Ask the Author: Chris Armstrong
Answered Questions (2)
Chris Armstrong
This is such a difficult question! There is no definitive answer. All that I can say is that both of my books, all of my (as yet unpublished) short stories and all of my poems would never have come into being without some hook to hang them on. Some germ of an idea. I find it impossible to start with the idea that today I will write a poem - something will trigger a thought and I will know that I need to be at my desk. The Dark Trilogy came into being because I felt that one of my poems - an obliquely autobiographical poem - Retrospective, published in Mostly Welsh - needed some explanation; and, as I wrote in a previous answer, my current work began after I read a sentence that resonated with me in an article about James Joyce!
Chris Armstrong
In The Dark Trilogy, I created a literary alter ego - Trystan Lewis - named Trystan as I had a vague idea when I began writing to link him in some way with the Tristan in The Romance of Tristan and Iseult. I never found a way to make that work but kept the name! Lewis, the surname, after the old nickname I had been given when I first went to sea, Louis. A few months ago I was reading an article about James Joyce which mentioned Stephen Daedalus as Joyce's literary alter ego and that reminded me of my original plan... and I began writing! Trystan, on which I am still working, is built on the chapter structure of The Romance and, while it does not follow the original story line, there is something in each chapter that resonates or links with that chapter in the original. Watch this space!
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