Leicester Shindig

On Monday night, I was invited to give a poetry reading at the Leicester Shindig. The night was run in conjunction with Crystal Clear Creators (who are publishing my pamphlet), and Nine Arches Press. The night was well attended, with many interesting and engaging poets performing. There was a real focus on the musicality of language, and even an impromptu performance of “Timorous Beasties,” in honour of fast-approaching Burns Night.

I really enjoyed the humour in Jonathan and Maria Taylor’s poems, describing a psycho and the experience of teaching Larkin, respectively. The tone contrasted nicely against Maria’s other poem, in which she explored the notion of family and roots, a subject I also like to address within my poetry. I enjoyed reading Deborah Tyler-Bennett’s “Mr. F.’s Lament” in the last issue of Hearing Voices magazine, inspired by “Harris’ List,” detailing the London prostitutes of the eighteenth century, and so I was glad to hear another from the same sequence. Roy Marshall also gave an impressive reading. Roy is another winner of the Crystal Clear Pamphlet competition, and his pamphlet entitled “Gopagilla,” will be released in March.

I have attached a video of my reading at the Shindig, with an introduction by Maria Taylor. Despite being fairly nervous before-hand, (I’m glad there was a bar), I think it went very well. Some of the poems are taken from my pamphlet, “Someone Else’s Photograph,” which will be published alongside Roy’s and the other four winners in March 2012. The Leicester Shindig was a fantastic evening, and I will definitely be attending in the future.   

"The Shipping News" and New Beginnings

One of the books on my A Level English Literature course back at school was Annie Proulx’s Postcards. I loved the book, and the terrible sympathy that was roused for Loyal by the end of the novel. Until this week, Postcards remained the only novel by Proulx that I had read. I had heard good things about The Shipping News, the story of the journalist Quoyle who returns to Newfoundland, the home of his ancestors, following the death of his wife. The ocean is almost a character in the novel, ranging from the quiet, “There’s the sea. Like a door opening and closing,” to the tumultuous waves of “green curlers.”

          

          In her acknowledgements, Proulx credits The Ashley Book of Knots by Clifford W. Ashley as an inspiration for her novel. This encouraged me to think about beginnings. How to start a story? The protagonist of her novel, “Quoyle,” is taken from The Ashley Book of Knots as a name for a coil of rope. The example given is that of a “Flemish Flake,” which is a “spiral coil of one layer only. It is made on deck, so that it may be walked on, if necessary.” This encapsulates Quoyle’s character at the beginning of the novel, dominated by his unfaithful, nymphomaniac wife. Each chapter begins with a quote from The Ashley Book of Knots, helping to develop and enrich the plot.  

          

          Taking inspiration from this, I found a book called The Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. I chose a page at random, which told of the tradition usage of dried kingfishers. This was something I had never heard of, and I have used it as a starting point for a poem and a short story. I think this is an interesting writing exercise because it forces you to move away from ways in which you typically start putting pen to paper. I’ve also found that it’s been a good prompt to fit in some writing in between dissertation deadlines this week!