Spotlight On Writers
Adele Evershed
@AdLibby1
- Where, do you hail from?
I was born in Wales and grew up in a small seaside town called Porthcawl. It’s a beautiful place, with wide sandy beaches pounded by the wild Irish Sea. Of course, I only appreciate that now that I no longer live there!
After attending university in Exeter, I lived in London and Manchester before moving to Hong Kong and Singapore. Living in Asia was a wonderful experience; I got the opportunity to travel and met some wonderful people I’m still friends with today, even though we live on different continents – thank you, Facebook!
- What is the greatest thing about the place you call home?
I have lived in Connecticut for fifteen years, which is like living in a child’s picture book of the seasons; you get exactly what is advertised on the cover. My house backs onto a wildlife preserve so, during autumn, the view from the window is spectacular. We get deer in the garden and the occasional bear, too! I’m also a short train ride from New York so that I can get my theatre and museum fix, and now my daughter lives there, I have somewhere to stay overnight. But I suppose Wales will always feel like ‘home.’ There is a Welsh word, ‘hiraeth,’ which is difficult to translate into English. It’s a mixture of homesickness, longing, and nostalgia; a feeling of missing something you can never get back. That’s how I feel about Wales.
- What turns you on creatively?
I only started writing poetry and short stories about four years ago. Before that, I had only written panto scripts for a British theatre group. That was great fun, lots of double entendres and bad jokes. Then my daughter left for uni, and I was left at home with my husband and three sons, who are all football mad, so I started writing for something to do on a Saturday. At first, I wrote about my own experiences, but as time went on, I did a couple of free workshops, which really opened up my writing. Now I find I can hear something on the radio, which will trigger something in me. Then it might become the kernel of a poem or encourage me to research, and I have a flash fiction. I keep a notebook to write down snippets of conversations or words I like the sound of, and when I need inspiration, I trawl through those.
- What is your favorite word, and can you use it in a poetic sentence?
When speaking, I overuse the word ‘lovely,’ but in my writing, I like words that have a good feel in the mouth. One of my favorites is skew-whiff, which means not straight, or slightly off, and dates from the 18th century. Handloom weavers used it to describe fabric that was out of alignment. I like it so much that I used it as a title for a poem, which was published by Bee House Journal.
Skewwiff
I woke up yellow—decrepit—something not quite right
People born by the sea are older—yet this weathering surprised me
The compression of the thing settled in my gut
Rigmaroling me round the room like a drunk—yet I still couldn’t fill up the empty spaces
Time once felt slippery in patches—skidding past—a flibberty-jibbit
Now it just hangs like a promise—each day a small fable
I dig out abeyant words—yet use them in all the wrong places
Washing them with my breath—so they can exist for a short time
Capering about they creating their own mild breeze
—amorphous
—they float away on a riptide and I am too gutless to call them back
- What is your pet peeve?
My pet peeve… Gosh, that’s a tough one, since I have so many. People who don’t know how to merge onto a motorway, people (read: sons) who leave dirty plates in the sink rather than stacking them in the dishwasher… I suppose if I had to choose one, it would be mansplaining. When I was younger, I never had the confidence to interrupt a man telling me something I already knew, but now I have no fear or time to put up with it.
- What defines Adele Evershed?
When I asked each member of my family for a word they felt defined me, my husband said “empathetic,” one of my sons said, “spirited,” two of them said “passionate,” and my daughter said, “thoughtful and creative, but it’s hard to define someone you’re close to—they’re always so much bigger/more complicated than just a word or two.” I can definitely see myself in all of these answers. I love nothing better than a good debate, one of my mantras is “there but for the grace of God, go I,” and I am a person who would rather use fifty words when one will do! So I’m going to say wife, mother, teacher, feminist, musical theatre enthusiast, someone who believes kindness and education can change the world, and epic tea drinker!
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