We are pleased to welcome C G Moore to the blog to talk about his new verse novel Gut Feelings.  The book is based upon his own experiences with familial adenomatous polyposis and is told in verse and has special visual designs by Becky Chilcott.  The book is published by UCLan Publishing.

Authors often find their second novel quite challenging, did you experience this?

It was almost the contrary.  I found it quite easy to write.  What was difficult was knowing what form to tell the story in.  Once that was figured out, it flowed very naturally.  I have a lot of stories inside my head and this one felt very personal because it is my own story.  I felt it translated well in free-verse.

What was it about free verse which felt to fit the project?

I’ve always struggled to communicate my illness because it affects very few people in the world.  On average only 1 in 50,000 people have familial adenomatous polyposis.  Outside my family, I’ve never met anyone else with it.  When I have to explain this to friends or lovers, there are many aspects to communicate.  There is the science of the condition, the psychological impact on me and also how it can affects me as a gay man.  In order to communicate this succinctly, I wanted to pack as much feeling into it as possible.  The only medium that allowed this was verse.  I wanted to strip back everything that was unnecessary and create layers of meaning within each individual poem, but also in the ways these linked and created the story arc.

Why did representing chronic illness fell important to you?

When you’ve got chronic illness and it is invisible, it can be very difficult for people to see there is anything wrong, or to recognise this.  If it affects your bowel or is urinary, people don’t always see or understand that.  Representation in books for young people is important in helping to build more empathetic readers leading to more understanding and compassion.  I hope people might have a better understanding of how chronic illness can impact on people’s day to day lives.  I wanted people to understand what my mum, my grandad and I went through.

How experimental did you feel you could be with the poems?

I felt like I had a blank canvas in terms of free verse, but not in terms of poetry.  There were some poems that were in there that I liked, but which didn’t really fit with the other poems.  An early poem was a sestina.  I wanted to make the poetry accessible.  There is an evolution in the way that the poems are told from my younger self to the point at which I’m at now.  There’s a progression of form, of ideas and content. 

Becky Chilcott has done a fantastic job on designing the book, can you tell us a little about this please?

As I was writing each poem, I had ideas in mind as to how some wanted to be ‘form’ or ‘shape’ poems.  I wanted some to reflect the theme or subject.  I worked with my editor to look at ways that we could be experimental.  Initially we thought this would be using the letters from an individual word to create images relating to the poems.  Becky Chilcott the designer was given a lot of creative control, we wanted to give as much free reign so that the design gave additional meaning through the visuals which hopefully will draw new readers in.

Can you tell us what you are working on now?

Although I haven’t experienced second book syndrome, I feel a little like I now have third book syndrome!  During the pandemic, trying to balance work, publicity for my books and freelance projects has meant it has been hard to find time and space to write.  The third book is set in the Bible Belt in America in a little town in Texas.  I don’t think I can say any more than that it until I’ve submitted it to my publisher!


Good luck to C G Moore and thank you for the interview.