Alzheimer's Poem: Forgetting To Remember

In 1997, my artist grandmother died while suffering from Alzheimer's. I wrote this poem about her quite soon after her death, and can never read it now without tearing up.

I may have posted this poem on Raw Light before - it was published in my first poetry collection with Bloodaxe, THE BRIEF HISTORY OF A DISREPUTABLE WOMAN - but a conversation at dinner last night with fellow novelists Judy Astley and Katie Fforde made me think of it again.

I read this poem at my mother-in-law's funeral a few years ago, who also died from a complication while suffering from Alzheimer's.

FORGETTING TO REMEMBER
(for my artist grandmother, Christiana Evelyn Beatrice Holland, 1903 - 1997)

by Jane Holland
You turned your face to the wall a year ago,
waiting for this. Not a word, not a whisper
passed your lips. In your eyes, not a flicker
when they came and went, those ghosts
dressed like your children, but unknown, older.
And your son was not your husband, though
you must have thought so, trying his name.
The nurse came by, with something
to help you sleep, but you didn't. Sat there
as though for a portrait, erasing the canvas
with cataracts, your glasses deep bottle-green.
A few years shy of the century, you were still
in that sunny front room at Maison Dieu,
preparing to paint, though they'd sold it
to pay the home fees ten years before.
I was almost as tall as you at eleven,
sunlight glinting off that shade you wore,
one eye patched like a pirate's.
And after the guns at Arromanches,
he could never hear the racing results
so you had to repeat, repeat yourself
until he too was gone; memory
evaporating too swiftly then,
like turps you'd left in the sun.

The whole poetry collection is available on Kindle.

The Girl Who Cried "Publication!"

As I commented to fellow writer Carol McGrath on Twitter today, the only drawback to being a prolific author is that nobody pays any attention to your publications. New books come and go in a cricket-chirping wave of silence, where other less speedy novelists receive dozens of congratulatory messages and support with launching as soon as a new book hits the shelves.

As author problems go, it's a good one to have. And I fully understand this phenomenon. I too would hesitate to congratulate or support some Other Writer who appeared to have a new book out every five minutes, if only on the grounds that such prolificity is unfair and an affront to nature.

So I'm resigned to being ignored now on social media whenever a new book comes out, and entirely accept that I have become the girl Matilda in the apocryphal story, the tease who cried "Publication!" so often that, in the end, nobody bestirred themselves to click the link or even comment.

But a book is still a book is still a book.

And this one is WOLF BRIDE.

Debauchery and decadence at the court of Henry VIII form the backdrop to this arranged marriage between soldier Lord Wolf and Eloise Tyrell, lady-in-waiting to Anne Boleyn.

"Fifty Shades of Tudor Sex!" - The Sunday Times

Hilary Mantel meets Sylvia Day

Twitter hashtags: #WolfBride #feelupthebodies

Published August 29th 2013 by Hodder and Stoughton. Available in ebook edition now in the UK and Amazon US, paperback to follow in November.

First in the new Tudor series LUST IN THE TUDOR COURT.

Poetry Bazaar

Just a quick summertime reminder of my three self-published poetry titles on Kindle, as I like to make at least one poetry sale per year!

The revised Kindle version of my first collection: DISREPUTABLE (UK Amazon store and US Amazon Store): youthful poems of love, dreams, optimism, and loss.

Includes poems for which I won an Eric Gregory Award in 1996.

Then there's my controversial female narrator version of the Anglo-Saxon poem THE WANDERER (UK Amazon store and US Amazon store): 'Most days I wake/like a stone in the stillness ...'

Anglo-Saxon loner with depression ...

Finally, there's my long modernist poem ON WARWICK CASTLE, written during my tenure as Warwick Poet Laureate (UK Amazon store and US Amazon store) which is currently on sale at only 77p!

I'm only 77p!!

What is the Point of Poetry?

I'm talking about How To Write Young Adult Fiction on a panel at the Penzance Literary Festival today as Victoria Lamb. My fellow panellists are Ian Thomas and Helen Douglas.

That event is at 3pm in the Open Shed, Champion's Yard, Penzance TR18 2TA.

At 6.15pm today, I will donning a different hat and asking 'What is the Point in Poetry?' at a discussion with Angela France and other poets and readers. That event is at the same venue as the YA panel.

You can book tickets for these and other Penzance Festival events here. Or follow the individual links above.

Fascinating stuff, though I can ill afford the break from writing today. My summer is packed with book deadlines, promotion and festival events. And I have still not decided what the point of poetry is.

Perhaps it will come to me on the long drive to Penzance ...

Labels, and why I like them

Yesterday we had an epic - but also minor - family adventure. Epic because on the face of it something very important happened. Minor because it does not affect our family life in any meaningful way. Life will carry on at home much as it did before. But a new label has come into our lives, and we are very pleased to welcome it onboard.

What happened was that my ten year old son was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome.

As a family, we have known for the past three years that Dylan has Tourette's. You can't live with someone with this syndrome and NOT KNOW.

"It would be hard to imagine a less likely troublemaker."

But although he already had a diagnosis of autism and ADHD, like his twin brother, the only concession to this further condition was a side note on his file that Dylan has 'tics'. Tic Disorder is a milder and more general condition than Tourette's, and usually of shorter duration - though medical opinions vary. In particular, Tic Disorder is fairly common in schools, with as many as 1 in 100 children showing possible symptoms.

So yesterday we took our son to yet another consultant at yet another hospital for yet another opinion, and FINALLY, after speaking to him for fifteen minutes, this new consultant pronounced it Tourette Syndrome.

But why is this a good thing?

Isn't Tourette Syndrome just another problematic life-long label, like ADHD and autism, to be hanging about our son's neck at the tender age of 10?

In some ways, yes. But the truly vital thing is the timing of this diagnosis, rather than its significance in general. Because a diagnosis makes no difference to his condition. There is no cure for Tourette's. There is no particular treatment, though some doctors believe in medication to alleviate symptoms. (We are not keen on medication, having already gone down that route in the past and disliking the side effects.) It may last his whole life, it may go away on its own, it may make his teen years a living hell.

"There's a word for what he does, and that word means he is not to blame."

But when he starts secondary school this September, his new teachers will be handed a file detailing his special needs, and now the tag Tourette Syndrome will feature on it. And when he tosses his head violently twenty-five times in a lesson, or makes a repeated high-pitched noise like dry windowscreen-wipers throughout his school assembly, he will not be singled out for punishment. Or if he is, we will be able to object on the grounds of this official diagnosis.

And when you have a child who, from the age of five, was humiliated and made to sit apart from the rest of the class for 'wilful disobedience', for an inability to sit still or work quietly, for making funny faces or noises when the teacher was in full flow, to be able to point to a diagnosis that completely explains his behaviour is a miracle.

Let's be clear about this. My son has moments of naughtiness, like every child, but on the whole he is well-behaved. We will not be treating this label as an excuse for genuinely rude or disruptive behaviour. Though it would be hard to imagine a less likely 'troublemaker'. My son is excruciatingly polite to adults, a favourite with the teachers at his new (more relaxed) village school, and marvellously intelligent, enquiring and eloquent. People remark on it everywhere we go, often with amazed expressions at his responses.

But Dylan also has these other difficult conditions that mean he sometimes misreads non-verbal signals, or prefers his own company to playing with peers, or can't sit still for longer than thirty seconds and will rock violently if forced to do so, or can't help repeatedly making odd squeaking and sniffing noises - often at the most embarrassing moments for him.

So that is why I like labels. Because this particular label will save my son from being labelled a troublemaker at his new secondary school, and help him to concentrate on his school work without worrying about being excluded for 'disobedience'.

I know many people hate labels - especially for long-term issues like this - and would prefer not to be stuck with them. But labels that save our children from being discriminated against are nothing short of fantastic.

And Dylan himself, having seen other kids with Tourette's on Youtube and knowing - absolutely knowing - that he has the condition too, is very pleased with his diagnosis. There's a word for what he does, and that word means he is not to blame. When you're a born people-pleaser, and you've been consistently blamed for things you can't control since you were old enough to sense the irritation and disapproval of your teachers, the sense of liberation and relief that accompany such a realisation cannot be overstated.

So thank you, Monsieur de la Tourette.

For those interested in knowing more about the syndrome, here is an extreme case of Tourette's on the This Morning show.

OVERHEARD wins its category at the Saboteur Awards

My contribution to OVERHEARD is a short story called THE CELL.

A while back I wrote a short story exploring the tortured mindscape of an Egyptian female hermit from the third century. It's called THE CELL and is published in a short story anthology from Salt Publishing entitled Overheard: Stories To Be Read Aloud edited by Jonathan Taylor (De Montfort University).

Overheard was nominated for a Saboteur Award this year, and I've just heard that it's won its category. So major congratulations to everyone involved!

What the Saboteur reviewer said about my story:

"Religious devotion is taken to a more disturbing extreme by the narrator in Jane Holland‘s ‘The Cell’, which beautifully evokes the isolation of a nun’s cell and her gradual descent into either madness or anther spiritual plane. Rather beautifully, Holland lets the reader see this as both a loss of health and also an outcome to be desired and welcomed."

 Review by Richard T. Watson

Contributors include: Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Ian McEwan, Blake Morrison, Louis De Bernières, Adele Parks, Kate Pullinger, Adam Roberts, Michelene Wandor, Vanessa Gebbie, Judith Allnatt, Jo Baker, David Belbin, Panos Karnezis, Jane Holland, Gemma Seltzer, Ailsa Cox and Will Buckingham.

You can read more about OVERHEARD here on Amazon UK. 

The book is also available to buy from the Salt Publishing website.

The Writing Rollercoaster

So I've finished another novel, the 90,000 word book I was working on for a new publisher, and have to start work on another next week, probably the third book in my Tudor Witch trilogy with Corgi. Though there is another project in the wings, waiting for a green light. If the light comes, that one will take precedence, as the Tudor Witch finale is not due until the autumn.

There's such an emotional and mental high about finishing a novel, a real burst of energy towards the end to get you over that final bump in the road. It's addictive, makes you want to start a new one immediately. Well, that's the effect it has on me. The issue is that you suddenly hit a wall a few days after the book is done, a wall of total exhaustion that forces you into a coma-like rest from writing. So it's important to wait a beat, and not let the high fool you into thinking it was easy.

Of course, finishing a book is not the same as it being ready to send. I have to fiddle with it first. My spelling is superlative, so that's never been an issue for me. However, beyond the inevitable typos, there will be continuity errors, forgotten plot threads, character screw-ups, and possibly a gaping hole at the centre of the book.

Well, the gaping hole theory is unlikely in this case, as it's a fairly straightforward love story, no aliens or quantum physics or mysterious locked room murder to account for. But the rest? Definitely possible.

So over the next week I will be administering mouth-to-mouth to my finished manuscript so that when it appears, as if by magic, on the editor's computer screen next week, it will be as clean and watertight as I can get it.

Then she will smile, point out all the issues I missed, and make me fix them.

By then, of course, I shall be up to my waist in my next novel. And hopefully loving it as much as I loved this one, which almost seemed to write itself. Let's hope it knew what it was doing.

Witchstruck wins YA category at the RoNAs 2013!

This is just to let you know that my novel Witchstruck won the Young Adult Romantic Novel of the Year Award tonight in London's Piccadilly.

Judy Finnigan and Richard Madeley (pictured here) handed out the awards.

If I stuttered and blubbed a bit at the podium, I should probably be forgiven. I hadn't expected to win and couldn't quite believe it. It was a truly overwhelming moment.

Here's the winning book: Witchstruck.

Read more about Witchstruck on Amazon.

New Poems at Epicentre Magazine

Random poetic image: Aldeburgh

For those of you who are interested in poetry and the like, there are three new poetry entries at Epicentre Magazine this week.

I have two poems in the online magazine myself this time, though they cannot technically be termed 'new'. They are part of a tentative poem sequence I wrote in about 1999, set on the Isle of Man during the last throes of the English Civil War. The poems are written in the narrative voice of Illiam Dhone, who is believed to have surrendered the Island to Cromwell's forces - most probably to avoid major bloodshed among his native Manxmen.

Old they may be - and indeed they were 'lost' for many years, and only regained when Neil Astley at Bloodaxe very kindly emailed them back to me after a decade in a filing cabinet (the poems were in a filing cabinet, not Neil Astley) - but they are still - as far as I know - unpublished. I suppose it's possible one or two of them were published in one of the UK's poetry magazines twelve years ago. But if so, I have no memory of it. And I'm pretty certain no one else will have, either.

Anyway, a few things for those interested in poetry. A moment snatched in the middle of prose to look back at the lyric impulse.

Here's the page at Epicentre.

On Warwick Castle: new digital edition

Browse on Amazon UK

Back in 2008, my poems from the Warwick Laureateship were published in pamphlet form by Nine Arches Press. Since that pamphlet 'On Warwick' is now out of print, there is a new digital version available on Kindle only.

Priced at only 77p, this new edition contains the long title poem 'On Warwick Castle', and two other poems commissioned during my stint as Warwick Poet Laureate, 'On the Renovations at Leamington Spa Station 2008' and 'Leamophants', on the history of elephants in Leamington Spa.

'On Warwick Castle': "On Warwick is the product of Jane Holland’s year as Warwick’s Poet Laureate. It’s not unusual for local laureates to write poems about major landmarks of the area, but the main poem in the collection, ‘On Warwick Castle’—described in David Morley’s foreword as Holland’s “modernist piece de resistance”—is probably one of the more ambitious works of public poetry generated through a local laureateship." David Floyd, writing in Sphinx.

High praise indeed!

If looking at this ebook on Amazon, do please click LIKE there if you feel able to. This apparently helps the book's visibility to browsing punters. Thanks!

Award Shortlisting for Witchstruck

From £2.84 on Amazon

My Tudor novel WITCHSTRUCK, written as Victoria Lamb and published by Corgi for Young Adult readers, has been shortlisted for an award administered by the Romantic Novelists' Association.

The award is Young Adult Romantic Novel of the Year, and the winner will be announced, along with winners in other RoNA Awards categories, on February 26th in London. Awards will be handed out by Judy Finnigan and Richard Madeley.

As you can imagine, I'm very pleased about this shortlisting. The shortlist is extremely strong and it's an honour to be in such brilliant company.

Witchstruck is the first in the Tudor Witch series. The second book is out in July 2013, entitled Witchfall.

The Young Adult Romantic Novel of the Year shortlist:

 Jo Cotterill, Sweet Hearts: Model Behaviour, Red Fox (RHCP)
Laura Jarratt, Skin Deep, Electric Monkey/Egmont
Marie-Louise Jensen, The Girl in the Mask, OUP
Victoria Lamb, Witchstruck, Corgi (RHCP)
Sarra Manning, Adorkable, Atom (Little, Brown)
Susan Waggoner, Neptune's Tears, Piccadilly Press 

Witchstruck:
"Twilight meets The Other Boleyn Girl in this gripping and passionate tale of Meg, a spirited young witch learning her craft amidst the danger and intrigue of sixteenth-century England." 

Christmas Chez Nous

It's a big family ... and still growing!

Not quite sure about Grandma's Santa hat.

Christmas can be a bit of a strain for my husband.

But empty packaging has many uses!

Vegetable peeling is always a potential flashpoint area.

Best to steer clear of the kitchen and figure out how the mechanical kitten works instead.

Looks tasty, doesn't it?

Time to unwind with some chocolates.

And even the animals got a Santa hat and treat bag each!

Hope your celebrations were happy and peaceful too.

Adventure Sky! more parts etc.

I can't do the formatting properly, but here, for no reason other than I need to update my blog before it breaks one of my fingers out of sheer temper, are some shiny new extra parts to my long poem ADVENTURE SKY!

(The first part of this poem can also be seen at Stride.)

ADVENTURE SKY!   a poem in progress

PREFACE

Wilderness of continents/howling

winds of up to speeds of/tsunami. NO SMOKING.

Bruise-blown sun hangs like a battered bulb.

Tornado silence. Newsflash: APOCALYPSE.

Cities/black steel craters burning without light.

Cinder priests consumed in last absolution:

“And few shall be saved,” according to the prophet

and space-time-continuum logistics: S.T.C.L.

Back to people murdering themselves for relief.

Road rage. Oxygen critical. Survivors

reviewing themselves in soft silver spacesuits

while earth burns/red mist shift-clinging to thighs.

Oceans boil over. Sungate. CRASH. Blister-pack

Arsenic Survival Kit.™ Here kids, take this.

Fasten your nooses he says bluefall founders –

some GOD forsaken rock Home Sweet Hole

in the ozone. Fragrant as ever. Amen

@rest.com Now take the w(h)eel Captain

O Captain Adventure. Our world is gone –

a stagnant used-up trashcan reservoir billy.

Life support stutters. Fans applaud. TOUCHDOWN.

Outside the porthole invisible glistens:

another dis-aster place de l‘étoile car smash

* red-eyed peripherique candlelit vigil

waiting to happen.         

                         – Goddess!   

                                      – Adventure Sky!

Sleep-pod eggsistence. Dust ® POUF! ¬ tinfoil

rocks. Pan right. One small stepladder –

                                                down arrow  ¯

(welcome) – humanity. INTRODUCTION ENDS.

Part One: The Journey

ON THE BRIDGE:                          

                                              SongStress enters,

clipboard in hand. Multisize uniform, fastened

at neck and groin. Pseudo-realistic

representation with same sex attraction.

Steel(breasts)-brush. Off/ followed by roll-up

roll-up male eyeballs bulging lesbian alert.

72 months to touchdown/don’t flashback.

Aftship, the Lawman is nowhere to be seen. Cradling

a ghee-tar on his bunk, feet up, he strums semi-

idle elegies to Earth. “Lost, ah lost …”

Amongst the seed-banks and proto-plant racks,

in green rubber spaceboots, the Shaman moves

with his soft hands from leaf to leaf, swaying

and muttering. Nothing much happens.

                                             STANCE.

Flashback to back: two visions. One earth burning

then – “Come in control…” – “ARK! ARK!” –

a rainbow of lights/fast-forward flotilla lift-off

steel-soft hardware/fluorescent tubes.

Behind, the dark pageant consumed audibly

in shear-off random starburst/pinpoints of light.

Rolling to starboard: rotating sections ROTATE!

deep shudder then – flung back – G-force – white lights

drawn into suction (artist’s impression) BLING!

Steadily shinily faster-than-light sailing.

Metal shutters DESCEND. Pale

corridors hum. “Bug Detectors Activated.”

Tungsten glow, watching the planet dwindle:

burnt stack on the horizon’s black smoke signal.

Bible-ash/soft with believers. Gold tooth wrack.

         CAPTAIN ADVENTURE’S LOG: 2200 HOURS

Had sausages for tea. Amazing what they can do

with/EMERGENCY. “Space debris sighted, Captain.”

“Blast it from the skies.”/synthetic pigs bladder.

71 months to touchdown. Carpet golf.

“Scan the universe for survivors.” / “Aye aye, Cptn

Adventure.” / Lines of Virgilius R6

feet, dactylic in essence, caesura in the third,

spondee to finish. Not so these.

Nymph, in thy orisons be all my ships remembered.

The Captain reminisces: ‘Light years from now

all this will be grassland and you, lady,

with furious incantations, or no furious incantations

but mown lawns at 3pm,

old Mr Patterson in his shirt sleeves, glowing,

the town clock …’ 

And so on.

LAWMAN’S BUNK

                                    Woo-ooh ®

                                                          SongStress enters

in a wave of / stuffed cat in hand / eucalyptus

and Old Spice. ‘Where is,’ she asks, ‘the governor

of this gang?’ (Polemic Pat, we called her.)

Lawman stands, cradling his ghee-tar, unbuttoned.

(The overheads of hyperbaton) We

who are about to watch Mad Max II again

salute thee, O thief i’ th’ night, hortus conclusus

guarded by the flaming swords of cherubim.

Lawman strums a bar and sings

his “Bee-Bop-A-Lula” definition of sin as

                  Water Theft

                  Refusal to Procreate

                  Destruction of Seed

                  Blooms in the Engine Rooms

                  Pretentious Crap

                           &      

                  Whitespindriftdandelionclockflotilla

We read out the digital displays and cry

across the vast exigencies of space

for those we left to die on a broken planet.

‘Lost, ah lost …’ Melted down to a toothpick.

But a new star beckons. Preserve the old ways, for/

‘63 months to touchdown, Captain.’/

they are soon lost to us. Like table manners.

The stars roll over, thunder / ‘GAS! GAS!’

‘Emergency shutdown: Sections 18

through 25.’ ‘Send in a team; check for

survivors.’ / ... et ad aeternam shine.

IN WHICH THE SHAMAN SAMPLES SHAMELESSLY

(a tongue twister)

Could be morning. Soft breeze in the living quarters.

Shaman taps at the air-con: 21°

Celsius. Physical jerks on the touchscreen.

A small cabin with rolling tobacco

and apple fritters. Deafening whiteout.

“That last mortar attack on Paradise Street ... ”

Exploding limbs and / ‘Oxygen levels stabilised, Captain.’

‘Re-open sections when ready.’ / the rest is silence.

Chilli dogs remembered. Birdsong Bar-B-Qs

from the leaf-fringed suburbs:

“When I consider how my light is spent,

I wish I’d stayed behind and burnt.”

But Shaman says: “Arise and go now,

for a bold coming we had of it

and that one Talent that is death to hide

is lodg’d with me useless, though dull would he be of soul

who could pass by such a pearly porthole.”

                                     Hark!

The touchscreen flickers.

“I heard voices in my ears, saying Ding-dong. Here endeth,

here endeth nine runner bean rows

and a sea-change into something rich and strange:

sea-nymphs, linnets’ wings.

O, for a beaker full of ding-dong

in a small cabin. Come in; my soul’s of clay

and wattles made. Here endeth

here endeth everything.”

                  Hic iacet liber.

So the old gods die.

Throw them down, every one of them, and let us make

no new idols but music.

The music of the wormhole.

The music of dust.

The music of alienation,

         synthetic whiskey in a plastic cup.

Of porn and peas and leaving party repartée.

For all things have their music.

Even betrayal has its music.

Even deceit is a song.

O SongStress, ­give us lemons, for we are thirsty!

Give us lemons, lemons/

& lemonade.

Ding-Dong. Here comes a chopper.

To Be Continued ...

To dream of death ... a poem for All Hallow's Eve

A poem for All Hallow's Eve, which I managed to miss by a few seconds. Typical.
 

Oneiromancy

To dream of death signifies fear
of the unknown. Dandelions
tell of a lover’s

infidelities. Towers and steeples
are signs of ill omen.
To avoid nightmare, sleep

with a stone under your pillow.

The ring-tailed dove

must not be crossed with the crow
or harm approaches.

To see rivers in flood

means death by drowning, and roses
financial ruin. Anything blue

is an excellent omen

for childbirth. Pearls bring sickness.
Opals, relief.

Falling from a high place

indicates a stranger’s treachery

and carrying milk

a long-held dream fulfilled. But

to dream of milk spilt

is to suffer love unrequited.

From Camper Van Blues (Salt Publishing).