It takes a community to write a book

I grew up with the image of the lonely artist; Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, James Joyce sitting in the lonely garret writing in splendid isolation.  I accepted that Wordsworth really did wander lonely as a cloud and that Yeats wrote about things falling apart, as a solitary man. I never considered the ecosystem within which their writings sat and nor did they disabuse the reader of that illusion.  There was something of the ego wanting to elevate the creative process to the work of single genius, in the way that we like to position humans, usually illustrated as males, at the top of the pyramid of life with worms at the bottom.

Just as the pyramid is an ideology rather than an accurate representation of the truth, so is the illusion of the lonely artist.  In reality the production of the book requires a network which reveals not just how the artist is connected, but how all life is interconnected.

I recently held a book launch with Booka at the Holroyd Theatre for my poetry collection Farmotherlands.  I wanted the event to be a community event and so invited along Ian and Stef from Treflach Farm, Casha and Barbara from Babbinswood Farm, Tom Adams the Apple Man, Jock Tyldesley and Vera Van Heeringen to play music and Hannah White to take photographs.  I invited the farms because my collection is about farming and although I have farming family, I am not a farmer.  I wanted music there to create a party feel and I wanted Hannah to take photos not just of the launch, but of those attending so that they would leave with a gift from me to them, a visual memory of the evening and the people they spent it with. Photos of connection.

But the connectivity goes far beyond that.  My poetry collection wouldn’t exist without my mum whose farming family I wrote about.  It was her who read us bedtime stories, who did a degree with the Open University in literature and enthused about the work of Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney.  Both she and my dad had a love of the outdoors and nature which came of course from their parents and their background.  Then there were my cousins and my farming uncle and my cousin’s children and their children and so, immediately it becomes apparent that my collection arises not just from me, but from my ancestry and my wider family connection.

Then there were the English teachers who inspired me both at school and university, the poetry podcasts I have listened to, the Masters degree in creative writing I did, the volumes and volumes of other poetry I have read; Ada Limon, Seamus Heaney, Mary Oliver, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Clare Best, Richard Blanco and many, many others.

During the pandemic I read widely around ecology and climate change.  Wilding by Isabella Tree, Braiding Sweet Grass by Robin Wall-Kimmerer, Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard not only opened my mind to the interconnectivity of humans with nature, but also modelled for me a way of writing that integrated the personal and the factual.  Joanna Macy inspired me not only with her thinking around our connections with nature, but also linked her philosophy to Buddhism which in turn connected me with my earlier experiences in meditation in India. Wendell Berry inspired me with his writing and his deep, earth-drenched knowledge of the land and farming.  All of these influences are part of the collection.

Then there are the people who let me walk across the farmlands, the friends who have joined me rambling, the crazy ones who woke in the early hours to walk up a hill for breakfast at sunrise.  I have spent time in communities with other people who write, on courses, by the sea, in the hills with people who know about nature and permaculture, all of their influences are in the book.

Then there is my work. My work allows me the time, inspiration, and headspace to write.  Larkin worked at the University of Hull, Eliot worked at Lloyds bank, Elizabeth Gilbert waitressed tables.  Without having a steady income it would be impossible to write because I would be to worried about putting food on the table and surviving and so my work life and the people I work with, form part of the network which created the book.

Then I don’t think I would have found a publisher had it not been for all the various competitions I entered and was variously successful in. Of course, in order to enter, I needed a computer on which to write and post and pay, a computer where I was able to share the launch and connected people.  A computer which connects me to the people who made it and to the minerals in the earth that power the microprocessors in it.

Then of course there are all the people who helped in the production of the book: friends who were first readers, professionals who gave testimonials and proof read, the publisher, the printer, the courier who brought the books to Shropshire, which of course required a vehicle, which was made by somebody, which ran on the road, which was built by somebody using materials quarried by somebody.  On the launch night, there were local people, the staff from Booka, from the Holroyd, friends who brought friends, strangers who met friends, without all these people, would have been no launch.

And then think about the book itself, it was really important to me that the book was printed on sustainable paper using vegetable prints.  The photo image was taken by Hannah who I used to teach, and a tree somewhere grew, in earth somewhere, connected to mycelia somewhere, which created paper to print on.  And that tree needed soil, needed light, needed rain.

So when you hold that book in your hand, you are holding the sum of all of those connections. You are holding sunlight, rain, the work of the people that brought the book to you, all the people who have inspired me, all the experiences and work I have done, all the places I have been. And then all that hopefully will connect you, through the poems, through the vegetables printed on the tree to your own memories about the places you have been all the places that you have been, which then connect with all the people you were in those places, with all the more than human beings that were present with you in the wind and the rain and the sun.

There is never a solitary anything.  Never a solitary artist, never a solitary person, never a solitary beast.  Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes the web of life, a community of humans and more than humans, to create a book. We are always interconnected whether we realise it or not.

Julie Leoni is a mother, writer, life coach, work-shop facilitator and teacher of English, Psychology and yoga. She wild swims on the Welsh Borders and attempts to grow soft fruit. Farmotherlands (Hedgehog Press) is her debut collection which is already making waves in the literary world as: Winner of The Bournemouth Poetry Prize 2024, finalist in the London Independent Story and Poetry Prize, finalist in the Cinnamon Press Best New Voices 2024 competition, shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and the Mslexia Poetry Prize, longlisted for the Canterbury Poetry Prize 2024. Copies can be bought from Booka. You can find out more about Julie and read her blogs at: https://www.julieleoni.com/