Michele meets her public
The Centre for New Writing welcomed another A-list writer to its Literature Live events series on 26 November, when the novelist Michèle Roberts read from her new memoir Paper Houses.
Described by event chair and former colleague Patricia Duncker as someone who opened the way for women writers in the 1970s, Michèle has written 12 novels and three books of poetry as well as non-fiction essays and her memoir of 1970s London. In this, she dedicates a chapter to each of the houses she inhabited during a period of great social and personal change, as well as describing her role as a 'flâneur' of the streets between them.
Michèle began her reading by describing the communes she moved between as a "poor and radical" graduate arriving in the capital, and the people they allowed her to meet. In Camberwell she struck up a friendship with her neighbour Mr Salmon across the back fence, his words and stories both encouraging her sense of belonging and providing material for her next novel.
She went on to describe how, later in the decade, she relied on her friendships as "food and oxygen", at a time when she was juggling up to six freelance day-jobs and living in a squat where she could barely afford food. Trying to squeeze her writing in at night, it was a hard and depressing period for the writer - despite her apparently cheerful façade.
Her final extract described a contrasting period as a 'faculty wife' in the US (having married in haste), as well as more "mystical and blissful moments" she has experienced. The audience was then encouraged to join the author's discussion with Professor Duncker, when such topics as her relationship with her younger self, the joyfulness of the seventies, the processes of writing both memoirs and novels and the influences and constraints on Paper Houses were discussed.
Michèle also described her fascination with journeys between activities and interactions, and the way people's lives are acted out and recorded in the streets. "Engaging with people and experiences is a part of me and my family," she explained, "We're all connected and should celebrate that.
"I can't bear the notion of life as just being about individualism, with no more society - we're part of nature's flows of life!"