Writers on Writing - Jeremy Reed

JEREMY REED
Above all - Imagination

I started writing as a child, and ever since leaving school I have somehow managed to support myself on writing books. I suppose I've only managed to continue by not questioning the risk involved, or the enormous vulnerability that such a pursuit entails. Part of my quest has always been to defy the system and to live outside its institutional parameters. Too many writers attempt to make compromises. I believe you're either one thing or the other.
What has always driven me to write is imagination, and a lack of books I want to read. I try to create the sort of poetry and prose that I wish others had written. My models are J G Ballard, Jean Genet, Edmund White, and the poets James Schuyler, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbury and Thom Gunn. I look for risk, zaniness, colour, cutting-edge material, and above all - imagination.
One of the great rewards for me is to have had my work earn high critical acclaim from some of these writers - like J G Ballard, Edmund White and John Ashbury.
I write for at least six hours a day, so to me writing means connecting with the universe in my own way. I hold my pen up to the sun before I write and write into scarlet-covered school exercise books. I write by hand as I like to feed my neurology into the page. Sitting in front of a terminal all day is the occupation of the business sector. I tend to write at home in the morning and in the afternoon I go out to a local café and continue there for two or three hours. I love pop music, so tend to break up the hours of writing with bursts of sonic distraction.
Writing means everything and nothing to me. On the one hand its my obsessive preoccupation, my life-force, and on the other hand I'm consumed by its ultimate meaninglessness. I suppose if you take anything seriously, then you are acutely aware of the downside as well as the up.
I wouldn't wish to do anything else but write, no matter the material insecurity it brings. I made that pact with myself a long time ago. My work is crowded with small detail. I think of myself as a kleptomaniac. I write like I am directing a film,; with great visual clarity. I aim for the kicks that imagery brings, and hope that others too will get off on reading what I've written. Finishing books is the hard part. Knowing I'll never go that way again. And usually it rains at the time, and rain is another form of lyric expression…