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.

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?

 

Sidetracked by Deep Hanging Out

Since Korakas is set in Crete, I couldn’t resist picking this up and having a read. I thought I’d check out how Richard Gwyn tackled the place. Funnily enough, although his book is far from what I am aiming for, we have the same feelings about the place – Crete that is – a land of stories and mis-information, myths and legends which tip over into reality. There’s a fair amount of sex in his book, and little more than sexual tension in mine. Mind you, his sex is very clear and unfussy, does what it says, no more, no less. Not gratuitous, just there. His book is set in the 1980s. My ex lived on the island for a while in the 70s and much of what he remembers is echoed in Gwyn’s version of the place, which is pretty close to how I remember the place when I lived there during the late 80s and early 90s.

I don’t suppose I would have picked up Gwyn’s book to read were it not for the setting, but I’m glad I did. It’s easy to get into habits with books and I enjoyed reading something that I ordinarily might have passed over. I did have the odd inward groan that he discusses topics which I cover in my as-yet-incomplete book, and writes passages in italics – as I do in parts of mine – although his italics are a stream of consciousness and mine are for the character of the mother. I suppose it would be impossible to write about a place like Crete without echoing some other book which has come before. At least it shows that if Korakas were published it may well pick up readers curious about the setting as much as those curious about the story.

If you have ever visited Crete, Hania in particular, I think you would enjoy reading Deep Hanging Out. If you enjoyed his last book The Colour of a Dog Running Away I reckon you should give it a whirl. If neither of the above apply, you could give it a whirl anyway. It took me a while to settle into, but I did eventually and I’m glad I did. I wasn’t too keen on the young protagonist, Cosmo Flute, but I don’t suppose I was meant to be. There were moments where I felt it was a bit over-written and Gwyn packed in too much factual/political information, perhaps a bit heavy handed in places, but the politics of Crete is quite heavy, so he’s forgiven. I may even have to lend my copy to the ex – much as it pains me to share with him – but I think he would appreciate the book, if only to reminisce about his home from way back.

windswept and interesting…

Well – found a photo for the book jacket - all I have to do now is get a book to go inside it. Had the letter saying no thankyou for my one-to-one at the Writing Conference on Saturday, so that’s another avenue temporarily closed. Ah well,  back to the grind, done 3,000 words today, not bad going. If I can get this thing finished I think I might be able to write a decent synopsis or outline – that seems to be the hardest part for me. What is Korakas about anyway? Is it about a girl, a mother, a daughter, an island, a man, a beast? Is it about magic or is it about control? All of the above, but so hard to pin it down and make it sound interesting.

The photograph was taken by the other half last year, possibly the year before. In Norfolk on the beach, I think. Might have been Dorset though? Both holidays under canvas where nature and the wind played a great part in proceedings. I found the picture stuffed behind the computer, a real print of a real image printed on real photographic paper from an actual negative – how old fashioned. Not having a scanner, I snapped it on my mobile phone and transferred it here that way – how very modern. I must say I still prefer good old prints to digital – but the quick fix of digital makes this blogging thing more colourful.

Just time to post this before doing the school run. So my day of writng will come to a halt and the afternoon of cooking several meals to placate the disparate tastes of my lot will commence. I swore I’d never do it, but one of them only eats veg, the other won’t eat any veg at all and likes fish, the third will eat some veg, likes meat with gravy, but won’t eat casserole. Added to this the oven has broken, so somewhat limited as to what I can produce. You get the picture, I’m sure.

Notes from…

It took a while to get through On Chesil Beach, a few weeks ago. I enjoyed parts of it, but I must admit I was left feeling a bit in the lurch. Not really a novel and not really a short story. I know, I know, a novella. But honestly, I wanted more. Maybe it’ll make a great film one day – I found the last part a bit tedious and a bit of an ‘information dump’ (a Graham Joyce phrase which I think describes perfectly that thing writers do when they just drop a whole load of facts on the reader instead of weaving them into the story piece by piece).

I set to on my own writing for a while, but then the computer went on the blink and I had to send it off to be fixed. Then my aged laptop decided to follow suit. So, I grabbed a cheap book at the supermarket - Patrick Gale’s Notes from an exhibition. What a great book. It is about a bi-polar painter and her Quaker husband (and their four children) and the truth about her life, which is revealed after her death – set for the most part in Penzance – it sounds dreadful, but it isn’t. He switches the narrative from view point to view point effortlessly, skipping from the present into the past and back again, allowing the reader to learn about every family member. No point me explaining any more, but if you fancy a good read, then read it.

The computer is back with a brand new hard drive (thanks to the extended warranty I didn’t even know I had) and I am inspired by Patrick Gale to attack my own stuff again. I have two viewpoints in my book (mother and daughter) and the narrative flips between the past and the present in turn, so reading Notes from was really helpful. I think so hard about how I am writing and which view or what time I am in, sometimes it seems quite laboured – having read Gale’s notes at the back of his book I realise that he planned and plotted to achieve a seamless result, so there is hope for mine yet.