Pam Johnson - novelist, poet and fiction tutor on the MA in Creative & Life Writing at Goldsmiths -
offers author interviews, reviews, literary news, plus images and quotes to keep the words flowing
I’m really looking forward
to this coming weekend in Aldeburgh.
On Saturday 27 and Sunday 28
April poet Tamar Yoseloff will be writer-in-residence in the south lookout
tower on Aldeburgh Beach. She plans to create a temporary reading
room, a wall of words, an installation of found objects.
She’s invited poets to
read with her on Saturday evening on the theme of the sea and I’m delighted to
be one of those lucky poets.
Many congratulations to Ross Raisin and Evie Wyld, both
ex-Goldsmiths students who have published excellent novels, won prizes and have
now made it on to that most prestigious of literary lists – Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Well deserved!
Looking forward to this Friday evening when I’ll be reading my poem, ‘Ringo Hated Onions,’ at the London launch of the anthology, Newspaper Taxis, published by Seren.
Delighted to find my poem in such distinguished company – others in the book include: Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy, Elaine Feinstein, Peter Finch, Adrian Henri, Philip Larkin, Lachlan Mackinnon, Roger McGough, Sheenagh Pugh, Jeremy Reed and Carol Rumens.
Do come along for the reading and buy a copy. It’s all in a good cause as royalties are being donated to Claire House Children's Hospice, serving those children and young people of Merseyside with complex medical needs since 1998.
I'm not sure how many of the poets will be reading on Friday, but I'm pretty sure Philip Larkin won't be among them. Hope to see some of your there:
To the Troubadour last night for an amazing evening. This
was no ordinary poetry reading, more an event of spontaneous spoken word. What
We Should Have Said, re-invigorates what an evening of poetry can be.
Not much is planned. One poet reads, a theme or a mood is
picked up and the next poet comes to the mic. The music falls in with the
rhythm of the words, the first poet might return to speak, or Stuart Silver might
pop up with a surreal anecdote or wry observation.
Last night, one theme that was explored you might call,
‘education’, but it was nothing Michael Gove would recognise. Each performer,
in their different voices, offered alternative curricula, subversive ways of
knowing.
No doubt about it, this is the kind of event where, well,
you really had to be there.
Liz Berry, teacher and unofficial patron saint of
schoolgirls, is a huge talent and a perfect choice for such an
event. Her black country accent, and seductive tale-telling was at the heart of
the evening. I'm looking forward to her first full collection. Meanwhile, she has a pamplet with Tall Lighthouse.
Mariko Mori: Rebirth, Burlington Gardens, Until 17 February 2013
Anyone in central London looking to escape Christmas frenzy
or the end of the world – due today, apparently – would do well to head for the Royal Academy in Burlington
Gardens and this wonderful exhibition by New York based Japanese artist
Mariko Mori
This is work to calm and rebalance the mind, inviting reflection on life’s
cycle of death and rebirth, and our connection to the natural world.
When I visited earlier this week I could have stayed for hours in the room with Tom Na-Iu II. The large totem stands
alone in a white room, pulsing with light. Five metres high, it is lit
from within by hundreds of LED lights and connected to Super Kamiokande,
Institute for Cosmic Ray Research at The University of Tokyo. The observatory,
apparently, detects neutrinos emitted by the sun and other such phenomena which the
work displays in real time, in constantly changing light patterns. Awesome. Worth the ticket price for this alone.
Fascinated equally by ancient cultures and cutting-edge science, Mori
draws on the aesthetics of Shintoism, Buddhism, astronomy, particle physics and
technology. I particularly enjoyed
White Hole, to be found in a dark space at the end of a spiraling white corridor.
A helpful attendant lights the way for you with a torch.
Whatever transpires on 21 December 2012 – end of the world or start of a
new era – either way, sitting with one of Mori’s installations, you’d be in a
good place.
On until Sunday 17 February 2013, 10am – 6pm daily (last admission 5.30pm). Late night opening: Fridays until 10pm (last admission 9.30pm) £10 full price, concessions available
For more information visit the website of the Royal Academy, here.
If you’re down on the South Bank in London, it’s worth taking time to catch this exhibition of poems and photographs at the Poetry Library until 3 February 2013 – Tuesday to Sunday, 11am to 8pm
Formerly is both a book and an exhibition. It’s a collaboration between poet Tamar Yoseloff and photographer Vici MacDonald. The book contains fourteen of Yoseloff’s poems, each a response to one of MacDonald’s photographs of derelict parts of London. The exhibition puts the book on the wall with enlargements of the words and images.
Since launching the book earlier this year, Yoseloff and MacDonald have revisited each of the locations to collect found objects – such as a cloth rose, a pair of black court shoes, a fragment of brick, a plastic dolphin - and to write up-to-date field notes, all on display. Some of the buildings have disappeared. In place of The Rose pub there is now a car wash.
Talking to MacDonald at the launch last week I was curious to know how her collection of images had begun: ‘As a child I'd get fascinated by doorways, shops, decaying industrial buildings, and "photograph" them with my eyes.’ At art school she started photographing for real and later, ‘when digital came in, I decided to concentrate on shop fronts, with a possible book in mind. I'd make special pilgrimages to places that looked interesting on the map. Or, locations would choose me, as I passed through them.’
Tamar Yoseloff had long admired MacDonald’s photographs, ‘like good poems, they focus on the minute but important details.’
By the time their collaborative project was conceived Yoseloff had plenty of images to choose from, ‘I trawled through hundreds she has taken over the years.’ MacDonald noticed that Yoseloff tended to respond to images that included text and sought more of those out for her to view. And so the process of trawling and selection went on.
Meanwhile, Yoseloff was considering poetic form, 'The sonnet seemed to be perfect – snapshot-sized, but also appropriate for elegy and commemoration.'
With that in mind, they eventually settled on the fourteen images for each of which Yoseloff produced a poem. Her sonnets don’t obey all the rules, but as Don Paterson says in his 101 Sonnets, the basic requirement for the modern sonnet is those fourteen lines.
With images chosen and the constraints of form in place it’s still a tall order to ‘commission’ yourself to produce. ‘Narratives and characters suggested themselves as the poems developed,’ Yoseloff recalls.
Tamar
Yoseloff at the launch reading 'The Rose.' Added to images and words
was a soundscape devised by composer and electronic musician, Douglas
Benford
The poems work well as a sequence, the effect is cumulative as words and phrases are repeated in changing contexts. The tone ranges from elegiac, such as in 'Formerly,' to a kind of resilient bravado in ‘Quickie Heel Bar.’ Poems and pictures work together to build atmosphere, character and history. To quote a phrase from ‘Formerly’ this is a project to ‘honour dust.’
Formerly is available in a limited edtion of 300 signed copies, price £8, from Hercules Editions
To Waterstones in Covent Garden yesterday evening for the launch of Mary Hamer's novel, Kipling & Trix, for which Hamer was awarded The Virginia Prize for Fiction.
The name of Rudyard Kipling is known to millions but what of his talented younger sister, Trix?
Mary Hamer's novel explores dark episodes in their childhood and follows the reverberations through their adult lives. In the book Henry James refers to Rudyard as a 'brilliant, agitated boy.' Sister Trix was similarly brilliant but why didn't she shine?
Later this month I'll be posting an interview with Mary Hamer to discover how she came to inhabit the world of this famous writer and his sister. Meanwhile, the launch in pictures:
Mary Hamer reads from the opening of Kipling & Trix
above: Some of the Clink Street 'midwives' watch the moment of delivery!
Show don’t tell. How many times is that command repeated in writing
workshops? It’s not without its truth, but I’m wondering if it’s become an
easily repeated shorthand for something that needs to be teased out.
Show don’t tell suggests that all telling equals bad writing and all
showing equals good. Tell that to Paul Auster, master storyteller, whose substantial body of work explores the power
of story itself.
October is turning out to be Paul
Auster month for me. I’ve seen him speak twice about his work – at the BFI
after a screening of his 1995 film Smoke,
and at The Shaw Theatre, talking about his new memoir, Winter Journal. I’ve read Winter Journal and re-read The Red Notebook - Auster's thoughts on writing. All of
which set me thinking about that familiar workshop mantra.
Smoke
Smoke is a film that every aspiring fiction writer needs to see. It grew from Auster’s short story,
‘Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story.’ Auster wrote the screenplay and collaborated
with director, Wayne Wang on making the film.
Why is it so important that you see
it? It’s a film that shows how to tell
stories and shows why we need to tell stories. It’s a masterpiece. If I had my way, it would be on the
syllabus of every fiction-writing course.
Smoke is a story about stories; how they intersect and
overlap; how chance encounter and co-incidence precipitate change. At the start of the film a young man,
Rashid, intervenes in the life of Paul Benjamin [played by William Hurt – the
film is worth seeing for Hurt’s performance alone], a grieving writer unable to
finish his novel. From then on their two lives become entwined in unexpected
ways. A web of connections begins to spin, circling around the hub of a
corner-store smoke shop, The Brooklyn Cigar Company, manned by Auggie [played
by Harvey Keitel, another amazing performance].
This video clip, from the
opening minutes, announces the film’s story theme with the telling of how to weigh smoke.
On stage after the screening of Smoke [BFI, 6 October], Auster explained how Wang had read
the Auggie Wren story in The New York Times and knew it would make a film. Auster gave Wang his
blessing but wasn’t at first involved in the project. Eventually he did get drawn into writing the screenplay.
Auster was generous in acknowledging the contributions made by his wife, the
writer Siri Hustvedt, who helped him brainstorm a first draft, and friend, the
director Robert Altman, who cast his eyes on the final draft. He recalled how
he’d showed Altman what he, Auster, believed to be the finished goods. Altman
suggested it needed another character which Auster duly added, though he wouldn’t
say which one. ‘I’m too embarrassed,’ he claimed but insisted Altman’s
contribution was crucial.
The debt to his collaborators
aside, what is striking about the film is how much Auster’s narrative voice and
preoccupation with storytelling have transferred from page to screen. Watching Smoke is an experience that is not unlike reading, say, Brooklyn
Follies.
The film manages to stay true to
Auster’s founding influence, as discussed in The Red Notebook, ‘… the
greatest influence on my work has been fairy tales, the oral tradition of
story-telling.’ Auster’s work
privileges the speaking teller of
the tale. Of Ghosts from The
New York Trilogy, Auster says, ‘The
storyteller is part of the story, even though he never uses the word I.’
Smoke is a love-song to oral story telling. It’s an urban folk tale, a point
emphasised in the penultimate scene when Auggie recounts a story to Paul
Benjamin. In film terms the scene is static – two men sit talking – but the
camera plays on Auggie’s face picking up the nuances of his expressions, his
pauses. As Auggie’s story reaches its conclusion the camera moves in to a
close-up of just his – telling – mouth.
We guess there’s a grain of truth
in Auggie’s story but suspect some of it is fabricated. When Auggie has
finished his tale, Paul Benjamin leans back, takes a long drag on his small
cigar, exhales, smiles and says:
‘Bullshit takes
real talent, Auggie … To make up a good story you have to know how to push all
the right buttons. I’d say you were up there with the masters.’
‘Wadd’ya mean?’
asks Auggie.
‘It’s a good story.’ Benjamin replies and the two agree life
wouldn’t be worth living if friends didn’t share stories.
So why has the show don’t tell mantra taken such a hold? I think it’s because in early drafts – the stuff of most
workshops – the weakest writing is a kind of outline telling, not fully voiced.
It’s as if at such moments the writer is still telling herself the story. I
tend to mark up these passages as notes-to-self. It’s not a matter of simply
deleting such passages but working out what it is you are trying to tell
yourself. At such moments it’s too
easy to say show don’t tell.
A more nuanced feedback might
include a few probing questions: what is it you are telling yourself? Do you
need a dramatised moment here? Do
you need to tell? If so, who is the teller? Is the teller fully part of the
story, strongly voiced, engaging? Might the teller have a miss-hit a few
buttons here?
Auster’s work is a reminder that
not all telling is bad, but that to achieve the oral-tradition- effect-on-the-page for a contemporary reader you do have to know how to push the buttons. It a matter of voice and pace that can’t afford to slip.
Auster makes telling an art. He
gets the voice – tone and pace – pitch-perfect, drawing the reader in as would a storyteller round a
campfire.
On the way home from the BFI event
I had a Paul Austerish encounter. I was sitting on the bus reading my new copy of
Winter Journal when a young woman leaned over:
‘Is
that any good? I’m taking my boyfriend to see him next Tuesday...It’s his
birthday.’
‘I’ve
only read ten pages,’ I replied but I talked eagerly about Smoke and Auster’s
insight into the making of it. She
hadn’t heard of the film – being under 25 I guess she must have been at primary
school when it was first released. She was excited to be able to get the DVD
for her boyfriend’s birthday; equally, I was delighted to discover Auster would
be talking about the writing of Winter Journal at a separate event. As soon as
I got home I booked a ticket online.
More of that book/event in another
post. It’s looking as if Winter Journal will turn out to be my Book of The
Month.
To the South Bank this evening to see Richard Ford reading
from his new novel Canada, and in Q and A with James Runcie.
Interesting to hear that this big book grew from 20 pages
Ford had written in 1989, about a boy escaping to live in Canada. When he came
across the pages again he wondered what the boy was doing in Canada, ‘Where
were his parents?’ Ah, he thought, they’d robbed a bank. Okay. And off he went.
The book opens with the
narrator declaring: ‘First, I’ll tell about the
robbery our parents committed.’ The narrator's parents, however, are not natural bank robbers, but having made that the start Ford
told himself ‘This is gonna have to work.’ And so the novel grew as he explored
‘how to make that plausible.’ What had driven these ordinary people to rob a bank?
Why Canada? Ford loves the word, the sound of it, ‘It’s a
dactyl,’ and the way it looks on the page.
Several times Ford referred to his dyslexia which means that
his process is slow, carefully considered - writing as an act of ‘super
patience.’ Once a draft is complete the editing begins with him reading the
work aloud to his wife Katrina, until it sounds right. Writing, for him, an
aural process. Hence all those rhythmic, flowing sentences.
Apparently he keeps his
work-in-progress in the freezer because once, while at lunch, a
reading lamp fell on his manuscript and set it alight. ‘I still have the burn
mark on my desk.’
He reckons that the wide
recognition that came with The Sportswriter was due to the fact that he’d
decided on a 'draconian method' of working. Why? Because he felt his earlier novels weren’t complete, he hadn’t expressed all that he had wished to.
Since The Sportswriter he has followed this method, which consists of typing up
everything from his notebook and filing it in a loose-leaf folder – character
notes, themes/ideas, places. Everything he thinks is relevant to the book must
be caught in this way until he has several hundred pages. 'I read it once
a week, until it is in me.’ Then
he can write the book. It's tough, a kind of ‘clerical hell’ but it works for him.
I'm only up to chapter 10 but it certainly seems to be working with Canada.
All acts of writing involve a certain amount of courage. The PEN/Pinter Prize reminds us just how courageous some writers must be in order not to be silenced.
The Prize, established in 2009 in memory of the playwright
Harold Pinter, is awarded annually to a British writer of outstanding literary
merit who casts ‘an unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the world and shows a
‘fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and
our societies’ – The quotes are from Pinter’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
On 8 October I went to the PEN/Pinter Prize evening at the
British Library to see Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy collect her award.
Duffy accepted the award with modest good grace, saying she
didn’t feel worthy of it. However, she did proudly note that both she and Harold
Pinter had benefited from a state education. How many potential young writers
might we be losing as Michael Gove turns back the clock on state schools, she
wondered. A scandal!
She read a selection of her work – with musical
accompaniment from John Sampson - amply
demonstrating that she met Pinter’s criteria. There was a long poem about the First World War and its
futility alongside a wry, pin-sharp
riposte to the teacher who had a Duffy poem banned from the school syllabus, ‘Mrs
Schofield’s GCSE.’ You can read it, here
But that wasn’t the end of the evening. The award comes in
two parts. It then fell to Duffy to announce the second part of the
prize which is offered to an international writer of courage. Duffy had
nominated the Syrian journalist and novelist, Samar Yazbek. Forced out of Syria
because of her views and her writing Yazbek now lives in exile in Europe. You can read
about her life in exile, here.
Clearly very moved by this recognition of her writing, Samar Yazbek read her acceptance speech
in Arabic. Her non-fiction, A Woman in the
Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution, as already attacted much attention.
Interestingly Yazbek has a novel due to be published here, Cinnamon,translated
by Emily Danby. It's due out on 5 November. Not long to wait.
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