God - Keeping My Faith

 

I believe in God. I don’t know what God looks like and I wouldn’t know where to start to guess. God’s appearance is not important, it’s the sense of being I reach out to and, for me, God is a presence to be aware of rather than something visible.  I have what my husband would call ‘blind faith’. I get what he means, but to me my Christian faith is not blind.  Each to their own and we respect our opposite views. We trust each other to follow our funeral wishes, but hopefully they won’t be needed for a while yet.

Before school broke up for the Christmas break, I was in the infant’s library with a small group of children. I was asked if there was a book about Egypt and luckily I found something considered ‘perfect’. Bright and polite, the boy went on to explain to me that his family were from Egypt and don’t celebrate Christmas, so they were going there for the holidays to visit family and show off the new baby. He wanted to learn about the country before he went. I was pleased to help. I learnt a lot about his culture that afternoon. It was nice to catch up with him in the new term. His family visit had been very good and he’d been much warmer than we were.

It’s not unusual for my six year old grandson to have us in fits of laughter. He has a natural wit about him, inherited from his mum. One family tea time he commanded attention with, “Listen everybody, if I was the Son of God...” he proceeded to list the things he’d do to make a perfect world with lots of football and Roblox involved.  I wanted to know where this had come from so I asked him who the Son of God is. Confusion or Marvel characters had taken over as his answer was something about a man who lives in our heads and eats our brains.  

I’ve turned to God for help and guidance throughout my life. Growing up without my mother, who died young, was hard. Difficulties were magnified by my father’s swift remarriage which resulted in me trying to fit in but left feeling abandoned and not welcome in the new family. It was a long time before I found any hope and I never got any answers, but I got through it.

‘Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret’ is a book by Judy Blume. It’s a wonderful read for girls growing up, having anxieties about every aspect of puberty and not feeling confident about asking. I believe it’s a film now. I’ll look out for it. I had grown out of that stage of life by the time I read it, but I could relate to most of it and hoped it was useful to my daughter when she built an invisible wall to keep me out.

Life throws hurdles into the mix, or maybe just mine, and some higher to clear than others, but again, I never gave up and any obstacles haven’t been impossible to conquer, so far. Sometimes I’ve been my own worst enemy. I’ve broken more than one of the Ten Commandments, some more than once. I’ve tried to disregard God, only to realise that I can’t get by without my faith. For this and for past misdemeanours I have been aware of forgiveness.

This year has already brought challenges. I’m shuffling about as I write this, easing off one physical pain for another and trying to keep mental stresses in proportion. Someone once said, “When things look like they’re falling apart, it might be that they’re falling into place” or something like that.

Having a faith and believing in God is who I am. I don’t carry a banner, I don’t evangelise, I just do my best for everyone and in everything I do. I live and let live, accepting people for who and what they are, hoping they offer me the same.

The words of Desiderata mean a lot to me.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann. 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Tribalism - Let's Be Individual

I’ve mentioned before about my childhood fear of the Nigerian tribal mask that used to hang on my father’s office wall.  This gift from his brother who spent many years working for a petrol company in Lagos in the 1950s was ugly and scary and moved with us from one pub to another. The mask and many items my uncle brought home had been given to him as souvenirs but they were meaningful to their tribes and culture and he was honoured to receive such things as gifts.

 

 Apart from the really scary mask, we had an ornamental boat made from brass that was always on the mantelpiece and fascinated me as a child, and a few other bits of bric-a-brac that had come from Africa. I don’t know where it all ended up. I can only guess it was lost over time, or discarded when my widowed father remarried.

I don’t think tribalism begins and ends in Africa, though. We all follow a culture of sorts, or a mixture of thoughts and feelings that define who we are and give us a sense of belonging when we are with like-minded people. Politics, religion, sport, entertainment; it all falls into specific boxes and some don’t or won’t mix.

 In my youth we had Mods and Rockers. Mods rode scooters, Lambrettas adorned with many wing mirrors and sometimes a fur tail. Rockers rode motorbikes, the bigger the better. Triumph Bonneville was loved and some of the Japanese motorbikes were getting popular, Honda and Suzuki. No one could afford a Harley Davidson. And Rockers never rode scooters.

There was the ‘either or’ thing in pop music. It was Cliff Richard or Elvis Presley, The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, rock/prog rock/metal or Tamla Motown. A person was not supposed to like both and live in both camps, but I did and I wasn’t alone. I like what I like.

My step-mother’s mantra was ‘be an individual, don’t follow the crowd’ and yet she complained because I was different from her and I didn’t conform to her ways. I didn’t fit in with her. I still don’t ‘fit in’ to a lot of things, including work, but not fitting in has never held me back.

Back to Nigeria, I found this poem:

     Tribalism is an identity
     Resulting to nepotism
     And a great animosity

     Tribalism is an identity
     Of no statutory backings
     Denting my nationality
 
     From existing as an entity
     Resulting to conflicts
     And the death of humanity
 
     Tribalism is an identity
     A scar on nationalism
     Degrading our community
 

By Onyeche Vincent Onyekachukwu

 

  

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Hipster - Has Anyone Got a Cowbell?

All I wanted was a bell round my neck. Everyone else had one. The ‘everyone’ in this case referred to the groups of fashionable young people parading the promenade. I watched them from our upstairs living-room window, above the pub. They were older than me, but they were how I envisaged myself in the near future.  My Nan, always fascinated by the sights that walked by, tutted and thought they sounded like the donkeys on the beach. My Dad said they were ‘hippies’ or ‘Beatniks’ and I wasn’t going to be joining in with them. He was being boring, but he let me have a troll doll instead and I chose one with beautiful, long orange hair. I had her for many years. By the time I was old enough to please myself about strolling along the prom with a cowbell round my neck, the trend had passed and I was involved in more worthwhile activities. 

 

In making an effort to be individual, someone’s style can be so popular and copied to the extent that it becomes almost a uniform, like Teddy Boys, and defines opposites, like Mods and Rockers, Skinheads and Greasers. It is not just fashion, it’s a way of life, a culture.  Hipster, none of the above and not a hippy, but no label required, they are people of this generation.

 

My son has grown a full bushy beard. It looks good, even though it covers so much of his handsome face. This must be the opposite of ‘designer stubble’ that didn’t suit everyone and gave a look of scruffy and unshaven to some unfortunate fashion followers. Beards seem to be more popular than ever and the bigger, the better with young men, like medieval warriors. I can’t imagine my husband without his goatee and my daughter’s partner suits his rich auburn full beard, neatly trimmed. I hope it is a trend that lasts. I like it.

 

I’d love to feel bold enough to have colour in my hair again. I had my blonde highlights done at the weekend. It doesn’t make a lot of difference, it’s just a touch of natural looking enhancement. A hint of a rainbow beneath the top layers would be perfect. It could be a retirement gift to myself, perhaps, if only that were soon. My daughter has purple hair at the moment. It will be another colour before long.  She doesn’t like false nails, sweeping eyelashes or lip fillers all of which seem popular with young ladies. She had a tiny facial piercing as soon as she was old enough to have it done. I wish she had wanted a cowbell for a necklace. I would have happily bought it.

 

 

I love this poem I found by Porche Freeman,

 

I can't hear you over the sounds of The Shins on my iTouch.
I watch your mouth move but I don't care too much.
My music sounds like an orgy of broken computers.
My thoughts are too complex for you to clutch.

I am a Hipster and these are my confessions.
Scalene triangles and vintage are my obsessions.
My hair is so messy.
My life style is formed out of homosexual repression.

I don't wear skinny jeans, they're called fitted.
I love this hat that my grandmother knitted.
I carry sticky pads and sharpeys for artistic expression.
I got a ticket for being so cool unpermitted.

My name is John, but I tell people to call me Noah.
I once fell in love with a girl named Ramona.
I listen to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs but she said No No No.
So it was over fo eva.

I carry a camera because I am indie.
My favorite band is Breakfast with Cindy.
I love freaking coffee.
Look at my ironic t- shirt, I'm so trendy.

I am a Hipster and these are my confessions.
Scalene triangles and vintage are my obsessions.
My hair is so messy.
My life style is formed out of homosexual repression.

 

Porche Freeman

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x



 

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Stardate: -716000

Would it make too much mess if I picked apart a sentence?  The theme this week is 'space' and I can't think the word without it being pestered by its fellows, ':' and 'the final frontier'. 

It's quite economic, as sentences go.  And it's a metaphor.  It reminds me of the way Sir David Attenborough describes locations in his voiceovers: The Sahara: a vast swathe of scorching earth.  Or Antarctica: the planet's ice box.  Something like that.  But the Star Trek quote is more evocative than that.

Being an American TV series which started in 1966, Star Trek was riding on the tailcoats of the great Westerns.  Bonanza was the top rating TV series that year, and had been for the two years before.  It was also the year that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was released in US cinemas. 

The American Frontier, that push westwards, since the 17th century, of Americans as they spread across the continent, was still fresh in the imagination.  New territories, ie farmland as yet unclaimed, became almost impossible to find after the 1890s.  By the 1960s the Americans were reminiscing fondly about the days of outlaws, goldrushes and, before the truth of the Trail of Tears was widely known, their dominance over the American Indians.

In 1966, the US space programme was also at the forefront of imaginations.  They had yet to walk on the moon, but the Project Gemini took astronauts into space for longer and longer periods and Project Apollo was costing the modern equivalent of $205billion with the aim of putting the first men on the moon.  Three years later, it would succeed.

Roddenberry's intentions behind the TV series are crystal clear in those first four words.  He saw space as the new Wild West and Americans as THE human race.  In the future, he imagined, John Wayne would ride through the stars, an outlaw captain writing the rules and disobeying authority, finding love on every planet and outsmarting every menace. 

This concludes my examination of that short metaphor.  And it goes to show just how much cultural punch you can pack into a few carefully chosen words.  Poetry: cultured concentrated.

Captain James T Kirk

John Wayne

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Serendipity

A guest post by C J Heyworth.

Given that my mother was a widow who chose not to remarry after my father's death when I was seven in the Summer of 1953, I suppose her second important choice from my point of view was to work as a school dinner lady so as to "be there" for me when I was not at school, even though her pittance wages did not allow us a 'grand lifestyle" at all.

What I am grateful for is Mum's determination that I should never miss out on the extras organised by teachers at my primary and secondary schools - country days out to Garstang, Fairsnape, Parlick and Brock, and city trips to Lancaster, Manchester, Liverpool, York mainly related to the History syllabus.  Best of all (and I still do not know how it was afforded as light Summer clothes were needed for predicted higher daytime temperatures) a European tour which took us to London and Dover, by ferry to Calais and through Belgium, Germany, Austria and across The Brenner Pass to Riva at the northern tip of Lake Garda with day visits to Milan and Venice - a splendid introduction to matters European.

But the visits which had most lasting influence on me were the Fifth and Sixth Form trips each November to see the RSC perform at The Memorial Theatre, a lasting shaping of how I should choose many hours of life in enjoyment of theatre both as an audience member and a participant.

Attending the performance by the touring RSC Ensemble of an abridged Taming of the Shrew at The Grand revivified my memories of "back then". I'm sure the standards today insisted on by Tourist Boards such as Visit England and Stratford's own Accommodation Bureau would have made the sort of Wednesday to Saturday Coach Trip we took impossible for a school to organise today, mostly because of arrangements for sleeping in the guest house within walking distance of the theatre.

To keep costs to a minimum, each bedroom was shared by ten of us in double beds which completely occupied the floor-space in the room, there was one bathroom/toilet on each floor, and the two spinsters who ran the place were not brilliant cooks.  They also loved what my mother used to refer to as "dust-gatherers" - the Guest Lounge was crowded with all sorts of mainly wooden ornaments - "They do not break," explained one of who we referred to as Macbeth's Witches.  Being teenagers we labelled them as "immensely old".  They were probably in their late fifties at least!

I work this out as a couple of years after I had left Baines to become an undergraduate at Reading University, one of my best friends of the time, the late Bob Glass, explained that his parents, who ran a guest house on Lord Street near Blackpool North Station, had sold their place in Blackpool and moved to Stratford-upon-Avon having bought another guest house.  Bob was living in London, and I visited him there quite frequently, hitch-hiking from Reading, an easy matter.  In his generous way, Bob invited me to see his parents' new home in Stratford, and, lo and behold, which was the guest house they had bought ?

The one we used to stay in for our school trips, but modified to the high standard Mrs. Glass always insisted on - no more five beds to a room, and the target visitors were American Literary Junkies wanting what Visit England now calls Shakespeare Country.

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We Won an Award

 By Ashley Lister

This week’s theme is pain and pleasure – a topic which I can tie in easily to this blog’s Thursday night victory at the Radio Wave Culture and Lifestyle Awards.
For those of you who didn’t receive a text, tweet, email, telephone call or FB update on Thursday night, the Dead Good Blog received the Website of the Year Award for 2012. If I haven’t already thanked you for your support and your vote, then I must now thank you wholeheartedly.
Thank you all for the votes. It is truly appreciated. The contributors deserve the recognition and we honestly could not have won this award without your support.
But I’m wanting to talk about pain as well as pleasure.
I should begin by talking about the pain that came from having my tuxedo shrink. (On that point I could also talk about the pain that comes from comments of people suggesting I’ve gotten fat and my tuxedo hadn’t really shrunk. But I’m not a small-minded person. Apparently my backside is no longer small either).
Nevertheless, the pain of wearing a suit that is too small was just one of the points that hurt on Thursday night.

It was more painful that three of our main bloggers weren’t able to attend. Stylish Ste and Suave Shaun (both looking distinctly dapper) were there. But the wonderful Lara Clayton, Lindsay Barlow and Vicky Ellis were absent due to other commitments and conflicting circumstances.
This was painful for three reasons: 
1) All three absent writers are talented and hard working and deserved the opportunity to let their hair down at this event. Ladies: I’m truly sorry circumstances were against you.   

2) The photographs we’ve taken would have been a lot easier on the eye if there had been some female content within them.  

3) You three were sorely missed. You deserved to be a part of the triumph. It would have been wonderful to be able to share the evening and the victory celebration with each of you in person.
Absences aside, it was the pleasure that marked the evening. The awards ceremony was prestigious and swanky and wonderful. I drank champagne and lager. My head still hurts. I could write prolifically about the pain of that.

A bloke approached Ste and myself early in the evening and asked if we were a couple. If he had seen how much Ste was kissing me after we won, then I’d have been waiting with anticipation to find out the answer to that question. In truth, it would only have taken one more kiss from Standard Ste and I would have been reaching for my lucky condom.

Another bloke later called me a sissy for wearing a tuxedo. I could have taken issue with the comment. I could have wondered why he was telling me that I looked like a sissy for wearing a tux when there were a thousand other guys at the awards dressed identically. But I let the sleight pass. I might have looked like a sissy in my tuxedo. But I was a sissy in a tux holding the award for website of the year.

In conclusion, I’d like to reiterate my thanks to everyone who helped us secure our success. Below I’ve reprinted the poem I read when we received our award:

We’re a poetry blog for the brave

Where the writers try not to behave.

I’ve just made this small note

To say thanks for the votes

And, of course, thanks to Radio Wave.

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How I Feel About the "Novels" of Katie Price...

Jordan and her ghostwriter Rebecca Farnworth

This week’s theme, ‘literary fiction vs commercial fiction’, has the potential to be dangerous. It has the potential to evoke great mists of anger. And, contained within these mists are small glass orbs of sulphuric acid, suspended by nothing more than strings of self-restraint...

One word is capable of making me run for the scissors. One name makes me want to cut the strings, cause the fragile orbs to fall and allow the acid to burn massive holes through titles such as Angel,  Crystal and Sapphire. These are not the writings of a spiritual hippie on a path of enlightenment – if they were, I would probably hate them a little less – but rather they are (just a few of) the “novels” “by” Katie (aka Jordan) Price.

*The presence of scare quotes around both ‘novels’ and ‘by’ is deliberate and completely justified. I refuse to state, acknowledge or use the literal meaning of these two words when placed in the same context as said page three model for the following reasons:

1) A ‘novel’ is generally thought to mean: an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex – and I don’t believe for one minute that Jordan is capable of writing anything longer or more complex than a shopping list. (Please make sure that all hate mail uses correct grammar and punctuation. Thank you.)

2) The preposition ‘by’ can be employed to indentify the agent performing the action, e.g. a novel  [written] by Tolstoy. Therefore, given that Jordan has a ghostwriter, I would argue that it is not correct to write: a novel written by Katie Price, given that she hasn’t actually engaged in the act of writing (her ghostwriter has).

 However, despite this fact, I will continue to allow her to be the object of my disdain...

...Because it’s difficult to make voodoo dolls of the unknown, spectre –like, Rebecca Farnworth.

...Because publishers accept a name before they accept a manuscript.

...Because our celebrity obsessed society insists on buying a name rather than a novel.

...Because we value fame over talent.

...Because bookshops merely roll over and indulge immature palates.

...Because I walked into Tesco in 2009*, and saw Sapphire “by” Katie Price placed at number one in the book charts – and despaired.

*It was also on this same night, in Tesco, that I decided to rewrite the charts. Removing all of Jordan’s “books” and replacing them with Ian McEwan’s On Chisel Beach (which was number fifteen in the charts).

For me, the literary verse commercial fiction battle will only ever result in one winner. Literary fiction is literature that has the ability to last – to be read, enjoyed and sought years, decades, even centuries after the author has died. I very much doubt that the “novels” of Jordan will survive the test of time, and if they do then maybe society really is doomed.

But for now, the “novels” “by” Katie Price will remain as a pet hate; they are that one thing that I really wish I could throw into the Room 101.

Thank you for reading,
Lar   

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Sounding Off.

When somebody tells me that poetry is boring, I can be a little dismissive.

I can also bite heads off. For me, that is like saying music is dull. All music. Ever. Dull.

Now, there are plenty of older people who can roll off some schoolday Wordsworth. I know a fair few dramatic types that love to do a bit of Shakespeare from time to time. I probably also know a few dozen teenagers that could quote, word for word, the entire album of a rapper.

Do these people get on? Probably not. They probably don't realise just how much they have in common.

Several people have told me lately (after noticing the blog) that they can't be doing with poetry and, in a quest to get to the bottom of this, I have been thinking about the way Sound (this week's theme) makes almost all things poetic more accessible.

As writers we pump poems full of imagery, cram it in, elaborate our points but, if by the end of the poem nobody is actually listening, was there really any point in tying up that metaphor in the final stanza? Trailing off is a nightmare. Standing at a microphone and losing the plot is something of a disaster and so, I like to think that over the past few years I've developed a few techniques in my writing to try and hold the attention.

I've tried writing in beats, using rhetoric, hard and soft endings, rhymes, stressed and unstressed syllables, alliteration, assonance, and even a little sibilance. None of these techniques are nessecarily the answer but, we chuck them in all the same to help move the poem along. We hope that they'll make someone hear.

From the many poetry readings I've found myself attending over the years, I can't say there is an answer. Poets pick and choose. Each individual just has to feel the poem and, with practise, just know almost.

I could go on here to produce a top five, top ten or greatest hits kind of post but we all have our own tastes - you know what sounds work for you. I will instead encourage all of you to attend a poetry reading. I keep coming across the line about the couple who attend events together; the old 'I don't like it, she does' situation. Carol Ann, our poet laureate, reckons there are always surprised faces and comments like 'I didn't think I liked poetry'. So go on, get yourself out there and have a listen. It could be the way someone uses the words, it could be the noises they are making with ideas, it could just be that you liked the concept but if you never look for things you like, you might always be that sad, closed minded fool that bands all poetry in together as boring.

It has been an interesting week. We've had general strikes and ludicrous comments from TV celebrities. I also heard yesterday that Meryl Streep is to play Margaret Thatcher in a film. So, for our cock-sure Prime Minister, for the Iron Whore and for Jeremy Clarkson- I'm dedicating you all this John Cooper Clarke classic.

Sound.

Thanks for reading, Shaun.

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Essence and Inspiration

An interview with Cath Nichols, extended from one previously conducted by Deborah Swift (novelist) at: www.deborahswift.co.uk

1. What is it about poetry that makes it essential to you?

Something about the reading of poems makes me go into a different space/time experience – whether that’s reading them in my head or hearing the poet read them out loud. It’s not usually the ‘story-telling’ space (which I think of as a kind of escapism, or learning, or forward momentum) that I get from reading prose. It’s more like meditation or a quality of attention. If prose is forward momentum, poetry is circular; it ripples out from the centre. Certainly when I’m writing poetry, too, there is a sense of ‘tardis space’ – time spent ‘in’ poetry is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside!

2.Tell me about the themes that most excite you at the moment, or structures in poetry or prose that make your eyes light up.

I have been preoccupied with the sea for years and with various myths. Also hybrid people and characters: for example, mermaids, and over the last couple of years the Procne and Philomela, a myth where both women are turned into birds. I’ve noticed that I often get hooked on material that was someone else’s first. The hook is where my mind keeps going back to a thing that I disagree with strongly (such as Hans Christian Anderson’s use of the little mermaid and how she has to work to earn a place in heaven - yuk). It’s the gritty irritation than later develops into something, a percieved injustice in the older writing that needs re-writing for today (in my opinion). Philomela (the nightingale in various odes) had real appeal: why should she turn into a nightingale and sing a sweet sad song having been raped by her brother-in-law? It made me furious! So, I wrote a poem and later a play (set in the present and involving an Asian family in Manchester) to work out a different approach.

I am building up a novel now which is a response to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. Again deep outrage that Imogen’s husband agrees to a bet to test his wife’s faithfulness. She is put at great risk; he believes she has been unfaithful and sends someone to kill her; and then at the end of the story they reunite to live happily ever after! Aargh! The gall of it. Of course, I realise in those days women had to put up with a great deal and possibly marriage was the best protection available, so you’d do all you could to make it work, and forgive all kinds of crap. But not now.
Investigating structures: now I’m doing longer works I am fascinated by links between poetry and prose or plays – it’s something about rhythm and alternation, I think. In prose it seems to be to do with suspending the revelation of plot and creating recurring motifs; and in a poem it’s to do with the tension in enjambment, and repetition of words or sounds.

3. You are interested in radio and the aural experience of words. How has this influenced your work?

It was a big part of my PhD research. I’d noticed that many poets write for radio as dramatists, docu-drama writers and sometimes as poets. I love Michael Symmons Roberts work (he used to be a BBC documentary producer and later Head of Religious Broadcasting before becoming a full-time poet and academic). Paul Farley and Simon Armitage too have done a lot. Way back you have Dylan Thomas and in fact almost every poet based in London in the forties did some work for radio as an actor, writer or producer. Samuel Beckett did some innovative stuff (he did the first really radiophonic play All that Fall – using sound in a distorted way for atmospheric effect). Joan Littlewood and Charles Parker valued working-class history and experience. With Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger they made the Radio Ballads series: this pretty much invented documentary without commentary – people were heard in their own voices for the first time, instead of transcribed interviews being read by actors! That followed on from the invention of new technologies that made recording equipment portable – writers and producers could get out and about.
Kathleen Jamie did a wonderful radio play in the 90s that had imagined characters from Larkin’s Whitsun Weddings talking about their lives since the great Whitsun train ride. Their stories were interleaved with Larkin reading the poem. You can listen to it in the British Library if you go to the sound archive there. All of it is just so inspiring.

I’ve done some local BBC radio short drama and poetry but I’m still trying to crack Radio 4 drama. New writers have to go via the Afternoon Play slot which is pretty pedestrian. Only the famous get asked to do docu-drama stuff, which would be more up my street. So, watch this space!

4. Which other writers have made a lasting impression on you and why?

For novels, Shani Mootoo’s The Cereus Blooms at Night. Fabulous, surprising novel set in the Caribbean with race, sexuality (as in queer as well as straight) and gender issues seamlessly woven through a great story set in the past and present.
Anne Carson, a Canadian poet and Classics professor who writes book-length poems or sequences. The Autobiography of Red (Red is a little ‘creature’ from a Greek myth alive in the present day), and Glass and Gods. The sequence where the narrator goes home to Mum after heartbreak, but re-investigates Emily Bronte and the moors, sums up a particular kind of sadness and detachment. It is sometimes shocking when it describes certain acts of desperation, but it’s so truthful as to how humans can be with each other. The Beauty of the Husband is another book-length poem of hers (subtitled ‘a fictional essay in 29 tangos’!). It won the T.S. Eliot Prize a few years ago). Carson also does translations of Greek drama and writes fantastic essays.

5. Tell me about your publications or scripts-in-progress.

Pamphlet, Tales of Boy Nancy (Driftwood, 2005). This is being re-issued soon by erbacce press (Driftwood having closed) with a group of new poems, ‘Distance’.
Collection, My Glamorous Assistant (Headland, 2007).
I’ve poems forthcoming in Poetry Wales and The Stinging Fly and, I found out last month that I’ll be in 2012’s Lung Jazz: Young Poets for Oxfam. I’m not that young, but the line was drawn at 40 years old at the time of sending in work last year.
I’ve a couple of plays doing the rounds at the moment (i.e. being sent to theatres and companies), so look out for them, or if you’re part of a theatre group you can request to read them. They all have very strong parts for women. Drowning Meirion Evans – set around 1915, Woolworths, the Lusitania and with lots of magical business. Birdie – the Philomela myth re-written for an Asian family in Manchester. And there’s Ada – a take on Phaedre where an older married woman falls for a young lad with dire consequences. I took inspiration from the Iris/ Peter Robinson affair in Northern Ireland (she was sixty and had an affair with a nineteen year old, yikes!), but also gave it a twist: she is ardently religious and finds out that the lad thinks he might be gay – so she’s trying to ‘help’ him be straight. It all takes place in a country on the brink of civil war, and Ada is married to the country’s president.

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