Postcard 004 - Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling by Sir Philip Burne-Jones, 1899.

Rudyard Kipling, sent to [Kirsty L]

I am currently reading Kirsty's new book, a collection of short stories entitled A Portable Shelter.  It is dedicated to her father, for taking her to "the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo river, all set about with fever trees." It's a quote from the 'Elephant's Child', from the Just So Stories. 

And so this card went to Kirsty because of the Kipling quote, and because he's pictured here in the act of writing. And Kirsty is always writing.

Some of her work, when it comes from personal experience, can be arresting in its honesty.  Do I mean fidelity?  Its openness.  Certainly she's written about things I never would, or rather that I would feel a level of discomfort about disclosing. On first encounter with some of those pieces, years ago, I remember thinking that I could never be so open, and I immediately felt the restriction of that realisation. What's stopping me, really?

I tend to be more unfiltered in poetry than prose. I once vaguebooked half-formed lines of an unfinished piece which elicited an angry response from a family member when he recognised what it was they were about. I think he felt that it was disrespectful of me to have written them. Facebook may not have been the place, but in retrospect I wonder if I would have been better not to have shied away from it, as I did then.  I envy, or admire, in K the confidence she has to be open.  I wonder what it is about me that makes me feel that I could not, that I don't have permission to do that.  I prod and poke at the thing, in the hope that it will give up its secrets. And I try to write more honestly, even if I disguise the names, and weave deniability in from the start.