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Poet
on a mission
Percy Zvomuya, Mail & Guardian (SA)
September 29, 2006
http://www.chico.mweb.co.za/art/2006/2006sept/060929-poet.html
Percy Zvomuya speaks to Owen Sheers
about Welsh literature, his taste in books and the telling of his
great-grand uncle’s adventures as a missionary in Zimbabwe
Owen Sheers, a Welsh writer, finds
nation-specific pigeonholing imprisoning and would rather just
be seen as a writer -- and what more liberating a way to do this
than to write The Dust Diaries, a book on Zimbabwean missionary
Arthur Cripps, his great-grand uncle.
I am sure Sheers will take issue with
being called a Welsh writer as he is quite clear, in our interview,
that it is "not helpful to define a writer by his nationality,
because you want to be writing in the world and about the world".
He would rather be described simply as a "writer from Wales,
because Wales is my cultural background". Sheers gives the
example of his novel The Dust Diaries, a winner of the Welsh book
of the year, but essentially about a maverick missionary and poet
who left England for Rhodesia at the turn of the 20th century.
"The beauty of writing is that
you cross all borders -- and that should not be confined by nationalities,"
he says in a clear tone, much to my relief. I had been apprehensive
about getting lost in the fog of a thick Welsh accent. Still, the
uniqueness of one’s experiences can’t be submerged, as shown by
a conversation Sheers had with a poet from Zimbabwe, John Eppel.
Sheers recalls: "He first said, ‘Your poetry feels very Irish,
actually like Seamus Heaney.’ And then he said, ‘No, no, no, I realise
that’s wrong. It is very Celtic. It is very ancient, man, so ancient.’
So maybe there is a Celtic note in my poetry."
Despite his insistence on unshackling
himself from national boundaries, you still get the feeling that
Sheers is not dismissive of nationality, because one’s writing,
he says, is "obviously informed by your histories, by your
landscapes and the culture and the people that you grew up with".
For instance, in the course of our interview, he notes that "Irish
and Scottish literature have been recognised within the canon of
English literature much more than Welsh literature".
Sheers pays tribute to what the Irish
have brought to English literature, explaining their defining body
of work as arising from "the violent nature" of their
relationship with the English. Another reason, he says, is that
the Irish are a nation of emigrants, unlike the Welsh, who are more
a nation of immigrants. "[The Irish] were writing from the
world. You cannot fail to acknowledge people such as [James] Joyce,
[Samuel] Beckett; they were crucial to the modernist experiment
and they were amazing writers."
We turn to talk of an incident that
surprised me in The Dust Diaries, which is an odd mixture of myth,
fact and reality. There is an episode where Cripps, who was also
seen as a powerful rain spirit, controls and sends bees to stop
a car. "I am more comfortable using fictionalised techniques
than using historical facts," says Sheers. Consequently, his
work sometimes strays into the realm of magical realism.
The novel is a poetic eulogy to Cripps,
an independent missionary in Enkeldoorn, now Chivhu. Cripps was
opposed to settler policies, including hut tax, and bought a farm
where he invited Africans to live without being bothered by the
colonial administration. Some of the policies he advocated, such
as segregation, would shock from today’s perspective, but, viewed
in the context of the times, can be considered quite progressive.
Regularly penning a poem or two that
were critical of Rhodesia’s footprint in the life of the natives,
Cripps came to be seen by African people as an ally, a hero, and
was deified by some to the level of a rain spirit. A few white people
were embarrassed by his spartan habits, his insistence on walking
the more than 100km from Chivhu to Harare, but he received the grudging
respect of others.
Much later, in the sulphurous atmosphere
that hung over the farm invasions, even the driver of the infamous
Chenjerai Hunzvi, leader of the war veterans, confessed to Sheers
his admiration and love for the missionary and his work.
When I ask Sheers how the book has
been received, he laughs and says he has been lucky that it was
critically acclaimed. Touching praise came from Doris Lessing, who
chose it as her best book for last year in The Times Literary Supplement,
and Michael Holroyd -- whom Sheers describes as the father of contemporary
British biography -- also chose it as one of his best reads.
"In the reprint I want to put
[Lessing’s] quote on the front of the book," he laughs. But
Alexandra Fuller, author of the lauded Zimbabwean memoir Let’s Not
Go to the Dogs Tonight, was not as obliging. She describes the book
as "cheerless … and lacking in the essential ingredients of
humour and humanity". He waves away her criticism, which we
agree is harsh and uninformed, because The Dust Diaries drips with
humanity.
As I thumb through my copy, I open
it to the inside front cover, where Sheers stares out from a portrait.
Casually, I say to him that some girls from the office found him
handsome and wanted to come along for the interview. Chuckling,
he says simply that sometimes pictures overstate how people look.
I tell him that, when I read The Dust
Diaries, what struck me was its poetic intensity and the easy way
he has with metaphor. He attributes some of that to the early influence
of RS Thomas, a Welsh poet. "He was a poet and a priest and
I was fascinated by how the poet was always questioning the priest
and vice versa."
Another writer Sheers appreciates is
Bruce Chapman, author of the novel On the Black Hill, for "moving
the borders of fiction and non-fiction".
Sheers says that when he was writing
The Dust Diaries he "was always slightly worried about being
too lyrical [for], as a poet writing prose, you don’t want to be
writing purple prose".
We turn to talk about his next novel,
Resistance, whose manuscript he has just submitted. He says it is
"a different book" to The Dust Diaries. The latter, he
explains, had been "given" to him because it was a story
already in existence. His forthcoming novel is "a counterfactual
story set in an alternative history" of Britain had the Nazi
invasion occurred.
There were British plans for an underground
resistance movement of about 4 000 men, and local people had been
recruited into the movement. The book begins with resistance activists
heading for the hills. It deals, he says, with the concept of occupation
and the validity of personal resistance for individuals caught up
in world events. "To what extent can you define your own cause,
or at what point is your cause defined for you?" is one of
the questions the book attempts to answer.
Unlike The Dust Diaries, Resistance
has a more accessible narrative structure. Perhaps the events in
the Middle East influenced the book? He nods, but he hopes "it
doesn’t ring too obvious".
"I wanted to imagine a story that
would really get hold of a reader and pull them along, which is
what I suppose every writer wants to do," he says. So is it
as poetic as The Dust Diaries? "I do love imagery, metaphor,
but this book is more simply written with a simple narrative structure.
It is highly focused and takes place over nine months in a valley
in Wales. My intention was to write a beautifully written page-turner,"
he says, quickly adding: "This is a grand intention, so I don’t
know if I succeeded."
Perhaps this is because Sheers confesses
to being "a terrible reader" himself. He started reading
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera in February.
One hopes his forthcoming page-turner will not be read over six
months.
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