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Gill Oliver

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Community Connections

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Several people's hands all connecting

Author of the Month, December 2024 - Radio Interview

It felt like a celebration to end 2014  as Author of the Month for the broadcast “Community Connections” on my most local radio station, Sherborne’s Abbey 104. Every author wants to find the right readers, people with whom our work resonates in one way or another. And I was doubly lucky that Andrew Read was not only an appreciative reader of my latest book, Amateurs, but also a skilled radio interviewer. Talking with him was a delight!   

 You can listen to the whole programme  here – the interview starts about 8 mins in

TRANSCRIPT

Andrew:  We have all authors from around the world on this feature, but I’m very pleased to say that for the last one before Christmas we are staying very very close to home.  I’m  joined from her home in Sparkford by local author Gill Oliver.  Gill, welcome to Abbey104.

Gill: Thank you so so much for having me!

Andrew: This book we’re going to talk about today is your third book. It’s only just come out, it’s called Amateurs. It’s basically all set in an amateur singing group but there’s a huge amount of characters and stories,  and it’s a very in-depth story, isn’t it?  Would you like to summarise the story? 

Gill: Oh gosh, it’s not that easy, is it? Superficially, it’s about two sisters. They’re twins and one of them is classical composer; the other is disabled and she’s a singer, and she has had a very different musical upbringing. And it’s really – the emotional story and the family story is – who’s the prodigy; and also, how can they get to work together.

Andrew: The book starts with your your main protagonist having had quite a  major disappointment: not winning the competition she thought she was going to.

Gill: Well yes I know, she’s quite annoying really! It is a coming of age novel really …so yes, she  starts feeling very disappointed in a very gloomy place and then it gets worse for various reasons. But she ends up having to act as accompanist for her mother’s amateur choir, and she’s not too pleased about, that but actually it turns out to be a great thing as you can imagine.

Andrew: Yes, it’s the the making of her really, and  I think what comes across in this book very clearly to me is that it doesn’t matter if you’re a top professional or if you’re a beginner in an amateur group of any sort, it’s the amount of fun you get out of it, and friendship you get out of it.

 

Gill: Yes, absolutely, amateurs are people who do a thing for love, and that’s the most important aspect of it really.

Andrew: There are some lovely lesser characters in the book. One I particularly loved – and I’ve got the page open here – this is great uncle Pat. Now, the book is set in Liverpool. Great uncle Pat is described being a minor celebrity on Merseyside;  he’s obviously been very involved in the labour movement, the union movement; at one point it says that there was a rumour that he lent his money for a holiday to Derek Hatton. I mean,  these are all times that  I remember back in the 80s. Own up! Is there somebody you know that’s like great uncle Pat?

Gill: O gosh. Well, I did I have an uncle Joe Bradburn. He and my dad used to have  political arguments, which was quite fun. So he’s part of it, but he isn’t the same person at all.  It was just a way of building up that sense of heritage… because there’s a huge… Liverpool culture is quite amazing really. There’s a musical culture that’s got very deep roots in the amateur side of things with the Rushworth foundation. You know, Rushworth and Dreaper – the organ builders, but they had the biggest music shop in Europe at the time of the Beatles. And a lot of interest in amateur music making and amateur culture of all sorts; art, drama, everything. And also that political activism. And at the same time I wanted to embed it in a real place, where you can only be funny really. That’s what you’re meant to be!

Andrew: What led you to Liverpool then? Is it a city that you know, have you lived there? 

Gill: Yes. I grew up just outside Liverpool and I went to school in Liverpool. When I was the age of the two twins in the story, I was having a fantastic time really, knowing a mix of people who were amateurs and who were professional musicians, and the professionals helping the amateurs; and also people involved in theatre, the Unity theatre, that kind of thing. It just seemed a very vibrant place to be, and I loved that about it: it was something very democratic.  

Andrew: Your second book, the one that came out before this, Joe Faber and the Optimists,  is a different type of book.  You’re not aiming, then, to build a series of books, they are all very much one of themselves. 

Gill: Yes, I’m not into series building, I don’t think, because I have to write about what I need to write about. With Joe Faber, that was a serious book; it was a book about stroke rehabilitation, although it’s quite lighthearted and quite funny – and truthful, I hope. But after writing that, I knew that the next project was going to take three, four years my life, so I wanted it to be something that wasn’t going to be emotionally draining; and I thought well, what do I want to write about that just makes me feel good?  And I thought, well, singing makes me feel good. Of course the writing of it coincided with lockdown which gave me extra impetus to write really, because I was going in my mind to the places that I could not go in fact. We couldn’t sing, we couldn’t meet up. It was just the antithesis of everything that I enjoyed. So yes… that was my Covid book.

Andrew: Writing was your ticket to freedom.  You are a performer, you do sing with the Sherborne Chamber Choir; you are also work with the University of the Third Age Madrigal  group. These are wonderful groups to be part of right through the year, but it must be even more magical at Christmas.

Gill: Well, yes. It would be strange not to be doing Christmas musical, I have to say.

Andrew: I’m really interested, particularly, by madrigals. They are a type of music that’s fascinated me  for many years. They’re set back in olden times but a lot of them can be very reflective of life today. They’re almost timeless. 

Gill: Yes they are. They’re really interesting and the best of them have really interesting words as well. I mean, it’s not all hey-nonny-no, it’s not all fa-la-la-ing. There are some really deeply moving madrigals,  as well as some quite funny ones.

Andrerw: Do you think your knowledge of different types of music has actually helped with your writing? 

Gill: Yes it has, actually. If I’m honest, when I’m structuring and plotting… With this book, for example, I knew I needed a ‘Queen of the Night’ moment. And I was thinking about a bit at the end of The Marriage of Figaro, where the Countess forgives the Count – he’s been adulterous – and the music just stops while forgiveness happens… and then rushes off again to a happy happy happy conclusion – ‘we’ll all be very jolly now. Got that out of the way…’  But I wanted that sort of moment. So quite often now – well, not just now, I think I’ve always thought that way –  my parallels are often from music.

Andrew: Have you written a lot in your life or has it been something that you’ve taken more on as you’ve got older? 

Gill: I’ve written more seriously in the last 15 years. I wrote a lot when I was younger. I wrote a lot of poetry, in fact. I studied literature, and pretty much talked myself out of being any good at it. As people do. So it’s been a great thing to pick up again. I don’t know… The realisation came to me that it was something I deeply wanted to do. It was one of my earliest ambitions to write.

Andrew: Picking up what you were saying about almost talking yourself out of it when you were younger… What advice would you give to young writers these days, or those maybe who are thinking about dabbling and don’t actually think they’d be any good. What would your advice be? 

Gill: Well, the paint is never dry, is it? I mean, anything you put down you can revise. You can throw away. You can show it to someone else who might say, oh, I like that, or you can do this with that, or you good at that bit, and actually that’s been quite helpful. That’s been really formative for me. I’ve been part of a writing group that’s been run by another person with Sherborne connections, actually, a woman called Susan Elderkin who is anuthor and writer, and just being with other writers has been hugely helpful for me. And that’s where I went wrong when I was a teenager, because I stupidly thought that writing was a thing you did quietly on your own in a secret place. So I didn’t do English literature, and meet other writers;   I did languages, and read loads of books.  And it was all wrong! 

Andrew: Well, it’s all ended up very very well, you’re a published author of three books. The latest one  called Amateurs. It is published by Ah But Books. How can people find out more information about you, Gill, and also how to get hold of copy of this wonderful book?

Gill: Well, of course, Winston’s is the go-to place for a physical copy, the ebooks and paperback are on sale on Amazon, and I’ve got a website which is gilloliverauthor.com. Or drop me a line and get in touch with me. I think it’s got a lot for book clubs because there’s a lot to discuss in this book. There are lots of aspects to it. If there’s a book club out there who would like to do a deal with me for some copies, please get in touch. 

Andrew: I think it’s also a snuggle up by the fire on a wet winter’s night type of book. It’s quite cosy and the characters are absolutely wonderful. Gill Oliver thank you so much for joining us and being our final author of the month for 2024. Can I wish you and your family and friends a really lovely Christmas and a happy New Year.

Gill: Andrew, thank you very much.

Abbey 104 branding, photo of microphone

Paperback Launch

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Where better to launch the paperback of Amateurs than the café bar of a first-class music venue?

After all, the book’s as much about socialising as it is about singing. We wanted a party and definitely got one – I’m only sad I can’t post photos of the fun bits, all because I forgot to seek permission from attendees to share them on the internet. My error. At any rate, the sun shone on Sherborne’s Merritt Centre. A really fun event, in the company of readers, fellow-writers, musicians, fellow-singers, artists, and all those brilliant people who work to run societies, choirs and events in the town. Special thank you to Jenny Newman, who asked the questions; Emily Williamson, who sold the books; and the brilliant hospitality team at Sherborne Girls.

Author behind books for sale
Check out the choir on the sales desk!
Room full of listeners
Comfy, spacious venue and so many friends
large airy room ready for guests
Merritt Centre ready for the party...
Author and friend
Jenny Newman and Gill Oliver in conversation
Invitation to book launch 14 August 2024

Yevtushenko on untruth… a verse translation

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Back in March, as the war in Ukraine gathered pace, I became obsessed with the memory of a poem I’d studied as a sixth-former, by the Soviet poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Ostensibly about child-rearing, the poem describes the way the communist state seeks to infantilise the masses. “You shouldn’t tell untruths to little children.”

But when I tried to track the poem down, I kept bumping up against a different, and to my mind weaker,  version. My school book, published in the west, is out of print. (And back in the Soviet era, a book might be on a university syllabus but not available to buy.)  But by searching the missing lines I came upon a Russian poetry blog which contained the text I remembered. Apparently this version, from 1952, is almost unavailable in print – and I can’t now tell you where it is, because the blog itself is no longer accessible. I did copy it, though. Phew.

Yevtushenko lived a long life – 1933-2017  – and was quite a cool dude in his day; a strong-featured man who declaimed his work on stage and achieved fame at home and abroad, as writer, performer and filmmaker. Political commentary, and criticism of Stalinism,  were a constant. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for his poem Babi Yar, about the Nazi massacre in Kiev. Another thing I read at school.

As for the poem about morality and children, which came back to haunt me… There are plenty of English translations out there, but all in the sort of free verse that might as well be prose (sorry guys).  Also they sometimes add a title  –  ”Lies”   –  when lies is a word he’s very careful not to use at all. Untruth is much more the Russian way. Poetically, Yevtushenko works in primary colours, so rhyme and rhythm, particularly in this poem, are used almost simplistically to hammer the message home. And not to observe that nail in the final line is… well… untruthful.

I spent a couple of days in a sort of linguistic trance, translating it.  Verse translation always involves compromise, but it’s the ultimate writer’s puzzle.  It’s not perfect. But, to me, this is what Yevtushenko’s poem feels like. As much to be heard as read. 

I’d love to share the original here, but don’t have permission to reproduce the text from the poet’s family. Perhaps that’s something I should get on to now!

 

On getting stuck in a shed

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Music to my ears from David Mitchell  at this year’s Sidmouth Literary Festival

Knowing neurosis from the inside ought to be really useful for a novelist, if only it didn’t make it so very hard to get yourself into the starting gate. 

If you don’t dare call yourself a writer, you can’t say you suffer from ‘writers’ block,’ can you?  I put it in inverted commas because in common usage, it’s generally a misnomer.  Most of the time, it’s a fancy way of saying you don’t know what to do; truly pathological inability to write is serious, but rare.  As a student, however, I was one of those people who needed to ‘catch the tide’ with any written task; if there was noise, or distraction, or a too-late start to the day, there would be major stress and a likelihood of procrastination. Of course, it was always somebody else’s fault.

I’m now a recovering neurotic, whose period of peak muddle collided with all the major life decisions.  Classic. School had been a place where my work had been valued and encouraged. But once I’d left, I didn’t have the guts to sustain myself as a writer, and in fact I buried myself in other business without sharing that deep-seated aspiration with anybody. Eventually a blessed conjunction of the right people and the right circumstances helped me sort my head out. When, after several false starts over the years, I completed a first, unpublished, novel, it was written largely in the middle of the night, and as a conscious act of defiance against the day job which was turning me into an insomniac.  I reasoned that if I woke at 3 am, whatever I did with that wakefulness was going to be my business and my business alone. (Interestingly, the brain is very tuned-in to fictional possibilities at that time of the night.) 

I’ve since lost count of the number of women who wrote their first book early in the morning before the kids were up; or in fifteen minutes grabbed here and there, in a parked car. If writing matters to you, you will. 

So I was very interested to hear David Mitchell, interviewed this week at the Sidmouth Literary Festival, say, in answer to a question, that he didn’t ever suffer from ‘writers’ block.’ With two teenage children, he doesn’t have set times to write; as he put it, ‘I just think, this is the hour I’ve got, I’ll use it.’ He’s no smug smarty-pants, either; what he does acknowledge is getting stuck. Hallelujah! Music to my ears. Not so much the language of the ivory tower, as the shed, or the workshop.

Like the craftsman we should all be, he has ways of dealing with getting stuck. He points out there are two main causes. The first is not knowing your character well enough. His answer? Get your character to compose a letter to you, the author, setting out how they think and feel about everything, from politics to sex.  The second reason is that the particular material you’re dealing with  – which may be very good – just doesn’t belong in the story you’re writing. He recommends putting it aside in a special file for future potential use; a welcome, positive spin on the idea that sometimes you just have to ‘kill your darlings.’ What I love about David Mitchell’s advice was its practical, down-to-earth nature. in order to get yourself un-stuck you either write, or shift segments you’ve written out of the way. You may, of course, end up with the authorial equivalent of a garage full of ill-assorted screws and bits of wood that  just might come in handy. But you haven’t wasted your time.

To hijack a phrase from Auden, about getting stuck they were never wrong, the Old Masters. There were always studies, cartoons, multiple versions before the masterpiece was finally painted. 

And yet, and yet… the problem, as you first embark on writing as a serious activity, is that it is personal, emotional, and you feel you’re putting yourself on the line, so it’s easy to be a bit jumpy and even precious about it. And how can you take material you’ve spent hours, maybe weeks, coaxing out of your head, and chuck it in the bin?

Cultivating writerly habits is important, but I’d argue that the mental habits are way more important than the circumstantial ones. Whether you sit down at the same time each day, and write in pencil or ink or on a laptop, is really a matter of personal choice and convenience. If you need your special Moleskine notebook, or insist on a turquoise pen, fine, just be honest that these have only ritual significance. (I adore buying stationery but it’s never a good sign.) What does matter is understanding that the five minutes it took to have a key realisation about your WIP equals a good day’s work; and that the material you pare away isn’t wasted, just evidence that a) you can create and b) you’re in control of your creations.

I’d much rather admit to being stuck than self-diagnose with an incurable condition…