Jackie Kay

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Transcript

Ramona Koval: Ever since I've been going to Edinburgh ten years ago, I've always managed to see Jackie Kay's events and record them from the back of the room. She's a captivating writer and a warm and funny presence. As a writer she just gets under your skin and holds you and moves you and that's the best kind of writing, I think. Born in Edinburgh in 1961 to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father she was adopted by a white couple at birth and brought up in Glasgow. She studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and Stirling University where she read English.

The experience of being adopted by and growing up with a white family inspired her first collection of poetry The Adoption Papers in 1991. Her first novel Trumpet, published in 1998, was awarded The Guardian Fiction Prize. In 2006 Jackie Kay received an MBE for services to literature. Her short story collection Wish I Was Here is absolutely marvellous, every story is a winner. Her latest book is called Darling, a collection of new and selected poems.

She writes for adults, she writes for children, in fact if you're a human being she writes for you. Here she is with a reading at the beginning of our event at Edinburgh at the International Book Festival.

Jackie Kay: Thank you. I'm just going to read a couple of poems. This is a love poem. A lot of the love poems in this book...actually this is from an earlier book called Life Mask. One year I was at Edinburgh and this woman came up to me in the book signing queue and wanted Life Mask signed, and she said to me, 'An awful lot of these poems in this book are awful sad, hen, I hope you've cheered up.' I quite like that, the cheered-up school of literary criticism, I'm having it.

'Her'

I had been told about her.
How she would always, always.
How she would never, never.
I'd watched and listened
but I still fell for her,
how she always, always.
How she never, never.

In the small brave night,
her lips, butterfly moments.
I tried to catch her and she laughed
a loud laugh that cracked me in two,
but then I had been told about her,
how she would always, always.
How she would never, never

We two listened to the wind.
We two galloped a pace.
We two, up and away, away, away.
And now she's gone,
like she said she would go.
But then I had been told about her—
how she would always, always.

Thank you. No idea exactly what that poem means but whenever I read it somebody comes up and says, 'I knew someone like that; always always, never never.' This is written in the voice of an old woman, this is called 'Robin'.

'Robin'

[reading from When someone dies... to ...cup of tea and I dunked it in.]

Thank you very much, you've been such a lovely audience. I'm going to just read you just one more poem to finish with before sitting down and talking to Ramona. You all seem pretty wide awake, I haven't seen anybody fall asleep except my dad! That's a good joke, but it's true! This is for my dear friend Julia Darling who died three years ago, but it's also for anybody in the audience who's lost anybody, which is most of us in some way or another.

'Darling'

You might forget the exact sound of her voice
or how her face looked when sleeping.
You might forget the sound of her quiet weeping
curled into the shape of a half moon,
when smaller than her self, she seemed already to be leaving
before she left, when the blossom was on the trees
and the sun was out, and all seemed good in the world.
I held her hand and sang a song from when I was a girl—
Heel y'ho boys, let her go boys—
and when I stopped singing she had slipped away,
already a slip of a girl again, skipping off,
her heart light, her face almost smiling.
And what I didn't know or couldn't say then
was that she hadn't really gone.
The dead don't go till you do, loved ones.
The dead are still here holding our hands.

Thank you very much.

Ramona Koval: You've absolutely slayed us all with that last line, we're all a bit unsteady. I'm just thinking about how it is that you are able to pinpoint those emotions and put them in the poem, and I sort of imagine what it's like to be Jackie Kay...does it mean that you're so sensitive to everything that is going on around you that you are being welled up emotionally every day in all kinds of ways? Is that your experience?

Jackie Kay: No, I think emotion...that's what poems really are, aren't they. I think Wordsworth called poems 'emotions distilled' and it's interesting to think about poems being actually about sentiments in one way or another, real sentiments in the real meaning of the word, the old fashioned meaning of the word, so that although poems don't need to be sentimental, they are from strong feelings and strong sentiment. But it doesn't mean that you go around like that all the time. But I suppose you have got a way of seeing when you write and you are looking at the world in a particular way, and so anything that you overhear in a bus, to how somebody might be, to how you see the moon over Hanover St or Fredrick St last night can suddenly be a poem because you're looking at things in a certain way.

Ramona Koval: But it must register emotionally with you and you must store them somewhere and bring them out.

Jackie Kay: Yes, I think so. I think you do. I think with that poem 'Darling', that was a very close friend and she was ill for a long period of time, so I suppose that builds up. And I think actually poems are a way of expressing those things that we find in life quite difficult to express. Grief is one of those subjects that people find difficult to talk about and poems are a way, I think, of dealing with grief. It's interesting that when somebody dies, often the first thing that somebody will turn to, even people that don't read poems very much, is a poem because poems have a way of saying things in a concise way that other things can't. That's what attracts me to writing poems. I think also because I talk a lot, so it's quite good to try and discipline myself, and the poem is a good form of discipline for me.

Ramona Koval: I was going to talk to you about all these old ladies, even before you mentioned it, because it's quite striking in your work. I thought, you know, you don't read a lot about old ladies who are funny, who are sexy, who are amused about life, who have lived a good life, who are talking with each other, who are joking, who are kind of still people, because older women are regarded as expendable in many societies. Can you talk a little bit about what attracts you to writing about them?

Jackie Kay: I don't know, I think I probably had a bit of an old head on young shoulders. People always thought I was older, even as a kid, and I'm just really interested in different ages. It seems like different people have different ages that suit them, so some old people you see actually grow into being old and feel quite comfortable and it suits them being old...I think everybody has got a prime time in their life where that is the age for them, and it varies, so I'm quite interested in that. And I'm just interested in looking at how people change as they grow older, whether or not their mannerisms or their habits solidify, anxieties become more particular when you get older. So I suppose that I like observing things partly as preparation in the hope that I will get old myself...because it can't be assumed, you know, there's buses out there all the time that could knock you down...

Ramona Koval: They wouldn't dare!

Jackie Kay: Oh you never know! But partly as preparation and partly just as a writer I like looking at all different ages, I like looking at very young children, I find them interesting too because they'll often come out with completely different things to adults. So it's just that range, but I find the extremes particularly interesting; young children and very old people.

Ramona Koval: What sort of a young child were you?

Jackie Kay: I was quite chatty, loquacious. I learnt that word early...it felt good because it kind of covered it up; I could say, 'I'm loquacious,' and it sounded better than saying, 'I'm a blether of Hell!' I was quite political. I had strong ideas about apartheid and poverty, and I used to go on a lot of marches and I wrote a lot of political poetry when I was younger and I used to organise garden fetes and raise money for leprosy and things like that. I had a whole gang of friends in my street, and I went to the same school as a lot of the friends in my street in Glasgow.

I was very imaginative, I suppose, I had a big imagination, so I always liked writing, but more than that I always wanted to be an actress when I was little so I used to go to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama on Wednesdays and Saturdays for years. And then when auditions came up I'd go for things like auditions for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and I wouldn't get the part. Must be because I had the Glasgow accent...

Ramona Koval: Yes, it must be! But you put it to good use here in your reading, all that training.

Jackie Kay: Yes, I suppose, a frustrated actress, yes.

Ramona Koval: When you write for children...because the 'map of Australia' poem is from that children's collection...when you write for children...sometimes when I read a poem in that collection, it could have been in the adults collection as well...what is it about writing for children? Do you have to think about enriching their view of the world or teaching them something about how life is or showing them something about language that they can grab hold of and play with? Is there a philosophy of writing poems for children? How do you know it's a children's poem?

Jackie Kay: It's a good question. I like to write poems that are crossover poems where they could be appreciated by a child or an adult because actually I think children are very, very sophisticated and people often write trivial things for them. But children are often very deep thinkers and profound thinkers and I like to try and address that in the poetry, so it's not so much that I'm feeling like I'm teaching them something, it's more that I feel like I'm trying to talk to them at their level because they're already at that level. I was in Ireland one year doing a poetry reading for ten-year-olds, and at the question time one little girl put up her hand and she said, 'What do poems mean? Do they mean anger, do they mean love, do they hate, do they mean pity, do they mean revenge, do the mean sadness? What do they mean?' It was great, just her list of things, it really woke me up.

Ramona Koval: You know, when you're a child it's the first time that someone hurts you deeply, the first time you know you don't fit in, the first time you know someone hates you, the first time all of these things that are difficult will be revealed to you.

Jackie Kay: Exactly. I think that's the thing, we all remember ourselves as children, don't we, and sometimes thinking of ourselves as a child is like waving to someone across the sea because we're already starting to recede, depending what age we are. We have a notion of ourselves as a younger self, so every adult contains within themselves the idea of themselves as a child, and some adults that dislike children literally forget the exact feeling of being a child. I think the interesting thing about being a writer is that you have to remember it. It's why an awful lot of writers are actually quite childish, if you think about it, they keep that childish sense because it's a way of being highly sensitive and looking at the world in that way. When you're a child you notice the spots on a ladybird's back, or the whole summertime will have a different sense, the whole summer will feel like a long time and you'll have different notions of time. When you're a writer you're trying to capture these extremes or these distortions because time is very subjective. There's no such thing as subjective time, and when you write that's really all you're writing about over and over again, the different ways in which time is very subjective.

Ramona Koval: Except you obviously have an adult part of your brain which is also interpreting what you're seeing and what you're reporting in your poem. So you're right, you've got a very old head on your shoulders. Also what I wanted to desperately ask you as I read your collection was why the obsession about teeth? There are a lot of poems about dentists, teeth, gums.

Jackie Kay: I don't know...it's very funny though because just before this reading I had a bunch of people taking photographs of me. It's always a bit weird, six people taking pictures, and I said, 'Oh my God, it's like having five dentists at you at once.' One of the photographers said, 'I am a dentist!' I couldn't believe it. And then he said, 'A wee bit of advice for you; you need to brush your teeth going straight down because that wee bit is starting to recede.' Seriously, I'm not making it up, it's very true.

Ramona Koval: But what about the teeth? There's almost a love poem to a dentist there.

Jackie Kay: Yes, I think you're right to pick up the thing with teeth. I think because teeth tell the story of a life...you know, you go from milk teeth to false teeth to gums, and little children are obsessed with teeth and the tooth fairy and you have all these myths around teeth coming back and going away. And at different points in our life when we have terrible toothache it's very memorable. Toothache is one of the most memorable pains, it burns you...that poem about toothache. And then teeth, if somebody dies and then there's no other way of identifying them, teeth recognise you if you've been murdered or whatever, teeth are a way of identifying people. So it's kind of fascinating how much of ourselves are told by teeth.

I remember going to the dentist once and the dentist said to me, 'You'd be amazed by the things a dentist can tell about you when you open your mouth. They can tell how recently you've had sex.' I said, 'Really!' I was quite interested. They can tell if you smoke, how much alcohol you drink, all sorts of other things apart from just sugar that we'd normally think of. So I just think teeth are fascinating and people are very particular about their teeth, aren't they, we're all quite self-conscious in one way or another of our teeth, even those with perfect sets with teeth. They're kind of odd things; there they are sitting in the mouth. They're bizarre if you think about it.

I remember when my gran was very ill in hospital, she lost her false teeth on the way to the ambulance and she couldn't find them, and she became quite obsessed with trying to find these teeth. So I went to her sheltered house and I was looking through all these drawers for sets of teeth. And then eventually I found a set of teeth. I knew they weren't the current ones but I knew that they would please her anyway. So I rushed back to the hospital with this set of teeth and she fitted them into her mouth and the nurses came round and she went, 'Ta-da!' Because they were so awkward, they didn't fit into her mouth, she had to take them out and promptly was sick. But you know, there's that sort of thing with teeth, they just tell so many different stories.

Ramona Koval: When I was in Australia I noticed that there was a list of possible next future poet laureates, and your name was on it. And then there was a book or something, as in bookies taking bets, or voting. What's the story there?

Jackie Kay: I think The Independent have got some vote going on where people can go and vote for who they want...if it's going to be a woman poet laureate, who they would want. It's just all silly though because I don't know if a woman will get offered the job or...

Ramona Koval: Because there never has been one, after all.

Jackie Kay: There never has been a woman. I think it would be great if there was a woman because I think it's like about time that there was a woman poet laureate. Who knows what will happen.

Ramona Koval: Well, we'll just have to wait. Jackie Kay speaking there to me at the Edinburgh International Book Festival a couple of weeks ago. Her latest collection of poetry is a new and selected volume called Darling and it's published by Bloodaxe.

Publications

Title: Darling: New and Selected Poems

AuthorJackie Kay

Publisher: Bloodaxe Books

Description: 1 85224 777 0

Title: Wish I Was Here

Publisher: Picador

Description ; ISBN-13 9780 3303 7332 6

Title: Trumpet

Publisher: Picador

Description:

ISBN-13 9780 3303 3146 3