An Writer in her Landscape. My Interview with Catherine Fisher by Steve Gladwin

I'm really delighted to be interviewing Catherine this month. She's a hugely successful writer for Middle-Grade and YA. Based in Newport, Gwent, she won the Tir Na n-Og prize for ‘Candle Man’ in 1996, the first of her dystopic series, ‘Incarceron’ was TheTimes Children’s Book of the Year and New York Times bestseller. Winner of the Cardiff International Poetry Prize, Catherine has published four collections of poetry and one pamphlet called 'Folklore.' Her work has been labelled fantasy, but in truth is not at all easy to describe. It has a huge range of scope and takes the reader all over the world and backwards and foreword in time, into the Norse sagas and to the Celtic otherworld, between faerie and Ancient Egypt and many other places besides. I attended two of the courses on writing from Myth and folk-tale which Catherine co-tutored at Ty Newydd with Kevin Crossley-Holland. It was there that I first became aware of her love of landscape.

 

Catherine, thank you so much for agreeing to talk to us. Can I start by asking you to describe just how different the landscape surrounding you now is from the landscape in which you were born?

 

 It’s actually pretty much the same. I was born in Newport in Gwent and that’s where I still live. Obviously there are more roads and houses than there used to be, but the underlying landscape of the rivers Usk and Ebbw and the levels with the hills behind doesn’t change. I live near the Usk and the river and its tides are very important; I always like to know what the tide is doing.

 

 What are the most vivid of your childhood memories?

 

 The earliest thing I can remember is playing on the floor while my mother was ironing. She told me I would have to go to school soon. I told her I wasn’t going, but she explained you had to. I was appalled, and hated the whole idea. I was probably 4 years old, or even 5, because at that time that was the age school education began- we had no nursery or kindergarten. I could already read and when I got to school it was just as bad as I had expected. In fact I never got to grips with it, and only when I got to A Levels was it at all bearable. It’s a characteristic memory really, and shows I was suspicious of authority even then.

 

 And what about books? Were there ones which inspired you more than others, or made you want to be a writer?

 

I was lucky in that there was a small public library round the corner and I went there every week for books. All the usual children’s books of course, but Stevenson stands out, especially Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll. It was there I read a whole shelf of myths and legends and fairytales. Also about that time I found a battered paperback of the Casebook of Sherlock Holmes in a junk sale and thus entered the magic world of Baker Street. Later I read Alan Garner- a revelation!-, Tolkien, Holdstock,David Jones, Keats, Yeats. And then Arthur Machen.

 

 As a writer is landscape and the ability to write about it something that’s important to you?

To take just two of your books, Corbenic and Dark Henge, the landscapes alternate between the mundane and the otherworldly – in each case with the one leading to the other. I notice that it’s been a theme all the way since your first book, ‘The Conjurer’s Game’.

 

 

 The way the land is formed, its woods and rivers and valleys, are a sort of entry into the imagination. Land and Mind are so similar. I have often set books in real landscapes and then travelled through them, or used real landscapes in Otherworlds. There are certainly plenty of portals in the books! Maybe I learned that from Alice in Wonderland, but also a book like Elidor, where the streets are very grim and real, but lead to astonishing things. If fantasy is grounded in the mundane, it adds to the power, somehow. Gondor would not be so high and perilous without the Shire.

 

Have you ever had a wish list of plots and themes. Welsh myth is clearly particularly important to you, but you have travelled much farther afield. Can you give us an idea of your range?

 

I wish I had a wish list. I usually just start with some tiny idea or image or place and then see where it goes. I am very unwilling to plot in advance or even think about the book too much when it is being written. I avoid thinking about it or talking about it. I have used a lot of Welsh themes but also Eqyptian and Greek motifs in The Oracle series, and more sf ideas in The Obsidian Mirror set, where I wanted to mix fairies and time travel..I enjoy historic fiction, and of course time travel is ideal for setting stories in other periods. Books like Incarceron are usually called distopias, certainly alternative futures. 

 

 

Having seen you confidently striding off on our courses at Ty Newydd, I’ve imagined that walking and getting out into landscape is especially important to you. What are the places that call to you and why?

 

I walk a lot in the woods around Tintern, and the Wye valley. Then there are places on the Gwent Levels- wet, marshy, wide-skied places that I like. I walk on the Marlborough Downs a lot, usually in summer- thoise open chalky landscapes with their ancient architectures are magnetic places. But I also like walking around unfamiliar streets in old cities, where the buildings hint at undiscovered stories. The very act of walking helps with getting your mind to that liminal place where stories are formed.

 

Is there a right and wrong way of writing about landscape, or is that a bit too black and white a way of looking at it?

 

 I don’t think there are right and wrong ways of writing about anything. It’s just the way it happens.

 

 What about your own personal landscape – the place where you live. How well does it reflect you the writer?

 

 

 

 The Gwent Levels are a strange in-between sort of place, between sea and land. Like all estuaries, there are big skies and wet underfoot and flat roads. We also have words like reen and gout which are local. And the Severn is a huge presence. I have set stories here- The Candleman in particular. But I do like to vary settings, so not often.

 

 You’re labelled a fantasy writer. Are there any tricks of the trade you might offer to any aspiring writer of fantasy?

 

 Only to find what fascinates you and write about that. Keep it inventive, play tricks on the reader, keep them guessing. Above all think about language and how you use it because that is the only tool you have.

 

 

 

OK, Catherine, we have come out of lockdown and we can have people round to dinner again. If you had three great fantasy writers, living or dead at your table, who would it be and why?

 

 

 

I would invite Arthur Machen, Dafydd ap Gwilym and David Jones, and then just sit back and listen. What a conversation that would be! Welsh myth, local places, strange tales. And I’m sure ap Gwilym would know a lot of stories we have lost.

 

Do you think there have been phases in your writing? Where do you think you are at -the-moment, and what are you working on?

 

 Yes, there are phases. I began with shorter books for 9-12s, then the books got more complex and longer and older, for young adults. Suddenly I wanted to go back to a younger audience, with the Clockwork Crow trilogy. My next book is a collected short stories, gathering old and new short pieces together. It’s called THE RED GLOVES AND OTHER STORIES and will be published by Firefly in September.

 

Finally, how well have you been able to work and cope with lockdown? What are the most important lessons we need to learn for the future?

 

 I have worked as normal through lockdown, on the short stories and some other projects. What has been difficult, of course, is not receiving as many stimulating experiences as usual- theatre, opera, ballet, sport, museums, galleries, trains and travel- which is where I spend a lot of time. I think we will learn to appreciate these far more than before.

 

Thank you, Catherine, for sharing all your thoughts with us.

 

Thank you, Steve.

And Catherine's new collection of short stories, 'The Red Gloves' and other stories will be published on September 16th 2021.

The photos of the woods around the Wye Valley were taken by Catherine.

If you want to find out more about Catherine and her work, her website will tell you all you need to know.

https://www.catherine-fisher.com/

Two Mid-Wales Writers Chat About Myth, Poetry And The Donald

In a thoroughly enjoyable year of interviews, which have given us three different takes on King Arthur by Celtic expert and author John Matthews, fellow storyteller Andy Harrop Smith and acclaimed poet, translator and children's writer Kevin Crossley Holland, I have also enjoyed my interview swap with my friend and fellow writer Sharon Tregenza and a fascinating chat with Marty Stewart, whose first two books are Riverkeep and The Sacrifice Box. But we end the year with a real treat, a wide-ranging chat with four time Tir Na nOg winning writer and fellow resident of glorious Mid Wales, Frances Thomas.

Now Frances is someone who my old editor Viv suggested that I should get in touch with several years ago and now I'm delighted to have finally done so. Recently it led us to a book swap where I got by far the better end of the deal in that I was able to enjoy over a weekend her first trilogy about the Welsh bard and mythic figure, Taliesin, one of my own great heroes. Among the many things i enjoyed was the way she brought together the two very contrasting versions of Taliesin and it was that which really prompted this chat.

So, Frances, first many thanks for agreeing to this chat and for responding so enthusiastically to my questions.

Thanks for asking me, Steve. I've really enjoyed doing it.

1. I’ve always been fascinated by the origins of someone’s art. It’s that first workbook and the glimmers of the ideas within that intrigue me. Recently I’ve read your Taliesin trilogy from the 90’s, which you very kindly provided in a rather uneven swap. After telling you how much I enjoyed it and ripped through the whole thing over a weekend, you told me it was all so long ago that you could hardly remember it. But do you remember its genesis and what intrigued you so much about the figure of Taliesin?

How it all started; well, I really can't remember. Except that I've always been fascinated by Welsh mythology, and when I first decided that I was going to try and finish a book (rather than making the endless false starts I'd done until them) I'd look for a Welsh theme. And Taliesin seemed an interesting subject - not so over-written as Arthur- there was a good deal of scope for me to make up my own story, combined with the scraps of legends; a known yet unknown figure if you like.

2. Now I’ve been fascinated by the figure of Taliesin for twenty years or so, but for me it’s always been more the Taliesin that wrote the mythological poems - multi-layered and full of meaning - and was said to be King Arthur’s bard – the one if you like who was present in The Spoils of Annwn or in the company of the Singing Head. You, on the other hand, in the second and third books in your trilogy in particular, chose to concentrate far more on the less mythic figure, the Taliesin who was court bard to Owain of Rheged and indeed Owain features significantly in your series. Why did you choose that version?

Although I love myth and magic, I find that when I'm writing, I want to write about people and their relationships and their connections with the world about them. And I want to find reality in the magical/mythical  elements.

3. Taking a massive leap forward to the past few years, you’ve been concentrating your attentions on Greek Myth with your Troy books. What do you think are the main differences in the mythology of your native land and that of classical mythology?

Our versions of Greek mythology have been much cleaned up and sanitised by countless retellings. And when you first read the Mabinogion, the stories can feel strange and rambling; you look hard into them to find the connections and structures you expect from modern tale-telling. (Probably the stories as we now know them have been worked on by their Christian scribes, so we don't find out too much about the pre-Christian deities who were there originally, which also  adds to the strangeness). You need to find your own way of reading them, and then they are suddenly full of  real people -loves, betrayals, friendships, cruelties, quests and disappointments, revenges  and triumphs. 

4. What is it, do you think, that myth has to offer not just the growing child, but the questing adult, and how well equipped are we as a society to provide that kind of nurturing?

Myths have an especial richness, in that they've been worked on over centuries by people trying to find answers to the basic questions of life - why are we here, what are we  supposed to be doing, how is it that things go wrong, how  can we do the right things, how do we relate to other people, why are some feelings - love, hate, revenge, excitement - so strong and so universal?  When we read them, we tread in all of those thousands and thousands of footsteps that have gone down that road before us. So for both adults and children there is a feeling both of strangeness and familiarity; we benefit from being exposed to them in so many ways. (This in spite of the publisher who rejected my 'Helen's Daughter' with 'These sorts of things don't sell' - well, I think they do, if children have the chance  to see them)

5. Would you say there have been distinct periods of writing in your career. Has happiness necessarily coincided with success?

I don't think I've ever been very successful - there have been periods when things seem to be going quite well, but then they're followed by disasters. Publishers are never very easy to work with, and most writers can't rely on the expectation of success. I found that out the hard way at the very start of my career when the second and third books in my Taliesin trilogy were turned down by the publisher of the first one.

But happiness comes from writing - when I'm writing, I'm perfectly absorbed in my writing world and perfectly happy. That's what a writer should look for and enjoy rather than 'success' which is transient and unreliable.

6. How important is the home and the landscape you live in, do you think, to the life of a writer? I’m thinking particularly of that fascinating and almost indefinable Welsh word hiraeth, that I’ve mentioned in a previous blog. Is that longing a part of what you write or what makes you write?

I love living in mid-Wales, which as you know, is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I love being able to look out of my window every morning and see the light and the colours, different and gorgeous every day. I'm less mobile than I was, for various reasons, so the joys of sight are especially blessed. But I'm also - and this might sound paradoxical - a Londoner at heart, since I lived there for more years than I have lived in Wales- and I feel 'hiraeth' for London when I'm in Wales.

But looking back over my stories, I don't think I write about either; I try to bring to life the landscapes of the places I write about, even if I don't know them well. I  remember when I was a child I always believed that Rosemary Sutcliff must have been a great traveller, as she wrote about places so vividly; and I found out later that she was so disabled, she must have travelled very little and with great difficulty. It's imagination that does the trick.

7. And apart from skills, in this day and age its tolerance and understanding that seem increasingly to be going. On one of your blogs, you wonder what Donald Trump’s favourite poem might be, and the actual answer turns out to be fascinating. Can you tell us about that.

I don't suppose the Donald has ever really read a poem in his life, but he quotes as his 'favourite poem' the words of a song called 'Snake' originally sung by black soul singer Al Wilson in 1968. It's about a woman who out of compassion takes home and nurtures a wounded snake, which, when healed, turns round and bites her. Before she dies, the snake sneers 'You knew I was a snake when you found me.' For snake, of course, read Mexicans, Muslims, immigrants generally.  In spite of objections by Wilson's family, Trump continues to quote it.

8. Now poetry is important to you – not just your own, but clearly other people’s. This has led to you publishing two rather extraordinary books of poetry. Can you tell us the thinking behind that?

I love reading poetry and I try to write it, though I don't think I'm very good. My two 'poetry' books, A  Bracelet of Bright Hair, and Dancing In The Chequered Shade, are basically journals in which I about the events of my day, and try to match a poem to it. Some of the poems are by me, but mostly they're by real poets. Readers have told me that they've found the books helpful and inspiring. Certainly they were very enjoyable to write.

9.Two years or so ago I did a wonderful six week course on Mental Health in Literature with Future Learn and co-tutored by Doctor Jonathan Bate and Professor Paula Byrne, (now Lord and Lady Bate). Among the many wonderful things covered was the therapeutic nature of poetry and I was able to give first hand experience of how wonderfully it worked for Rosie, who was quite ill at the time, on one of my blogs. I also learned how very different an experience it was to read a poem out loud when Jonathan gave us the task of doing this with On Westminster Bridge – admittedly after we’d heard Sir Ian McKellen have a stab at it! Do you think there’s any particular way of approaching poetry that’s more effective for you?

10, I think good poetry can make you a better person if you give it your full attention. I don't think it would work on Trump though. Remember Auden's marvellous poem on the death of a tyrant; 'the poetry he wrote was easy to understand...'  I don't think there's a better or worse way of approaching poetry; just give it your full attention and then watch out for those poems that suddenly grab you by the throat. I remember how Donne's love poems did this for me when I first read them as a teenager.

11. Let’s move back to the present and your Girls of Troy series. How did that fascination with classical mythology finally bear fruit and what made you tackle it in this way?

I realized that there were also figures half-hidden on the margins of the well-known Greek legends just asking to be let out, and these figures were mostly women and girls; and I suddenly found them clamoring to tell me their stories. When I found that Helen of Troy had a daughter, Hermione, I knew I had to find out her story. Then I discovered that Achilles had a son, Pyrrhus, and that Hermione and Pyrrhus had a relationship. How could I resist such a beginning? This became 'Helen's Daughter' the first volume in the trilogy. Then I knew I had to write about the actual battle for Troy, so I give this story to a slave girl who witnesses it all, in The Burning Towers.. Finally, the story has to be finished off by writing about the murder of Agamemnon and the subsequent revenge taken by his children Electra and Orestes. For a long while I tried to find ways of telling this using a voice other than Electra's; but finally I realized that she had to tell her story herself. This became the final volume, The Silver Handled Knife.

12. Rosie and I are currently listening to Anton Lesser narrating The Iliad on Audible. It’s a long and confusing narrative with so many lists of names that it makes the Welsh story of Culwch and Olwen seem positively half-hearted in comparison. How do you de-bug something like that and make is more accessible – the same I suppose with the ancient Welsh books and the poems of Taliesin. Or do we just have to accept them as they are as much as we do Shakespeare’s plays and not soften or reduce them?

Anton Lesser must be great to listen to - what a voice. We have Derek Jacobi doing the same thing, and it's great to listen to in the car. I think that in their raw form, the stories can be a bit indigestible especially for children. But they can be retold in such a way that you concentrate on the universal and exciting elements of the tales, and children can 'get' them. When I was young, my father bought me a copy of  the Odyssey in Barbara Leonie Picard's adaptation  and read it to me at night. I loved it, and Odysseus has always been one of my heroes. (yes, there are gruesome bits in the story, but somehow I absorbed those).

13. This seems a nice point to ask you about the pictures, Frances. I asked you to select several which had some kind of meaning for you. Could you tell us about them and what led to your choices?

Apart from a little bit of self-advertising for my Greek books, there the Lion Gate in Mycenae, which we first visited a few years ago, after longing for years to go there. Seeing it inspired me to write about Mycenae, and Agamemnon and his family. There's also a little Greek Athene owl, which I bought in Greece, and sat on my windowsill while I was writing the trilogy,, and I hope , gave me inspiration from the goddess!  Lastly two pictures taken from our house, just showing how beautiful Wales is, and how lovely it is to be able to wake up every morning and see such beauty for free - it's different every day and I never take it for granted. I don't have any pictures for the first trilogy, but certainly the beauty of the countryside inspired me to write about it.

14. The second picture looks very like a place I walk in regularly. That's Mid-Wales for you. But finally, Frances, are there still remaining characters, themes and ideas you want to work with and why?

I have a story that I wrote some years ago, set in the seventeenth century and the era of tulip fever. My agent wouldn't send it out, so it's still sitting there. It's probably a bit 'quiet' for today's market, but I'd like to work on it a  bit, and bring it out myself. I don't have many indulgences any more, so self-publishing  is one I can allow myself, I think.

Well I hope your tulips get to flourish at some time in the future, Frances,Thank you so much for chatting to me and everyone who reads this blog.

Steve, it's been a pleasure.

And I, everyone, will see you next in January so I'll look forward to that.




Steve Gladwin

Author of 'The Seven' and 'The Raven's Call.'

Writer and Screenwriter

imagepoet7@gmail.com