Colm Tóibín’s Writing Room – and Robert Frost’s bed
February 8, 2010 @ 11:53 am | by Rosita Boland
The creative process is an endlessly fascinating one. How does the book emerge from the head and onto the page? Nobody really know that, apart from the individual writer. This is the study where Colm Tóibín works. He writes long-hand, which is highly unusual these days when most writers of novels opt for computers – however, lots of poets still write longhand.
Speaking of writers’ homes, I once spent a month as writer-in-residence at The Frost Place in New Hamphire in the US. Robert Frost had lived there from 1915-1920, and it is now a museum and a foundation for poetry. My rooms in the musuem were downstairs – where Elinor’s (his wife) piano and stove still remained – and outside were the woods that inspired both the poems, The Road Not Taken and Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening. Among the upstairs rooms was Frost’s bedroom, with his large brass bed.
Downstairs was also Frost’s armchair and a piece of wood that fitted across the two arms of the chair, which was how he liked to write. He used to take the armchair to the veranda, which overlooked the glorious White Mountains, place the wood over the arms, and write. His study, if you will, was outdoors.
I had the run of the place for a month, and the museum items became as familiar to me as the table I ate at each day. They became absorbed into my daily routine. Each evening, I too sat in Frost’s chair, with the piece of wood in place, writing my diary and looking at the view he had seen. There was a skunk under the verandah, a bear in the woods, and strange sounds in the basement where the boiler roared, other noises thrummed from, and where I dared not venture.
On my final night, there was a mouse in my bedroom. I fled. Fled upstairs to the museum rooms, where I spent the last night of my first visit to the US sleeping in Robert Frost’s bed.
