In the Studio: Poet Fred DAguiar
The poet, novelist and playwright Fred D\u2019Aguiar was born in Britain, grew up in Guyana and now lives in Los Angeles. There he came across the story which became his most recent collection of poems, For the Unnamed. It was originally entitled For the Unnamed Black Jockey Who Rode the Winning Steed in the Race Between Pico\u2019s Sarco and Sepulveda\u2019s Black Swan in Los Angeles, in 1852. That tells us what we know: the horses\u2019 names, who owned them, where and when the race was run, and that the winning jockey was black. His name, though, was not recorded.
Fred D\u2019Aguiar recovers and re-imagines his story, in several voices \u2013 including the horses. In this edition of In the Studio, Julian May meets D\u2019Aguiar on the cusp. For The Unnamed is written and D\u2019Aguiar explains how he is now preparing it for publication and his way of proof-reading. He is also feeling his way towards his next project, beginning a series of poetic studies of people he has known, people he has lost and people who inspire him. This is, tentatively, entitled Lives Studied.
D'Aguiar reveals his processes, how he begins, rising very early, taking his dog, Dexter, for a walk, drinking a coffee, then setting to. He speaks quickly, so writes always in longhand with a pen, to slow thought down, to consider. He speaks too of his reading and influences, for instance Robert Lowell and his collection \u2018Life Studies\u2019. For D\u2019Aguiar the practice of writing is integral to his existence - writing is living.