I am a poet. During an average week I do many things: I teach, I perform, and I fundraise to support my projects. I am a MPhil/PhD student in the Creative Writing course in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths. Of course, I write poetry, and I sometimes experiment with the short story and the novella. I attend peer and mentor workshops and I read a lot. This is on top of being a mother of two young boys and a community volunteer. I am stretched and scattered and love the variety of my life.

Having so many roles, you might think I’m forced by my circumstances to be extra organized, but I’m not. I am, by nature, a relatively neat and ordered person; however, I am loath to tidy and categorize my writing life for fear it will somehow sabotage my creativity. I worry that I run the risk of hemming in my thoughts by neatly filing everything away and destroying the free, organic nature of my imagination.

Last month, I read Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. Lessing’s protagonist, Anna Wulf, keeps four colored notebooks, one for each part of her life: politics, day-to-day events, emotions and her writing life. This got me thinking about my own practice – could it be contained so neatly? Would keeping distinct notebooks for all my different types of writing – research, free writing, notions, plots, revision, etc. help or hinder me? And the computer – how do I treat that? Is it essentially another type of notebook, or more of a final destination for the handwriting that ‘graduates’ and is destined for public consumption? These are the questions guide me on the start of a practice-based academic career. I’ll get out my notebooks and begin.

Tags: Jocelyn Page

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 10:06 pm and is filed under Jocelyn Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.