Write Way Up for this Performance Poet.

This may look like me telling one of the children off in front of a washing line full of laundry, but in fact it is the only photo I could find at short notice to go on the web site for the poetry thing I’m involved in. I know it isn’t very glamorous, or book jacket kind of thing but I think it does the job quite well – besides I am stuck on page 3 of the ‘artists’page on the web site, but if you Google images of Anne Holloway, up I pop in the first handful – fame at last!

The workshops have been going really well – the performance has been called Write Way Up and is part of the Lyric Lounge, a week long event to celebrate words – we have one more workshop session before a final day of rehearsals and the performance on Wednesday 29th at 7pm. I’m really looking forward to it now- I’d forgotten how much I enjoy live performance.

So if you are anywhere near Leicester and free on that evening please come and support us at the Y Theatre, East St. We are seven completely different poets, mix of ages and influences – I’m the oldest.

I will post the poem here once the event is over and a photograph of the object which inspired the poem.

A Stick and a Sculpture Park made me a Poet

I recently attended an audition – just because I thought I should. If, I decided, I call myself a writer, I really should gain as much experience in as many fields of writing as possible. I tried to be a poet under Mahendra Solanki at NTU, he is very strict and sometimes scathing. I told him at the end of my studies that I doubted I would write another poem for quite some time, the process is so hard, at least to achieve anywhere close to what I wanted to achieve. All my poems seem to be a kind of snapshot on life, a time or a place or a thought that crossed my mind for a moment.

Anyway, the audition was to find seven perfomance poets who could work together towards a performance of poetry at an evening to celebrate the Special Olympics this year in Leicester. The project is called Heritage and the poems are to be written in response to museum artifacts from the Leicester museums. The organisers spent an afternoon trawling through the museum stores choosing 25 objects to spark the chosen poets’ imagination. What a great job, wish I could have been there.

I went to the audition with a couple of fellow writers, all nervous and uncertain, armed with sheaves of paper covered with a variety of poems to deliver. The place – The Y Theatre, Leicester, was packed and they were turning away budding poets who had not registered to audition before the night. We were asked to keep it brief and deliver about 3 minutes of poetry each, due to the massive turn out. The poets commenced, speaking and ranting and whispering, few of them reading, most of them delivering their pieces by heart. Young people, old people, men, women. We three sat quietly, sending glances back and forth, silently crying, ‘Oh my God! How do we compete with this?’ I shuffled and re-shuffled my papers and decided to give them STICK and SCULPTURE PARK. The atmosphere was charged and I found myself giving it all I had – all nerves and embarrassment went. They have an open mic night every month at The Y and we all came away determined to attend each month. Writing didn’t seem such a quiet and lonely obsession after all.

The best news is that I have been selected along with one of my friends to be part of the Heritage project – we have to attend six workshops before the final performance, mentored by Kevin Fegan, poet and playwright. Can’t wait – although it is a bit daunting as I’ll have to deliver the goods now. So maybe I am a poet after all.

Both poems can be found on my ‘writing page’ on tabs next to this page.

Korakas or Broken Waves?

Look at me I just can’t stop today. I’ve just added the Prologue of my finished book to the ‘writing’ page of this blog. I have a list of 95 agents to send it out to and I’ve had 8 ‘No’s so far.  I’m calling them all first to check they are accepting manuscripts and in some cases this gives me the chance to explain what it is I’m sending – so if they really don’t like the sound of it I get a no then and there – tough trying to pitch it live over the phone, but not a bad discipline. One lady like the sound of it, so I sent in a sample. She read it but gave me a ‘No’ saying she ‘felt the narrative was too rapid for the characters to develop, but having said that, as always is the case in publishing, it is a matter of taste’.

 I also have a – ‘it’s not for me but , so I’ve passed it on to a colleague, give me a nudge end of Feb if she hasn’t got back to you.’ (This from an agent friend of an old author friend of mine, a tenuous link but needs must!)

A- ‘leave it with me, I’ll find the right time to pass it on.’  (This from an old friend who would rather I met the agent in mind befor sending it to her).

 The title is problematic – we have had some fun trying to come up with the title that will grab an audience (thanks to Big Sis for many of those suggestions). The title it should have is ‘Breaking Waves’ – sadly that’s taken. The blurb too is problematic – so here it is – any comments received with thanks:

 Broken Waves is a dark story about love, control and the edge of madness. Alithea was raised on fairy tales about her father, the island and her mother Anna’s fears. When Anna goes missing Alithea travels back to the island they left fifteen years before, convinced this is where her mother has gone. She becomes confused and entangled in the place, falling under the influence of a stranger, just as her mother did with her father, Korakas.

As Alithea tries to unravel the truth about her parents, Anna’s old friends seem to stand in her way, believing that her father was a controlling bully, and like many of the local men who take a foreign wife, expected Anna to behave according to his traditions. But one friend, Doug, believes that Korakas was no ordinary man. Alithea uncovers the story of Naucrate the mother of Icarus, who plunged to his death centuries before over the seas to the north. She makes connections between this dark tale and her mother’s obsessions. Finally she is faced with a choice, to give in to her own desire or to allow her mother to rest in peace on the island.

If the chickens are laying, Spring must be here

February 1st our chickens produced their first egg – we’re not actually sure which one did it – and there is still some confusion over who is a chicken and who is not – we had some Welsummer crosses which we raised from young chicks and we also had 6 birds from Curly Boy’s school. Every year they have an incubator with eggs, to show the children how chickens hatch and grow. Last year they asked us if we would like the chicks once they had served their time in the school – so we inherited 4 brown hens and 2 white cocks. One of those cocks has been donated as a pet to a friend’s grandson and the other as it turns out, is doing very well at what cockerels should do – crowing, seeing to the girls etc. All in all we have 13 birds at the allotment now, we think 8 girls and 5 boys – could be 7 girls and 6 boys – only time will tell. We are supposed to dispatch the boys and eat them, but they are so beautiful we’re not sure we can! Not so very self-sufficient as yet. Today I went up – Wednesday being my writing day, therefore I tend to do anything but writing – just to make sure the water was ice free and see how they are doing and there were two more eggs for me. So that’s 7 since Feb 1st.

So if the chickens are laying after the long dormant Winter months, I think I should start producing too, writing that is – I shall turn my back on the laundry, the dishes, the piles of stuff to go upstairs and the piles of stuff to go downstairs, the piles of stuff to be sorted, or posted, or put away – and I shall write. I won’t even have lunch in front of the telly – which was my old habit on a Wednesday. Trouble with that is that I end up watching Loose Women and they make me shout at them – not conducive to a productive afternoon.

So there was a summer holiday

So there we were on holiday and it rained and rained and rained.

“Oh? Where did you go?”

“Not far from Conwy.”

“Well what did you expect?” Comes the reply.

believe it or not it was raining this day too…

but we caught a lot of crabbies…

and counted them…

the girls braved the sea

so did Curly Boy

Then when the weather got better…

we went back to school and back to work

then we worked and worked till Christmas and after Christmas we ran away to the beach for New Year

and this time although it was cold it didn’t rain

we sat round a fire, just long enough to say Happy New Year! Watched somebody else’s    fireworks then ran back inside to get warm.

Wish we were still there…

but we’re not and so I am getting back to work. Work includes writing on here more often – to keep me at it.

Mamma Mia.. who would have thought!

I used to go to the cinema because I wanted to see a film. For a period of time I used to go alone. I worked a late shift and often had day times to myself while everyone else I knew was at work. Sometimes I would go and see a film because a friend wanted to see it. When I had children I stopped going to see films that I wanted to see and began seeing the films they  wanted to see. So for a good few years I have seen every Disney, Pixar etc that came out. Now the older two are 13 and 15 they are able to go without me and L and I take it in turns to accompany Curly Boy when his kind of film comes out – do you know how much it costs to go the the cinema now??

But, last week I went to the movies with The Lovely J – a bit of mother daughter bonding. There were two films she wanted to see and with her friends away on various holidays, I agreed. Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snoggingcame first. I should have known when I saw the credits – a Nickleodeon production. Absolutely dire! Then I had to go and see Mamma Mia. I had expected it to be a bit of cheesy fun, prepared to smile at it and tap my foot (never was an ABBA fan – my first proper ‘date’ was to see ABBA – The Movie! and that was terrible), prepared to grin and bear it for the sake of mother daughter relations. It is however a great film. The cast slip into the songs with an ironic smile on their face, when the lyrics are cringeworthy, they skirt round them with humour. My personal favourite was the rendition of Chickita- with Meryl Streep crying in a grubby Greek toilet whilst her two old friends try and soothe her. Hilarious. Close second Dancing Queen with a chorus of young lads in flippers and trunks dancing on a pier. I cried, I laughed, I tapped my foot and cringed slightly as Piers Brosnan rocked it through a couple of songs – but hey all in a good cause. I  recommend it and shall be returning again to enjoy it once more. Apologies to ABBA fans but the songs in the film are much better renditions than the original efforts. The script is great and relationships between the characters very real, I had a lump in my throat for living on a Greek Island too – forgetting all the reasons why I chose to move back to England for the length of the film, wishing I had let my daughter grow up by the sea in the sunshine – but then dilapidated houses seem so much more romantic on screen than they are in reality!

Engleby

I picked up this one because several people had asked if I had read it – because part of it is written as journal entries – one of my narratives in Korakas is in journal form and they thought it might be useful to me. Very different from mine however, but I am glad I read it. Mike Engleby is an odd chap but worth reading.

If like me you were anywhere near London in the 80s it will make you smile. If like L you were at university during the 70s it will make you smile. It’ll probably do the same wherever you were or whatever you were doing during those decades. The unreliability of Mike’s (Engleby’s) narration crept over me slowly – maybe I’m just slow. I found myself laughing at some of the statements he made and as the story unfolded my laughter turned to gasping as I couldn’t believe he actually said some of the stuff, then it dawned on me that pooor old Mike might not be all he cracked himself up to be.

Another one I am pushing at people saying, ‘you must read this’ although since reading it I have read some of the reveiews and they are anything but complimentary!

Macmillan New Writers

Long time no write I know – but I went to a writer’s group in Leicester the other evening to listen to a chap from Macmillan New Writers speak. MNW was set up two years ago by Pan Macmillan to find new writers. You email your complete manuscript to them (usual thing – guidelines on their web site) at the moment he reckons they are receiving 150 a day and they are trying to respond withing twelve weeks. If you haven’t heard within that time you haven’t been selected. If you are selected to be published (they are publishing twelve new authors a year at the moment) they do a basic run of hardback, no advance just a share of royalties. The reality of this is that you may not get an upfront payment, and due to average sales for first novels in hardback you may only get £1000 or so in royalties. But it still seems a good option to me. I don’t expect my first novel to be a smash hit, I’ll just be content to see it published. Macmillan are looking for writers with potential, who can go on to publish second and third novels. The thing that attracts me to this is that unless somebody would give me an advance of £30,000 I wouldn’t be able to give up work anyway, so for the moment writing is going to have to fit around paid work, so waiting for royalties isn’t a problem. As the whole novel is submitted the readers have the opportunity of whizzing through to see how good it is throughout and at the end, so the emphasis isn’t on those first three chapters. They came in for a lot of bad press at the outset, but I reckon it is quite a good way to get into the market place. If they choose to publish your novel (has to be a debut novel, any genre) they have an option on your second one and if you want an agent you are still free to get yourself an agent.

However… isn’t it a bit like self publishing? They copy edit but don’t edit, they do a special hardback edition rather than paperback. No special marketing budget. No advance just royalties? Is it a step into the world of publishing or is it just their way of low risk publishing and picking up on second novels if they hit a winner?

Interested to know what you think.

Yeauargh

I can’t think of anything more coherent to write at the moment. Work is manic, home is manic, life is manic – now someone is going to tell me what the dictionary definition of manic is and that it is the wrong word to use

manic

 

  • adjective 1 relating to or affected by mania. 2 showing wild excitement and energy.

  — DERIVATIVES manically adverb.

okay – missuse of the word – but it is busy and irritating and non  stop and wearing and tedious and I am on the verge of applying to the Apprentice or Britain’s Got Talent – anything to bring me a blast of money and a change of life – perhaps that’s not the right phrase either – let’s hope that particular hormonal interlude will stay away for a while – don’t really need any more imbalance right now. Why am I working so hard to pay the gas man?

 

Caught up in The Gathering

I have just finished reading Anne Enright’s ‘The Gathering’. What a bloody marvellous book. My good friend Maxine told me it was the best book she’d read in decades and so off I trotted during my lunchbreak to buy a copy (with the WH Smith voucher I bought off Tall Boy – an unwanted gift at Christmas.) I have read it in two days flat – and that with work and family getting in the way – standing waiting for the kettle to boil, stirring spag bol in the pan and sat on the toilet (lid down) whilst curly boy is in the bath.

She writes with such embarassing honesty. Maxine said it was so good it almost made her want to give up writing, I do hope she won’t. For me, on the contrary, it made me rethink how I am writing. I am resolved to write as honestly too, no holding back, cut the gentility. I have no aged relations who may take offence at what I have written. She says stuff that all of us must think some of the time, or at least some of us think, some of the time, or at least wish we could think. She doesn’t bang on about being Irish (sorry Frank McCourt – loved Angela’s Ashes, but ) it is just who she is. I didn’t feel excluded from a special club, ‘well you’re not Irish..’ ‘ well you’re not Catholic..’ she deals with men and sex and marriage and children and love and grieving and held me in limbo along with Veronica, who waits for her brother’s body to be shipped back to Ireland. Memories floated around, tangled and confused, much as they do in my own family, ‘you weren’t even there,’ ‘that wasn’t Summer, that was Easter,’ ‘it was a blue car,’ ‘ we never even had a car when we lived there,’ you know how it goes. It made me cry like funerals of virtual strangers can make me cry, because I’m afraid next time it will be someone closer to home, and because I know one day it will be somone closer to home. It made me cry because on some days that’s exactly how I feel, except I’d never even get as far as Gatwick airport, I only get as far as wanting to run away. It made me cry because I run around being indispensable too, when actually if I stopped doing it, it wouldn’t matter at all, because most of it is pointless in the greater scheme of things.

And look what it’s done as well – I’m back blogging – can’t be bad – just had to have something worth sitting still to write about.