• RLF News
• Article

My Writing Life: Gordon Meade

Gordon Meade is a Scottish poet based in the East Neuk of Fife. He was the Creative Writing Fellow at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, an RLF Fellow at the University of Dundee, a member of the RLF’s Bridge Project, and a poetry tutor for a number of primary schools in Fife. He has published twelve collections of poems and has read from his work throughout the United Kingdom and in Europe. In 2014 he was diagnosed with Stage Three cancer which, a couple of years later, developed into Stage Four. He continues to give readings and poetry workshops, mostly online, whilst waiting to enter the non-existent Stage Five.

This interview originally appeared on our Substack channel. 

1. What book should every writer read?

Without a doubt, the book I feel that every would-be poet should read is Poetry in the Making by Ted Hughes. Initially written for 10 to 14 year-olds, I have found it essential reading both in my role as a poetry tutor in primary schools, and as an aid to my own writing. With chapters covering writing about animals, weather, people, and landscape, Hughes’ writing is clear, concise, and inspiring. Allied to numerous examples from his own poems and those of Keith Douglas, Sylvia Plath, and Robert Lowell, I think it is an excellent introduction to the making of poems for any age group.

2. What is the one thing you wish someone had told you before you started your writing career?

Perhaps the most helpful thing someone might have told me before I started my writing career, although I would probably not have heeded their advice, would have been to try and hone my networking skills. In the beginning, perhaps due either to my insecurity, or my arrogance, regarding my own work, I decided not to seek out too many connections amongst my contemporaries. It seemed, perhaps naively, the only way in which I could be certain that my early work, if it were to be accepted, would be so on its own merits.

3. What is the best advice you’ve ever received about your writing?

The best advice, and lots of it, was given to me by my supervisor at Newcastle University when I embarked on what remains a still unfinished Master’s degree on Gaudete by Ted Hughes. My heart was never really in academic work, and when I came upon some of my supervisor’s poems in an anthology of North-East Poets in the university library, I managed to pluck up enough courage to tell him that I wrote poems, too.

From that moment on, we spent most of our time sharing each others’ poems. I always thought of him as a maieutic teacher, one who allows a student to believe that it was he, or she, who had discovered the answers to any questions that might have been posed, by themselves. Our working relationship developed into a lasting friendship, always founded on our joint love of poetry, which survives to the present day.

4. What is the most underestimated challenge about being a professional writer?

Perhaps the easiest, and most difficult question of them all… how to try and make a living from writing. In my case, I have been fortunate to have had a number of residencies both in schools, in an art college, and in a library. I was also the RLF Fellow at the University of Dundee on two occasions, and a member of the RLF Bridge Project at three schools in Fife. Allied to this, I have been awarded a number of Writer’s Bursaries from what was then the Scottish Arts Council, now known as Creative Scotland. I have also been the grateful recipient of grants from the RLF.

Although all of the above have been, at times, financial life savers, I would never have been able to continue my writing career with the focus I believed it needed without the emotional support of my wife, my daughter and a number of close friends.

5. What was the proudest moment of your writing career?

Probably one of the proudest moments of my writing career was receiving a letter in 1991 from the publisher, Chapman, informing me that they were going to publish my first collection of poems, Singing Seals (1991). Another, more recent, special moment came a few years ago when the Canadian photographer and animal activist, Jo-Anne McArthur, emailed me to let me know that she was more than happy to include a number of her stunning photographs in my collection Zoospeak (2020). I had sent her a number of the poems from the proposed collection in the hope that she would indeed give me permission to use her photographs alongside the poems. Not only did she agree to this, but she supported the book by writing a foreword for it, and then collaborated with me on a further collection: EX-Posed: Animal Elegies (2023).

6. What is your typical writing day like?

I suppose that my writing life, like my life in general, has been somewhat split between two time zones, B.C. (before cancer) and A.D. (after diagnosis). I was diagnosed with Stage Three cancer in 2014 which, by 2016, had metastasized into Stage Four. Most of my mornings are now taken up by my making sure that I have taken all the various medications I have been prescribed to help keep my cancer at bay; some which have to be taken on an empty stomach, whilst others, after food, and still more, two hours after eating.

If I feel strong enough, I take our dog for a short walk before coming home to check my emails and do any admin work. In the afternoon, depending on my energy levels on that particular day, I like to settle down and do at least a couple of hours writing. In the early evening, I try to keep up with some reading, usually poetry books although, recently, I have been reading quite a number of non-fiction books mostly concerning animals, the environment, and climate change.

You might also like: