Where the Magic Happens: Karen Rigby
Karen Rigby’s poem “The Lover” appeared on Linebreak on July 21, a short time after it was selected for the Best New Poets 2008 Anthology. Here’s Karen on her writing space.
When the editor for Linebreak, Johnathon, asked me if I’d be interested in showing my workspace, I thought of the Guardian’s series on writer’s rooms.
It’s easy to imagine writers sitting at roll-top secretary desks, writers with curios lining their shelves, the honest disorder of a happy household, the sheaf of papers, the glowing screen. Viewing the rooms of much more established and well-known writers, one might believe that being a writer almost requires a space resembling a private library, artist studio, or cottage. Grand or eccentric retreats for grand, original minds.
The public’s curiosity may stem from the desire to find out what belongings reveal about their owners. I wondered if my own room might seem very austere by comparison, or what characteristics a viewer might try to superimpose on a writer based on an image.
The easy explanation for the clean look: My husband and I have been living in our current (first) house for only half a year, have enough storage space, and are still making the fundamental decisions regarding furniture. The “bones” of the space must come first. The dressing up of these interiors will come much later.
Still, I think even the choices already made say something. We are in transition. The furniture, like many of my stanzas, has been repurposed, reassembled (from other drafts or in this case, other rooms–the chair was borrowed from the kitchen table. The desk was once a sofa / console table and is lightweight enough to move around the house–I migrate according to whim or seasonal changes in the natural lighting).
I don’t require a large footprint. I always write on a laptop. All I need is a wireless connection and the printer, which is in another room.
One of the benefits of moving from an apartment to a home is that suddenly all of one’s items become dispersed or dwarfed by the whiteness of the walls–if “clutter” is an accumulation of objects within the confines of a particular space, the easiest way to remove it is to simply spread out so that everything finds a place. The books, then, remain outside in the foyer.
Inside the cabinet: books by Edward Hirsch, Sandra McPherson, Larry Levis, Sandra Lim and others. Also Audrey Hepburn movies, and (of course) Marguerite Duras’s The Lover. The dust jackets for hardcover books are wrapped in plastic sleeves like those in a library. Haibane Renmei, an anime series. A plush Scottish terrier in the back, behind the books. An Edith Piaf CD, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Alice Fulton’s short stories, more books.
Now that I look at these pictures they do make sense with how I tend to write: I usually write one poem at a time until I’ve finished, rather than producing many drafts of many poems at once. When I write, I often begin with the title and then proceed to work from the beginning to the end, line by line until I am satisfied with each line. Such a methodical approach seems fitting for someone who is most at peace when the surfaces remain clear.
But lest a reader or viewer imagine perfectionism, there’s always more to the story than meets the eye: there’s a terrific phrase in JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, wherein the main character, Holden Caulfield, describes someone else as a “secret slob”.
You wouldn’t know from the photo that these nightstands are actually our dressers (multi-purposing again) but that on my side, everything in the drawers is jumbled. This has nothing to do with writing at all but may one day become the one quirk I maintain–akin to Roald Dahl’s ball of chocolate wrappers in the Guardian article–I may be particular about the more visible surroundings, but drawers are another matter.
From all this one may surmise that I am a practical person, not fond of excess. I favor simple lines, small patterns, and a somewhat wintery look with rare lapses in taste or sudden bursts of enthusiasm (yellow! of all color choices!) and that I pick and choose my battles.
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