When I first arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, back in 1994, James got together a group of friends for a party. I’d reach the point in a conversation where, in England, I would sense discomfort and had learned to retreat. It might have been a point of spiritual experience,or even that simple overt enthusiasm for life that’s a sign of being gay;- “Dampen it down, love,”
In Santa Fe people listened intently and offered a tale of themselves in return. This was a culture that was open rather than closed. It brought me out of myself.
Back then I saw myself as a novelist. Looking to stay in the United States but without a visa to work I had to find a way of making my writing pay (my first novel sold for £3,000). So I took to nonfiction, and a book I reckoned Americans might want. That book was the biography of the Indian holywoman Mother Meera, and as a sideline a tale of a westerner’s addiction to devotion. In Search of the Divine Mother sold to Harper Collins.
I Was Carlos Castaneda, my tale of Peruvian shamanism, came next. Ten years on, firmly back in the UK where a publisher friend with an esoteric list brought our On Sacred Mountains for no advance, and some novels had followed a similar non-commercial route, I looked to step into academia. While teaching in a secondary school I completed a PhD, fulltime, and simultaneously taught on a university’s distance MA Creative Writing program and wrote a book. A university post needed me to have a current book that a university academic department would want to own as world-leading research. I knew that true-life spiritual adventures would not be deemed suitable. Hence my biography of the great Scottish scientist J.S. Haldane, Suffer & Survive. It went on to win the British Medical Association’s Book Award, First Prize for Basis of Medicine, landed me my first lectureship in the UK, and two years later I was at the University of Hull, as Director of the Philip Larkin Centre and Professor of Creative Writing.
Colleagues in the new department, of course, found out about the earlier books and became venomous. A letter was signed descrying me to the authorities, hostile and anonymous reviews for my work appeared on Amazon’s book pages, my Wikipedia page kept dripping with anonymous spite and my Twitter pages with abuse. (It felt uniquely horrible at the time, but talking later with professors at other universities they have dealt with worse.)
I brought out my papers, wrote more books, brought in research grants, won awards, loved teaching and the students, and worked damn hard. For respite I took walks along the River Hull. One day I found myself standing on its banks, looking out over a field, and saying out loud, “If you don’t leave here it will kill you!”
This was that inner voice, the one England schooled me into ignoring, and it was time to listen to it. This was a time of voluntary redundancies in the university but I didn’t take that route, simply resigned, and so could be replaced by lecturers I had trained in their PhDs who now able to obtain their first university posts. This week Hull’s creative writing department was ranked number one in the whole country for student satisfaction. Way to go!
(My books submitted externally for the REF, the exercise that determines the level of universities’ research incomes, included my Hull vampire novel Forever Konrad – you write what comes to you! Cheeringly it was recognized as being world-leading. You set your own standards.)
Last May I spent a week on a boat in Alaska, on a trip to reward people who had been major supporters of ClientEarth. They came from around the world, including England, and all were incredibly open. When I spoke of intimate experiences they were sympathetic rather than hostile, keenly interested, and shared of themselves.
In January 2020 I finished my last official act in my teaching role at Hull (where I’m now very happy to be emeritus professor), talking through grades with my co exam marker, and an hour later was on the train to Heathrow. I was set to present the book Client Earth at the book festival in Jaipur. It was while heading out from there that I met with the Bishnoi community for the first time and began the process of writing their story.
Called My Head for a Tree it’s coming out in the US and UK early next year. I wrote a couple of new pages for it this week, and worked with its editor on selecting photos to sit alongside each chapter. It’s starting to look gorgeous. And while it’s not about my own journey, it is a book about nature and the spiritual life.
I’m back in the territory of that Santa Fe party, not feeling the need to hold myself in check to avoid embarrassing people. I’m writing for a world that is open to what I have to say, because it resonates with something deep inside their own life.
Today we head for our little ex-goathouse in the Pyrenees for a couple of quiet weeks in nature. Without WiFi. Staring out of the window and taking walks through the valley. Such places lead me gently into what to write next.
An inspiring journey of determination. As one of your lucky students, I am grateful for your generosity and openness. Terrible the response from Hull colleagues about your spiritual books - those earlier books drew me to ask you to mentor me. Universities aren't the best places to foster openness. My experience of Hull is that there is a leaning towards teaching students what to think, rather than how to think. Glad I was lucky enough to be under your safe, open wings.