Work in Progress

Unmastered: On Writing for Myself by Katherine Angel I am often asked how I wrote Unmastered. Sometimes, I am asked how I went about getting it published. Mostly, I feel a bit stumped--almost embarrassed--by these questions, because in truth I don't quite know how to answer them. But I like trying to answer them, because in my gropings and squintings back at the years that led up to its publication, I have started to understand a bit more about how I write. I spent the best part of a year writing what I thought of as an essay, and ended up showing it to some agents. When they were emphatic that these ten pages were the beginning of a book, I was a bit taken aback because, after some attempts to map out a book, I had given up in frustration. I sat with my agent in a bar, listening to her say: we could tweak these ten pages a little, turn them into a proposal, and try to get you a book contract. As I sipped my drink, I knew that that was exactly what I did not want to do. I felt a strange, inward turn take place; a changing of gears. I felt myself place, calmly but resolutely, a barrier between me and everything else. I turned my back on everything outside of me and went into a new space of concentrated quietness. Read on...

Horace and the Ages of Excess by Harry Eyres While researching Horace and Me, my book on the Roman poet (and a few other things besides), I was astonished time and again by the uncanny prescience of this ancient and some might think antiquated poet; by how pertinent so many of his words remain, two thousand years after they were written. Perhaps it was something like the experience an archaeologist has, pushing a spade into long-dormant earth and coming up with a perfect glittering coin or piece of jewelry: how can this thing still be shining so bright after so long? Horace wanted his poems to be useful as well as sweet. He offers not just beautiful images and rhythms, but a philosophy of living well. It is a poet's philosophy, that is to say it is thoroughly human, grounded in experience, not theory, and accepting of inconsistency, of the fact that the noblest philosophy can be undone by a bad cold. Read on...