‘The author of the letter is very much in charge of the narrative’: An Interview with Ali Rowland
By Inakshi Bagga
Edited by Annabel Wearring-Smith
‘I think that letters are very direct, and there’s the option for people to write one back, but- in the moment- the author of the letter is very much in charge of the narrative. So I’ve really played around with letters and communication and how it used to work and how it works now.’
The latest submission to be published in The Letter’s Page is a deliberately shocking letter by writer and poet Ali Rowland, as a manipulative ex tries to control the narrative of a past relationship. Last week, I sat down with Ali to discuss the inspiration behind her piece and what she thought about writing in the often-forgotten form of the letter. Our discussion was incredibly insightful, and we enjoyed discussing a range of topics, including mental health, communication and the human experience. Ali is an experienced writer, having won various literary competitions.
‘I used to write years and years ago, probably about 3 decades ago when I was a teenager. And then I sort of, I went to university and started work, and life sort of took over and I didn’t do anything for ages and ages. And then I had a major breakdown in 2018. And after that I sort of come back to writing. Partly as a kind of therapy, really. And I’ve been writing ever since. Really mostly poetry. I’ve had about 50 poems published in journals and things. And won a couple of competitions, so I’ve got to think of myself as a writer now.’
The letter studies the connections between people and the way that significant, life-altering events can be interpreted in such different ways. Ali spoke to me about her deliberate choice to have the letter come from the point of view of Theo, a character who comes across as deeply patronising and profoundly unlikeable.
‘I think I could have written it entirely from Emma’s perspective, but I thought it was different. It would be more interesting to see it from somebody else’s point of view. I suppose as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised how different the same relationship or event can be seen by different people, and how much you can understand how reliable somebody is as a narrator by the words and phrases they use. It was quite challenging to be inside Theo’s head, but I think it’s a good test for a writer to be able to write from the point of view of someone they don’t like, or someone whose ideas are very different from their own.
‘See, I perceive Emma as a sensitive person, and then Theo is not so much. I know in that letter he wanted to set out his case and I don’t think he’s the sort of person who’d want to ring Emma up so that they could discuss it. He just wanted to say, look, this is what happened and I think we should accept this perspective and close it down. I think a woman could do that, but it’s maybe more likely to be a man who does that because, culturally, they’re encouraged not to show their feelings so much. I didn’t want to say it’s a gender thing, really, but I do think it’s a personal thing. It could happen to anybody, I think, of any gender.’
For me, the letter came across as deeply personal, and wanted to know whether it had personal resonance to Ali’s own life. I felt as though it captured such an important aspect of communication and a struggle for reconciliation against an individual so determined to distort the truth of events. I asked her if writing the letter felt therapeutic to her.
‘Yes, I think I did find it therapeutic to write. I’ve never been in such a situation. I’ve been happily married for a long time, but I have had therapy following my mental health experiences and I found that the best therapists almost hold up a mirror to your experiences. You can see yourself in those situations, as if you’re sort of watching a play. That gives you a different perspective on what you did and how you felt, and that can be quite a powerful thing to do.’
‘I think that Theo wants to draw a line under it. He wants to make some points about the break up. And he wouldn’t want to be challenged about it. So he’s controlling the interpretation of that by the word.’
I wanted to hear more about the character of Emma and how Ali envisioned she would respond to Theo’s letter. She told me that the letter comes from a novel she is currently writing, titled ‘Who Do I Think I Am?’
‘In the novel, the break up is still very raw for Emma. She tells us through her narrative voice that she can’t really properly think or write about him at the start. In fact, in the early chapters, she doesn’t name him- she just calls him ‘him’. Theo’s letter stays on her desk, and she does not open it for quite a long time. When she does finally open and read the letter, it has quite an effect on her personal reassessment of the relationship, but it’s not the huge thing that it would be if she had read it right at the start.’
Ali tells me that writing in the letter form is relatively new to her, with this novel being the first time she’s properly done so. I wanted to hear more about her views of writing in the letter form, and any challenges she may have faced.
‘I think that letters are very direct. There’s the option that people can write one back. However, in the moment, the author of the letter is very much in charge of the narrative…they’re quite often about rumination, about thinking about things rather than the kind of two way communication of the letter. You will find this in some kind of classic 19th-century novels, that people will send a note to somebody and you know from one city to another and that they’ll get a reply straight away. That’s quite interesting, I think, but then there’s the opposite situation, where letters that have had to travel around the world could take months to arrive. There’s a situation like that in the book, where a character has died abroad, but the news is very, very delayed. So I’ve really played around with letters and communication and how it used to work and how it works now.’
Finally, I asked her about what advice she would give to writers of the future hoping to get their work published. ‘I think it’s important to see if you’ve got something that fits the bill. You can spend a lot of time sending to places that don’t really like your style or the format. But I think you know you can always, you can always give things a try. You get a lot of rejections and sending things out, and I thought that would be hard to deal with, but actually I think whether things get published or not, it’s quite a subjective decision. Just keep plugging away to it and- most of all- make sure you enjoy it. Writing’s such a great thing to do. It’s such great fun.’
The Letters Page team are back in the office, and ready to read your real letters again. We publish stories, essays, poems, memoir, reportage, criticism, recipes, travelogue, and any hybrid forms, so long as they come to us in the form of a letter. We are looking for writers of all nationalities and ages, both established and emerging.
Your letter must be sent in the post, to :
The Letters Page, School of English, University of Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK.
See our submissions page for more information.
To stay up to date on The Letters Page newsletter publication, subscribe here.
theletters.page 