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Linda France talks to Nadya Radulova
Q & A interview with Nadya Radulova, for altera magazine
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N.R. Why did you choose Lady Montagu for a character and a voice of your new book The Toast of the Kit-Cat Club? L.F. Well, in 1990 I came across an anthology where every poem was introduced by a biographical note. One of the pieces there was by Lady Montagu. I was immediately struck by her, intrigued by her adventurous life and her prolific output. So, gradually, slowly, I looked at many books related to her, and it took me something like seven years to really enter her world. And in 1997 I got a fellowship at the Fine arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass., U.S., and I began to write, hoping I might catch something of her spirit and learn more about her and her times in the process. N.R. Is there any space between you as a writer of this book, and the biographer, as a narrating voice? As well as between the narrating voice and the voice of Lady Montagu & what impresses me is that the voices in this book sound very modern. So, how would interpret the space between them? L.F. The first thing is that I wanted to narrow the spaces. To make her [Lady Montagu] come alive. I was always struck by the fact how contemporary a woman she was. She was a woman ahead of her time. So it seems to me very natural for a contemporary woman poet to identify with her. I wanted to touch her energy, humour, intelligence, courage, integrity. At the same time I wanted to have access to 18th century allusions – literature, politics, gender, gardening, music, costumes, interior decor, gambling etc. I really, really wanted to be faithful to her life, to her environment, and to her writing. Of course, there was an option to make it totally postmodern, and to situate the character in a contemporary context, to offer a postmodern dislocated version of her life. But from the very beginning I preferred somehow to be more truthful , authentic – towards the character and towards the genre. And she is extraordinary enough without any tricks. N.R. Part of Lady Montagu's letters are dedicated to the East, to the Ottoman Empire and its provinces. How was it for you to write the poems about the Orient, about, for example, the Turkish Bath through the gaze of an 18th century Western woman? L.F. I was fascinated by her fascination, her keen awareness of the Other. We have come to take foreign travel somewhat for granted. I wanted to present her sense of wonder and freshness. And under it her conclusion that, despite all the surface difference, people are the same the world over. N.R. You know, I'm not surprised that you chose this character. Like Lady Montagu, you have traveled a lot, lived in different places – London, Leeds, Amsterdam, India, Sri Lanka. What have you gained from all these places? As a personality, as a style, as a type of writing? Aren't your travels in fact "practices on yourself"? L.F. Well, I always want my poetry, my work, to be strongly rooted. Speaking about my constitution, I should say I love the land, I really love the land, the earth itself. And I've already told you about my early uprooting – leaving the North and going to the South, when I was a young child, and how much that affected my awareness of language and identity. So I always have the desire to compensate – to locate myself, to sense my origins, always asking the question what's really important here? How can I orientate myself? N.R. You often work in collaboration with visual artists. What happens with the autonomy, the closure of a poem, of a written text, when the visual part come on the stage? Do you have the feeling of transgressing you borders, the borders of language? L.F. That's a very interesting question. I am excited by the risks involved, the loss of boundaries, the chaos and the coming together, making something that is "greater than the sum of its parts". It 's really another form of foreign travel. N.R. You choose to live in the middle of the field, an hour's drive from Newcastle, with almost no neighbors. Is there a kind of art- or life-strategy in this choice? Do you consider it a kind of an escape? L.F. I hope not. Again I think it's related to a creative tension between being static and being active. Living far from the city frees me from being deeply in it. I'm so interested in culture, that I'd spend all my time in the art galleries, cinemas, museums & and I would not have time for my writing. So my choice frees me from destruction, and is a kind of a discipline for me. And the tranquility of the countryside is helpful for me in a creative way. I really do not feel it like an escape. It's not easy or comfortable. But I don't think I could do it any other way now. I've chosen a way of inquiry and investigation and in the end this is a healthier balance for me. N.R. Do your life and your art wear a "simultaneous dress"? L.F. Aaah, that's my ideal! My aspiration, my vision. The simultaneous dress is an image for me of whole-heartedness, integrity, the outside matching the inside, a complete acceptance of simply what is. I want to wear that dress and be able to speak my own truth with something like clarity. |
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