‘my prose has turned out to be very revealing of my personal life, which has rather blown my cover. I suppose it’s all there in code in the poetry’
Ian Gregson, ‘‘‘Negotiations’’: An Interview with Gwyneth Lewis.’ Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, 173 (2005), pp. 50-56 (55).
The above quote is frustrating because I’m finding it difficult to get hold of the article. I keep finding it referenced elsewhere, for example in the extracts posted on Zoe Brigley Thompson’s Warwick blog. Sometimes I think researchers in other areas underestimate just how difficult it can be to get hold of writing about contemporary literature in magazines with small print runs and little or no online archiving.
The other thing I’m noticing is that Lewis has written a considerable amount on her own work, has been interviewed widely and that every critical review of her work quotes Lewis on Lewis. This is a bit of a double-edged sword; while her thoughts are totally enlightening, it can seem a bit of an easy way out to quote rather than analyze.