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Interview with Colleen Higgs
Interview by Moira Richards
COLLEEN HIGGS, author of Halfborn Woman(1)
talks to MOIRA RICHARDS about poetry, patriarchy and self-publishing.
When Colleen Higgs e-mailed me with an offer to send a copy of her
about-to-be published book of poems that I might review it, I did what I always
do before I undertake such a task. I Googled her name to learn what I could
about the poet and her writing. I was instantly charmed by the insouciance of
the few poems that my search turned up, so the review was on!
Halfborn Woman soon arrived from Cape Town, where Colleen lives and works,
and before I could even open the little volume, my hands had fallen in love with
its slight yet definite heft as it balanced between them, with its
smooth-as-chocolate cover that cooled their fingers. I remembered Colleen
mentioning that she had self-published her book, and I was determined to learn
more about that aspect of her creation too. This is what we said:
Hi Colleen. I had planned to start by asking you to
introduce yourself, but perhaps I'll let your poetry speak for you as it seems
to do so very eloquently. The first poem in Halfborn Woman is entitled
'autobiography' and it exhibits the light touch and wry humor that characterize
so much of your poetry in the volume. The opening lines say:
I was born in 1962
the year after Sharpeville
two years after the Republic was declared by the Nats
a year before Kennedy was assassinated
in Texas, which at one, I'd never heard of
The poem expands into a delightful summarization of
the events and experiences that inform your life as a South African woman and
now, having just finished reading your book, I feel as if I know you well. Your
poetry is personal, candid and very accessible even to people whose tastes in
literature usually favor prose-coated plots (this I know because I enticed my
husband, who is wary of poems and loves wild birds, into reading 'butcher bird'
which much to his surprise, really touched him).
I came of age in a time that was deeply repressive in South Africa-- the late
seventies, early eighties. I couldn't imagine what the future would look like
and how I would fit into it. I'm interested in writing as a way of life, a way
of making sense of my life, of processing my life, and of gaining access to
insights. I think I see the world as a writer: I see patterns, and narratives,
images, beauty, particularity. I feel that I am engaging in 'the conversation'--
which is what I see writing as doing.
I am also interested in documenting my life and times and in some way trying to
capture the ephemeral-- ordinary daily life, the minute changes and shifts.
Obviously there are huge gaps in my book; I haven't been able to write about
many things that are/have been important to me and that have affected me deeply,
either the writing is still too raw, or I can't find the words to write about
those things, yet.
I particularly enjoyed your longer prose poem,
'plumbing - a short history' that narrates chattily, as if we were exchanging
confidences over a coffee, your account of some half-dozen ex-boyfriends. Other
poems in the book also deal with old relationships that perhaps didn't turn out
as you might have wished, yet the tone always conveys a sense of your
ebullience/resilience, as in:
in retrospect
i guess
i didn't play
my cards right
probably
because i didn't realise
we were playing cards
I think that some of my poems might be uncomfortable for some men to read.
They are irreverent, some of them don't take men and what I found to be their
sexual earnestness, seriously. I have found that writing is a way of 'getting my
own back,' of taking a stand or cocking a snoot at the patriarchy or those
representatives of it that I have found to be oppressive. I think I have
experienced life as veering between absurd and full of sadness and loss. It has
taken me a long time to reach a place in myself where I feel stable and 'happy.'
I don't experience happiness as my ground, as I say in the poem, 'walls and gaps,'
'being happy is not a thread or a quilt or a road/ it's like bees buzzing on a
hot afternoon/ separately, then disappearing.'
Your love poems are written with a simplicity and
understatement that convey an intensity of emotion far beyond what the words on
the page can say. You seem to be unafraid of analyzing the personal costs to
yourself that your love relationships demand. It's also very brave of you to
write these thoughts down and to publish them for all the world, and for those
loved ones to read. I think in particular of some lines in the prose poem,
'being Kate's mother':
I've been cracked open by a force much larger and more powerful than
imaginable, it's made me humble, broken my will and my ego. I now see that
this is good for me, as a writer and as a person, even though it is painful
and sometimes at two in the morning, I think I can't do this anymore, Then I
find I can endure, to the next moment.
Being a new mother is an ordeal in the sense that knights had to
undergo ordeals in order to prove themselves worthy to their kings.
My writing is 'about' daily life, relationships, what I see
before me. I am recently married, and have a daughter who is not quite two.
Before that I had a series of relationships that lurched and floundered. I
didn't know what I wanted, and the poems in Section Two capture something of the
despair and hopefulness, which was my experience of these different
relationships. After thirteen years of psychotherapy, I came to a place where I
am able to be in a committed relationship, not that it is easy, but it works,
and I have a child who has taught me about commitment. This relationship also
has helped me to heal many things which I could not get over, like the loss of
my father at age five.
Not only are you a writer yourself, but you work to
help aspiring writers too-- tell me a little about your job at the Centre for
the Book in Cape Town and its Community Publishing Project (CPP)?
The Centre for the Book has as its broad aim, contributing towards building a
culture of reading and writing in South Africa, in all South African languages.
We act as a networking agency for all those who are part of the book chain, and
who are interested in books, writing and reading. We promote reading for
pleasure. We disseminate information and advice regarding books. Writers
approach us daily, asking for advice about how to get published.
The CPP is a project of the Centre for the Book, in partnership with NB
Publishers. It is still in its initial pilot phase. The aim of this project is
to build capacity in publishing and to make it possible for more books that
would be of interest to specific communities to be published. We give small
grants to successful applicants, which pays for the printing costs of a small
print run - 350 to 500.
You've had your poetry published in a number of
journals - Sesame, New Coin, Bleksem, New Contrast, Aerial, Kotaz, Incanda,
Writing from Here 1999, Vocal Chords - has writing always been an important part
of your life?
I am forty two years old. I have been writing since I was able to. I would say
that I am a writer, rather than a poet, in that I don't only write poetry. I
wrote prolifically as a child and teenager, and then at university when
confronted with the canon of English literature felt that I couldn't possibly be
a writer. Living in a country far from the places I was reading about, Europe
and the USA mainly, a woman, a white woman in a country in turmoil, I couldn't
see what I could have to say that would be relevant.
I did an English Honours degree at RAU in 1989/90 and encountered feminist
literary theory, looking at issues of how women have been silenced, marginalized,
over the centuries, and then reading writers like Adrienne Rich and Helene
Cixous, I suddenly started writing again, and I found an energy in my writing. I
did my mini thesis on the poetry and prose of Adrienne Rich, and was inspired by
the way she engaged with personal/political issues in her writing. In fact the
title of my book, Halfborn Woman, comes from a line in an Adrienne Rich
poem, 'Upper Broadway.'
Why did you decide to go the self-publishing route to
publish your Halfborn Woman volume of poetry?
For two reasons: one is that I didn't want to approach any of the publishers who
do publish poetry to publish my collection; most of them are men, and I know
some of them quite well... Perhaps I lack humility. I didn't want to be told
'no' or to be given some sort of valid excuse or reason as to why they wouldn't
be able to consider publishing my work at present. Because of my work, I know
how difficult it is to 'get published,' especially to have a collection of poems
published.
I know that some critics (male university English lecturers) have been doubtful
about my work. I have been told that I don't use metaphor, that it is too
personal, confessional, and none of my poems were selected for the New Coin
anthology, 'It all begins,' even though I had published a number of poems in
that magazine. Perhaps my work lacks literary merit, but because of my knowledge
of feminist literary theory, I was suspicious.
I also didn't want to have to submit to kindly editorial advice about what I
should leave out. Self-publishing means that you are your own editor and
publisher, for better or for worse. I did get advice and suggestions about the
manuscript, but had the freedom to make choices about which suggestions to take
on and which to ignore. I have put into the book only what still seems strong.
Secondly, I wanted to do what I advocate that other writers should do if they
find they can't 'get published'-- that is self-publish. I have written a booklet
about self-publishing, how to do it. I felt that actually doing it would teach
me more than anything else could. It certainly has, and I have uncovered all
sorts of useful things, such as a small publisher distributor, called Blue
Weaver, who are now doing my distributing for me. I have learnt a great deal
about the production phase, and some of the pitfalls, I am clearer about the
possibilities and the limitations.
Tell me more about what you've learned from your
self-publishing experience?
It's not over yet. I am still in the process of marketing and distribution. But
it has taught me that self-publishing is possible; it requires you to make an
enormous number of decisions, from choosing what should go into the book, what
should be left out, the size of the book, the length, what font, the cover, who
to do the printing, whether to put a picture of myself into the book or not. How
many copies to print. Should I do it at all? What will my mother think? Will she
cope with what I have written?
I have struggled with a mixture of elation and self-doubt. I have enjoyed doing
it. I wonder what the reviews will say, will there even be reviews? Will the
book be taken seriously, or ignored? Self-publishing is a kind of activism, of
taking things into your own hands, not waiting around for someone who is a
gatekeeper to say 'yes' or 'no.' That is why I have called the imprint Hands-On
Books.
I have had to become more assertive about myself as a writer, and get over my
diffidence. It has always been hard for me to take myself seriously as a writer,
as Karen Press(2) says, 'inhabiting the identity of
writer'-- you have to do it in order to be able to write, but if you inhabit it
too fully it can also be counter-productive and you can engage with the
trappings of being a writer, which have nothing to do with writing. I, like many
other particularly women writers, have internalized those critical patriarchial
voices. For me writing often seems like an act of defiance. Self-publishing
feels like a revolutionary act. I have been fearful sometimes when I have
submitted poems to literary magazines that I will be punished or derided; in
spite of these fears, I have continued to write, submit my work and now to
publish a collection of poems.
How have people responded to a self-published product?
So far I have had a positive response. Most people have responded to the book as
a book, they have not differentiated between a self-published book and a
commercially-published one. I have tried to make the material object, the book
itself, look compelling and feel like something which a reader would enjoy
holding. I think the fact that I have published my work in literary magazines
for about 15 years, gives me credibility as a poet. I am not sure that writers
who have not developed some sort of profile would find it as easy a path with a
self-published book of poems. So far, I have found people extremely supportive
and interested. I hope to get a review in the Sunday Independent, and other
newspapers and have been interviewed by Nancy Richards for SAfm(3).
Some writers I know feel encouraged by what I have done, as though I have opened
a path that others might follow in. I feel that I'm in good company with having
self-published my book, writers such as Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood, and
even Stephen King have taken this route to publishing.
Is there anything that you'd do differently next time
around? I assume you're not saying, "Never again."
I would leave myself more time in the production phase, that is the layout and
printing stage, so when the small problems and hitches arise, there would be
time to really think about things, and to make better decisions, possibly. It's
amazing how at every stage you see things that you would like to change or edit
or add to, or take away from. But there comes a time when I realized that it was
'good enough' and I decided to let go of the book, with its (I hope) minor
imperfections. I now have it in hand. I am really thrilled with how it looks and
feels and reads. So as a publisher, I feel I have been successful in the
production of the book!
Thanks Colleen, for chatting with me. I enjoyed reading
Halfborn Woman - I wish you many sales and hope she'll be the first of
many. Do you have plans for another book in the near future?
Thank you for the conversation about my book. I already feel taken seriously. I
would like to finish a novel I've been working on sporadically for some years.
In any case, I continue to write regularly, to show up on the page, as Natalie
Goldberg(4) puts it. Who knows where that will lead?
Afterword: The trouble with feminism is that it teaches us that there is
nothing that women cannot do-- and so we try to do everything, and all at the
same time! Colleen Higgs acknowledges our delicious dilemma of having so much to
do and not enough time in which to do it, in her poem 'being Kate's mother':
I think I try too hard, to be the perfect worker, perfect
mother,
rushing to and fro from work and home, breast feeding Kate at
lunchtime, multi-tasking like crazy.
And, as the poetry in Halfborn Woman charts unflinchingly
Colleen's coming of age and celebrates her right to be the woman whom she is, so
her production and publication of the book itself reiterate her determination,
and confirm her capacity to live her life according to her own terms. I think
she should get to have the last word:
I know about absence, loss, grief
they're inked into my cells
I know about the relief of writing
finally to speak the unspeakable
exposing its pale naked tendrils
(autobiography)
Notes
1. Halfborn Woman
ISBN 0-620-31975-5
Published by Hands-On Books
PO Box 15254, Vlaeberg, 8018, Cape Town, South Africa
Telephone: 021 423 2669
colleen.higgs@nlsa.ac.za
2. Karen Press, the South Africa writer and poet
(1956 - ).
3. SAfm is one of the South African Broadcaster's nationwide radio stations.
Nancy Richards hosts a daily (very short, too short, half-hour) programme
entitled Otherwise - the Woman's Perspective.
4. Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down The Bones: Freeing The Writer
Within (Shambhala 1986).
About Moira:
Do a Google search for 'Moira Richards' to find her essays on Women Abuse,
her reviews of woman-authored books and other editing and writing work she does
for various e-publications. Off-line, she teaches accounting and related
subjects to students at the soon to (e)merge Nelson Mandela Metropolitan
University.
About Colleen:
Colleen Higgs was born in 1962. She spent most of her childhood in Lesotho,
her adolescence and young adulthood in Johannesburg, and more recently lived for
five years in Grahamstown. She now lives in Woodstock, Cape Town, with her
husband and baby daughter. She has worked as a teacher, a teacher trainer, a
materials writer and an academic development lecturer, and is currently
programme manager at The Centre for the Book. Her poems have been published in
literary magazines over the past fifteen years.
