Post by Lucy Cranfield

One thing that has been drilled into me throughout my time at Westminster, from the moment I stepped through the Regent Street doors, is that your writing is only governed by your experience. The old tradition of the more you read the better you write is still at the forefront of any advice I have ever been given. Chloe Aridjis is a prime example of this; Aridjis is the author of two novels, Book of Clouds and Asunder, as well, as being a co-curator of the Leonora Carrington Exhibition at Tate Liverpool that opened in March 2015.

In her talk it was evident that her writing was heavily influenced by her life experiences. From birth she had been thrown head first into the literary world with her father being the famous Mexican poet Homero Aridjis. She spoke extensively about her childhood, during which she moved from the US to the Netherlands and to Mexico City. As a child, Aridjis would wake up to many great poets, such as Ted Hughes and Jorge Luis Borges, sitting round her dining room table having breakfast, and speaking in conversation with her family. She was also taken to different poetry festivals organised by her parents, with all of this falling into her day-to-day routine. As she has grown-up she has spent time in Berlin and England, but when talking about Mexico and her heritage she was filled with pride and passion. Again, this was example of her background and history moulding her writing.

It seemed to me that Aridjis had no choice but to be a writer. Her immersion in the literary world gave no option for anything else that wasn’t creative. Her influential childhood gave her a lasting impression that none of us would ever have had the chance to experience. Aridjis’ life is full of many different inspirations which, as a writer, I am in awe of. These inspirations have helped shape her writing and have drawn out ideas and creativity. With her own childhood seeming like something straight out of a book, how could she be anything but a writer? It posed the question why did I become a writer? For me, it was to be able to become like many of my own favourite and admired authors. I wanted to be able to provoke a change in the reader, like many great writers have made me undergo. For Aridjis it was like the path was already laid out before her. There was nothing else that she could have become and after hearing extracts from her novel ‘Asunder’, it seemed she would be wasted in any other profession.

Lucy Cranfield, 27 February 2017