Get Creative: The craft of non-fiction
In a new series, author, critic and broadcaster Cristín Leach explores the craft of non-fiction.
When I'm writing, I think of the late American author Denis Johnson's oft-quoted three rules. He advised students to:
1. Write naked. That means to write what you would never say.
2. Write in blood. As if ink is so precious you can't waste it.
3. Write in exile. As if you are never going to get home again, and you have to call back every detail.
That said, when it comes to writing personal essays, it might be useful to pair those rules with Stephen King's evergreen editing advice from On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2020), to:
"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you… but then it goes out… it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it."
The first personal essay I wrote and had published was written with the door slightly ajar, because I wrote it as I sat with my grandmother who was dying in a nursing home. The room was warm, her breathing steady, and she didn't wake up while I was there. The door was being kept just barely open as nurses came and went, stopping and popping their heads in to check if everything was still ok. Of course, nothing was ok because my grandmother was dying, but at the same time it was ok. She had lived a long life. She was comfortable. We were quiet and resting and waiting together. And, because I am a writer there was a notebook and pen in my bag, and so I began to write.
Sometimes, your initial job as a writer is to just capture those words as they land.
The essay was published almost three years later in Winter Papers 5 (2019), along with four photographs I took that day. While She Was Sleeping is one of those unusual essays that almost fell out of me fully formed. The stream of consciousness I wrote in my notebook by her bed was only lightly edited by me before submission, and barely touched by editors Kevin Barry and Olivia Smith, who suggested minor changes to some words and came up with the title to form the final version. Not every essay arrives like that, but opening or closing lines, or significant phrases attached to important observations, often do. Sometimes, your initial job as a writer is to just capture those words as they land.
Right now, the island of Ireland is pulsing with a vibrant network of literary journals that are open to non-fiction writing, including personal essays: The Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, Banshee, Gorse, Winter Papers, The Four Faced Liar, Profiles, Howl, The Pig's Back, Storms, Sonder, The Belfast Review, The Martello Journal, The Ogham Stone, Púca Magazine, Ropes, The Tangerine, Trasna. Tolka focuses exclusively on non-fiction (inviting submissions of essays, travel writing, reportage, and creative non-fiction hybrids like auto-fiction). They don't all pay for accepted work, but many of them do. And with publication comes something else: that early nourishment that can lay the ground for future themed anthologies, memoirs, and books of collected essays.
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Irish Examiner
3 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Sam Gilliam: IMMA exhibition underlines impact of Irish visits on output of US artist
Sam Gilliam was an American abstract artist who revolutionised the display of work in gallery spaces. Draping unstretched canvases from the ceilings, and arranging industrial fabric on the floor, he blurred the line between painting and sculpture, and helped shape the development of installation art in the 1960s and '70s. Gilliam broke ground also by becoming the first African American artist to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1972. By the time of his passing, aged 88, in June 2022, he had enjoyed any number of public commissions and major museum shows across the US. Although Gilliam is not as well-known on this side of the Atlantic, he visited Ireland in the early 1990s, and was greatly moved by the experience. His stay is commemorated in Sewing Fields, the new exhibition of his work curated by Mary Cremin and Seán Kissane at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham, Dublin. 'When we first started talking about this exhibition,' says Cremin, 'I met Gilliam's widow, Annie Gawlak. She came to IMMA and told us about how Gilliam had completed a three-week artist's residency at the Ballinglen Art Foundation in County Mayo in 1993. 'Gilliam normally worked on large canvases with petroleum paints, but he wasn't allowed to bring those paints on the plane, so he dyed and painted fabric and sent it on ahead to Ballinaglen. And when he got there, he worked with a local seamstress to collage pieces of the fabric together, so they're kind of stacked on top of each other. You'll see one of those pieces in the exhibition, it's part of a series of four called Cottages. I think the experience was quite transformative for him.' Gilliam was one of the many international artists who have spent time in Ballinaglen with the support of the arts foundation established in the early 1990s by Margo Dolan and the late Peter Maxwell, who owned a prestigious art gallery in Philadelphia. The foundation runs workshops, residencies and fellowships, along with education and outreach programmes and a museum of art. 'It's this amazing place in the middle of the village,' says Cork-born curator Cremin. 'People like Howardena Pindell, who we've shown at IMMA, and Jo Baer, who was very influenced by the archaeology in the area, have all done residencies there. It's very interesting that Ireland has had a real impact on these artists, and a real resonance with them in terms of art making.' Down Patricks-head, by Sam Gilliam. When Cremin began work on the Sewing Fields exhibition, she discovered that Gilliam had once shown in Dublin. 'In the early 1970s, he had a solo exhibition with a gallerist named Oliver Dowling, who passed away just last year. Dowling was a maverick, and quite an influential person within the arts in Ireland. He helped set up the ROSC exhibitions. But it was news both to Annie and to us that Gilliam had ever exhibited in Ireland. We don't think he came over for the opening, but everyone involved is dead now, so it's not possible to say for sure.' Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1933. 'Growing up where he did,' says Cremin, 'where there's a massive cotton industry, he was probably seeing a lot of quilting and that type of making. We have an exhibition of quilts from Gee's Bend in Mississippi on at IMMA at the moment, and we know that Gilliam had several Gee's Bend quilts in his own art collection. There's a correlation between this idea of stitching and layering, telling narratives through the fabrics, that I think is referenced in his work as well.' In Gilliam's youth, his family migrated north. He studied art at the University of Louisville in Kentucky and then settled in Washington DC. 'He was part of the colour field movement, with people like Kenneth Noland. They made minimal abstract paintings. But later on, he made works that were much more three-dimensional, or sculptural, and he started really playing around with the paint, scraping, stitching and layering. There was really a lot of improvisation. 'He was very interested in jazz as well. Improvisation is very important in jazz, of course, but it's also very important to the kind of way he worked. There were no limitations in terms of how he worked with paint or with the canvas. He was very liberated.' Gilliam came of age during the Civil Rights Movement in America. 'That was, very obviously, hugely important to everyone,' says Cremin. 'And for Gilliam, being a black artist coming up at that time was a big deal, because it was predominantly white males in the art world. He wasn't making work that was overtly political, he was making art for art's sake. But that said, he was very involved in the establishment of the Studio Museum in Harlem, and he was part of a very important exhibition called X in America. 'And also, I guess he does engage politically, in that a lot of his paintings are called after significant black figures, like Martin Luther King. There's one piece in the exhibition here called Count On Us, which is this beautiful three-coloured canvas that's referencing when Obama was voted in as president. It was a very aspirational and very exciting time. So, he referenced politics in a different way.' Mary Cremin, curator. Sewing Fields was organised in collaboration with the Sam Gilliam Foundation, which is run by the late artist's family. 'Gilliam was very supportive of young black artists, and his foundation has continued that work,' says Cremin. 'They also collaborate on exhibitions such as this, ensuring that Gilliam's work is shown as he would have liked. Some of the work in Sewing Fields has never been shown before, and some of the technicians who'd been with Gilliam since the 1980s came over to help with the installation. 'It's only two years since Gilliam passed, but I guess it's important for his work to continue to grow, and for people to have an increased awareness around him. In terms of contemporary Ireland, this is not just the first time he's been shown here since the 1970s, it's his first museum show here as well. Many of these works have never been exhibited before, and many people are travelling over from America to see the show. It's really exciting for us.' Gilliam's time in Mayo may have been brief, but the landscape had a big influence on his work, says Cremin. 'Even towards the end of his life, he was making these really large paintings, with thick impasto, he called Downpatrick Head and Irish, County Mayo. As Annie says, he always referenced back to his time in Ireland.' Sam Gilliam, Sewing Fields runs at the Irish Museum of Modern Art until January 25, 2026. Further information:
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3 hours ago
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Concern over future of planned €300m Wicklow film studio
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