Words Unlimited

A Cure For Piles?

Anyone know a cure for piles? Most writers seem to suffer from them. It's an occupational hazard.

No, it's not the sitting all day - I mean the piles that grow because of your [okay, my] obsessive tendency to hoard material - cuttings, photographs, notes scribbled in libraries, notebooks of all shapes and sizes, magazines, stacks of books - all vital research.

These autumn leaves set me thinking about my piles. Stack the leaves in a bin liner for a year or so, and they will rot beautifully. This nourishing leaf mould, when spread on the soil, produces growth spurts all over the garden.

When I'm working on a novel, it's not the papers that rot down [if only] but the composting goes on somewhere in the unconscious. For me, having the back up of the original research piled around me seems necessary until the project is complete. That's when I reach for a bin liner.


I've just finished a book, and, yes, this is my tidy desk. You should see the bin liners I'm taking to the recycling dump. Will Self has legendary piles and 'leaves' of post-its [presumably nuggets gleaned from the piles] all around his workroom.  Take a look for yourself at these 70 + photographs showing a 360 degrees view of his writing room.

COMING SOON

Later this month I'm launching two new regular series so why not subscribe now to Words Unlimited and catch them both from the start?

Author Interviews

This monthly series starts with, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, Ross Raisin. He talks about completing his award-winning novel,
God's Own Country and gives a progress report on his eagerly awaited second book.

Weekly Writing Workshop

Would you like to start your writing week with a workshop waiting for you when you switch on your computer? 

Later this month I'm launching Words Unlimited's Weekly Writing Workshop.

Each Monday I'll post a writing prompt - a picture, potent phrases, or a combination of both - to kick start your writing week.

Suggestions to as to how you might work with these will appear on a permanent page which you'll be able to access from the post. As the posts mount up in the archive you might want to work with several images to create a narrative. 

You can start a conversation with other writers by leaving a comment after the prompt or leave a new prompt in the comment section. 

When Weekly Workshop has been running for six months I'll review the feedback I'm getting.  If there is enough interest, one of my options will be to invite you to submit, via email, an extract of prose - Maximum of 500 words - or a poem - Maximum of 40 lines.  A selection of these will be published on Words Unlimited.

Whether you're working alone, with a writing buddy or your own writing group - why not subscribe to Words Unlimited now and be sure to get the first prompt?  Just click on the subscribe link in the sidebar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sea & Poetry

I'm off to Aldeburgh on Wednesday with a small contingent from
the The PRG & Clink Street Group for sea and poetry [and fish & chips].

In between sessions of writing and reading we'll take blustery walks down to the beach and Maggi Hambling's wonderful Scallop. Hambling's sculpture, a monument to composer Benjamin Britten, invites us to pay close attention to the sea - its sounds and its energy.

 

Britten immersed himself in the sounds of the Aldeburgh landscape and shaped them into his music. The inscription on the Scallop - I HEAR THOSE VOICES THAT WILL NOT BE DROWNED - is a quote from Britten's opera, Peter Grimes.

Hambling describes this twelve-foot high shell as a "Conversation with the sea."

And, apparently, it can converse in all weathers, having been built to withstand winds of up to 100 mph. Hambling also walks the Aldeburgh beach every day as part of her process in creating her North Sea paintings.

As well as having conversations with the waves, we'll be listening to many voices as from 6 to 8 November the 21st Aldeburgh Poetry Festival gets underway.

 

Poetry, like music, is to be listened to and read aloud. There's a varied selection of voices from Britain, Europe and Americaon the programme.

 

Now, where's that windproof jacket ...

 

Be Brave – I Dare You …

Why not read more poetry? Go on, it’s good for you.

I don’t mean that to sound medicinal – really – or like some old English teacher who may long ago have put you off the stuff for life. If you find yourself shying away from reading poetry why not try one of the collections on the shortlist for the 2009 T S Eliot Prize, announced yesterday?

Poetry is so portable. Why not slip one of those ten volumes into your jacket pocket or work bag? Forget the morning rush hour, lose yourself in a poem or two, it’s likely to make you feel less grumpy than reading the paper and no nasty print on your fingers.

There’s something for everyone on this year’s T S Eliot list whether you’re coming to poetry for the first time, are a seasoned reader or are writing poetry – the list is a great resource.

For starters try Alice Oswald’s startling and somewhat subversive remake of the ‘nature’ poem or Sharon Olds’s sequence of war poems that, whilst excavating her own memories of the Second World War speak subtly of Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.

For poetry watchers Simon Armitage’s [Chair of the Judges] reported remarks make interesting reading. Sharp intakes of breath as Forward prizewinner, Don Paterson, didn’t make the final cut. Armitage says there were many excellent books under consideration but what the judges looked for was bravery. Apparently they felt that too many poets were “in a holding pattern.” The chosen books each reveal a poet pushing their craft to the next level – something all writer’s need to do – keep challenging themselves.

Talking as I was, yesterday, about reading to write, no matter what genre you aspire to work in, reading poetry is the most wonderful way to sharpen your awareness of language and the ways in which it works on us.

So newcomers - still not feeling brave enough? Why not rope in a few friends?

I set up a poetry reading group – The PRG – and I’ve written about it for the Poetry Book Society’s website. Click here and you can read the article and then follow the links to find out more about the books.

Go on, I dare you.

Short Story Masterclasses

How do you write an effective short story?

How are you going to grab your reader with the first sentence and keep them hooked to the end?

How do you write something accessible and engaging but with much more going on underneath – a story that will live on in the reader’s imagination?

How do you get to write something strong enough to be published in The New Yorker?

To create effective fiction you need to immerse yourself in the effects created by the best practitioners. This means reading as writer not as a literary critic – there is a difference. Reading as a writer you’re always asking – How did they do that? Why did that work?

Better than any ‘How To’ book is simply to read widely and read as a writer.

Here, in no particular order, are a few authors that every would-be short story writer might want to dip into: Anton Chekhov, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Flannery O’Connor; and more recently William Trevor, Grace Paley, Amy Bloom, Joyce Carol Oates, Rose Tremain, Haruki Murakami, Tim Winton, David Foster Wallace, Ali Smith, Lorrie Moore, Jayne Anne Phillips, Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Donald Barthelme, William Gass, Alice Munro, George Saunders, A. M. Homes.

So it’s wonderful to come across The New Yorker Fiction Podcast, the backlist of which contains several writers on my roll call. Each month a leading fiction writer selects a short story – previously published in The New Yorker – they read it and then talk to NY fiction editor Deborah Treisman.

I’ve just listened to Joshua Ferris reading George Saunders’s story “Adams” – afterwards he talked about how Saunders had voiced the piece and more.

Each month a new author/story is added, and, its FREE.

I’ve just subscribed and have the entire backlist in iTunes – quite a library. I’m off to find a hard copy of the Saunders’s story. I can’t wait to read it on the page.

Heroes & Heroines

was the theme for this year’s National Poetry Day, and they turned out in many guises at the Royal Festival Hall last Thursday to celebrate the day and the Centenary of The Poetry Society

 

Poetry Slammers, Mr Gee and Joelle Taylor heroically held together a packed programme of live readings, interactivity – including the beach ball haiku – and archive footage of past poets. The old Post Office film, voiced over with Auden’s ‘Night Mail,’ proved a touchy choice on the day postal workers voted for a national strike – and yet, Auden’s rapping rhythms were in keeping with the mood of the afternoon.

By the end of this extravagant, wide-raging event it was clear why poetry heroine Carol Ann Duffy had to be the new poet laureate. Who else could nonchalantly extend a bridge between Mr Gee and Mr T. S. E other than Ms C Ann D?

 

Following archive footage of T. S. Eliot – newly announced as the nation’s favourite poet – Duffy made an effortless, dead pan link to the great man by reading her very different take on the ancient world, ‘Mrs Tiresias,’ from The World’s Wife.  She then performed ‘Mrs Faust’ – the rhythms and humour couldn’t fail to connect to the many school students present.

 

Having captured the entire audience’s full attention, she ended on a more serious note and a nod to the future with her wonderful new eco-poem, commissioned specially for the day, 'Atlas' - a timely reminder of the earth’s fine balance and fragility.  Read ‘Atlas,’ and hear Carol Ann Duffy read it, here.

 

And, there were the hundreds of unsung heroines who helped to mark the Poetry Society’s Centenary with the largest ever knitted poem. Dylan Thomas’s 'In My Craft or Sullen Art' was a great choice for this inclusive project – a wonderful reminder of why anyone writes poetry in the first place.

 

Want to give poetry a try? Collect ‘found’ poetry and contribute to Lemn Sissay’s Global Poetry Systems or try Caroline Bird’s video workshop, here.

Rain

On Wednesday in London it poured.

 

Poetry watchers should have guessed the weather was trying to tell us that, yes,

Don Paterson would win the Forward Prize for best collection with his new book, Rain.

Paterson received the award on Wednesday evening in a cool classical reception room at Somerset House, with a balcony overlooking the Thames where guests, waiting to hear the announcement, marvelled at the sheer quantity of water falling from the sky.

One of the reasons Paterson was selected was for his use of rhythm and rhyme. A judge reports:

Without wanting to get into a debate as to "what is poetry", there was too much that was too close to chopped up prose. Of course this approach can be satisfying and interesting. But you should be aware what a blessed relief it is, after being confronted by book after book of flatly efficient – and less efficient - poems, to come across sprung lines, rhythm and, even the odd rhyme. On a related point, if you are going to use fancy line breaks or spacing or layout on the page, have a damn good reason for doing it.

I can hear 'flatly efficient' poets in workshops up and down the country revisiting the 'chopped up prose' debate. Meanwhile, hear Paterson talk about Rain.

Faber and Faber At 80

A feast of words last night at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, to celebrate Faber and Faber's 80 years of publishing poetry.  Current front-list poets – Seamus Heaney, Alice Oswald, Paul Muldoon, Wendy Cope, Daljit Nagra – read from the backlist – Ted Hughes, Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, Philip Larkin and Sylvia Plath. Added to this, projections of evocative black and white photographs filled the stage as archive recordings brought to life Ezra Pound, Louis MacNeice, Robert Lowell and Marianne Moore.

 

But why when we were there to celebrate poets and poetry, include tenor Robin Tritschler accompanied by Julius Drake, singing Britten’s settings of Auden’s work?  No denying the consummate performance of the two musicians but not a word of Auden’s poetry reached my ear.  Nor anyone else’s, judging by the dissatisfied talk afterwards. This musical section offered an entirely different listening experience.  The tenor’s tortured enunciation at the service of the music [and it is fine music] was so far removed from Auden’s voice.

There is music enough in the poetry itself.

High points for me were Paul Muldoon reading from Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land,’ Heaney reading Hughes and Alice Oswald reading Beckett.

Heaney has acknowledged that, in his early days as a Faber poet, he looked up to Ted Hughes, so it was poignant to hear seventy-year-old Heaney reading ‘Thought Fox’ watched over by a photograph of Hughes in his twenties. Later Heaney read his own ‘Digging’ – both poems now seminal works on the process of writing.

Alice Oswald, so earthed and embodied, didn’t sound a wrong note as she read Samuel Beckett’s play/poem ‘Rockaby.’ Extraordinary. Reading from her own long work, 'A Sleepwalk on the Severn', a poem that captures several voices, there was an echo of Beckett in the rhythms and repetitions, a touch of Dylan Thomas too in the portrait of a village and evidence of the influence of Ted Hughes in the precise connections to the natural world she evokes. But, Oswald has synthesised all of these voices. Hers is a mesmeric, highly original music.

The best of last night has sent me back to read, read, read. And, reminded me that so much of writing involves listening. Listening in to early drafts and asking – what is it I’m trying to say? What does that sound like?

 

Beginnings and Endings

I’m teaching two courses away from Goldsmiths this autumn. One for those starting to write and one for those who’ve finished their novel and need start the process of final revision.

Write Time, Write Place, a one-week course in October, is based in a gorgeous old town house in Sineu, country town and old Roman capital at the heart of rural Mallorca.

Is Your Novel Really Finished? Is a workshop for writers of children’s novels, part of the British SCBWI's 2nd Conference for Writers and Illustrators in November.

Sharon Olds

              

Sharon Olds is over from the States this month with readings in Edinburgh, Aldeburgh and London. I’ll just miss the Aldeburgh Poetry Prom, as I must leave my house by the sea on that day to be back in London. If you haven’t seen Olds read it’s worth the journey! 

The essay I wrote for Magma 44 had me re-reading all of her books earlier this year, including the stunning new collection, One Secret Thing. My respect for her grew. 

Readers are rarely indifferent to her work. Pouncing on individual poems or the latest book the verdict is usually either love it or hate it.  

Reading such a body of work I could only admire her journey, her tenacity in the search, through writing, for ‘truth.’ Outspoken, of course, but look at the multi-perspectives she brings to the same material – her difficult childhood, her troubled relationships with her parents, her sexuality. There is compassion, searing honesty, but no self-pity.  And, always humour. See her if you can.