On Friendship

by Jo Bell

Reader, I have a fondness for fondness. So when Word Soup’s lovely organiser Jane Brunning asked me to choose a theme for the January event I chose friendship. In the dark winter days, I thought, we should revel in the slow-burning, deeply warming relationships that furnish our lives. Not the sexual ones that provide the fireworks; not the family ties that come with their own incendiary baggage; but the friends who share nights at the local, food around your table, those who make the bright moments especially bright and the really crap moments slightly better.

I was delighted to hear the Dead Good Poets wrangling with the theme in their own readings on the night, and to share the mic with friends like Sarah-Clare Conlon, Fat Roland, Kim Moore and Martin Malone. My poems – like English Walkers or Break in and Leave Me Flowers – often start from small gestures that make me particularly glad of my mates. I read both of these at Word Soup, but I didn’t squeeze in the poem below, written after a delicious, easy late night/ early morning in Warwickshire some years ago.

The space we share with friends becomes invisible

Was that the time we visited Seville?

The night we all lay stoned in dunes at Druridge Bay,

me swearing I could see the Northern Lights?

Or were we on the boat, each bumping round to find a bunk,

excited by the smell of salt?

Perhaps we walked the fields behind my house

to see the hilltop obelisk at dawn,

and soaked our ankles with the dew.

We did that, once.

I cannot say. For every night we’ve spent

is present now in every night we spend.

As like as not, we drank too much.

At any rate, we talked and laughed and spent the time

like hoarded coins: amazed, as usual,

to find each piece increase in value

simply by the keeping.

Nights like Word Soup are the life-blood of the spoken word scene, and it was brilliant to see the DGPs tackling the whole event with such professionalism and energy. I arrived horribly late thanks to a disastrous traffic jam on the M60. So I missed one or two of the Dead Good Poets whose own friendly, chatterbox blog I had been following in recent days. But the welcome was warm, the feedback extremely generous and it was a real pleasure to join you all on stage at the New Continental. There was a real feeling of companionship. Thanks to all of you and I’ll be back as soon as I can!

Read More

Desert Islands.

Good morning readers and welcome to what I feel could be an excellent week on the DGPS blog. With the BBC's Desert Island Discs celebrating 70 years on the airwaves this week, what better theme to start us off on our musings than Desert Islands themselves.

The thought of an island excites me. It scares me. It brings with it all sorts of adventures, perils and, as a vegan, I suppose some difficult choices. That said, it could also be quite relaxed should I drop amongst a coconut plantation- which is a little like I felt on Thursday night.

I want to add my name to the list of people singing praises. I thought the whole event was great (well done again to all at WordSoup- always guaranteed a good night) and actually getting to be on a poster excited some demonic part of me, I must say. I was worried though- I was on the island, waking Lost-style from the crash. First up from us had me a bit jittery but there, just past the light was a table full of coconuts. There has been some good stuff coming out of the group lately and to be amongst the tenders of such a fruitful plantation was a comfort at the least.

This moves me on to what I actually thought I should write about this week. The Island idea appeals to me as a boy scout (and after an afternoon thinking, I suspect The Scouting Book for Boys may be of more use to me than a poetry anthology) and one thing I found during my years there was how to be amongst friends- look out for one another and that is something that I like to think has stayed with me.#

I've been the unwitting receiver of various strange and unexpected news recently. There has been all kinds of madness and I wonder, as a writer, what is appropriate to take forward into new work. There is a clear line in my head but in the same way so many useful things are passed on and stay with you forever (how to hold a spade etc), surely they will stick around- perhaps surface somewhere in a muddled metaphor or character. This must be an issue for many writers and it is certainly something that I find needs to be considered with regards to more personal poetry. A line can find itself in the wrong mouth, stuttering with rage and completely out of context. A bit like the suggestions somebody might be pregnant following a poem I performed recently- and that was bloody me reading it!

Going back to the birthday mention, a quick search tells me I would automatically get a copy of the Bible (or alternative) so some soul searching could probably go on. I might pick a different book, learn a new culture completely on my own... I'd probably do what many of us would do- think about home, the past, the things in life we have and do hold dear. I wouldn't need 8 records. I would take them. A collection of festival/occasional/thoughtful songs that could be any 8 from a hundred. I would spend a lot of time listening to the things inside my head though- the voices I have carried with me. Advice, friends laughing, brothers, mothers, teachers, fathers, grandfathers... the voices in my head that are pushing for a poem and are better left to Caliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest (III 2.133-134)
"The isle is full of noises,
sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not."

Thanks for reading,
S.

Read More

Thursday Knight

By Ashley Lister

For me Thursday night this week started back in October 2011, when Jane Brunning asked if the Dead Good Poets would be interested in attending a Word Soup event. For those who think it’s unreal to think of a night in January 2012 starting three months earlier I have to point out that this is winter in the north and the nights are getting longer.

My response to Jane Brunning was, ‘Sure. I’ll try anything once.’

I have a mindset to try anything once: except voting Tory or eating snails. There are some things where you only have to look at the ugly slimy little buggers to know that they’ll leave a nasty taste in your mouth.

And I also feel this way about snails.

So in October I confirmed with my fellow bloggers that we were all free to step out of our respective comfort zones and venture, as Shaun so eloquently described Preston at the start of this week, behind enemy lines.

There were further exchanges of emails. There was talk of us trying to combine our styles into one single performance piece. Lara had the genius idea of us each describing ourselves by the day of the week on which we blog. It was a shame that the idea didn’t pan out. Vicky, who is a constant explosion of ingenuity, was coming up with a rush of ideas that could have made our collective appearance seem more cohesive. Lindsay – who writes the most entertaining children’s fiction I’ve ever read – did her usual trick of containing her fears so that no one would have even guessed she was ‘bricking it.’

There were email discussions where we got snarled up in the complexities of who’d sent which message first and who’d responded privately rather than to the group and who was sticking to the theme and who was giving who a lift.

There were email discussions where the less informed amongst us discovered we were on the same bill as Jo Bell and panicked at the idea of working alongside someone so revered and respected in the world of poetry. As is turned out, the reverence for Jo Bell is deserved – she is absolutely sensational.

It’s known amongst this group that Ste Stroud does not believe in God. But surely he must believe in miracles because he was standing onstage with the rest of us on Thursday night. Given our fears and our collective organisational skills, it’s a miracle that any one of us was there.

As a side note I should say here that I’ve been immersed in writing my latest novel this last couple of months. It’s all sword and sorcery and dungeons and dragons and damsels in distress.

And alliteration.

If I’m not writing that novel I’m either researching medieval minutiae or I’m reading Game of Thrones. Occasionally I take some time away from the writing to practice wielding a broadsword. Right now I’m using the broadsword as a method for training the dogs. For anyone who is concerned about this, I can say that most of the dogs still have heads.

And I mention this connection with glamorised medieval depictions of knights because that was how I felt on Thursday night. I had ridden into Preston with my fellow knights. I was confident in the knowledge that each and every one of my colleagues was worthy to bear the arms of being a Dead Good Poet because I know each and every one of them is damned good and armed with strengths that complement the weaknesses burdening the rest of us.

And I’m now looking forward to the next time we can set out as a banner of knights ready to conquer another audience.

Read More

Friendship needed for behind enemy lines...

Evening all.

I trust that here, amongst internet friends, I don't have to apologise too much for again posting up late. I know, it is becoming a joke but I'm a busy guy...

Anyway, the theme this week is friendship which, at first, seems an easy one. We all have friends, we all know what that means and we all know pretty much what an actual friend is. Pushing it further than that though (no, not friends with benefits) and it starts to go either a little soppy or a little bit 'do you remember the time...'.
I think I'm probably of the soppy variety lately- and am more than feeling guilty about still not visiting my BEST friend's near six month old baby as yet. Life being life though, a bit of space and that has become nearly a boundary now so this week I'll be sorting something with him. Here comes the soppy bit- I actually welled up in the car a couple of weeks ago as I was near his house. I got to thinking just as Elbow came onto the radio- cue Guy Garvey's lyric.

"gentle shoulder charge,
 love you man"

I don't know if it was how northern it came across, how simple it was or how we maybe just don't say it enough but it darn near got me. I played the track on repeat, just to try and set the frame of mind and forgot completely what it was I had initially wanted to say.

I've been trying to write something on this for a while now. Thursday night sees the bloggers shipping out to Preston for WordSoup (with Jo Bell) and behind enemy lines (which is anywhere with a PR postcode for me) I want something decent written. Is it being 'too close' to the poem? Is it trying 'too hard' for the poem? Is it just not having enough direction figured out for the poem? Preston calls and I don't like doing repeats, not at all so I'm going to try and write on a different subject for a day, see if it triggers something whilst I'm not concentrating.

Once again, apologies for the short, late post- work and the old block... I'll at least have a poem for you guys next week, promise. If it is just happens to be on this week's theme- well, friendship is a great theme for writing, isn't it. ;)

Thanks for reading, S.

Read More