Ed Posnett: Using Your Languages and Pursuing a Career in Writing - Part I
Alex Fice, Italian Editor
Edward Posnett is an award-winning writer who studied Spanish and Italian at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. After graduating he did a Masters in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, and then worked in finance for a couple of years. He was drawn to writing through his fascination with nature and natural objects, leading him to write an essay on eiderdown harvesting in Iceland which won the Bodley Head/Financial Times Essay Prize, followed by the publication of his first book Harvest.
We had the honour of interviewing Ed about studying languages at Cambridge, his Year Abroad, and how these experiences have influenced his inspiring career in writing.
Ed Posnett. Credit: Gabriella Ferrari
Ed graduated from Cambridge in 2008 and has many fond memories from his time at university: ‘I just loved my time at Cambridge. It's such a cliché because you hear people talking about their university days and they say it's the best time of your life - and really it was for me, because it was just so formative. I fell in love with my subject, particularly Italian literature and language. I did Italian ab initio and studied with Gabriele Natale who was head of language teaching at that time. He was a brilliant language teacher, and I just loved it. And we had a really good small group - Italian as a department is obviously much smaller than many others, so you can get to know everyone, which is really really nice. I have particularly fond memories of studying Dante with Robin Kirkpatrick, a fabulous Dante scholar and just incredibly enthusiastic.
‘It's really a very special time and many of my friends today were Cambridge linguists, we spent a lot of time together and had a shared love of literature. I was actually in a band at university made up predominantly of linguists called The Second Hand Kisses. We didn't make it big needless to say, but that was a really fun thing to do - it was just that combination of shared intellectual interests but also in a very relaxed environment, and I think that's something very special about Cambridge because once you leave university all sorts of other things sometimes get in the way, whether it's professional ambition, or family.’
Deciding where to go on the Year Abroad is a common dilemma faced by language students, so how did Ed decide what to do and what did he take away from the experience? ‘I decided to go to Italy, because I already spoke Spanish quite well. And for the first few months, I actually went to Sardinia and worked as a diving guide off the coast of Sardinia. The great thing was that I didn't really dive very well at all, I just sort of turned up and got a job doing odd-jobs, and suddenly I was on this beautiful coastline: I was in a place called Alghero, and it has a system of underwater caves because all the coast is limestone. It has beautiful limestone formations, so I learned how to dive and was sort of adopted by the Sardinians. It was honestly one of the happiest times of my life and I think a lot of the decisions that I made afterwards, later in life, go back to that time. And then I tried studying Chinese in Bologna; I had a wonderful time and made many friends and really loved the city. It gave me a taste of university in Italy, which is very, very different from the UK. I'm sure you guys maybe have experienced this yourselves: absolutely packed lecture halls, professors who tended to be eighty and above, just very different from the UK but also really enjoyable. And then for the last few months I worked as a legal translator for a law firm in Milan, which was interesting, but certainly not quite as fun as working in the diving center. So I kind of got a taste of three different universes, which I really enjoyed.’ In addition to making lots of Erasmus friends with whom he is still in contact, Ed also met his wife, who is Italian, on his Year Abroad: ‘We actually met in Venice… she was a friend of another linguist who was working in Venice, and I went to visit this good friend and then met her. Languages at Cambridge have shaped my life in so many ways, [it’s] the reason I’m here in Philadelphia [Ed’s wife is currently finishing her PhD at Princeton and has American citizenship], the reason I wrote this book [Harvest].’
After graduating from Cambridge, Ed went on to do an MPhil at Oxford studying modern Middle Eastern history and learning Arabic. He admits that those two years were very different from his undergrad experience and very hard work. After his Masters, he worked at a large consultancy in Canary Wharf. ‘There was no great master plan at that point. I just needed a job, and I wanted to use my languages. It was primarily a research job, so carrying out research in Spanish and Italian, a little bit in Arabic, on companies in different markets and putting it all together in a report. In some ways it was quite similar to being an undergraduate at Cambridge: you get a load of material, you have to read it all and then present it clearly and explain it - it’s just that the subject matter was quite different and much drier.’
After a couple of years, Ed left consultancy to pursue writing, although he admits that this transition was not particularly smooth: ‘I worked on one particular book project, which didn't work out and was somewhat heartbreaking; it felt like a huge failure. And then I tried something else, and got a bit of traction with that, and then from that small project, other projects started appearing. So that's my journey. It's funny, with hindsight, you know, it kind of makes sense but at the time it felt like pure chaos. [...] I think if I was talking to my former self I would say that rather than having a master plan, it's more about just being open to different possibilities and opportunities. I was always a great planner, but actually the way things worked out for me was more just based on ad hoc things that came up and that I found exciting, or that just made me happier. The thing to bear in mind is that you only really know this through doing it, if that makes sense. You can do a load of work experience - and I did a ton of work experience while I was at university which seemed to point in the same direction - but then actually two years in, you really get to sort of know what it is that you like and what you don't like.’
In his career, Ed has been fortunate to have lots of opportunities to use his languages, something that is not always possible for graduates of degrees in languages. ‘It really depends on what you want to do, and if you do want to work in a more standard career there are abundant opportunities to use languages. So when I was working in the city, I was constantly translating from Spanish, Italian and Arabic, and those skills were very much in demand. And I have friends who are lawyers who are often using their language skills. For more creative projects, I think that it’s sometimes a bit more challenging. In my case, I was often attracted to write about things that required language skills, in part because it allowed me to get closer to subjects. But you often find that it means that certain subjects are neglected by writers whose first language is English. For example, a few years back I wrote about a local currency that had taken off big time in Sardinia and is one of the most successful local currencies in the world, in part because of the strong bonds of cohesion [in Sardinia]. And I managed to sell that article, or sell the idea of that article, because I could do all the research in Italian, but write about it effectively for an English-speaking audience, so I think there are definitely opportunities available when you're writing. I think you’ve just got to be creative about it and think about your strengths, for example being able to write in English, but also to be able to research in different languages. And I’m hopeful that those opportunities still exist - you just need to be able to grab them at the right time. That's a huge advantage for writers. I mean, for anyone living in another country, just to be able to read or carry out research in the local language and to be able to have those conversations. Otherwise journalists are relying on translators the whole time.’
Ed explains that finding opportunities to use your languages in your career can be quite difficult, and his main advice is to make those opportunities for yourself if you can: ‘If you want to find interesting opportunities to use your languages you kind of need to make them happen, because they're not going to happen in the established structures, whether that's large firms, or bureaucracies in my own case. I've just often become quite obsessed by niche topics that require me to, you know, speak to people in Sardinia or in a remote part of Peru, and that's what gets me really excited and geared up - but I had to work really hard to get there. And no one was going to give me those opportunities - I kind of needed to sell the idea to people first.’
He also emphasises that it’s okay if you don’t use your languages for several years, as the knowledge will stay with you and there will be plenty of opportunities to pick up your languages (or new ones) later down the line. In fact, during lockdown Ed started taking online Arabic classes again after not using it for seven or eight years, and even practised by having conversations with people in the Middle East and North Africa. He emphasises that ‘all the stuff you're doing will stay with you. I know there's pressure to use your languages, but you can always revisit them later on if you want to do something else.’
In Part II of the interview, we discuss nature writing and Ed shares his advice on getting into a career in writing. To find out more about Ed’s work and discover some of his writing for yourself, visit: https://www.edwardposnett.com/about
