Writing Ourselves Well - Blog

2012-01-24T17:19:00.002Z

I was given an ereader - a Kobo - for Christmas and I have been exploring its potentials. I have discovered it is good for reading in bed and while travelling. It is bad for reading poetry (though this appears to depend on how the digitisation has been done) and academic books with end or footnotes.

Like most ereader owners I have been investigating the freebies (though as a writer this slightly goes against the grain as the writer (or his/her estate) presumably doesn't get paid). Most of the free downloads are out of print books which means discovering some volumes I would never have nosed into otherwise.

One such was Famous Women: George Sand by Bertha Thomas, a surprisingly pacy and fresh read given it was written/published in 1883. I also found out more about Sand, a woman I knew more by myth than fact.

This is what she had to say about the revolutionaries/politicians that disappointed her: 'What I see in the midst of the divergencies of all these reforming sects is a waste of generous sentiments and of noble thoughts, a tendency towards social amelioration, but an impossibility for the time to bring forth through the want of a head to that great body with a hundred hands, that tears itself to pieces, for not knowing what to attack. So far the struggles make only dust and noise. We have not yet come to the era that will construct new societies, and people them with perfected men.'

How apt even for today.

2012-01-17T16:56:00.003Z

I've been enjoying reading The Plot, a biography of my father's English acre, by Madeleine Bunting. Beautifully and evocatively written it combines local and natural history with personal memoir. It also gave an excuse for a bracing walk around Sutton Bank followed by a cosy lunch in a near-by pub.

One extract, in particular, caught my eye, as she describes a time as experiencing: 'dramatic population growth and a new urbanization [which] saw towns and cities expanding rapidly. It was an age of anxiety. ... trade was accelerating. There were repeated laments about the commercialization of human relationships. ... "everyone has their price" was a common and bitter refrain. An unprecedented number of people were on the move, as migrants, pilgrims or vagrants. With these changes came a new impersonality, as strangers became customers and neighbours in the cities. It all caused great insecurity; money was frequently excoriated as a form of pollution. Greed was the great sin of the age...'

Could this be our own (painful for many) present? No, surprisingly, this is the twelfth century and these changes in society caused the Cistercian monks to seek out East Yorkshire to build their isolated and austere abbeys.

2012-01-10T18:38:00.002Z

Over the festive season I very much enjoyed reading Author, Author by David Lodge. Not wishing, of course, to put myself in the same league as Henry James when it comes to his forté as a writer, I do feel a kinship with his frustration and depression at the luke-warm reception for much of his work.

Writing in the author's voice, Lodge ponders on the reasons for this response to James's literary output: 'Some huge seismic shift caused by a number of different converging forces - the spread and thinning of literacy, the levelling effect of democracy, the rampant energy of capitalism, the distortion of values of journalism and advertising - which made it impossible for a practitioner of the art of fiction to achieve both excellence and popularity, as Scott and Balzac, Dickens and George Elliot, had done in their prime. The best one could hope for was sufficient support from discriminating readers to carry on with the endless quest for aesthetic perfection.' (P348).

How familiar that sounds, and yet Lodge meant it to represent the situation in 1898.

I will finish with James's own words, from his short story, 'The Middle Years':

'We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have.

Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task.

The rest is the madness of art.'

2012-01-02T18:46:00.000Z

Healing Words: an introduction therapeutic creative writing
This one day experiential workshop will give an introduction to the use of creative writing and poetry both for personal reflection and within a therapeutic space. It is suitable for health professionals who have an interest in writing and for writers who have an interest in working therapeutically. It is a taster for an up-coming Open College Network accredited course.

Tutor: Kate Evans, UKCP registered counsellor, MA in Creative Writing & member of Lapidus (www.lapidus.org.uk)

4th February, 2012, 930am-5pm, at Scarborough Psychotherapy Training Institute (ScPTI), YO12 7QU. £65 (ScPTI members)/£85 (non-members)
Contact: mail@scpti.co.uk

2011-12-21T09:30:00.002Z

Wintery Solstice greetings. Let us all work together for a more peaceful and just 2012.

2011-12-13T06:53:00.004Z

During my reading yesterday I came across this quote from French poet, essayist and thinker, Paul Valéry (1871-1945):

'The true poet does not know the exact meaning of what he has just had the good luck to write. A moment later he is a mere reader. He has written non-sense: something that must not present but receive a meaning, and that is very different. ... The verse is waiting for a meaning. The verse is waiting for a reader.'

(JR Lawler trans. In The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, ed J Matthews,

Princeton University Press)

I connected it immediately to the free writing I do. It is not until I read it back that I see meaning, indeed, having done the exercise of going back through my journals, it may not be until I re-read it some time later that I grasp what is being said. What I was trying to communicate.

It also applies to when we let our words go free to an audience beyond ourselves. How relaxed can we be about them not 'getting it'? How prepared are we that they will find their own meanings in what we have written, which might diverge from what we intended?

2011-12-08T19:43:00.003Z

Going through my old writing journals I found an entry inspired by John O'Donohue, poet, priest and philosopher, who died in 2008. He contrasted the external world with each individual's 'profoundly nameless' internal world, and said that if we live only in the external our 'heart will whither in the famine fields of image, information and noise'. He also warned that, though there maybe some security in sameness and predictability, there is no growth or peace in a denied life and to renege on the call of our creativity is to rob ourselves of everything.

Though I love the lights and baubles which twinkle out into the darkness at this time of year, I fear the boisterous commercialism creates a famine for our souls which no turkey - however huge - can satiate. The accepted and banal rush and bustle and stress associated with the buying and primping and over-indulging of a modern-day Christmas will surely leave us feeling empty when the New Year comes around.

2011-11-29T14:29:00.004Z

I have been watching Art of America on BBC4. In the last programme (I saw) the lovely Andrew Graham-Dixon was exploring the work of abstract painters and it occurred to me, where were the abstract movements in literature?

Perhaps poetry is closer to visual art than prose. I can see how some poems could be said to be part of an abstract vision in that they attempt to capture the essence of a thing or a moment, to grasp what's inside rather than what's perceived from the outside.

But novels appear to be less conducive to such experimentation. Apart from a few notable exceptions, we still write novels in the same way as we did when the 'first' ones took this country by storm in the 1700s. As a writer I've struggled to conceive of how to create a narrative which is only about essence, and as a reader I wonder whether I would accept such abstraction. Would I not miss the comfort of being taken by the hand through a story?

2011-11-16T09:26:00.002Z

It comes from a well-known saying, I know, so not a new thought, but this Haiku presented itself to me this week:

Fragile and silent
the wings of the butterfly
may yet brew a storm.

2011-11-08T12:37:00.003Z

A couple of weeks ago I went to 'Anniversary - an act of memory', a performance piece celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights created by Monica Ross. There was something compelling about the experience, however, I couldn't help thinking that the declaration is perhaps showing its age.

Proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly on the 10th of December 1948, it was born out of war and conflict. A key phrase comes in its preamble: 'Whereas disregard and contempt of human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of humankind...'

There are still barbarous acts in this world of ours, yet, it seems to me, that the declaration no longer covers all the bases - and, indeed, sometimes came over as anachronistic. Article 17: 'Everyone has the right to own property...' and Article 23: 'Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment...' come to mind.

But for me it was mainly what was missing: the rights of our planet and our duties and responsibilities to it and to each other.

The preamble, with its repeated use of 'Whereas' has an almost poetic feel to it. I would suggest a few additions to it:
Whereas we are part of a larger family than the human one.
Whereas we rely on the bounty of the earth and her gifts.
Whereas we are not owners of our planet but custodians.
Whereas we have responsibilities as well as rights.
Whereas we acknowledge our mistakes of the past, let us learn from them.

I still feel the article which poses the greatest challenge is Article 29 which attempts to address the problem that our 'rights' often conflict with those of others. Maybe if the earth's rights became more central, this would be a way through such tensions and contradictions.

2011-10-30T20:41:00.003Z

I went to see The Art of Persuasion at the Stephen Joseph Theatre this weekend, a first play from author Roger Osborne. It was masterful. I was going to add, 'for a debut', however, that would have been disingenuous. This was a play any dramatist would have been proud of writing.

To be honest, I wasn't keen on the topic, thinking I saw enough scheming politicians on the nightly news, I didn't need to spend my Saturday evening with them too. But I was gripped from the beginning. The Art of Persuasion explored how and why corruption happens with wit and intelligence, it also set up audience expectations in the first act, only to bowl straight through them in the second and continue to rip 'em down in the third.

This was apparently a 'workshop' performance put on with the minimum rehearsal and scanty resources. You would not have known it. The actors were superb, absorbing us into their sordid little drama whether we wanted to go there or not.

Osborne, already a well-known and accomplished non-fiction writer, has crossed genre with aplomb. Creative plasticity is something that I have addressed in previous blogs and it was raised again on the Culture Show (BBC2) this week. Steve McQueen was asked whether he was now an artist who expressed himself in film or a film maker who sometimes painted. Giving the interviewer a withering look, McQueen responded that he would go wherever his creativity chose to take him. I was considerably heartened by this (for myself and my attempts at melding the visual with the literary) and, further, hope that Osborne continues to take his talents for a turn on the stage.

2011-10-26T10:23:00.005+01:00

I have just got back from the 3rd International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry (http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/cqr/international-symposium-on-poetic-inquiry.html) which was held at Bournemouth University from the 20th to the 23rd of October. It was a very rich experience with researchers coming from Canada, the US, South Africa, Denmark, as well as from around the UK. I was the novice of the bunch. At the same time I did feel at home and that I had something to offer from my experience as a writer-poet, therapist and researcher.

Poetry Inquiry is a qualitative research method, it is relatively new, it is controversial. The symposium offered case studies as well as some of the on-going debates. I was pleased too that there was room for the magical. A candlelit evening of poetry at the Russell-Cotes museum (http://www.russell-cotes.bournemouth.gov.uk/) and the conference dinner at the Langtry Manor Hotel (http://www.langtrymanor.co.uk/), the house built in 1877 by Edward VII for his mistress Lillie Langtry.

I was also given the gift of discovering how to perform Haiku, which I tried to do on the final day with this offering:

Hungry, I arrived.
Satiated by your words
I leave with silence.

2011-10-18T22:19:00.002+01:00

Loved when
I turn to you.
Scared of how you might greet
The precious cargo of me, becomes
Entwined with you. Full knowing.
Now I exist.

2011-10-10T10:48:00.003+01:00

I am very pleased to see my latest article in print: 'The chrysalis and the butterfly: a phenomenological study of one person's writing journey' Journal of Applied Arts & Health, Vol 2 No 2, 2011.

I am particularly proud of this piece as I think it accomplishes the mix of academic and creative which I've been striving for. I also believe it does justice to the moving story my interviewee entrusted me with. [I am working hard not to add in a 'nearly' and an 'almost' in these last two sentences].

One of the aspects of the creative cycle (that I've blogged about before) is the idea of fully completing the process by feeling the achievement before moving onto the next project. I am endeavouring to do that, though, of course, for me, the writing never stops.

2011-10-04T19:30:00.002+01:00

Last week I saw a recording of Edith Sitwell being interviewed in 1959 by John Freeman for the BBC Face to Face programme. It was extraordinary to watch this woman, who I had read so much about and seen in so many still pictures, animated. I was initially struck by how bad her teeth were.

I became frustrated by Freeman's questioning style, so much was left out and unexplored. 'Poetry has two parents,' Dame Edith said. What did she mean?

A critic once stated that Sitwell was 'as ugly as modern poetry'. I, of course, don't find either unattractive. Edith looked beautiful, almost ecstatic in a religious sense, as she talked about filling a notebook with re-writes of just one poem and then, sometimes, 'putting it aside for a while'. Her poetry was inspired, she said, by a humble love of God and of humanity and she described the artist undergoing perpetual 'resurrections' as they find over and over renewed inspiration for their creative work.

It was wonderful to see how poetry could fill this woman - ill, depressed, at the end of her life - with such vigour. Maybe it will do the same for me when my days begin to run out.

2011-09-27T21:58:00.002+01:00

I wonder how many other people after watching the entertaining Fry's Planet Word on BBC on Sunday, were left with the same question as me: when does a series of grunts move from being 'just' communication to being a language?

Fry argued, as many before him have, that it is language which sets humans apart from other animals. And, indeed, uniquely on this planet, we appear to have genes specifically geared towards making language acquisition a natural process, as well as the specialised vocal apparatus.

But what is language? Our nearest cousins in the primate world communicate with each other, and can be taught to use symbols which communicate with us. However, this is not language, according to Fry, because it is merely responding to an immediate emotion or need in the present moment.

So, in that case, when I request a glass of water or say, 'I'm scared', have I dropped from the pinnacle denoted as 'language' to the base 'communication'?

2011-09-21T09:38:00.004+01:00

While at the Lapidus (http://www.lapidus.org.uk/) agm the other weekend, I attended a writing workshop facilitated by Vicky Field. We were exploring the idea of islands and afterwards I did one of my cartoons in my writing journal. It is the first time I have put one of my sketches on public view!

I am really enjoying seeing where my visual creativity can take me and how it complements or enhances my writing.

It is interesting that we tend to categorise ourselves in one art form or another, and yet, I'm beginning to feel, this is a false pigeon holing. There are famous examples of those who were wordsmiths as well as artists, such as William Blake, and less well known ones, for instance Daphne Du Maurier painted when she was blocked in her writing.

I heard Kwame Kwei-Armah say on the radio some time ago that in this country we distrust people who want to branch out into many art forms. It's a shame if this were true, since, I believe, the blossoming of one aspect of our creativity helps the fruition of another.

2011-09-14T18:03:00.002+01:00

Found Poetry
I've just visited London, a place I lived on the edge of for some years, but never felt at home in. Going to pick up a tube map at Kings Cross, I found instead a similarly configured leaflet entitled 'Polish Poems on the Underground'.

What a trove. One poem, in particular, spoke to me immediately:

I returned to you years later,
gray and lovely city,
unchanging city
buried in the waters of the past.

I'm no longer the student
of philosophy, poetry, and curiosity,
I'm not the young poet who wrote
too many lines

(Extract from Star by Adam Zagajewski, trans Clare Cavanagh)

2011-09-07T09:48:00.002+01:00

I'm still strimming my writing journals and have found this which appears appropriate for this time of year:

Autumn Jazz

Stewing apples on the old agar.

The last of the crop.

A nothing woman,

then she takes up the sax -

her notes crack the blue,

finding the lost.

2011-08-31T10:55:00.003+01:00

While gazing at my four season collages, an artist friend said, and when you look at them, doesn't it take you back to the moment you made them?

I gave a non-committal reply as that didn't quite fit for me. On the other hand, delving back into my writing journals, as I have been doing recently, certainly allows me to time travel. Seeing my words and the way they are formed - the size and consistency of the letters - on the paper, tells me a great deal about how I was feeling at the time.

I've been discussing whether it is possible to keep a reflective writing journal on line. Perhaps for some it is. However, I wonder whether the technology not only means that the writing loses its spontaneity, that 'before the thought is fully formed' quality, but also the visual impact of how it was written when reading back.

In my journals I've been finding titbits to inspire my present writing projects. I also re-discovered this which I still like as a meditative little piece:

Those moments I lost

in the pettiness of things,

I find again in the sea's

underwater calm.

Those moments I lost

in the fear of things,

I find again in the sea's

night terrors.

2011-08-22T14:47:00.002+01:00

I love to sit at the top of our garden by our lavender bushes and watch the indsutry of bees. I am humbled that they put so much effort in and, over their lifetime, produce just a tea spoon of honey. I wonder what my tea spoon of honey will be?

Bee Keeper
Today I feel the weight of honey,
the deliberateness of bees.

I sip my lavender cup
then slip to the next,
through draped cherry skirts,
my bloomers pollen yellow,
with a certainty and a fecundity
insects know
and humans have lost.

I will have my portion of nectar today,
create my share of sweetness.

2011-08-16T08:53:00.002+01:00

My mind goes back to the International Human Sciences Conference which I attended in July. One of the keynote speakers was Professor Bernd Jager from the University of Quebec. He spoke about creation myths and how they might be used to understand (rather than explain) aspects of our shared humanity.

He suggested some commonalities in these myths: action followed by encounter, then a 'standing back' and a 'calling forth' of what has been created. This is followed by a benediction, a 'seeing that it was good'.

And I thought that it is often the 'benediction' which I forget, the moment (in Gestalt terms) of satisfaction, when the desire has been fulfilled. Perhaps that's why sometimes I feel like a hamster on a wheel.

Jager talked about the importance in myth of the rhythmic succession of 'creation' followed by 'benediction' and 'rest'. I wonder if there is something unhealthy in having lost this sequence.

2011-08-08T15:49:00.003+01:00

How to get started writing? It’s no secret that I am a great advocate of what I call ‘free’ writing. Free writing throws off any inflexible rules about how writing ought to look or about what it ought to say. I call it free writing. Others have described it in different ways, such as unconscious or automatic writing where we write whatever is in our heads in as muddled up or disorderly fashion as possible. From this ‘mess’ can be drawn words or phrases which are often surprising and can be the springboard for further, more crafted, writing.

Natalie Goldberg in her seminal work Writing Down the Bones, gives the following 'rules' for free writing: keep to a time limit*; keep your hand moving; don't cross out; don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar; lose control; don't think; don't get logical; go for the jugular (if something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy)
* I would suggest initially three minutes, working up to five or ten.

The aim is to 'burn through to first thoughts … to the place where you are writing what your mind actually sees and feels, not what it thinks it should see or feel', to 'explore the rugged edge of thought.' (Goldberg, p8/9)

This does take practice and may initially go against the writing instinct, especially if you have a particularly rigid attitude to writing taken from certain experiences in the past, school for instance.

Surrealists used free writing before they painted and I introduced it to a local artist, John Bell. He has recently sent me this wonderful painting which expresses for him the process of ‘free’ writing.

John explains: I just thought you may like to see the attached picture entitled ‘Golden Thread’. It is about free writing; it reads left to right. The upper horizontal line represents thoughts we are aware of, but there's lots going on beneath.

Tracing free writing along this upper line gives a peak to represent a gold nugget dredged to the surface. This, tracing further, gives an opportunity to be enlightened by this revelation, and a realisation of more, perhaps even larger ‘nuggets’ to uncover later.

(For more information about John's art, contact:johnrbell52@hotmail.com

So this Summer, set your writerly hand free and discover the treasure just below the surface.

2011-08-01T12:29:00.003+01:00

I have just returned from the 30th International Human Science Research Conference: Intertwining body-self-world (St Catherine's College, Oxford, 27th-30th July 2011).

It is difficult to encapsulate the experience in one word. It was so many things: interesting; challenging; scary; lonely; full of encounters; warm; thought-provoking; curious; confusing... I think that what it all means to me will unfold and change over the coming months, depending, perhaps, on what happens next and on what ideas and acquaintances will be deepened.

Under the curious heading must come the 'workshop' given by an American Dennis Rebelo, who tutors business entrepreneurs in creating a more effective personal story (and, most amazingly, gets paid for it!) He put up his first powerpoint slide with his title: 'Phenomenologically-Structured Storying for Threshold Moments in Life and Work'. What made me start and look again was that he had actually trade-marked the phrase: Threshold Moments. It came as a complete shock to me that you can trade-mark words, trade-mark a meaning. Is this even possible? What happens if I decide to use threshold and moments according to my own fashion? I wonder, even as I type this, whether I need his permission to put these two words together in a sentence.

Yes there were times during the conference when I felt out of place, a little lost. On the other hand, I was impressed by the other delegates' passion for their research within the human sciences, and also their capacity to hold onto a belief that what they are doing will somehow improve the world around them. That was comforting.

2011-07-25T14:24:00.002+01:00

Fry's English Delight on Radio 4 on the 18th of July was dedicated to brevity. So I will keep this short.

During the programme he talked about the Haiku, one of my favourite forms when writing poetry, with Caroline Gourlay. She said the Haiku captures a moment, it brings us to an awareness, it brings us to silence.

I had a big meeting last week and I lost my voice. I wrote:

Inevitably,
the week I am to be heard,
my voice crawls away.

I found I wanted to change the last line to: my voice croaks because of the double meaning (to die). I'm still not sure which I prefer, however, the first version gives me the syllables normally required for a Haiku. Although, as Gourlay also suggested, I know the syllable 'rule' for the Haiku could be seen as spurious, given that the Chinese and Japanese languages (where the form originates) uses characters and not words which can be broken down as ours can.

2011-07-20T10:47:00.003+01:00

The question is whether I am going to be the only blogger in the world (or, at least, in the UK and the US) not to post about the Murdochs? And it is tempting to think that there is nothing else going on of import, however that would be wrong. Wars are still being fought, peace is still being pursued, famine and poverty are still killing. Awful as what went on at the News of the World was - and I have always said it was a shabby enterprise and wondered why people propped it up by buying it - these other truths are equally as weighty.

We have two young, female language students staying with us, one from Spain, Laura, and one from Switzerland, Selina. Last night around the dinner table we tried to put the world to rights. Laura said she would give half the wealth from the richest in the world to the poorest. Selina said she felt the money should go into sustainable projects rather than to individuals. I said that it's been proved many times over that educating girls and women was effective in lifting the whole family out of poverty.

Laura, in particular, reminded me of myself as a late teen, ambitious for her writing, idealistic, fiery. She said if you're not a dreamer when you are young, it will never happen. Perhaps she is right. I have certainly become more cynical, more world-weary, less sure of what might bring about change. For Laura and Selina I hope that the future will not buff off their sparkly edges quite so much and that their ideas will be given the opportunity to shine.

2011-07-11T16:26:00.001+01:00

My article on Writer's Block has been published. You can see it at:

http://www.eurocps.eu/sites/default/files/Journal2011_i5.pdf

Obviously any comments or thoughts would be gratefully received by email!

2011-07-06T08:32:00.002+01:00

It is sometimes - though not always - reassuring to hear other (more famous, more published) writers talk.

Desert Island Discs, Radio 4, 17th June, 2011
Kirsty Young: When did you realise you were a writer?
Andrea Levy: Any day now.

Even one as Andrea Levy struggles with seeing herself as a writer. Writing, putting marks on a paper which form symbols that others can interpret, is something the majority of the population in this country do in one form or another, at one time or another. Yet to be a writer appears to be mean more than this.

Margaret Atwood (Negotiating with the Dead, Virago, 2003) suggests:
'A lot of people do have a book in them … But this is not the same as “being a writer.” Or, to put it in a more sinister way: everyone can dig a hole in a cemetery, but not everyone is a grave-digger. The latter takes a good deal more stamina and persistence. It is also, because of the nature of the activity, a deeply symbolic role. As a grave-digger, you are not just a person who excavates. You carry upon your shoulders the weight of other people’s projections, of their fears and fantasies and anxieties and superstitions…' (p23)

It has taken a lot for me to own the title writer. And it is still a work in progress, especially when the reviews are bad. Or, worse, there is no feedback at all - no-one is interested in what I am doing. At moments like that, the only way forward, for me, is to keep putting those strange symbols down and hope at some point they will make sense and have meaning to another person.

2011-06-14T17:38:00.003+01:00

I will spread my wings,
one tranquil eve, as gulls do,
and ride the updraft.

Written after a beautiful evening in the garden of The Victoria at Robin Hood's Bay watching the sea birds.

2011-06-06T10:22:00.002+01:00

I've just finished Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín. Over-all I found it a slightly dissatisfying read. I didn't believe in the heroine Eilis. She didn't strike me as being like any woman I had ever met, come across or heard of, especially her attitude to her painful and underwhelming first experience of sex. It did occur to me that she might be more of a male fantasy of what a woman ought to be like.

In complete contrast, I felt utterly taken by the protagonist in Siri Hustvedt's The Sorrows of an American. Is this evidence of better writing, or just that Hustvedt creates a female fantasy of what a man ought to be? And I happily buy into it (the erotic tenor of the first sentence of this paragraph is not lost on me).

There is an argument that the talent in good writers shows in how they craft characters very different from themselves. Then, on the other hand, it could be said that our stories are merely peopled by facsimiles of ourselves with different wigs on.

Perhaps it doesn't matter. Maybe there are enough diverse writers out there to construct abundant realities, and it is for us readers to decide which dream world we are prepared to step into.

2011-05-30T12:07:00.003+01:00

An old man sits down to author his memoirs. For three hours every day he writes longhand in a notebook. He dies. When his daughter discovers his work, she reads page after page: 'I lived. I lived. I lived.'

Is this a short story? It being brief and a narrative.

2011-05-24T07:02:00.002+01:00

A number of years ago I bought a CD, Poetry in Performance (Vol 2, 57 Productions, www.poetryjukebox.com) and I was immediately caught by the arresting 'the poem that was really a list' by Francesca Beard.

More recently, her haunting diction and striking rhythms have come back to me. I cannot claim this voice totally for myself, though the ideas are mine, and it keeps breaking out:

The caretaker who is really a poet.
The criminal who is really a protester.
The civilian who may be a rebel.
The child who is collateral damage.
The terrorist who might have been a goat herder.
The wrestle which was really an embrace.
The philosopher who was really stone.
The scaffold which was once a tree.
The meditation that was really sleep.
The words which became a knife.

Try it for yourself, especially while you are watching the news.

2011-05-17T16:48:00.001+01:00

I am very excited to announce that poet, Jackie Kay, who was 'in residence' during the Scarborough Literature Festival in April, went to see 'Words in My Head'. She wrote the following:

‘I spent a dreamy, special hour transported by this extraordinary soundscape/art installation. It seemed as if it was reaching my very soul! Sitwell gets inside your head. She’s an inspiration.’

2011-05-09T10:46:00.002+01:00

Recently, I was struck again by my relative safety as compared to what faces great swathes of my fellow human beings. Unlike many women, I am not scratching around for enough to eat, or walking miles for (supposedly) clean water, or living in a flimsy shelter, or under the constant threat of physical or sexual violence. Unlike many writers around the world, I am not worried that the next poem I create will mean I will end up in prison.

In this country, we have mostly come to see poetry as something safe and fluffy, comforting, perhaps, on ocassion challenging. But dangerous? Yet as I lie in my snug bed, I listen to a Lybian reciting poetry which has landed him in prison and caused him to be tortured. The authorities found these words (which, of course, I cannot understand as they are in his own language) so menacing and intimidating that they had to shut the perpetrator up. Incarcerated, he had no access to paper and pens, so he spent hours committing his poetry to memory, another act of difiance.

Words, these things we often use irreverantly or with little thought or effort, are seen in some parts as if they had the force of grenades and the power to topple regimes.

2011-05-02T11:27:00.002+01:00

Barry Forshaw (biographer of Steig Larsson), speaking at the Scarborough Literature Festival, tries to convince us that Larsson's Millennium trilogy is good, despite how badly written it is. An interesting argument. Apparently, the rumour that if only Larsson had lived, his books would have been better edited, is false. His editor says they are exactly as the author intended. In other words, in my opinion, poorly structured, poorly plotted and with flimsy, unengaging characterisation.

According to Forshaw, Larsson enjoyed his comics, and that made sense to me, what he should have been writing were graphic novels. How they have gained the reputation for literariness is beyond me. Not that some graphic novels can't be literary, I should hasten to add, just that many are not, and don't pretend to be.

During the talk it was also suggested that Lisbeth Salander is Pippi Longsotcking (Astrid Lindgren's wonderful creation) grown up. I was saddened by this thought. Pippi is above all other things kind and generous. Not adjectives I would associate with Larsson's broken and brittle heroine.

2011-04-26T18:19:00.002+01:00

The origin of words - etymology (from the Greek meaning true) - fascinates me. I have discovered that moonraker - the title of the James Bond movie - can mean simpleton from a story of two men found to be trying to 'rake' the reflection of the moon out of a pond. Or was it a barrel of smuggled brandy? Depends on which version you read.

And the word library comes from 'peel' as in a slice of bark or the papyrus on which our stories were originally written down. However, peel has other meanings, pulling back the layers to reach a core, for one, as we do when we read or write in order to undo the mysteries of existence.

Many authors attribute their choice of career and passions to entering a library. And I find the atmosphere in a library, not to mention the quirky mix of people, something special. Yet, knowledge is available from many different sources these days and, perhaps, books will become a thing of the past, so, maybe, our temples to them will too. Public libraries have been around for, what? 100 or 150 years? I wonder what community spaces will become as iconic to the coming generations?

2011-04-19T18:56:00.003+01:00

Rejection. Sarah Waters speaking at the recent Scarborough Literature Festival remembered sending out Tipping the Velvet to publishers. Three sample chapters and a synopsis plus a SAE. So when an envelope was posted through her letterbox with her own hand writing on, there was no doubt what was inside. Rejection.

Once we writers decide to seek an audience, rejection is inevitably a part of our lives. Whether it is in a tutor’s marking of an assignment; a manuscript returned from a publisher which looks like it has been handled only enough to deposit it into the pristine SAE; or a visitor exiting from ‘Words in My Head’ and saying loudly, ‘Now this is interesting,’ on finding a painting to examine (I am, of course, happy for that artist that they were appreciated). Rejection hurts. A little or a lot. It still hurts.

How to recover from it? The age old advice of:
(a) doing something nourishing for your writing;
(b) putting the rejected material aside for a while and getting on with something else;
(c) hoarding positive comments and praise which can be referred back to at this point;
(d) after a short period of time going back to the feedback and considering whether it has anything valid to say.

To survive as a writer, somewhere inside us we need to develop a steely reed of self belief, which may bend with the comments of others, but does not snap. And there is something to learn from rejection. Whether we choose to take it on board (partly or fully) or toss it aside, we find out, in that process, about what is important to our writing and to ourselves.

I would never wish rejection on anyone, however, I do occasionally wonder at the writers who appear to get beyond it, who are in a position where it seems no-one dares to offer up even the mildest critical comment. A bit like dictators who stay in power for thirty, forty years, who must begin to believe in their own invincibility and rightness because they are not told otherwise, is this healthy for any writer?

I love Edith Sitwell’s later poems. They are what inspired ‘Words in My Head’. Though even I would have to admit that there are not an insignificant number which could have done with a good edit.

Hideous though it is, there is perhaps a danger in no longer experiencing it – and, indeed, even forgetting what it is like – the rejection.

2011-04-12T19:26:00.005+01:00

'Words in My Head' is having another outing as a fringe event at the Scarborough Literature Festival.

http://www.scarboroughliteraturefestival.co.uk/fringeevents.htm

2011-04-05T16:59:00.003+01:00

What is a short story?
While teaching this current module on the University of Hull at Scarborough creative writing programme, I am constantly struck by the parallels between writing a short story and a poem.

Is this a short story?

The Incredibly Sophisticated, Utterly Grown-Up Helen Walters
Leeds: leggings, tutu skirt,
diamanté clips, sparkly pink make-up.
Stilettos - dagger heels - ten Wickeds sunk.

Filey beach: leggings, tutu skirt,
outsized jumper, sparkly pink wellies,
rod and net.
'Nan, look, the rock pool
has sunk the sun.'

I also like that the title is almost longer than the poem-story.

2011-03-29T16:40:00.002+01:00

Writer AS Byatt (as quoted by Dr Giles Fraser on 'Thought for the Day', the Today Programme, Radio 4, 16th March 2011) has said that since we no longer have religion to tell us our position in the world, we need social media, as we only exist if people tell us we do.

On the other hand, Byatt cites poet Wallace Stevens: 'From this the poem springs, that we live in a place that is not our own and, much more, not ourselves.' Suggesting that with the creative endeavour we have to come out of the self which others reflect back to go to another landscape, perhaps a lonelier, a bleaker, a less chatter filled one.

2011-03-22T16:35:00.002Z

What is a short story?

Tash Aw: 'For me, the short form is about suggestion, about the murkier, more troubled existence that lies beyond the confines of a few thousand words.'

After the Census by Kate Evans

‘Have you done it yet?’ ‘What?’ ‘The census.’ ‘Still got a week.’ ‘Yes, but you might as well get it done now.’ ‘Yes,’ she lifts it up and then quickly puts it down again without making a mark. ‘I’ll do it later.’

He turns back to his paper, flicking the pages with sharp snaps of his thick wrists. She knows it’s the idea of a great-great-great niece or nephew finding him in the 2011 records which is behind his keenness. He clears his throat, a guttural huh-huh-huh. She leaves the room as if an urgent appointment has just presented itself.

Once through the kitchen and back door, she slows her pace. The sky makes her think of being enclosed in one of those Fabergé eggs he so hankers after. Yolk flowers are beginning to spatter her forsythia twigs, the daffodils and crocuses have cracked through the ground and are rattling their heads together in a breeze laden with the earth’s dampness. She’d pulled on her wellies and an old jumper over her cashmere twin-set on the way out. Now she sits on a low wall and lights a cigarette. For a moment she considers the red-veined, oxalic-acid-green tongues waving above the pink stalks of rhubarb forcing their way through a bottomless upturned bucket. It was question 4 which had stopped her in her tracks.

How could she possibly know?

2011-03-17T16:01:00.002Z

For those who haven't seen it in today's Scarborough Evening News, my review of the latest biography of Edith Sitwell:

‘Edith Sitwell, Avant Garde Poet, English Genius’. Richard Greene’s title says it all. Rightly, in my opinion, he argues that Sitwell’s brilliance has been much misunderstood, ignored and, ultimately, forgotten. She did not, of course, help her own cause, making enemies of many a reviewer, labelling them the ‘Pipsqueakery’. And the ethereal nature of her work was out of step with the kitchen sink realism of the 1950s and ‘60s. Even so, Greene suggests, Sitwell’s almost complete rubbing out from the literary annals after her death in 1964, is deplorable. It is fitting then, that this new biography, thirty years after Victoria Glendinning’s, should be published to right this wrong.

Greene, in his 444 pages of narrative and 64 further pages of notes and references, does an admirable job of re-establishing Sitwell’s reputation. He also places Scarborough at the centre of her influences; not only her childhood experiences here, but the place itself. ‘Scratch the surface of Edith Sitwell’s poetry and you will find Scarborough and its contradictions. … In this seaport, fashion and frivolity formed a thin façade beyond which lay grief and catastrophe.’ However, it is not just, as Greene says, in terms of content, that Scarborough pulses through her poetry, it is in its very rhythms, echoing the sea’s which, as Sitwell herself wrote, came to beat within her veins.

Greene had access to documents that have only just become available, and his extensive volume comprehensively charts her life from unhappy childhood to the respected writer whose biography of Elizabeth I was once optioned by Hollywood. It details her torturous relationships, with her parents, her former governess and the artist Pavel Tcheltichew, as well as the more nourishing ones, especially with her brothers and fellow creatives such as Siegfried Sassoon and Stephen Spender.

Though Greene’s account is robustly written, for me it lacks the warmth of Glendinning’s. He appears to be very concerned with rooting out what ‘actually happened’. He seems to forget that, for a poet, honesty is not about facts, it is about a much more complex and compelling emotional truth.

'Edith Sitwell, Avant Garde Poet, English Genius' by Richard Greene was published in hardback by Virago on 3rd March 2011, £25

2011-03-07T19:54:00.006Z

Coastival was a success. Seven hundred people visited Wood End Creative Industries Centre during the three days to experience the various exhibitions there. Whether they all sat and listened through the whole of 'Words in My Head' cannot be known, however I like to think that maybe they were all touched by it in some way. It's as if I had produced a poetry collection and 700 people have at least picked it off the shelf, that's an achievement in poetry terms.

A few people also left praise-full comments, such as:
'A wonderful installation for the place - and a wonderful place for the installation!'
'Wonderful theatre.'
'Brill' signed, 'a non poetry person'.

Then there was the Cober Hill residential which generated a store of great writing for me and the participants. I went to see poet, Sean O'Brien, talk and read last Friday and he spoke about 'the silence' which follows the creation of a poetry book. It seems to me that we all need that moment of silence when we 'stand and stare' - marvel even - at all that we have done.

2011-03-01T18:19:00.002Z

Written on the Cober Hill residential:

And if we were to love
what then?

Would we dare to
spend a thousand years
loving?

Would we fight and scratch,
what if we did?
What would survive then?

And if we did love
ourselves and each other?

Deeply as the ocean rifts.
Passionately as the volcanic earth.
Secretly as the forest greens.
Endlessly as the desert drought.

And if we should love
more than hate?

Turn guns to ploughs,
bombs to heat,
soldiers to peacekeepers.

What then?
What then.

2011-02-26T12:15:00.003Z

Reflections while co-facilitating a residential workshop at Cober Hill:

The power of the word, the pen writing the word, why is it so unexpected? Visual art, music and dance can surely be as impactful? Is it the ordinariness of writing which makes its power extraordinary and startling and terrifying?

We meet ourselves in painting, sculpture and dance too, but, perhaps, we sign up more consciously for that - by taking up a special instrument or going to a demarcated space such as a studio or a dance floor?

2011-02-15T16:56:00.003Z

The age old question, when is it a Haiku and when is it a short imagist poem?

Snowdrops
Spring's barefoot dancers,
ragged skirts, their heads lolling,
- sun satiated.

2011-02-09T10:59:00.002Z

I have been watching Faulk on Fiction (BBC2, Saturdays, 9pm, part of the BBC's season of programmes leading up to World Book Day in March). I did note, on his first outing, SF did not mention any female writers, though since he has some in the coming three episodes, maybe I can forgive him.

The hero is dead, he says, at least in the modern literary novel. I am continually fascinated at how literature follows society following literature. The novel is the mirror, but, in seeing itself, society - or the individual - is transfigured. So have we come to a place, perhaps, where heroes are no longer welcome?

It is also interesting how great creative explosions are also dependent the more prosaic. Van Gough needed the development of the paint which could convey his imagination. Novels required the printing press, higher levels of literacy, people who saw a business opportunity in bringing bound pages of tales to the masses. What will the invention of our age, the internet, ultimately mean?

And when the oil which turns the turbines which creates the electricity which lights our computer screens runs out, how will we tell our stories then?

2011-02-01T17:10:00.002Z

I am watching a news report from a war zone. A soldier crouches over a rifle, there is a gentle 'phut', no more than the final breath escaping from a balloon. The journalist tells us this soldier has just killed a man.

It is an explanation which we need because the soldiers talk about a 'target down' and having 'dropped him'. It all reminds me of the the over-used, 'collateral damage'.

I wonder at how language can take us so far from the act. And at the seemingly innocent sound of a gun.

2011-01-26T07:19:00.005Z

A friend of mine said in an email that she was shocked by the sentiment expressed in the poem I posted recently. I couldn't understand what she was on about, until I re-read it and realised how it might be taken, out of context, as it was, posted on my blog. As part of the 'Words in My Head' sequence, hopefully it will be read as a homage to Edith Sitwell's 'Façade'. And for those people who know her story, they will recognise that it is taken from an experience she describes in her autobiography, Taken Care Of.

Though, on reflection, it is indeed shocking that the little girl Edith should be so estranged from her mother as to not understand why other children would cry at the loss of theirs.

I am very excited at the moment as 'Words in My Head' is really beginning to take shape. I heard it in its entirety for the first time last night and my co-conspirator, musician Matt Barnard, has done an amazing job. He has created a rich tapestry of sound that envelops and enhances my poetry which sits at the very heart of it. I don't think my poems have ever sounded so good!

In addition, my lovely Mark has created the pedestal and my sister Ros has dressed the head superbly:

Next week, we are trying it all out in the space it has been designed for, the Sitwell Library, and I am exceptionally excited about that!

2011-01-19T11:14:00.005Z

When I was in my twenties, I would devour novels at the rate of one a week. In recent years, I've been reading poetry and non-fiction, less fiction, and have become more discerning in what I spend my time on.

However, I'm getting back into novels and had a couple recommended so picked them up over the festive season. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, should have really gripped me - a murder-mystery, some political comment and a feisty female character. However, it didn't. It needs a thorough edit, probably bringing it down by at least a third. The pace, which should carry the reader through, plummets as it over-explains, repeats itself and uses five sentences where five words would do. I understand that Larsson died shortly after handing his manuscripts into the publisher, so could not have done the edit. It's an enormous shame no-one else thought to do it in his memory.

On the other hand, another doorstopper of a work, Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, should not have appealed to me at all. About an armed robber who escapes prison in Australia to end up being involved with the mafia and violence in India (and beyond, though I haven't got to that bit), I would not normally have picked it up if a friend hadn't handed it to me. Yet it is tightly, subtly and evocatively written. Another friend appeared to dismiss it as 'that hippy classic they're making a film of with Johnny Depp'. However, I think it does a better job of looking at the nature of goodness than Larsson, who is, perhaps, considered more literary.

Shantaram is based on truth, so the author claims. And the detail gives it an authenticity - at times engaging, at times horrifying - which is hard to dismiss. At first I had difficulty accepting the beauty of the book, knowing it was written by a man who had deliberately set out to cause harm to others. Roberts has since been re-captured, done his time in prison, re-invented himself. And in my head I do believe in rehabilitation, yet in my heart I found it hard to trust in the redemption of this writer. Maybe, in the end, that discomfort is at the very kernel of this disturbing book.

2011-01-12T10:26:00.003Z

My article about Edith Sitwell appeared in Poetry News: http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/publications/poetrynews/pn2011/

And Coastival is approaching (http://www.coastival.com/). Some of Edith's most famous poems - Façade - are my least favourite, though they were innovative for their time and surely the fore-runner of today's rap.

My tribute comes in this poem:

Childhood 1
Old Sir Faulk,
unintentionally,
misplaced his wife.
Mollie and Gladys,
little shadows in mourning weeds,
wept their loss at high tea,
- even the chittering song birds knew to chitter no more.
Lady Faulk, lost, gone, for now and for ever.

I imagined my own mother so disposed of
and asked, persistently.
But why, why, why did they cry?

2011-01-05T16:40:00.002Z

Happy New Year. This season's greeting. Though, of course, it's all rather arbitrary. Some pagans consider Samhain as the New Year, others Midwinter. The Chinese will be celebrating in weeks to come and some Christians haven't even seen Christmas in yet. I could go on.

However, for everyone, there does seem to be a need to mark a completed cycle of time and, perhaps, take a moment for reflection. I am not immune to this. Looking outwards, I hope for peace where there is conflict, relief where there is pain, possibility where there is despair. Personally, 2010 has been good to me and I do not need more from 2011. I wish for love and nurturing relationships and the opportunity to continue to explore my creativity and to make the best use of my talents. I want to encourage a more caring and just way of being for myself and for those I am able to be in contact with. I want the space to make mistakes and the humility to admit them and learn from them.

It is all a work in progress, as the planets make another revolution above our heads, only with very subtle alterations to their course.

2010-12-20T10:21:00.000Z

Snow falls stealthily,

brittle leaves of yesteryear

composted for Spring.

2010-12-13T14:51:00.003Z

People who want to write sometimes ask me how they should begin. And I say get a writing journal and write in it everyday for at least ten minutes. This isn't a diary for recording events, it is a place for jotting down, stream-of-consciousness-like, words, ideas, images, feelings, descriptions, quotes...

I was interested to see that Bruce Springsteen has such a journal (Imagine, BBC1, 7th December, 10.35pm). His scribblings become songs. He also described keeping the bits and pieces which didn't at first work in a kind of lyrics junkyard, from which he would salvage them, sometimes a long time after, and explore putting them together in a different way until they do run. A bit like a writer's Scrapheap Challenge.

As with many creative endeavours, often it's knowing when - and being brave enough - to cut. Lenny Henry mentioned this as a crucial skill on Front Row (Radio 4, 8th December, 7.20pm). It's hardest when it's our favoured lines we have to cull. Though it's useful to think of them as not being lost for ever, only rather kept safe for another outing.

2010-12-07T19:59:00.002Z

A friend of mine sent me a link to a youtube of opera singing in a shopping arcade's cafe (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE). I like discovering culture in unexpected places.

With a designer colleague, I once cooked up the idea of adorning the doors to our town's loos with poetry - thinking we'd have a captive audience. We have not put any plans into action, but when I was down in Bristol, I got to read poetry about the sea as I used the toilets in the SS Great Britain's visitor centre.

And yet, as I look at the trees stark against the winter sky, I think, nature has got there before us, if we just open our eyes, art is all around.

2010-11-22T17:44:00.002Z

I am working on an article which I hope is destined for the European Journal for Qualitative Research. It is a literature review on Writer's Block.

And, as I start to write it, I find myself stymied. I know what stops me, mainly; two thoughts: What have I got to say which anyone wants to read? Will it (I) be good enough? And generally I can work round it.

I have read about Writer's Block from the writer's perspective before, now I am also getting the academic's angle. They appear to put the causes under three headings: cognitive (the rule-laden part of the brain fighting with the imaginative); emotional (the feeling of not being up to the task in some way); and environmental (including the physical, social and political).

Using a completely 'unscientific' method (and having just discovered I have three instead of two followers to my blog), I wondered if any reader out there might be prepared to email me about their experience of Writer's Block (knowing that it might be published, though anonymity could be maintained)? Email: writingourselveswell@tiscali.co.uk

Thank you.

2010-11-15T10:05:00.002Z

I have been a little slow in getting into the on-line social (and professional) networking and I have certainly never quite understood the attraction of 'tweeting'. However, I do seem to have ended up on Twitter by default:

www.twitter.com/_creativecoast

I wonder if this will open up a whole new phase for me?

2010-11-09T18:22:00.003Z

I'm so excited. This morning we recorded my poems for the Edith Sitwell installation, Words in My Head (www.coastival.com) in a real studio. My collaborator, composer Matt Barnard, was sound engineer and was very calming and competent. I had two friends from the Scarborough Poetry Workshop, Felix Hodcroft and Rosie Larner, reading the poems and they did an excellent job. Even when Matt wanted to record them breathing in different ways!

It felt like I was in one of those docu-films of all night-ers putting down an album with the ba-i-and. Every now and again I would go over and press the intercom with the studio and "direct" with a little suggestion on a word being emphasised or not.

I also get a huge buzz from hearing my poetry performed well. I quite enjoy doing it myself, but when I do that I can't hear them properly as the nerves appear to make me slightly deaf. So it's an enormous treat to have them gifted to me as Felix and Rosie did this morning.

I'm still more than a little carried away by the moment.

2010-11-03T09:27:00.002Z

I went to see the film Made in Dagenham last night. A surprisingly upbeat tale about strikes! Namely, the industrial action taken by women machinists at Fords in the late 1960s which eventually led to (along with other pressures) the Equal Pay Act of 1970.

It made me think that we can engage with any story as long as it is well told and there is the human interest; in this case, in particular, the relationship between Eddie and Rita and the shell shocked (a reference to unrecognised dementia?) veteran and his wife.

For a relatively feel-good movie, it did try to present some of the complexities in the situation and in people's motivations. I did enjoy the the 'old style' union leader characters, I remember them from the university Labour club. Quote Marx but still expect the "girls" to make the tea.

2010-10-26T20:32:00.002+01:00

Some free writing I did in the therapeutic creative writing workshop I facilitate:

Write a poem,
she says,
like it's
a stroll in the park.

Write a poem,
she says,
yet the way is undefined, weedy,
clogged with soggy leaves.

Write a poem, she says,
put a powerful image about the way you feel on paper
and don't
blow yourself away.

Write a poem,
she says,
as if breathing
were that easy.

2010-10-11T11:33:00.003+01:00

Unfortunately, I believe we have ended up with the wrong first woman Poet Laureate. Much as I admire some of Carol Ann Duffy's poetry, though listing geographical regions now seems to have become her trade mark, her erstwhile partner, Jackie Kay, would have been a much better choice. Her writing is superb, and, in addition, she brings her audience along with her.

I saw Jackie Kay at the Beverley Literature Festival last week. This is the third time I have seen her in the flesh (I have also heard her on the radio) and on each occasion she engages; entertains; makes me think and question; and drags her listeners through all manner of emotions. Have you heard CAD recite her poetry? It always sounds like a funeral dirge.

Jackie Kay, mixed race, adopted into a white family from Glasgow, speaks from not only being a lesbian woman, but also from a sense of being between cultures. Now she would have made an inspiring, powerful and exciting Laureate for our modern Britain.

2010-10-04T10:16:00.004+01:00

Words in My Head, the poetry-soundscape installation in celebration of Edith Sitwell's poetry which I am creating for Coastival next year (www.coastival.com), is really beginning to take shape, at least in my own head! I am moving from poet to project management mode and feeling the excitement of seeing something which was a spark of an idea come to fruition.

Here is a sneak preview of the poetry:

Sipping Tea with Ms E.
Tall as a post,
gaunt as a ghost,
be-ringed fingers drumming, drumming,
waiting for me to say something,
anything, worthy of a poet.

I have a little sonnet,
I offer up tentatively.
A little nothing I dashed off.
I sip my tea. It has turned cold.

Sonnets, her eyes glare,
are all the same size.
And a poet never dashes anywhere.
She brushes crumbs from the table.

The word, the word.
She softens,
Trust the word, the beat,
the waves pound, the sun creaks, the lion roars,
the poet lays herself open,
she listens and then
she spins.

2010-09-28T16:57:00.002+01:00

We appear to have jumped straight from an Indian Summer into Winter. Where did Autumn go? The colouring of the leaves and the crunch of them underfoot. The mellow mists, the fruitfulness, the hint of woodsmoke. OK, maybe I am turning into a lolling romantic with the last.

One of my favourite Autumn poems is 'Late October' by Maya Angelou, which finishes:

Only lovers
see the fall
a signal end to endings
a gruffish gesture alerting
those who will not be alarmed
that we begin to stop
in order simply
to begin
again.

I love the idea that I may not be alarmed when we have a stop and that, in any case, we will "simply" "begin again". It feels so easy, so comforting. And, of course, I am a great believer in making up words, "gruffish", how wonderful.

2010-09-21T16:40:00.004+01:00

I have to admit to not feeling much like writing this evening. Things have suddenly got very busy in all departments of my life and I feel tired. Yesterday the bright spot was the first session in the Creative Writing for Good Mental Health course (funded by the WEA). Ten of us gathered and began to get to know each other and plunge into the enthralling (to me, at least) technique of free writing. It is interesting that some people take to this throwing off of "shoulds" and rules with enthusiasm and some are more guarded. It is difficult to know, sometimes, how to give people the permission to "just let it flow" when they are used to so many "rights" and "wrongs".

Today the bright spot was an email from my collaborator, Matt Barnard, on my Edith Sitwell installation, 'Words in My Head'. I do find it exciting to be working with someone else, whose skills and talent (in this case in terms of composing and music tech) can take my words and poetry into a place and direction that I am not even able to conceive of.

Apart from that, the volume of work and number of things to be taken into account at this present time, make the days challenging and the nights restless. I went swimming at lunchtime and found myself in the fast lane being splashed and edged out by big muscular men intent on front crawling as fast as they could from one end to the other with little regard of who might be in the way. Felt a bit like a metaphor.

2010-09-14T17:33:00.002+01:00

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again. So sang 'Frankie Goes to Hollywood' in the 1980s and I danced around to it as a student, believing every word. Believing if I shouted it loud enough, there would be no more war.

And yet it seems to be everywhere at the moment. The present wars and the agonisingly poignant stories of soldiers coming back as multiple amputees and/or deeply emotionally and psychologically traumatised. The past wars in the many anniversaries to do with WWII, and interviews or images of those involved still grieving after over 60 years.

A statistic stood out for me this week, I can't remember it exactly, it was something like 100 years ago 95% of the casualties of war were combatants, now 95% of casualties are civilians.

War is good for nothing. We sing it, we know it and yet we don't seem to be able to live it.

2010-09-07T15:36:00.006+01:00

My friend and colleague, Hazel, and I facilitated our first Writers' Way residential at Cober Hill this weekend.

We aimed to offer an exploration of creativity through guided writing exercises, meditation and visualisations. We began on Friday afternoon, and the first session, as so often is the case, was a little shaky with everyone nervous and some people very tired from stressful working weeks or long journeys. However, as we went along, everyone grew in confidence and the group gelled to be supportive and inspirational. I was buoyed up by the positive creative energy which was swirling around.

Cober Hill (http://www.coberhill.co.uk/) is also such a gorgeous setting to hold a residential, with its gardens and walks all the way down to the sea. A perfect place to awaken all our physical senses and feel grounded in our bodies whilst allowing our imaginations to take flight.

The finest feedback to receive from the participants on the Sunday as we parted was a call for a five day course. A sign that what we'd succeeded in bringing about had indeed been useful and nourishing to people.

2010-08-31T15:56:00.002+01:00

Earlier in the Summer I heard that I had the "commission", along with a small budget, to do an art installation for Coastival next February (www.coastival.com). Words in My Head (which was meant to be a working title but appears to be sticking) will be a celebration of the poetry of Edith Sitwell, it will be housed at Wood End, Scarborough, where she was born in 1887.

My interest in Edith Sitwell has been growing ever since she was nominated in a Local Heroes project I co-ordinated for the museums' services in 2003-2004. Up until that point, hers was a name which I vaguely connected with arrogance, aristocracy and eccentricity. Of course, she was much, much more complex than that and, at times, an innovative, a surprising, a fine writer.

I have become fascinated by her life story, her unhappy childhood, her move to London where she was forced to financially support herself despite her family's wealth, her relationships with various characters, including other writers and artists. And I am struck by her poetry, which she continued to write and develop throughout her days.

As part of the research for Words in My Head, I went to Renishaw, the Sitwell seat near Sheffield. I was excited, especially on seeing a pub called the Sitwell Arms, and I enjoyed my time ambling through the gardens, being given a tour of the house. However, I didn't feel particularly connected to Edith, nor do I think that I learned anything new about her. I feel more in step with her here in Scarborough, despite her dislike of the place and the fact that she rarely returned once she had the choice.

Perhaps it is my own attachment to the town that I am engaging with, rather than Edith's, yet I cannot help sensing the beat of the sea, the roar of the lion as she called it, coming through those starkly moving poems she wrote in the 1940s and 1950s.

2010-08-24T18:04:00.003+01:00

I was listening to Open Book on Radio 4 on Sunday and a trio of authors talking about the nom de plumes they choose. There was a man who wrote under a female name and a woman who androgynised hers with initials (as JK Rowling did, claiming she was taken more seriously because her gender was not immediately identifiable).

There is a long tradition of woman writers having to take on male pseudonyms - the Brontes, George Elliot are the most frequently cited examples. However, surely we are in a different world now? Publishers claim men are less likely to read books authored by a woman, apparently the bias does not go the other way for female readers, except in the romance genre. I think I would feel manipulated if I found I had been reading something I discovered was by a clandestine man.

Both interviewees on the radio claimed the decisions about their name had been made to suit the "brand" they were wanting to publish in. Further evidence the literary world is not all about the writing, but rather about a complete product.

2010-08-16T16:19:00.004+01:00

I had one of those sparky-sparkling moments when I discovered that I had written something startling even to me the supposed author. For some time now, I've been playing about with ideas around the connections between poetry-making and research. And last week I was trying to bring my thoughts together onto one page through a messy and disorganised - always the best kind - mind map.

I looked back at what I had put down and there it was:

Poetry in research as

-Method.

-Data.

-Analysis.

-Reflection.

-Presentation of findings.

A slotting in place of what I'd read, experienced and practised over the last several months. And at each stage, I feel I can connect my therapeutic-researcher to my poet through being able to explore both content and form. What I have found so far in my reading is that poetry is seen as important at one point or another of the research, but not as a thread running through it, and that little is made of the form and how it connects to the layers of meaning.

I am excited to think that what I have come up with may indeed be innovative. I feel like patenting it!

2010-08-09T15:18:00.003+01:00

A Haiku for August

Still my fevered mind,
the waves swell enough for two,
the sky is yet vast.

2010-08-02T16:55:00.003+01:00

Writing is a dangerous profession for some. A writer is being threatened with prison because of what he wrote about the Singapore death penalty. The author of The Bookseller of Kabul has been ordered to pay damages for her fictionalised depiction of a woman in her story. Both are standing by what they consider to be the truth in their writing and are defending their right to express what they feel they have to say.

The second case gave me particular pause for thought, as it is about a character in fiction. True, the writer herself claims her story is based on fact, and there seems to be the Bookseller's own literary ambitions which might be muddying the water, even so, to have to pay damages on a work of fiction? All writers draw on the people around us, should we, perhaps, be more circumspect about how we do this after this ruling?

Words have a power which terrifies authoritarian regimes and people who cannot bear, will not survive, criticism or contrary views. There are many writers we hear little of who have been detained, tortured, even killed or disappeared, because they have dared to make public their words (see Amnesty International's website: http://www.amnesty.org.uk).

It is a sobering thought for one as safely cossetted as me.

2010-07-26T15:46:00.002+01:00

Our borough council had £69k to spend on community projects. It decided to allow the "voters to voice their choice" through a participatory budgeting exercise. Over thirty groups were asked to put in bids for up to £5000 each, and one very hot Saturday, they were to present their ideas to an audience of bona fide residents who would decide on who would get the dosh.

I went along because I am involved in a number of the organisations hoping for some of the funding. I expected to be bored out of my mind. I was not.

Yes, it was hot and stuffy, yes it was a very long day. However, besides the passion, energy, commitment and sheer ingenuity of those vying for the cash to do something positive in their communities, any irritation or discomfort evaporated like sweat off a donkey's bum. I was impressed and inspired.

I am willing to take bets that the number of people in the audience who were not already keenly interested in people action and/or involved with one of the groups, was negligible. The voting, done after each presentation, was very tight, and, in the end, most agreed it was often the quality of the presentation which won. If presenters mumbled or didn't engage with the voters, then they lost points. Near the end, when my spirits were beginning to flag, a cheer-leading group hoisted a young slip of a thing up on a human pyramid nearly to the library's roof, and, against my logical judgement, that gave them an extra point on my paper. And I swear the man from the yachting club got his support because he was good looking and tanned (not from me, I hasten to add).

I was interested in my own process in making decisions. It is easy to criticise funders for not "getting it right", yet I will admit to being swayed by the ephemeral and to voting tactically, to ensure the projects I really wanted to see succeed got most of my votes. I also voted down projects which were perfectly good because I had already supported another for the same cause, such as youth or sport.

I was aware of being part of Cameron's "Big Society" (although this participatory budgeting exercise was made possible by the former government). And I wondered how we would cope with decisions more complex than allocating £2000 here and £3000 there? I'm quite happy telling the government how not to run the country, but am I capable of coming up with a workable alternative?

2010-07-19T09:28:00.003+01:00

It's been fifty years since Harper Lee published her seminal novel, To Kill a Mockingbird and I watched an excellent documentary about the author, the book and its influence on BBC4 the other week.

Do I admit to knowing the book only through the film with that powerful performance by Gregory Peck? (Interesting - or maybe thank goodness - there hasn't been a re-make). I used to see a lot of films - I am more selective and less tolerant these days - yet it is scenes from certain ones, such as To Kill a Mockingbird - which still have the force to flicker into my brain as if I had viewed them only yesterday.

Though, according to the documentary, Harper Lee had set out to be a writer and was, by all accounts, a good and a focused one, To Kill a Mockingbird was the only book she ever wrote. After its publication and the storm that produced, she stopped writing (at least for a public audience). "I've said all I have to say, why say more?" was apparently her explanation.

This is not a sentiment I can quite get my head round. Not only do I feel I need to keep repeating myself - is anybody listening anyway? - but I also feel I have more and more to say the more I write. And what about the process of writing? The pure joy and satisfaction of taking and distilling an experience, a feeling, an idea, into words and sharing that? I can't imagine that ever becoming stale for me.

Still, I have never, up to now, experienced the sudden and phenomenal - perhaps over-whelming - critical success Harper Lee did. Perhaps, in some ways, I've been lucky as, at least, I've been left with my writing.

2010-07-12T17:15:00.003+01:00

Am I letting time slip by? Should I be pushing myself to do more? Or does creativity need dips - pauses? Sometimes if I do force myself to write, I will enjoy it and produce something satisfying. At other times I can nail myself down (as one of my friends puts it) and nothing comes and I feel a failure. Yet I won't know until I try. And my process seems to require a lot of musing, along with many breaks. I wonder if this is laziness, procrastination or necessary? It's a funny, slippery quirk, this thing I call creativity.

Titles have been exercising me this week. It came up at a get together I had with a couple of writer companions. How to choose a title for a poem, to say just enough but not too much. And then Daniel Stern dedicates a whole section to how he came up with the title for his book The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life (WW Norton & Co, New York, London, 2004). Personally I think he made a mistake in not sticking with his first thought, "A World in a Grain of Sand". This would also have gone perfectly with the cover illustration, sand sifting through an hour glass (though, presumably, the cover was the last thing to be decided on).

I wanted to give a title to the small research project I have embarked on, but found myself stumped. It is looking at the writing journey - an over-used phrase and title if ever there was one - and is bringing out themes around potential swamped and then re-discovered. Re-surfacing has come to mind, but could indicate a treatise on tarmac, whereas Surfacing, I'm fairly sure, has been used for a novel, perhaps by Margaret Atwood.

I have had better luck finding a title for the series of novels which I'm pretending I am not writing: The Art of... The Art of Surviving I have already, and I am starting on The Art of Leaving. The possibilities are endless, which I guess is what Sue Grafton thought when she started on her A is for... crime series.

2010-07-05T20:52:00.002+01:00

Two stories in June's Therapy Today caught my eye. One was a news item which quoted the World Health Organisation as saying that neurological and mental disorders are the leading cause of ill health and disability globally. Voluntary organisations apparently find it hard to raise money for mental health projects because pictures of people suffering from mental distress don't tug at our heart strings enough.

At the end of the piece there was the statistic that half of all countries in the world have one psychiatrist per 100,000 people. And I wondered if this was really a worrying figure. Many societies outside of the West have very different attitudes to mental well-being to ours, and I have read the suggestion that some are more enlightened, more tolerant, more empowering. Perhaps, just possibly, psychiatrists and Western style mental health "solutions" are not the answer everywhere.

The second article was right the other end of the journal giving the results of a BACP professional conduct hearing. A complaint about a practitioner had been made because he had commented on a social networking site about a client in such a way that the young person could be identified. There seemed no doubt that in this case the therapist had been foolish and broken his duty for confidentiality. It did make me sharply draw in my breath, however. I am exceptionally careful about, and sensitive to, confidentiality, even so, would one day a client's identity seep into something I was writing and leave me quite rightly vulnerable to a complaint?

2010-06-29T18:47:00.002+01:00

Life After Life After Death, a collection of poetry by Felix Hodcroft

Published by Valley Press. www.jamiemcgarry.com/valleypress

It's impossible to remain unmoved by this new collection of poems. Jagged, thought-provoking, raw, they demand attention and deserve to get it.

The sharp, sometimes to cutting point, observation brings to mind Philip Larkin. He also brought foibles, discomforts, hurts into a tight focus. He also crafted with a considered choice of word sounds and rhythm.

There are deliciously lyrical images here. "...those lush afternoons when the world seemed to poise in our grasp like a peach" from Inasmuch. "There'll be stillness, something/waiting, there'll be sunbeams melting mist./There will be buds that gently ripple into/scarlet, snow and gold." from Bequest. And you can almost taste the words off the page in Jackets 'n' Skins.

Side by side with the appetising comes the tough, unrelenting and tortured. We Fought, in particular, has this balance teetering on an edge but always satisfyingly maintained.

No subject - love, death, murder, cancer, relationships (familial and otherwise) - is too difficult to be tackled - and brought down in the box (since we're all in World Cup mode). Each is explored unflinchingly, all its dark corners poked at.

And the form follows content, being unsettling too. We're not quite sure who or what or when, we have to grasp at meanings that are relevant to us. Making these poems not an easy read, but a fulfilling one.

If I wanted to be nit-picking, I might suggest some of the endings lose this trust in the reader and become a little too explanatory. A few more commas would not have gone amiss either.

That aside, this collection is worthy of much re-reading and contemplation. I went through it almost in one go and I can see there will be poems that I will return to again and re-discover in a different way.

Narratively strong, Hodcroft's poetry holds that fine balance between ugly realism and lyricism; bleakness and hope; death and life, and even life after life after death.

2010-06-22T19:18:00.003+01:00

Back from a two week holiday and wondering what I should put in this post. Our trip away was indeed a fine one, with a fair mix of walking, sightseeing and relaxing. I always have a writing journal with me, but this year, for the first time, as well as the reflections on each day and the snatches of prose or poetry to be crafted later, I was sketching and painting.

Some time ago I moved away from lined paper in my writing journals - too restrictive - and recently I've been buying what are essentially sketch books to write in, so that when I do paint, the paper is absorbent enough. Writing on the thick pages is delicious, but occasionally I get knocked by the thought, are my words worth this weight of paper? Much of what goes down is scrawled, imperfect, not thought through, will remain as notes. But these are the seeds from which more crafted, more communicative work, which can touch others, will grow. And you wouldn't sow your prize marrows on scanty earth.

As a young secondary school pupil I was told by my art teacher that I was not good at his subject. That comment has stuck all these years. It is a joy now, therefore, to find out that I can work visually and am captured by form and colour. And I am discovering how what I draw complements and nourishes what I write in a satisfying symbiosis.

2010-05-31T19:45:00.002+01:00

Where does your inspiration come from? How many times does a writer at a literary festival or book signing get asked this question? What surprises me is when I learn that everyone else doesn't have 101 ideas floating around to make into a story or a poem. I think it was author Mark Haddon who said that, as he got more experienced, he didn't have less ideas, he just got better at netting those that would lead somewhere.

I was sitting on the beach one warm Friday evening, there were groups of students playing football or quaffing from cans of lager (which they went on to leave littering the sand!) presumably post-exams. Then there was this trio which caught my eye. An older man with two teenage girls, both pasty, one waif-like, the other slightly more buxom, they both wore shorts and bikini tops, though this was the North Sea coast not the Med, neither were smart or seemed terribly confident. What was their relationship with each other? With the man who bought them a football so they could emulate the students in a rather ungainly way? These questions led me to a story which is unsavoury to say the least. It has the provisional title of What Makes Girl Killers or Crushed Buttercups (I found out later, rather pleasingly, that buttercups symbolise immaturity and betrayal).

Two of my favourites among the fictional pieces which I have written also started with observing people interacting and wondering, who? What? Why? What if? My novel Breathing Cell, came out of seeing an older woman with a man and two teenagers on holiday in the South of France. I wrote a whole tale about what happened on that holiday, which never made it into the novel but formed the backdrop to it. My short story, Adrift, came from spying an older woman with a boy of maybe 8 or 9 years old (obviously English tourists) on a vaporetto in Venice. At once she became the youngster's grandmother bracingly dragging him round Venice to "help him adjust" to his parents' divorce. And this led onto other characters who found themselves adrift in this beautiful and sinking city whose paths keep crossing, like the labyrinth of tiny streets which befuddle all but the natives.

When I told my husband the outline of the story I had made up about the three on the beach, he just raised his gaze to the sky and said, indulgently, I was letting my imagination run away with me as I always did. So is that what makes a writer? We don't know when to put the brakes on?

2010-05-26T09:34:00.004+01:00

Is it me or are contemporary dance performances getting more obscure and shorter? I still remember sitting in a theatre as a youngster, maybe 11 or 12 years old, and being completely mesmerised by the Ballet Rambert's Ghosts. The music was Central/South American pan pipes (this was before we heard these on every street corner) and the narrative was very definitely about oppression, revolution and loss.

Last night's Love and War by the Mark Bruce Company was far more open to interpretation (it was also only an hour long, whereas we had two hours with an interval back in the 1970s). Was this a circus of life with each of us doing our own tricks for the ring master? Was this the eternal struggle with death (or depression) the hint being in the title? Was it merely vignettes with no over-all organising theme? Whatever it was, it was fab; absorbing, emotional, thought-provoking, scary and expertly danced.

It came to me that contemporary dance is becoming more and more like abstract art. The question is not what does it mean, but what does it mean to me? And, last night, having identified two of the dancers with people in my personal life, I happily riffed to my own tune, made up my own tale.

The only negative for me was that the music was turned up too loud! Now I am sounding middle aged.

2010-05-18T19:24:00.002+01:00

Sometimes it's good to be proved wrong. No sooner do I write my last post for this blog than writers who have written political fiction start popping up all over the place. On Radio Four's 'Saturday Live' there was Prue Leith with her A Serving of Scandal. Then on Sunday's 'Broadcasting House' ('BH') there was Blake Morrison, whose South of the River takes the Labour Government of the '90s as a backdrop, and Michael Dobbs who has written numerous political novels including House of Cards.

I still think there's much fictional mileage in the present situation. We shall see what I, or another writer, can make of it.

Also on 'BH' was the author Sadie Smith who said something I have often challenged students with: fiction is about truth, lies are for reality.

Finally, I loved this little snippet, also from 'BH', about the bird song to be heard accompanying the first joint press conference by Cameron and Clegg. Apparently there was a robin singing from one side and from the other a blue tit tweeting as it was nesting. How apt.

2010-05-11T19:30:00.005+01:00

Well this has to be a fiction writer's dream, because you couldn't really make it up could you?

First the live debates, then the election results, the parties' machinations, the unlikely Lib-Conservative pact (who says it doesn't make a difference that they're both public school boys and that the smell of power isn't more over-whelming than principle?) And now Brown's resignation. I still think he was the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time, but still there's a poignancy in his limping away, finally beaten, like an injured bison.

It already has the feel of a novel. And yet we don't see our political world mirrored that often in our story-telling. Wilson, Heath, Thorpe, Scargill, the Gang of Four, Thatcher, Blair, here are "off-the-peg" characters and plots which enthral, infuriate, anger and sometimes even move us to tears. Interesting that most writers appear to shy away from them.

I'm still playing with an idea for another novel and how to interweave the Thatcher years into the personal story of a deluded would-be Kate Adie trapped in a going-nowhere job at the BBC of the 1980s. But all of a sudden I'm off on a story about two young teenage boys who meet at a chess match between their respective schools - Eton and Westminster - and sneak out for an illicit smoke and make a pact....

2010-05-04T16:27:00.002+01:00

Mary's Mother
She was brought up to know better.
It's the son of god, she tells me.
A poor excuse for not waiting,
for opening her legs before she ought.
She'll never know how
I meekly hid my face in shame
when she was expected before her time.

A proud one, our Mary,
my husband's doing.
If she was to be the only one,
then he would lavish all on her,
not me,
for he could see as well as I could,
the slope of her nose,
the tint of her hair,
the curve of her stubborn chin,
not his, but
my brother-in-laws.

Betraying twice over, my sister and my husband,
I could not find forgiveness for those
blue eyes which should have been brown.
My sin, my twice-fold sin,
how could I feel other than punished
and punishing?

And now,
bold as you like,
she holds her rounded belly.
The women gather and toss broken coins, spin needles,
touch her with a gentleness I have never managed.
She's carrying high, it's a boy,
they say.

The son of god, Mary replies,
with a certainty and a delight that cracks my chest again.

If only I'd thought of that one, all those years ago.
She's clever, my cuckoo daughter,
and she doesn't get that from me.

The Minotaur's Mother piece I was working on has evolved.

I now have what I hope will be a performance piece for many voices.

It's called, for now, Into the Labyrinth, and this is an extract.

2010-04-26T20:16:00.002+01:00

My second non-fiction article for an academic journal has been peer reviewed - a new experience for me - and accepted. I am pleased, of course. I am also astounded by the terms under which it appears all such publications operate.

Not only do academic journals not pay their authors, but they also insist on obtaining all rights in anything they publish. What? Are they really thinking of making a film out of my piece, or perhaps a cartoon? Will they honestly seek to have it translated into Russian or Korean? It seems extraordinary that they should want to attain all these rights (for the full length of copyright, ie for 70 years after my death) and do nothing with them. Surely all they really need is world English language serial, quotation/anthology and digital rights.

When I raised my misgivings, I was told that they would permit reproduction in author's other work (ie I would be allowed to quote myself in my own writing) and that in years gone by I would have been expected to pay to see my words in print.

I think it was being suggested that I should learn to be more grateful!

2010-04-22T15:53:00.002+01:00

I've been poorly this week and suddenly I've become very aware of my body, each twinge, each growl, each grumble. For someone who lives so much in her head, this is an odd sensation. Normally my body just gets on with its job of carrying my mind around. This week, it decided not to, and I was non-plussed.

Scarborough has just hosted its annual literature festival (www.scarboroughliteraturefestival.co.uk). I went to an event hosted by Amnesty International to hear Rouhi Shafi, an Iranian writer, speak. It was sobering to be reminded that I may feel sharply stabbed when people unfairly criticise or - more often - ignore my writing, but, in reality, my life is not in danger. Unlike writers from countries across the world who risk harassment, imprisonment, torture and death by expressing themselves. The pen is indeed mighty and feared by governments of many persuasions.

2010-04-13T19:18:00.003+01:00

I have finally moved into my Spring/Summer schedule, promising myself at least ten hours of creative time a week. But what is creative time? Is it only sitting at a table with pens and paper or typing at a keyboard? Or can it include walking to the sea and eating an ice cream? Or going to the theatre and listening to poetry? What, in fact, is not a creative activity, except perhaps doing the washing up? And even then, that can be a moment for fermenting or composting what has gone before. Ten hours appears an achievable goal after all.

I have also bought Poetry as Method, reporting research through verse (Sandra Faulkner, Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA). (I've just noticed, what an evocative place to locate a publisher!) I've only started to read the first chapter, but the book (as its blurb says) 'takes an interdisciplinary approach to using and creating poetry for conducting and reporting social research'.

Sacrilege surely, even the mere thought of using poetry. Are we not the instrument of such a divine art rather than the other way round? And to connect it to something as calculated as research, doesn't seem right.

Yet, as poets, we seek to delve into our own and others' humanity to root out some universal truths and communicate them on. With our words we attempt to create sense and meaning of our experiences, in order that others might do the same. Are these not good definitions of the work of a researcher?

2010-04-06T20:25:00.000+01:00

I've put my poem on the map at:

http://gps.southbankcentre.co.uk/

2010-03-31T15:28:00.003+01:00

I've been away for a long weekend and took with me a Ruth Rendell and a Sara Paretsky. Crime, about the only fiction I read these days. I used to devour a novel a fortnight, but poetry and non-fiction have been my diet these past few years. Though the distinction between the three forms - fiction, non-fiction and poetry - appear to me less and less defined. There's been a trend for fiction to become built around fact and to use poetic techniques such as alliteration, metaphor, assonance, rhythm. Non-fiction has married into supposition and "it might have happened like this..." And perhaps poetry has become more narrative? Certainly it is less defined by rhyme and meter, two things which set it apart from prose.

Perhaps literary form is once again mirroring society, where demarcations and boundaries have over-all become fuzzier and greyer.

So back to the crime. I think Rendell and Paretsky are genius at the genre, their structuring holding the tension and pace right through to the last page. I'd borrowed both from the library, so both were quite old. The Rendell in particular showed its age. Written in the '70s there were no computers or mobile phones and characters were still calling the operator to be connected. It felt rather quaint, though it was only forty years ago.

2010-03-22T20:41:00.004Z

To write a Haiku:
pick the gem out of the dust,
polish with vigour.

2010-03-16T18:16:00.003Z

Well it's up until May. It was pretty nerve wracking, going in and making all the decisions about what should go where. Not to mention trying to make sure everything is secure so nothing will fall on anyone's head! Feeling proud of what we have achieved together.

2010-03-09T16:47:00.003Z

Today, unlooked for
I was handed a gift.
Sometimes, it happens.

It was an extra-ordinary experience, sitting there with seven others who were responding to my poem, finding in it what they needed at that moment. I didn't want to admit to myself that this was what had happened. Why? It would sound too arrogant, too egotistical? And yet it was my words, the ones I had chosen to put in that particular order, which had reached them in such a powerful way.

Their willingness to share this, was a gift to me.

And yet, and yet, I crave publication, which would only distance me from this raw, visceral, resonance of a person's emotions with the words I have written. Why? Because publication means validation, recognition, an attainment of some abstract measure of what's good.

"What have you published?" Is the question which often greets me. Nothing. But my words have met another's heart and soul and made it sing. Is that not enough?

Trust the moment shared

as, touched by another's pain,

we feel what's tender.

2010-03-02T18:50:00.000Z

CREATIVE WRITING:
THE WRITER’S WAY

Friday 3 to Sunday 5 September 2010
Tutors: Hazel Ettridge and Kate Evans

This two day residential workshop will invite you to explore your creativity using various techniques including guided writing exercises, relaxation, visualisation and meditation.

The weekend will suit those who want to cultivate their creativity, or who feel blocked in their writing, or who feel the urge to write but don’t know where to start.

The Writer’s Way is an approach to creative exploration and development, healing, personal growth and spiritual fulfilment. It is a loose collective of professional creatives who share a vision – that creativity is an essential component of a life well-lived.

2 NIGHT WEEKEND BREAK
ON A FULL BOARD BASIS.
£137.00 PER PERSON

Cober Hill, Newlands Road, Cloughton, Scarborough,
North Yorkshire, YO13 0AR.
Tel: (01723) 870310. Fax: (01723) 870271
Email: enquiries@coberhill.co.uk
Website: www.coberhill.co.uk

2010-02-22T11:25:00.002Z

I went to see crime writer, Sara Paretsky, speak at the library last night. She was engaging, warm, entertaining and interesting. And her passion for mixing a sense of social responsibility with her writing was infectious.

Why write? To communicate? To communicate what? Our story which we feel compelled to tell, that's often where people start. And, then, maybe, our view of the world, our questions and, perhaps, some of our solutions too.

Why read? Certainly not to be shouted at or lectured to. To be informed, to feel a kindred spirit, to be entertained. What Sara Paretsky manages so well is to interweave the political comment into a story which carries us along and enthralls. That's where her skill lie. It's one I'd like to emulate more.

In her new novel, Hardball, her detective, VI, becomes entangled with a group of socially active nuns, based on a real collection of activist nuns from Chicago. Her description reminded me of my time volunteering in New Orleans where I met the Caritas nuns, the first time I'd spent any significant time with women from a religious community. They impressed me greatly. They had been the first racially mixed order in the deep South and still lived in one of the poorest districts of the city, cheek by jowl with families beset by drug addiction, alcoholism, pitiful housing and lack of hope for the future. The nuns' commitment to quietly working for human justice, through their way of being and actions, was humbling. They also cooked me up the most delicious corn bread I ever tasted.

2010-02-17T09:43:00.005Z

I'm tethered down low,
yet the trees still grow boldly,
bone straight and stretching.

2010-02-10T04:33:00.003Z

My lovely volunteer in my WEA funded therapeutic creative writing class hands me an article. Ex-poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, and author David Lodge arguing over whether the growing plethora of creative writing courses being run by universities have any purpose.

It's a discussion that swirls around and comes to the surface every now and again. Yet we never see art or music or drama degrees being questioned. It's as if an aptitude for writing, alone of the creative arts, has to be divinely given and then developed through a lonely apprenticeship in a garret.

Can talent be taught or is it innately present? In my experience, there are some students who appear to have a particular feel for words and are able to experiment in evocative and innovative ways. But is this because they have given themselves permission to explore, play and commit themselves to their creative process?

Even if the spark is present - whether naturally or by design - more is required. Motivation; openness to feedback from others; technique; a voracious appetite for reading; regular practise - a writer is one who writes; an awareness of, and engagement with, the literary movements of the time. All these should come from a well taught creative writing course.

Interestingly, Lodge's main gripe was that universities were churning out writers who could only produce formulaic pieces. I think he is shooting at the wrong target. Publishers and their - our? - obsession with celebrity and product are doing that quite unaided. Students may decide to write to a formula, but that's because that's what will get them published. Lodge claims that in publishing originality and good writing will out - who is he trying to kid?

The article gave the number of authors who had been on short lists for literary prizes and had also been on a university creative writing course. It was high - especially for poets, that side of our demon art which is supposed to be more god-given than any other. Now surely that must be telling us something?

2010-02-01T10:21:00.002Z

The first day of the second month of the first year of the second decade of the twenty-first century and last night the lightly gilded full moon hung heavy over the fulminating waves.

I go to pick up my collages. I am led into a back room, a small square holding cell, with a large wooden scaffold of shelves along one wall. A morgue for creativity. The un-chosen are propped against each other, flat fish filleted, waiting to be smoked.

I take my precious pair back out into the lobby and begin to wrap them gently for the journey home. The woman behind the counter addresses me. I recognise her. She was one of the choosers. "Perhaps," she says brightly, "you would like to go up and see the exhibition?" Would I hell. I smile back sweetly and say I don't have the time.

Don't they teach empathy at art gallery curator's school?

2010-01-26T06:38:00.003Z

"Rubbers," she says - read "erasers" for any American followers I may have. "Here, smell them," she continues, her whispering tones evoking the erotic rather than the every day. And with a slightly embarrassing delight, I admit that I know what she means.

I don't keep them wrapped up and in boxes, but I do appreciate rubbers. I have a triangular one a student gave me, I like its shape, the way it sits in my hand and that it effectively erases. I'm fond of most stationery. I get a kick out of choosing my writing journals - the quality of their paper, their size, their covers have to appeal to me - I enjoy finding the right pen. In discussion with my husband, I realised I don't get that excited by protractors or set squares or compasses. Though I remembered receiving all three in a tin case as a preliminary for starting secondary school and never, ever using them.

All this reverie was sparked by a discussion on last Friday's Radio 4's Woman's Hour between author Alison Baverstock and technology journalist Claudine Beaumont. Alison is a devotee of stationery, Claudine writes directly onto a plethora of technological gadgets and claims that anyone under 30 would be mystified by the allure of pen and paper.

I do believe that there is a difference in the creative process between writing long-hand and tapping on a machine. In my writing journal, the words change size, shape, form different patterns on the paper. There are "mis-spellings", "errors" in grammar which lead me into new unlooked for thoughts and which a computer would rudely underline in red or green. All this happens naturally, unconciously, as my imagination dictates. With any technological kit, this is pre-determined by whoever wrote the programme.

I am able to create directly on a computer - I am doing it now - but to be at my most creative, when I surprise, and enchant, myself, I need that free hand.

I note that Alison is an author concerned with novel writing, while Claudine is a journalist. Perhaps, that also explains the difference.

2010-01-19T18:19:00.004Z

I promised myself I would write this post whatever happened. Saturday saw me taking two of my precious poetry-collages through the rain to the local art gallery to enter them into the Pindar East Coast Open. The framer had said cheerfully, you never know this weather might put off a number of entrants. In other words my chances of being selected could be higher because of the snow and the rain. I skulked into the building and out again without meeting the eyes of any of the other hopefuls with hands full of oblong packages of various sizes.

Then three days passed. Excitement would come in waves, perhaps even now my creations were being reverentially placed onto the yes side of the decision room. Only to be quashed, who did I think I was pretending to be a real artist?

Finally at the end of this afternoon I rang the prescribed number. An efficient sounding young woman looked my name up. "No, I'm sorry your pieces have not been selected this time around."

"Thank you," I said. Though what I really wanted to do was wail: you've got it wrong, they're perfect, they're fragments of my soul. To scream: how can you turn them down, you're philistines, you know nothing about art, call yourself an art gallery?! There are few times when exclamation marks come into my writing, this occasion warrants it, however.

I have no way of knowing whether I nearly didn't get in or whether what I offered was thrown to one side with deriding laughter. I'd prefer to believe the former, and perhaps, if only, there'd been even more inclement weather Saturday...

2010-01-15T14:05:00.003Z

It's been a busy week, with creativity having to move aside as I gear up for the new year of paid work. I'm fairly sure this is only temporary and I will get my balance back once again.

Meanwhile, BBC 4's Dear Diary has been an absorbing end-of-a-frenetic-day watch. So far its looked at the power of diary writing, how people hide or reveal themselves through writing a diary and why people do it. In the most recent programme, there was the suggestion that there has to be a certain level of self-absorption, naval gazing - narcissism even - which motivates a person to keep going with a diary.

I have heard the suggestion that all writers - and especially poets - are narcissists, never happy unless they're able to bore others rigid with their view of the world thinly disguised as a sonnet or a short story.

There's no doubt that there has to be ego in writing, and I am not immune to wanting adoration for what I produce. However, it feels too easy, too dismissive, to leave it at that. The enjoyment and well-being I gain from the act of writing, even if it is never to be shared, goes beyond stroking the self. And then, what of the reader? I have had some responses to my recent article from people who do not know me, thanking me for putting into words what they have experienced or feel compelled to explore, and for encouraging them to continue.

This is the real pleasure of writing for an audience, the connection, human to human, the shared understanding or the debate, which leads to further journeys, further discoveries. Though, of course, my burgeoning narcissist is most content to be having a little preen on reading these enthusiastic emails too.

2010-01-06T09:24:00.003Z

And the wounds of my heart are red,
For I have watched them die
Extract 'To the Warmongers' by Siegfried Sassoon.

I am no Siegfried Sassoon,
I have not watched them die,
I have only watched their boxes
return.
I have only watched their flimsy cotton shrouds
lined up in some dusty market place
far away.

I have only watched on my TV screen.

Yet do I have the right
to ask
why?
To say,
to pray,
for pity's sake
no more?

2009-12-21T09:44:00.004Z

Winter Solstice

Compass of the waves -

sombres season's conductor

to the sun's return.