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An Interview With Welsh Writer Vanessa Gebbie - Author Of 'The Coward's Tale'
AmeriCymru spoke to Vanessa Gebbie recently about her novel ''The Coward''s Tale'' and her future writing plans. Vanessa is an author from South Wales, currently living in the south of England who has previously published two collections of short stories. ''The Coward''s Tale'' is her first novel and it is to be hoped, the first of many more. Visit Vanessa's website here Find her AmeriCymru page here Buy The Coward's Tale here
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Vanessa: Hi, and thank you so much for the invitation! Merthyr was always referred to as ‘home’. ‘Home’ was with my paternal grandmother Ethel Rose Rees, my uncle, aunt and cousin, in Highland View. Other relatives lived in Gwilym Terrace, off Plymouth Road, and Christopher Terrace. Memories are so many and so clear - I could (and probably did...) fill a book with them. But a few...
Wild ponies came to graze on the old coal tips at the end of Highland View. There were a few of us kids - we used to try to catch them with lassoos made of washing line. No chance! I remember one, a beautiful thing, grey as the mist. We called her Venus, but I expect that made no difference. As a small child, I would go up to bed before Coronation Street came on the television. I shared my grandmother’s double bed - and can remember the struggle to climb up, and how lovely it was - soft as anything. In the intermission, she would come up with a pack of sweet cigarettes - and I would lie and ‘smoke’ listening to the theme tune trickling through the floorboards. Listen - “Da - da da dee di da...” (!)
There was no plumbing inside the house - apart from in the kitchen. No bathroom. I remember how cold the china pot under the bed was!
I used to go with my uncle for walks across the river. He knew many things - where to find wild strawberries, and where the gypsies camped, and how to trick people into shaking his hand when he was holding rabbit poo. Squish...
He took me to the mouth of the old railway tunnel and we would stand together and shout into the darkness to hear the echoes. You could see the rib cage of a sheep a long way in, across the rails, like it was luminous.
And I remember my aunt sitting so close to the fire in the front room, that her left leg changed colour. It became mottled, like a map. I was fascinated to see how far up it went - but never found out.
Vanessa: Thank you for the comparisons - I learned a lot from Dylan Thomas, obviously, but I wanted to create something that wasn’t mere whimsy, like Under Milk Wood - lovely and genius though that is. Yes, there are individual tales - but the whole is a weave that makes them impossible to take out - or the whole would miss something - I hope you agree!
At the back of all the tales there is the echo of a disaster that happened a few generations ago - the collapse of a coal mine called Kindly Light. Families now are still coping with the fallout - even though they had no direct experience of the accident. One of the themes I was exploring is that of coming to terms with the past - understanding and acknowledging it - and then you can move on. Without that understanding, we are tethered, somehow.
That all sounds rather heavy - but the book isn’t heavy, is it? Like life, it is at times sad, then funny, sometimes serious, sometimes not.
I was also exploring the importance of ‘story’ to us all. Isnt it through fiction that we learn important truths about ourselves and others? I’ll leave that as a question.
AmeriCymru: ''The Halfwit''s and the Deputy Bank Manager''s Tale'' resolves itself with a wonderful and symbolic device. The dead and frozen fish rescued from the Taff illuminates the theme of the whole with a clarity that caused this reader to gasp with delight. As an aspiring short story writer I must ask ....how do you construct your stories? Do these revelatory episodes arrive first in your imagination and is the rest of the story constructed around them?
Vanessa: I am delighted you liked that story. And although I don’t plan and plot when I write, I often do have an idea of the final tableau of a piece - and set characters loose to work towards that tableau, to make sense of it. I think that’s how that piece happened - I wrote most of it in about 2005/6 so it’s a while back now.
The river freezing was a real gift - when things like that happen as I write, it reminds me why I love this work. Then I found photos of The Taff frozen over in reality - and that was great. Here’s a link to some images, taken in 1895. http://www.peoplescollection.org.uk/Item/7446-view-of-the-bridge-over-the-frozen-river-taff
But if course, this happens in September, in The Coward’s Tale, and at the end of that piece it says, “but rivers don’t freeze in September...” so it’s up to the reader to decide whether it did or didn’t! I love playing games.
I am a visual writer, and take inspiratation from visual images too. Photos, paintings, all sorts.
If you are a short story writer, I think Short Circuit - Guide to the Art of the Short Story is available in the US. I was asked to pull together a text book on writing short fiction - and as I’d never got to the end of a single-author ‘how-to’ book myself, decided to invite over twenty prizewinning short story writers, who are also teachers of writing, to contribute chapters/essays on all sorts of craft and process issues. It’s gone down well - and is recommended reading on many writing courses. It’s deliberately slightly different - there is no single ‘do this and you will be successful’ message, like there is with so many others. Something for everyone.
AmeriCymru: In a recent Telegraph article the reviewer/interviewer observed that "...Astute readers will find the 12 apostles in the characters he (Ianto Jenkins ) describes." Is this a religious novel? Does it have a religious dimension?
Vanessa: No - it isn’t. Not in the “Religious with a capital ‘R’” sense. I am not religious, really. However, the creation of the main characters was greatly helped by images and myths that have attached themselves to the twelve men who we have come to know as The Twelve Apostles. All I was doing was using those images as guides in making up my men, and/or their problems. They gave me jump-off points.
Some were easy - Peter, for example, The Rock - it was obvious to attach him to coal in some way. Others were less easy. Nathan, or Bartholomew, for example - less immediately well known images. I needed to research, and I much enjoyed finding out about the myths and legends, and in many cases used Biblical stories too. The Clerk’s Tale, for example, uses Tommo Price, a character who is a modern version of Doubting Thomas, in large part.
But having said I am not religious - I wouldn’t say I am not spiritual. Maybe partly, the novel is saying we need to accept the existence of things we don’t understand, things that have no or little logic?
AmeriCymru: I know you must have been asked this before but how does it feel to have your first novel described as "the legitimate offspring of Dylan Thomas and Gabriel Garcia Marquez” ?
Vanessa: Rather nice! I am immensely grateful to a fab writer, Charles Lambert, for that quote.
AmeriCymru: Besides appearing in numerous anthologies you have also published two collections of short stories, ''Storm Warning'' and Words From A Glass Bubble Can you tell us more about these collections? What can we expect to find between the covers?
Vanessa: “Storm Warning - Echoes of Conflict” is my ‘war book’. Written for my late father, who was a Sapper, and decorated in WWII, it explores conflict from the point of view of those caught up in it.
My father was a mild, gentle man from a Welsh valley town, working in a drawing office. He was pivoted into WWII as were so many, not really knowing what he was going to. He rose to the rank of Captain in the sappers, and was awarded the MC. But afterwards, he never really came to terms with what he’d experienced - it affected him for the rest of his life, in subtle and not so subtle ways.
‘Storm Warning’’s stories usually take place after the conflicts - WWI, and WWI, Vietnam, and many many others - and explore the legacy of the conflicts. (My Vietnam story is interesting, about power, and revenge - a man wants to take revenge on his old commander, and takes a job as janitor in the block of flats where the now-retired man is living...)
‘Words from a Glass Bubble’ is my first collection, a gathering of stories that had won prizes here and there, at Bridport, and Fish among others. Both that and ‘Storm Warning’ are from Salt Modern Fiction.
AmeriCymru: From your blog ( http://morenewsfromvg.blogspot.com/ ) we learn that you run a series of ''Daily Story Gym Exercises'' on Twitter. Care to tell us more about these?
Vanessa: Sure. I tweet as vanessagebbie on Twitter. But it struck me that it would be nice to have writing prompts appearing out of the blue, not attached to any writer in particular. So if you search for #StoryGym on Twitter, you will find a daily writing prompt tweeted by me, designed to intrigue, to kick off a new character, a story, perhaps. It’s about the first thing I do every morning!
AmeriCymru: What are you working on currently? What''s next from the pen of Vanessa Gebbie?
Vanessa: A novel, but it will take a long time. It is a prequel and a sequel in one, to The Coward’s Tale. Ianto and Laddy feature large as life. I am also writing poetry, and doing a lot of teaching.
AmeriCymru: Any plans to visit the US?
Vanessa: I wish! Who knows, maybe if the book does well, Bloomsbury will stump up for a ticket and a vist to an Eisteddfod. Wouldn’t that be great!
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?
Vanessa: Thanks for your time reading this, it is greatly appreciated. And thanks Ceri for such interesting questions. Good luck with your own writing.
