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Experimental
work from a group of seven British writers and one painter,
all residing in Paris, Writing Off the Wall reveals
the naked creative mind in action, in blissful independence
of the trappings and rigours of publishing. Gathering
regularly at the painter’s house and good-humouredly
subjecting themselves to a writing routine, creative-writing
workshop fashion, the seven writers focus for twenty minutes
on a painting by Maureen Pucheu or on a given theme that
comes out of a shower cap, then share their productions – or
demur. After a year, a selection is made for publication:
their favourites, just as they are, no alterations: all
spontaneous flights in pursuit of a Hogarthian “line of
beauty” – that serpentine that supplies grace and liveliness
to the variegated composition. Fragmentary, uneven,
occasionally rough around the edges, consistently
surprising, the volume is alive and pulsing, a feast for eye
and ear alike.
The
themes vary: sometimes intensely visual, as in Maureen’s
paintings, or “A photograph of the Queen,” “The wood
carving,” “Facades: what is behind?,” or “Red”; sometimes
they betray the writer’s obsession with writing: “Interior
monologue: guess who I am,” “Word weavers,” “Word games,”
“Dialogue using long, open vowels and clipped consonants,”
or the ghostly “Eighth writer”; occasionally they take a
rather more sinister twist, as in “The odorous haunts of
flies,” “And all the little fishes drowned,” or “The
Derringer.” The genres are equally diverse, from poems to
the opening lines of novels, monologues or dialogues,
sketches and well-rounded cogitations. Adrian Mathews, the
author of mystery tales, uncharacteristically writes verse
for a while, and when he reverts to prose, Angela Howard
picks up where he left off – sinister forebodings puncturing
her serene scenarios – and is occasionally joined by Martin
Lewis, the sharp-eared sceptic; Tom O’Brien professes
himself open to (almost) any challenge, yet contributes only
one piece; Murray Simpson, ever the actor, tries out voices
in snippets of drama; Vivienne Vermes and Denise Larking-Coste
snatch every opportunity of investigating couple dynamics,
yet Vivienne is distracted by thoughts of the novel she is
writing. They all free-associate, digress, confess, put on
masks, play with words, raise questions. Maureen Pucheu
paints increasingly daring non-figurative figurations of
suspended words, in colours that embrace the initial greys,
indigos and ochres and make room for primary, exuberant reds
and timid yellows on their jagged, lived-in surfaces. The
writers respond viscerally to the blood pulsing on the
canvas, the shadowy presence that so precariously and
transitorily inhabits it, the painting’s resistance to easy
‘meanings.’
This
lovely little book is an invitation to write, and read,
creatively; to embrace language, and colour, lovingly,
carefully, as one treads on broken glass, forever aware of
the seashore’s sand processed into it. It is a writer’s
primer, a refreshing memento of the easy hard work that goes
into the making of beautiful things, and at the same time a
performance of the dance of the seven veils, where there’s
always an eighth, the dancer with her skill, her training,
her private inspiration.
ANA-KARINA
SCHNEIDER
Lucian Blaga
University, Sibiu |
