JACKIE KAY

Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh and grew up in Glasgow. She has published three collections of poetry, inlcuding the Forward Prize-winning The Adoption Papers. Her novel Trumpet won the Guardian Fiction Prize. She also writes for children, and in 2004 she published a collection of short stories, Why Don't You Stop Talking? You can find out more about Jackie on the Contemporary Writers website.

This interview took place in January 2005. It was hosted by enCompass Reader-in-Residence Susan Tranter, with questions submitted by visitors to the website.

Susan Tranter: Can you tell us what you've been reading recently?
JK: I've been reading Julia Darling's Apology for Absence, a wonderful moving poetry collection and re-reading George MacKay Brown's A Calender of Love.

Anu: Can you ask Jackie why she decided to publish a book of short stories recently? Many writers start their careers with stories, and then progress on to novels: how did it come about that she did it the other way around, and does she think it's made a difference?
JK: When I wrote Trumpet, I loved writing best the solo characters that appear for a moment then are gone, the registrar and the undertaker. I thought I could write short stories from writing them. I love the short story form. It is a wonderful hybrid form for me and is a cross between poetry and the novel, so for me I had to have written both of those before going on to the short story. I don't know that it makes a difference which way around writers choose to experiment with form. I know that for me all my writing is part of a journey. At the moment I feel most happy and most comfortable in the short story form and have no desire really to write another novel just yet.

DV: Why did you decide to write Trumpet in lots of different voices rather than one?
JK: Trumpet for me is a novel about belief and about the fluidity of identity. It tells the same story from different points of view to show how differently it it possible to view one life. I wanted to have a mulitiple-voiced narrative also so that it would be like a piece of jazz, with several instruments having their solo turns. I wanted to build a world in voices so that the reader too could make up Joss from all those different pieces. I don't think it would have worked to have had just one narrative voice.

Chris R: Hi Jackie! Having written poetry, biography and fiction, what are you planning next? Do you see these things as being very different fields, or is it all part of the same thing?
JK: I see them all as being very different. I have just finished a new collection of poems, called Life Mask which will be out this April. I'm working on a new collection of stories and a memoir about going to Nigeria for the first time. But I see them all as being part of my work as a writer. I don't feel a vocational poet in the way that some poets are. I really enjoy trying to do something different with each new book.

Sassy J: Which do you prefer, poetry or prose? Are the different forms suited to different moods? Or how does it work?
JK: I prefer poetry for some ideas and short stories for others. I don't particularly like writing novels. I find them a pain to write! Ideas already come in the form, so I already know once I have an idea if it is going to be prose or poetry. And the ideas come from different moods. Poetry for me is more exposing. With fiction, you can hide behind the characters you create. But I do like writing both and I hope I always will.

Min: What are the three things which as a writer you couldn't live without?
JK: That is a hard question because it involves abstracts and concretes. I have to have a study. I have to have doubt and belief in equal measures. I have to have books to read.

J: In Jackie's opinion, does writing have to be political to be 'worth' anything? Is it ever enough just to create something beautiful?
JK: It doesn't have to be political. Though everything seems to be even if it doesn't try to be because we all have a way of looking at the world and that comes through the writing. I dislike writing that tells people how to think, or is didactic or polemical, but I think that I come from a political background and those values inform my work. But yes, it is always more than enough to create something beautiful. God, yes. I wish.

Sara: I was really moved by the poems you wrote about being adopted. How far was The Adoption Papers a healing or understanding process for you?
JK: I think that we write often in order to try and discover or understand ourselves and so The Adoption Papers was a cathartic book for me to write. I wrote it before I had ever traced a birth parent and it made me think about nature and nurture and the conflict of identities. It was a searching book to write and in the end it did feel healing too.

Arjun: Hello Jackie. Thanks for answering our questions. I was wondering what you think you might have done if you hadn't been a writer: can you imagine anything else?
JK: I wanted to be an actress when I was a child. I went to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. I can imagine that but at that time there were no parts for black girls in Scotland, it was before inter-racial casting. I think I like reading my work live because of the frustrated actress! But now I feel good for nothing else really and when I ever am disappointed in what I am trying to write, I try and imagine what else useful I could possibly do, and come up with nothing!

D: I have just read Why Don't You Stop Talking and would like to know when or where Jackie gets most of her ideas? She seems to cover such a range of subjects. 

JK: Where do ideas come from? I'm not sure. A lot of them come from something somebody says, or something I say myself, or from overhearing somebody say something. Once I have a voice, I usually can find a way to write it. I am interested in the border country that exists between fact and fiction, reality and the imagination. I like putting ordinary people in extraordinary situations. I'm also really interested in the idea of transformation. And in the detailed hours of working people's lives.

Riitta: How does your typical 'writing day' go?

JK: I get up and walk the dog. I find walking the dog helpful for writing. It clears the head. Then I come home, have some breakfast and write for three or four hours. If I am up against a deadline, I write till the wee small hours. I think the secret of writing something long is routine and I keep trying to be more disciplined with my own routines. I travel a lot so that disrupts the pattern. I'd like to be at home for six months and do the same thing every day.

Susan Tranter: Are there any writers who have perhaps been under-rated but that you'd recommend to enCompass visitors?
JK: Maybe a tricky question! I wouldn't like to tag somebody with under-rated! But there are plenty of writers who are not known to a broad audience of readers. Poets in particular. There are also writers who are very rated amongst their peers but who do not sell large numbers of books.

Susan Tranter: Many thanks for answering our questions Jackie.

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