Friday Feature: We showcase @MattHilton
After a very brief hiatus for Christmas and the New Year, we’re pleased to be say that our Friday Feature is back on again for 2016. This week we showcase another Proser and probe them for details about themselves and the things they love.
This week we talk to Matthew Hilton, who is on theprose.com under the username of @MattHilton
Matt lives in the hills south east of Toulouse, France in Europe (yes, we’re jealous) and he is lucky enough to be able to tell us that his occupation is a Writer.
We ask him, like we do everyone, what his relationship is with writing and how it’s evolved. He explains: “My relationship with writing began twenty years ago when I took a trip on a cargo boat into the Baltic. At that time I was known for my graphic artworks and on board that ship I engraved metal plates to print up later. But I also kept a journal in parallel and when I got back on shore it was published with the images as Flagships for New Reaches.”
“Why I say the relationship began then is because, in my caravan on the coast under the rattling rain I got, for the first time, a critical distance away from the surface of my prose as I worked on drafts.”
“The life walked in and stole my thunder for a while and it wasn`t until quite a time after that I had another serious wrestling match with text - and this time it was in French. As part of an exhibition I produced a five thousand word account of my arrival in France; was I an immigrant, an expat or an exile? The process went from my first draft in English to a translation collaboration and then into a full re-write by me in French. Satisfying. The booklet was called De La Franqui à Ramonville. As a result of that work I was offered the chance to do an artists book and I ransacked my life for a series of erotic episodes, published under the title My way of loving Beasts.”
“The fate fell on me with a thunk. I was a volunteer at an Amnesty International Booksale and had the right to pick myself a book. My hand fell on Gangs and Countergangs an account of the Mau Mau rebellion in British held Kenya in the 1950`s. You could say I dropped everything; opening the book at a photo of a gang blacked up and dressed in thrift store disguises I said "Opera". I let most of my life drop away for several years while I struggled with the material. It is now in the hands of Australian composer Taran Carter & we are looking to produce asMau Mau - the Opera.”
“By now I had stopped my art stuff, the process of physically transforming materials started to sicken me, and I set off into my first full length book Heavy Waters. I did everything you should, bum on the seat every day, watch those adjectives and so on - but I couldn`t get a hearing for it so I self-published. And then I thought why not? At my age my focus can`t be on making a career - I have stuff I want to process, using imagination and language, and put out into the digisphere, the rest can wait; my kids can profit.”
Prose asks Matt to briefly discuss the value that reading adds to his personal and professional life. He goes on to tell us: “Reading allows me to live a million lives, other than the one I got, and in the personal relationship with the author I hallucinate inspection hatches into writing`s machine rooms.”
We ask his to describe his current literary ventures and to tell us what we can look forward to in future posts. He answers: “I have just put out Tap once if Human via Smashwords. I wrote this ebook to explore that funny frontier in the mind where there's something you can't grasp - happens pretty quick for me in mathematics. I went with this into the realm of artificial intelligence and its application to crowds, to us people type things, to the huge spaces inside ourselves available for automating. I describe it as "Earthy fiction with a scientific flavor - a tale of robots, reptiles and rezistants in thirty twelve minute chunks"”
“My next project, starting February, is currently titled Success = True. It is an attempt to create my very own America (I’ve still to visit) using as its chronological spine the story of Malcom McLean, the man who put cargo containers into our history.”
And what does Matt love about TheProse.com?
“Its clean design, its open ness, the way it makes me feel close to the people behind the glass.”
Our eternal question that ties in with our ongoing Books Before You Die feature is ‘what book do you insist everybody reads before they die?’ Matt tell us: “You mean just before? Must be the Tibetan Book of the Dead.”
We probe as to whether he has an unsung hero who got him into reading and/or writing?
“Well perhaps I could cite Chartist Edward Edwards - a former bricklayer who educated himself in the libraries of the Mechanics' Institute and was one of the prime movers of the Public Libraries Act 1850. For me, where there`s a library there`s a home.”
When we ask if there’s anything else Matt would like us to know about him or his work, he modestly replies with: “No thanks - I think I`ve blown off quite enough for one day, thanks for the opportunity.”
Thanks to Matt Hilton for his time in answering our Friday feature questions. Are you an active Proser that would like to take part? If so, get in touch at info@theprose.com