{"id":1769,"date":"2012-10-21T11:19:53","date_gmt":"2012-10-21T10:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1394"},"modified":"2016-02-05T19:44:19","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T18:44:19","slug":"manchester-letters-jenn-ashworth-nermin-yildirim-reviewed-by-charlotte-rowland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1769","title":{"rendered":"Manchester Letters: Jenn Ashworth & Nermin Yildirim, reviewed by Charlotte Rowland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Letters, landscapes and the truth behind truth: shifting the solitude of writing<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Manchester Letters: Jenn Ashworth & Nermin Yildirim<\/span><\/p>\n

Saturday 20th<\/sup> October<\/span><\/p>\n

Manchester Literature Festival 2012<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

By Charlotte Rowland<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

It might look like letters and landscapes have nothing in common besides their alliterative beginnings. One\u2019s intimate; one\u2019s endless and vast. If one\u2019s paper and letters, the others much more than black on white. Letters are clandestine. Landscapes are loud voices talking late at night. Landscapes might be addressed to no-one.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the similarities lie little below the differences. Both, for one, involve walking. Not literal movement through space- but a kind of mental-mapping that needs more than just one foot in front of the other. Both are about looking and perspective and finding memories for what\u2019s going on. Both ask that space be taken one line at a time.<\/span><\/p>\n

And both (to continue the half-fanciful imaginings) come into a recent \u2018Manchester Letters\u2019 project collaboration that sees novelists Jenn Ashworth and Nermin Yildirim in conversation with each other for the first time. (Perhaps one more than the other, given the title, but both DO sidle into it, I promise). Sharing letters over sea, from (often) rain-filled Preston to what seems (to a local Manc) like far-off, sunlight-stealing Barcelona, meeting in Istanbul, and coming together a second time at this afternoons Manchester Literature Festival event to unpack their discussion of the summer and talk about what it\u2019s felt like to letter-hike through another writers life, this kind of epistle-contained communication gets right to the grit of questioning the abilities of language, and asks how environment influences the making of self.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chairs seven-a-row, coats off backs; and a humming collection of literature leaflets means the venue, Manchester\u2019s International Anthony Burgess Foundation,\u00a0 has assumed its usual position as the audience take theirs. An expectant eagerness tints the pre-event conversation. Hands shuffle on laps. A few hold wine glasses half-full with thirst. Thick-rimmed glasses fix onto faces (though this could just be me). Even the light rayed in the windows might be listening.<\/span><\/p>\n

To begin, two readings, one from each, of a section from their latest novels; Nermin\u2019s read in Turkish with a translation on sheets flapped to hand. There\u2019s something irrationally pleasurable about hearing something read in a language you have no abilities in at all. You\u2019re left to listen for the lilt; the melodies of language (which seem soft and gentle here); but also, you\u2019re reminded what writing is for; for self-expression and pleasure- something here that lets us in on how similar (but how different) these two writers are; their landscapes and backgrounds becoming immediately apparent.<\/span><\/p>\n

The questions that follow begin on local ground. Jenn\u2019s inexperience of the Turkish landscape (and, like me, life-long experience of Northern England) sets the conversation at an angle, as she recollects how she saw letter writing to Nermin as the one chance she had of getting to know her. \u2018I\u2019m writing to a writer not yet translated into English\u2019, she tells. \u2018I\u2019m making stories\u2019. But then, every book is different.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nermin explains how the Turkish language made a swap from using the Arabic alphabet to Latin, which means that Turkish literature lovers have lost the Shakespeare\u2019s of their nation, as most readers living now are unable to speak the Arabic language used to write earlier works. It\u2019s the index of inherited culture that Nermin misses. But she knows \u2018language is still alive\u2019. And when asked how to go about portraying facts of reality in fiction, she shrugs. \u2018For me truth is changeable. There are lots of truths and lots of perspectives\u2019. <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m still thinking about this line (though this could be because it seems to tell a lot of truth itself, or because its 5am and it seems fitting when waiting for dawn). Lots of truths. Lots of perspectives. What is there less of? Sleep, for one. And solitude. Writers no longer have to look for things alone. They can share things; talk about last night\u2019s clouds (or whatever your \u2018thing\u2019 is); pass on what they\u2019ve found.<\/span><\/p>\n

Collaborate.<\/span><\/p>\n

To most writers, collaboration cries intrusion and trespass. (Head-down, no eye contact). But here, sea-split communication (all be it over months of exchange) have allowed two writers to share the localities of their own landscapes and explore the continent of the other without losing sight of their own landmarks. It\u2019s travel without the strange, shift-in-time feeling of waking up in an unfamiliar town. Movement. \u00a0Perspective. You only have to think of Simon Armitage ambling the Pennine Way in the general direction of \u2018home\u2019 (map-reading skills dependant), or Alice Oswald, scouring the River Dart for a kind of poetics to dig from the water\u2019s debris to get a fair idea not just of how environment affects us, but how writers themselves are growing more and more aware of their own space.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ve learnt it\u2019s very easy to look into a country and see its sensitive areas\u2019, answers Jenn, to the question of how Turkey\u2019s space and political situation might be impacting its writers. Nermin lets her role as writer reign above the government affairs of her home. \u2018You already know what you should write\u2019, she enounces (something I first heard in her accentuated English as \u2018you already know what you should sight\u2019; a claim which also seems fitting for gathering up what space might give to a writers perspective). No doubt writing has a kind of inherent instinct to it that means some of what writers write is pre-determined without conscious decision making. But so too is part of it a growth of nurture; a spin-off of our own selves in the making, and an examination of how the heritage of our cities might shape who we are now, here, as writers. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018I wanted to write about what it felt like to live there rather than provide a map\u2019, says Jenn, keen to voice the difference between geographical accuracy and self-representations of space. And yet there is a sense that this kind of fleeing harks back to the mental-mapping required for landscape and literary control. We have to read signs, and inform ourselves of the past, in order to be able to feel or write on the past at all. But \u2018none of us go around explaining ourselves\u2019, as Jenn puts it. \u2018We just live\u2019. <\/span><\/p>\n

And \u2018just living\u2019 is what letter writing comes down to. The fact I\u2019m writing this at 5am before work is irrelevant. Sort of. If Jenn and Nermin\u2019s letter-links do nothing else (though what they actually do is endless and brilliant), they show how time, lost or living, has a relevance; but more so, a resonance with what we as writers are doing in its pass. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Language links us with culture, and to be a writer you need to control both\u2019, says Nermin, who goes on to say \u2018I want to write in the language I am dreaming in\u2019. A romantic aspiration perhaps, but if literature can\u2019t contain at least a proportion of the open-risk sentimentalism letter-writing permits then surely that leaves us with a barren landscape of nothingness ; heritage without use; meaning without feeling. <\/span><\/p>\n

If part of this is nostalgic lament for the understanding of an elusive past, both Jenn and Nermin recognise that what\u2019s been can be plaited and woven into what\u2019s to come; that a writer can write a modernity by re-building the ruins of a pre-destructed past. It involves being alert to the sensitivities of your own surroundings; and it involves talking about these backdrops in determination of finding meaning.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of this is recognition of tradition; of a pre-treaded historical trail that has left paths open-ended. A 19th<\/sup> century Austen-like vibe has crept into modern letter writing which actually (if truth IS to be universally acknowledged), gives what Jenn and Nermin are doing a referent for history; a sense that an exchange of old-form, pen on paper communication has meaning beyond what is said; resonant with what has been said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Isn\u2019t this more than communicating?\u2019 asks Nermin. I believe it is. The seal; what stamp we use; the colours and creases of the envelope; our handwritten aesthetics; the act of sending itself, as a will to manage distance; are all part of the narrative a letter tells. It\u2019s form with content. Sound against sight.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the landscape part. <\/span><\/p>\n

Writing letters is communicating slowly, with patience and persistence. It\u2019s taking time to enjoy the view. If writers want to get inspired, the landscape, and it\u2019s many open paths; routes of communication; transformation; translation, are waiting. You have to walk a little unsettled; scared and slow. But look around. The landscape\u2019s changing. You\u2019re alone. But you don\u2019t have to be. Not if you put it in a letter and send it to a stranger on the other side of the sea.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Letters, landscapes and the truth behind truth: shifting the solitude of writing Manchester Letters: Jenn Ashworth & Nermin Yildirim Saturday 20th October Manchester Literature Festival 2012 By Charlotte Rowland It might look like letters and landscapes have nothing in common besides their alliterative beginnings. One\u2019s intimate; one\u2019s endless and vast. If one\u2019s paper and letters, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[16,283],"tags":[156,171],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nManchester Letters: Jenn Ashworth & Nermin Yildirim, reviewed by Charlotte Rowland - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1769\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Manchester Letters: Jenn Ashworth & Nermin Yildirim, reviewed by Charlotte Rowland - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Letters, landscapes and the truth behind truth: shifting the solitude of writing Manchester Letters: Jenn Ashworth & Nermin Yildirim Saturday 20th October Manchester Literature Festival 2012 By Charlotte Rowland It might look like letters and landscapes have nothing in common besides their alliterative beginnings. 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