Mslexia

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New Writing

Gloves

Guest editor Stella Duffy introduces her pick of poetry and prose in Issue 36 ◊ Jan/Feb/Mar 2008

For me, gloves mean many things. They are points studded through my life: the itchy white net gloves I wore as my sister’s bridesmaid when I was four, the glove my mother would invariably drop while getting ready to leave the house in winter – bad luck for her to pick it up, but she guaranteed a surprise for me when I picked it up for her. School gloves of boring fawn. The pink lace and diamanté gloves I bought myself in the late 70s, long before Madonna was desperately seeking Susan. Fingerless gloves for my first freezing visit to a New York January. The gloves the chemo nurse wore when she gave me the drug, too brutal to touch her skin, yet pumped into my veins anyway. A stunning pair of deep purple, butter-soft leather gloves I bought my wife from a terrifyingly posh shop last year in Milan. Each one, for me, with story, place, time, and people associations.

Your glove pieces too, were enormously evocative. The best of them though, rarely made the work about the gloves, but rather used the gloves as a spark, a place from which to begin writing. Personally I am always much more excited – both as a writer and a reader – with a story that approaches the matter indirectly, surprising me with its handling of the theme, rather than placing the subject centre stage. I far prefer a piece to which the gloves are intrinsic, which could not work fully without the necessary gloves, and yet is not about those gloves. This is absolutely not an argument for artifice for its own sake, or style over content (without a story on which to hang the words, no amount of beautiful style will ever work for me over a good story, cleanly told) but it is to suggest that perhaps there are other ways into a theme, and that the ones that didn’t hit me squarely in the face with their subject matter were more likely to interest me than those that did.

Alison Key’s ‘Glove’ did this beautifully. Her carefully told and moving story is absolutely not about gloves, or, in this case, the one glove. It is about love and loss and moving on; the glove in question is vital to the telling of the story, but it is not the sole reason for the story. In my own writing which can, as it can for all of us on occasion, grind down to hard work days where it all feels like a bit of a slog, the times when I am most excited and interested in what I’m making, are when a single thought spins off into fully developed characters and scenes, as in this case. Similarly Trilby Kent’s ‘Stealing Their Churches Behind Them’ certainly needs the gloves throughout the story, but the abiding sense of place, the small injustices, the conflicts of both past and present that suffuse the piece, are what stayed with me from a first, second and third reading. Ruth Tudor’s ‘The Breakthrough’ gave me something else I search for in fiction, a chance to go beyond what I know, to learn from someone else. Several of your stories dealt with gloves as protection from animals or birds. Tudor wisely locates the telling in a therapist’s office, a place most of us understand – either from personal experience or at the least from an episode of The Sopranos! – and then powerfully opens out the confines of that more easily recognised locale to include a wild creature, the brutality of natural life, and a high, far sky. The dropped glove, the lover’s glove, the tell-tale glove, all these are standards in our literature; Esther Webber finds a valuable difference in ‘Verity’s Shadow’ by studding her story with specific and clear characters alongside her protagonist. She also offers a modern view of an affair in some neat and honest language. Young women do say fuck; so do plenty of older women. I, for one, am a little tired of those nice reading groups where I’m asked, ‘Must they use such language?’ Yes, they must. If the character is to be true to her time and place, she must. Of course, there is an exception to every rule and E H Obey’s ‘Paris and Lemon Sorbet’ would seem, on first reading, to be the exception to my theme-not-plot preference. The story would appear to be entirely about gloves – and what gloves! – yet it also manages to encompass friendship and family, the growing pains of girls, the restless confines of small towns, as well as schoolgirl bullying. Perhaps not such an exception after all, the gloves sparkle throughout the story – but no more than the characters or the place or the narrator’s clear and precise voice.

I found it far harder to choose from your poems. While I make my living from writing novels, I still often work in theatre as a writer, actor, and director. Trained up by a mother who could recite great chunks of Walter de la Mare and Browning at will, I first read your poems on the page and then read them aloud, to hear them and feel the words in my mouth. Lynne Shapiro’s ‘Your Dead Mother’ was definitely one of those that worked aloud. Sparingly written, image-perfect and yet with an emotional content that can sometimes be lacking in pared down poems (notwithstanding the two similes in just eleven lines – see below!). I found it quite delicious. Gemma Halder’s ‘The Changeling’ is on my list, partly for the clear picture it evoked right from the opening and maintained throughout, but also very much for the harshness and strength of the final line. Similarly, the strength of tone in Jayne Pupek’s ‘Red Glove’ attracted me enormously with a very clear setting, a concisely conveyed character, but also with an intensity many writers might spend several chapters trying to achieve. Rhian Gallagher’s ‘Gloves’ has a great sense of time past, of love and worlds lost, elegantly matched to the pace of the piece as a whole. I also very much liked the note on how to improve: I think we could probably all do with being reminded to walk – constantly! – in the forest, musicians and writers alike. Finally there was something so very plain and clean about Judith Green’s ‘Bus Stop’. From the (literal) spacing on the page, to the barely-there, but very necessary gloves, to the lectern of cold hands – read it aloud: it’s worth it.

OK then, here’s the simile thing. It’s my simile thing, a very personal preference, but bear with me – where else am I allowed to say it? I’m calling for a moratorium on simile. Enough already. If you find one perfect simile per page or piece to absolutely sum up your point, then great, go ahead. If you need three or four to get it across, then I’d suggest it might be better to dump the imagery altogether and just tell the reader plainly what’s going on. And while I’m here, what’s wrong with metaphor? Personally I think metaphor is far stronger than simile – and therefore needs to be used even more sparingly. But it was also extremely underused in most of your work, which seems to indicate that it’s rather fallen out of favour with newer writers. Give it a go. Why, after all, would you want to be like something, when you could actually be the thing instead? Not like a writer…but a writer.

In the end, as always with this type of work, what I have chosen are pieces I like. Work where the words, the tone, the surprise, an unexpected image, a passing smile, or a single moment touched me. There were many I liked a good deal, but not quite enough. I’m sorry about that. Some of the poems seemed to me better suited to a story than a poem – choice of form, in this case, when both poetry and prose are on offer, being as important as content. So much of what we are able to publish as writers is affected by other people’s rules – the publisher’s budget, the house style, the reviewer’s mood, the vagaries of the market – that I can no more tell you how to guarantee publication than I can assume, after 11 novels and more than 35 short stories published, that the reader – or my editor! – will always like my work. All I can do is try my damnedest to ensure I will always like my work. That whether I’m reading it for the first or the 20th time, I’ll be pleased with the words on the page. You are your first reader. Be honest with yourself, push yourself, take time and make every effort – and then, please yourself. 

STELLA DUFFY was born in the UK, grew up in New Zealand, and has lived in London since 1986. She has written 11 novels, over 30 short stories, eight plays and many feature articles and reviews. With Lauren Henderson she co-edited the anthology Tart Noir from which her short story ‘Martha Grace’ won the CWA Short Story Dagger Award. She is also a performer and director, often using improvisation as a writing/creative tool for writers and actors. Her latest novel is The Room of Lost Things (Virago).

AUTHOR PHOTO © Ben Smith

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Personally I am always much more excited – both as a writer and a reader – with a story that approaches the matter indirectly, surprising me...

STELLA DUFFY