{"id":885,"date":"2018-08-07T16:35:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T15:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/?p=885"},"modified":"2018-08-07T16:35:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T15:35:00","slug":"poet-in-residence-interview-with-iain-morrison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/2018\/08\/07\/poet-in-residence-interview-with-iain-morrison\/","title":{"rendered":"Poet in residence: Interview with Iain Morrison"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arts Ambassador Gabi Gurycz chats to John Hansard Gallery\u2019s Writer in Residence Iain Morrison <\/span><\/p>\n

What made you want to become a writer? Are there any specific moments where you realised this was what you were going to do?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The word writer isn\u2019t one I often use about myself, funnily enough. And it\u2019s interesting to hear it offered back to me as a perception. Of course I am\u00a0\u2018writer-in-residence\u2019 at John Hansard Gallery at the moment and so must be able to consider myself a\u00a0\u2018writer\u2019\u00a0enough to have imagined myself in this role. I think if I feel a distance between my idea of what I do and the word writer, it probably has something to do with the word\u00a0\u2018poet\u2019 getting in the way. I\u2019ve noticed that poets have one of the only genres within writing practice that somehow resists being described as\u00a0\u2018writer\u2019. <\/span><\/p>\n

I have been creative for as long as I\u2019ve been anything independent minded, I think. I\u00a0have memories of Mum helping me to write down stories before I could write them myself. I always wanted to make my own version of a thing. I went on to study music at Cambridge University,\u00a0specialising in singing and composition.<\/span><\/p>\n

In about 2008, with another performer\/writer called Leiza McLeod, I made a theatre piece about the experiences of women writers of the Beat Generation, called\u00a0Gimme the Beat Girls<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Gimme the Beat Girls (2009)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This experience of reading poetry, and some prose, that cohered to convey a shared experience that wasn\u2019t really being voiced except in the writing, must have\u00a0catalysed me. It was when I moved back to Edinburgh, my home city, shortly afterwards, that I met a circle of writers and it started to be that most of what I was producing was poetry.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why is writing important to you?\u00a0You have been John Hansard Gallery’s writer in residence the past few months. What did that entail?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

It probably follows on from what I was saying above, that it seems a way of thinking\u00a0through experience, both for the writer\u00a0themselves, and for the\u00a0reader coming to what\u2019s been written. For me it\u2019s a space to untangle and to calm my perceptions by allowing a dialogue with my thoughts, externalised as words.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what\u2019s at the core of my John Hansard Gallery project,\u00a0Gallery Notes<\/i>. The writing I\u2019m doing over the course of a year starts in each instance as note-taking. I have been going into either public or private situations in the Gallery where I have listened to the voices being heard and written down my thoughts mixed in with fragments of what I\u2019ve heard. This is a process that relates to the way writing\u00a0\u2018untangles\u2019 perception for me. Writing becomes a sort of pearl-making, finding a way so spin our understanding around new strangenesses.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Jane Birkin and Iain Morrison at the staff club, Highfield Campus, May 2018. (Photo from Iain’s Blog)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The context for my residency is that John Hansard Gallery has been moving from it\u2019s Highfield Campus site to a new building in the city centre.\u00a0I\u2019ve made five or six visits to Southampton now, of varying lengths.\u00a0On each visit I\u2019ve made some time to write at either the old or the new site, or in related parts of the university. I\u2019ve taken time to draft my notes into poems. I\u2019ve captured film footage from the outsides of the sites as well which will be edited with the texts of the poems to make film-poems which capture the passage through the year for the gallery and its team and audiences. So far I\u2019ve presented work in three public events, with more on the way in the second\u00a0half of the residency.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m\u00a0particularly looking forward to working on a final publication, now that I can see more clearly what shape it will take. Most of the writing has been done at this stage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0What do you think connects art,\u00a0writing and the city together?\u00a0How does it relate to Southampton?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Southampton is clearly having a good cultural moment. At the official opening of the new gallery in May, Sir Nicholas Serrota, Chair of Arts Council England, talked about how despite the overall pot of public money shrinking, investment for Southampton has been going up. It\u2019s clear from\u00a0conversations with Louise Coysh (Associate Director Arts and Culture) and others within University of Southampton, that it\u2019s proud of the strong, public-facing arts institutions within its bounds. Being a writer in residence in a gallery, embedded within a university, within these wider civic and national structures gives a good starting point to\u00a0use writing as a way of interrogating the connections and energies between all these layers. <\/span><\/p>\n

I’ve always find the impact of space really interesting in how it shapes writing.\u00a0Has writing on different sites, the old John Hansard Gallery and the new impacted your writing? <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m interested in whether you\u2019re thinking about space in terms of privilege, as in which spaces writers have access to write within. From that point of view I\u2019m exploiting the potential of the writing residency at John Hansard Gallery to take full advantage of the access granted me to situations a writer wouldn\u2019t normally be allowed into: staff meetings, the gallery before it\u2019s open to the public, event and group structures within the university.<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u00a0is\u00a0 <\/span>being done\u00a0to enhance the links between writing, art and\u00a0culture in Southampton which the opening of the gallery has shown are so vibrant and important?\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The So:Write residency programme (myself at John Hansard Gallery, Nazneen Ahmed at Southampton Libraries and Dinos Aristidou at the Mayflower<\/a>) organised by Southampton-based organisation Artfulscribe has I hope shown some of the possible \u2018business\u2019 that writing<\/span><\/p>\n

can get up to when it\u2019s let loose in different communities and cultural organisations. It\u2019s great to hear that further residencies – for no doubt with as varied writers \u2013 will also be coming up in the year ahead. I feel I still have a lot to learn about the interactions between the different scenes in Southampton, but luckily for me, I still have a good few months of engagement left!<\/span><\/p>\n

ARTIST ROOMS: Gerhard Richter is open at the John Hansard Gallery 12 May-18 August 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

Iain Morrison is writer-in-residence at John Hansard Gallery, part of SO:Write<\/span><\/a> [https:\/\/www.so-write.org], a literature project led by Artfulscribe.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Visit Iain\u2019s blog at https:\/\/permanentpositions.wordpress.com\/tag\/iain-morrison-poetry\/<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Arts Ambassadors is a paid opportunity, supported by the Careers and Employability Service\u2019s Excel Southampton Internship programme, University of Southampton.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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