Spotlight: Sarah Wallis, Norman Hogg & Mark Russell
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, Sarah Wallis, Norman Hogg & Mark Russell.
Sarah Wallis
What was the inspiration behind ‘Limited Edition Hagstone Beach’?
Stones and pebbles on Scottish beaches, Iona greenstone, or nephrite, I discovered via research for a book of poems called Precious Mettle (out now with The Alien Buddha). It’s about female fortitude and a treasure hunt of sorts through various metals, precious and semi precious stones and minerals. I was also reading about stone boats and the saints and witches that sail them in myth and legend. Iona in Lacrimis didn’t make it into that book but it is going to be in my next one, Poet Seabird Island.
‘Limited Edition Hagstone Beach’ is also in the new book and came from collecting hagstones from my hometown beaches at Dunbar, they are stones with a perfect circle in them to see through, made by the Common Piddock trying to carve their way free through the stone. If you find a large stone with lots of mazey holes in, pick it up and shake it, you will hear the rattle of shells that have been left behind, but be careful you may also get a drenching as they can be filled with water too.
Who do you imagine to be your ideal reader?
Someone who is curious about the world around them, who will bring their own imagination to play with the poem and someone who appreciates the sea in all its salt mood vagaries.
What's your favourite part of the writing process?
The initial idea stage when a world of possibilities light up your mind and your brain gets to play with all of them like a firework sparking off in all directions, twisting and turning idea, image or phrase and striking for home with what seems, in the moment, a brilliant occurrence of random sparks that fit absolutely perfectly and you can say to yourself, that’s it, that’s exactly how it was / what I meant to say and how on earth did that happen? (May delete later. In the less fun, editing stage.)
Are you working on anything exciting or challenging at the moment?
At work on a series of Modern Sonnets - After the Circus, there is a Fire Eater with a bad cough, a tattooed Body Artist, an Illusionist, and Tightrope Walker – she imagines she is in the clean high air of the mountains and not in the choking swirl of circus tent dust - there is also an aging Magician with dementia, a pair of star crossed lovers – the Strong Man (low circus) and Sylvia of the Flying Trapeze (high circus) – Our Lady of the Tigers (retired) and Citizen Clown.
I am also working on my next chapbook Poet Seabird Island, both my Gutter 27 poems will appear in this project, which will be published by Boats Against the Current. So I am immersed in circus and islands at the moment.
What's been your favourite book of the last twelve months?
Stav Poleg’s The City, published by Carcanet. I absolutely love the ringing repetitions and singsong voice of the poems and have been recommending it to everyone.
Who is an author or poet you think more people should know about?
GB Clarkson – Monica’s Overcoat of Flesh, Crucifox and the very recently published Medlars, for lush language, new words and expertly crafted work, do go read her.
Kirsten Luckins’ Passerine is a fascinating and very different kind of poetry book in epistolary form, again one I recommend and re-read.
Susie Campbell is a recent discovery and she has a new book, The Sleeping Place, do go seek it out, the first page tells us that ‘a gardener discovers a Saxon burial ground next to the Victorian cemetery where Lewis Carroll is buried.’ Hooked.
Is there anything else you want our readers to know about you and your writing?
They told me at UEA it could well take ten years to publish my first book, which I couldn’t comprehend at the time. It took twelve years in the end and many times I almost gave up, but persistence and perseverance is absolutely key to believing in your own work when no one else will.
If you want to know more, head to my website - sarahwallis.net - for links to recent publications, reviews of my chapbooks Medusa Retold, Precious Mettle and How to Love the Hat Thrower.
Norman Hogg
Instagram: @norman.j.hogg
What was the inspiration behind ‘Fake Hat with Molar Logo (Happy Saturday)’?
The story evolved from a recurring dream in which my dad and I went on a drunken rampage through our High Street. He was small, like a chimp, so I carried him everywhere under my arm, and he had this football-sized tumour on his neck. The tumour had the Tesco logo on it, as if he had bought it there. It played ambient muzak and made floor announcements. At the end of the night, the town lynched us.
I’d been wanting to try writing fiction for ages (pretty much forever) and eventually started working with this weirdly familiar dreamscape, trying to flesh it out and give it a modicum of real-world logic. These particular dreams started while I was hospitalised for depression, and I think the story inherited some of the issues I worked through there; the social estrangement that comes with neurodivergence, the patently absurd, yet unescapable, cycles of mental illness, self-medication and addiction. That stuff’s all in there, somewhere, (perhaps in dad’s bag), festering quietly beneath the escalating pageantry of slapstick.
On the other hand, it isn't that deep. It's just a romp inspired by happy memories of teenage drinking in a small Scottish town—a nostalgic farewell to indoor smoking, messy, late-night pub crawls and half-forgotten scuffles after closing time.
What's your favourite part of the writing process?
Transitioning from fine art to literary fiction, I thought I would enjoy the relative spontaneity of the first draft. I’ve found that dyslexia can be a strength in more abstract approaches to writing (or text, more generally) but now I had to start thinking about structure, world-building, pacing, grammar and all that—how to write a good story basically. As I’ve been learning, I now enjoy the point where I’m just beginning to edit, starting to think about how it could all come together. At that point it’s still easy to make bold moves, big cuts, juggling whole sections around until a story emerges. That’s my favourite part—when the story gets up on its two feet, and you see it for the first time as a separate entity, autonomous. Maybe this is the closest a writer ever gets to being the reader?
Are you working on anything exciting or challenging at the moment?
This year, I was fortunate enough to be awarded a Canadian Arts Council grant to develop a collection of short stories. I’m really excited at the opportunity, but I’m still working out how to write, so its defiantly gonna be a challenge. The stories, which would include the two published in Gutter, are set in an alternate, neo-medieval version of 1980’s West Lothian (there’s a bunch of Canadiana in there too). So, there’s a bit of world-building involved, which is a learning experience I’m really enjoying. My biggest challenge so far, I think, is how to combine absurdity with affect. My writing (so far) has a tendency toward wild, careening slapstick, which I like, but there’s quite a lot of tragedy in the stories too—stuff that really needs to hit home. I’m not sure I’m really nailing that balance yet. We’ll see how it goes.
Mark Russell
Twitter: @mark59russell / Instagram: @markrussellhi
What's been your favourite book of the last twelve months?
Kathrine Sowerby’s (Find Yourself) At Constant Falls from Blue Diode Press is a remarkable book. Intelligent, funny, probing, distinctive. Everything you could want in a book. I think we may have all been to Constant Falls at some time or other, and this is as good an account of it as you’ll find.
Who do you imagine to be your ideal reader?
I don’t have an ideal reader. I wonder if anybody does. I hope my work can find a broad readership, but I certainly don’t have anybody in mind when I’m writing. Except me. I write for me, for some need in me, so I suppose I might be my own ideal reader.
What's your favourite part of the writing process?
My favourite moments are when you find yourself writing almost outside yourself, when the poem begins to surprise you, or challenge you. It can feel like it’s daring you to go somewhere dangerous, or forbidden, or just somewhere you hadn’t planned to go. And you have to go with it because the poem’s leaving with or without you. It’s like that kid you grew up with who is very cool, or the one who’s always in trouble, and you want to try to keep up with them by taking risks, too. Not all poems do that, of course, but those that do are the most enjoyable to write.
