Have you any early memories of being interested in writing?
Words, for me, are a safe space and always have been. I have early memories of being interested in words – spoken and written – and in books, and being drawn to the smell of book pages.
Growing up, my house held the sounds of Scottish, standard Italian, dialectic Italian, Highland Scottish, Central Belt Scottish, West Coast Scottish and Gaelic – there was a real sense of two cultures seeking to sit happily together. This made language and words intriguing.
I’m attracted to the sound and sense of language, its ability to repel and connect people. Once I began to understand this as a child, words became adventures waiting to happen.
Did you start writing at an early age?
A mark on a page has always been intriguing to me so, perhaps you could say I’ve been writing since before I was able to write! I came from a very creative family; words were considered to be important.
My mother was academic and read all kinds of texts widely. My father was also immersed in words. His starting point was facts, he was always searching for information. Both of my parents read extensively. It was clear to me that reading brought constant reward.
I’ve always understood that there is something restlessly independent in being creative, in whatever discipline, to pursue the need to communicate ideas to others is a consuming force.
It sounds like you were supported at home, what about school?
At home, nothing was discouraged but I don’t think writing was necessarily encouraged. My mum was very intent on making me practice my handwriting so that it looked nice, but in terms of creative writing, that was a very private matter. I was known as a reader but not as a writer. Nothing I was writing was shared within family circles.
In school, there just wasn’t the atmosphere to share your own creative work. Again, it was a private activity. It wasn’t something you shared unless it fit in with your homework.
Did Robert Burns poetry feature in your education?
No, not at all. I took English at school as far as I could and it didn’t come up. My mum liked poetry but I wouldn’t be able to put my finger on anything specific and I don’t remember Burns being part of my education.
The poem I first remember hearing from school is “Mid-Term Break” by Seamus Heaney. That was the one that started me thinking there was something interesting in poetry. The power of that poem, the gut punch of it, really impacted on me.
How do you come to writing then?
I always skirted around diary-keeping but there was a sense that writing was something good to do. I took to writing about how I felt and what I saw but in a more creative way rather than simply recording events. I would do then what I do now, in that a lot of my writing occurs in my head, and it takes a long time before it gets to the page.
I think the key thing I was actively doing was reading. I needed to saturate myself in words. I was reading everything and anything. I remember the tiny, one room, library I would be dropped off at when I was very small and that was like a little bit of heaven, being able to sit amongst those books.
How does poetry become an interest?
I had always wanted to act, that was my goal when I left high school. So, I did an acting degree and worked for nine years, mainly in theatre and radio, and I absolutely loved it. After that, I went into journalism.
If you had asked me when I was 12, I would have said that I wanted to be an actor and if I couldn’t be an actor, I would be a journalist. My 12-year-old brain thought a journalist was just someone who played with words, and that is essentially what I did because I was a sub-editor.
I spent my days crafting and culling, digging in to find the truth in the meandering tales that you got from some reporters. I had to produce something to invite and inform the readers.
What happens then?
For a series of reasons, I left journalism and began an Environmental Science degree. Then I had to pause that to care for my terminally-ill mother and, after she died, I was asked to go back and finish the degree. It was very soon after her death and I wasn’t quite ready to dig back into the science – none of which I had studied at school.
The university allowed me to temporarily side-step, and I took a Creative Writing course. One of the first assignments I was given was to write a poem – and I had no idea what to do. I read, and then I began to write and all the disparate pieces of myself came together and made sense. From that point on I have been writing poetry.
If you want to learn more about Giovanna MacKenna’s work see the following links
