SCOTS Project - www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk

Document : 1671
Title    : Interview with Liz Lochhead
Author(s): N/A

Copyright holder(s): Pascale Free

Audio transcription


F66: Do I see myself as a feminist? Well of course I do. Erm, I don't see
myself as a feminist-writer, you know, with a hyphen between the two. Er,
but that's a different matter altogether, but as a private citizen, erm
I've been a feminist er since the the ideas attached to the current recent
wave of feminism came out, in the mid sixties to late sixties. And er I
think that society has changed, and there's now a more general feeling of
of course there should be equality between both sexes. But erm this wasn't
so, erm if people hadn't fought for a lot of things. Erm and I do als-, I
did also feel the need to assert a female voice in pa- in erm Scotland
particularly, you know, I I felt that it was important that unlike previous
women writers, I didn't feel that I had to write like a man. Erm. I might
write a play that had er twelve men in it and no women. //I might.//
F1187: //Mmhm.//
F66: But I wouldn't do it without noticing, [?]like[/?] some men might.
F1187: Do you find it easier then obviously to write from a woman's
perspective and not have any //men within? No.//
F66: //Er, no. I don't.// Er. [knock on door] Er, come in! [door opens]
//Hi! We're doing a wee interview just now, [CENSORED: forename]. It's
alright! No bother.//
F1187: //Hi! [third speaker apologises]//
F66: Come back erm at four for the //group, that'd be magic.//
F1187: //[third speaker says 'okay' ]// //[third speaker says 'Alright,
yeah yeah, cool, see you soon' ]//
F66: //Is that alright? Okay, see you soon.// //[laugh]//
F1187: //See you later.//
F66: [CENSORED: forename] is lovely. //He's writing really well.//
F1187: //Yeah.//
F66: His writing's really, you know, taking a quantum leap. That's how
writing seems to work. You know, you stick in a sort of plateau for a
while, and then you take a big erm advance forward. Erm, I did feel
pressured, I think, to write fr- er from a female point of view, erm
pressured internally, and erm from the outside. Erm, it's interesting
actually. I've just been erm working on a a p-, a just a very short preface
for er Agnes Owen's er collected short stories. And er one of the things
that I f- used to find shocking about Agnes in the mid s- seventies er was
that she wrote in a a a male point of view. And that often the males she
wrote about were very disrespectful to women, //you know, and she just//
F1187: //Mmhm.//
F66: wrote it down, I mean she obviously took great relish and great
freedom into becoming a man, and I understood that, you know? Erm, and I
would think, gosh can you do that, if you're a woman? //Erm and yes, you
can do anything, actually if you're a writer you can do anything you like
to do.//
F1187: //[laugh]//
F66: Erm there's no reason why you can't er write in the voices of men,
women,
F1187: Would you see it as a form of escapism then?
F66: Erm, oh yeah, writing is a form of escapism, //of course.//
F1187: //Mmhm.// Mm.
F66: Even if it's escaping into the very heart of what you're stuck with,
you know, [laugh] it's still a form of escapism. Erm, you know, and I think
it often is, erm, going into it, going into what you're stuck with, annoyed
by, and so on. But if you're going in as a writer, erm then you've got all
sorts of reasons and all sorts of fun with it.
F1187: Mmhm. Writing is all about fun really, isn't it?
F66: Erm,
F1187: Not really.
F66: Er, //well.//
F1187: //[laugh]//
F66: There has to be some fun moments somewhere in it, I think. Er, I think
it becomes less and less fun, the longer you do it. There's more struggle
involved all the time. But the struggle is to get to those moments of
freedom when you're enjoying it. Er. And if you werenae ever gettin them,
then I don't think you would be able to be bothered with it.
F1187: Mmhm. You just said that writing, erm, you gain leaps of
understanding, sort of, yo- you're on a plateau and then you make a quantum
leap. //Are you are you still making quantum leaps at the moment?//
F66: //Well,// oh no, //no, I don't think I am.//
F1187: //[laugh]//
F66: No, I'm erm, I don't think you necessarily get better all the time,
F1187: Mmhm.
F66: er, no, just various students that I meet though,
F1187: Mmhm.
F66: it's lovely to be around while people are doing that thing. And I
watched it, they all do stay, you know, at the one l-, and then there's a
breakthrough poem or a breakthrough piece or there's something that, you
know, that someone's really getting at. Erm and that's lovely just to be
around watching it. I sometimes feel jealous of the freedom of some of the
erm students I've been seeing, you know, th- the other night at erm the Art
School er there's a young poet and she'd been writing, er, [tut], she's a
painter, she's a very good painter, [CENSORED: forename], and er she had
been working on her thesis all last term, and she said she hadn't been
writing creatively at all, and we just got going on a daft wee erm project
which is the same one as I'm going to try with the the group when they turn
up in in twenty-five minutes. Er and eh she just let go in such a, you
know, a lovely way. She had a voice erm and was able to to let that voice,
kind of, it's a lyric voice, but let it out with an ease. Erm it's an in-,
she's one of these poets with a sort of intimate voice. It's as if she's
just speaking into a corner of your ear. It's a voice that I- it's a tone
that I I would like to achieve myself more often. And she just was able to
do it. Of course the piece that she wrote in half an hour wasn't perfect,
but all it needed doing to it really was the bits that are not right taken
out, //you know, the bits that were a bit literary,//
F1187: //Mmhm.//
F66: the bits that talked about, you know, a constellation of cherry stones
at her feet, you know, and the dirt, and then she found out, you know, that
she just wanted to put the stones at my feet, and the dirt, you know, //it
was better.//
F1187: //Yeah.//
F66: And it was about that kind of thing, about being able to erm get to
that unpretentious place. But sometimes things that sound very er easy were
a struggle. The point is you've got to make them sound easy by the end,
F1187: Mm.
F66: erm or flowing, erm. But no, I'm not necessarily getting better at it,
at all. No, no, I feel just like like an apprentice at the moment. I don't
write nearly as many poems as I used to, and the only consolation for that
is that the ones that I write are more important, to me, you know, not to
the world or, you know, not in a literary sense, but, you know, th- they're
more essential, er in the end, to me, the ones that I manage to get done.
It's it's a funny business. [laugh]
F1187: I mean a lot of the poems that I've read of yours are very personal,
very //very personal.//
F66: //Well they're not.// //In, they seem, th-//
F1187: //They seem to be, yeah.//
F66: er there's a persona er at work. I think that everything that
everybody writes is very personal to them. I mean, if there's some
science-fiction writer, to J G Ballard, it's very personal, you know, this
s-s- fantastical world that he's done. You know, it has to chime in with
your own er deepest desires and and so on, but nobody ever thinks that
novelists' things are personal, whereas if you try and write things that
sound personal, as a poet, people never think of the fictional aspects of
them. Erm, I'd really like to write more fictional things. That's what I'm
writing that's exciting me the most at the moment. Erm that's the things
that I get the old buzz that I used to get from writing poems thirty years
ago. I still love writing a poem though, more than anything else //in the
world.//
F1187: //Mm.//
F66: Even ones that are a struggle. Er.
F1187: What kind of buzz did you used to get, or do you still get?
F66: Oh you still do. It's just that buzz that you want to get it finished,
that you want to stay up half the night if necessary, writing it out and
writing it back down again the same, but with a different slant on it, and
changing a word from the beginning of the line to the end, and it's that
sort of drafting and redrafting. It's very much a biro thing. I wouldn't
want to go to the computer till very late late drafts. But I am now going
to the computer, even for, you know, for the later drafts of poems. And I
wonder if if I shouldn't, if I should try and ban that until the the typing
up stage. Maybe that's, maybe it's something as strange as having it
printed too early //that//
F1187: //Mmhm.//
F66: that it's stultifying rather than freeing.
F1187: Mmhm. It feels final when it's printed.
F66: Yeah, which is strange cause, I mean, plays don't, I do like having a
word-processor for plays, and it actually just feels like a perfect,
transparent, version of the way I used to write when I would literally cut
and paste and the pages would become so thick they had to be photocopied
flat down, you know, //before going to the typist to get//
F1187: //Mmhm.//
F66: er typed up, and er I type really slowly, but it's fast enough if
you're thinking. It's fast enough for first drafts. And it's frustrating
for me to type up things. It just is. I'm er, I'm so slow, er so it's okay
typing up a poem. That's kind of part of the fun. Erm but I would hate to
type up a play from, you know, from a whole draft. Er. But I like, I really
like having the ability to cut and paste in a play. But of course you've
got to keep printing out and scribbling on it.
F1187: When did you think "Oh, I could be a full-time writer"?
F66: Erm, gosh I don't think I ever have //thought that.//
F1187: //[laugh]//
F66: I've sort of struggled on from year to year thinking I won't get a
real job for another wee while. //[laugh] Erm,//
F1187: //[laugh]//
F66: And now, because I've had that big sixty, birthday, I could retire.
[laugh] Somebody else said "Who would know the difference?" //And er,
[laugh]//
F1187: //Charming! [laugh]//
F66: but erm you know, I mean obviously writers don't really retire, do
they? Just get on with writing the next thing. Erm, but it would be
interesting not to, I mean I don't feel that I'm trying to work at a career
or something like that. You know, it's just, I think [inhale] "Could I
write a s- a story about that?" Could I write some stories? Could I collect
them together? That'd be nice. I'd love to do a collection of short
fiction. And a lot of them I think would be dramatic monologues. But they
would be, they'd be what I think of as as short stories. And some of them
are adapted from performance pieces. I've always liked the dramatic
monologue. But I like the dramatic monologue in poetry. And I think in a
way all the "I" poems, the ones that you think of as very personal, are
actually sort of dramatic monologues. Sometimes spoken in the voice of a
person quite like me, [laugh] but others not. //Erm,//
F1187: //Mmhm.//
F66: but, you know, I do feel that distance and difference between the "I"
that I write and myself. I mean the "I" that I write is very rarely me.
F1187: Mmhm.
F66: Or very rarely quite me. There have been a couple of them. And maybe,
yes, that is probably true, that the poems I've been writing recently have
had more of a naked //"I".//
F1187: //Mmhm.//
F66: Yeah.
F1187: Why do you think that is then?
F66: I haven't a clue. //[laugh]//
F1187: //[laugh]// Is there anything you've tried to write, that you have
tried over and over and it hasn't quite worked?
F66: [tut] Oh, quite a few things. Mmhm. Mmhm. For instance I I tried for a
long long time to write a play based on a true event. Erm. There's a woman
I know, she's a friend, called [CENSORED: forename] [CENSORED: surname],
who believes that her father murdered a little girl. Er. That I can
remember the little girl disappearing when I was seven and when [CENSORED:
forename] was seven. This little girl was a year older than us. Disappeared
one day in a blizzard. And I became fascinated by, not so much the story,
but, erm of the murdered little girl, but of [CENSORED: forename]'s story
of believing that her father had done such a thing. //That was the story//
F1187: //Mmhm.//
F66: that interested me. And I kept trying to make a drama of that, and I
wrote a very good film script for it, and a lot of people have liked that,
but erm it's not been made because people say, well because there isn't an
ending to it, because, you know, it was never found out to be the ending of
that mystery. Erm and that was kind of the point to me, was that there was
no end to it.
F1187: Mmhm.
F66: So I tried to make that the end. And erm I think the film script works
very well to read. But as TV didn't make it in the end, I found that
frustrating, so I've tried about four, five or six ways of trying to make a
play out of that, a stage play. And it's never worked, and I've never quite
given up. And I know that I've got to do something with the material, but I
think I've got to take a fictional, le-, I think that's the thing. And I've
tried to think what went wrong, and I think it was that my view of whether
[CENSORED: forename] was right or wrong shifted //during the writing and
rewriting.//
F1187: //Mmhm.//
F66: Erm in my first versions of it I- I didn't have such a a gap of irony
as later on. You know, I began, and also you worry about things that are
people's own real lives. Erm so I think I've got to have fiction. Erm and
I've written other plays that haven't gone anywhere, erm and I think I've
not wanted to write them badly enough. Eh. Whenever you really want to
write something which I did with the material that belonged to [CENSORED:
forename], erm I think that'll have a a more poetic or dramatic outcome
eventually, once I can see the way of doing it with the freedom that I have
with my own stories to fictionalise. You know my own, you know you said the
poems were very personal and, yes sometimes I would say I could look back
and connect things to specific biographical things in my life, erm but I
think the act of writing removes that for me. //So//
F1187: //Mmhm.//
F66: erm. So there's obviously a sort of f- freedom even with things you
care about. You also, you're always constructing it, you're always
constructing a sort of, not so much a story, it's more a drama for me, and
a drama might just be a dramatic situation. It might not be a complete
drama. It might, i.e. it might not be a drama with an outcome. It might be
just a dramatic situation
F1187: Mmhm.
F66: that's described in, say, a poem, without the outcome being involved
in it. Erm, some plays feel like long poems, you know, a play like "Mary
Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off". The structure of it is dramatic.
Erm. But there's a very static first half in that one scene does not lead
to the other. The first half of the play describes four or five different
aspects of Mary's life that were, erm running concurrently, you know, you
get what's she like with Bothwell, what's she get with erm, with Knox,
what's she like erm about Elizabeth, and, you know, and all these things
were, sort of, separated structurally to be dealt with, to be contrasted
with Elizabeth's way with the same question. So all these things er were
completely concurrent until there was an- a dramatic action of Elizabeth
sending erm Darnley to Scotland and and Mary falling in love with Darnley,
was the first bit of action that pushed on the second half of the play. Erm
so sometimes dramatisations are showing poetic states erm that exist and
don't seem to have an out, and I think that's what I like about a Greek
drama like Medea. Erm, yes, there's terrible action happens in it but at
the end of it the woman is stuck there saying "it will never be over". That
action just seems to land her in a situation of being locked //together//
F1187: //Yeah.//
F66: with the husband. Erm, locked together in in the agony of what's
between them. Erm. I like working with other people's [laugh] material when
I'm stuck cause you're never stuck if you've got something starting. You
know, like it's great fun working with a Molière or something. Erm, so if
I do get stuck, I'll always be able to work, because I could always, I can
always be doing versions of other people's things and, once you depart from
that that could, you know, always become something different.
F1187: Is that one of the things you enjoy most about eh Glasgow
University, working with the students here?
F66: Erm, what? The different versions of things?
F1187: Working with their different versions, their different styles of
writing, //seeing them improve.//
F66: //O- oh yeah.// No I just, I really love erm being around people, as
they're, you know, starting off doing it, and eh it's funny not to be able
to be very reassuring with them. You know, I was talking to somebody just
before you came and he was saying, "I don't really know what I'm doing.
This thing's an experiment." And you sort of think, well it always is,
actually.  You know? Erm, of course, you get less able to experiment freely
erm as you get more experienced, you know, you don't do certain things that
that don't work. Erm but it means you don't do anything sometimes, er and
sometimes people will be trying things that are, you know, they're not
gonnae work but they've had such good fun finding out they don't work. Or,
they actually sometimes make things work that y- you know, that oughtn't to
or, they make an aspect of it work and then they can just use that one bit.
No, it's it's terrific cause there's so many erm people that have got raw
talent. It's not that raw, some of them. Some of them are becoming
increasingly sophisticated, but erm it interests me that sometimes when
there's students who erm are not writing very well, at first when they
come, you know, they're maybe writing in a clichéd kind of forms and eh
don't really know what they're doing. Some of them, you know, [exhale]
advance really quickly. So the desire to write is the main thing.
F1187: Mmhm.
F66: Erm, you know, it's their desire to do it can sometimes lead to them
doing it really a lot better than than they start off. But of course some
people, erm because the- they, cause those people want to write. You know,
they're not people who want to be writers. Erm, you also meet some people
that, you know, want you to tell them what to write, and they kind of are
interested in becoming writers rather than writing something.
F1187: Mmhm.
F66: But, you know, whenever people are writing something, whether it works
or doesn't, it's just an exciting time. Especially, as loads of them are,
that are open enough to see what does work and what doesn't. No, the-
they're they're great. Erm, but I haven't been seeing stacks and stacks of
students. But, those that I have seen, I think are really, you know, all of
them, working hard, and, you know, terrifically open to things, you know,
I've not found very many people who are so kind of er precious about their
work that they won't take criticism. Erm, most people realise that, if you
bother to point out that, that word there is killing the image next to it,
//you know er,//
F1187: //Mmhm.//
F66: is pulling it, or whatever, erm, if people are open enough to just see
that it's not a criticism but a, you know, which most people seem to be,
then, it's very exciting. But occasionally I've been feeling old, //you
know, sometimes [laugh]//
F1187: //[laugh]//
F66: you know, you go "My God, //I wish I had that//
F1187: //[inhale]//
F66: [exhale] amount of nerve to deal with that thing, you know? Cause some
things that that people are dealing with it are, you know, are not working
out very well, but they've got great kind of courage and stamina and "I'll
do it all again". And what's interesting is that most people begin to
recognise the bits that do work
F1187: Mm.
F66: for them. And I think the the workshop situation's good because erm
the wee group that meet, there's only, what, half a dozen of us or erm
sometimes seven or eight, people are really really erm grateful for other
people's critical points.
F1187: Mmhm.
F66: And, you know, they seem to have got to the stage of so not feeling
got at, so feeling supported by someone's opinion. Erm, and it's always
helpful, it's almost necessary to be able to see your work from another
person's point of view.
F1187: Mmhm.
F66: And you always meet a few people that don't like doing that, they say
"Oh well, I don't want to read anything, erm, at the moment, because I'm
writing this, //and I don't want to", you know.//
F1187: //[laugh]//
F66: And I agree with people, I mean, if you're writing, you know, a novel
about a particular thing, don't read a, somebody else's work on the same
subject, at the moment. Erm, but don't stop reading, read different stuff
that that feeds into it.
F1187: Mmhm.
F66: And it's that sort of trial and error which I think gets more
complicated [laugh] for you, //as you,//
F1187: //[laugh]//
F66: you know, the more choices you have.
F1187: Mmhm.
F66: And yet now and again you get beyond all that. I mean you must have
felt that when you were writing that short story.
F1187: Oh yeah. //Yeah.//
F66: //Just suddenly you're going// "Okay, I know what's gonnae happen
here." And it's as if you're writing down rather than writing it. //And
that only happens now and again.//
F1187: //Yeah.// It's really exhilarating when it does happen. //Really
exhilarating.//
F66: //Mm? Mmhm.// Yeah.
F1187: Do you think it's, I mean it's a- an old question, but do you think
it's actually possible to teach people how to write? Or do you think it's
//something that you hone?//
F66: //No no no,// of course you can't. //But you can, er,//
F1187: //Yeah.//
F66: you can encourage people to teach themselves to write. Er, you can
encourage them to look at their work with an irony and an outside eye,
F1187: Mmhm.
F66: an outside ear. Erm. You can encourage them to be honest. Er. And you
don't want ever to spoil anybody's fun in what they've done. But you can
point out that well, erm, that particular rhyme is very forced and lame and
weakens the rest of your piece. Erm, so do you want to leave it like that
or are you gonnae do something about it. Up to you, I mean, a- I'm always
saying to people, it's up to you. They don't ha-, nobody ever has to change
a word to suit anybody else. But if people sit round this table and five
out of six people tell them that they don't, you know, they had thought it
was written in a woman's point of view and it was actually a man, and that
they were annoyed at not realising until the last line, you know, that kind
of thing, erm there's no point in saying, "It's not meant to be a man",
//you know, or "It's not meant to be a woman".//
F1187: //Mmhm.//
F66: Erm, er, you know, you-, people take on board what other, how other
people read things. And I like writers who want to communicate, rather than
to express themselves.
F1187: Mmhm. Do you think that's the purpose of writing then,
communication, putting across a particular idea, //or do you think it's not
always necessary?//
F66: //Oh, mm.// No, I think the point of it probably is expression.
//Erm,//
F1187: //Mmhm.//
F66: for the writer anyway is to express something that they don't know.
Usually it's to express something to yourself. You know, it's not, to
communicate with another bit of yourself //really//
F1187: //Mmhm.//
F66: via that expression. And then looking at this bit of expression as if
it was written by somebody else and trying to make it communicate better
//with//
F1187: //Yeah.//
F66: yourself and others. Erm.
F1187: [paper rustling]
F66: Of course it's very important to be expressing yourself. And I
definitely do feel that if I've expressed something to, if I've
communicated with the other bit of me, if it doesn't for other people,
that's okay. Er, but I've got to be being honest about that.
F1187: Mmhm.
F66: And I think sometimes people at the beginning of writing [knock on
door] erm are a wee bit, you know? Hello!


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Information about document and author:

Audio
Audio audience
General public: For gender: Mixed
Audience size: 1

Audio awareness & spontaneity
Speaker awareness: Aware
Degree of spontaneity: Spontaneous

Audio footage information
Original title: Interview with Liz Lochhead
Year of recording: 2008
Recording person id: 1187
Size (min): 29
Size (mb): 142

Audio setting
Education: Recording venue: Room in university department
Geographic location of speech: Glasgow

Audio relationship between recorder/interviewer and speakers
Speakers knew each other: Yes

Audio transcription information
Transcriber id: 1187
Year of transcription: 2008
Year material recorded: 2008
Word count: 4449

Audio type
Interview: 

Participant
Participant details
Participant id: 66
Gender: Female
Decade of birth: 1940
Educational attainment: College
Age left school: 17
Upbringing/religious beliefs: Protestantism
Occupation: Writer
Place of birth: Motherwell
Region of birth: Lanark
Birthplace CSD dialect area: Lnk
Country of birth: Scotland
Place of residence: Glasgow
Region of residence: Glasgow
Residence CSD dialect area: Gsw
Country of residence: Scotland
Father's occupation: Admninistrator
Father's place of birth: Craigneuk
Father's region of birth: Lanark
Father's birthplace CSD dialect area: Lnk
Father's country of birth: Scotland
Mother's occupation: Housewife / ATS in army
Mother's place of birth: Carluke
Mother's region of birth: Lanark
Mother's birthplace CSD dialect area: Lnk
Mother's country of birth: Scotland

Languages:
Language: English
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: 
Language: French
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: 
Language: Scots
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: 


Participant
Participant details
Participant id: 1187
Gender: Female
Decade of birth: 1970
Educational attainment: University
Age left school: 18
Upbringing/religious beliefs: Catholicism
Occupation: Teacher
Place of birth: Glasgow
Region of birth: Glasgow
Birthplace CSD dialect area: Gsw
Country of birth: Scotland
Place of residence: Scotstoun
Region of residence: Glasgow
Residence CSD dialect area: Gsw
Country of residence: Scotland
Father's occupation: Musician
Father's region of birth: Kent
Father's country of birth: England
Mother's occupation: Computer programmer
Mother's place of birth: Paris
Mother's country of birth: France

Languages:
Language: English
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: All the time
Language: French
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: At work, at home, on holiday
Language: Scots
Speak: No
Read: Yes
Write: No
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: Social context