altlitgossip:

I was heart broken not to be in the Best Alt Lit Short Stories 2012 collection. I presume there was an age and/or quality cut and I fell short. Story of my life, alas. However, as a recompensation, I give you this expat interview with me as a reminder that there’s more to life than lief, like travel and language and endless meaningful sex with changing partners on different continents. Trust me on that.

Excerpt: “I believe I began to write in English when I went to school in London in the late 1970s; much later, again in London, I wrote 300 English poems in one year, but they were no good. I stopped writing German in New Zealand in 2002. Both when I speak and when I write, I feel (and, I think, sound and read) like a different person. You can hear this in my podcasts, but I’m not sure how to describe the difference. I’m more playful in English and much less inhibited, not just off but also on the page. And I’m not just talking about the disregard for proper grammar…yes, different languages do open different doors in one’s mind. Somerset Maugham says «the French language tends to rhetoric, as the English to imagery», and German writing, I think, lends itself more easily to the expression of ideas: philosophy is both our bane and our burden. Whatever the true correspondence, each language resonates more strongly with another aspect of inner/outer reality, and I do feel that. I relate well to images, perhaps that’s why I write in English.” [Read full interview]

Posted at 9:30am and tagged with: interview, lit,.