My first love was music. I studied it at the conservatory (piano and singing) and at university. But in my early twenties I moved abroad and the experience knocked me so far outside my comfort zone that I turned to writing as a way of filtering my life.
A Matter of Interpretation
I do a job that has nothing to do with my degree – I teach English at the University of Pisa. I’ve always loved language, so this has greatly enriched me. It’s allowed me to look at my own language with different eyes, and this has helped me to approach Italian with greater awareness. All this has been a boon for my writing, as it’s honed my skills.
I see myself as a magpie – an expert in nothing, but with a hunger for sparkly, glittery nuggets around which to build stories.
Ever since I was a child, and I first came in contact with Spanish students coming to Ireland to learn English, I’ve been fascinated by what’s different. At times this can put you to the pin of your collar, but it can also open your mind.
As an Irish person, I’m very aware of the need to accommodate people that have had to uproot themselves and are seeking a new chance in life. The emigrant experience is of course a process of give and take, as I have learned in Italy: there are duties as well as rights. But, no matter what the superficial differences separating us are, at the heart of it all lies our common humanity.
This approach to my experience of difference and the emigrant experience has fed into ‘A Matter of interpretation’, where outsiders are harbingers of the new and the necessary. Having a different eye, they perceive things with a different sensibility. This often leads to breakthroughs. Michael Scot was considered a barbarian outsider from the North, but he made a significant contribution to the advancement of knowledge in Christendom.
I was in my forties when I finally bestirred myself into getting my driver’s licence. I really couldn’t say why it took me so long, especially as I love driving now. My father raced motorbikes for Ireland, the deadly Isle of Mann circuit being his speciality. I guess we all rebel in our own silly ways…
I like alone time and I need a lot of it. And with the passing of time, I’ve become less self-conscious about going places and doing stuff on my own. That said, if I didn’t have a small circle of trusted loved ones, my life would be a desert.
My writing process starts with a strong image and the sensation that comes with it, and I build around that in terms of character and sense of place. Ideas are not the driving force; they are a framework over which I spread a canvas that tells a story through colour and tone.
I have a soft spot for top floors. When I got married, we moved into a top floor apartment on the Lungarno in Pisa. It had a terrace with a spectacular view of the city rooftops and the surrounding mountains that entered into my heart and imagination. The sensation of safety that this eagle’s eyrie gave has never left me, despite a subsequent move to the tranquillity of the ‘burbs. I don’t know – maybe it’s a hobbit vs elf thing: trees are better than a burrow. Or maybe it’s just a few renegade genes from an Australopithecus past still making themselves felt…