On Being a Writer in Wales: Gosia Buzzanca

Gosia Buzzanca

My debut book came out in Autumn last year. In the weeks following the publication, I called Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre a home away from home away from home multiple times in press interviews and meetings with readers.

That white-walled, teal-window-framed building, filled with history, books, magical wooden portals, home-baked cookies, hummus with so much garlic it makes my eyes water is so important to me that I based an entire part of my first book there.

I’ve only been twice, so far, each time for a week-long stint, but I feel like I know it as well as the route to my primary school back in Poland, and could move around blindfolded.

What makes it so unique? Is it the element of respect but also adoration it demands, like a scary but loving grandmother? Is it the long table that, depending on the time of the day, is covered with either overflowing plates or notebooks and laptops into which words flow; the way you can glance across it and nod at your new favourite person and know they know?

Is it the way Tŷ Newydd brings together the kindest of people who all care about the same thing? All of the above.

My first ever book event was held in the lovely Book Space in Cardiff.

Sophie Calon, a brilliant Welsh writer interviewed me, her questions were warm and open.

But I did notice a spark of surprise in her eyes when upon asking me about my biggest Welsh writing influencers, I couldn’t really name many. I wrote about Jan Morris before. I admire and feel the fear of Cynan Jones’s pen.

Yet I would feel like a fraud talking about being actively influenced by anyone in particular. Does it make me a fraud anyway?

I landed in Wales either by accident or by fate. I was always a writer. Now I am a writer who lives in Wales. I was born and grew up in Poland, where I wrote and published, before I moved to England, when I thought about writing in English for the first time.

I’m friends with writers from all over the isles, the first person who really opened up writing and publishing to me here was Scottish, my creative writing degree is from a university in The North of England. I’m a sucker for Patricia Lockwood, an American poet, novelist and essayist.

I guess what I tried and failed to point out after Sophie’s question, was that I didn’t grow up emerged in Welsh literary tradition, so I lack that deep connection to it in the same way that many Welsh writers would probably lack the connection with Wiesława Szymborska or Adam Asnyk.

And that this is okay, hopefully, and won’t get me exiled more than I already am.

But at the same time, the book I’ve written is published by a Welsh publisher, life-changing opportunities were offered to me by Literature Wales in the past.

The Hay Festival is somewhere I would like to live inside of the entire year (please). I’m inspired daily by the writers I know who write here, from here, about here. I don’t take these chances and this community I’ve built for granted.

This is my dream: to gather back in Tŷ Newydd with all the writers I met along the way since moving to Wales 16 years ago and share Tony’s bolognese with them, and then sit by the solid wood table and watch them do the thing they’re all so good at: write their poems, essays and stories in Welsh, Urdu, German, Arabic, Polish, English.

I want to listen to them read, and I don’t have to understand everything to appreciate it, and to know that it’s good.

I want to fall asleep grateful that for a moment in time, I belong.

Buy a copy of Gosia’s memoir There She Goes, My Beautiful World here.