Jennifer Williams

And there's the kind of...

biblical and peaceful connotations of that.

It's interesting.

Even that thing, if you bite into a slice of orange and that's a sort of explosion in your mouth.

if you could describe your writing practice say if when you were these poems were still written while you were actually soldiering these were written in my notebooks and would it be that before bed or when you had a bit of spare time you were just almost as a kind of recording process these were coming out it depended on the place when we first came in country the first three weeks or so

And it looked like, because there are various quotations.

I find that very moving that you were taking the time to have that level of engagement and understanding.

Did you...

Were there other people?

Yeah.

Did you have people there you felt like you could share your, were there other soldiers who were interested in poetry or literature, or were you quite unusual?

Yeah.

And did you, I mean, I don't want to get too far away from the portrait, but I feel like, out of my own curiosity, it will go unsatisfied if I don't ask this.

How did you end up there?

Because actually, thinking about it, it seems somehow like one of those things you could ask someone and they might have an answer.

But actually, if you asked anyone why or how they ended up doing the thing they do, it would probably be just as difficult for most people to... You know, a complex and complicated accumulation of so many different...

decisions and choices and experiences.

A bit like what we were saying about how poems come out, you know, that end up with you being in a particular place.

I have to wonder, I mean, I'm glad I'm here in Scotland, but grew up in New Jersey, studied in Boston, my sister lives in Hawaii, and I ended up in Scotland.

Absolutely.