An Interview with Natasha Carthew - by Klaudia Hanssen
Image from Hypatia Trust via Unsplash
Natasha Carthew, a working-class Cornish writer, takes pride in writing about working women in rural areas of Cornwall. Along the anticipation for her newest book, Born Between Crosses an Exploration of Rural Working Women, coming out on 29th April 2021, she is organising the Working-Class Writers Festival, which will be running this October in Bristol. I spoke to Natasha about her writing process behind Born Between Crosses.
Q- You have mentioned in the book that you have had the idea for Born Between Crosses for a long while. What made you decide to finally write it?
I have written a couple of stories about Falmouth. I did that as part of the writing group in Falmouth, probably the course that you’re on. They did a thing with National Trust, where I wrote Songs of the Forgotten, that’s about mining and about working-class women history in Cornwall. That got me thinking about the stories that I had grown up with.
Q- Did you take a lot of inspirations from your own life or were you trying to detach your own experiences when writing for Born Between Crosses?
It was from my own experience growing up in Cornwall, growing up by the sea, coming from a background of poverty. Because of the work that I do, as well as being a writer, I have been contacted by a lot of people who tell me their stories. So, there is kind of a mixture really, the stories that are made up stories from what I have been told by people who contacted me, and stories that are more from heart and more from my personal experience. It’s an accumulation of different things, there are so many stories that need telling. Also, there are many stories in history that don’t get spoken about because women never wrote their stories down- past women stories were always written by men or not written at all; I find that perspective really interesting.
Image from Natasha Carthew
Q- Was the writing process of Born Between Crosses any different from your previous books?
No, for me, as a writer, the first couple of books that I [had] written were poetry and then I went into fiction. I was lucky to be published with Bloomsbury. For me, poetry have always been there. So, it was really quite liberating for me, as it meant that I could just throw out the guidebook and I could just write from the heart. For me, the poetry and the narrative course is a natural way of writing. A lot of the time when I write fiction, I’m having to hold back that part of me that wants to just explore different avenues, different genres. Writing prose poetry is my default, when I can write for myself.
I find poetry easier to explore, because as I say when you’re writing fiction, you’ve got your chapter, shapes, dialogue, characterisation, and you’ve got everything there. You always have to keep that in your mind when you’re writing, with this I have my basic shape, but I knew that if a story was going to lean more toward a short story or more toward prose than poetry then so be it. This was the thing that I just wanted to explore what each piece of writing.
Q- Born Between Crosses is divided into 4 sections; water, earth, fire and air, alongside Mother Nature who is binding all of these elements together. Was that something that you had planned all along or was that a coincidence that happened once the book started to be more developed?
At first it wasn’t intentional. I’m very much a nature writer, so Mother Nature was intentional from the start, this narrator that could move around looking on people’s lives and looking through their windows. She was a reference point throughout. It wasn’t long until we realised that some stories were set in winter or summer. So really, it’s kind of a simplistic idea, that turned to the four elements and the fifth element being space, which is Mother Nature. I enjoyed doing the Mother Nature, finding her voice, I wanted to be cheeky with how she moved around, as you can’t really pin her down.
Q- When writing Born Between were you trying to write about specific places in Cornwall that you knew or were you trying to write more around the locations and the Cornish culture?
As a Cornish writer my culture is very important. I wanted to have the four areas so the summer by the ocean, the rural town and Bodmin Moor. The town and the coastal location could be anywhere, but the Bodmin Moor is Bodmin Moor. I wanted to touch on all the rural because even with the towns still being towns, they’re still rural and it has a say in for the towns structure. Especially for working class women, the jobs are always very routine and basic, I wanted to get that across.
Q- Hypatia Publications is a small press in Cornwall that takes pride in celebrating female authors, was that why you choose to approach Hypatia Publications with this book?
It was, I wanted to give something back. I wanted for it to be personal, I wanted that personal touch. That’s what Hypatia did by supporting me through publishing a book that’s very close to my heart. They’re brilliant, great at communicating, their all women team. They’re in their early days with publishing, so I wanted to support them.
An extract from Natasha’s upcoming book: Born Between Crosses: an exploration of rural working women-
the young woman with dreams in her own hands
coach ticket
and the letter that read
acceptance
small thing
but to a girl who had nothing
her fate was sacred
like a relic dug out from heritage earth
the gift of study
and the wilderness of some unknown city
flashing neon
and the lights up close
that turn
toward
Written by Klaudia Hanssen
Edited by Sophie Williams