Writing to think

Sometimes I'd like to pare away all the little irritations, all the everyday stuff that gets in the way of life – what shall we have for supper? Is it time to leave now? Where did I put that pair of socks? Do I really have to finish reading 'To the Lighthouse'? I'd love to put all of those to the side and make space to write...about....what? Because actually, you know, that is my life – life is the thing that goes on while you're dreaming about tomorrow – I can't remember who said that, for some reason John Lennon comes to mind.

This isn't some terribly worthy post about how to write or what to write about but rather the dull ramblings of stuff in my head while part of my consciousness – probably somewhere deeply submerged – I work out what I actually want to write about. Do we even decide what to write about I wonder? At the moment at the front of my head I'm considering this rather sticky keyboard on which my clean fingertips are carrying out a rather grimy Riverdance – who on earth leaves a keyboard like it's had a tub of yoghurt chucked over it? Don't answer that one, not even in your head. This keyboard is in a public space which makes the very suggestion of misuse of a computer grim.

And then for a brief moment Microsoft Word stopped working – blank screen, a moment of binary pique at the suggestion it'd been misused as some sort of public sex toy. As if.

I can see how from just these few ramblings I have the suggestions of a poem; a collection of thoughts about being here now. Something to make something else from – the creative act rather like the spillage on the keyboard.

 

And my fingertips still feel sticky and I've still not thought of anything new or interesting to say but the desire to communicate – born out of a sense of boredom and the inability to get onto Facebook – has led me to meander in amongst the tall grass and weeds of my imagination. My subconscious happily tucked up in a Mariana Trench where the thoughts, all dressed in white woollen jumpers and wearing three day old stubble, worry about ever resurfacing or contacting the conscious again.

Hmmm.

Unpicking knots and hour-glass figure poems

Last week I went on an Arvon course at The Hurst in Shropshire with the wonderful Daljit Nagra and Julie Copus – the week was quite wonderful and I’m sure I’ll mention it again in later posts. One immediate effect that last week has had is to encourage me to interrogate my own poetry far more than I have before. I’m finding myself going back to poems that I knew weren’t quite right but had something going for them and I’m tugging them apart line by line, word by word, stitching new bits in here and there in the hope that I’ll eventually come up with a new set of Emperor’s clothes….

Looking at your own work is (for me at least) the hardest thing to do because even after weeks of ‘resting’ a piece I still know the story and what I wanted to say and I can’t see past that to see what the poem needs to say. I had a conversation with Julia about this and she said that I was rather like someone listening to a great piece of music through headphones and singing along – I could hear the entire orchestra but all the audience got was my a capella version – she did kindly add that she was sure I had a lovely voice. I’ve always suspected I’m a little tone deaf.

So what’s the best way to deal with this problem? How do we make our work convey exactly what we want them to say? I truly wish I had a quick answer to this one, I wish I could say, “Well, it’s easy, just do X, Y, Z and then Bob’s your uncle and a deal for your first collection will be yours for the taking!” But I can’t. So far my remedy for redrafting is as follows – and this holds true for any type of creative writing whether it’s a novel, short story or poetry and even for writing non-fiction too.

Don’t censor yourself in the first draft

Try to train yourself to write freely or practice ‘automatic’ writing. Stephen King recommends this in his brilliant book, ‘On Writing’. Set yourself a time limit each day when you will not be disturbed by anything. Then write whatever comes out of your fingers. Last week I put myself under pressure at one point – I’d poured cold coffee over myself, wasted my break by waiting next to an empty loo I thought was occupied and had to write something, anything within ten minutes – here’s the start of it

“I’m harassed, panicking, I don’t like being pushed this is not how I work. I like plans, preparation, being ready, not hurried. I come prepared, I don’t just throw things together. I plan, prepare. I admit I’m anal and like order and I’ve not even begun to say what I wanted to say because I’m panicking, unprepared. I don’t like this. I feel boxed in, cornered – a rabbit in headlights except rabbits don’t do that deer do but rabbits just ignore the headlights and go squish under the wheels of a 4x4…..”

And from then on a poem suddenly appeared. It was a piece all about people who come to the countryside with very different expectations of their life to those who have always lived there. I admit it, it was a bit of a rant but one I hadn’t intended to write until I was put under that bit of pressure and also because I tend to write a great deal without thinking - ‘automatic’ writing.

So that’s fine, you’ve now got something down on paper. Great. Now what?

 

Put it away for a few weeks

Honestly, it helps. If you can put it away for more than a few weeks that’s great – with any luck you’ll have forgotten writing it and you’ll be able to see what the piece is really about. Distance – that’s the thing. Finding distance with your work is so important – you need to see the writing as something away from you, not part of you. Objectivity is what I’m getting at here and when you’ve just written something it’s hard to be objective and see things like weak line endings, bad meter, poor images and so on. After a few weeks those things should (hopefully) become a little clearer.

Now you’re at the stage that I was a few weeks ago – loads of stuff written, redrafted after a few weeks and then I’d even submitted pieces here and there. Some of the poems have been successful and some haven’t – that’s not always because they’ve been poor poems (I tell myself) but sometimes the editors have been looking for different types of work or perhaps just recently found something similar that they preferred. Well, at least that is what I was telling myself, but now – after last week’s many conversations – I’m beginning to see that some of what I’ve written isn’t yet fully formed. My background has been very much story based – I’ve always been a voracious reader of fiction, I wrote a novella for my Masters, I wrote opinion pieces for a magazine – all stories of a type. Yet my poetry has tended towards lots of abstract and rather nebulous ideas…apart from those that have made it into print…guess what? They’ve been rather like tiny stories.

So, my next piece of advice…

Apply the same rules of writing to fiction AND poetry

When you want to create a really rounded and fully formed character in a story you consider how you describe them with all the senses, how they speak, how they move, what others think about them, what others say about them, what motivates them and so on. So apply that to a character in your poem – think about what they’d say, what motivates them and so on. Even apply it to your poem – what is motivating it? What’s it really about? Pull it apart, work out if each and every line, each and every word works with your poem and with what you want it to say. Try writing out your poem in longhand if you normally use a PC or laptop. Try writing out your poem into prose, change the line endings, add words, take them away, keep slowly chipping away at it until it looks exactly as you want it to.

This last bit is the hardest part of all and I’m still grappling with them – so expect some further posts in the future attempting to make this part of the process somewhat clearer!

At the moment I’ve pulled one old piece apart and I know it’s saying something – originally it was an observational piece about two elderly women on the bus – I watched them and they interested me. Now I know from what I’ve written and rewritten that it’s a piece about being in the mother-daughter relationship and being overshadowed. The poem still doesn’t work yet, in fact it’s got rather an hour-glass figure – a great beginning, a strong end but nothing in the middle. I know that just like prose fiction I need to give it an event, something to hang it all around, something to give it tension but right now I can’t see what that might be. So this poem will stay in my Drafts folder for a while longer and that’s irritating because I like things finished….which is why I probably rush stuff and submit it before it’s really ready.

The way you speak to me….

Another post about poetry and how it works, this time on Tone.

There is a famous story about a professor of Linguistics who is explaining double negatives to his students, ‘I can’t not eat the cake’, for example, and how a double negative makes a positive but the reverse, a double positive, does not make a negative. From the back of the room a student calls out, “Yeah, right.”

The words ‘yeah, right’ do not form a negative on their own, in fact most of the time they will be a double positive but in this case the negative was conveyed by the tone.

Another example – you look out of the window and it’s raining and you say, “What a beautiful day” or you lose your keys and remark, “That’s marvellous.” The words themselves are all positive but because of the tone used it is clear to the listener that you mean the opposite.

So what does all this mean for poetry? As we all know poetry was always traditionally recited aloud and even now it’s far easier to understand if it’s voiced rather than silently read. It’s easy to convey tone when speaking but if a poem is only read silently it can leave it ambiguous. Here’s an example, William Carlos Williams’s poem, “This is just to say”

This is just to say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

 

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

 

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

So, was he really sorry? Probably not. Tone is conveyed by voice but it can also be conveyed by the words used and their context. Going back to the Linguistics Professor and his student we don’t need to hear the student saying, “Yeah, right” to know that he said this with a tone of sarcasm because of the context and also the words themselves. Had he said, “Yes, absolutely correct” we would probably have concluded that this was a keen and slightly sycophantic student – again from the words used – the implied tone.

So, tone expresses a meaning, it’s implied by the words used, their context and by the ways they are said aloud. We can conclude that William Carlos Williams is not sincerely sorry in ‘This is just to say’ because he tells us what pleasure he had in eating the plums saved by the person to whom he writes the poem and he admits that he knew they were being saved for that person’s breakfast. Williams implies an intimate relationship with the other person – whose fridge would you take food from? We know from interviews with Williams that this was a note written to his wife – he was a doctor and often worked night shifts, returning home to raid the fridge before going to bed.

Henry Reed the WW2 poet uses two voices in his famous poem, ‘The naming of parts’

NAMING OF PARTS

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens,
          And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
          Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
          Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
          They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
          For to-day we have naming of parts.

Each voice has a different tone; the first voice is clearly an army instructor explaining in simple, prosaic terms what the soldiers are being taught about weapons, the tone is efficient, explanatory and almost brutal. The second voice is the internal one of a soldier whose mind is wandering away from the weapons lesson and onto the surrounding beauty of a garden in springtime. The soldier’s tone is gentle, dreamlike and Romantically poetic as he looks at the flowers, insects and trees.

The overall effect of two contrasting voices used in this way is a bitter anti-war tone. The brutal matter of fact way the instructor explains the machinery of war is offset by the soldier’s beautiful images which hint at deeper meanings.

- In the first stanza there is a mention of Japonica – a beautiful flowering tree but also a native plant of Japan – one of the countries against which the soldier will be fighting.

- The second stanza makes mention of the trees silent gestures which they (the soldiers) have not got – they will not be allowed to continue in peace, they have to fight the war.

- The third stanza mentions how fragile the blossoms are – we could argue that this suggests the soldiers are just like the blossoms, particularly in light of First World War imagery of poppies in the fields of Flanders.

- The final stanza is full of sexual references – ‘rapidly backwards and forwards’, ‘fumbling’, ‘cocking-piece’ and ‘bees’ all implying that these young men will have this taken away from them because of the war – ‘in our case we have not got’.

So we can see that in Reed’s poem the language, its context and the use of the voices all contribute to the overall tone.

Sometimes poets like playwrights or novelists will use characters in order to express views and ideas and thus giving us an alternative persona for the ‘I’ of the poem. Among the most famous of these are Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’ (1842) and T. S. Eliot’s ‘The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1917). Later poets often employed this persona method but in the 1950s and 60s this moved on to ‘confessional’ poetry which leaves the reader (or listener) wondering if this really happened.

John Berryman’s ‘The Dream Songs’ play with tone and use not one but two personas, ‘Henry’ and ‘Mr Bones’. The collection which won Berryman the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 is

“a sequence of sonnet-like poems whose wrenched syntax, scrambled diction, extraordinary leaps of language and tone, and wild mixture of high lyricism and low comedy plumbed the extreme reaches of a human soul and psyche.” http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/6

Dream Song 4

Filling her compact & delicious body

with chicken páprika, she glanced at me

twice.

Fainting with interest, I hungered back

and only the fact of her husband & four other people

kept me from springing on her

or falling at her little feet and crying

'You are the hottest one for years of night

Henry's dazed eyes

have enjoyed, Brilliance.' I advanced upon

(despairing) my spumoni.--Sir Bones: is stuffed,

de world, wif feeding girls.

--Black hair, complexion Latin, jewelled eyes

downcast . . . The slob beside her feasts . . . What wonders is

she sitting on, over there?

The restaurant buzzes. She might as well be on Mars.

Where did it all go wrong? There ought to be a law against Henry.

--Mr. Bones: there is.

Mr Bones and Henry act rather like the angel and devil characters we often see in cartoons which represent base instincts, Freud’s Id or the devil character and the angel Freud’s Superego or the conscience – the remaining part of the personality being the ego or the conscious part of ourselves. Berryman plays with these two contrasting sides of his personality to show us how it feels to suffer from frustrated desire. Henry is ‘dazed’ by this beautiful woman and would jump on her if her husband and four others were not there and he is plunged into despair because she will never be his. Alone Henry’s desires would give the poem a melancholy tone – a desperate lover destined never to have the object of his affections, ‘Brilliance’ with her ‘jewelled eyes’, even if Henry does slip a little into his true baser instincts’ What wonders is she sitting on, over there?’. However, Mr Bones, Berryman’s conscience puts Henry’s longings into context as he points out that the world is full of ‘feeding girls’ and the final witty reply to Berryman’s ego wishing there was a law against Henry (or lust), ‘there is’.

Throughout the poem Berryman uses bathos to give the humorous tone; the mention of ‘chicken paprika’, the ‘husband & four other people’, that she is ‘the hottest one’, the ‘spumoni’ ice cream, her buttocks and the use of colloquial language, ‘de’, ‘wif’. All of this purposely works against any traditionally romantic and high-flown notions which Berryman puts in opposition.

Again we can see that the tone is created by the words used, their context and the voices used by Berryman.

Finally poets can address their poems to a particular listener which lends a different tone – both more intimate and particular. John Donne’s ‘The Sun Rising’ is written to the sun.

The Sun Rising

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

Late school-boys and sour prentices,

Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,

Call country ants to harvest offices ;

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

 

Thy beams so reverend, and strong

Why shouldst thou think ?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long.

If her eyes have not blinded thine,

Look, and to-morrow late tell me,

Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine

Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.

Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

 

She's all states, and all princes I ;

Nothing else is ;

Princes do but play us ; compared to this,

All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.

Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,

In that the world's contracted thus ;

Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

To warm the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;

This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

This device gives Donne the opportunity to tell the sun how unimportant it is when compared to his lover. The tone is romantic, the first blush of love, which we see particularly at the end of the first stanza, ‘Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,/Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.’ The use of the end rhyme emphasizes the romantic, troubadour style – this is a poem which is easily remembered because of the rhymes and can therefore be repeated to ones lover.

Donne also uses a gently reprimanding tone towards the sun as if it were an elderly badly behaved relative; ‘busy old fool, unruly sun’. This gentle chiding coupled with the romantic remarks about his lover – ‘She is all states’ enforces the sweeping romantic tone – this is a man entirely infatuated; ‘This bed’ has become the ‘centre’ of his world and ‘these walls’ the only place the sun need shine upon.

X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia in their excellent book, ‘An Introduction to Poetry’ explain precisely about tone -

“Strictly speaking, tone isn’t an attitude’ it is whatever in the poem makes an attitude clear to us: the choice of certain words instead of others, the picking out of certain details…..To perceive the tone of a poem rightly, we need to read the poem carefully, paying attention to whatever suggestions we find in it.”

As is always the case with poetry – read, read and read again.

Clichés, Sentimentality and Robert Burns

I am a sentimental romantic, I admit it. I try to avoid being overly sentimental when I write, in fact when I redraft I try to take out anything that’s even slightly slushy – as much as I love to cry over dead dogs (Greyfriar’s Bobby makes me wail), loss and misery, it’s only good when it’s well written. So I avoid the clichéd Hallmark style and try to aim for a more sophisticated version which allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Sometimes though familiarity really does breed contempt. Clichés become just that because they’re overused, not because they’re wrong. Words and phrases become overused because they’re good and everyone wants to say them and to write them. When I’m writing fiction I tend to use the occasional cliché in my first draft, in fact sometimes I’ll even put them in on purpose. Why? Because I use them rather like Post It notes or a highlighter pen – they remind me when I come back to the piece that I need to expand and rework that sentence or paragraph - I want it to mean the same thing as the cliché but I want it in my words and not the overused ones. 

One of the most well known and hackneyed clichés is that of a red rose to signify love – you can’t fail to have noticed how the price of red roses goes through the roof (oops, cliché), the price of red roses rises to ridiculous levels (alliteration but doesn’t have the same ring though, does it?) around Valentine’s Day. So who do we have to thank for that one? Not just Interflora but one poet in particular- Robert Burns who wrote the lyric poem ‘Oh my love is like a red, red rose’ in 1788 or there abouts.

Oh, my love is like a red, red rose

O my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile!

There are various archaic and modern spellings to be found in different versions of this poem and indeed there are musical versions too as this is a true ballad, a lyrical poem. However, for me anyway, the best version of this is a spoken one – read by a man with a Scots’ accent. For all that this is a over used and exceedingly well known piece, it’s still one of my favourites and almost moves me to tears each time I read it – I did say I’m a sentimental romantic! I picture this as the parting of lovers forced apart by circumstance – or maybe I’m just influenced by the life story of Burns who was prevented from marrying his sweetheart and mother to his twin sons until he became famous. The words of this poem voice a very real feeling and desire to be eternal lovers – something that seems so unlikely and unusual in today’s cynical world.

Anyway, listen to Alan Cumming reading it – sadly the embedding has been disabled or I’d have put the YouTube window in here.  It might be hugely clichéd now but I adore this poem.

Networking and Marketing for Writers and Artists

Last night I went along to the Horsebridge Arts and Community Centre in Whitstable to take part in a Creative Canterbury networking event, and very good it was too. I met Alma Caira there - she makes hand made silver jewellery, does web design, animation, and photography in addition to teaching art and crafts. I'm hoping she soon gets a website showcasing her work to which I can direct you for all your jewellery and web design needs...my commission is cheap too! I also chatted briefly with the Arts Development Officer, Mitch Robertson who now wants to come and scream in my garden - living out in the sticks does have its benefits, maybe I could start up a whole new sideline of offering a Place To Scream.

Anyway, in amongst eating strawberries and grapes we listened to a brief talk about marketing for creative businesses which was mainly aimed at visual artists and craftspeople. All fascinating stuff as the speaker mentioned building a brand and giving added value. Most writers today already have to do this in order to get ourselves out there and known but rather than us providing gift wrapping or technical knowledge about displaying work we promote ourselves and others on our blogs, Twitter and Facebook. We write articles (like this one) which we hope will be of some use to other writers and maybe of some interest to our general readers too. We tell you what we're doing, how we do it and how you can do it too. We aim to entertain and inform and with any luck you'll come back and read something else here again, or perhaps you'll remember my name and look for other things I've written elsewhere. In other words, we try to build a readership, a following. I know I'm very much still in the early stages of this - I completed my Masters Degree only two years ago (feels longer).

The marketing man last night told us how important our network of satisfied customers is and how each happy 'consumer' experience is related to seven other people but the bad ones are told to...I think he said ten but maybe it was twenty-one people. Anyway, his point was that when you're not making an effort with your customers they tell more people how bad you are and people like to feel good about their consumer choices. For artists producing an item like a painting, a sculpture, jewellery or similar things this means talking to your customers; telling them about yourself and the item, giving them a story which they can recount to their friends. It also means making your 'product' a real luxury item by providing specialist knowledge, wrappings, in short giving or offering something extra. As consumers we all know this works - just think about the difference between a supermarket own brand packet of pasta and the one 'handmade' in Tuscany - be honest, is there a huge difference between the cooked pasta by the time you've covered it in wine drenched bolognase? Not really, but then look at the packaging - cheap clear plastic with the supermarket's name printed in large letters or gorgeous dark blue paper with jaunty yellow stickers. I know which one I'd rather my friends saw when they come over for dinner - my bank account doesn't agree but that's besides the point. The luxury item says something about us as consumers - it says, "I have good taste" and quite possibly, "I have more money than sense" but I'll gloss over that....And if you're purchasing something that costs over £500 (and a good piece of art or design will cost this) then you should be getting more than the cheap clear plastic wrapping with the supermarket name on it. The marketing man talked a great deal about how there are no real differences between BMW and Mercedes Benz cars, for example, but branding relies upon our emotional choices - how we feel about ourselves for buying one brand over another.

And before you think that this is useless advice for writers...just consider for a moment which books you'd rather have on your shelves or to be seen reading in a coffee shop....Jackie Collins or Margaret Atwood? Dan Brown or A.S Byatt? I'm not saying that any of those authors produce a bad 'product' - I've read books by all of them. I won't tell which I enjoyed most....but I'm a firm believe in wide and eclectic reading, a mixed diet for the mind if you like but I know an awful lot about sex, shopping and secret codes.

I think that for writers, and indeed for anyone in the Creative Industries, it's important to know your market; to know who reads or buys what you produce, to know what they like and then you can produce more of it that's better and more desirable. Personally I'd love to be a literary writer who deals with deep philosophical questions and appears on an A level syllabus (don't ask why that's important to me...I don't know, but it seems like the pinnacle of achievement - keep your Booker prize, I want to be studied by spotty seventeen year olds). That's my dream. My reality, as I'm quickly beginning to realise, is that I find it easier to write light humorous pieces with the occasional bit of thought-provoking going on - rather like a puddle with a hidden pothole - and I've been paid to write like that in the past. Maybe I ought to return to that half-written humorous novel, plot it out properly and get it written....

Last night was really worthwhile, it's given me plenty to think about and plenty to write about Now all that remains are two things, firstly a question I need to ask you, dear reader...what would you like to see more of here?

And lastly, that by reading this blog and telling others about it you're showing the world how erudite, amusing and downright sexy you are. Honestly.

On rejections and dealing with them

I spent a large part of July worrying about having a job in September - budget cuts and so on - and part of that worrying pushed me to write lots of poetry and send out everything I have to magazines and journals. On one hand this is a Good Thing as it gave me something to focus upon and it's what I should be doing anyway. On the other hand the downside is that I've received three rejections so far and heard nothing from the others.

There are two voices in my head holding a conversation about this state of affairs; one is the sensible calm voice who knows that rejections are a necessary part of writing, that more poetry is written than read today, that maybe some of the poems were not really ready, that they didn't fit what the editor is currently looking for and that I haven't had them all rejected yet. The other voice is... well, more of a shout, a tantrum with a stamped foot if you like.

Writing is a solitary pursuit; we write firstly for ourselves, to ourselves in order to understand the world, to make sense of our feelings. For some people their writing ends there - they write diaries which explore their inner world but never see the light of the outer world. The rest of us write because we want to share something with all of you out there we want to connect, 'only connect' as E.M.Forster said. So we spend our days watching, listening and collecting bits of life which we then transcribe and transform onto the page, making sense of it, giving it a new life, making it fresh. The transcribing and transforming is the alchemy - the bit we do almost in secret, tucked away literally for some in their writing sheds, offices, attics and garrets and metaphorically for others writing in cafes and libraries who hide in plain sight. When we finally return our work to the world we, I am often so blinkered that it is like my first born child - perfect in every way.

This is getting terribly poetic here - I'll just take a moment out to translate...

I love my writing therefore I expect everyone else to do so too. I'm shocked and hurt (with dramatic flounces) when others do not feel the same way.

So that's where all the foot stamping came from and it should last approximately 12 hours if you're lucky but don't allow yourself to continue the tantrum for over 24 hours if at all possible. Why? The short answer is (and this hurts) no one cares. The long answer is what the sensible voice in my head has been saying throughout all of this.....

Rejections are a necessary part of writing -
Your writing may simply not be good enough just yet and even with rejections there is a hierarchy (at least in my head...) - no reply whatsoever means the poem either got lost or really stank, a standard form rejection means it was poor but the editor is polite, a note asking you to submit again in the future means it was still poor but you show some promise, a note explaining why they didn't accept your poem means that you're close and the poem isn't bad.
All writers even the megastars like Stephen King have been rejected - I regularly recommend his book 'On Writing' to new writers. If you didn't ever receive rejections you (I) would begin to doubt the worth of doing this...to me if something is worth doing not only should it be done well but also it shouldn't be easy. Rejections are good for the soul and good for building humility - a very necessary trait in writing so you can continue to learn and develop.

More poetry is written than read today -
Sad but true. If each of us who claims to love poetry actually bought collections from new poets or subscribed to the very same magazines we wish to be published by then there would be a bigger market for poetry. It's the chicken and the egg all over again - the chicken is the reader that gives birth to the egg, the writer...or maybe the chicken is the writer....Either way, if you want to write poetry then read it. On that note I'll briefly get on my soapbox - make sure you're reading contemporary poetry as much or more than the classics. You live now, so find out what people are writing now. You need to know what has gone before but not to the exclusion of what is happening now. For example, rock stars, pop bands, musicians generally have an awareness of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Blues, Jazz and so on, some even use pieces of classical music reworked...which reminds me - listen to Pachelbel's 'Canon' first, then listen to The Farm's 'All Together Now'.



Back to the poetry...

Maybe some of the poems were not really ready -
Did I actually put this poem away for a few weeks before I sent it out? Sometimes I can get so impressed with myself (I know I need to learn a little more humility but it's a fine balance between that and having self-confidence!) that I send out new work before it's ready. When the rejection arrives you need to look again at the poem - does it still work for you? Perhaps it needs some further revisions - now is the time to do it before you send it out again.

It didn't fit what the editor is currently looking for -
Poetry does go in trends and fashions and different journals and magazines look for different types of work. I know this is obvious but when you receive the rejection you need to remind yourself of this. Poetry tastes are different, it's all subjective and the editor you sent your precious piece to may simply not like poems about kittens (actually no one apart from small children likes poems about kittens - as much as we love the furry beasts we don't want to read soppy poems about them). Just like when you broke up with that guy who smelled odd - it's them, not you.

I haven't had them all rejected yet -

Yet.

So the short sensible answer to rejection is to 'man up' and revise, redraft and resubmit elsewhere. Keep reading, keep writing and hopefully keep improving.

I'm now going to take some of my own excellent advice and look at the latest batch of rejections.


Oh, and by the way, the job did re-materialise so I won't be entirely penniless by Christmas.

Writing for fun

Most of the writing I do is simply to please me - whether it's fiction or poetry I am my first reader and like to entertain myself. I think most people, if not all that write creatively do it because they have to, or want to, even if it's never seen by anyone else. I always love to talk to elderly ladies at family parties because so often they reveal that they've kept a diary or some sort of journal since they were a child - diary writing used to be so very common. I kept a diary from about the age of ten or eleven right up until I was in my late teens. One day I must look at these again - that is if I can bear to read the terrible purple prose and daily outpourings of teenage angst. Undoubtedly it will be full of dull, petty arguments and repeated fantasies involving Simon Le Bon.

More recently I've turned some of my experiences into comic turns - a couple I've posted here in this blog, quite a few can be found on various internet forums, especially those which ask a question each week - I submit anonymously of course. Most recently the divine Domestic Sluttery held a competition asking for culinary tales of woe, the winner receiving a gorgeous pair of 'I love cake' earrings from Love Hearts and Crosses - I posted the following story and won!


"A couple of years ago I was having some friends round to supper and I'd planned a very impressive rolled pork loin with apricot and herb stuffing all tied together with bacon, home grown vegetables - I was out to impress. I'd gone to the local farmers' market and bought the pork loin, then left it in the kitchen under a gauze umbrella thing ready for me to begin my creation once I'd got the veg. I went out to the garden (in my floral dress, of course) collecting mange tout, carrots and fresh herbs - impressive...but I was married to a farmer - none of it was my doing - I spent my days reading books and drinking wine!
So, there I was, Lady Bountiful, returning to the kitchen with my veggie haul, only to discover the large black farm cat had dragged the pork loin onto the floor and eaten half of it! It was still raw!

I cut off the chewed bit, rinsed it under a tap and carried on with the recipe, adding some more bacon and pretended it hadn't happened.
Later that evening once my guests had drank half their body weight in wine I told them - they don't talk to me anymore."

Here's the cat that did the deed, he goes by the name of Mog.

The new year starts in September!

I'm sure I can't be the only one who feels that the new year really begins in September - the shops are full of Back to School stuff, the days are a little shorter, a little chillier and we all feel fairly rested and ready for new challenges.

So, as the new year is only a few days away I'm making some changes around here as I've spent the summer writing and 'consolidating my career' (I've sent out lots of emails). The first change I'm making is to open up this blog more - it began for me as somewhere to put down a few thoughts, the occasional short story, Question of the Week post, bits and pieces really - since I've jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon I realise how much I've been underusing my web presence (see, I've even paid attention to some of the web marketing spam!). Here's my list of resolutions...

- This blog will now be clearly linked to my Twitter account - I'll stick a wiget thing on it

- If you write a blog that is particularly concerned with writing or publishing (especially if you're in the UK) then please send me a link and I'll post it up here

- I will try to post something worthwhile for writers (and readers) each week - that's going to be the hardest resolution to keep once the University term begins

- If you'd like to write a guest post on here (especially when I'm snowed under with undergraduate essays to mark!) then let me know


Ummm....that's all I can think of for now, if you have any other suggestions do get in touch.

"Once Upon a Time...Artists and Storytelling" Embankment Galleries, Somerset House 26 June - 26 July 2009

One of my favourite childhood memories is lying on my stomach in the local public library reading The Orange Fairy Book by Andrew Lang - I'm still searching for a copy of that book even now, it was large in my eight year old hands and had an orange cloth binding - just the thought of that book and I'm back there deep within the worlds created by the Grimms, Perrault, and the Arabian nights. So when I saw that the Courtauld Institute had an exhibition on in the Embankment Galleries called 'Once Upon a Time...' I wanted to go. The exhibition was the culmination of the year long MA Curating the Art Museum course at The Courtauld and therefore jointly curated by those students led by Martin Caiger-Smith who was previously Acting Director at the Hayward Gallery. Artists have told stories ever since there have been stories to tell and artists to depict them and the first section of the show, Childhood Stories, about the link between illustration and text show was the personal equivalent to Lascaux cave paintings - the earliest attempt to make sense of the world around us based upon Snow White and Cinderella rather than the caveman's woolly mamoth. While not particularly groaning with Fine Art as such - although some particularly fine Paula Rego illustrations feature - the familiar Victorian Cruikshank and Crane prints of Beauty and the Beast, Jack and the Beanstalk, Three Blind Mice and so on, lulls the audience into a cosy rememberance of times past and in fact a quick glance around at my fellow visitors to the exhibition on a wet Wednesday afternoon confirmed this - plenty of nostalgic smiles and contented sighs. Personally I would have loved to have seen a few Ladybird book illustrations in there too - my version of Snow White was Eric Winter's, not Walt Disney's. However, one of the strengths of this section of the exhibition was that the dark and almost gothic side to our childhood tales was emphasised instead of the ubiquitous cartoon versions.



And like all good fairytales and stories the exhibition took a turn to even darker things...the second section of the exhibition was devoted to personal mythologies. Rather than taking an obvious line and showing some William Blake drawings, the MA curators had chosen Twentieth century prints and contemporary video works. Oskar Kokoschka prints waited in atmospheric subdued lighting alongside the dark curtained doorways to Tracey Emin and Gillian Wearing videos.


Tracey Emin's film Why I didn't become a dancer brought up memories of Hans Christian Andersen's The Red Shoes very strongly - this piece from 1995 is so much more than just Tracey from Margate telling us about her crap childhood as if she was on television with Jeremy Kyle. Unlike the fairytale Emin has built a successful career on her lack of vanity and a strong personal mythology which finds itself deeply rooted in our celebrity culture - Tracey as Cinderella.


Part of that same conversation is Gillian Wearing's Confessions which really does tread the same ground as Jeremy Kyle and Jerry Springer but with ridiculous disguises that remind one of the Channel 4 comedy show Bo' Selecta. The interesting thing about all these television resonances is that Wearing's piece - fully titled Confess all on video. Don't worry, you will be in disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian dates from 1994 so this is a true case of life (or television) reflecting art.Kokoschka, Emin and Wearing are also part of the same conversation that Sartre championed in Being and Nothingness and that politicians, actors, pop stars and even shop assistants all buy into; that our past is what we make it and truth doesn't have to feature in that. The exhibition makes a strong case for our past as story, our lives as story and art to make sense of our lives and ourselves. Intriguingly all the curators of Once Upon a Time... are women and so often, certainly in Western tradition, women were the storytellers - Mother Goose and the Wise Woman. This exhibition scratches the surface of a fascinating discussion which certainly continued for me as I went home to get out my copy of Marina Warner's From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber a wet afternoon in a gallery started out with me enjoying childhood memories and ended with dark thoughts about blood and beasts, just like all the best afternoons.

The Job of Writing Poetry

I'm mother to twin boys, I do a bit of teaching at a local university in the English department and this coming academic year the Art department too. I'm hoping to start studying for a PhD soon on the links between art and poetry. I also do a bit of freelance writing for magazines and I write poetry, some of which gets published.

In short, I'm a busy person, especially if you factor in my Twitter/Facebook/b3ta habit, reading approximately one novel a week, cooking and gardening too.

I find that I do most of my writing - the poetry and the occasional short story/half written novel - during the university vacations when I have no other demands upon my time except family ones. My children know that during the school holidays they can stay up a little later and they can laze around in bed until 10am if they fancy because I'll be writing until about lunchtime and then the afternoon and evenings are theirs.

So all of this means that writing poetry in particular tends to be done in these splurges and because of all the rest of the stuff I need to get done I have to be organised about redrafting and submitting work otherwise it would all simply sit in the virtual dusty drawer of my Documents folder on my laptop. How I organise this may be of some help to you...if you're not organised properly for writing you're not treating it like the job that it is!
Here's how I do it....

First Drafts and 'The Muse'

I don't believe in this notion of 'The Muse' and waiting for it to strike, some people (even some published writers) that I know do go along with the idea that they'll only write poetry when they get the feeling that it's about to strike. They're the lucky ones - that doesn't happen for me and if it did I have a feeling my Muse would strike at 3.00am and I hate having a broken night's sleep.
I try to write to a routine. I aim at sitting down every day Monday to Friday from about 9.00am until at least lunchtime and writing/editing/submitting - doing all the stuff that's involved in my job - the job of being a writer/academic/mother/dogsbody! Some days and some weeks I write every day, other times I might spend a week or two sorting out lecture plans, magazine submissions, job applications or even - and this is a guilty secret - watching YouTube and reading junk online - I feel bad about those days even though those are the times when my subconscious is probably working really hard at a new poem....okay, I don't really believe that either, but hey, I'm human.

I also go out and write because then I don't get distracted by the internet, newspapers, the internet, gardening, the internet, cats and the internet. Cafes work best for me because I can watch the world go by wrapped up in my cocoon of caffeine and there's something very special about writing longhand in a nice notebook.

So, what do I do once I've got all these First Drafts?

The Redrafting Filing System

Everything I write gets typed up either straight into Word, or more recently I've been using Evernote - it's free and you can save your work both on a laptop/pc and online and synchronise the two together to keep it all up to date. It also takes screen clippings from sites so you can keep all your research together too.
I then put this first draft into a folder marked redraft for two months time e.g. REDRAFT OCTOBER 2009 - everything I write this month, August, will go into that folder and I won't look at it again until October. I always like to leave at least six weeks to two months before revisiting a piece because I will have almost forgotten it and that gives me some distance and I'm more able to be subjective about it - I won't feel bad about cutting out all of my 'darlings'.

I've redrafted the poem, what next?

Where to submit poetry

The best thing any writer can do before beginning to write, let alone submit work, is to READ. If you want to write poetry then read poetry - I read somewhere that there are huge numbers of people writing poetry in the UK and the rest of the world but there aren't huge numbers of people reading poetry...strange...That's a bit like a rock band saying they never listened to music.
Once you're reading lots of poetry you'll have some idea of where you'd like your work to end up that's because you'll want to know more about your favourite poet and you'll Google them or find them on Poem Hunter (I'm on there!) and soon discover which magazines published their work. In addition to that you can look at the excellent lists at the Poetry Library's site or sign up to a writers' newsletter like Writer's Relief which will send you a list of calls for submission every month along with hints and tips for writers.

These are just a few ways you can find out where to place your work. Don't forget that it is easy to get work published online with plenty of obscure websites - anyone can set up a site and put whatever they like on there, that's the beauty of the internet - but if you want to build a good reputation for yourself and to be taken seriously as a professional then you have to keep to the professional sites. That's not to say that a new online poetry magazine isn't worth submitting to, but just make sure that it's the sort of place you'll be proud to be a part of in the future.
Don't ever pay to have your work read - if it's good enough for a reputable magazine to accept then they will not charge you a reading fee. Most magazines sadly won't be able to pay you for your submission - if you want to make money from writing you'd be far better off going into journalism. Magazines will often send you a free copy of the edition in which you've appeared. The only time you're likely to spend more than just the postage fee is if you're entering a competition - that's how most poetry competitions are run - the winner(s) get a cash prize or published copies of their work.

You've selected some likely magazines, what now?

First of all read the submission guidelines - you won't even make it to the long list if you've formatted your work incorrectly, emailed it as an attachment when they've asked for work to be in the body, sent it to the wrong person, sent free verse to a sonnet magazine and so on.
Secondly read the submission guidelines again and make sure you've complied with all their demands - this is very important.
Then write your covering letter - make it simple and to the point, remember to be polite because good manners cost nothing and you never know when you might meet this person in the flesh at a literary festival, book launch, writers' workshop or even in the pub.
If you're sending something via snailmail then make sure you include a stamped self-addressed envelope so they can either return your work, send you a rejection letter or even an acceptance letter! Remember though that you'll probably send out at least ten to twenty submissions for every single acceptance, if you're lucky.

How to keep track of all your submissions

This is the bit that I really wanted to write about - the whole reason for this post! Most poetry magazines accept and encourage simultaneous submissions - this is where you have a poem that you send to four or five magazines at the same time. If one magazine accepts it you then contact the others and ask for it to be withdrawn from you submission explaining why. Magazines do not encourage multiple submissions - this is where you send one or more poems every week without fail - that's the work of a stalker not a poet. Bundle up your submissions and send one containing up to five or six poems (depending on the magazine guidelines) and if they are all rejected or accepted you still wait a reasonable amount of time before submitting again - this is also usually mentioned in the magazine guidelines.

Once I've received a rejection or acceptance from a magazine I do two things: first I re-read the rejected poems and see if I think it needs rewriting, tightening up or 'rested' (in the dustbin), secondly, if I think it's still a piece that works, I get it straight out to another magazine.
I use an Excel spreadsheet for listing all my poetry ready for submission and all the magazines where they've been submitted.
Each poem submitted gets a date - month and year when it was sent off and where, once I get a reply the date is either changed to red - rejection, or moved onto another spreadsheet. I keep a separate spreadsheet for all the successful pieces as once they've been published they can't be sent off to another magazine generally. The screenshot above is for my current poems awaiting acceptance - I've taken out the titles of both poems and journals. I also put in a hyperlink from Excel straight to the journal website and also to the document folder where the poem is saved.

This works for me and gives me something practical to do once I receive a rejection. Of course I spend a bit of time moaning about it and feeling down but if you want to be in print you have to be like a cowboy - grow a thick skin - it comes in handy for all those times you have to get back up on the horse!

Developing confidence as a writer

I've been writing professionally for about three and a half years now and it's only very, very recently that I've developed confidence in my writing to believe what we're all told - that editors turn your writing down sometimes not because it's necessarily bad but because sometimes it's just not what they're looking for.

Writing for Magazines


I've done a bit of this - I had a regular column in a national magazine for three years and because I found it fairly easy to write I didn't always see any value in it. I truly believed that if something is worth doing it should be hard to do it well.
That's simply not true.
Some things are easier for me because I'm good at them - as writers we should print this out and pin it up somewhere!

That said, just because you're good at something it doesn't mean you shouldn't practise it and try to get even better!

Today I'm taking the athlete Usain Bolt as a case in point - he was the fastest man in the world last month yet last week yet he went out and beat his own record. I'm sure if that had been me I would have simply dined out on the first record...well, for at least a few months.

As everyone knows - you're only as good at the last one. Bolt knows that he's only as good as that last record, and what a record! Writers, poets, musicians, artists, we're all only as good as our last piece so we owe it to ourselves to keep writing, keep practising and keep getting better.

How do you get better?

Keep reading, keep writing and keep learning with an open mind, it's as simple as that. The more good quality writing your read the more you'll absorb and then begin to produce good writing yourself. A good writer is always a reader first.


Okay so preaching over for a while.

The reason I think I've become more confident is because I believe in what I've written. I believe it's clear, concise and sounds like me, it's not me trying to fit with some style I think I should be following. I've read a few blogs recently that advise just this - write in the style that suits you - if you're a crime writer or a romance writer, write that! That's not to say you shouldn't try your hand at expanding your repertoire and improving your writing but don't turn your back on what you find easy just because you think it should be difficult.

In writing this blog post I've also realised something for myself....I don't like the standard bookmarks feature in Firefox (which I use)and I need to find something easy to use to collect up all those excellent blogs that I've read so I can share them with a wider audience. There is a wealth of knowledge out there and I'm losing a good deal of it by not cataloguing it properly.

Hmm...something for me to work on next.

Twitter and other useful stuff

I know, I know, I'm really bad at keeping this up to date and I just end up making myself feel even more guilty (good Catholic Guilt) every time I read some of the amazing blogs that are out there.

Anyway, recently I've become rather fond of Twitter. First of all I did the whole fan thing and followed Stephen Fry - you have to really, it's a given in the UK that he's a National Treasure and all that, sort of on a par with the Queen Mother (God rest her soul, Knees up Mother Brown, Blitz Spirit and all that). Then I began to nose around a bit and see who else I should follow...

blah, blah, blah
more about my entry into Twitterland
blah, blah, blah


Hugh Laurie, blah, blah, blah

Mrs Stephen Fry, blah, blah, blah

Then...

I began to follow writers, publishers and agents and now...just like every good advert, I'm finding many different interesting things all over the place that I'm using regularly to write with - prompts and so on and also lists of magazines looking for submissions.

I realise that this is the potted version and those of you looking for some real meat to this post will be rather disappointed so far...I know, I need to do better with posting blog entries - I'll try.

Meanwhile, I'll share with you a couple of things that I now use regularly because they help me to plan and to write.

The first thing is Free Mind which is an open source piece of software for Mind Mapping - if you've never given MM a go, do try it - especially if you're at all creative and tend to think in clusters or images.
I've been working on a few Fine Art lectures I've got to give next academic year and Mind Mapping them is the ideal way for me to throw down as many ideas as I can and then begin to link them and organise them effectively.
I've also used MM to plot and develop short stories, it's also great for developing a character. It's easy to list lots of attributes or possible events without tying yourself down to a list of and then, and then.
How to do Mind Mapping is explained nicely here at Lite Mind.
Try it!

Now, the second bit of useful stuff I've discovered on Twitter is an evil way of making you write more which is always an excellent thing to do but as most writers are terrible procrastinators (as I'm writing this I'm avoiding writing an article I've been asked to do) being forced to write is a Good Thing. So, I found this web page called Dr. Wicked's Writing Lab - Write or Die.
Well obviously you don't actually die if you don't write - at least, not on this site - but it is a fiendish way of making you get words down.

And that's what writing and being a writer is all about - getting words down. No one said anything about Great Words - they come in amongst all the rubbish. Writing is a bit like mining for gold I find - lots and lots of spoil comes out and in amongst that you might find something nice and shiny and worth holding on to...sometimes.

Right, that's enough for today.

I'll try to be better about keeping this up...maybe I need to make it more a part of my procrastination.....

My First Poetry Review

I've been talking about including reviews and other such stuff for some time to friends and in my continual dialogue that goes on in my head between me and myself and I - that makes it a trilogue I suppose. Anyway, I'm digressing, the point is I'm finally getting around to doing a review of some poetry I read recently by Maria McCarthy, also known as Medway Maria. She comes with a great poetry pedigree as she studied under both Sarah Wardle and Susan Wicks.

I've known Maria for a few years now and have had the great pleasure of reading some of her short stories. Maria's work tends to be concerned with Irish immigrant family life - much of her work is based upon memoir but also in the grand tradition of Irish writers her work is often playful, truthful, heartbreaking fiction. This time, however, I'm looking at one of her poems, 'Story'.

Story by Maria McCarthy
I know this story.
It’s one of nuns and Christian brothers;
of drawing water from the well; of delivering
a sister when the midwife couldn’t come;
of finding a man in the barn, hanging;
of sailing to England with one suitcase,
bearing two of everything, of sending money home;
of working like a navvy; of cinemas
and dancehalls and clinging to your own;
of meeting my father at a dance
above the Gas Showrooms; of the wedding
in the blue suit, three months gone,
on a day you had the flu, of letting you go
home while he stayed and drank; of his mother
who said he didn’t have to marry you;
of sharing her house till she complained
about a mark made by the baby’s arm
on the bedroom wallpaper; of going homeless,
in a hostel, where the men could only visit;
of how he did nothing to find you somewhere to live;
of travelling to Ireland with my brother;
of the man who would have taken you on,
baby and all, married or not, and of the other man
in England, who you knew before my father,
who took you to a show, Chu Chin Chow on ice,
but was too nice, too old, too caring,
who came walking his dog past your house
every day until he died, the house that the council
gave you once you had five, where my father
led you a hell of a life with the drink and the babies
and the miscarriage when the hospital doctor
accused you of doing it yourself;
of hiding from the rent man; of holding
your head up in the street with us all turned
out nicely, so the neighbours wouldn’t know;
of how you did it for us, stayed with a man
who was home when the pubs were shut,
or when the horses had run the wrong way.
I know this story. It’s yours, not mine.
I’ve stopped listening.




This poem is just like the suitcases that the woman takes with her to England, yet instead of holding ‘two of everything’ it’s stuffed full of her life, her story. That’s what this poem is about – one woman’s story that is rolled out again and again in all its gritty misery only to fall upon the deaf ears of her own daughter who’s heard it all before. We’ve all heard the stories from our own parents or grandparents about how we don’t know we’re born, we didn’t have to walk twenty miles to school like they did in a blizzard without shoes or have a night out on five shillings and sixpence (a night out? That fortune would last us all year!). This poem is for all the daughters and granddaughters who have listened to their mothers and grandmothers trotting out their tales of woe.

It would have been a cheap and easy shot for Maria McCarthy to just poetically roll her eyes and ignore the stories of a hard life. Likewise there are plenty of nasty histories that just become Misery Memoir and set the reader up as the voyeur. She’s avoided this by giving us line after line of clipped story – just what you’d hear at a family party; have you heard about the time when.... We’re transported at first to a world that’s almost Biblical in its simplicity – water drawn from a well, populated by nuns, Christian brothers, missing midwives and hanged men. Already in the first five lines there’s enough plot for a novel.

As the poem unfolds we hear the common tale of a woman trapped in a marriage out of religious duty, living the hard life of an immigrant and it’s this that makes this poem more than just a story of one Irish woman’s life, it’s the story repeated all across the world whether the religion is Roman Catholicism or Islam; arrive with one suitcase, work hard, send money home and cling to your own.

As I was reading ‘Story’ I was reminded of the Galway poet, Rita Ann Higgins and her wonderful poem, ‘Some People’ which deals with similar territory of poverty, Catholicism, motherhood and hiding from a rent man.

The thing that made me come back to this poem again and again though was the bitter last line - 'I've stopped listening' it makes me want to go back to the beginning and pick through all the stories there - what was it that made the daughter turn away from the mother? Was it the promise of a better life with the man who would have taken her on baby and all? Or was it the constant repetition of all the stories, all the stories that are the mother's, not the daughter's - a distancing, a marking out of territory, of independence - you've told your story, you've lived your life, now let me live mine.

And I for one want to keep hearing the stories of these Irish women.

A week in North Wales

Just back from a lovely week in North Wales. We went to Llanberis - the Mecca of mountain biking, hiking and rock climbing. We spent a day at Coed Y Brenin mountain biking - I did the Cyflym Coch route and then spent a couple of hours with my feet up lazing in the grass reading Popco by Scarlett Thomas while P went off on another two trails. I got the best deal, undoubtedly.

We also spent a day hiking up Snowdon - we took the Pyg Trail up and the Miners Trail down - in hindsight this was a mistake and next time I'd go up Miners and down Pyg - Miners is a far gentler pathway up and Pyg is apparently the hardest. The strangest thing of all was that my hands began to swell up on the ascent and didn't finally return to normal until late in the day well after we'd got back to town. A quick Google search tells me just what I'd suspected - the warm weather combined with walking and swinging my arms while wearing a heavy back pack all combined to stop the blood flow from my hands travelling back to my heart. Added to which I was drinking plenty of water which would have diluted the electrolytes in my blood.
Science!

The best bit of the holiday was without doubt the climbing of Flying Buttress which is a Very Difficult (or VDiff) route on the Dinas Cromlech crag in the Llanberis Pass. It was my first outdoor climb of the year and P's first ever outdoor climb and his first multi-pitch too. The sun was shining, the air was warm and the climb was wonderfully easy, apart from the final pitch with the nasty polished chimney which resulted in me making rather a lot of odd noises and swearing quite a bit too. The worst bit of the entire day was the walk/scramble up to the crag and back again. I hate scrambling. I know you're supposed to stay upright and walk but I always seem to end up sliding down on my backside and moving very, very slowly. Just stick a rope on me and let me abseil down!

Anyway, back now and onto more mundane things - exams to mark and poetry to submit, read, write and review.

I promise to write a long review of a wonderful poem written by Maria McCarthy (Medway Maria) which is long overdue.

I also promise to write about the poetry collections I've been reading and buying lately.

Later.

Posting and waiting for feedback

I've just posted a sonnet I wrote a little while ago on a poetry workshop website. I'm waiting for feedback and almost biting my nails down to the knuckle...well, I would if I bit my nails, but you get the idea.
It's ridiculous because I've had poetry published, I've had articles published - I had a regular column in a magazine for goodness sake! Yet still I'm worried about how this piece will fare in amongst potentially hostile waters....and it's quite a challenging piece as it includes text speak and references to Facebook, the Poetry World, if there is such a place, may not like that.

That's tough.

I like the poem and I think it's got potential. When it gets published somewhere I'll post it here. Most recently I had a poem called India, March 1992 published on Angelic Dynamo. The only problem is that there are a couple of rogue commas in there and every time I see it they make me cringe!

I guess that's always a problem for writers - tinkering.

On having a crisis of faith

I’m currently having a creative crisis of faith – not any religious faith you understand, although I suppose that would be rather useful for me right now – faith in my writing and its (my?) abilities. It’s the nature of writing to be rejected at every turn until at last it finds some receptacle – be that a journal, magazine, publisher, or wastepaper bin. I know that writers have to be thick skinned, believe in their work, keep refining their writing, keep reading, keep networking and all those other worthy pursuits. I realise that the readership for new poetry is tiny and by my reading more and publicising more other new writers I’ll increase my own slice of the literary pie – or at the very least there’ll be a few more crumbs to go around.

It’s hard work keeping the faith and getting out there, it just is. I feel like a petulant child – I want to be taken notice of but equally if someone did make a big deal about my work I’d be suspicious mainly because I’m not sure I’ve paid my dues or have enough knowledge yet. I think that’s the biggest obstacle for any new writer – looking at what’s gone before and realising that you probably can’t match up to most of it and you probably never will. It’s the Socratic idea of knowing that you know nothing – how bloody depressing.

Notting Hill? Nah...more like William Hill

I had a Notting Hill moment just now – I’ve come into work to catch up on paperwork and concentrate my mind. So I’d just got off the bus, stopped in Starbucks to pick up my usual (grande skinny wet almond latte as you asked), turned on my iPod (a gift of course – I wouldn’t spend that sort of money on a label myself...but I’d ask for one for Christmas...), walked out listening to Hard-Fi – ‘Living for the weekend’ and on into the market square. The sun was shining and as I glanced over at one of the stalls the guy manning it caught my eye and he smiled at me – a big full on Hollywood smile as I’m sipping my fancy American coffee and listening to British indie music...I was Julia Roberts for ten seconds. The music became the soundtrack to my filmic life. A half smile played on my lips for the remainder of my stroll to work – even as I passed an al fresco art class where (just like the best cinema traditions) the teacher was a chap I’d been an undergrad fine art student with and his class were sketching statues that not only I’d seen erected but I even know the artist personally.
I am a camera.







And I drink waaaay too much coffee.

Books - or "How well read am I?"

I love the opportunity to show off and I don't believe I'm that different from most people, so I found this list of books that you tick off to show just how well read you are. I suppose it's a form of bragging but geek bragging. Sort of similar to seeing other parents at the school gate or on the rugby pitch in September, first day of term and asking where they went on holiday during the summer. Normally my answer is embellished with Enid Blyton-esque homespun goodness with imagined Kath Kidson accessories - never would I reply that we'd stayed at home all summer because we couldn't afford to go anywhere, good grief no! I'm far too concerned with others opinions of me, yet sufficiently Catholic enough to abhor total deception, and sufficently of the Hyacinth Bucket school of snobbery to imply I'm better than in reality I am. In short, I'm all about spin.
So in keeping with making me look good (and feel free to copy the list and stick it in your own blog with your own reading history) here's this list.

You are supposed to:

Look at the list and:

1) Bold those you have read.

2) Italicise those you intend to read.

3) [Bracket] the books you LOVE.

4) Reprint this list on your own blog.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (I want to read Wide Sargasso Sea so I think I ought to read this first)

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible (not the entire thing but I would say undoubtedly that it's the most important work of literature in the history of man and therefore everyone should read at least parts of it)

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (this has been sitting on a shelf with the first chapter read and reread over the years, really must finish it)

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 [Little Women] - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (okay, not the Complete Works, but more than enough to list them here singly)

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 [Birdsong] - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (I did read Mill on the Floss and remain cross with Maggie Tulliver twenty years on)

21 [Gone With The Wind] - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 [Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis]

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (but I could add in Northanger Abbey which was excellent)

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie-the-Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (felt a bit cheated by The Blind Assassin but I did enjoy the film of this book)

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 [Atonement - Ian McEwan]

51High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (recently read My Melancholy Whores and loved it so I want to read this one next)

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (read The Pearl and that put me off Steinbeck but I know this is a classic…maybe I should read it)

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (read The Enchantress of Florence and adore it so must read this too)

70 Moby-Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce (Dubliners is sitting staring at me from the To Read shelf)

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - A. S. Byatt (another one staring at me from the To Read shelf)

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (halfway through and guess where it now sits with its metaphorical arms folded with disapproval)

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 [The Faraway Tree Collection] - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (and another on the shelf)

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 [The Wasp Factory] - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (on the shelf too…)

Pasted from <http://pinksunshine.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/how-well-read-am-i/>