From the silence.

This weekend, football grounds across the country have fallen silent to mark the anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster.
On the car radio today, I listened to the names of all 96 supporters being read out before the Liverpool game and found myself, in the middle of Tesco car park with tears across my cheeks.
It is an emotive thing football. It brings entire communities out in uproar and drives hard divides between rival towns yet, once a year, all that tribal behaviour is put aside as we look back and remember the 96 fallen supporters.
Every year, I try to write some kind of poem about the event. Things that move me on the news and continue to move me for so many years later, I feel deserve to have poems written about them. Every year though, I fail at writing something I am happy with. I'm conscious that I have no real right to the subject matter other than the fact I'm a football fan and so, every year I move aside, leaving it to someone who can better capture the emotion of it all.
This year though, marks 25 years since the disaster and finally, after a huge wave of public support, things have started to move in the right direction- that is peace for the families and importantly, justice for the 96.
With all this in mind, and with the inquest getting under way then- I've decided to post my effort from this year. It clearly needs some sharpening up but, given that I've spent the last week trying to work out how to read Hamlet's soliloquy for an upcoming event- I've simply not had the clarity of mind to tackle such weighty tweaks.

Thanks for reading, and here's (enjoy is the wrong word) the poem.


A Warrington Inquiry

Has finally come around it seems
the slurs and poisons of two dozen years
the anguish. All the lies.
It is a mere dream that truth will out
So much evidence has little clout
Due to testiments from undrunk yobs
All suited still to uniform jobs -
(some writing for The Sun).
But hold this inquest- it is due
Not for us, not for them but for people who
Could have easily been in that Leppings End
If their team had made it happen.
If we'd put our passion there that day
The news would hone in on our family ways
We'd be freshly slurred and left in a haze
The terror. The bloody carnage.
But a warzone this was not- no way
Two teams the country loved watch play
In a neutral ground for their own safety
Just to watch it gives me shivers.
It's emotion running up my spine
from my deepest guts through my heart to mind
Every time- the tears well in my eyes
So, yes, justice must be seen.
Because every week I support my team
And whether in red, bright blue or green
It seems everyone's feeling the same.
There's no reason for it. No fan blame.
Whispered, cold faced decisions with no-ones name
Those on duty there daren't recall that game
When their memories differ from statements.
This is not just law its protection rackets
It's a cover up that had Margaret flapping
It's a bloody disgrace that they've still not cracked it
This is England's public shame.
We've had twenty five years of hard nosed scandal
Honest folk pursued as vandals,
Hooligans, thieving drunken
Animals. It just simply wasn't true.
For them and their loved ones, memorial's due
There's a plinth in Trafalgar Square would do
For they've fought and they've fought
and they've fought the law
They've put petitions in the PMs front door
They've been knocked back and hushed up and still
they've sought more. There's no number of red chiselled bricks
Can make up for the 96.
But in their name football understands
In the front rooms all across the land
Whether Cockney or Manc, whether Red or true Blue
Supporters seek truth. Only justice will do.

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Home is where you lay your hat? .... Nah!

What's in an address? Many may say it's your home, but I don't feel that way.

In my 38 years of being on this planet, so far I have had 8 addresses. The first 3 of those were the family home shared with my Parents and siblings. They really were home to me. The remainder were houses or flats shared with housemates, the significant other in my life at the time, or latterly, with just my son. None of those later 5 I would class as home, just a place that I have resided. To me, a home is yours, mortgaged or not. I have only ever rented as an adult, and short of winning the lottery to enable me to buy, it is highly unlikely that I will ever get on the property ladder myself.

I try my best to make our current place of residence feel like home for my son. I like living there. It is a cosy little 2 bedroom cottage style terraced house. But to me, it isn't home. It may be because of the mess, or because I didn't get that feeling people talk about when buying a house, where they love the house as soon as they see it and feel like it's home. It saddened me to realise, that I may never have a home of my own.


The Nomad

From a loving home
Setting out on my own
Finding my own two feet
First here and then there
Adventure turning to despair
Never finding my welcome retreat.

I have had many abodes
And hospitality bestowed
I am thankful to all and to each 
But a little place of my own
Just mine, not on loan
Eludes, always just out of reach.

So I drift ever on
Searching over yon
Realising it may never come true
To have my own door
A roof, walls and floor
I'm a Nomad with an ever changing view.



Thanks for reading. x ;-)

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Readdressing Creative Processes

At times I think it can be helpful to have several mediums in which to express creativity. That way, when one outlet fails or becomes too stressful, there is always another. For me, I quite like the rewards of baking, the extra spoonful of love that seems to be included with a handmade card, the sense of 'achievement' that comes with building an Andy Warhol Campbell's soup can on Minecraft, or taking a photograph which manages to capture how you see the world / feel about it. The latter is something I've always had a liking for, and yet is one I've never really taken beyond my 'click and point' camera.

Over the years, I've been absorbed and inspired by many wonderful photography exhibitions (one of the luxuries of having lived in London) and I enjoy flicking through books of photographs for those images that make me think 'wow'.

Anyway, as a result of my writing being slow (and slightly painful at times) I decided to make an effort to take more photographs. To learn more about the technical side of photography. To teach myself something new. To have a different creative hobby which might in turn release the poetry from my head. To take images without the pressure there seems to be to write a line or stanza.

Below is one of the photographs that resulted from an early morning Sunday walk on the beach...

...and below is the poem which resulted from the above photograph.

Re- Focus

I slowed the shutter speed, increased the ISO.

By the time the image appeared on the camera's display

there was nothing left - a world bleached into obscurity.

The receding tide, wet sand and resting gulls

now lost in a thick, glaring white.

A whiteness like that I imagine in death, in the middle ground,

in the space between this place and the next.

Later, when I downloaded the photographs, they looked like errors:

The missing subjects, the lack of colour and contrast.

But as I began to edit, dragging the 'brightness' slider

backwards into negative figures,

I watched as a faded grey structure pulled itself from the absence,

sharpening, gradually becoming darker - its iron legs

lifting from the fog, as if refusing to disappear.  

Thank you for reading,

Lara

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Addressing your audience

As writer we need to know who we are writing for. Personally I write for children. Many people think children's writing is a watered down version of adult writing, but this is not the case. It's probably more difficult to write for children than to write for adults. Why? Because you not only have to write something that appeals to children, but to their parents. It doesn't matter how much a child wants to read your book, it's going to go nowhere unless the one who holds the cash is willing to part with it. Adults have completely different ideas about what children should read than children do, they look for educational aspects, they censor and they may refuse to buy a book if they feel it encourages bad behaviour in their child. There are also those adults who buy gifts for children who want them to read something they would like to have read when they were little, which may be very different to what a child nowadays wants to read. Plus there are libraries to consider, they can be very selective with what they feel children should be reading. With picture books adults will look for something that they can tolerate when they have it requested for the 23rd time that day.  

Children on the other hand run a mile if they even sniff a tiny bit of educational material in there. They want to rebel, and to be entertained. They want to escape in the fictional bad behaviour of their protagonists to escape the rigid adult controlled world they live in. Learn stuff? Ha, nope. They have some kind of weird anti-didactic radar. You have to sneak it in. Again very difficult to do.

So in children's books there is a dual audience to write for, both the child and the adult.  This isn't a case of crossover fiction, which is even more difficult to consciously do. Every children's book has to consider a dual audience if it wants to be published. I'm not saying that you have to consider the adult audience too much, just be aware of it when writing.

Don't underestimate children either. Difficult concepts are good. Children don't like to be patronised, you can simplify but don't avoid things, children are people too. In a project at Uni we gathered 2 groups of school children separately and has a discussion about Anne Fine's 'Up on cloud 9'. This is a book which tackles attempted suicide and depression. The 12 year old group's views on what was happening in the book didn't differ greatly from the 14 year old group, the only difference was that the 12 year old group thought they didn't know what was happening in the book when they actually did.

It's a tricky business this writing for children lark. Wish me luck.

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