A Collaborative Sentence: Talking With Robert Glück About Writing Margery Kempe

For them.'s "Read Me," a "queer literature column," Davey Davis interviews Robert Glück about the NYRB reissue of Margery Kempe, originally published in 1994 (but originally published in 1501). "[O]ver five centuries later, poet Robert Glück’s retelling . . . transmutes the holy woman’s life into a riotous queer palimpsest that recalls the delicate daring of John Berger’s G., the somatic echoes of Gayl Jones’ Eva’s Man, and the achronicity of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando," writes Davis. From their conversation, which took place over email:

You’ve spoken before about your admiration for Blanchot’s conts, and the way they approach composition at the sentence level. Every sentence is so carefully tended to that the prose feels unnatural. (I mean this as neutrally as possible!) How much of the writing of Margery was in the revision process? 

I did so much revising that by the end I was haunting the sentences, my being went into them. I wanted each sentence to be a beginning, and I confected a sentence half-way between Margery’s and mine. A collaborative sentence. When I finished Margery, I didn’t know how to write anything else. A book doesn’t interest me till it becomes too hard a problem for me to solve. Then I have to become a different person in order to write it.

Between Margery Kempe's writing process — dictation, likely — and yours in the 1990s and again now, I'm prompted to wonder about the materiality of the craft. What did you write Margery with? How do you write now, in 2020?

I sort of collaged my way, working on all parts of Margery at once. I had a haystack of notes on my desk and in my computer. I printed out the book many times and edited and elaborated by hand. But now I do that more on the computer, like everyone else, I suppose. The screen swallows us up. I still print out copies to work on, but less often. Right now I am in bed, the bottom edge of my laptop is balanced on my chest, the screen is above me, a few inches from my eyes. It’s comfortable, though falling asleep can be dangerous...

The full interview is at them.