Identity and Northern Ireland: A Conversation with Louise Kennedy
‘I had really felt that I had lost my northern identity or my northern voice, but when I write I get it back, and I think that's why it was very restorative for me to write’.
Photo credit: Patrick Bolger
First of all, would you be able to tell us a little bit about how your debut novel came about and what was your writing process like? Did it differ from writing short stories?
Lots of things were different about the process and I suppose the reason for writing the novel possibly came from a different impulse that I had from writing the stories. With the stories, I started to write when I was asked to join a writing group, which meant that straight away I was given deadlines and every week I went into a room where people were presenting writing that was being workshopped. And it’s no exaggeration to say that I hadn’t written – I literally hadn’t written a word since school, and nothing we did in school was creative writing, so I really hadn’t written anything. So, I suppose the reason I wrote short stories was simply because that was the unit of fiction that was required of the writing group I joined, and then it was also what was required when I did an MA in Creative Writing.
And then, after that, I decided to do a PhD, which I thought was a really great idea, but I think it was my version of midlife crisis! I don't even have undergrad English degree and I had to write a few chapters of a book to PHD English standard and I think it gave me a nervous breakdown. But anyway, towards the end of the MA year, I wrote a short story called Hunter Gatherers, and I think with that I felt I’d hit on something that was probably a bit more sophisticated – I think maybe I’d found a voice and tone that I liked and felt comfortable with. Also, I think that Hunter Gatherers has a very strong sense of place, so with the stories I wrote for the PhD, I just tried to keep those things in mind, and it definitely felt like something was beginning to happen with the stories – they were starting to get a lot more complex.
And then I’d written one of the last stories that I wrote for the collection – it’s set in the North and it opens in a bar and it's about obsession and a teenager or young woman going through the collateral damage of the troubles – and, although I didn't realise it, I think I was probably fleshing out my ideas for the novel.
Also, I suppose I also started to write the novel because it was a kind of procrastination from writing up the creative part of the PhD… I couldn't be completely idle, but I thought that if I at least wrote something then it means that I’m not a lazy b******, so I started to work on an idea. And then, in March 2019, I got a cancer diagnosis and it did a few things to me. I didn't really let myself dwell too much on the big picture because you can’t really go through life like that, but I did think that, if I was going to write a novel, I couldn't just presume that I had decades and decades to do it, so I just thought I should just try and get a draft down while I could. So after 11 weeks, I had around 62,000 words, which sounds impressive, but looking back, I was very lucky that I actually had a project that I could throw myself into. I think that helped me in lots of ways. By June 2019, I had something that resembled a novel – in length at least. It wasn’t very good and I left myself a hell of a lot to clean up for the second draft.
And how does it feel now that the book is out there and published? Is it still true that you feel uneasy with all the praise you’re receiving, or do you feel a sense of accomplishment?
This kind of fascinates me. I have done some teaching and I’m always just baffled when people come in with a piece of work that they're really, really happy with. I totally get that a person can be happy with having made something new, but how can they be happy with the writing? I'm really glad for them, but no, I’m never happy at all and I think that’s as it should be.
Do you think that’s because we all tend to think that everything we create can always be better?
Yes, I do, I think there’s that. Also, I haven’t been at this long enough that I can call myself an artist or a writer or something, and although I'm really delighted for anybody else who is comfortable with it all, I think because I did my last shift in the kitchen about three years ago, I just can't be doing with that. I just feel like I’m a chef with notions. I think most of my neighbours didn’t even know I was writing until the Sunday Times Audible Awards when they opened the Sunday supplements and saw my big face there and thought, what?
Trespasses is set in a town in Northern Ireland where there were very few Catholics, which mirrors the surroundings you grew up in. Because of the fact that you are writing about a time and place that you know very well, do you find that you are identified by your nationality? How do you feel about being labelled a ‘Northern Irish writer’.
That's really interesting. I come from probably one of the places in Europe where identity is most contested and it’s really interesting to me. I left when I was 12 and we went to the South because, I suppose, my parents had had enough of the north by the end of the 70s for a lot of reasons that are well documented – you know, there were bombs and things. I didn’t want to move but they sold us the idea as if we were going to the promised land where we wouldn’t have to run around pretending we weren’t Catholics. But really, it was a s******* theocracy in the late 70s and, you know, the health service was pretty poor, people were very narrow-minded, and I didn't really find it a fabulous improvement in lots of ways. I guess it was a relief that people weren’t getting killed on a daily basis, but I didn’t find it so great.
I found it hard to settle and every time I opened my mouth I was teased, it was just really exhausting being different. So I got rid of my accent pretty quickly and I'm not very proud of that, but in a weird way I think it's why I wrote the book that I did. When I speak, people from the north don't think I’m a northerner and people in the south don't think I’m a northerner. For example, somebody from Belfast follows me on Twitter and has read my writing and she messaged me to say she nearly crashed her car when she heard me on the radio because my accent was really Southern and she couldn't believe I would speak like that when every word I write comes across as very northern.
I had really felt that I had lost my northern identity or my northern voice, but when I write I get it back, and I think that's why it was very restorative for me to write, and that's why I feel right in myself – it's really strange.
Full interview is featured in Exploration Issue
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