WENDY ERSKINE: “Why I find profoundity in the lives of ordinary East Belfast people’

Wendy Erskine’s stories of loneliness, alienation, quiet desperation, disappointment, heartache and ennui set in her native East Belfast have garnered high praise since publication in her debut collection Sweet Home by The Stinging Fly in 2018.

The ultra-glamorous head of English at Strathearn Grammar School, a dead ringer for Debbie Harry who belies her 53 years, sets her microscopic, eagle-eyed literary lens on the ordinary lives of characters that she imagines populating the streets near her home.

The thoughtful, erudite mum-of-two finds much to explore in what might at first seem quotidian and everyday, even humdrum, but with her commitment to display how “joy and woe are woven fine” in human experience (to quote the Romantic poet William Blake), she finds magic and stardust where lesser writers might see only banality and people living as they would die, “in front of the TV”, or others who have learned to expect little more from life than “holidays and meals and trips to the multiplex and city breaks”.

Many of them are weary and the cityscape comes to reflect this in instances of pathetic fallacy; one character observes the concrete jungle as tired, “like it can’t be bothered with the afternoon either and longs for the shutters down”.

She writes of characters like Mo, who did fortune telling while working at a call centre before opening a beauty parlour that is subject to paramilitaries hounding her for protection money; of a bigoted teacher who objects to Celtic place names and won’t eat green sweets (while secretly in love with a Gaelic player in his 20s even while she approaches 60); of the fictional rockstar Gil Courtney for whom the Troubles are utterly irrelevant; the couple obsessed by their niqab-wearing Somali neighbours; and of hilarious insights into teenage besties Cath and Lauren.

People stare out of their windows or go on meandering walks peering aimlessly into shop windows. Or they collect online vouchers for cheap meals at restaurants with inconvenient time constraints.

This is the stuff of real life, people doing their best to cope in situations of searing isolation or emotional constipation, grieving, love-lorn, waiting for a triumph that doesn’t come, grappling with disappointment that arrives devoid of sugar-coating.

Not that Erskine doesn’t do humour, she does with gusto, but she also “wants people to be moved” by her precise rendering of all the absurd tragicomedy of life as it is lived every day.

Erskine, an avid fan of “1960s girl groups, New Wave and psychedelic music” who gets a glowing 4.5 out of 5 on the Rate My Teacher website for her role at the prestigious east Belfast institution that boasts alumni such as Margaret Mumford (Sir Alan Sugar’s erstwhile right hand woman on The Apprentice) and novelist Lucy Caldwell, dismisses the notion that the ordinary lives of the people of her native city are somehow not rich enough to make appropriate thematic material for fiction.

“Somebody might say ‘Oh, you write stories about ordinary people.’ And my response is, yes, but who are these extraordinary people you are talking about?

“Because strip away status and artifice and we are all ordinary people. Plus, once you get to know ordinary people and understand their lives, they become extraordinary, individual, special and just as worthy of literary analysis as some powerful hero or heroine.”

She continues: “People ask of my writing, “Is everything going to be set in East Belfast?’ As though people who live in London have lives that are more complex or more exciting, by virtue of the fact that they live in a big metropolis, whereas I really do think I could write collection after collection about people who live on streets here similar to the one I live on. I think their lives are just as rich as any.”

So too does she deride the notion that local fiction has some kind of moral imperative to focus on the 30 years of conflict that so disturbed our peace.

Erskine believes that the literary imagination should have unbridled permission to roam free through whatever territory it is intent on exploring: “If you come from Northern Ireland you have an absolute prerogative to write about whatever you wish, whether that is the Troubles, the post-Troubles landscape or novels about turtles or about people playing the guitar or about landscape gardeners.

“There shouldn’t be any expectation about what you decide to write about.

“With me, what I’m thinking about is that there is no sort of homogenous Northern Ireland life; where you live or whatever social class you come from doesn’t mean that your experience is any less worthy of exploration or any less profound.”

She is interested in characters on the margins navigating lives that may seem nondescript from the outside, but are charged with an emotional valence, poignancy and levity so that, as Erskine intends, “people may laugh, but I also very much want them to be moved. I could write a story that is simply funny ha-ha, but that would not be true to the complexity of human experience.

“In the same way to centre my literary focus solely on melancholy would also be to deny that life is an absurd tragicomedy composed of darkness and light. To go back to Blake, “joy and woe are woven fine”.

“That is very much the philosophy behind the fiction I try to write.”

‘QUIET STOICISM OF ULSTER PEOPLE COMPELLS ME’

Erskine’s first foray into creative writing began when she was offered an afternoon off amidst her hectic schedule as head of the English department at Strathearn Grammar.

Though tempted to “join the gym, volunteer in an art gallery or mooch around coffee shops reading magazines or watching make-up tutorial videos on YouTube which I endlessly love,”, she saw a Facebook ad for a six-month writing course at the Irish Writers Centre, a lofty Georgian edifice on Dublin’s Parnell Square, run by The Stinging Fly magazine. She committed to it in 2015 after submitting a story named Locksmiths, the idea for which came to her while regrouting her bathroom floor and stripping away the layers of paint and wallpaper left by previous owners of her home.

It is about a woman engaged in the optimism of a DIY project while the Troubles rage on her doorstep: “I’m interested in people on the side-lines, those who aren’t the centre of attention, the lives quietly lived. There are plenty of characters like that in the collection. Quiet stoicism compells me.”

‘I LOVE THE CITY, CONCRETE, TOWER BLOCKS, STREETS, BOOKSHOPS AND MARGARITAS’

Wendy had a happy childhood, and with her brother would be taken to the library once a week by their mother,who kept “random” books in the family home in Jordanstown.

She inherited her mother’s love of reading, and delighted in creative writing exercises at Belfast High School, situated between Whiteabbey and Greenisland: “We used to be given a Mars bar at the end of the class if we did well, which was absolutely blissful for me.”

She went on to study English at university in Glasgow before going into teaching there and then in Newcastle Upon Tyne before relocating to home, sweet home.

“I always wanted to study English, because reading was my thing more than anything else. I think Hemingway said that ‘the good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear, or it may be the wreck of his life, and one is as good as the other.’”

Though she is a dedicated teacher who delights in her colleagues, pupils, the discussion of literature and a school she loves so much she has stayed for over two decades, as well as a much feted writer of short stories, Wendy considers her greatest achievement to date as being mum to her two children Mathilda, 19 and son Bobby, 16, whom she shares with art teacher Paul, whom she met on her return to Belfast in 1997.

“I’ve never found parenting stressful, it’s been more like this joyous voyage into uncharted territory and I am very proud of the fact that my children have grown up to become two lovely human beings,” she confides.

The secret to her longevity with husband Paul?

“Spending substantial time apart and having separate interests as well as being able to totally enjoy each other’s company. You need to be self-sufficient individuals as well as a couple.”

And despite being an enormous bookworm, who especially adores the Russian master of the short story Anton Chekov, Wendy is also something of a fashionista who stocks clobber by The Vampire’s Wife, Isabel Marant and western shirts in her wardrobe as well as a panoply of finds she bought on Ebay for next to nothing.

Then too, when not looking cooler than any teacher has a right to in pencil leather skirts with choppy-cut silvery hair and flicky eyeliner, she loves nothing better than wandering through her native Belfast: “I love concrete. I love tower blocks and streets, browsing in bookshops and going to a nice old bar with lots of red velvet for margaritas.”

Q&A: ‘I’D HAVE MARY SHELLY, GENE CLARK AND LOU REED TO DINNER’

Tell us some of your earliest childhood memories?

Hearing my Mum and Dad have a conversation about how they didn’t think The Beatles were that good. Also, trying to bang an Ormeau Easter egg on the side of a chair to break it open to get the little fluffy plastic chick that was inside.

School days - what subjects did you excel at and were you ever in trouble?

Not surprisingly, English was my favourite subject and I always loved it. I don’t think I was a real goodie-goodie though, I always liked make-up, eyeliner, back combing my hair and wearing a lipstick I remember that used to change colour. So I would have got into trouble sometimes because of my attempts at aesthetic improvement, for sure.

Who in your life makes you laugh the most?

Probably my Mum who is 82. She’s very funny and has a very particular wit and original way of looking at the world. She’s very aware of the ridiculousness of things.

Who is your best friend?

My husband of over 20 years, Paul.

Some of your favourite books?

The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner, Sea State by Tabitha Lasley and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

Favourite film?

Once Upon A Time in the West, directed by Sergio Leone.

If you could invite anyone from history to an ideal dinner party who would you bring and what would you serve them?

I would 100% have Mary Shelley. Then Gene Clark from The Byrds and The Velvet Underground’s Lou Reed. I’d serve a great big plate of nice breads and cheeses and meats so that I could sit and enjoy their company with minimal effort, although I think Mary Shelley was vegetarian, so no meat for her.

Can you describe yourself in three words?

Disciplined, frivolous, observant.

How much do you enjoy teaching?

I’ve worked at Strathearn since 1997 and that is an indicator of how much I love the place. It’s the kind of job where every day is different, and there is always something interesting going on. I love the discussion of literature above all.

You’ve recently been made a fellow of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s. What does this mean to you?

Before I began to write I’d always loved reading other people’s writing, first as a student, then as a teacher. Being a writer can be lonely, so what I really look forward to is being able to help writers, whatever their age or background, find a way to improve their creative endeavours. To collaborate with somebody on making a piece of creative writing as powerful as it can be will be a huge privilege for me.

Love is...Essential.

The meaning of life is...Not always apparent.

Dance Moves by Wendy Erskine will be published by Stinging Fly and Picador in February 2022.