sean ashton

April saw the publication of my novel The Way to Work, and I’ve been doing a few promotional things: interviews for Radio Cambridge and Talk Europe; articles for The Big Issue, The Irish Times, Best American Poetry; and a forthcoming reading at Camden Arts Centre with Sally O’Reilly and Susan Finlay.  

I should probably do more research than I actually carry out. But I guess we’re not always aware when we’re doing research? I was in Tate Britain the other day, listening to Susan Hiller’s audiowork Monument, and virtually everything she was saying was interesting (‘The individual is a locus, not a bounded unit’; ‘safe art ignores death and aging’; ‘subject matter is not the same as content’) so I felt compelled to take notes. Which is amazing, because artists’ audioworks are usually THE most boring things in art galleries.  

I will be carrying out a few site visits to Haworth, Norfolk and Keele University for the novel I’m writing now, in which Charlotte Brontë reawakens in 2022 and resumes her career as a writer after a 170-year hiatus. I don’t so much research as ‘monitor’ phenomena. After climate change, probably the most radical development of the last 20 years is how the rethinking of gender along non-binary lines – a hitherto specialist concern – has gone mainstream. This is a complete mindf*** for biological essentialists, and a way-out, literally a salvation for people who don’t see gender in only biological terms. That’s a fascinating dichotomy. One of the characters in my next novel is a non-binary professor who refuses all pronouns, but is not militant in its attitude to the heteronormative community. The professor is a champion of all queerness – even that which resides in the heteronormative realm.  

Grey wagtails have started colonising urban areas. And I saw a buzzard outside my London flat the other day. The abundance of raptors generally, especially in urban areas, is a cause for celebration. I will shortly be making my annual pilgrimage to some nearby heathland to watch nightjars – which is the most exciting thing I see every year. 

I’m not sure ‘inspiring’ is the word, but I’ve been ploughing through the complete works of Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness in particular feels like a prescient investigation of humanity as something completely uncertain in essence, something completely unknowable: contingent at best. That is a valuable lesson for now, when everyone seems so sure of themselves, so obsessed with their identity and so determined to be right – more determined to be right than get at the truth, or at least listen to folk with different viewpoints. 

Gardeners’ World. There’s this period between November and March when the programme isn’t broadcast because there’s not much happening in the garden in winter. But it’s still a garden! I find dormancy in general intriguing. I picture a series of half-hour shows in which gardeners talk about a subject completely unrelated to gardening while gardening. So the gardening – or whatever can be done in January in a garden – is a pretext for a kind of monologue about their life. That’s my pitch. 

Further Reading: Leeds Art Show Review