Spotlight: Sharon Black, Thomas Malloch & Monica Burns
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, Sharon Black, Thomas Malloch & Monica Burns.
Sharon Black
What was the inspiration behind ‘Golf Ball, Stalag Luft II’?
I attended a poetry workshop with Luke Kennard at the R&A World Golf Museum in St Andrews a couple of years ago as part of StAnza Poetry Festival. The curator took various objects out of their cases to show us, for inspiration, and this golf ball was the one that sparked my curiosity. I know nothing about golf, and to be honest am not the slightest bit interested in the sport - which is why I signed up for the workshop as I like to jump into the unknown and my least obvious areas of interest as I find these can often throw up the most interesting results. The human story behind this battered but strangely beautiful ball was what intrigued me.
What's your favourite part of the writing process?
I have two favourites parts: research and editing. With this poem I re-contacted the curator who generously sent me lots of articles the museum had about the Polish camp of Stalag Luft II and how the prisoners got hold of materials to make their golf balls and clubs and how the game was played out in the grounds. I love discovering new stuff so I spent many happy hours poring through material related to the object, getting a sense of my subject, before putting it all to one side and sitting down to write. After the initial free-write or first draft, I love picking through the rubble to fish out the bits that somehow seem to have something to say, and then building these into a new thing. To see a poem take shape, to find the sculpture inside the block of clay, is a very satisfying process - because I never know what is going to appear.
What's been your favourite book of the last twelve months?
I've just finished Margaret Atwood's collection of short stories Wilderness Tips. It's my first time reading Atwood, and I loved her humanity, her joy of language and wordplay, and her wry sense of humour. Those stories are some kind of wild sweet nectar.
Are you working on anything exciting or challenging at the moment?
I'm in that strange anti-climatic space at the moment of having just had two books out at the tail end of last year (The Last Woman Born on the Island (Vagabond Voices) and The Red House (Drunk Muse)) and not knowing what happens next. I enjoyed working on my first full themed collection (The Red House, about the remote Cévennes area of France where I live ) and think I might like to do another themed collection, but I'm not sure what. I guess I'll just flail around for a while writing whatever comes up and at some point take a look and see if any themes are naturally coming to the surface.
Thomas Malloch
What's been your favourite book of the last twelve months?
Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These is a thing of spare beauty, its oblique look at the scandal of the Magdalen laundries told with a poet’s economy of language. No surprise then, that it won the Orwell Prize for Fiction. It was my stand-out read of the last year.
Who is an author or poet you think more people should know about?
James Galvin is a poet, though I’m not familiar with his poetry. I only know one of his works, The Meadow, this location in Colorado being the fixed point for a number of the book’s characters. I don’t know anyone who has ever read Galvin and I think I only know his name (and therefore the book) from a newspaper interview with Colm Toibin. Regardless, it’s a work deserving of a wider audience.
What was the inspiration behind your submission, ‘Silverfish’?
Silverfish came with a content warning: ‘Sexual abuse in a foster home setting.’ I don’t have experience of either (sexual abuse or a foster home) and there is no specific inspiration, if that’s even the right word. But it does seem to me that abuse-of-power stories have featured in the news quite frequently in recent years. It is awful to think that somehow a man’s abuse of young girls (or even boys) does not surprise, yet a woman as abuser, does.
Make no mistake; I do see Silverfish as an abuse-of-power story but I also wondered how a sexually aware teenager might feel about being the object of an older woman’s desire. Would he even feel that it was abuse? What might the long-term effects be? Necessarily bad? Might vulnerable young people actually enjoy the attention of their abusers, particularly in the grooming stage? None of this is nice stuff but ‘nice stuff’ doesn’t much interest me. And since it’s not nice to write either, I don’t usually enjoy the writing process. Indeed enjoyment isn’t even an aim. But satisfaction is, and sometimes I think I hit the mark.
Monica Burns
Instagram: @mjburns_art/ Twitter: @mjburns_art
What's your favourite part of the writing process?
For me, writing is editing. I think because I’m also an artist, I view the writing process as similar to the drawing process. The first words you put down will always be just the sketch. The rough, scattered part. Then comes the refining and perfecting. I love getting down to work on something I’ve bashed out, knocking it into shape and figuring out what it wants to say. It’s where my brain really comes alive and the shape of the story really starts forming. I think many people are scared of the editing process, or think of it as just crossing Ts and dotting Is, but at least for me, it’s a vital part of the writing process. It’s the part of the process that makes the difference between the loose sketch and the final, fully rendered image, as it were.
What's been your favourite book of the last twelve months?
Rizzio by Denise Mina. Brilliant short book. It is Mina's first foray into historical fiction, and I really hope she does more!
Are you working on anything exciting or challenging at the moment?
I am working on a graphic novel adaptation of James Hogg's 1824 gothic novel, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. I am doing both the art and script for this, so it is quite challenging to tackle it all by myself! I have a full time job so I can never say for certain, but I hope to get the graphic novel ready for publication within the next five years. I'm currently seeking funding opportunities to help me towards that goal, and I have a two-week residency in Hospitalfield soon to work on it.
Who is an author or poet you think more people should know about?
James Hogg! Part of the reason I am doing this graphic novel adaptation is because I am determined that he and his writing deserve more attention. He was a shepherd for most of his life, working in the Scottish borders, and he taught himself to read and write. He was good friends with Sir Walter Scott, and his Confessions of a Justified Sinner inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to write Jekyll and Hyde.
