Turning the Page

Over 50 writers – graduates from Scotland’s Creative Writing Masters and PhD programmes – gathered together at Sandeman House in December for a full-day event hosted by literaturetraining to explore how they could apply the writing and other skills they developed at university to make and sustain a living as a writer.

Loved this event. It was massively inspiring and gave me the real kick-start I needed to get going with everything.

Adrian Mead, the former night club bouncer and a hairdresser turned writer and director of film and TV, was fantastic. If I could garner half his energy and drive, I'd be happy.

Linda Cracknell's quietly informative presentation outlining her own writing career path and the way in which we could visualise and put into practice our ambitions and dreams was incredibly helpful.

A great day, brilliant to meet other graduates in a similar situation, great resources and speakers and something I hope can be repeated...

News and publications

I should probably just update the publication/other news a little here, as it's been so long...



Firstly, yay for finally graduating from Edinburgh Uni's Creative Writing MSc (with distinction...eyes wide with shock and awe at said result). Loads of pics of that on the Facebook page. So now I'm BA (Hons), MA, MSc...hilarious!



Publications...'All part of Nature', a short story in The Legendary, November 20, 2009. Issue 11
as the eds there say:

Every piece of writing in this issue gives you a decadent glimpse of life to help you get your voyeur on. These worde WILL leave a taste in your mouth, it's up to you to decide if you like it

interesting....

Also I've had a piece accepted for Cinnamon Press Microfiction anthology, to be titled Exposure; out in September 2010. Very exciting, especially when there were 4000 pieces of work submitted for it...

Last but not least, I had a lovely mention in Sarah Salway's essay, 'Stealing Stories', in the fab new book by Salt Publishing called Short Circuit: A Guide to the Art of the Short Story, edited by the prolifically talented short story writing Vanessa Gebbie.

Now, back to the writing...

you - poem

what if there is no
place to go back to?

a sudden wall erected –
blocking past
and self.

all influences smashing up against it at a sprint – too fast
to pull up
and stop
lost
now

caught only as strangers
on the street –
a study of reactions, carefully observed,
yes,
observed as object,
yes

but never understood
never known
no comprehension

just a picture of a moment of a time you don’t
remember

but it’s not
you
it’s the man
that was

is

was

is




is there a core of you-ness?
or is that you only a web,
a connected span of memories
and shared conversations –

times spent with

times had with

times shared and loved with

love made with







now
the holes just open up and open up wider
and the who you were slips in
untouched
by any of it



they

can only remember a ghost –
the singing memory of a you shining in their minds

but a you blacked out to nothing
whispers silently in yours

there is no place to go back to


there is only now
and the next moment
and the
next
and
the
next

till somehow there are enough moments
accumulated
to make
a life


you
as
you
are

Shadows - a Sijo

Shadows proliferate, shaped large against that blue wall,
scrawled across that cracked pavement, graffitied into being –
tilting the world into a sudden darkness – only I can see.

How the rhino - poem

Perhaps it’s an obsession –
if such a thing exists
in someone as ordinary as me.

Tucked under the skin, an irritation,
wearing wrinkles in, and folds,
the way the rhino got his skin,
with this grazed remembering
of then.

Nothing visible –
no presence marking the place
where it happened –
so that’s what went on,
yes, I see. It’s evident.

No

stained and rusted patch
of anything resembling hate,
no slimed unease, no surface-caustic spill
that burns and sizzles through
to deeper places.

No, just this mild re-appearing
from the past,

and me
not choosing
to ignore it.

Bohemian - poem

Evening. Cigar smoke.
Your arm around
my shoulders.

You’re talking about changing
the world –

but first I have
to see to the children

Bloodstones - poem

The gems rattle loose
from their settings

clattering onto the much too solid
ground –

vitreous fragments revealed
as truth

in splinters –
and now the glass-sharp
edges

slide
so cleanly
into flesh.

Publication News

My poem 'Hotel Room Tuesday' will appear in Aesthetica Magazine 14. Publication of this issue will be on 1st August, 2006, and will be available from Borders Bookshop and the Aesthetica website.

The Aesthetica website seems to be getting bigger and better each time I visit, and there's a lot of good stuff going on there, so I'm thrilled to have had a piece accepted there...

Paradise Street - a poem

Voices arc the street –
electric sparks
blue - too blue - against this sky
and day smirks
balanced on the white-glossed sill

waiting

the confession loiters low at the
window
curtained for a moment before

riding
on the rolling wave of engines
clattering shakes of buses pressed to full with
faces
mouthing

rising
on the tightly
plucked out song of birds
all praising now and now
as if it mattered

gliding
far from her - this room - this window
this open street
of Tuesdays - Thursdays -
strung out flags of welcome
red with celebration

but not for her

she curls against it -
lets the sting invade
and burn its way
to the root
then pinnacle
of her –
to cauterise the almost-longing
that she felt
but couldn’t keep
couldn’t save
couldn’t allow –

there isn’t enough day
isn’t enough

falling back - a poem

You rampage
shining through your life

sabotaging from the inside
before they can.

Easily done
without too much thought

or preparation

just this
relentless
leaning into the void

faltering on the brink
then falling back

if allowed

or not –

but
by then it
doesn’t matter.

By then
there’s nothing to fall back
for

sonata - poem

She plays here every Saturday
in this cliff top café -
Beethoven, Mozart,
depending on the weather –

while he sits by the window
watching the sea
and feeling
the sweep of the notes

as her fingers glide,
fluid as the waves,
as clean as the gulls’ sheer flight
to the horizon.

He trails in her wake –
displaced
a little more
each time,

dying with the last
resonance –
falling in a way
he doesn’t yet know the name for

and all the while
her fingers place the notes
there
then,

closer,
as the waves flatten whitely
against the shore
white against black

to the brink of him
and beyond.

'listening to the earth as it curves
down and down to the waves �
tight-roping between the fields'

'the edge of the world'

published sort of stuff

I try to write - some things have been published but most haven't. Short stories and poems have so far appeared in: QWF, Decanto and Gold Dust Magazines. I have also been long listed for the Bridport International Poetry Competition 2005,the Cinnamon Press First Collection Award, 2005 and Cadenza Short Story Competition. Two of my poems have been reviewed for the Guardian Poetry Workshop and are published on the Guardian's website. And that's the gen to date. More if and when...

Traces - a poem

Hauled from a blank-sided sleep
by the splash on your face
of an early spring morning –

and a bird you don’t recognise
sings in the tree in the applelight –
each note playing across
your drink-roughened thoughts like

a breath

recollected.

I slide around the edges of this moment –
glide along the margins of your life,
disturbing the planes of your senses –
a sudden taste familiar
as my mouth stops yours

my scent decorates the air
gratefully tracing a route –
your way of escape –
if you could only decipher it.

I’ll wait, though, till you do
and cradle the weight of your grief
in my hands;

ease between this skin of death
and dark. Insinuate a way
through to your dreams –
mark the way more clearly.

the end of it - poem

You’re insistent
and remain so,
as the wet suds of beer slide
down the sides of the glass

and, lingering like a thought
above our heads,
someone else’s cigarette smoke

hangs

till I can taste
the black-tar lining of their lungs.

I know, you say, but it’s
for the best –
and I can’t disagree.
I never do.

Which is why we’re here
at the end of it –
a shared life pooling
at our feet

and the death
breath of other people
blossoming in our lungs.

there the lines cross - poem

There the lines cross and some form of horizon
balances,
but the distance ebbs and flows
as physics surely did not intend

this room swells and spins
with a blown-glass sharpness layered
over everything – focusing the detail
briefly as it whirls

will it ring if I strike it?
one crystal note of clarity?
or will it shatter into eye-reflecting fragments?

dazed on white Egyptian cotton –
or not – I can but wish –
as planes and virtues of what they say
reality is, meld with a flattened
one dimensional moment

some lag of time, in vision
from here to here – a dragging,
colours stretched in supple streaks
and objects now unleashed
from their moorings are free to exist
wherever they choose

the rules for everything
for words for thought for movement
have slipped a little
beyond the edge of memory
I can feel them pressing in
but can’t yet prize them out

leave them there then
furring up

nothing matters and neither do I
so I knock
with my thoughts upon the glass clear edge
and listen to it sing

He is Conflict - a poem

He is conflict,
confusion stings his mouth,
angry words bruise and graze his skin
just as, all those years ago, R’s fists
did on Brighton beach. Seagulls,
a brass band and Punch and Judy.
The ice cream burning as it carved
a slow, smooth path down his arm;
Because you’ve not licked it fast enough,
R said, though your mouth’s
big enough to stop a bus.

Not a fist, though.

Blood pink on the vanilla,
the distant summer of buckets and spades
where the days pinched him in
and he couldn’t help
flying those thoughts like a kite
streaming behind him

where they flap still,
slapping the face of anyone
who tries to get close,
slowing him
pulling him
dragging him
back to the time

where the lies are and sharp fingers
dig and scratch, and he no longer
remembers specifics of who is to blame

only the blood from his mouth,
salt against sweet,

the taste of his childhood
punched out,
red against white,
and the sun’s hard light on the sea
stings.

Confessions - a poem

Your lies mesh,
cat-cradled tongue caught up
and almost stilled

but wearied words,
nothinged with weight,
fall at our feet

to be kicked aside
or gathered into piles
as ammunition.

Ticks of time peel off
and crumble into bright white
flakes – marking our pathway

here.

The fast relay of tightening
pain that pulses in a heart beat
fills your thoughts,
and mine,

till all attempts
to block it out
are lost.

Your fingers grasping,
clutching,
the outward

over-riding effort
to reclaim
when sin calls out;

confessions barely noted,
mislaid, as through the walls
the voices leak
and footsteps echo,

cornered visions fragment
in the full-on glare of focus,
as if all knowledge could be
questioned in these few words.

The talismans,
stored and hoarded
later to be
dragged out – an evidence of deeds,
our crimes

whose surfaces vibrate -
ripples circle
circle out to missing edges,
shimmer in some presence yet to be

recorded.

These bitter tokens, strewn about,
are scuffed by pairs and pairs
of trampling feet whose
echo spreads – a widening stain
of sound
that aches.

Copper-mouthed
the hasty tang
tongues familiar teeth explored

a warmth, degrees unknown as yet
but measured,
understood and stored
a sigh within a sigh.

Bold frustrations
wrestled
knocked about – tied up

broken in with fantasies
remarked upon
pulse between us
sounded out and later mocked.

All paths
lead here;

we cannot turn away.

a blackbird singing - a poem

To my untutored traffic-tuned ear

silence swims in the trees and all sounds cease.

The ripe void wraps itself around me

and I stand listening, silent, as the stained air

unfolds, filling emptiness with a floating

melody. A blackbird’s melancholy

liquid notes pour falling like a luxury.

Its voice, a vibrant instrument of virtue,

spills simply into the soft summer evening,

offering its honesty as a gift.