Review: The novel ‘What Willow Says,’ by Lynn Buckle

Lynn Buckle is a deaf/hard-of-hearing author, artist, activist, and tutor. Her second novel What Willow Says, published by époque press, celebrates deafness, transitioning peatlands, and the unique language of trees. It was selected by critics of both The Irish Times and the Irish Sunday Independent as one of their Best Books of 2021.

Reading What Willow Says, I felt immersed in the rich, sensory descriptions throughout. Set in the Bog of Allen in the midlands of Ireland, the tale reads as a series of journal entries, following the thoughts and reflections of a Grandmother and her 8 year old granddaughter who is deaf.

It is a beautiful – almost poetic – book, with the Grandmother often describing how it feels to watch her beloved Granddaughter grow and recounting her own insecurities as someone who does not know fluent sign language. What Willow Says cleverly weaves several of the issues families experience when they encounter deafness gently into a vivid narrative of colour, texture and nature.

Despite Grandmother being hearing and Granddaughter being deaf, the two have a very close relationship. It reminded me of my own relationship with my dear Nan who I shared a special bond with. The importance of family and the closeness between the two characters is a prominent theme throughout.

What Willow Says feels seeped in nostalgia and it reminds me of a time where people moved and lived more slowly, more mindfully and felt more at one with the natural world. It’s the type of book you can savour at a slower pace, as I found myself re-reading pages to fully absorb the settings described.

I personally very much enjoyed this book, with its non-traditional layout and the thoughtful way in which it invites the reader to slow down and notice the world around them. I spoke to the author to find out more about the inspiration behind What Willow Says and what sparked her journey as a writer.

Hi Lynn, thank you for the opportunity to read What Willow Says! Can you tell us a little bit about you?

I am a full-time author, but that doesn’t always mean full-time writing. As a career, it entails many book-related tasks such as talking at literary festivals, bookshop signings, interviews, judging competitions, writing literary articles, mentoring up-and-coming authors, teaching creative writing, promoting the latest novel etc. All good fun and an essential part of the writer’s life, but it is important to allocate time for actual writing.

I work from home, in the boggy Irish midlands, and carry out most of my work online. I was born in England and moved to Ireland in the 1980s. Myself and six family members are either deaf or hard-of-hearing. It is a different experience for each of us.

What inspired you to pursue a writing career?

I spent most of my life as a professional artist and art teacher and started writing seven years ago. I was always an avid reader and compulsively creative, so it was not such a big transition from visual art to writing and there are many transferrable skills.

I began with a novel and made the rookie mistake of sending it to agents too soon. After joining a writing group, honing my skills, and some minor publications, I re-submitted my debut novel The Groundsmen and was lucky to find a publisher in époque press in 2018. They bought the rights and launched me into the world of publishing, book tours, and literary events.

I continued writing novels, short stories, poetry, articles, and teaching. 2021 was a very good year in my career. I was selected to represent Ireland as a UNESCO City of Literature virtual writer in residence at the UK’s National Centre for Writing in Norwich, along with authors from Iceland, New Zealand, Scotland, and Poland. Work from this residency was published in the pamphlet Imagining the City and the anthology What Meets the Eye; The Deaf Perspective (Arachne Press).

My next novel, What Willow Says, was also published last year and listed as a Best-Book-of-the-Year by the two major Irish newspapers. I was delighted when it was longlisted for The Barbellion Prize, a prize specific to amplifying the voices of ill and disabled authors and I’ve found out this week I’ve been shortlisted!

Congratulations! From reading What Willow Says, I can tell that the natural world brings life to your writing – has this always been the case?

Yes, it often features in my work, be that in the written form or in visual art. Living as I do on the Bog of Allen, it is inevitable that these vast flat landscapes would seep into my words. What Willow Says is a paean to nature, to the rapidly changing landscape on which I live. But it also serves to build emotional connections, works as a heuristic device, and acts as an emotional salve.

As a character, the setting holds many layered meanings and I draw on the histories, collective memories, and myths associated with the locality where my novel is placed. It became apparent, while writing my novel, that I would have to research the susurrations of trees.

I discovered, as a deaf person, I could identify different tree species by familiarising myself with their noises through hearing aids, by feeling the rush of wind through forests, by watching branches sway and observing nature daily. It was a turnaround, to be influenced by my own writing, and a challenge to depict a hearing narrator.

What else serves to inspire you as a writer?

My writing serves social issues, using the platform of my fiction to address either domestic violence, disability, gender, or climate change. As already mentioned, I am also inspired by the myths and legends associated with the area in which I live. They are a large part of the narrative, adding further layers and meaning to my book, resulting in new mythologies.

How would you describe What Willow Says?

It is a celebration of nature, deafness, communication, languages, and familial love. It is purely fictional, but all writers draw on their experiences to some extent. We are constantly stealing aspects of people’s lives and weaving them into our fiction.

The first entry of What Willow Says is a declaration about truths, establishing for the reader where fiction begins. The setting is very much a real place and easily recognisable as the boglands of Offaly, Laois, and Kildare. I include actual GPS coordinates which identify exact locations and seek to record these places before they disappear, as their function changes, and to observe the exploitation of nature.

Why did you decide to focus on the relationship between the grandmother and the granddaughter (who is deaf) – why is their story so important?

Nearly everyone can identify with the inter-generational relationship between a grandchild and grandparent. It is a unique and unconditional bond, forged with love, and evokes strong memories for readers. It is this emotional hook which draws people into the story.

Their story is an important one for portraying deafness in a positive light. I also wanted to include a strong, vibrant, older female protagonist who challenged the trope of a crone and wasn’t just a cliched adjunct to others.

I noticed What Willow Says hints at feelings of regret from the grandmother towards not learning to sign, not pushing the cochlear implant soon enough etc – what was the intention behind this?

There is no universal experience around deafness, sign language, the oralist tradition, and CIs/hearing aids. My novel highlights the positive aspects of deafness, home sign, and sign language rather than the ableism experienced by D/deaf communities. I wanted to make hearing people envious of the deaf world, to the extent that they would want to learn sign.

The grandmother in the story avoids pushing the cochlear implant due to the dilemma we all face around CIs and hearing technologies; the question of deaf people conforming for the benefit of a hearing world vs the benefits a CI might bring to a deaf person.

Her slowness to learn official Irish Sign Language is, unfortunately, common. She tries justifying this with comprehensive home-sign and is slow to recognise that her lack of fluency in ISL will ultimately damage the child.

It is my personal experience that hearing-centric people would rather accommodate deafness through technology than learn our sign languages.

Can you share with us details of any other work you’ve created where deafness features?

The National Centre for Writing commissioned me to write a virtual walking tour of Norwich which was published in their pamphlet Imagining the City, along with work from four other UNESCO Cities of Lit authors. I wrote this from a deaf perspective, along with a short story, connecting our two cities, called Ailbhe’s Tale.

This follows the journey of a strong deaf protagonist and was published in the Arachne Press anthology What Meets the Eye, The Deaf Perspective. Not all my publications feature deafness as I don’t believe that deaf authors should be defined solely by their deaf experience in writing.

What are you up to now – do you have any projects in the pipeline?

I have a novel in editorial and am working on three more. It helps to have more than one on the go but sometimes it is necessary to just blitz one of them. I will continue to run The Climate Writers Group at the Irish Writers Centre, interviewing some great authors and promoting the idea that all writers can include positive solutions to the climate crisis in their work.

What advice would you give to budding writers who are also deaf?

Be true to yourself in your writing and read, read, read. You can learn so much about craft from other novels and signed work. It also helps to join a writing group for feedback, encouragement, and community. If you cannot find one, set up your own.

And remember that none of us compose a perfect first draft, it is but the first layer upon which we build. But you have to start somewhere, and just keep on going. Such advice is the same for hearing writers. There are challenges to deaf writers, but creating the work is not one of them.

Have you had to overcome any particular challenges in your writing career due to your deafness? If so can you describe these?

There are the usual challenges associated with deafness such as lack of accessibility when participating in literary events (no captioning or signing), organisers and interviewers who expect me to be their educator on deafness and deaf access, book reviewers who concentrate on my deafness rather than the literary merit of my work, organisations which do not budget for captioning or interpreters, refusals to accommodate deafness, institutional ableism in arts funding criteria, and a lack of understanding/support/ promotion around the literary merits of signed literature and literature originating in sign.

Having said that, I would like to praise the many literary organisations which I have worked with who did support my writing career and removed any challenges I faced due to my deafness, who put the supports in place and created equal access.

Final fun question – is anything on your bucket list for 2022?

I plan to read more foreign fiction in translation. I’m obviously interested in the ambiguities of communication, in translating from sign to the written word, and in captioning as a literary device. I hope that immersing myself in foreign literature/cultures and studying how translators transmit meaning will lead to new literary devices in my own writing and new ways of transmitting feeling.

Other works by Lynn Buckle include her 2018 debut novel The Groundsmen, anthologies such as What Meets the Eye, The Deaf Perspective from Arachne Press, Infinite Possibilities, Brigid, Luisne an Chleite, HCE Review, époque ezine and literary articles for The Irish Times. Awards include The Barbellion Prize 2021 longlist (winner to be announced in 2022), The John Hewitt Society Bursary, Greywood Arts Carers Residency, Red Line Short Story Competition shortlist, and 2021 UNESCO City of Literature Writer in Residence at the UK National Centre for Writing, representing Ireland.

Twitter  @Lynn_Buckle
Insta      @lynnbuckle1
Web       https://lynnbuckle.wordpress.com/about/
Publisher https://www.epoquepress.com/titles-what-willow-says

Purchase https://www.waterstones.com/book/what-willow-says/lynn-buckle/9781838059286

Imagining the City pamphlet National Centre for Writing, UK, 2021

What Meets the Eye, The Deaf Perspective anthology Arachne Press 2021