“the one book I can only read in small doses because it upsets me so much …Silences by Tillie Olsen…”. Excerpt from an interview which Ralph Wessman conducted with Anne Kellas while doing a tour of her bookshelves:
The post below is a recent reflection on silences of various kinds:
Tillie Olsen’s book is about silences in women’s writing; how a young poet will appear and she’ll be wonderful … and then you don’t hear from her till she’s sixty, because she’s been busy working, and raising kids.
I’ve lived with that book for years … and it’s inspired me to not give up… [it] has kept me focused.”
Ralph: “In mentioning you’ve found silences in your work, have you ever managed to sit down and write about what it is that’s silenced you? Or have you simply picked up again from where you left off?”
At the time I tossed his question off a bit.
But now, yes, I think I will write about that. Thank you Ralph. Because recently I found I was somewhat silenced by being told off (in the most polite manner) for my poetry being “too difficult” for a local broadcast. Probing, I got to the real reason: it was my subject matter not the poetry that was too difficult.
A few months ago someone else asked if I might consider writing about the future and not the past, and, did I consider the reader when I wrote?
It’s questions like these that I take to heart a bit too much. But today came some feedback that energises me: a random message from a friend who’d shared Ways to say goodbye with someone in grief, and that person had found it profoundly helpful.
I often get feedback that the book helped. I used to try out poems from The White Room Poems at the Republic Bar readings years before the poems were published. With that receptive audience, almost every time someone would come up and say thank you. Yes, with tears. But they were grateful tears. I also tried the whole book out, in draft form, with four or five poets whom I greatly respect, and asked them if x or y poem was too much. I expected a ‘yes’, but instead they all said no, not too much, publish it.
So, yes, I do consider the audience. I do consider the reader.
But while I write the actual poem, no one else must be in the room!
I hope this reflection will silence my own internal censor and my own internal critic enough for me to carry on!
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