Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: A warm welcome to the Creative Places and Faces podcast, the podcast that explores places that help to inspire creativity. Some are local, some even formative, and others are far away and sometimes rather exotic. I'm Mike Payne, one of the Creative Places and Faces team. Let me introduce you to your host, Jackie Deburka. Jackie is originally from Dublin, Ireland, but has spent a lot of time abroad, especially in Spain. She is the author of Salvador Dali at Home, creator of Travel Inspires, and the number one travel and tourism influencer, Q2 2020, according to Global data.
Over to you, Jackie.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Today's guest is the acclaimed author Jan Carson from Ballymena in Northern Ireland.
In 2019, Jan won the EU Prize for Literature for her second novel, the Fire Starters, which is one of the best books I have ever read.
Set in East Belfast, the Fire Starters is a highly entertaining, exhilarating read that reveals an intimate understanding of human nature that has merged surreally yet successfully with fantasy. The book left me extremely curious about Jan's imagination, which will be one of a number of subjects that we'll be chatting about today.
Thanks so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule, Jan, to join us.
[00:01:21] Speaker C: Thanks, Tacky. It's lovely to be here.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Thank you, Jan. Now let's jump in with what I feel is a crucial question. Jan, how. How would you describe your own imagination?
[00:01:31] Speaker C: Oh, gosh, my father will tell you it's overleaping and it's a bit out of control. He calls me a champion exaggerator, but it's definitely healthy. Anyway, I tend to see the world as it is and then put another layer on top of it all the time.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Okay, that's an interesting way to put it. So you grew up in Ballymena town, John, which is around 27 miles north of Belfast.
Was there anything from your childhood, you know, the life or environment that you feel might have triggered that overleaping imagination?
[00:02:07] Speaker C: I think a couple of things were important for me growing up. First of all, quite obviously, was books. I was a really, really prolific writer. I used to get all of the library tickets from everyone in our family and go down to the Ballymena Library on a Wednesday night and take out as many books as I could get my hands on.
So I had very quickly read through almost everything in the children's section and by the edge of about eight, had progressed onto, for some reason, crime fiction.
So I was diving into quite deeply into Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell and stuff at 8, which I don't know how healthy that was.
And I think the other big Factor for me was growing up in a quite conservative Presbyterian, rural Presbyterian church.
So a lot of times sitting in long church services, quite bored, having to use my imagination to provoke things. And then also I think I'm very grateful that my primary storytelling language came from the Bible and particularly the things like the parables and the apocalyptic literature. My first memory of church was a two year sermon series on the Book of Revelation.
So you can see where the magic realism comes from when your first encounter with the Bible is the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Mark of the Beast. All of that.
Yeah.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Okay. And what about Ballymena as a place to grow up, Jan? How was that for you?
[00:03:36] Speaker C: I guess it was grand. Whenever I was a young child, you know, it's very safe.
John Hewitt in his poetry talks about the Coasters in terms of middle class Northern Irish people during the Troubles. And we definitely were coasters that passed us by for most of, thankfully. I'm very grateful for that.
I think as I grew older, it became quite a difficult place. It is very concerning.
Back in the 80s, it was very much Paisley town still.
And there was a lot of legalism associated with kind of the Protestant community that I grew up in, and not a lot of space for art or expression. So the idea of being different from other people was frowned upon. So I definitely found that as I moved into my teenage years, I found that really difficult.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Okay, so quite restrictive from how you've described it.
[00:04:29] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And just a sense of wariness about people who dress differently or think differently or question things. And I was definitely always a questioner, even within the church context. I was the one that was putting her hand up and saying, why? But why?
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Okay.
In a quote, John, from an interview that you did with the Belfast Telegraph, you said about the actor Liam Neeson. I think Liam has an incredible presence about him. I know this is a cliche and something I probably won't get away with also coming from Ballymena, but there's something so grave and warm and wise about his voice.
Is there something grave, warm and wise about Bellamyna and his people?
[00:05:13] Speaker C: I don't know. I think maybe it's been interesting. As I've kind of moved away from Ballymena, I have found some of the outliers, people like Liam Neeson and Cathy Brown, who runs the Sheamusini Centre down in Balacai, they are Ballymena people, but from that artistic mould of questioning things.
And I think those people have a real. There's a gravity and a wisdom to what they're doing and what they're questioning, but they've also retained the stuff I love about Ballymena, the sense of community and respect.
And I kind of wish I had known some of those people whenever I was the teenager scuffing around the tower center, looking for kindred spirits.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, that's understandable. So you said, Jan, you used the phrase coasters in terms of the very badly named troubles. Did it affect, you know, you much in Ballymena? Talk us through how that was for you as a young person.
[00:06:14] Speaker C: I think it's always there.
My church community was impacted by the Tiban bomb and I remember that as a child and just the feeling in the church family of loss and something that was on the TV suddenly coming very close to home.
So that I remember and I remember the news being on and also more, I think it made us quite local.
You know, when I say, like, I wasn't the first time I was in Dublin, I was 18, which people from England and stuff struggle to believe that. But, you know, there was a sense that it wasn't terribly safe to go over the border.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:00] Speaker C: And even going up to Belfast, like going to Belfast in the 80s for me, felt like a real occasion.
And the wariness of seeing more of a strong presence of soldiers on the street and people checking your bags and the checkpoints on avenue and things.
It felt like a different world and not as safe as Ballymena did.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:23] Speaker C: And I also. I mean, I have a really strong memory that I'm probably never going to shift of getting caught up in a bomb scare while taking my swimming lesson in the Ballymena Seven Towers Leisure Centre on a very snowy night.
And I was very little, I think it was five or six, and we had to get out of the pool and run down the road in our swimsuits in the. Through the snow. And I remember being absolutely terrified that night.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Oh, God, of course.
Wow.
So. Well, that's something I. Obviously, I didn't. I didn't know, but that's. That's a very strong memory. I can imagine.
[00:07:59] Speaker C: I'm sure we were grand. I don't think there was any bomb at all, but just that sense of, you know, it coming closer to you.
You can watch things on the TV and know, oh, they're talking about places that I know and, you know, this is part of my history and my culture, but until it comes right up, like, close to you, you don't have that same kind of visceral response to it. So I think there was a moment of Realization somewhere in upper primary school of, oh, this is happening to my Northern Ireland.
Not just Northern Ireland on the news.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. So you mentioned earlier, Jan, in terms of your imagination, that it was triggered to some extent by the church parables and so on. Do you think that having Belfast, you know, a little bit under 30 miles down the road and seeing what was happening on the news and also what you've just told about the bomb scare, do you think that in any way would have contributed to your very active imagination also?
[00:09:00] Speaker C: I don't think so.
I guess, you know, I only came to write about Northern Ireland and think about it creatively quite late on. So almost all of the things that I was engaged with creatively, because I didn't come to writing until I was 25.
I actually was much, much more involved in the music scene in Belfast.
I did visual art for. At school. So I was really interested in visual art as well for a long time. And it wasn't. It sounds awful, but I wasn't interested in Northern Ireland. I was looking to America and to London and to places outside of Ireland for my influen.
So I don't think the Troubles really was there present with me until much, much later when I began to seriously unpick and some of that. And I'm kind of ashamed to say this, I went to a Protestant girls grammar school in Ballymena and we got taught no Irish history.
So there was a real silence around the history of both the past history and the more contemporary history that it.
And I, you know, I had to go back and reteach myself a lot of that in my 20s because I just had a huge gap.
I don't even know if I could have articulated to you in my times what the Troubles was.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Okay, yeah. You're not the first person in this series of interviews, John. You're not the first person to have talked about that sort of school experience around history or history being sort of presented in a certain light that wasn't really, well, was quite far removed or at least very simplified version of the truth.
[00:10:45] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think it's shocking in a way to have sat through like I did history all the way up to a level and into undergrad at Queens, and to have never encountered Irish history, but to know American history and Russian history inside out just seems really, really strange to me.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So you studied history in Queen's?
[00:11:07] Speaker C: I did. For. At Queen's, you have to do three subjects, or I don't know if you do now, but back then, for Your undergrad, you had to do three subjects for your first year. So I did a side of Byzantine studies alongside social anthropology and English.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: Okay, definitely.
[00:11:27] Speaker C: I dropped after first year.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: Okay, definitely. So going back to before, you know, when you were still quite a young person, you're in Ballymena. Did you head off with your family, Jan, at all on day trips or holidays to any environments that were really nice?
[00:11:44] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I'm very, very lucky. My daddy is a real country guy. Like, he grew up in the countryside and was really, really keen for my brother and I and my mom as well to get out at the weekend and explore. So we were always heading off for what, what in Ballymena you call a wee run on. The car would usually be down the glens or around the north coast or forests and climbing slamish and all sorts of things like that. So I'm very, very grateful for that. And then when I was six, my daddy lost his job and went back and retrained as a teacher. So he then had. He went, he went from like never being at home until I was in bed to always being around and having very long summer holidays.
And he liked to use the whole summer holiday. So we actually, we would usually go to France for a full month and camp.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:12:38] Speaker C: And dad would drive the whole way down Scotland and the whole way down England and then one summer the entire way down France to the top of Spain, really. So that was really good fun getting out and experiencing different cultures and.
And we'd also do. I'm very, very fortunate as well. Like, I know the.
I know the Britain, Scotland, England, Wales part of Britain really well because we were always holidaying there as well.
So I've been all over every flipping Victorian seaside resort in England. The Carsons have been there.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Okay. So, yeah, that's quite formative in terms of the amount of traveling you yourself have done over the years afterwards, you know.
[00:13:22] Speaker C: Yeah. Never a bit, bizarrely, never on planes, but I don't know if they were aware of their carbon footprint or what it was. But we didn't do the continental holiday thing, really. We, you know, we got in the car and we explored and I guess to some extent they were quite cheap, low budget holidays. Like, we quite often be camping or staying in a bay of bay.
My dad had a wee gas stove thing that he'd take and would make potatoes and bacon or whatever by the side of the road. But they're really lovely childhood memories of being free to explore the Yorkshire Dales or, you know, learning to swim in landudno or whatever it was. It was great.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Fantastic. So are you one of many children or what is the family setup channel?
[00:14:08] Speaker C: There's just me and my younger but much more mature brother, who is three and a half years younger than me.
He's always been the mature influence.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Okay.
Okay. So you're. You're obviously great holidays abroad, great adventures as you were growing up, you mentioned that you were going to the library every Wednesday. Were there family members or school teachers who played a prominent role in encouraging your creativity, your writing and so on?
[00:14:43] Speaker C: Not really.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:14:48] Speaker C: When I got to A level, I had two fantastic English teachers at a level that were really, really brought me on, Mrs. Finley and Mr. Knox. And they both really instilled a particularly. Mr. Knox made me fall in love Wuthering Heights. And that destroyed me.
So that at that point, yes, but not until then.
I've realized recently, like, my dad is a great reader, but he's a. It's all crime fiction, so he absolutely loves crime fiction books. And I realized actually at this weekend, I went up to see them and we watched. There's a program on called the Nation's Favorite TV Detective.
And I realized just how much of my bonding over the years with dad has been over Morse and Poirot and Tiger.
And he would read all the books and I would read them too, and we'd chat about them. So not so much literary fiction thing, and definitely no interest in poetry or theater. But he does love his crowd fiction and he would always have a book in his hand on holidays.
I think there was way back there. But there's almost no creativity in my family. They're all engineers.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Okay, that's interesting. That's.
It's unusual, isn't it? And not even if you were to skip back like, even one generation, Jan, would there be any sort of artistic flair?
[00:16:15] Speaker C: No.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:16:18] Speaker C: It's really interesting. They just don't really know where I came from.
Daddy taught engineering and his dad was an engineer working on the railways.
And my grandparents on the other side were businessmen, so they're all very logical, mathematical. My brother, he did his masters in engineering, so there's. There's no. I mean, there is a creativity to engineering, but of course there is.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's. It's not normally lumped in with the creative arts as such, is it?
[00:16:53] Speaker C: No. I don't know where it came from.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Interesting. Not there anywhere that's really interesting. So I'm guessing going back to what you said, Jan, about Ballymena, and then starting to feel you know, different and all of that type of stuff. So you also had that with your family in so far as your creativity starting to bud.
[00:17:16] Speaker C: I think they've always been. They've always been reasonably supportive, and I think they've known from quite young on that I'm a bit different and wired a wee bit different and encouraged that. And I think as well, there is a thing around book learning still, you know, that you do well in school and they, you know, you're reasonably intelligent and that's all something to be proud of kind of thing, but not the, you know, we would never have been one of these families that had furious discussions about Jane Austen round the dining room table.
I sometimes do get quite jealous of families where there is a real rich seam of creativity.
But I also love that my family keeps me really grounded. You know, they'll constantly ask, even my. I've got a wonderful relationship with my niece and nephew, who are 12 and 10, and my nephew will constantly ask, what are you writing this week, Auntie Dan? What. What's it about? And I'll tell. And they say, that doesn't sound very good. They wouldn't be interested in that.
And he's great. He just keeps you on your toes all the time.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: Okay, that's. That's funny. It's. It's. It's just interesting. I'm. I'm fresh with your unfortunate Children of Belfast in my mind.
[00:18:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: And I'm just sort of wondering. I'm wondering in a way, was that feeling of being different, did that have anything to do with your inspiration for bringing that into the book?
[00:18:54] Speaker C: I think so. I think particularly there's one of the unfortunate children in the Firestarters has got wings, and her parents keep pushing her off high things to get her to fly, even though she can't.
And not so much me, it was more of an observation because that kind of sense was endemic around the community. I had other friends that were trying to do things their parents didn't understand.
That sense of, you know, in Ballymena, where I grew up, and this is a bit of a generalization, but there was an expectation that if you were like me and you liked books, you would go to university, become a teacher and move back to Ballymena and get a bungalow and teach.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:39] Speaker C: Not that you would go and do an English degree and then decide to write mad books.
And so there is a sense of sometimes of.
And you have to understand as well, like, my family's slightly different because my dad did go to university, but for most of My friends, they were the first generation to come out of Palomina to go to university and they went off and saw things and experienced things that their parents generation just hadn't. And when they came back, there was a disconnect.
I don't think we talk about that enough in Northern Ireland.
I was born in 1980 and definitely everyone from about 75 on for about 10 years, they were experiencing some of that disconnect because not only did they get to go to university, but they're also the generation that experienced cheap travel and experienced the Internet for the first time. So you have a wealth of experience that the previous generation didn't have.
So it makes sense to me that it would be hard for your parents to understand you because we've seen things and experience things they didn't experience.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: Definitely. So how were your student days? Because you went.
If I did my calculations correct, Jan, you went aged 18 to Queen's, didn't you?
[00:21:05] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I kind of wasted my undergrad and I didn't waste it in the way you're supposed to waste your university time.
I was really miserable for three years going through that. Awkward.
Who am I? What am I doing in life?
I just. I really wish I could go back and do my undergrad again, particularly because there were. I got a lot of the last professors and teachers at Queen's before there was a new intake. And so I had people like Edna Longley and Michael Allen teaching me and I didn't appreciate what I was sitting under.
And I wish I'd gone back and done it again.
I'm very involved in the writing community here in Belfast and I see the new intake of undergrads coming in, going to every reading and every discussion, and I think, why didn't I do that?
I think I just did the bare minimum and then went home to cry.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Right.
It's so unfortunate. But I think. I mean, I studied history in Trinity and I went age 17 and I didn't make. Exactly like yourself, Jan. I didn't make the best out of it at all.
[00:22:23] Speaker C: You know, there was a huge culture shock for me, coming from a very conservative, almost entirely church community, that there was very little in our life except church to this whole world of, you know, students and student life. And, you know, I didn't drink, I was scared of pubs. I didn't know how to socialize with people who were different from me.
And that took a while. And there was a culture shock thing there.
And I wish I could go back and do it again because what a gift doing Three years of English at Queens with all of those amazing thinkers.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Would be, of course. Yeah, of course.
So what happened then? You had those three years. Did you come out the other end to those feelings? Was there a shift? Jan, what happened?
[00:23:17] Speaker C: This is a desperately depressing story, Jackie. Sorry.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: Okay, go on.
[00:23:22] Speaker C: I came out of that, and I worked for the Presbyterian Church for four years.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Oh, really? Okay.
[00:23:28] Speaker C: It was more of a retreat back into. Oh, what? See if I'll go there. But I will say, I think that four years was probably the most so far anyway. It was probably the most difficult four years of my life because there was something in me fracturing and coming into my own and learning who I was and that, you know, faith is still an important part of my life, but it doesn't look like the faith of my childhood. It certainly doesn't look like a very tight, legalistic Presbyterian faith.
But that four years was very important for me in challenging some of those things and thinking through it and asking questions. And at the same time, I was beginning to meet lots of other people to start moving out into the music scene and the art scene and finding kind of kindred spirits there.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:24:20] Speaker C: But still then kind of running back and feeling guilty about it, all in all.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Well, I mean, it sounds, from your description, Jan, like such a very strong church background. Such huge contrasts, you know, at such a young age, really, you know.
[00:24:38] Speaker C: Yeah, it was quite. Quite all consuming. And it's. I have so much patience for people who have.
Who have been brought up with ideas and concepts and things that are countercultural to how, you know, you're supposed to see the world now, because it is not easy from moving from, you know, seeing the entire world and everything in it through one lens to try to change your opinion. It doesn't happen overnight. There has to be this wrestling, difficult period where you're challenging things and you're questioning, you know, why do I think that about this issue and learning what to hold on to and what to get rid of.
And I think sometimes we expect too much of people. We think, you know, you can move from thinking this way about an issue to this way overnight.
It doesn't work that.
So I'm actually. I'm quite grateful, though. It was a very hard period.
I'm grateful that I had space to move through it. And there were some amazing people who walked through that period with me. My brother, for example, was fantastic.
Other people who are still in my life now came into that and allowed me to think through and question and were very gracious with my luckily this.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Is not a party political broadcast. It is a short announcement to mention our sponsor. This episode of the Creative Places and Faces podcast is sponsored by Property Insurance Center. Property Insurance Center's sponsorship helps to support the local economy by promoting not only local writers, artists and craftspeople, but also entities involved in travel, tourism and hospitality. This first series of the Creative Places and Faces podcast has an exciting lineup of guests including jan Carson, Henry McDonald, Ann Smith, Malachi O' Doherty, Andrea Spencer, Helen Sharkey, Emma Thorpe, and many others.
Today's sponsor, Property Insurance center, specializes in commercial and residential property insurance and all types of business insurance.
Originally established in 1976, this family insurance brokerage has served thousands of businesses and families just like you over the decades. To discover more or become a sponsor, click on the sponsorship link below this podcast. And now back to you, Jackie.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: Okay. And tell me a little bit about your involvement in the music scene.
[00:27:08] Speaker C: Jan I just would have.
I helped to run a little venue at Queen's that did spoken word and some singer songwriter stuff, which I really loved doing that.
And I would have been friends with a lot of folks that were in bands and my brother and I had a really beat up car. So being the people who drove amps and speakers and things to gigs, which I really enjoyed, I've always enjoyed music and I love, I love being around creative people and I still do. Like, I don't necessarily have to just be around writers. I love being around filmmakers and musicians and visual artists and talking about the process of creativity.
I think I've always been drawn to those people and I loved being in that community. It was one of the things that kept me sane and healthy through that period.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: Okay, so tell me something. You mentioned that you Left Belfast Age 25 out of pure frustration. What happened to make you feel like that?
[00:28:19] Speaker C: Jan I think most of it is probably me. Like, I knew I needed to draw a line and be somewhere where people didn't know who you were.
There's something about the physical geography of Northern Ireland, but also the kind of psychology of it because it's so small, you can never get away from your parents or your extended family or your neighbors. It's that thing that we love where you say, you know, within 30 seconds of meeting somebody, you'll realize you've got mutual friends.
That can also be really claustrophobic.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: Yeah, of course.
[00:28:56] Speaker C: I knew within me I was beginning to become more artistic and to challenge and think about things. And I want it to be in a clean space that I could do that so that that's What I left, it wasn't so much the troubles or, you know, the. The politics of the place. It was more, I need to breathe for a while.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that's understandable. So you went off to Portland, Oregon. Why did you choose Portland? Out of curiosity. What, were you there.
[00:29:28] Speaker C: By accident? So I actually thought I was going to Portland, Maine. I didn't realize there was two Portlands.
So I wanted to explore the two sides of myself because faith was still really important to me, but art was becoming increasingly important.
And so I looked for a role somewhere that I could have both, because I'd been working in churches up till that point, and there are a number of places in the bigger churches across the world that have a designated arts pastor role.
It's looking at where theology and creativity intersect. And so I just. I sent out my CV to every single one I could find.
And a large, large church in Portland were the first people that got back, and they initially offered me a paid internship, and then it transferred into a job after about a year.
So I went out there knowing absolutely no one, just to try and start again.
[00:30:37] Speaker B: Okay, how was Portland for you? Talk to me about the environment.
[00:30:46] Speaker C: It was the maddest culture shock, and it was wonderful. I'd spent the summer before working as a secretary in the offices of the Presbyterian church, like the head offices. So I went from that to about three days later sitting on a bus with every kind of diversity and every kind of craziness that you can think of going on around me. And Portland in 2005 was just a super alive, vibrant city. It's become a bit of a cliche of itself recently, I think. Just there's a lot of what we would have called yipsters, kind of a cross between yuppies and hipsters have moved in and trying to look arty, but they want kind of. They want the nice lifestyle as well. But back then, it was just, there were film directors everywhere, there were writers everywhere, there were musicians everywhere. We went to see different bands every night of the week.
We went to Poyles Bookstore, which is the world's largest independent bookstore, and just saw whatever writer was coming through. There was a writer reading every night for free.
So, you know, you'd be down there watching Patti Smith or Salman Rushdie or Jonathan Safran Foer or Douglas Copeland, and I just loved that. I'd never had anything like that in Belfast, and it was amazing.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: Wow.
It seems like you couldn't have ended up in a better environment for that particular stage of your life. No.
[00:32:18] Speaker C: And I think as well. The church community out there was really progressive, so really open minded, quite liberal, really safe and supportive, but just absolutely shot through with art as well. So, you know, we had people within our community who were.
One of my good friends is a camera woman for Tarantino. We had people on the New York Times bestsellers list and huge graphic designers. And I loved that you could have a vibrant faith and be completely sold out for your art and creativity as well.
[00:32:56] Speaker B: Well, fantastic.
So just moving towards the stage, Jan, where you've returned home from Portland and you wrote your first novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears, which was published to great acclaim in 2014.
How did the environment that you'd left behind, how did that trigger this first novel?
[00:33:20] Speaker C: So I didn't want to leave Portland. My work visa ran out and I got shut down back home and not even to Belfast. I ended up spending the first, most of the first year back at home in my parents spare bedroom in Ballymena, which was horrific. Like I literally went from, I interviewed Bon Iver one Thursday and the next Thursday I start at work in a Yankee candle shop in the Tar center in Ballymena.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[00:33:49] Speaker C: Helped him talk. The other way was great.
And I worked in a gift shop for about 9, 10 months gift wrapping candles.
And there was nothing in my life like while I'd been away, all of my friends from Belfast had moved on and you know, settled down, bought houses, got sensible jobs. I was back living with mom and dad. And at night the only place that was open in Ballymena to write was the cafe and Tesco's. So I went drive to the cafe in Tesco's and start writing this novel which became Malcolm, which is all set in Portland. And it was kind of, I don't want to be here, so I'm going to write about the place that I want to be.
So that's where that came from. And I did. I chipped away at it for years and years. It took me a long time to write it. I think it began in 2009 and it finally got published in 2014.
[00:34:46] Speaker B: Okay. Okay, good. And when you say it took that long to write, were you writing for most of that time or were you approaching publishing houses?
[00:34:57] Speaker C: Writing and revising? And I didn't know how to write a book. Like I have never once in my entire life done a class on how to write. So I was just making it up.
And so at one point I think it was 200,000 words long.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: Really? Yeah.
[00:35:17] Speaker C: So there was a lot of editing and I was also, I was writing Quite a few short stories. So I actually wrote my first short story collection in that same period.
I would have dabbled in the short stories as well at the same time. And I was knackered as well.
I tell you what, I think everybody should work retail or borrow work at some stage in their life, because it's so exhausting. But you also learn so much about human beings. Me too.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:35:47] Speaker C: That was a. It was a really good experience for me to do that for a year.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. Notice. And so when. When did you move on to Belfast? When did you leave Ballermena and go to Belfast?
[00:36:00] Speaker C: At that stage, I. So 2009, I lived with my folks and then I had a.
A terrified scamper back into church work for about nine months, where I moved to church. Hertfordshire.
Really. Okay. I lived in Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire for nine months. And I literally was about 30 seconds on the job and was like, what am I doing here? This is a big mistake. So I had it in my notes after three months and worked six months to pass it on to the next person, but that was there. And then I came back and I got a job in the Ulster hall as a community arts officer, which is the big Victorian music hall in Belfast. And I loved that job. It just was the absolute best job I think I ever had in the community and the team. And it was such a freeing thing after years and years and years of working in churches, to just be able to breathe.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
So how long were you working there around that stage. John, wasn't it, that you started to live in East Belfast?
[00:37:13] Speaker C: Yeah, I sort of moved around lots of divey houses for a while, and I ended up settling over in East Belfast.
I worked in the Ulster hall from 2010 through to 2017. Really quite a long six and a half years, I think it was in different. Different formats and different variations of the job, but all community arts engagement at the same time. I also completed a master's in St Andrews long distance, so I was kind of scuttling backwards and forwards there as well. And I wrote a couple more books.
So it was a busy, busy time, but really full of just really sort of grounding myself in the literary community in Belfast. It became very apparent from day one at the Ulster hall that they wanted to have a literary input to the outreach work they did, because there's such a legacy of writers involved in the Ulster hall, like Dickens has read there and Arthur Conan Doyle and all sorts of, like, our own Northern Irish writers. So they wanted to celebrate that and that was my ticket into making contact with a lot of the other writers, contemporary writers in Northern Ireland.
And I loved that. Just like, it felt like coming home kind of thing.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: Okay.
Now, in various interviews, Jan, you've described yourself as an overachiever. And the amount of energy that comes through, you know, when you speak about the. Obviously, the work you've done and you're writing in the middle of the different jobs you've been doing, do you feel you're an overachiever because you feel a responsibility towards what you do? And I'm referring to both the arts and the community work and your writing?
[00:39:04] Speaker C: Yes. I think with the community stuff, there's a part of it is responsibility. At worst, it becomes guilt. And nobody should be operating from a position of guilt. And I'm trying to work on that at the minute. But mostly I think it's a responsibility and a sense of wanting to do it really well.
I believe that the people I work with deserve something really good. And it annoys me on the way into when I see community art. That feels like lowest common denominator kind of provision. I want people who are in my projects and my workshops and things to come away shocked by what they've achieved, because I think they are capable of that. So there's that sense of, like, I want to give some people something really special.
I'll also be really honest, and I'd say I have absolutely no capacity for boredom.
So most of the things that look like excessive productivity are just me going, I can't sit still. What am I going to do now? Well, I don't know. I've got another idea.
[00:40:12] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:40:12] Speaker C: Yeah. I just. I'm not good. I don't understand boredom. I don't understand sitting in front of a TV at night, just watching the mindless tv.
I'd rather be creating or thinking or scheming or whatever it is.
[00:40:31] Speaker B: You mentioned, John, obviously the distance course in St. Andrews, that was a master's, wasn't it, in theology and contemporary culture. So from what you've just said now, that seems like quite a logical choice. You were bringing in your very, very solid church background, both from your childhood and obviously your work life, and mixing that obviously with contemporary culture. Talk to us a little bit about that, the actual masters and the.
Because you did go over there fairly frequently as well, to Saint Andrews, didn't you?
[00:41:02] Speaker C: I was so fortunate. I fell in. So in my year group, there were about 10 people doing the Masters in Theology and Contemporary culture. And they are. They were just wonderful people. Like, from Such a range of experiences and life backgrounds, and we all got on like a house on fire. So after our first week together, for the rest of the four sessions we went over, we would always hire a big house and all live together for the week and spent most of our times after classes in the pubs, furiously arguing and debating and thinking. And it was also, it was a little bit like being in Portland, like to have this group of people around me who. Faith was important to them, but ideas and thought and art and creativity was also incredibly important. And, like, some of those people are still my dearest friends, and they're all ages and they're all over the place, but we still try to give up every so often.
And the course itself is just wonderful. St. Andrews is. It's just. It's a gorgeous space to be doing university. And it's got. The theology department is. It looks like something out of Harry Potter. It's wonderful. But we also had wonderful professors who were provocative but respectful. They would throw ideas out that people didn't agree with and provoke critical thought and challenge things. But you always felt safe.
And I love that, like, you know, theology can become a real space where people destroy each other.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: Of course.
[00:42:37] Speaker C: Yeah, I love that. You know, one of the things that they were very clear on is, you know, you can have completely different theological ideas for someone, but we must leave this space respecting each other.
And I think we all did.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
So important, obviously. Now, another place that you've been spending time in over the last four years is Carmoi, which is in Norway, and it's an island you've mentioned also there that you've been, you know, working within the high schools, and you've built, you know, quite also another community of people around you there. And this has all been part of the Creative Europe writing program. Why do you love this place and the people and your experiences there so much? Jan?
[00:43:24] Speaker C: So this came out of. I was at the West Cork Literary Festival in Bantry about four years ago, and I got chatting to an older couple at the bar, and they were Norwegians, Odd Henning and Hildreden. And we got on fire and they said, you'll have to come and stay with us. And little did I know that Odd Henning runs this Creative Europe project for a huge chunk of Norway.
So that was me signed up for life at that point.
And I've been going out for about a week to 10 days once a year, every year now for four years. And I just love it. The students are amazing.
The troubles is on their History curriculum at what would be G level. And so I work with them responding creatively to the things raised by the Troubles and the literature around the Troubles.
The young people are just. They're so intelligent and so articulate. And I think as well, there's a huge amount of compassion and wisdom to the way they approach their thinking. It's part of the Norwegian way of life. They treat their children with an enormous amount of maturity, and they expect maturity from them.
I love working with them. We write stories together and we read together and we discuss.
And I get to work with the teachers and train them up on how to use creative writing within the classroom.
I think that openness.
I've done a little bit of skills work in Northern Ireland, and I've always found it reasonably restrictive.
It's so tight to the curriculum here.
Whereas they just seem to trust their young people. So a huge part of last year was watching Derry Girls and responding to.
[00:45:09] Speaker B: Derry Girls and can they understand the accents?
[00:45:13] Speaker C: Well, we did have to put the subtitles on sometimes.
And they're able to draw parallels between things like, you know, Norway. Like, we always hear about Scandinavia being a utopia, but there has been issues with rising fascism and issues around kind of intolerance of people coming from other places to live in Norway. And the kids are really quick to pick out, you know, here's something from your background we could learn and apply to what it's like to be here in Norway at the minute.
Okay.
I'm always really passionate about places learning from each other's experiences, and I guess it's one of the things that really saddens me about the EU and Brexit.
It's been such a joy to get to know riders from other places with a background of conflict and to see, you know, what they've learned from their situation and how it might apply to us.
[00:46:12] Speaker A: As Jackie just couldn't stop asking questions. This interview has been split into a few episodes. Be sure to check out the next one. The link is below.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Creative Places and Faces podcast. If you would like to apply to be a guest or a sponsor, be sure to check out the links below the podcast. Until next time, from all of us here, take care, stay safe and be creative.
