Friday 17 December 2010

The problem with elephants

is that they're just not poetic enough.

Pachyderm...oliphant...Loxodonta africana...Elephas maximus...

Even starlings can sound sexy in a poem.

But elephants..?

Thursday 16 December 2010

I am reading...

'Theatre for Children: A Guide to Writing, Adapting, Directing & Acting'
Tennessee Williams 'The Glass Menagerie'
Samuel Beckett 'Waiting for Godot'
Teach Yourself:'Writing a Play'.
Jon Stone 'Scare-Crows'
C.K. Williams 'Wait'

Monday 13 December 2010

Baaaa....

After weeks of moaning to friends about how I was so going to hate doing poetry, I discovered that, hey, it wasn't so bad after all.

Then, I entered a poem (one written in class) into a magazine competition.

Then, last week, I heard that this poem is one of two runners up in the competition and will be published in their magazine.

Then, realising that this was the first poetry competition I'd ever entered, and officially only the second poem written as an adult, and that I'd spent a long long long long time grumbling about poetry...I felt rather sheepish.

Baaaa.

Tuesday 30 November 2010

The Invisible Woman

Oh boy.

Non-naturalistic theatre. It's doing my head in.

But this time I may have cracked it. It's what we, here, (yes us commoners), affectionately know as art-wank.

So, here we go. No props. No stage directions. No stage furniture. No sound effects (all banned). If I produce an acceptable piece of art-wank - I mean non-naturalistic theatre - then I may progress up the ladder and wear the badge of the visible student.

But more likely I will go down in history as the one who is neither confrontational or weird enough to be noticed in class.

I am the invisible woman. Which has it's advantages. For instance, I will no longer need to deliberate over what undies I wear (hmmm big black pants or black big pants?), or fret that I have the kids' breakfast down my front. And nobody will be able to tell me I need a haircut.

Monday 8 November 2010

Teacher-speak

I live to write another day.

What is it with university academics?
Why are they still so much like school teachers, even after all that extra education?
Why are intelligent human beings still treating others as if they are imbecilic 9 year olds?

Tutor: 'So what do you notice about..?'

Audience attempts to notice something.

Tutor nods: 'Hmmm, that's an interesting comment [it obviously isn't], anything else you notice?'

Audience silence followed by more desperate attempts to notice something.

Tutor (with a 'helpful' voice): 'Take a look at the second stanza..?'

Audience still clueless, looks desperately at the two members of audience who have acquired secret knowledge of literary jargon in the hope they will blind tutor with said jargon.

Tutor: 'That's a good way of looking at it...but...is there anything else..?

Member of audience: 'So, are you trying to get us to say..?'

Tutor: 'I'm not trying to get you to say anything, there's no right or wrong answer'

Audience gives up.

Tutor: 'Well perhaps if I tell you ...'

One member of audience realises that of course there IS a required ANSWER and that it's taken 17 people a whole agonising 15 minutes to be led to THE ANSWER, during which anyone who has contributed to the class discussion has made a rectumhole of themselves by muttering apparently irrelevant drivel.

90% of audience go home thinking what a wonderful teacher they've just experienced.

One member of audience (who at some time in the past opted for the red pill and dropped out of the matrix) realises that the class has been exposed to teacher-speak, and feels hugely patronised and rather depressed as a result.

And what can we learn from this story?

1. No matter what teachers say there is always a RIGHT ANSWER, i.e. the one they want you to say.
2. Until you say this answer, you're going to be WRONG.
3. To disguise the fact that there is a RIGHT ANSWER, and that the teacher knows that answer and is deliberately keeping that right answer from you, every time you say a WRONG ANSWER they will say things like 'yes, good try' and 'nearly' and 'I hadn't thought of that one' [they had, just thought it was stupid and irrelevant] and 'that's an interesting thought' and 'hmmm'.
4. If you hear any of the above phrases, you have been exposed to 'teacher-speak' and should immediately seek out a decontamination chamber, consume alcoholic beverage and exorcise yourself through some online ranting.

Wednesday 3 November 2010

When the light stops shining out of an author's bum, how many publishers does it take to reach in and change the bulb?

Today in a fit of literate thinking I visited the Oxfam bookshop. Yes I browsed the classics. Yes I even opened a few, read a few lines, then put them back. The thing I've discovered about the 'classics' is that they tend to have a lot of words, mostly in a very small font, clustered together in paragraph-long sentences, which are then organised into page-long paragraphs. Obviously the intention is to send us all blind and mad. I refuse to participate in this lemmingness.

Instead I bought 'Too True' by Blake Morrison. According to the front cover Blake is 'One of our most sensitive and stylish writers'. Or so says the Sunday Times. But we're not supposed to judge a book by it's cover, are we?

I've only got as far as page 16, but there are already some interesting quotes. I give you an example:

'Without art, confessionalism is masturbation. Only with art does it become empathy.'

Hmm...well that's nice dear. Anyone for another jelly baby?

A friend and I have been discussing the difficulties of commenting on other classmembers' poetry. I mean what does one say, when one hardly knows the poet, and one is instructed to comment on the blood-and-tears-sweated-over-very-precious poem. Really, when a person's entire future mental wellbeing depends on your delicate choice of words, what does one say?
'Nice words,' my friend helpfully suggested.

Yes, 'nice words'. I think I'll have that on my epitaph.

Monday 1 November 2010

The definition of desperation

Deadlines. Love 'em or hate 'em, they make you neglect your children, shout at your partner and ignore your friends. In my case they make me cut up a print-out of a wikipedia entry and part of a gardening catalogue and spread it out in little pieces across the conservatory table.


...sorry the rest of this post has now been removed

Brain the size of a pumpkin: hollow and gone to seed.

Last night, at a halloween gathering I was asked about my writing.
So how's your course going?
Eeuukkk...
Who do you have for poetry?
Euuukk...it was supposed to be someone and it's someone else instead. It's a woman. I can't remember her name.
What sort of writing do you do?
Euuukk...

So I failed the intellectual adult conversation test. Three children and now I'm only qualified to talk about the contents of the dishwasher and soup recipes. Will my brain ever return..?

Friday 29 October 2010

Poetic Roadkill (or Survival of the most poetic)

I'm having issues with Darwin; he dawdles across my mind every time I leave space for stray thoughts to come begging. I didn't invite him in and I don't know what he's doing there. He strides through grey matter, looking all beardy and talking about finches' beaks and giant tortoises. Sometimes he's joined by Mendel and Buckland, (the former looking monkish and the latter eating zebra roadkill). And then just when I think it can't possibly get any weirder, these group of misfits are joined by a chicken that, coincidentally, is crossing a synapse at the same time. It's most disconcerting.



Why did the..?



Chicken:
runt of the pterosaurs
you cross the road
without looking
left - or - right
No green cross code
A poultry with purpose
‘til the punch
line
strikes
children’s tarmac.
It’s no joke.
I blame Darwin, snitching on fossilized apartheid
so generations of bones
disowned their progeny. And you,
with your 20th century vocation
T. Rex would bite his opposing thumb
if evolution had granted him one
Such cold-blooded kin
surely it’s no surprise
why you
on a daily basis
commit occupational suicide

Sunday 24 October 2010

Progress Report

Ongoing homework: write a 2000-word short story (due end Nov)
write a poem of 20 lines (due Thurs next wk)
write a 1200-word first chapter of a novel (due Jan 2011)
read Margaret Attwood's book, The Handmaid's Tale (due Jan 2011)


Most difficult thing I've done this week: try to hate the Margaret Attwood book 'The Handmaids Tale'. I tried and tried. But it was really really really good. I shrivelled for nearly 2 hours in the bath so I could finish it.

Most progress made this week: someone is going to lend me Jane Austen DVDs so I don't have to read the books. Hallelujah!

Least progress made this week: the poem I've written for next week. Am completely rewriting it and - like the time I decided to sort the loft out - it's looking a lot worse than when I started tinkering with it.

Best displacement activity to avoid doing any writing: posting on both my blogs.

Help needed most: Any ideas for a first chapter of a novel? I had this urge to write about cheese, but I don't think I could squeeze a chapter out of it.


In the meantime, check out these great alternative ideas for xmas...
http://notwavingbutironing.wordpress.com/2010/10/23/place-your-christmas-orders-for-my-novelty-aprons/

Wednesday 20 October 2010

And my specialist subject is....

I have just discovered that the tutor for our November day workshop 'Reading for Writers' is an authority on Jane Austen and HH Munro (whoever that is). Said tutor will also be leading many of our sessions next term.

I'm just going to go and have a lie down under the desk. Please don't be concerned if you hear sobbing noises.

Thursday 14 October 2010

What it is to be educated

Yesterday I ask someone in my (non-diploma) writing group what 'erudite' means.

'It means learn-ed,' they reply, with only a hint of irony.

___________________________________________________________

er·u·dite 

–adjective
characterized by great knowledge; learned or scholarly: an erudite professor; an erudite commentary.

—Synonyms
educated, knowledgeable; wise, sapient

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Revision

Ok. First poem has been revised.

8 times.

Still mostly crap, though knowing very little about poetry I can only surmise that it is crap. I could of course be so naturally talented that it is a masterpiece and I don't know it. [Watch out for that pig overhead.]

I was wondering whether to get rid of the line I had about the destruction of the Twin Towers. At first I liked it, then I started worrying that someone intellectual might think it's a reference to Tolkien rather than some crude attempt at political comment...and then I thought the whole poem might give someone an insight into the insane mind of a home educating mother. I think everyone else has written nice poems about leaves and butterflies and flowers: I've written about loss of innocence of our children and the futility of war (and not in a 'tum-ti-tum' sort of way, but in a 'New Fast Automatic Daffodil'* sort of way). Oh joy.

Homework for this week has been abandoned after the initial draft, and been substituted with displacement activity reading a book entitled 'How to write a Poem'.

I have read said poetry book - well I've speed-read it for the vaguely interesting bits (thankfully it is a short book with not many interesting bits). I still don't know how to write a poem. I'm the sort of person who likes poems written in the shape of a dog or a tennis ball. And funny poems about farts. I wonder if I am on the wrong course.

But this is still not getting my homework done. There is some progress: I have decided that a suitcase isn't really appropriate as a protagonist. Which leaves me with a senile woman instead. So I now have a story about a senile woman and a suitcase. I suppose I could make it a time-travelling suitcase, but I get the impression that a) children's stories and b) science fiction are not considered to be appropriate genres for writers doing this course. Story is to be ready for tomorrow evening. Why am I blogging instead?

have been listening to Stephen Fry's 'An Ode Less Travelled' . Have been listening to the chapter about iambs and metre and troichers or bizits or whatever they are, and going around all day with 'ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum' in my head (an iambic pentameter apparently). 'I came to ask if you would come to tea' (that's the clean version). I hope this education is worth it and doesn't just turn me into some word-wanky pratt.

* google it. I'm sure there was a fab poem made of a combination of wordsworth and a car advert, possibly written by one of the Liverpool Beat Poets, but then I could be making that up. Wasn't there a group called the New Fast Automatic Daffodils? Or did I make that up too?

Sunday 10 October 2010

10th of the 10th of the 10th

Somehow the months and days and years have aligned to give this quirky date. 10/10/10

The heavens have also enabled me to write my first poem.

No. I'm not going to share it with you. That would just be too painful (for you as well as for me). Something akin to Vogon poetry in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe, but without the double chins.

To be fair, I'm surprised I can write anything after dropping into a cataplectic state following an email from our poetry tutor: 'For our first session please remember to bring along 6 copies of one of your poems.'

One of my poems?

Oh, you mean One of my many poems? Obviously.

Last time I wrote a poem was...er...twenty five years ago, or thereabouts. Poetry writing is what you do when you are in your teens. Why? Well because writing depressing prose for personal viewing is less humiliating than making an arse of yourself in front of that boy you fancy, the boy who you know wouldn't touch you with a bargepole if Clearasil actually worked and you were the last available date on planet earth.

And, it has to be said, writing teen-angst poetry is better for your health than self-harming. (Though if you write something resembling Vogon poetry, it may equate to the latter anyway).

Homework for this week: A short story with three 'episodes' (no more, no less).

Longest period spent timewasting this week: several hours today wondering if a suitcase can be a protagonist.

My latest in-class revelation: I am the only person in the universe who hasn't read 'Pride and Prejudice' (or perhaps the only one foolish enough to admit it).