Featured Interview With Jon Lawrence
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in Pontypridd, South Wales. I was raised in the seaside town of Penarth, just outside Cardiff. I loved it there. It was a very interesting place to grow up. I particularly used to like to stand on the pier and watch the sea roll by and dream into the distance. It always used to start my mind reeling, it made me contemplative and curious. I suppose this was the start of my interest in the arts. Now I live in the east of England where I teach creative writing and music.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
Strangely, I always struggled with reading. I’m not sure if it was a form of dyslexia or not, but when I used to read the words seemed to jumble up and mix around. I would start reading one line and then finish the latter part of the line below. I found reading very difficult, but I was always interested in creating stories. I can remember scripting out little plays to be performed at lunchtime at Albert Road Primary school in Penarth. Soon I became interested in music and I started to write lyrics. This led on to the release of a number of albums in the 2000s. I always had a narrative style of songwriting and soon I began to want to explore the characters in my songs in a little more depth, to give more attention to them than three verses and a chorus. After writing hundreds of songs I started to write short essays and short stories before attempting my first novel, The Pastoral.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I like strong emotion in my stories. I like to find the heart in them and want to be moved. I particularly like the work of the late Oliver Sacks who managed to emotionalise the often dry subject of science. I am also a fan of Paul Theroux, but I also love Oscar Wilde, Steve Martin, Stephen Fry and I have always had a particular affinity for the work of Siegfried Sassoon. I also adore the work of poet Christopher Reid.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest book has been about eighteen months in the making and it explores further many of the issues I have written about in my previous books, such as grief (Playing Beneath the Havelock House, Bisha) to the often difficult relationship between fathers and sons (Albatross Bay). However, this book also considers mental illness, a subject with which I have had a great deal of experience.
The story is about a septuagenarian called Anwyn, who returns to her childhood hometown of St David’s on the west coast of Wales to escape the hubbub of London and to grieve the loss of her poet husband. As the grief consumes her she starts to notice problems with her memory and fears that she will forget about her late lover. In short, she is terrified that she is suffering from the onset of dementia. Alone, with no family to help her, she forms an unlikely friendship with the members of a broken family. She befriends Maggie, a kind-hearted and dutiful wife, and her husband Huw, who owns a dolphin watching company in the waters around St Davids. He has to deal with a guilty conscience. Finally, there is their son Peter, a distant young boy, with a passion for wildlife who is mercilessly bullied at school for being different.
Anwyn’s house in St David’s has an old radiogram which she turns on at the same time every night to hear a poetry programme. She becomes fascinated with the work of a particular poet called Jack Newton, whose work seems to give her solace and comfort in her grief.
There are some surprises at the end but the main part of the story is how Anwyn deals with her grief and the importance that friendship plays in our lives. I’m very proud of it and I hope others will like it too.
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