The Writer as Outsider

 

 For several years now, perhaps triggered by the isolation engendered by the Covid situation, I have spent much of my time - as I say in a recent blog post (scroll down) - dancing on the border between memoir and fiction.

One outcome of this has been my new collection This has resulted in at least one distinct collection called Siblings: seven distinct stories of a family of seven siblings. The stories are all told by the middle child – called Ayla. She is the storyteller.

This book will be published in the spring but you can listen again to these stories on Bishop FM. 

I have written elsewhere about middle children – for example in my novels The Bad Child and Becoming Alice. Inevitably some observers will say that is this is a deep reflection on my own role as the middle child in a diverse family who relishes the role of the outsider.   

But I would assert that this outsider feeling transforms itself to a creative resource when one is a writer who can reflect on the events going on around her.

There is a poem about this feeling in my book WithSuch Caution – a Life Glimpsed in Short pieces. 

I thought you might like to read it. Here it is, Wx

Outsiderness

 

Being the third child of four

I was bred to be an outsider.

Being the new child from a far town

I was labelled outsider.

 

Talking with the wrong tone

I was seen as a verbal outsider.

Being the cleverest child in class

made me an outsider.

 

Working alongside men

I was the female outsider.

Writing stories made me

a mendacious outsider.

 

Living with a man doesn’t see

I have become an invisible outsider. –

Learning to make myself comfortable

In this ultimate containment.

 

Now, living through to older age

I am an intimate outsider, even

the ultimate outsider, relishing

this … Outsiderness.