Spotlight: Paul Brownsey, Adrija Ghosh & Bruach Mhor
One of the greatest privileges of publishing Gutter, is being able to connect with writers familiar and new. Each issue, we’ll shine a spotlight on some of our contributors, to discover more about what inspires them, and where they hope their writing takes them next. Today, it’s our pleasure to speak to Issue 27 contributors, Paul Brownsey, Adrija Ghosh & Bruach Mhor.
Paul Brownsey
What was the inspiration behind ‘Manoeuvres’?
I was walking in the Kilpatrick Hills with my friend Annie the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We kept hearing loud rumblings and bangs. Maybe we were a touch overwrought, but we kept looking towards Faslane: could it be that the Russians would launch an attack on Faslan as a message to the West to keep its distance from the Russian invasion? The rumblings, it turned out, were just underground burns descending in rocky beds; the bangs came from a quarry. But the wee minx who sends ideas for stories did her stuff. What if the Russians *had* gone for Faslane, and what if I got home to find my husband had joined up as a volunteer?
What's your favourite part of the writing process?
I loathe the initial process of getting some sort of narrative down on the page. I love the process of revision: refining, reordering, choosing new words, cutting bits out, finding places where gaps can speak, introducing new and barely noticeable bits of subtext.
What's been your favourite book of the last twelve months?
Tie between the collected stories of John Cheever, with their brilliant exposures of the gaps between people’s lives and what they tell themselves about their lives; and my fifth reading of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, which I think I’m at last old enough to understand.
Anything else you want our readers to know about you and your writing?
Once upon a time I was an academic. It’s been fascinating to learn the difference between academic writing (where everything should be on the surface, indubitably complete and clear and unequivocal) and literary writing (where it’s the undertones and overtones and ironies and gaps and equivocations that count).
Adrija Ghosh
What was the inspiration behind ‘Sundial’?
I wrote Sundial, the poem that found its way into Gutter 27 when I was in Norwich, studying for my MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. I am usually very moved by the geography of a place. The East Anglia campus is an interesting mix of brutalist architecture, the Sainsbury Center, and the Norfolk Broads. The summer solstice was a gorgeous, golden day. I wanted to compress how I felt and experienced Norwich in the poem, my year in the city reflected in the sun traversing the sundial.
I had also just come back from my Translation residency at Dragon Hall, Norwich where I had translated Rabindranath Tagore's Bhanusingh'er Padabali from Brajabuli to English. The way Tagore weaves in the Indian Classical Raga and its timekeeping with his prosody also inspired me to look at time differently - do we really feel differently during different hours of the day? Could I condense my emotive voice in a poem? I think Tony Hoagland's concept of 'poetic housing' also played a part in my efforts of turning the poem into a vessel for my experience in Norwich.
It was honestly about time and compression. Trying to retain the expansive nature of Time alive by stuffing it in, well, a page and a poem and an object that tracks it. I thought it would be an interesting way to articulate the juxtaposition.
What's your favourite part of the writing process?
Foraging. I forage my memory for moments that inspire me or haunt me. I forage for words in the many languages I speak. I forage for metaphors everywhere I look, I live, I leave. The act of searching keeps me hooked. I am always looking to the world to be surprised, and it is yet to fail me. I find wonder in everything. I am a naturally curious person. I am not very concerned about a person's psyche, but I like to observe how people interact and react to the world. I usually say I write a lot about love and a lot about loneliness. People watching makes me feel like I am in a theater at all times. I enjoy being a part of a fourth-wall-breaking spectacle.
Another aspect I really enjoy about my process is the discovery of other arts while I am at it. I listened to blond by Frank Ocean on repeat when I was editing my debut collection, I loved the way he spoke to my interiority. I loved finding motifs in his music and visiting a David Hockney exhibition that was being held at the Fitzwillaim at Cambridge. It was such an oh. moment for me. I could find connections everywhere. The resonance of queer lore, an invisible thread that makes us a community really really tied me to that moment.
Are you working on anything exciting or challenging at the moment?
I recently signed my first contract as a Translator! I am really excited to work with some of the most thought-provoking feminist contemporary creative non-fiction that is currently being written in Bengali. I usually translate poetry or fiction, so translating CNF is going to be a completely new creative endeavor for me.
Is there anything else you want our readers to know about you and your writing?
My debut collection 'the commerce between tongues' is coming out with Broken Sleep Books on June 30, 2023. I am really nervous about unfurling my work to the world. It is a collection of queer, polycultural, polyglot poetry that I hope is received with love and grace.
Bruach Mhor
Who do you imagine to be your ideal reader?
One who appreciates that a poem can often imply more than it explicitly says. I am by nature rather oblique in my interactions with people. And that carries over into the writing.
What's your favourite part of the writing process?
The editing stage when I have the basic idea on the page and want to replace what I think of as "weak words" with more interesting words: words which imply what was previously implied but imply something more interesting.
Are you working on anything exciting or challenging at the moment?
I am a keen snorkeller and have a project writing poems about shells. I know our local species and hope to write about many. The challenge is to make something connected with the distinctive form of a species. I have written quite a few poems connected with sculpture (one has appeared in Gutter) but shells, unlike most sculptures, do not arrive with a background human story of creative intentions. I must connect the form with something.
