Some Answers Without Questions

‘A delight: approachable, rigorous and omnivorous in its frame of reference. . . a timely, lyrical investigation into what it means to create’ Observer
‘A pointed, svelte but diverse work’ Irish Times

My voice arose out of the desire to connect and was shaped in reaction and resistance. It became my own when I started to use words in a way for which I had no example. All the voices I used to imitate, knowingly or not, fell silent and the only one I could hear was mine.

Part memoir, part manifesto, Some Answers Without Questions is the result of decades of answering questions that don’t really matter – and not being asked the ones that do. In this rigorous, lyrical and vital work of self-investigation, Lavinia Greenlaw sets out to consider the impulse to say something, to write or sing, and finds herself confronting matters of presence and absence, anger and speechlessness, authority and permission. She asks what enables anyone – but a woman and an artist in particular – to create and respond even when they haven’t been invited to.