Geoffrey Heptonstall on “This Place was Mine”
Interview by Gabriela V. Everett, Ines Le Cannellier, & Katie Lynn Johnston
This week we talked with Geoffrey Heponstall, the all-around writer and creative, about his piece “This Place was Mine,” what inspired him to be a writer, and what he’s on to next.
When did you realize you wanted to become a writer? Why writing?
Walking across a college lawn someone spoke of his ambition to write. I had vague ambitions to do something creatively in the course of my life. That conversation gave me a direction to follow. I was nineteen. If there was a single moment that was it. (My friend realized his ambition when he became a novelist.) There were other students with similar ambitions. So I found a support network at once. The only problem was that I wasn’t sure what to write.
But why writing? Well, it was something I found I could do. I could act, and I could write. I had no musical talent. I had some artistic ability, but not enough. But words on the page worked for me.
I wasn’t sure where I might find my voice. I wanted to be a poet, but I tried fiction, theatre, essays. I’m still not sure if I am a poet essentially who also writes other things. I’ve had some success in theatre, about thirty short stories and a novel. And a lot of reviews, polemics and essays. It’s surely necessary to try a range of genres before discovering where your voice lies.
When writing fiction, and particularly that of flash, what is it that usually gets you started? Do you find that your inspirations vary from prose to flash to poetry?
I find there is something I want to say. It may be something in the political world, or in the world in general. Long fiction is for a narrative that requires detailed characterization and a certain amount of plot. Flash, like lyric poetry, is a brief impression, a distillation of emotions, with imagery rather than story. Poetry is intense. Flash fiction has more flesh on the bone.
Very little I write is autobiographical. I’ve invented a place called Promise Strand, the setting for a number of stories that have some basis in my life. But there’s a filtering of reality in the imagination machine.
Here, there, somewhere…the ambiguity of “This Place was Mine” strikes the chord—or perhaps the loop—of eternity, of “if you’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it all”. Your use of repetition serves as an echo from here and there, and circles back to questions which, ironically, offer perhaps no straight answer, but a simple answer. Where did the idea for writing a piece that treats temporal and setting qualities as something to be played with come from?
I find this interesting because I wasn’t conscious of the time theme. Time isn’t a linear progression, an exact mechanism. It stretches, it contracts, and it bends. I suppose this interest of mine has informed my writing. I had a curious experience, very intense, of walking into a once familiar room and feeling I was literally back in time. This was serious. I had to get out of that room straight away, and I knew I must never go back. Possibly the narrator of ‘This Place’ is experiencing something of that.
Was there a specific moment—personal, political, or of the limelight—that inspired this idea of man vs. The System for your piece? Where did the idea of your narrator come from?
I’ve worked a lot with homeless people. None of them were homeless because they had nowhere to live. They were on the streets because they had drink, drugs and/or mental health problems. They found it hard to fit in with society. Some eventually found stability and a better life. Others were never able to find a way out, and they died. Quite a few had a cover story that was obviously untrue. Self-respect demanded they say their condition was only temporary. Or they had a job to go to. Or they were trying to help others. Life is tough even for those of us fortunate enough not to be at the margins. I’ve seen homeless people sheltering in doorways, with a book in their hands. I find that both sad and gladdening. They haven’t given up the fight. They’ll win.
One of the things that is so wonderful about “This Place was Mine” and your writing style is the seeming limitless possibilities for interpretation—and thus I want to ask, what is your interpretation of your own piece?
It’s a shelter for the homeless. A stranger appears. His lingering sense of dignity causes him to pretend he is simply visiting. He pretends to be important, rich, and benevolent. But the fragility of that pretense is evident. He is trapped in a web of broken promises and wishful thinking. He is speaking to someone, yet to nobody in particular. He is speaking to himself, but also to the world.
Are you working on anything exciting that you would like to share? Where can our readers find more of your work?
A few ideas at the moment. It’s the start of the year. That always seems to offer hope of things improving. Just about a year ago (was it really only a year?) there was Amanda Gorman, so very young speaking with age-old wisdom. I read her full collection, and every page but one was so vibrant it shook in my hands. How can I match that?
I don’t have a website, but if you google my name my books are available on Amazon. And there’s a lot of stuff published on-line. A recent story for Pennsylvania Literary Journal is, I like to think, one of my best.
I’m currently drafting three linked essays all to do with memory and time. So, yes, I am thinking about time.
Geoffrey Heptonstall is the author of Heaven's Invention, a novel (Black Wolf, 2017) and two poetry collections published by Cyberwit: The Rites of Paradise (2020) and Sappho’s Moon (2021). A current project is Virginia, a filmed monolog directed by Neal Yeager.