Órfhlaith Foyle

Órfhlaith Foyle is an Irish novelist and poet. Foyle was born in Nigeria to Irish missionary parents, living there as well as Kenya and Malawi, all of which had a profound effect upon her writing. Quotes It made me a reader. We lived in countries where television was either non-omnipotent or it was banned. So I read everything I could get my hands on. Also my mother is a great reader and I remember our book shelves in Malawi were full of Shakespeare, Dickens and newspapers. Also living in Africa and being white made me realise that the world just didn’t follow straight lines and it made me curious. So I asked questions even though I knew there were some questions you never asked because you didn’t know who was listening. Africa is a country that is romanticised via Karen Blixen; Elspeth Huxley: the ‘White Highlands’ set; various films and famines. We lived there as children and so to us it was a normal childhood and Ireland was foreign; even though we realised we were the foreigners in Africa, it was still our home. Our parents had friends both black and white and being a child, I don’t believe we bothered with anything other than making friends and going to school. I am always conscious of the white African label. I don’t live in Africa anymore and sometimes I have to remind myself that I grew up there. Your childhood informs your work as a writer. You cannot escape it and growing up in Africa; I saw the absence of certain things. People disappeared; you were advised not to talk about things and I loved to talk. I was constantly given out to for telling secrets; not because I wanted to but because the words just got out. I used to look at South Africa and be glad my parents never brought us there. I could not understand the whites there. They seemed so far removed by the whites I knew. But I only saw things from a child’s perspective although I was grown-up for a child. Africa has and had such extremes of experience for me. There were friends in school whose lives were so different to mine, almost dangerous and yet we played rounders, giggled in the tuck-shop queue, visited each other’s houses yet there was always this membrane of difference between us. The difference was that my experience of Africa would never match the experience of the girl sat next to me in Sir Harry Johnson’s primary school. I could weave in and out of adult conversations and know that certain words were codes for something else. I could ask my friends questions that they just couldn’t and wouldn’t answer. So Africa made me realise that people hid things; they used certain words and your colour of skin categorised you. It’s influenced my writing in that I have always being fascinated by why and how people hide themselves. I am fascinated by difference and how it can either foster love or destroy it. I could have got these fascinations if I grew up in Ireland perhaps but never to the same intensity. There was always something disturbing about living in a country where you were the colour of the finished yet recent colonialists. Africa today still has extremes. Black and white Africans are still eyeing each other but I would not give up my childhood in Africa for anything. This sort of question makes me squirm. Poetry has always been mysterious to me. I readily admit to not being an academically astute poet. I know the differences between a sonnet and a villanelle and poetic parameters can be good training for a poet, but I have always been lured by feeling most of all. So how I feel and how I believe does come out in my poetry. It’s odd but I have always been conscious of how many ‘I’ poems I write and they are not always me! I believe that poetry reaches into you and your outward looks may never show it but you can be changed by poetry or at least arrested. Poetry is personal. Before Red Riding Hood’s Dilemma came out, a poet I know said to me: ‘Now I’ll know what you’re like.’ So I suppose you do open yourself through the poems you write but for some reason it does not sit as easy as writing on Facebook or a blog. I think it’s easier to hide on social networks, no matter how creative you are. Poetry can show you to yourself yet it also shows the world to yourself. It’s crazy to do it. But I admire crazy. I suppose it goes back to the ‘difference’ angle as well as my childhood. The one thing that we are all encouraged to fear in this world is difference. Travel does that most clichéd of things: it broadens the mind and as a writer it stretches that visual panorama in your head. My parents took a chance on the world so I’m always grateful to them. I’m disciplined. I begin work early in the morning and I work until early afternoon. Whatever I am working on takes priority. Sometimes I get nervous as I approach my desk but once I start, I keep on going. If I’m not working on anything, I read or daydream. Afterwards, I like to run to get out of my head and sometimes I bake chocolate cake.