Motherhood and The Process of Poetry by Rosanna McGlone 

Prior to writing my book, The Process of Poetry, I interviewed the Chinese-American poet Adrienne Su, about the earliest draft of her poem ‘After the Dinner party’. Whilst last lines are often powerful and, may at times, need some unpacking, Su’s last line seemed particularly obtuse. I stared at the handwritten draft, ‘cheap merchandise of all ki’. It seemed unusually cryptic. Was ‘ki’ perhaps a reference to Chinese philosophy? The material and the spiritual? 

When I asked Su about this line, she stared at it for some time and then laughed. ‘I think that’s when I had to pick my son up from nursery,’ she explained. She had literally stopped midline, never completing the word ‘kinds’.

Motherhood impacts on our work in different ways. For my book The Process of Poetry I interviewed fifteen contemporary poets, discussing the development of an early draft of a poem into its final iteration. By chance, the majority of the participants were women. These included Joelle Taylor, Victoria Kennefick, Pascale Petit, Hannah Lowe, Liz Lochhead, Mona Arshi, Caroline Bird, Regi Claire and Gillian Clarke.

There was clearly an intergenerational divide between poets such as Kim Moore, Hannah Lowe and Victoria Kennefick and Gillian Clarke. The former poets juggle motherhood, teaching and the car of their young children, frequently necessitating working late into the night, and Lowe describes sitting on the floor for hours working on  sonnet after her child had gone to bed.

However, for previous generations, children have provided significant inspiration for writers. Gillian Clarke was a stay-at-home mother in the 60s who used her children and their observed experiences as the direct material for her work. Poems such as ‘Playing the Piano’ which is the one chosen for the book, is based on her experience of sitting up, waiting for her son, Owain’s, safe return, after catching the last bus home. Many others developed directly from real life family and, indeed, were often started- either with physical jottings, or in her head- whilst Clarke watched her children at play in the garden.

Nevertheless, this is not to say that today’s poets do not also weave the fabric of family life into their work. Indeed, Mona Arshi spoke of how she exchanged a temporary line in an early draft of The Lion, with the line 

                  …..But many evenings he’ll sit
  twisted behind the drapery solving my
 vulgar fractions with nothing but his claws.

 after hearing her children come home and discuss the maths homework that they had been set that day. Arshi realised that this worked perfectly as a replacement for a line with which she had been struggling. 

However, we are not only mothers, but daughters who have our own mothers. Liz Lochhead, in her poem ‘Chimneysweepers’ used a chance encounter with a young woman close to her home, to reflect on the loss of her own mother and on mortality. Lochhead brings a huge poignancy to the piece by raising the awareness that she can no longer ask her mother even the simplest of questions, now that she has gone.

My own writing, too, has been influenced by family life. Indeed, even before my son was born, I had written a piece for The Observer, ‘Pregnant in Paris’, followed a year later by ‘Have Baby, Will Travel’. It was as if my writing was charting the progress of my young family. 

As I began my research for the book, I was fortunate to be offered a writing residency just outside Stratford-on-Avon by The Hosking Houses Trust, far away from my own mothering commitments to my teenage daughter. At first it was a little disconcerting and I missed being perpetually on call. However, after a couple of days I was basking in the freedom and independence that this retreat afforded me. The autonomy to work late into the night, to leave my notes and books piled high on the dining room table squeezing a space to eat, as- and when- I could find the time to stop. This reinforced Virginia Wolf’s epithet that a key requirement for a woman to write fiction, or arguably anything, is ‘A Room of One’s Own’. Yet, if one had to choose family or writing which of us would not find it an easy decision to make?

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@RosannaMcGlone

Rosanna McGlone is a writer and journalist. She has written more than a 100 features for both national, and international, publications. Her first radio play was shortlisted for the BBC’s Alfred Bradley Bursary Award. Rosanna runs a Tuesday evening poetry class on Zoom. Her work has been supported by, amongst others, Arts Council England, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Hull Truck Theatre, Vault Festival and The Old Vic New Voices Programme. Writing residencies include Capricorn Hill, NSW, Australia and The Hosking Houses Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon, England.

THE PROCESS OF POETRY

A rare inside look into the creative process of acclaimed poets.

Through exclusive interviews, The Process of Poetry offers unprecedented access into the minds of literary greats like Don Paterson and Gillian Clarke as they unpack how an inkling of an idea grows into an award-winning poem.

“A fantastic idea… will prove invaluable to poets, creative writing students, and anyone interested in the creative process.” – Malika Booker, Writer, Poet and Theatre Maker

From first drafts to finished works, famous poets reveal their full poetic process, sharing insights into their inspiration, influences, editing decisions and more. This behind-the-scenes peek covers a diverse range of styles and backgrounds.

Topics span from poetic techniques like rhyme and rhythm to common themes of love, nature, grief and politics. There is something for all poetry enthusiasts.

Journalist Rosanna McGlone has interviewed over 100 leading authors with work published in The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald and more. Her plays and poetry have won BBC and Arts Council awards.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing