Monday, July 31, 2006
Not Dead, but in Hiding
I know it's been a long time since my last confession, folks, but hold onto your kidney bowls, pictures are coming soon of a lovely trip to the woods. Bears and all.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Blog-o-mania out of control!
In case people have been wondering why I so rarely update my Raw Light writing blog these days, I'm afraid it's not good news. I have over-stretched myself - every bit as painful as it sounds - and now have more time-consuming blogs to maintain than is healthy for my mental state. To prove this, here is a selection of the various online journals and resources I administer:
POETS ON FIRE daily listings
My Ancient Greek OU course blog
An irregular blog in memory of my mother, the popular novelist Charlotte Lamb
My local CE parish site, which I maintain for the church
To add to the above, I also have two other blogs under different pseudonyms, which I wish to keep anonymous for all sorts of dreadful and scandalous reasons, and I run a fun but infrequent blog for one of my four year old twin sons, who likes to make up his own poems and post them on the net, plus, of course, my Raw Light blog which you are currently reading.
I also run the POETS ON FIRE forum, which can't be left to run wild and needs daily attention, rather like a dog.
POETS ON FIRE FORUM
Is it any surprise I'm exhausted!?!
POETS ON FIRE daily listings
My Ancient Greek OU course blog
An irregular blog in memory of my mother, the popular novelist Charlotte Lamb
My local CE parish site, which I maintain for the church
To add to the above, I also have two other blogs under different pseudonyms, which I wish to keep anonymous for all sorts of dreadful and scandalous reasons, and I run a fun but infrequent blog for one of my four year old twin sons, who likes to make up his own poems and post them on the net, plus, of course, my Raw Light blog which you are currently reading.
I also run the POETS ON FIRE forum, which can't be left to run wild and needs daily attention, rather like a dog.
POETS ON FIRE FORUM
Is it any surprise I'm exhausted!?!
Thursday, July 06, 2006
It's All Happening!
Boudicca & Co.
Yes, it's official, I now have my own author page at Salt Publishing and the new cover of my second collection Boudicca & Co. has finally been revealed to the public in all its Titian glory. Drum roll, please!It really is a fun, sexy cover for a poetry book, everything I could have hoped for and more, and I'm very pleased with it indeed. The book itself is not due out for a few months yet, but there's some biog. and an interesting description of the book available online now, plus an extract and a recent photograph of me - which is unusual enough to merit a visit to the site, I think, since I usually try to hide behind pictures taken in my twenties!
Anyway, it's real, it's happening, and I'm very excited to be launching my second poetry collection with Salt.
Here's where you can find out more about Boudicca & Co. which is due out 1st November 2006.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
"If you love your books, let them go" - The New York Times on the new global phenomenon of BookCrossing
This is Summersault, a cafe in the heart of Rugby, a market town in Warwickshire, whose chief claim to fame is that the game of rugby was invented there. I live within ten miles of Rugby, so visit the town frequently.
When we first moved to the area about three years ago, I checked out Rugby and was enchanted by this charming cafe with its outside tables, lavish flower displays and the arts & crafts materials and jewellery for sale inside the restaurant. It runs to three floors, with a lovely atrium-style top floor for those long winter afternoons, heavily planted with greenery and glowing with light. It's always marvellous to find a good place to write and it helps if the food - and especially the coffee - is excellent too.
But in recent months, Summersault has become even more special in my eyes. For it has joined a rapidly growing worldwide 'sociology experiment', as Book Magazine has dubbed it, and become an Official BookCrossing Zone.
Okay, you may be asking, what is BookCrossing? Well, basically it's about passing on your used books to other people for free. But anonymously, to complete strangers, instead of to friends and family. The three 'R's of BookCrossing are
Read it!
Register it!
Release it!
This is how the system works. You read a book, you visit www.bookcrossing.com and register that book, giving it a unique number which is attached either on the cover or on the inside cover, using your own book labels or one specially downloaded from the website, then you just release the book ... leave it on a park bench, on a cafe table, at a bus stop, in a church. When it's found, the person who takes it home with them will hopefully read the label, visit the bookcrossing site, and notify them that the book has been found. Then they read it, and release it again. Simple as that.
Naturally, it's NOT as simple as that. Many books are released into the wild, as it's called, and never heard of again. Very depressing for the releaser. But many are registered on the site as having been found, and are then passed on again, all over the world. Pretty neat idea!
To facilitate book exchanges, some places have been designated as BookCrossing Zones. And to come full circle, Summersault Cafe in Rugby is just such a place.
As you can see from this photo, the books are kept in a small bookcase near the door, with a sign explaining the process and letting people know that these particular books are FREE and can be taken home. You go in, browse the books, take one home, register it, read it, take it back and pass it on again.
I've just picked up a cookery book there today, a Dan Brown novel for one of my teenage daughters, and a couple of younger reader books for the kids. On the BookCrossing site you can find out if there's an Official BookCrossing Zone near you or who's registered on the scheme in your area, when the last books were released there and exactly where. This scheme is global, of course, so your books can travel anywhere and you will be notified by email when someone finds them, even if they end up in Peru! It's an amazing network of leads and book stories for you to follow and the BookCrossing worldwide discussion forum makes fascinating reading ...
Here's a link to the Bookcrossing site. Why not join them and register one of your books today, then release it ...
bookcrossing
n. the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.
(added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary in August 2004)
When we first moved to the area about three years ago, I checked out Rugby and was enchanted by this charming cafe with its outside tables, lavish flower displays and the arts & crafts materials and jewellery for sale inside the restaurant. It runs to three floors, with a lovely atrium-style top floor for those long winter afternoons, heavily planted with greenery and glowing with light. It's always marvellous to find a good place to write and it helps if the food - and especially the coffee - is excellent too. But in recent months, Summersault has become even more special in my eyes. For it has joined a rapidly growing worldwide 'sociology experiment', as Book Magazine has dubbed it, and become an Official BookCrossing Zone.
Okay, you may be asking, what is BookCrossing? Well, basically it's about passing on your used books to other people for free. But anonymously, to complete strangers, instead of to friends and family. The three 'R's of BookCrossing are
Read it!
Register it!
Release it!
This is how the system works. You read a book, you visit www.bookcrossing.com and register that book, giving it a unique number which is attached either on the cover or on the inside cover, using your own book labels or one specially downloaded from the website, then you just release the book ... leave it on a park bench, on a cafe table, at a bus stop, in a church. When it's found, the person who takes it home with them will hopefully read the label, visit the bookcrossing site, and notify them that the book has been found. Then they read it, and release it again. Simple as that.
Naturally, it's NOT as simple as that. Many books are released into the wild, as it's called, and never heard of again. Very depressing for the releaser. But many are registered on the site as having been found, and are then passed on again, all over the world. Pretty neat idea!
To facilitate book exchanges, some places have been designated as BookCrossing Zones. And to come full circle, Summersault Cafe in Rugby is just such a place.
As you can see from this photo, the books are kept in a small bookcase near the door, with a sign explaining the process and letting people know that these particular books are FREE and can be taken home. You go in, browse the books, take one home, register it, read it, take it back and pass it on again. I've just picked up a cookery book there today, a Dan Brown novel for one of my teenage daughters, and a couple of younger reader books for the kids. On the BookCrossing site you can find out if there's an Official BookCrossing Zone near you or who's registered on the scheme in your area, when the last books were released there and exactly where. This scheme is global, of course, so your books can travel anywhere and you will be notified by email when someone finds them, even if they end up in Peru! It's an amazing network of leads and book stories for you to follow and the BookCrossing worldwide discussion forum makes fascinating reading ...
Here's a link to the Bookcrossing site. Why not join them and register one of your books today, then release it ...
bookcrossing
n. the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.
(added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary in August 2004)
Saturday, June 24, 2006
My Murky Past as a Secondhand Bookseller
The other day I came across some old photographs of my ill-fated secondhand bookshop venture in Camelford, North Cornwall, and decided to post them up on the blog, to share them with you. They made me come over all nostalgic for a moment, so I had to remind myself that I ploughed the last of my capital into this secondhand bookshop, launched it in 2002 with no business acumen or experience - and almost no advertising - and that it sank hopelessly into a pit of debt and despair before the first year was even up.
An old and sadly only too familiar tale for anyone who's ever been in business, I'm sure. But even reminding myself how I came to be so grindingly poor does not eradicate the little spark of nostalgia and fondness which leapt inside me as I viewed the photos of my old bookshop.
It really was a curiosity shop too, as you may be able to see from these photographs: strange prints on the wall, of nudes and who knows what else; a pair of elephant stools, hand-carved and painted; an exotic carved wooden wall-frieze; books sprawling everywhere, from cheap 60s & 70s 'Confessions of a Window-Cleaner' pulp fiction, to Modern Firsts of well-known twentieth-century poets, to antiquarian editions of Milton and Darwin; an impressive collection of occult literature - a local preacher came in one day and bought The Witch's Bible in order to burn it; an antique dark wooden settle for readers to relax on whilst browsing, and a large centrepiece table with an assortment of chairs for writing workshops and other social events.
Camelford was not ready for a bookshop, however. Rather like the bare platform in the poem 'Adlestrop', nobody came and nobody went for the first six months. A few local browsers would drop by in their lunch hour, engage me in idle talk, then disappear without parting with a penny. Once, a man in a weary-looking suit came in, poked around for a while, then smiled over the desk and told me that nobody reads books on the Cornish side of the Tamar. He was a bookseller from Devon.
One of my most serious problems was that I had little money for advertising, running a few poetry events instead to raise the shop's profile in the community, yet still failing to make enough in sales to cover the rent, rates and other outgoings. But I still maintain the shop failed because it was in too tough a location to draw regular custom - beyond the main body of the village, on a steep and dangerously busy hill, with almost no pavement. Even the Indian King Arts Centre, situated almost directly opposite, was struggling at the time and later closed down.
After I left, there was an art gallery there for a while. When we last drove past the shop, on holiday in Cornwall about a year ago, that too had gone.
An old and sadly only too familiar tale for anyone who's ever been in business, I'm sure. But even reminding myself how I came to be so grindingly poor does not eradicate the little spark of nostalgia and fondness which leapt inside me as I viewed the photos of my old bookshop.
It really was a curiosity shop too, as you may be able to see from these photographs: strange prints on the wall, of nudes and who knows what else; a pair of elephant stools, hand-carved and painted; an exotic carved wooden wall-frieze; books sprawling everywhere, from cheap 60s & 70s 'Confessions of a Window-Cleaner' pulp fiction, to Modern Firsts of well-known twentieth-century poets, to antiquarian editions of Milton and Darwin; an impressive collection of occult literature - a local preacher came in one day and bought The Witch's Bible in order to burn it; an antique dark wooden settle for readers to relax on whilst browsing, and a large centrepiece table with an assortment of chairs for writing workshops and other social events.
Camelford was not ready for a bookshop, however. Rather like the bare platform in the poem 'Adlestrop', nobody came and nobody went for the first six months. A few local browsers would drop by in their lunch hour, engage me in idle talk, then disappear without parting with a penny. Once, a man in a weary-looking suit came in, poked around for a while, then smiled over the desk and told me that nobody reads books on the Cornish side of the Tamar. He was a bookseller from Devon.
One of my most serious problems was that I had little money for advertising, running a few poetry events instead to raise the shop's profile in the community, yet still failing to make enough in sales to cover the rent, rates and other outgoings. But I still maintain the shop failed because it was in too tough a location to draw regular custom - beyond the main body of the village, on a steep and dangerously busy hill, with almost no pavement. Even the Indian King Arts Centre, situated almost directly opposite, was struggling at the time and later closed down.
After I left, there was an art gallery there for a while. When we last drove past the shop, on holiday in Cornwall about a year ago, that too had gone.
Friday, June 16, 2006
Salt Publishing: new poetry collection for 2006
Great news! This week I signed with Salt Publishing in Cambridge for the publication of my second full-length collection of poetry, entitled Boudicca & Co., which is more or less ready to rock'n'roll and should be out on the shelves by late 2006. This is me pictured in Cambridge a few weeks ago with head honcho for the British side of operations at Salt Publishing, Chris Hamilton-Emery - whose poem 'Salt' I published in my magazine 'Blade' about ten years ago ...As the title suggests, my second collection contains a long sequence of poems written in the voice of Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni, plus the best individual poems from the past nine years. Many of the poems included in this collection, however, were written over the past twelve months and reflect new changes in style and direction.
You can find my first poetry collection The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman, on the Bloodaxe Books site.
As the launch date approaches, I shall keep you updated about readings, performances and one-legged spoon races. And if you'd like to book me for a poetry event either later this year or in 2007, you can find all the right information and contact details for that on my Jane Holland website.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
My Mother and Other Romantic Novelists
My goodness, the days do pass quickly when you're meant to be keeping your blog updated on a regular basis, don't they?
Okay, I've got some FABULOUS news for you on the poetry front, but I am not yet able to reveal it in all its fabulousness, so you will have to wait just a few more days for that! Be patient, be strong, have another muffin ...
MEANWHILE, back at the ranch --- and it does feel like a ranch here at the moment, as Steve's not been able to get out to mow the lawn for a few days - preparations for Ofsted inspections at his school! - and the grass has grown almost to thigh-level in some parts of our garden, waving beautifully in the breeze with leggy buttercups and graceful seeded grassheads under the apple tree --- MEANWHILE, I have been extremely busy creating a brand-new blog.
Groan, not another blog!?
Yes, for I have bloggy fingers and am unable to prevent myself from creating new blogs almost every month. But this time it's all in a good cause, for I have created a blog in memory of my dear mama, whose writing name was Charlotte Lamb and who wrote over 150 novels, most of them romances, but some historical novels and a few big thrillers in there too, and who died in October 2000.
I miss my mother dreadfully most days, as she doted on her two granddaughters Katie and Becky, and very tragically died before she could meet her other three grandchildren, my twin sons Morris and Dylan and my youngest daughter Indigo. So almost every day my kids do these odd amusing little things and I say to them 'Your grandma would have loved that!' and I show them her photo and tell them about her. Which makes it hard to forget ...
I don't have much material to do with my mother, alas, not even many photos, as my siblings and father have most of that sort of thing. But I do have copies of nearly all of her M&B romances and some of the thrillers and historicals, so I shall be posting up information about them, and about re-releases of her books in places like Australia, where she's still a very popular author, and some new graphic novels that have been made using her stories, and other titbits either about my mother or about romance in general.
If that sounds like your sort of thing, or even if you're just a little bit curious about my mother and her work, do please come and see what I've been up to at charlottelamb.blogspot.com.
Okay, I've got some FABULOUS news for you on the poetry front, but I am not yet able to reveal it in all its fabulousness, so you will have to wait just a few more days for that! Be patient, be strong, have another muffin ...
MEANWHILE, back at the ranch --- and it does feel like a ranch here at the moment, as Steve's not been able to get out to mow the lawn for a few days - preparations for Ofsted inspections at his school! - and the grass has grown almost to thigh-level in some parts of our garden, waving beautifully in the breeze with leggy buttercups and graceful seeded grassheads under the apple tree --- MEANWHILE, I have been extremely busy creating a brand-new blog.
Groan, not another blog!?
Yes, for I have bloggy fingers and am unable to prevent myself from creating new blogs almost every month. But this time it's all in a good cause, for I have created a blog in memory of my dear mama, whose writing name was Charlotte Lamb and who wrote over 150 novels, most of them romances, but some historical novels and a few big thrillers in there too, and who died in October 2000.
I miss my mother dreadfully most days, as she doted on her two granddaughters Katie and Becky, and very tragically died before she could meet her other three grandchildren, my twin sons Morris and Dylan and my youngest daughter Indigo. So almost every day my kids do these odd amusing little things and I say to them 'Your grandma would have loved that!' and I show them her photo and tell them about her. Which makes it hard to forget ...
I don't have much material to do with my mother, alas, not even many photos, as my siblings and father have most of that sort of thing. But I do have copies of nearly all of her M&B romances and some of the thrillers and historicals, so I shall be posting up information about them, and about re-releases of her books in places like Australia, where she's still a very popular author, and some new graphic novels that have been made using her stories, and other titbits either about my mother or about romance in general.
If that sounds like your sort of thing, or even if you're just a little bit curious about my mother and her work, do please come and see what I've been up to at charlottelamb.blogspot.com.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
We're going to the Zoo, the Zoo, the Zoo ...
For those who believe I do nothing but sit in front of a computer screen all day, here are some photos of my recent trip, with the kids, to Whipsnade Zoo just north of London. If you're planning to go there yourself, go early in the day and expect to spend a long time there. We were there nearly five hours and saw maybe a third of what was going on there.
If you can afford the parking actually within the Zoo complex, go for it (about £12!), otherwise wear sturdy walking shoes, take a buggy for the kids and plenty of water/umbrella shade and/or sunhats if it's a hot day. Whipsnade is a very LARGE place ...
The boys trying to get up close and personal with the big fellas
I did mean to bring extra wipes ...
The closest any human has ever been to this particular species
Indigo in her natural habitat
If you can afford the parking actually within the Zoo complex, go for it (about £12!), otherwise wear sturdy walking shoes, take a buggy for the kids and plenty of water/umbrella shade and/or sunhats if it's a hot day. Whipsnade is a very LARGE place ...
The boys trying to get up close and personal with the big fellas
I did mean to bring extra wipes ...
The closest any human has ever been to this particular species
Indigo in her natural habitat
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Pure & Good & Right
This week I was at an Open Mic poetry night in Leamington Spa - PUREandGOODandRIGHT - which is held in a very chic bar-restaurant on Warwick Street called TOYK. Sean Kelly is the promoter and MC, a man famous for his poem about penguins and his song about Spiderman - if you ever meet Sean, get him to do the Spiderman song for you, it's genuinely hilarious and deserves to be aired on national television - and he was in fine form this evening, managing not to introduce me as a snooker player (unlike last time) and even forgiving me for hitting him in the face with the microphone. (An accident, I should add. I'd have hit him a lot harder if I'd intended to.)
Like the first PUREandGOODandRIGHT it was a star-studded evening, a sort of 'Who's Who' of West Midlands poets.
We had Julie Boden, former Birmingham Poet Laureate, though she was being part of the audience for once rather than shaking her booty at the mic. Dreadlockalien - aka Richard Grant - current Birmingham Poet Laureate, was also there, giving us his honey-tongued 'I wanna hear poetry' vibe. (Yes, mellifluous.) Plus Andy Conner, one of the 'Six of the Best' artistes from this month at the Birmingham Library Theatre, who gave us more of his long poems from memory - an impressive talent for memorising, this guy, and a quirky style of delivery.
To my great pleasure Roy McFarlane, gifted performance poet from Wolverhampton and a central member of the New October Poets, gave us an excellent ten minute set after the interval; ignore the quiet unassuming manners of this very polite man, Roy McFarlane is one of the most talented and politically motivated poets I've heard in the West Midlands and deserves to be more widely known in the UK. Then there was Jus B, a new talent and smooth groover from somewhere round the Birmingham area - didn't quite catch where - who laid it all on the line for us. Several new faces too tonight - new to me, that is - including Sue and Cherie, both of them very confident and impressive.
Oh, and I did a short set myself, and was accused afterwards of not reading any 'rude' poems. I thought I'd gone too far last time with my rudery so chose a slightly tamer selection this month, thinking the older members of the audience would appreciate the gesture. Shows how wrong you can be.
I will be MCing this Leamington open mic night myself on July 17th, while Sean Kelly is away on his hols, which is something I'm looking forward to, in spite of the ribbing I know I'll get at the hands of dear Dread & Co. I'm just arranging a few guest poets at the moment, so watch this space for further details.
I can highly recommend PUREandGOODandRIGHT if you live anywhere in the West Midlands; the restaurant and bar are excellent, the clientele appear to be well-hooved young professionals who are quite happy to listen to a spot of live poetry whilst unwinding with a large glass of Chardonnay, and the atmosphere is intimate, friendly and encouraging to new performers.
The next PUREandGOODandRIGHT will be held on Monday 19th June at 7.30pm. TOYK, Warwick Street, Leamington Spa.
Like the first PUREandGOODandRIGHT it was a star-studded evening, a sort of 'Who's Who' of West Midlands poets.
We had Julie Boden, former Birmingham Poet Laureate, though she was being part of the audience for once rather than shaking her booty at the mic. Dreadlockalien - aka Richard Grant - current Birmingham Poet Laureate, was also there, giving us his honey-tongued 'I wanna hear poetry' vibe. (Yes, mellifluous.) Plus Andy Conner, one of the 'Six of the Best' artistes from this month at the Birmingham Library Theatre, who gave us more of his long poems from memory - an impressive talent for memorising, this guy, and a quirky style of delivery.
To my great pleasure Roy McFarlane, gifted performance poet from Wolverhampton and a central member of the New October Poets, gave us an excellent ten minute set after the interval; ignore the quiet unassuming manners of this very polite man, Roy McFarlane is one of the most talented and politically motivated poets I've heard in the West Midlands and deserves to be more widely known in the UK. Then there was Jus B, a new talent and smooth groover from somewhere round the Birmingham area - didn't quite catch where - who laid it all on the line for us. Several new faces too tonight - new to me, that is - including Sue and Cherie, both of them very confident and impressive.
Oh, and I did a short set myself, and was accused afterwards of not reading any 'rude' poems. I thought I'd gone too far last time with my rudery so chose a slightly tamer selection this month, thinking the older members of the audience would appreciate the gesture. Shows how wrong you can be.
I will be MCing this Leamington open mic night myself on July 17th, while Sean Kelly is away on his hols, which is something I'm looking forward to, in spite of the ribbing I know I'll get at the hands of dear Dread & Co. I'm just arranging a few guest poets at the moment, so watch this space for further details.
I can highly recommend PUREandGOODandRIGHT if you live anywhere in the West Midlands; the restaurant and bar are excellent, the clientele appear to be well-hooved young professionals who are quite happy to listen to a spot of live poetry whilst unwinding with a large glass of Chardonnay, and the atmosphere is intimate, friendly and encouraging to new performers.
The next PUREandGOODandRIGHT will be held on Monday 19th June at 7.30pm. TOYK, Warwick Street, Leamington Spa.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Poetic Ducks and Drakes under Fire
I'm afraid a predator - probably a fox - came in the night a few days ago and did for those poor duck eggs in our back garden. We think the duck got away. The nest itself was decimated but no sign of duck feathers, so hopefully she lives to lay another clutch even though her unfortunate offspring perished before they could be hatched. So that's the end of that. But here are the first few eggs which I managed to capture on camera before their sad demise ...
Talking off the tribulations of sitting ducks, we've been having a humdinger of a fight in recent weeks on the Poem forum on the contentious issue of sexism in British and Irish poetry.
Needless to say, I am on the team which believes sexism still exists, and sometimes in spadefuls ... it's just a little more subtle now than when it was not punishable by public beheading. But the opposing team - all men, except for one woman - mostly believe it's outdated and unfashionable to see sexism at work in contemporary poetry, some even claiming it doesn't exist at all and that we must be hysterical feminists with chips on our shoulders about men - and the rest - to claim something so ludicrous as women being discriminated against in the dear old liberal utopia of British poetry.
Clearly nettled by our arguments, one well-known male poet cited a recent anthology by a major editor to demonstrate that person's lack of sexism. Another gentleman - on our team or perhaps just acting as a referee - quietly pointed out that 135 of the post-1945 poems in that anthology were by men. Only 16 were by women.
Hmmm ...
So here are some sitting ducks to accompany that topic, all of them poets and female, being treated with dinner by the Heaventree Press - the out-of-focus guys at the far end of the table - before performing at the Herbert Gallery in Coventry last month, to celebrate International Women's Day. That's a major poet Pascale Petit there with her eyes rather unfortunately closed, Kimberley Trusty opposite laughing, I think that might possibly be Helen Ivory beyond Kim with all the flowing golden hair, and we also had Esther Morgan, Zoe Brigley and of course myself, Jane Holland, hidden behind the camera as usual. The event went down very well, the large gallery was packed with standing room only within minutes of the start, and Jenny Ousbey was the compere. Excellent stuff.
However, although I believe expenses were paid for some who had travelled a long way, dinner seemed to be the main fee. Certainly that was all I got for performing that night. It was a very nice dinner in a lovely Coventry restuarant called Brown's, but cash would have been even nicer. Would that have been the case with a reading of six reasonably well-known male poets?
Somehow I doubt it ...
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
New 'Live Poetry' Discussion Forum - have you joined yet?
Oh yes, there are yet more Jane Holland projects in the mix this month ...
If you've been wondering why I haven't been posting as regularly as usual on Raw Light - and I'm sure you have! - here's the reason; a few weeks back, I launched a new discussion forum for UK poets who are into performance and spoken word, and it's been eating all my spare time since then.
This new discussion forum is a place where performers and poets can exchange views, make friends, advertise new or regular gigs, open mic nights and festival performances, see what's on in live poetry right across the UK on a daily basis, play quizz games, and generally network. Naturally, it's taken a fair amount of time to get the forum up and running, and encourage people to register as members and begin posting new topics for discussion, so I haven't been able to keep posting to this blog as often as I'd like.
Anyway, you can visit my new 'live poetry' discussion forum here - POETS ON FIRE FORUM - and why not become a member, while you're there? (Hint, hint!) It's all completely free, and takes less than 3 minutes to register a username and start posting.
Maybe see you there?
Here I am on stage at the Birmingham Library Theatre last week:
If you've been wondering why I haven't been posting as regularly as usual on Raw Light - and I'm sure you have! - here's the reason; a few weeks back, I launched a new discussion forum for UK poets who are into performance and spoken word, and it's been eating all my spare time since then.
This new discussion forum is a place where performers and poets can exchange views, make friends, advertise new or regular gigs, open mic nights and festival performances, see what's on in live poetry right across the UK on a daily basis, play quizz games, and generally network. Naturally, it's taken a fair amount of time to get the forum up and running, and encourage people to register as members and begin posting new topics for discussion, so I haven't been able to keep posting to this blog as often as I'd like.
Anyway, you can visit my new 'live poetry' discussion forum here - POETS ON FIRE FORUM - and why not become a member, while you're there? (Hint, hint!) It's all completely free, and takes less than 3 minutes to register a username and start posting.
Maybe see you there?
Here I am on stage at the Birmingham Library Theatre last week:
Saturday, May 06, 2006
"First performed on stage at the age of three ..."
Here's my three year old son Dylan, checking the microphone before my SIX OF THE BEST performance last week, who got up on the stage of the Birmingham Library Theatre as one of the warm-up acts and recited the opening stanza of John Masefield's famous poem 'Sea Fever' to an audience of nearly 100 people.
Now there's something unusual to tell the other kids at nursery!
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Charade Project: Friday 28th April 2 - 5pm
Is this the end of the age of the book?
On Friday 28 April, between 2pm and 5pm, a group of people will congregate in Birmingham's Victoria Square to recite their chosen song, play or novel while wandering together, as a conscious re-creation of the final scenes of Truffaut's adaptation of Bradbury’s novel, 'Fahrenheit 451'.
Charade is a work by artist Simon Pope which mirrors the futuristic 1950s novel ‘Fahrenheit 451’ where Ray Bradbury writes of an age when books are illegal and screen based media dominates society. The role of the fire service is no longer to extinguish but to start fires and to burn the books it finds.
Since January 2006 Charade has recruited participants from the West Midlands to save their most cherished piece of media history. Through a series of open workshops and online communities the volunteers have been assisted through a process of memorising and internalising their chosen item, working towards a final event in Birmingham’s city centre.
It's not too late for you to join in. Register online at Charade or tell us on the day.
Charade has been jointly commissioned by BBC and ACE as part of ‘Private View’ a programme to demonstrate “outstanding innovation and vision from visual artists experimenting with live technologies in the public realm”.
You can visit Charade to follow new developments online.
I will be taking part this Friday afternoon in Birmingham's Victoria Square, having memorised some scenes from King Lear - rather imperfectly, I'm afraid, but perhaps that's part of the project, how each person must reinterpret memorised works of literature or art because of their different ways of remembering them.
On Friday 28 April, between 2pm and 5pm, a group of people will congregate in Birmingham's Victoria Square to recite their chosen song, play or novel while wandering together, as a conscious re-creation of the final scenes of Truffaut's adaptation of Bradbury’s novel, 'Fahrenheit 451'.
Charade is a work by artist Simon Pope which mirrors the futuristic 1950s novel ‘Fahrenheit 451’ where Ray Bradbury writes of an age when books are illegal and screen based media dominates society. The role of the fire service is no longer to extinguish but to start fires and to burn the books it finds.
Since January 2006 Charade has recruited participants from the West Midlands to save their most cherished piece of media history. Through a series of open workshops and online communities the volunteers have been assisted through a process of memorising and internalising their chosen item, working towards a final event in Birmingham’s city centre.
It's not too late for you to join in. Register online at Charade or tell us on the day.
Charade has been jointly commissioned by BBC and ACE as part of ‘Private View’ a programme to demonstrate “outstanding innovation and vision from visual artists experimenting with live technologies in the public realm”.
You can visit Charade to follow new developments online.
I will be taking part this Friday afternoon in Birmingham's Victoria Square, having memorised some scenes from King Lear - rather imperfectly, I'm afraid, but perhaps that's part of the project, how each person must reinterpret memorised works of literature or art because of their different ways of remembering them.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
A Duck in the Catmint
In spite of an absence of water, this little duck has built her nest right under our noses, a few yards from the back door in our garden, in a dried old clump of last year's catmint. Her mate, we fear, was the drake last seen dead at the side of the road a week or so ago. So she's all alone in the world but ignoring our tentative efforts at help - apart from nibbling on some bread - with a quiet warning hiss whenever we get too close.
When I first put down a frying pan of water, in the hope that she might drink a little, she was scared enough to leap up from the nest and reveal eight or nine large blueish-white eggs keeping warm there. Beautiful. But our biggest fear is that a fox or wild cat may find her unprotected one night and devour the eggs, or the poor little ducklings when they eventually hatch out.
She might have done better nesting by the village pond about a mile down the road, next to water and clustered with good hiding places for young ducklings, but for some reason she chose our isolated house in the middle of rolling sheep fields to hatch this year's brood. Perhaps there are too many cats in the village now, or maybe this is a territory issue and some other more combative duck has taken the best nesting spot by the pond ...
Lovely, isn't she?
Friday, April 07, 2006
Woods etc., Rejection, and Elementals
I feel dreadful because I've been so busy posting on my POETS ON FIRE blog that I haven't been posting here on RAW LIGHT. This is not very good and accordingly I shall make amends by writing the following:
a.) Having finally got hold of a copy of Alice Oswald's Woods etc., I've been reading it with, at first, incredulity and, after a while, great interest. Although it seems at first glance like a collection containing all the usual suspects - stone, river, moon, stars, woods etc. - this book actually indicates a huge progression by Oswald as she swings even further along the line Hughes was beginning to take in his later 'nature' books, for want of a better description, such as Cave Birds and River, both of them marvellous books which slipped restlessly and ambitiously away from the mainstream wherever possible. It's a line I suppose could be described in places as working within the modernist or avant-garde traditions, but which in strong and rather eccentric hands like those of Hughes and Oswald becomes something uncategorisable. I wasn't sure of it, as I said before, at first, but then I think you get used to the voice and begin to trust it, allowing Oswald to lead you into darker and less obvious waters where you - or at least I - can see new possibilities for language and old possibilities given a new twist.
There are moments in Oswald's latest book when I want to kick her - a slavish homage to Hughes' Wodwo, for instance, which seems to add nothing new and should never really have got past the editor - but there are other moments, too numerous to mention, when I was fascinated enough to want to stop reading Oswald's poems and start writing something of my own. And when that happens, you know this has to be the real thing - poetry.
Perhaps that's the real test of poetry; not Astley's hairs rising on the back of his neck, or Schmidt cutting himself shaving, but a restless urge to write, to test yourself against that reaction, to go one better. That's certainly how Harold Bloom would see it ... if you believe in that sort of thing.
b.) After a silence of nearly five years, my work has at last appeared again in the pages of a poetry magazine - this quarter's issue of Poetry Review, in fact, just published this week. This five year absence from publication was due to a combination of writer's block - which seemed at the time more like writer's death than block - and an abrupt failure of nerve, which went hand in hand with the block and effectively prevented me from submitting even previously written work to poetry magazines. The poem that's just appeared in Poetry Review is a direct response poem to a magazine rejection - 'Deciphering the Rejection Letter' - which is sort of ironic, I know, but it does make me feel better to know I've finally broken the silence.
c.) And to finish off this blog entry, and make up for so many days of not bothering to post, here is a four poem sequence of mine, inspired by the elements and published in the excellent poetry magazine Acumen back in the late 90s:
West Kennett Long Barrow
Stone womb under an earth belly
too ancient for light.
Rain condenses its euphoric mass
to a single blessing
filtering through
the intestinal silence of rock.
Flies cling
to the mossed edge of a crevice.
She devours their small bodies like offerings.
Once, she could hold her face
up to the moon, watch it
screwing a thin silver bolt
through the deadeye.
Now she eats beetles
and hunts with the night-train
passing the lit windows of women
anxious for conception.
II
Almost Iceland
The house was a standing stone
on the edge of annihilation.
It sat there uncomplaining
while acres of wind
pummelled and rattled windows
and floorboards.
The sea birds shunned it. The bees
rarely came so far north.
The sheep called out to it to move
but it didn’t.
It just sat there.
Its single chimney grinned up at the sky
like a maniac.
For miles around, whole islands lay down
and withered. Stones
stunted themselves in its shadow.
And always the wind
hammering for the house
to be absent.
Finally, its inhabitants packed up
and left.
The house remained,
folding its arms and gritting black teeth.
It had no intention of surrender.
The wind blew on
battering its ram’s head repeatedly
against lintels and uprights
its high battle-cry
prising tiles from the roof
imploding
the senseless resistance of doorways.
III
Holy Island
Pausing
after the genuflection of causeway
salt water puckers a scar
the width of her belly
creased abdomen
folding a damp cloth into sand dunes.
Whatever she gave birth to
dragged itself beyond these coarse grasses
then sloped into wind-blear
turning its back
irascibly on civilisation.
Yet the marks remain. Twice a day
they etch themselves out
along the chevroned gold
of a mackerel stomach.
The sea staggers across here on stilts
ridiculous headdress bouncing
and swaying
exhausted by cold
yet making the pilgrimage.
After it kneels and kisses the earth
sacred light flattens sand
to a blind haze
magnetised by the crawling bodies of cars.
Bare steel hulks
dredging the sun-dust
hump-hump-hump themselves
over her consecrated skein
of striations.
IV
The Stone Henge
A perfect ice-rimmed crucible
tilts itself
against the first geometry of stars.
Vast scalded pockets of fire
empty themselves
through miraculous peepholes.
Obsidian heaven
volcanised light to this glittering sacrament
that drilled ancient fires
through the eye
suggesting bears and archers
the twin shafts
of a ceaseless plough.
Now a wind-blackened cauldron
pitches its song
through these wide openings
to weather
each isolated furnace
linked
by the furious tweak
of identification
the hot craned neck of naming.
a.) Having finally got hold of a copy of Alice Oswald's Woods etc., I've been reading it with, at first, incredulity and, after a while, great interest. Although it seems at first glance like a collection containing all the usual suspects - stone, river, moon, stars, woods etc. - this book actually indicates a huge progression by Oswald as she swings even further along the line Hughes was beginning to take in his later 'nature' books, for want of a better description, such as Cave Birds and River, both of them marvellous books which slipped restlessly and ambitiously away from the mainstream wherever possible. It's a line I suppose could be described in places as working within the modernist or avant-garde traditions, but which in strong and rather eccentric hands like those of Hughes and Oswald becomes something uncategorisable. I wasn't sure of it, as I said before, at first, but then I think you get used to the voice and begin to trust it, allowing Oswald to lead you into darker and less obvious waters where you - or at least I - can see new possibilities for language and old possibilities given a new twist.
There are moments in Oswald's latest book when I want to kick her - a slavish homage to Hughes' Wodwo, for instance, which seems to add nothing new and should never really have got past the editor - but there are other moments, too numerous to mention, when I was fascinated enough to want to stop reading Oswald's poems and start writing something of my own. And when that happens, you know this has to be the real thing - poetry.
Perhaps that's the real test of poetry; not Astley's hairs rising on the back of his neck, or Schmidt cutting himself shaving, but a restless urge to write, to test yourself against that reaction, to go one better. That's certainly how Harold Bloom would see it ... if you believe in that sort of thing.
b.) After a silence of nearly five years, my work has at last appeared again in the pages of a poetry magazine - this quarter's issue of Poetry Review, in fact, just published this week. This five year absence from publication was due to a combination of writer's block - which seemed at the time more like writer's death than block - and an abrupt failure of nerve, which went hand in hand with the block and effectively prevented me from submitting even previously written work to poetry magazines. The poem that's just appeared in Poetry Review is a direct response poem to a magazine rejection - 'Deciphering the Rejection Letter' - which is sort of ironic, I know, but it does make me feel better to know I've finally broken the silence.
c.) And to finish off this blog entry, and make up for so many days of not bothering to post, here is a four poem sequence of mine, inspired by the elements and published in the excellent poetry magazine Acumen back in the late 90s:
ELEMENTALS
1West Kennett Long Barrow
Stone womb under an earth belly
too ancient for light.
Rain condenses its euphoric mass
to a single blessing
filtering through
the intestinal silence of rock.
Flies cling
to the mossed edge of a crevice.
She devours their small bodies like offerings.
Once, she could hold her face
up to the moon, watch it
screwing a thin silver bolt
through the deadeye.
Now she eats beetles
and hunts with the night-train
passing the lit windows of women
anxious for conception.
II
Almost Iceland
The house was a standing stone
on the edge of annihilation.
It sat there uncomplaining
while acres of wind
pummelled and rattled windows
and floorboards.
The sea birds shunned it. The bees
rarely came so far north.
The sheep called out to it to move
but it didn’t.
It just sat there.
Its single chimney grinned up at the sky
like a maniac.
For miles around, whole islands lay down
and withered. Stones
stunted themselves in its shadow.
And always the wind
hammering for the house
to be absent.
Finally, its inhabitants packed up
and left.
The house remained,
folding its arms and gritting black teeth.
It had no intention of surrender.
The wind blew on
battering its ram’s head repeatedly
against lintels and uprights
its high battle-cry
prising tiles from the roof
imploding
the senseless resistance of doorways.
III
Holy Island
Pausing
after the genuflection of causeway
salt water puckers a scar
the width of her belly
creased abdomen
folding a damp cloth into sand dunes.
Whatever she gave birth to
dragged itself beyond these coarse grasses
then sloped into wind-blear
turning its back
irascibly on civilisation.
Yet the marks remain. Twice a day
they etch themselves out
along the chevroned gold
of a mackerel stomach.
The sea staggers across here on stilts
ridiculous headdress bouncing
and swaying
exhausted by cold
yet making the pilgrimage.
After it kneels and kisses the earth
sacred light flattens sand
to a blind haze
magnetised by the crawling bodies of cars.
Bare steel hulks
dredging the sun-dust
hump-hump-hump themselves
over her consecrated skein
of striations.
IV
The Stone Henge
A perfect ice-rimmed crucible
tilts itself
against the first geometry of stars.
Vast scalded pockets of fire
empty themselves
through miraculous peepholes.
Obsidian heaven
volcanised light to this glittering sacrament
that drilled ancient fires
through the eye
suggesting bears and archers
the twin shafts
of a ceaseless plough.
Now a wind-blackened cauldron
pitches its song
through these wide openings
to weather
each isolated furnace
linked
by the furious tweak
of identification
the hot craned neck of naming.
Friday, March 24, 2006
At the Lighthouse - a retrospective
The poem below, At the Lighthouse, was written about six years ago and is about the break-up of a long-term relationship which affected me very deeply. (It wasn't written until about six months after the event, of course, since it's always hard in the immediate aftermath of such things to get them clear enough in your head to make reasonable poetry with them.)
I'm not sure this is a particularly good poem though, but I do think it was a necessary thing for me to write, something which moved me on stylistically as well as emotionally. To explain that remark, I wrote a few more in this vein around that time - half-bitter, half-nostalgic, after-the-break-up retrospectives - then left them behind, hopefully for good. I've never been very good at 'personal' poetry. I prefer to look at larger themes in my poems, to at least touch on the bigger picture where possible, and this constant narrowing things down to personal specifics, to the mundane, seems to give my work a sort of cloyingly 'fashionable' self-awareness which I dislike.
Not that I like an utterly abstract approach either, the cold clear line of some postmodernist poetry, or the deliberate intricacies and complexities and lateral jump cuts of some avant-garde work. I suppose the poems I like best - of my own - tend to be a bit on the simple side. Overly simplistic, some might say. But not this poem, At the Lighthouse; this is more superficial than simple, I think, whilst not wishing to be too harsh on myself, this poem having been written at a time of great personal despair - hard to believe now, on the far side of it - when poems were wrung from me only with immense difficulty. And soon after, indeed, I stopped writing poetry altogether for several years.
For those who might be curious, the poem is set in the South of France, where we used to holiday together most summers. To be even more precise about the location, it's actually the lighthouse above Cap d'Antibes. To get there, you have to navigate these narrow winding dusty lanes, what the French call 'lacets' as I recall, meaning tight bends like shoelaces. And at night, this powerful beam of light sweeps the Cap, crowded with red-roofed private villas and swimming pools, and the glittering bay below. Marvellous when taking an evening swim, to lie back in the black water and wait for that beam to sweep across the Cap. I've actually managed to find a few daytime shots of the lighthouse and views of the bay online, which you can hopefully see by clicking here, if interested.
In spite of my reservations, there are little touches I like in this poem - the opening image of pine trees envisaged as 'bald old men', the atmospheric dust, the quasi-religious overtones long in advance of my own brush with organised boredom, the silver fish of the bay seen from a distance and at height, and lastly - my own twinge of nostalgia, probably only audible to myself - the cigarette, also described in another poem of this period, entitled 'It was cool inside the chapel', as 'your ubiquitous cigarette'. I was a chain-smoker too, don't get me wrong. But cigarettes - and booze, actually - were a major part of that relationship, over eight long destructive years, and since I'm now a smoke-free zone, the mere mention of a cigarette, in the right context, can flash me, both uncomfortably and with affectionate regret, back to that time ...
At the Lighthouse
Its cold steel eye swung
to dust our heads
below the scruffy creak of pines,
bald old men staring
at the black line
of the Mediterranean.
There was always dust there;
dust in our lungs
and in rope sandals.
We climbed the tilting path
to the lighthouse,
glanced in through the porthole
of the chapel.
From the viewing platform
at two francs a time
the bay was no longer
a silver fish
landed on its side.
You moved off into the dark,
the glowing target
of your cigarette
something to lock onto,
burning the retina.
I should have kept you
shadowy, elusive
as those fairy lights heaving
a half-moon bay.
But we had only months
before we fell apart,
swivelling the lens
to face our hinterland,
each trap at last
revealing what it was,
thick swimming dust
fused in the glare
of that cold steel eye.
This poem was first published in Poetry Review.
I'm not sure this is a particularly good poem though, but I do think it was a necessary thing for me to write, something which moved me on stylistically as well as emotionally. To explain that remark, I wrote a few more in this vein around that time - half-bitter, half-nostalgic, after-the-break-up retrospectives - then left them behind, hopefully for good. I've never been very good at 'personal' poetry. I prefer to look at larger themes in my poems, to at least touch on the bigger picture where possible, and this constant narrowing things down to personal specifics, to the mundane, seems to give my work a sort of cloyingly 'fashionable' self-awareness which I dislike.
Not that I like an utterly abstract approach either, the cold clear line of some postmodernist poetry, or the deliberate intricacies and complexities and lateral jump cuts of some avant-garde work. I suppose the poems I like best - of my own - tend to be a bit on the simple side. Overly simplistic, some might say. But not this poem, At the Lighthouse; this is more superficial than simple, I think, whilst not wishing to be too harsh on myself, this poem having been written at a time of great personal despair - hard to believe now, on the far side of it - when poems were wrung from me only with immense difficulty. And soon after, indeed, I stopped writing poetry altogether for several years.
For those who might be curious, the poem is set in the South of France, where we used to holiday together most summers. To be even more precise about the location, it's actually the lighthouse above Cap d'Antibes. To get there, you have to navigate these narrow winding dusty lanes, what the French call 'lacets' as I recall, meaning tight bends like shoelaces. And at night, this powerful beam of light sweeps the Cap, crowded with red-roofed private villas and swimming pools, and the glittering bay below. Marvellous when taking an evening swim, to lie back in the black water and wait for that beam to sweep across the Cap. I've actually managed to find a few daytime shots of the lighthouse and views of the bay online, which you can hopefully see by clicking here, if interested.
In spite of my reservations, there are little touches I like in this poem - the opening image of pine trees envisaged as 'bald old men', the atmospheric dust, the quasi-religious overtones long in advance of my own brush with organised boredom, the silver fish of the bay seen from a distance and at height, and lastly - my own twinge of nostalgia, probably only audible to myself - the cigarette, also described in another poem of this period, entitled 'It was cool inside the chapel', as 'your ubiquitous cigarette'. I was a chain-smoker too, don't get me wrong. But cigarettes - and booze, actually - were a major part of that relationship, over eight long destructive years, and since I'm now a smoke-free zone, the mere mention of a cigarette, in the right context, can flash me, both uncomfortably and with affectionate regret, back to that time ...
At the Lighthouse
Its cold steel eye swung
to dust our heads
below the scruffy creak of pines,
bald old men staring
at the black line
of the Mediterranean.
There was always dust there;
dust in our lungs
and in rope sandals.
We climbed the tilting path
to the lighthouse,
glanced in through the porthole
of the chapel.
From the viewing platform
at two francs a time
the bay was no longer
a silver fish
landed on its side.
You moved off into the dark,
the glowing target
of your cigarette
something to lock onto,
burning the retina.
I should have kept you
shadowy, elusive
as those fairy lights heaving
a half-moon bay.
But we had only months
before we fell apart,
swivelling the lens
to face our hinterland,
each trap at last
revealing what it was,
thick swimming dust
fused in the glare
of that cold steel eye.
This poem was first published in Poetry Review.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Listen with Holland
I've been a busy girl over the past week or so, and one of the things I've been doing is enabling people to listen to my poems online.
Along the way, I've discovered that it's quite a complicated process to load audio files onto websites and blogs, especially if you live in the UK instead of the United States - Blogger does a free down-the-phone Audioblogging service in the States, for instance, which you have to pay for in call charges if ringing from outside the USA - so this has not been easy.
However, I found a way round those problems by thinking laterally. I recently got hold of an MP3 recorder and, whilst the sound quality is not brilliant, have now managed to record a handful of performance-friendly poems and load them onto a free Sound & Image website called Putfile.
So if you like the idea of hearing my poems rather than just seeing them in print, you can now check out the ones I've loaded so far by clicking www.putfile.com/janeholland.
Be warned though, if you visit the site, that the volume is quite loud on some of the audio files, so do check it before the file starts playing - there's usually a short window of 5 - 10 secs while it loads during which you can lower the volume.
It's just poems being 'read out' at the moment - which is never ideal - but I have several gigs coming up over the next month or so, and will be taking along my trusty MP3 recorder to see what sort of quality of recording I can get from a live poetry reading in front of an audience.
Here's that link again: www.putfile.com/janeholland
Along the way, I've discovered that it's quite a complicated process to load audio files onto websites and blogs, especially if you live in the UK instead of the United States - Blogger does a free down-the-phone Audioblogging service in the States, for instance, which you have to pay for in call charges if ringing from outside the USA - so this has not been easy.
However, I found a way round those problems by thinking laterally. I recently got hold of an MP3 recorder and, whilst the sound quality is not brilliant, have now managed to record a handful of performance-friendly poems and load them onto a free Sound & Image website called Putfile.
So if you like the idea of hearing my poems rather than just seeing them in print, you can now check out the ones I've loaded so far by clicking www.putfile.com/janeholland.
Be warned though, if you visit the site, that the volume is quite loud on some of the audio files, so do check it before the file starts playing - there's usually a short window of 5 - 10 secs while it loads during which you can lower the volume.
It's just poems being 'read out' at the moment - which is never ideal - but I have several gigs coming up over the next month or so, and will be taking along my trusty MP3 recorder to see what sort of quality of recording I can get from a live poetry reading in front of an audience.
Here's that link again: www.putfile.com/janeholland
Friday, March 17, 2006
Memorabilia
Found this photograph, taken by Simon Norfolk in about 1996-7, amongst some old papers of mine from my snooker-playing days and decided to post it up too, since I've been blogging recently about snooker and my disreputable past. Odd how the sight of that cue - a beautiful Canon Whirlwind, which is now safely stowed away in an aluminium case and leaning in a corner of my house somewhere- makes me want to play again. My fingers twitch for the baize just looking at it. But that way madness lies ...
Such glorious earrings too. I wonder whatever happened to them?
Such glorious earrings too. I wonder whatever happened to them?
Monday, March 13, 2006
The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman
I had a hot flush today and decided to post up another old poem, give it a public airing. This time, to temper the rather avant-garde nature of my Umbra pieces - see archived posts for January 2006 - I've decided to post up the title poem of my first collection, 'The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman', which is a long poem about snooker and deals with how I started playing, the progression of my career in the game, and my eventual ban.
If you don't know the story, in 1995, I was banned for life from playing snooker by my local governing body - NOT the World Ladies Billiards and Snooker Association - for allegedly 'bringing the game into disrepute'. I was offered the chance to apologise for various comments I had made in the press about corrupt officials, in return for the ban being lifted.
I refused, and stopped playing competitively soon after that. At the time, I was ranked 24th in the world for women's snooker.
To accompany the poem, there's a photograph below of me practising for the 1992 Women's World Snooker Championships.
The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman
It starts here
as a table
in a small back room;
a busy pub, a sideways look,
the girls all cheering
when I drop the black,
a moment in between the kids,
a breath of silence slow
but true
across a table
in a small back room –
saying yes for once, not no.
Like Lazarus, I walk
from sleep, still stripping off
the winding sheet,
and take a cue from the rack
at the back of the club,
into the darkness
like a somnambulant.
Here hatred
breeds in corners at my step
and whispers fall
like evening
through these hanging lamps,
these gold-fringed shades.
The cloth is a lawn
to lay my head on, listening
to the beat of earth. They stare
from bar-stools, stalk me.
The men close ranks;
their shields reflect
like mirrors
as I clear the slate.
I am unwelcome here.
The door is there, they say,
and take the time to show me out.
But I am back again tomorrow,
sliding the new cue
like a blade from its sheath.
They cannot shut me out.
I have a right, a claim to stake
across this battlefield,
this bed of slate.
Their smiles are baited,
locked in place
until their silence is a war
that I seek out,
no choice of arms.
I play the men.
I lose.
And then I lose again.
I learn to stroke the ball away –
to catch the centre
when I can,
to find that timing
when the going’s sweet,
the baize is running like a race-horse
and the bets are down.
To take the risks
and never cheat.
I watch the best,
mesmerised as body
moves to wrist,
wrist falls to hand,
this silent discipline
of heart and mind.
I hammer home
each lesson
like a goldsmith,
working a delicate grip
into the hit,
the pendulum arm true
as a perfect right-angle
when the cue
goes through.
I start to win;
short sharp burst
of pure adrenalin.
I learn to dodge
those empty shafts of sunlight
in the club
when a woman
who walks alone
through rows
and rows of tables
dares to call them home.
Then others come.
They walk in,
taking the dust-covers
from the baize
with an awkward hand,
learning the touch of the cloth,
the deep furrow
left by a still hand,
fingers spread like a starfish.
First we are two,
then three, then four.
I pull them in from businesses,
supermarket queues,
from raising kids, from streets,
from empty doorways,
darkened rooms.
Together
we are stronger.
We take a name for ourselves
and make it ring.
We play
each competition
in the spirit of the game –
a name engraved
in silver on a cup.
Retribution comes
not from games on baize
but changing truths
to fit the end, till nothing’s
what it seems. And in their lies
I recognise revenge.
I’ll not give them what they want ¬–
a public apology.
This ban is straight and true.
What started as a sideways look
will run for life,
for disrepute.
First published in SNOOKER SCENE and subsequently THE BRIEF HISTORY OF A DISREPUTABLE WOMAN (Bloodaxe 1997). For more on my first poetry collection, click here.
If you don't know the story, in 1995, I was banned for life from playing snooker by my local governing body - NOT the World Ladies Billiards and Snooker Association - for allegedly 'bringing the game into disrepute'. I was offered the chance to apologise for various comments I had made in the press about corrupt officials, in return for the ban being lifted.
I refused, and stopped playing competitively soon after that. At the time, I was ranked 24th in the world for women's snooker.
To accompany the poem, there's a photograph below of me practising for the 1992 Women's World Snooker Championships.
The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman
It starts here
as a table
in a small back room;
a busy pub, a sideways look,
the girls all cheering
when I drop the black,
a moment in between the kids,
a breath of silence slow
but true
across a table
in a small back room –
saying yes for once, not no.
Like Lazarus, I walk
from sleep, still stripping off
the winding sheet,
and take a cue from the rack
at the back of the club,
into the darkness
like a somnambulant.
Here hatred
breeds in corners at my step
and whispers fall
like evening
through these hanging lamps,
these gold-fringed shades.
The cloth is a lawn
to lay my head on, listening
to the beat of earth. They stare
from bar-stools, stalk me.
The men close ranks;
their shields reflect
like mirrors
as I clear the slate.
I am unwelcome here.
The door is there, they say,
and take the time to show me out.
But I am back again tomorrow,
sliding the new cue
like a blade from its sheath.
They cannot shut me out.
I have a right, a claim to stake
across this battlefield,
this bed of slate.
Their smiles are baited,
locked in place
until their silence is a war
that I seek out,
no choice of arms.
I play the men.
I lose.
And then I lose again.
I learn to stroke the ball away –
to catch the centre
when I can,
to find that timing
when the going’s sweet,
the baize is running like a race-horse
and the bets are down.
To take the risks
and never cheat.
I watch the best,
mesmerised as body
moves to wrist,
wrist falls to hand,
this silent discipline
of heart and mind.
I hammer home
each lesson
like a goldsmith,
working a delicate grip
into the hit,
the pendulum arm true
as a perfect right-angle
when the cue
goes through.
I start to win;
short sharp burst
of pure adrenalin.
I learn to dodge
those empty shafts of sunlight
in the club
when a woman
who walks alone
through rows
and rows of tables
dares to call them home.
Then others come.
They walk in,
taking the dust-covers
from the baize
with an awkward hand,
learning the touch of the cloth,
the deep furrow
left by a still hand,
fingers spread like a starfish.
First we are two,
then three, then four.
I pull them in from businesses,
supermarket queues,
from raising kids, from streets,
from empty doorways,
darkened rooms.
Together
we are stronger.
We take a name for ourselves
and make it ring.
We play
each competition
in the spirit of the game –
a name engraved
in silver on a cup.
Retribution comes
not from games on baize
but changing truths
to fit the end, till nothing’s
what it seems. And in their lies
I recognise revenge.
I’ll not give them what they want ¬–
a public apology.
This ban is straight and true.
What started as a sideways look
will run for life,
for disrepute.
First published in SNOOKER SCENE and subsequently THE BRIEF HISTORY OF A DISREPUTABLE WOMAN (Bloodaxe 1997). For more on my first poetry collection, click here.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
The CHARADE project, Birmingham
One fascinating project I'm involved with at the moment is CHARADE, a project commissioned jointly by the BBC and Arts Council England from international artist Simon Pope and managed by Capital Arts Project in Birmingham. It forms part of 'Private View', a programme to demonstrate "outstanding innovation and vision from visual artists experimenting with live techniques in the public realm" and involves participants in public performance, video diaries, MP3 recordings of their work, plus opportunities to meet other volunteers and share insights.
Basically, you each pick a piece of popular culture - our most cherished books, films, plays, music, TV and radio programmes - and 'become' that item by interiorising it. After participating in workshops and online communities and using other resources to aid the process of memorisation and identification, CHARADE volunteers will then perform their chosen piece in Birmingham city centre at the end of April, wandering about together in the open air in "a conscious re-creation of the final scenes of Truffaut's adaptation of Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451."
"Charade mirrors the key premise of Fahrenheit 451, that rather than providing stable conditions for the storage and retrieval of knowledge, our computer networks become troubled, precarious; the fear of data-corruption forces us to go beyond our electronic systems and we focus back towards the body, the possibility and ability of our memories."
My chosen item is King Lear. An ambitious choice, perhaps, especially since one of the other participants has picked a short definition from the Oxford English Dictionary as her chosen item! But I'm only memorising a few scenes which are of special interest to me.
One of them is Act II, Scene ii, a scene in which the disguised Kent - unjustly banished by Lear earlier in the play yet still doggedly loyal to his old master - encounters Oswald, the cowardly and sychophantic steward of Lear's treacherous daughter, Gonerill. They argue, Kent attempts to fight Oswald, and ends up being put in the stocks by the Duke of Cornwall as a trouble-maker.
This short scene appeals to me on several levels. Firstly, I admire Kent's integrity and the blunt but clear-sighted way he deals with even the most complex emotional situations. 'Let me still remain/ the true blank of thine eye,' he begs the king just before being sent into exile, and later continues to serve Lear in disguise. Secondly, the glorious riot of language in this scene appeals to my love of words. In this scene, Kent famously berates the bewildered Oswald in a long series of breathlessly imaginative insults - a cascade of Shakespearean invective - 'Thou whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter!' being one of my personal favourites.
I'm still deciding which other scene from King Lear to memorise. I think a choice of two would be a good idea at this stage, perhaps deciding on the final one nearer the 28th April, which is our performance date for CHARADE. I think there's still time to register as a participant if you would like to get involved. You can email the producers at info@charade.org.uk or call 08709 316 834.
[If browsing this post as an individual page, the main RAW LIGHT site can be found here.]
Basically, you each pick a piece of popular culture - our most cherished books, films, plays, music, TV and radio programmes - and 'become' that item by interiorising it. After participating in workshops and online communities and using other resources to aid the process of memorisation and identification, CHARADE volunteers will then perform their chosen piece in Birmingham city centre at the end of April, wandering about together in the open air in "a conscious re-creation of the final scenes of Truffaut's adaptation of Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451."
"Charade mirrors the key premise of Fahrenheit 451, that rather than providing stable conditions for the storage and retrieval of knowledge, our computer networks become troubled, precarious; the fear of data-corruption forces us to go beyond our electronic systems and we focus back towards the body, the possibility and ability of our memories."
My chosen item is King Lear. An ambitious choice, perhaps, especially since one of the other participants has picked a short definition from the Oxford English Dictionary as her chosen item! But I'm only memorising a few scenes which are of special interest to me.
One of them is Act II, Scene ii, a scene in which the disguised Kent - unjustly banished by Lear earlier in the play yet still doggedly loyal to his old master - encounters Oswald, the cowardly and sychophantic steward of Lear's treacherous daughter, Gonerill. They argue, Kent attempts to fight Oswald, and ends up being put in the stocks by the Duke of Cornwall as a trouble-maker.
This short scene appeals to me on several levels. Firstly, I admire Kent's integrity and the blunt but clear-sighted way he deals with even the most complex emotional situations. 'Let me still remain/ the true blank of thine eye,' he begs the king just before being sent into exile, and later continues to serve Lear in disguise. Secondly, the glorious riot of language in this scene appeals to my love of words. In this scene, Kent famously berates the bewildered Oswald in a long series of breathlessly imaginative insults - a cascade of Shakespearean invective - 'Thou whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter!' being one of my personal favourites.
I'm still deciding which other scene from King Lear to memorise. I think a choice of two would be a good idea at this stage, perhaps deciding on the final one nearer the 28th April, which is our performance date for CHARADE. I think there's still time to register as a participant if you would like to get involved. You can email the producers at info@charade.org.uk or call 08709 316 834.
[If browsing this post as an individual page, the main RAW LIGHT site can be found here.]
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