If it was automatic writing it would go like this:

Christmas, vegi turkey, pine needles, Dylan Moran live, furious mild, parsnips, wine, annual snowball, killer Santa with the face of an angel, new slippers, pine needles, sprouts, glass of wine, wrapping paper that burns green and blue, Deal or No Deal DVD to take back, near riot for 10p Cauliflowers (do all these people know something I don't know, are the shops never opening again?), falling asleep, flicking through new cookbooks, forbidden foodstuffs, dream about a sex act I don't want to talk about, fridge too full, overspilling wardrobe, must have a sort out- too much shite all around in general, but at least it's covered in glitter, new Sharon Olds book- mustn't read it while I have to be happy all day, x-factor tickets ticking like a timebomb in my head- is she really going to make me hold an Eton Road banner?, will I gain seven pounds if I have another beer? pine needles, baubles falling when I walk past, -1 outside, can I free-cycle chocolate? that sinking feeling when it's over, and also thinking at least it's just once a year.

None of this would be too bad, except it's where I live now, about all I have to say till after new years day.

Keeping you posted

In amongst the Christmas cards was a letter from Ragged Raven Press to say I had come 2nd in their competition for poems over 40 lines, with my poem Glass Bottomed Boat. This was a nice surprise, since I had forgotten I'd entered. They also want to publish the Bodil poems, which made me pleased because it is a sequence I was pleased with, but knew would be hard to place due to its length.

There was an initial Elves and the Shoemaker feeling,when did I enter this? Did some Elves come and make me in the night? (Was this fairytale about acute schizophrenia or what? He went to bed, when he got up the shoes where done- he had been working all night, but when he did this he was a smaller man called Elf, and had no memory of it the next day.) Finally I remembered, then I got to thinking about the new work, and wondering if people will like it more because there is no trace of Middlesbrough in it anymore. Is class really that important still in poetry? Or is there another reason? I'm not sure.

Sleeping Man

For all you sleepless ladies - single (and the ones who don't want to be creepy by videotaping the actual bloke next to them snore) , here he is again.

Aaaawww.

Earl Grey with Keanu

I had the most beautiful dream, it is the nicest dream I have had since I saw Morrissey in a cafe and he was drinking coffee- and he turned and asked 'See anything you're interested in?'(he had the most immaculate hands, spread out on his cup and a wry smile as he turned to me.) The Morrissey dream I understand, it is inevitable I will dream of him, and disappointing I won't more often.

But this dream was about Keanu Reeves. What you should know about my relationship with Keanu is that I don't have one. I don't think about him, I don't have an opinion on him really, I don't know much about him. I've seen The Matrix, and a couple of his films years ago, but he has never been on a poster on my wall. In the dream there was bad weather and I was walking on a beach, I got lost abit, and bumped into him and he was just there, asking me to hide out from the rain. His house was on the beach, wooden and white, inside was clean, minimal, no frills, no fuss, but right. I sat in his house and Keanu boiled the kettle, and came back from the kitchen with a cup of tea and a plate of toast for me, handed them over, and said nothing as he watched me eat. This was the best toast I've never had in my life, thick cut, the right amount of butter, plain and nice. I ate the toast. Me and Keanu sat there sipping our tea. There was a vibe, things kept happening small things, eye contact, an eyebrow moving, a hand brushing by my arm- but that was it. I finally turned to him and said, 'so am i going to sleep with you or what?' Keanu smiled, walked away. He said,' There's plenty of time'.



So I woke up, having not slept in my dream with Keanu Reeves, and not understanding why he was in my dream. He withheld what I'd wanted, but it wasn't impossible, was going to happen, but not now. He'd fed me toast, and this made me happy. (It's easier to not have sex when there's been toast.)

So now I wonder what Keanu means, since he isn't a man I think of really. In my dream he knew when to be quiet., and that was nice.He'd given me the best toast I never had. The next day I wondered if this had something to do with writing and life, something in me saying I will get there in the end. I didn't know, I got up and made a full English (incase I was literally starving to death.) I boiled the kettle again and again, stared into the cup to see my face, and drank tea until it was coming out of my ears.

Christmas Card

Merry Christmas to everyone out there who reads this blog.
Hope your winter is filled with poetry.
Thank you for being my virtual friends
and letting me be virtually me,

Lotsa/ Lots of (for the text spell intolerant)
love

Angel/ a

x

Hark the herald Angels

A friend recently said she missed my blog, and I thought that was strange- as I thought it wasn't too long since I was here- now I am, and see almost a month I'm quite surprised. Winter does this to me, the month before Christmas will always go really fast, because there will be so many things to do. I think this happens to everyone. Come Christmas day we are ready to pass out with sheer exhaustion. What have I been doing? Where has it gone?

Workwise I've been thinking about the collection, and still don't have a title. Options so far:

My Pornographic Life

(I liked this one, but the press didn't, and thinking about it now I have eliminated most poems about me now- for a different project at a later date I think, needing more work again- so this got scrapped.)

Life of a Porn-star

Fistful of Blondes (this is the latest one, I've been thinking about this week.) Actually I'm gutted that Courtney Love called her book Dirty Blonde, since it would suit mine so well.

I'm still undecided. Any suggestions for the title for a book about women, Hollywood, pin-ups, Marilyn and porn?

I wrote about four poems about Finland, and I've been writing some prose letter poemy things too, for the porn section. They don't look like poems, and they are different in a way, but they seem to add something. I have another poem brewing , which I haven't had time to sit and work on that much. Also, I've done some work on something unrelated to the collection, which are some poems I wrote in response to some photographs by Robin Cowings. I hadn't looked at these poems for a longtime, and spent some time completely gutting them, and re-writing to the max. They are weird poems, mostly little stories, and a change from what I'm writing now , but I can't remember how I got from the photo to the poem in a lot of cases- wish I'd taken some notes about the process I had at the time. But why would I? It never occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to remember how I did it, or that I'd care.

Lifewise, it's been busy and practical. I've been putting on the overalls that say Geoff on the front and turning into him to sand walls and fill holes in them, so the hall can be papered after Christmas. It's a thankless task, one of those that takes ages, and then no one can see what you did in the end because it will be papered over. If you've done a good job it won't be visible, I suppose like devices in a poem. When I haven't been turning into Geoff I discovered a new way to unwind, I sit at night and cut cloth or sew some squares together. To be honest I have no craft skills whatsoever, but I have delusions of creativity- have ideas,and hoard fabric I like, or scraps of stuff and have done for years- of course I never use them, as I have no time or skills. So even while I'm doing it I'm thinking- another hair-brained scheme that will never be finished, but there is a simple pleasure to cutting squares and arranging them next to each other. I'm hoping this will be a quilt one day, though they are huge squares and nothing fancy, but I'll settle for a tablecloth when I get sick of it and it has sat waiting to be gone back to for 3 years. Come to think of it, maybe napkins have more chance of completion.

In amongst this is odd bits of Christmas shopping- I like buying presents for people, but there are some people who are so difficult it is terrible. Thinking about it the people who are hard are always people who buy themselves so much stuff on the net that anything you could get is a waste of time, and people who have more money than you. (If you are a writer most people fall into this bracket, so it's quite hard. In an ideal world I'd make presents for everyone, but there's those delusions of crafts woman again- spend all year making things that people open and say 'what the fuck is this?') Another type of person it is hard to buy for are people who don't know you that well. We all have people like this, relatives or people's husband's, and it's a nightmare. What do you buy a 50 odd year old man who doesn't like to read, doesn't watch movies, doesn't listen to music, and doesn't have any hobbies? And what do you buy the parents of your love interest? Why isn't it OK to just say to be honest I don't know you that well, you don't know me, let's scrap it? Or just say, you are such a consumer you have everything you need, here's a tin of spam- it's the only thing I could think of you'd never buy.

All this being said, mostly presents are fun to buy. There are just those odd ones that keep you trawling the net for hours @ whattobuyrich/boringbastards.com. The end result is always a compromise of something you didn't want to buy, and something they didn't really want. Sursprisingly, another person I've had trouble buying for this year is the live-in man. He is very anti-consumerist, and anything i could think of DVD or CD-wise he has, or isn't bothered coz he will watch it on the net or hire it. In terms of clothes, I am against it. When women buy clothes for men it always clothes they would like to see a man in, not clothes the man himself actually wants to wear (this might be changing I think, the new generation seems to have produced metrosexual men who look like they use product on their hair, and aren't afraid to wear pink.) (My generation of men are different, they played with eyeliner in the early 90's, and cut up fishnet tights to wear as shirts, and settled into sweatshirts and jeans when they got their first job and never left them since.) I asked him in the end what he wanted, he gave me a list (I like lists.)

1. Kangaroo Poo combats
(These were some trousers he used to have in the early 90's, and wore till they fell to bits. He wants the exact same pair again, same style, make and colour- which of course no longer are being made, and even ebay doesn't have, since the men who had these trousers wore them untill they became rags to wipe their paintbrushes on.)

2. DIY clothes with lots of pockets
(This has been a quest, every set I have pointed out the response has been the same 'Not enough pockets')

3. Socks like the ones I bought in Keswick

4. A Welding Set
(I hate this one, as I'd like to buy him this to play with- but I am loathe to admit the sad fact that I'm not thick, honest, I'm a girl and haven't got a clue when it comes to buying one. When I look at them on the net there are so many different specs and attachments on some and not on others I have no idea and have to leave the site immediately and look at something with bright colours instead.)

5. You can get me a shirt, if it's like my favourite one.
(circa 2000, never seen one like it again- and why would he need two?)

All clothing has to be black. All clothing has to be black, but not goth. All clothing has to be made of fabric that isn't shiny or scratchy or funny textured. If there is any make or logo or the item it is unacceptable. That's it , that was his list. Not quite sure what I can do with that. I think I'll get my revenge for this difficult to sort list by hiring him a stripper and having it turn up at his work. If he moans about it all men will say- you have a girlfriend who hires you a stripper- and you don't like it? What's wrong with you? It's a win win situation. Next year he'll ask for a nice pair of slippers and a board game and have done with it.

D'oh!

I'm in that odd state still, where you have just got back from another country and still feel a little like a visitor in your own life. You compare everything to where you have been, miss the salad bar, the tea, and everything seems to ba made of plastic again. There just seems to be so little wood, and everything seems a little grubby and ordinary. Last night I was sorry to miss a gig in Liverpool, because I did myself an injury. The official story is that I slid on the ice in Finland and my hands have been swollen and painful, gradually getting moreso ever since. This seems alot less Mr Bump and clumsy than the truth, it also sounds more beleiveable. The truth is the morning after I returned from Finland I heard the postman knock at the door. It was dark, and I was wearing slippers 3 sizes too big for me, I ran to the window to gesture to him to hang on a sec while I found the keys, and on the way there tripped over the furniture I had forgetten I had rearranged. Banged my chin on a stool, twisted weirdly, and felt like my hands were lobsters ever since. The parcel was infact for next door.

So yesterday I had that sick child in the summer hols feeling, kept thinking of all the things I was missing due to my foolish hands. I kept thinking about Jo Colley and Kate Fox who had gone to Liverpool, and even though I decided they would probably enjoy the gig better without me (had more time to read more of their own poems), I was sorry to not be there and find out if some people in Liverpool might like my work. I started to worry a little about seeming unprofessional, and also that these two poets who had previously been my colleagues but also friends might talk about me and decide negative things. ( Always seemed like that at school, you'd have a day off sick and when you got back your friends had decided they didn't like you afterall and were off giggling in corners someplace together.) Given I had to stay home, I then started to think about the Tom kelly and Kevin Cadwallender gig and was sorry to be to miss that too. All these stupid thoughts from sheer clumsiness. My hands are a bit better today, but they still aren't right.

Actually I don't like to look at my hands. They are big and ugly. They are not nice birdlike creatures that can flutter into any formation at a compliment or a smile. They are hands that do not have tapered fingers that can play piano or reach for a small scone. They will never twiddle with a pearl necklace. They are more like mans hands, big, fat, hands that lug stuff and scrub. There is a scar off a swiss arm knife that disobeyed when i was trying to open a bottle of wine 10 years ago, and a scar that matches on the corresponding finger opposite that happened when I was cutting a slice of bread. On the backs of my hands are scars from playing chicken at school. I never lost, but the scars wish I had. Inside my finger there is red sore patch from a blister made holding a paint scraper.

My hands don't get alot of my attention, except now they aren't themselves, when I am forced to look at them, and ask do they look right? Is that bit swollen? I can't take my eyes off them, and am suddenly grateful that even ugly hands are so essential. What they do makes them seem less offensive, but I have to take to take it easy on them until they feel like my hands again. So less of this typing- any ideas of things you can do without using your hands?

shades of blue

I could hardly keep my eyes open, but the snow wouldn't let them close. while a young woman with a bag made on an anvil watched Cinderella on her lap, a man answered a mobile with a ringtone he thought defined his personality, the snow kept on snowing, and the day showed itself to me.

Postcard from Finland

Finally Finland. A trip that was talked about for a year, and now I am here. All those trips to shops in quest for thermals have paid off.Actual snow. The sort of snow that seems like the snow you only saw once or twice as a child, but this time I can actually bend my arms. All day I want to bend down and touch snow, lay my palm in it, to check I am still there. The snow doesn't really melt when I touch it, but it crunches a little, acknowledges my presence in the smallest way. Trees stretch themselves across the ground in shadows, maybe they feel the same, all that snow has made them feel small. I am staying in a little wooden house, today chopped a tree. The girl we were supposed to meet is unwell and in hospital, and I can feel myself worrying, wondering if she is Ok, if us poets arriving are the cause of alot of stress. Hope we can meet someday. I hope we aren't a burden to her husband who must be worried about his wife, but he makes us at home. I am staying in her house, looking around at frills she made for the curtains and trying to feel her here. Little Gingham ruffles, red handles on the drawers, a smiley homemade birthday card covered in wallpaper and opening into a photo of her smiling and holding the cat like a baby in her arms. The girl that made the card lies in a little white bed, and we cannot make her smile. I was unexpectedly made to remember all those times I have been unwell, unhappy, unable to do things, and Im not sure I want to. A face of mine I can only see in a Finnish lake,because it has to be hidden. I do not try on the missing poets black glittery jacket I notice, but i do touch the hem.

But many of the things that could have gone wrong sofar have been Ok (touch wood, I am still here.) It is always a worry, because you are arranging to meet people you don't know too well, and are never sure what they think really of these odd English poets, but the Finns have been very good hosts. We didn't get lost finding the hostel. Kalle Ninnikangas unexpectedly came to meet us, and was a wonderful host showing us roundTampere. We have been made welcome in a little wooden house, and been initiated into the love of logs. (They break up the day, you chop them, splinter, carry them from place to place, stoke the fire, make more logs.)

Things seem more cruel here, necessary to survive, and I wonder if I'd been Finnish if I would be more sturdy, all weathers, that comments people make and don't make would fall to the ground all around. Instead I am an Englishman in Finland. It is beautiful here. I am trying to stay on the diet, and finding it hard because I don't speak the language. But I can't worry about that when I am here too much, it is all business, getting from place to place, squeezing things in a case, being polite, trying not to slip on the ice.

Attack of the Invisible Woman

Crazy week, so much poetry going on there hasn't been much time for real life. There have been so many events on that I couldn't go to many of the ones I wanted to (like the Russian poets readings) because I was doing gigs on the same nights in other parts of the region. Likewise, I wanted to go and see Sean O'Brien's piece on Friday night, but had ran out of money from being out everynight, and had to spend some time at home before they changed the locks and failed to recognise me. Highlights of the week:

1) Sharon Olds reading at Durham on Monday night

This was too exciting and scary for me. Sharon Olds is one of my favourite poets in the world. Her work makes me miserable and hopeful at the same time, the light shines through the poems. Her work always makes me feel something, and this is a quality I like to find in a poem . I wanted to go to this event, and was surprised when Olds read. The poems were amazing, read in a no frills, almost conversational way, that made them very accessible. It felt strange to hear these poems that feel so personal probably to everyone who hears them in front of 200 people. I was surprised by the night, possibly because I had an image in my head of Sharon Olds as a giant of some kind. Her poems are big, strong, powerful, sensual, and I expected to see a woman who looked as if she might start wrestling at any minute. But the woman reading the poems seemed nice, small, even vulnerable. There were lots of things I wanted to know- how do her loved ones react to the work they are so often in? But of course, she was Sharon Olds and I was just Angela Readman, so I couldn't ask her. All I could do was join a queue and get my book signed.

A great night though, one of the best I have ever attended. Colette Bryce and Anna Woodford also read really strong work (I'd never seen Bryce read before, and was impressed by her likeable and laid back style, her humour and the poems themselves.) I was glad this was an event of all women poets. The quality and spirit of the work was so strong I wondered about that event in Liverpool who never have women poets on. I wondered how many other women we just never hear about are writing great work that just never gets out there. Part of me was glad I was a woman writing poems, part of heard the quality this night and thought what's the point? Sharon Olds read her new poems about her mother, so brilliant, so moving, and I went nooooo, because i have been writing loads of mother poems, and it seems there is nothing i can do with them now but put them in the bin. While I was there I bought Anna Woodford's pamphlet The Higgins' Honeymoon (this has been the Holy grail of pamphlets, as I've been wanting it for years and have never actually seen it for sale); I really enjoyed the poems. I was surprised at the sass and sexiness of the poems, because I have seen her read many times and her work is always very precise and powerful, but I've never seen her read sexy poems, and I was interested in talking to her and asking why this might be (but again she was Anna Woodford, and I was just that poor Northern lass who tries to write poems. I'll get my coat...)

2. Liz Lochhead workshop

I was really sad that I couldn't stay and see Liz Lochhead read at the Lit and Phil, but Hartlepool beckoned where I had to read with the Finns and co. But I did go to the workshop in the afternoon. I used to be able to produce poems in workshops, but I now only really end up with some images that I might use at a later date and have to go away and let stew. The exercise was an abstract noun one, were you give it tactile qualities. What I ended up was no more than a list of these, with no inbetween statements whatsoever. But I could feel my little list go down like a sack of shite, other workshop participants having nothing to say about it, not liking what they heard. One person particularly disliked it, said it sounded like some sort of sexual abuse. The truth was it was only a list of images about innocense. One of them was a hand on the back of a child's freshly washed hair, and I thought it was sad that we live in a day and age that to even mention this we jump to sex or abuse. I was aware of people feeling uneasy about me and the lines. I felt nervous reading it out, because I am always nervous reading new work, or reading anything when I feel people aren't on my side. I didn't actually finish reading the list, left off the last two lines because I could already feel people thinking I was the creepy scary one in the group, so I just gave up.For the next exercise I played it safe and just made something up, I wrote about my dad peeling oranges for me. People seemed alot happier with the lie, even though the first one was alot stronger and has more potential. The truth is I don't know my Dad well enough to even know if he has ever eaten an orange.

My favourite thing was that this was ran by Liz Lochhead. I love her work, but she is such a natural and warm seeming person that she makes everybody feel relaxed. I met her 7 years ago at an Arvon course, and she was so lovely in encouraging me to keep writing at the time when too many people being horible about me on the MA had kicked the crap out of me. I don't think I'd still have been writing if she hadn't been so encouraging. It made my day that she remembered me after so long, and seemed really pleased I was still writing and still alive.

3. Finnish Poetry

The Finns were here this week. The highlight of this was meeting Riina Katajavuori and being introduced to her work. She came here to launch her and Andy Willoughby's new pamphlet Peripehries. Her work is strong, imagistic, clear, and ranges from stark reality to the mythic ,which is full of emotional truths.

'The crone doesn't get fat, as children aren't fattening. I'm all skin and bones, baby flesh makes me ecstatic.'

(The Baba-Yaga- Riina Katajavouri- Peripheries)

It is quite hard for me to comment on other aspects of the Finn readings, since I have been part of them. As usual Bob Beagrie, Andy Willoughby and Kalle Niinikangas read with vigour, conviction and bollocks. The music accompanying the poets was fitting and innovative and the poets were professional and well polished, and I wondered why there are so many people who never seem interested in seeing these poets and their inspirational readings. This week there were so many things on that I wasn't surprised at the poor turn-out , but I remembered times when there hasn't been lots on and people still haven't come. (Saying that, the Boro gig was packed.)

The pamphlet is great, the readings and musicians are excellent, but from a personal point of view these weren't good gigs for me. Nice to chat to friends or colleagues, nice to see the other performances, but for me it was the reading equivalent of being at a party and knowing no one would notice if you left. These big performances make me very aware of being quiet, being a girl, not being likeable or charismatic to an audience, and not having an entourage of locals to cheer me on and root for me. Gig wise this has just been a very bad year for me, launching the new pamphlet to like six people every time in February started off this feeling of wondering what am I doing wrong? I know you can't take an audience personally, but what occurred to me is I have been in Newcastle for 13 years, writing for 8 or 9 of them. Going to groups, giving feedback, trying to be encouraging. I'm feeling disappointed, pessimistic, and am in need of some sort of affirmation about my work I think, but aren't sure how to get any, or if the work earns it.

I recently heard from someone I hadn't met, who said when they mentioned me to someone she said my work was interesting. Not good, not that they liked it, interesting. I am starting to wonder if that's what people say about me, that the work is interesting. They don't like it or think it is good, so that's what they say. I thought my new work was good, improved, a while ago, and invisible gigs or one odd comment are making me have that feeling of doubt that feels like certainty. I can feel myself losing faith in a poem as I am reading it,the same way I trail off a sentence and don't finish with friends who I know aren't really listenning and are just planning the next thing they want to say. How can I make this change and make my work into something people want to read and say is good?

(When I think of the word interesting I remember a lad I once knew. We met up and went for coffee when I was 18. I liked him, he made me a bit nervous, made me have those stupid thoughts that I might bump into him at anytime and I would walk down the street planning what I might say if I did. It's odd how when you are young you do that, you waste hours liking people, imagining them and replaying interactions. Everyday you don't bump into them is a disappointment. While we drank coffee he asked point blank what I thought of him. This is an unusual question, you can know people for years and they'll never ask what you think of them (which is often a good thing, and sometimes a sad thing, because if they asked it might make both of you smile). I was taken aback. I panicked. I turned round and said 'I think you are really interesting.' He sounded like a specimen under observation. A month later he died.) Someone saying something is interesting might not sound like a bad thing, but I think it is loaded with things you are not saying. The sort of word you use when you saw a film you didn't really get into but recognised was trying to do something.
I have to cheer up, try and not to think about being invisible, but just when I think I've nailed it I see my hand be wrapped up by a page.

Slimming world

So I've gone and done it, I've joined slimming world.(Seems the world is getting bigger, not smaller, but...) I blame my mate Luan, who came down to stay with me. She looks great, she's lost a lot of weight, and is more confident and happy,but she was like an evangelist about owing it all to slimming world. I wasn't going to mention here that I'd joined, I thought I'd leave this to the other Angela, the one who cooks soups and grouts tile you won't want to hear about. But when I got there I was bugged by recognising a face in the group, and it was a lady who goes to the blue room. She recognised me too, so I reckoned since I can't keep the worlds sepearte these days I'd just confess.

What can I say about slimming world? It goes like this.

1. You get weighed (no one shouts out your weight, or speaks it)
2. They tell you how much you've lost or gained.
3.You all sit there in a horseshoe shape circle
4. The consultant will go round the group one at a time, say how much you lost or gained and you can say something.

There are little stickers and certificate merit systems and you will get these stickers when you have done something good, like lost half a stone, or been slimmer of the week. Would be nice if more in life was like that. Last week they had a food tasting, people brought in food they had made that was good for you, or that technically you can eat unlimited amounts of, and you could try things you have never had and ask the recipe. All this is good. The diet itself means you don't have to go hungry, as there are plenty of foods you can eat whenever you like. There's no calorie counting or weighing and measuring, and many of the foods aren't too difficult to fit into your ordinary life.

But I still find it is a very strange place. The tone in the group reminds me of an Avon lady seminar. Most of the members are women (express no surprise, men get to look distinguished and women get to 'let themselves go', right?) I felt a bit like like I was on planet tupperware, and had forgot my handbag and passport smile. Wish I could get used to normal things like seeming pleasant, exchanging pleasantries. Something switches off and I end up sitting there thinking I am not the right type, again. Maybe if I keep going it will be good practice, and more people will like me. I will practice, when someone says 'how are you?' to only say 'fine thankyou, and yourself?', and keep the 'they're all bastards, they are all trying to get me' at bay.

To be honest I'm going in order to stay sensible. Everytime I've lost weight in the past I've done it by not eating very healthily, silly diets of nothing but bran flakes or Farley's rusks. Eventually the diet controlled me, food just looked like the califoric numbers it contained. I've been to the other extreme of never going on scales because I gave up, and being miserable everytime I have to clothes shop. People don't help when you feel like this, 'friends' put you down with casual comments. (My favourite one was 'we watched an old video the other day, you used to be really pretty'- shouldn't I have just said thanks alot you cheeky cow or what? Instead I did that hunched thing with my shoulders of being about to turn inside out.) Another 'friend' of mine and I were discussing photo's, cheekbones came into the conversation and she said 'Oh, I've never noticed you having any cheekbones.' Now you can say it in a voice like Mary Poppins all you like pet, but isn't that a bit mean?



What I'm wondering, is how many people have 'friends' like this, who can be really lacking tact, insensitive, or just plain bitchy? And why do we put up with it? I really want to think it isn't inherent in female friendships. I don't think it has to be, I have 3 friends who are never like that, and are very encouraging and supportive. But why is this so often not the case? I'd like to go ahh, and blame it on relationships we have with our mother's when we were younger that has set up a template, but I know the mother of one of these quite well and she is lovely, and know people with bad mother's who never act that way. Why do we have friends? It's sounds like such an obvious question, but why people bother with people is something we don't ask, we just do, get on with it. Are everyone's reasons for the friends in their lives different?

Friends should

1. Be fun to be with.
This sounds like a given, but isn't always the case. I think friends need to make the effort to have fun together sometimes.

(An example of this is that at one point I was the only babysitter a friend had in line. I didn't mind, but the problem of course was whenever fun or nice things were done like going out I'd never be able to attend. I didn't mind the babysitting, but was starting to feel like only the babysitter rather than a friend, since we never did anything fun together.)

2. Friends should be supportive of eachother, always. No sometimes is in this. This is the golden rule. You should be able to say anything to a friend, and know that they will be on your side, be routing for you (even if they they would have done something differently.) You should both have an understanding about keeping things in confidence too.

3. Friends have many functions, the sharing of interests sometimes,the exchange of idea's, or someone to confide in. Ultimately friends affirm who we think we are. We make up who we are, how we think about ourselves by the reactions of others, which is why I have to ask why we would ever have friends who make us feel bad about ourselves?

All this seems so obvious, but I've had to think about this sometimes when 'friends' have plain made me feel bad. I've had to remind myself that friends are different to other relationships. That old addage you chose your friends is true (we might have to put up with things from siblings or parents , but we have less choice about that.) Shouldn't friends be your R&R? So what I ask is, what have I done? have I behaved in ways that would make someone chose me as a friend? Have they?


I had a strange dream that I was escaping from a prison, other people tried too, but I was very brave, I pulled myself up onto the roof, lay flat and shuffled along on my belly to get out. The guards didn't see me, they had guns. I almost didn't care anyway, I had to get out, had to try. I have no idea what this dream was about, it sounds like a negative dream, but was quite elating. Just had to try, get out and be damned. I think this dream had something to do with my work actually, or I suppose could be a dream about slimming world. I have continued with the sorting of things, finding things that must go, and found 2 black bin bags of clothes to give to the charity shop, 2 carriers to give to people I know, and some for the bin. I was amazed at the amount of clothes in the bottom of the wardrobe still in carrier bags, things I'd bought over the years and had never yet had the guts to wear. Ended up with just one curver box of clothes I like and would like to wear, but not sure I will, to keep in a holding cell for a year, then they must go. Got rid of a sofa too, sorted through all the books, and got rid of some of them, and CD's. I know some people who never get rid of a book, but eventually they take over. I never get rid of a poetry book, but some of the others (even good ones) had to go. Some I might read again, but isn't that what libraries are for? (Gill made a comment that in autumn there is a shedding to prevent things going foisty, and it was spot on.) I hate the idea of so many things taking up precious space, building walls round me, and me like a hamster sleepy in the middle of it all, chewing my way out.

Progress has been made on the sorting of poems. Been re-working Bettie Page poems, and ended up writing a new one and re-ordering the sequence. A friend told me it was a complex poem to read, so I made it a little easier by actually giving sections titles. I think I didn't want to tell anyone what to think, or give any pre-conceived notions or my opinion by giving the poems titles, so in the end I gave the titles as the age of the protagonist as a compromise between my intention and accessibility. It seems to be working much better now. On Saturday I went to the Sean O'Brien workshop. I am a bit scared of him, because he is such a proper poet and an academic. There is something about him, actually not him (he always seems pleasant and even maybe a bit shy) but his status, that makes me feel very silly and insignificant. So I was nervous about the whole thing, but I was surprised at how perceptive his comments were (I think because I assume men, especially clever men, aren't going to find anything in my work). Sad consensus in the group that the last four lines of the poem had to go, I didn't tell anyone, but these were my favourite lines, the lines that had started the whole poem. Nonetheless have spent time since working on the poem and given them the chop. I don't feel so much that I am murdering my babies, more like sending them out into foster care for a while, if they are good enough in a few years they may well come back.

On the work front, also had a magazine acceptance. This was a great surprise, since I had forgotten sending work to them, and the rejections were all caught up on I thought.They are going to publish 2 of the Marilyn poems in an issue that comes out early 2007, and particularly liked one that is my own personal favourite (that I thought might be a little difficult for a reader to get into.) I have stopped sending things out at the moment, but it might be time to get back on the horse.

Autumn

I'm loving the autumn, keep turning around as if I can feel the year snapping at my heels taking leaf shaped bites. Is it October already? The Christmas cards have already been in the shops for a month so it must be. Where has everything gone? I'm deep into organisational mode, organising the collection, sorting through my posessions and making charity shop, recycling, and bin piles. I took a screwdriver to the futon and made it into sticks, felt as if I was singlehandedly taking down Ikea one latt at a time. I don't know why I kept that futon so long, years of hoovering round it, rearranging my office with it in, yet no one had so much as sat on it for years. I'm amazed at the amount of things we have that we look at and never really see. Everything must go. The things, and the ghosts of people I've held onto the memory of, including myself. And it feels great, looking round each room with an eye on what do I actually like, what do I need? Amazing how much stuff we have that we don't care that much about, keep it because we acquired it, or paid £20 for it years ago, so are you going to let the memory of that long gone £20 force you to keep you imprisoned by rooms so full that they can't be enjoyed? It's amazing how we hoard, as if for a rainy day, as if those scratched and scuffed Tupperware boxes will save us from something some day. I'll think I'm done chucking things when a pocket of the house presents itself, and I have to start over again. At the moment clothes can't go though, that's a bigger job, and something I have to do when I know what size I am, and can, more to the point, actually see myself as it.

I'm deeply in a solitary phase, a leave me alone, while I plod through all these poems some more. Last week I spent 4 days on one poem, editing it, changing the line breaks. It had been a shape poem on a piece of A4 very nicely, till I remembered books are A5 and I had to spend every day playing around with it to make it fit. I tried editing it . I scrapped lines. But there were lines I had to add. I saved over a dozen versions. I still wasn't happy. I'm cross that I still wasn't able to keep the original shape on A5, so there's even more to do. This is when the autism kicked in and wouldn't leave. After days like that it feels good to pull a box of something out from somewhere and throw it away. This week I aim to get rid of a sofa, after I sort that poem I'll need the satisfaction of seeing something big go.

I've been thinking about people I know, and people I haven't seen in years, and will never speak to again. It's sad to me, all the people we shed and have to be shed by on the journey of becoming whatever we become. People who loved us, and then wonder what they ever saw there, make us wonder if we will ever be equals, good enough. I remembered an ex boyfriend, and how it all ended when he asked me to return 52p I had loaned for busfare. I think it was the last time I lost my temper, I virtually threw it at him. I'd spent four days cleaning and painting his flat for him, since he was busy at work and never liked to get his hands dirty, and at some point in that time had borrowed 52p busfare into town so that I could get to a cash machine. A few days passed, he didn't ask for the cash back, I spent the money on food for both of us, a bottle of wine, that sort of thing. Then he asked me one day, have you got that 52p? I hadn't minded helping with the painting, you help friends right? That's what we do, then I realised maybe it isn't what we do, but only what I was doing. That was the last time I thought a certain way about him, some box I didn't want to look in had been opened. 4 years, that's how it ended, with a stack of copper, like rain that can be piled up. It's that easy -how your perspective can change, how you see someone, how our hearts and heads move on, and we are filled with disappointment. Easy as 52p.

Sleepy Day

Couldn't sleep last night, got so sick of it I ended up putting on TV and watching lots of Six Feet Under. Every time I watch it my favourite character changes, according to what mood I am in. At first Ruth was my favourite, for having spent her life trying, doing for her family who she doesn't know how to be herself with, and never giving up on new things and lovers even now. I love her for trying. But last night it was Clare, and David's relationship with Keith that I couldn't take my eyes off.

Today I am seeing everything in that hazy almost flurecent lit sleep deprived state, but on looking at my poems was amazed to find lines I felt was in one of them that isn't. I wrote some more lines, that I hope will help the poem that I know has something wrong with it. The poroblem with it is it is a poem where I have tried to create alot of stillness, silence, and there is probably more unsaid stuff in there than said stuff. The problem with this is knowing when you have put enought things in to convey the unsaid things, and when you just haven't put them in at all, or have said too much. This poem probably didn't give you enough to go on, hoping it does now, have submitted it for feedback so I'll find out in a few weeks.

Now I'm thinking about greeting cards. What the hell do you write in them? Am I the only one who hates writing in the damn things? I think I hate it for lots of reasons

1) The writer thing makes there a huge pressure to write something better than just Happy Birthday, Angela
2) The split between writer and person someone just knows as a friend, daughter, whatever, is there. So although the writer wants to write something writery, this person knows you as just my fat mate, the babysitter, so and so's girlfriend, so there is a huge question about who you are going to be
3) Who is the audience here? Cards are addressed to someone, but since they will be out on their mantelpiece they are in the public domain. What do I wanna write to this person that I am happy with an audience seeing, possibly including old ladies, children and spouses?
4) If you've been writing a birthday card to the same person for 20 years chances are there are no new things to say.

Funny, I like buying cards, looking at the pictures, but hate the other bit. Maybe I should start a new tradition of sending empty cards, help the recycling thing while I'm at it.

What do I write on this card for someone for their 40th birthday?

Congratulations! 40- Only 25 years left till you can retire.
40- All the best, Just 8 years left till the kids leave home and can you do some things just for you.
Your tits aint sagging yet, well done.

What do I say? I ask myself why is it always the women who have to get the presents , do the wrapping and write in the cards? Think I'll stick to just saying Happy Birthday, have a nice day.
40- 6 houses

ne ne ner

There's someone I know reading my blog (most people I know don't bother, which probably aint a bad thing), who only reads it to see if they are mentioned. She'll talk to me and say, "Oh you still haven't posted about when we went to so and so..." (see still not mentioning it)"it's going to be too late soon you know." Makes me think about what makes it to blog and what doesn't. There's a whole other me some other place no doubt blogging lists of what I had to eat, and what so and so said to me, and how much the man undercharged me by at the grocers. Good thing about blogs is you can say things you may be thinking but never say to people, because, well, they never ask. I can't tell if people even ask how how people are less often, or if we've all become so programmed into saying 'fine thankyou' we don't notice it even anymore.

Today I'm feeling great, that first day of energy after a cold, were there are lots of things to do, and moreso you want to do them. One thing I've been doing is sorting out what to tell the arts people. If you've been in the position you'll know, no matter how hard you worked or what you produced this is slightly daunting, and gives you a feeling like when you've spent your mam's change from buying the Gazette. I think the reason it feels this way is partly because arts organisations are a world of forms and doing things officially, even if you try being an artists isn't like that, things develop, evolve, spark off and you can never plan exactly what you'll write- or why would you write at all? Also, because arts organisations don't ask to see any work you have produced it feels as if they might not think you actually did any (or at least that's what I worry about.) You are never sure if you got it right.

I've been very lucky that when I've had time writing I am able to to write during the week, and can have weekends to get on with other things that need to be done to keep writing time seperate. I still have poetry flashbacks though, will be doing something very different and will remember a line from one of my poems. Yesterday I thought of a poem I wrote over a year ago, and finally had the idea that there was something wrong with a line, and what to replace the words with (grooming replaced with 'groomed by.' Sounds so simple, why did it take me so long, and why did it come to me then? I was stripping a chair, the most relaxing and practical thing I've done in a longtime. Just the chair and me in the cold garage, scraper in hand and that line replaying in my head. When I knock off at the end of each day I'll be polishing that chair for the rest of the week. Working towards a feeling you don't often get as a writer of something being finished, complete.

So another entry were I didn't mention the lady who keeps looking to see if she was mentioned. I didn't mention her houses, collection of bowls, her vintage dresses or when we went out (except I'm mentioning her by not mentioning her.) In the way I see fit, ne ne ner! (how do you spell that!?)

Should be asleep

Can feel the street undulating with sleep, and I should be there. Instead I'm lying in bed going: why am I addicted to the X-factor already, when I know better? Will I get a publisher sorted for the next collection? Will it all be OK? Why are absolutely no relationships in life reciprocal or equal really? How come people say dirty old men but hardly ever dirty old women? And am I one of them? You lie there in bed and think all these things. I remember the film of David Beckham sleeping and think they should sell the DVD of it for sad middle aged women like me to play and fall asleep with. Maybe it would help, or maybe I'd end up watching that video feeling envious- look at the sleep on that, jammy bastard. So I lie there in bed: I think about my dream last night of wilderbeast being washed up by the sea with old beer carts attached, and wonder what it means, and think how come they don't say dirty old women much? I then think maybe I am one, because when I think of real good looking men they are all young. The men my age are..? I dunno, I just don't know any, they disappeared into their wives purses. Actually, the truth isn't that they are young, it is that I haven't thought about anyone like that for so many years they are now young, because it is the memory of who was there that is attractive. What I'm thinking about is this particular guy, my friend and I both loved him, he looked like some sort of pixie man, and never said anything that would shatter the illusion of his perfection (wise, that we only actually met him once.) I have no idea what he actually looks like these days, part of me doesn't want to know- because what then? I think about him though, not obsessing, but times when I can't sleep I'll wonder does it make me a dirty old lady to still fancy a guy who was 21 when my friend and I were into him? I haven't seen him since to like the updated version. We were hooked, we carried around photo's of us with him so that when prying relatives asked if we were courting we could say yes, and whip out the picture as evidence. It always kept people off our backs. Seems he is still fulfilling the same function really. The man who looks so right you can just picture a face to close your eyes to, to welcome you home. (It used to be Morrissey until I loved him so much even such mild thoughts seemed sacreligious.)

It's then I want to go to sleep. Before the questions stampede: if I want to lose 2 stone how many weeks will it take?, And will it even make a difference? Will I ever get to America?, What would make me laugh right now? Could anything wow me?,And if I bumped into that particular guy who could floor me with a smile now, would I just walk right past a man who looks like someone's dad, and would he just move his kids aside to let the nice lady pass?

p.s still in editing mode, still too many pages, and still some that may need to be included in.

I'm the one on the left

Caught the lurgy of a neighbour's child, and thinking if you can pin-point exactly where a cold comes from it probably means you don't have enough friends. It's one of those lingering ones, where you can hear the slow puncture sound in your chest when you are trying to go to sleep, and the sound of coughing gets on your own nerves. This is bad timing, just when I was in the middle of one of those transformations, kept curling round to see if I could feel the angles of wings starting to jut out from my spine. All those teams of people swooping in on TV to make you better- de-clutter your home, lose weight, make you 10 years younger, get a haircut, dress in a way that throws people off the scent of what you do for a living. No one ever looks in the mirror after and just cries, or says I liked it better before, and even when they look better I wonder if they get home,and don't have the confidence to wear their hair down, and revert back to the comfy jeans. (Why is TV now just there to make us feel bad, like we are lazy slobs who have to be told what to eat, do, and live?) The TV fairy folk do it in a comercial break, but the truth is transformation takes time, lots of time, and effort. It's a slow process, but I am in the process, aware that it takes time, the breaking of habits, change of lifestyle, losing things to an editing process, leaving peole on the cutting room floor. Lots of things just have to change. I know I can't make anybodyelse any different, all I can do is set about myself and see if that helps. Was feeling good about it, even with along way to go, when bam!, some random infection comes to make me look and feel like something a giant coughed up again. So it's hard to hold on to the feeling, the goal.

I guess I've been thinking about the few moments of your life when you feel special (the time the teacher handed my story to the class, the way some guy looked at me when I was 17...) It's a shame I can count them on one hand. Everyone wants to feel better in some way, less than just average. Some do it by academic acheivements, some do it by their profession, some accumulate (wealth, things, notches on the bed), some don't need to do anything they just look in the mirror. I suppose some give up on their own aspirations and breed, have a child they want to be better at everything than anyone and no longer have to feel the disappointment in themselves. I wrote, I hoped people would read it, be moved somehow, taken away, and that would make me feel less plain. But it isn't enough, not on it's own. Got to write better, got to open the doors wide for Trinny and Susannah to touch me inappropriately and make me look in the mirror from all sides. Got to just do some things I want to now and then. Say no. Just not be home. Get a metro to the coast and turn off the mobile.

But first to shake this godamn cold...

Last night of the fayre

I've been deep into collection sorting, editing, and wishing I'd written the poems originally on A5 because when you get to that point of formatting them A4 everything looks disturbingly different. I have a horrible hatred of small visual things like a poem going over a page by only one line or two and am having to go through everything to make sure this never happens. Of course a poem should be as long as it needs to be, but the control freak in me, that wants everything neat won't allow for such indulgent thoughts. The collection is alot longer than I realised and I will have to embark on editing like crazy, because there are still a few poems that need to go in there that would explain why I've chosen the subject matter. The poems however work as sets that will chronicle a life, so deciding which ones can or should be ommitted is difficult without losing the narrative. Still sorting that, will be a fair way off I think.

Last night was the final Hydrogen Jukebox. It was a great night, and a sad night. The place was packed, too packed in a way for the evening to be that enjoyable, since the room was too full to ever reach so and so over there you'd quite like to say hi to, etc, but a great night of entertainment.This was one hell of a gathering of North east poets, most of which read a poem or two. Paul Summers started the evening reading a full set from his new book Bela's Dirty Cafe, which is a collection I have been waiting for for a very long time, and amazingly wasn't disappointed in. It is always a pleasure to see Summers read, he reads with such energy and passion to the North east as a cause he supports. The set, like the book, was a mixture of explorations of masculinity and it's meaning in everyday life, and a more haunting lyrical journey into places, people and mortality. The people in his book are somehow fossils, beautiful, neglected , a product of time and place. We can see their spines but never touch the world of pressure that has gone before. The poems made me feel awed, reverant, sad because it all seemed so true. The poems make me feel that is is a poet who never lies, colours the truth, not even a dash- that what is there is just what there is, presented in a breathtaking way.

Following Mr Summers were poems from Jo Colley, Andy Willoughby, Kevin Cadwallender,
Bob Beagrie, Andy Croft, Jeff Price, and a whole host of others I only know the first name of. A complete smorgasboard of poets and poetic style, including shamanic journeys into Siberia from Willoughby (accompanied by didj maestro Kevin Howard.) There is so much to say about this night I can hardly say anything. The most surprising performance of the evening was Bob Beagrie's new poem Nice Hat- a poem about a man in Finland admiring the narrator's hat. Such a simple idea, that elaborated became really funny and energetic as the admirers conspire against him

"Hey, nice fucking hat...
Him in the hat he thinks he is inwincible"

This poem really creased me, and I was surprised because when I have seen Bob Beagrie read before I have seen him be many things: shamanic, soulful, spiritual, introspective ,even manic, but never side-splittingly funny, and it was real joy to see.

As for me, I was thrown by lack of a musician, as I really wanted to Sex with Elvis to love me tender, which seemed perfect for last HJ, so i had to do somethingelse last minute. Surrounded by great poets and all these testosterone filled performers I decided not to try and do any of the poems that would require trying to compete (and failing), and opted to do two quiet little poems (Undertaking Elvis, and Swallows.) Very forgettable really, but not as bad as it could have been since I haven't read since February. Lots of people I might never see again, so much growth by so many performers, and so much opportunity provided by one event for poets to push their work into new directions. . I just hope I won't return to that void I was deeply entrecnched when I first was invited to HJ. I was writing, but had given up finishing things -without any feedback, never seeing other poets, no place to share work and knew no poets to talk to. It was difficult to have faith in my work and push myself into new directions without some feeling of community, example and encouragement to feed on. I think to keep going under such circumstances you need alot of faith in yourself and your work, perhaps more than I will ever have.

Here's to the Hydrogen Jukebox. The end of an era. So what now?

7 Years

Somedays it's best to say nowt. When it's another anniversary, and he hasn't said a word, and you don't want to be one of those women who makes a fuss. And you know it's not that he's bad, it's just one of those things. So you move his shoes from the foot of the stairs, change the bog roll you didn't use the last of (and make a mental note that this is the 52nd time you've done this this year.) Tomorrow will be better, because the fact is there isn't much different about today, other than today is the day it bugs you. Today you can't help but think of those guys who noticed you existed when you were young and 4 stone smaller, the ones you dumped for having breath like toffee apples or always having a faint aroma of maths books. And you can't help thinking when did I lose it? When did I become a woman who picks up the shoes? Is this karma? What's so wrong with toffee apples anyway?

so scratch your name on my arm with a fountain pen

I was amazed at how clean the Shields ferry was. Being transported anywhere on water is a comforting process, I looked up at the little box and saw a middle-aged man, with a face that forgot how to be anything but eyes, in the little box upstairs with captain stripes on his sleeves. I wondered if he realised how comforting it was to be on his ferry, if he loved his job going back and forth with people feeling excited at no more than the knowledge of water, or always longed to turn around from that river and sail away into the sea. Did he always think he had that in him, and wanted to go a little further? It was nice to borrow tourists eyes to see Newcastle, to really look, and be surprised, and wonder does anyone else know?

Thinking about mothers and daughters I am no wiser. I wonder what is it mother's want for their children and what do they want from them? So few know, but it would be smoother sailing if we did, if we had little contracts and could refer back to check.

One thing that used to be on my list was get a tattoo, I always had in my head the tat I wanted, but I told this to a friend, who has now got the same tat (so I feel a bit of Charlie now if I get that tat everyone will think I copied. ) What I'm thinking about tats is something with wings (though Clare Raynor ruined that word), and wondering if there is a part of my body I won't object to enough to decorate. I always thought about that place where your trousers and top sometimes don't meet for my tat, but my mate said it was so '94. Is that true? Is my arse really so horrendously out of date? : /

If i jumped from the top of the parachutes

There's been people occupying the writing space for a week. It started with someone I know coming back from her hols in America with lots of stories to tell, then came my birthday, then my friend from way back coming to stay with me for a few days. Birthdays are funny, they make me think too much, when I seem to have a check list of all these things I thought someone my age would have done then compare it to reality. Aren't I supposed to have a real job by now? Aren't I supposed to be married and feel ecstatic at the sight of new lawn mowers and stuff? Where do these things come from? I have no idea. I blame Peter and Jane, cooking with mummy, digging with daddy, who don't look any older than I am now, and of course TV. You can put it down to anything you like, my annual mid-life crisis (we're entitled to more than one, since none of us know how long we will live), the fact that I had thought my writing did more than scratch the surface until it hit bone, the fact that I was just tired. Tired of routine maybe, sick to the back teeth when I heard someone I know talk about hols when I hadn't been anyplace again (she talked the states as if it was her back yard "Oh, you must pop over and see next time we go"), tired of feeling guilty about my new poems and proctrastinating about whether i should use them, and mostly just tired of myself. I still haven't decided if I will use the new poems that are about me, but I am thinking I will write some more and select some ... possibly, maybe, I hope. But I have been looking into practical things about my work and thinking about it, order, gaps, edits, length, and am thinking about the spaces that need filling, and spaces that should be there. Also prose is perculating and I am wondering if I will have the chance to let some out, but enough of that. What I really thought about was how I had said I have realised my own boringness, and self limitation, that is born of fear I suppose, or habbit, or what other people expect of me, or all of the above. I realised I forgot how to have fun, and couldn't remember when I last really laughed. I wanted to laugh like those girls on a bus you see, in stitches about nothing that is visible, the girls that make you feel like you must be the joke, with their laughter in code. The girls who are just being girls. I forgot how to be a girl along time ago. The good thing about this is my clothes are alot more comfy, I eat more that I just fancy, I get more done, but if you stop doing something enough you forget how to do it. I've had to change this abit in the last week.

My friend came to stay and I decided to forget about the work and its baggage and go with it, experiment , see what things where like. I made a list of lots of things I want to try, and either never have tried or haven't done in 20 years. I wanted to just do something, see if I could release me of practicality for a little while,see if I could forget, find out if I was only the woman who tiles walls and writes odd little poems, and see if this was fun.

Birthday To do List

1) Go Iceskating
2) Go on some fairground rides
(the last time I did this was 20 years ago.)
3) Try archery
4) Try a rockclimbing wall
5) Lose some weight
6) Wear a dress
7) Learn to cut glass and lead it
8) Learn to say No
9) Turn off the narrator and try to Dance-
(maybe go to a salsa dancing class or something to get more confidence in moving)

(The thing with the dancing is once I was no longer young or thin I stopped, when I tried again I found I was sort of a puppet with the real me trying to put clamps on my body pulling strings, saying "Oh no, you can't get away with that, what are you doing?" My arms and legs began to work with my brain saying left leg moving now, hand to right, and it just lost the feeling of dancing. I remember it used to be fun, remember when I lived alone dancing in the kitchen to The Smiths with a tea-towel and feeling good at looking like a dick, and want to lose the self awareness enough now and again to do it again.)
10)Put my feet in the sea
11) Go on a boat
12) Try dressed crab
13) Try lobster
14) Visit some country or place I've never been
15) Go on some go-karts/quad bike
16) Try and ride a horse


All of these sound really simple, they are. But I just have never done these things, or have done them once when i was 7 or something, and no one will stop me being boring but me. Alot of things that are very simple and alot of people take for granted I just don't do. I worry about them, I decide they are impractical, I talk myself out of it, and let myself be lazy. On my birthday i tried lobster; the day after I tried dressed crab, and was hugely disappointed that it didn't come in an actual dickie bow or something the way I had envisioned it as a child and a slightly autistic adult. So when Luan was here we kept busy, made ourselves do some of the things that were outside our comfort zone. The first thing wasn't too bad, we went to the Baltic, because last time she visited there was a function on and we weren't allowed in (though I did go in the time tunnel, which I might have avoided before due to the humiliation of the fat girl on a slide.I laughed all the way down, I don't know why. The Baltic man at the bottom looked so serious I thought I must be doing it wrong, but it was good anyway. I liked the little house in Baltic square, it seemed quite moving to me, that little house talking, saying a house is supposed to protect (is it?) , saying it was fat. I also enjoyed watching David Beckham sleep though I don't know why, I kept expecting him to wake up screaming 'Victoria man, get off us', or something, but asleep he just looked like a real pretty man being normal, sleeping, and I didn't have to worry about whether he was a bastard or thick as the Bo selecta sketch, or shallow. He was just a person, ok a real pretty one, asleep.) The next day we went ice-skating (skating is too strong a word , we went to the ice-rink and sort of shuffled along with one hand on the rail- I did let go of the side though and tried to do it, not very well, but ...) The day after that we went on the ferry (can't believe I have never been on this the whole time I have lived in Newcastle) and went on fairground rides. These are such easy things, shallow maybe, with no self impovement involved, but when I was up in the parachutes I no longer felt guilty about anything. I span round on the twister and laughed, for no apparent reaosn, laughed till my mouth was dry as the sand and the people were just sandcastles falling away in slow sifts. I felt my arms juggle air on the way down as I grabbed the rail and laughed so much I forgot who I thought I was. Maybe I never really knew. I felt more alive than I have felt in a long time, doing something just because I could. Some things I want to do aren't on the list, I need to lose the weight first or learn to swim better or things that are quite hard and slow, but it feels good to have ticked some things off the list. I did wear a dress, and looked , I dunno- fat? Yeah, but more than that, more vulnerable maybe, as if I was trying to be a girl, and the safety of jeans that no matter how bad I look no one can say I am trying to be or do anything, there's a comfort in that, a sheild of invisibility somehow as something without a gender. But I do know more about myself for all this, the most trivial things; no I can't iceskate, but do enjoy it, lobster isn't a patch on prawn and my favourite fairground ride is The Twister.

Why do people write?

I am really interested in why people write. It worries me also. I recently read in 101 ways to make poems sell that poets need to ask themselves this, but also why should anyone pay money to read my work? Why do I think they will? I need to spend some time thinking about this, as I don't think it is something poets initially think about. What they are thinking about is how to make their poems good, make them work, then comes the question about how commercial they are, and where they fit in when they think about getting a publisher. For a long time I believed writing poems that sell meant compromising what I wanted to write about, and how. I thought about the poets that do well commercially, and the biggest name I could think of was John Hegley. So this made me think to write poems that people will want to read they have to be

a) funny
b) rhyme.
c) Come in a package with a good/cool/or somehow otherwise appealing look
d) That this package must contain some form of likeable personality

I think there is an element of truth in this, in the sense that some poets will receive more readers because they seem non threatening, media friendly, and mostly write poems that are accessible and create the illusion to readers that they themselves could write something like that. But this is an over-simplification. (John Hegley is in many ways a bad example of what I want to say, as I actually really like his work, but am constantly surprised when I see people laugh at it. Ok, I admit I do have a problem laughing out loud in public, but when I have seen Mr Hegley read there are times I will be thinking that a poem is painful sounding, sad or something in it is plain unfair and the audience will be laughing along quite merrily. - This brings up somethingelse about comedy, and its essence- do people not see, do they choose not to? Is everyone cruel? Or is JH tapping into the truth that one of the functions of comedy is to provide relief where it is needed. Something has to be done, and it's better to laugh than cry - except I am out of the loop with that one.) I think about the people I know who buy poetry and they are not only buying John Hegley. They buy a range of comtemporary poetry, in different styles, with diffferent subject matter and voices. As my work is now approaching being a collection I need to think about what it might have to offer a publisher, who might read it, how, and why, which is new to me in many ways.

A colleague recently told me they had written a list of what they want to acheive in their writing and how they intend to go about it. This scared the hell out me , because I am not sure how I can create a similar list, and how to go about anything that I would like for my work. But I do need to think about it. I'm horrifed, but am going to try and compile a similar list sometime this week, to see what it does.

Sunday

They keep saying August will be hotter than July, but it's raining. I noticed a clutch of red leaves on the tree the other day outside my window, feel summer has burnt itself out. This week has been an odd writing week, I've been at my desk wanting to write poems about the last biography I read, and was finding it really slow.
I asked a colleague who is quite familiar with my work what they felt might be missing if the poems were part of a collection, and their answer was 'you.' All of the poems are about other women. (At times I have been touching of course on things that relate to my own experience, but there is no way for a reader to know that.) This raises an interesting question, which relates to things I have been reading lately, being how much do readers actually want to know about the writer themselves? Is this something I need to know the answer to and consider? I don't know the answer, and I think not knowing it made writing slower than usual at the beginning of the week, because I was sitting down to write with the suspicion that this is the point where I need to write poems that include the writer a bit more, but felt reluctant to do that.

I am interested in how writers deal with writing about themselves, because it always means actually to some extent writing about other people (our parents, relatives, friends, lovers.) Then what do these parties make of the poems, and what we have said? All week I avoided writing anything personal because of this huge feeling of guilt hanging over me regarding this issue, as if writing would be snitching on people somehow, showing things the people themselves have forgotten. So I couldn't write the poem that was really there regarding my research which would have actually included some people I know, and wasn't sure how to get past this.

Actually this was also hanging because recently I received a phonecall off my mother which ended with her saying "put that in your book", and hanging up. My mother has never said anything about the content of my poems other than she understands that there was swearing because I wanted to be "realistic. But suddenly the thought was there, that she may disapprove, and at very least must have said this for a reason. I thought about my previous work, and the poems she was named in - and couldn't see what might have annoyed her about them. I wondered if what was annoying her was the thought of the things I could write about, that she doesn't want to hear, rather than what I have actually written, and that seemed more likely. But I don't know, like I said she hung up on me, so I left her to it. But that comment has stuck with me enough so that the poem that was actually the one to be written couldn't come out, I had to write about other things to do with what I had been reading rather than what wanted to be wrote. I had pretty much decided I just wouldn't write a poem about my mother, because of this conversation and the guilt that it brought, then something changed.

At the end of the week I received a note from my mother, with 3 poems attached to it.

The back story to this is that since about February she has been asking me over and over if I was entering this poetry competition that she saw advertised in the paper for poems of less than 12 lines. I had reasons not to enter, being my suspicions about it

1) It was free to enter- how many poetry competitions are free?
2) There was no judge named and mentioned (which should always appear on competitions)
3) It was advertised in The Evening Gazette (though it claimed to be a national competition.)

All of this put me off (plus of course the fact that I have no faith in competitions really). Nonetheless I did send a couple of poems in, just to stop her going on about it.

Last week what I received were poems she had wrote and sent to the competition. The note told me that one of these poems had been selected for the anthology. This was all strange to me. This is the first I have heard of her even writing poems. But most of all I couldn't understand why she hadn't mentioned this, and why she had asked me to enter the same competition she knew she would be entering (mine, of course weren't selected.) (Now I know what anyone reading this will think this is a case of jealousy that my poems weren't chosen, but actually I couldn't have cared less in this instance because it wasn't a competition or press I heard of , etc, etc.) But I did wonder what this all was about; was she competing with her daughter (in the one thing that matters to her) and trying to put me down somehow? In terms of my acheivements as a daughter (infact everywhere) poetry is all there is (there is no high status job she can tell people about, no holiday cottage tucked away somewhere, etc etc), about all she can say is that I have had some books published in the North East. I wondered if this was a way of putting me in my place, saying 'look I can do what you do, and am infact better at it.' (I'd like not to think this, I'd like to think my poetry inspired her to want to write- but if so, why didn't she tell me about it?)

More to the point, the content of the poems was interesting. She had not only written about my childhood but used my actual real name (I may have written about mother, but only as a mother, in poems which could potentially be a fictional first person account of any mother.) I couldn't get out of my head the implication that I shouldn't write about her, that she didn't like it, yet here I was, my name in black and white and my childhood in rhyming couplets. Although this incident was odd regarding my relationship with my mother, it was actually hugely liberating for my work. I could shrug off the guilt and concerns about ethics that had plagued me all week quite easily (what's good for the goose is good for the gander right?) I had hated seeing my name in the poem, and felt misunderstood. I decided that writing anything whatsoever that explains who I am now inevitably involves writing about my childhood sometimes. And writing about my childhood does involve at times mentioning parties who were present, but I had a realisation that is so simple but huge; it is my childhood to write about. She has written her take on it, I can have my own too. Suddenly the poems I had pushed into nothingness bubbled out, and I had no reason to feel guilty anymore, she had herself given me permission to write in the most unlikely way.

Some people might see this and think the motive behind writing those poems is revenge, at very best tit for tat, but it is infact something to do with reclaiming your own life, that people take from you by their own perspective, or locking it away. I actually feel pretty good now , somehow free, and the poems I wrote? Could be worse. ; )

The hottest day of the year, again

So I'm definetely starting to look like a clown now, in my spotty summery shorts, and my face i don't recognise in the mirror. I do Mr Benn changes, super quick, when anyone I know knocks at the door- an ey up, that poet is coming round, better not let them see the indignity of knees. The logical thing to do would be buy some more summer clothes, but the Englishman in me, with all its experience of weather, keeps telling me it will break soon,and I'll be glad of all the money i didn't spend on flowery skirts. The other day I started washing my arms because they were looking distinctly grubby, until i realised what i was actually scrubbing at was freckles. I am trying though, trying to get used to squinting, and the sudden urge to paint things and make them look clean (to use up every ounce of the sun.) I was thinking, I blame all this lets use the sun on Mam's and their twin tubs, draining the sun for every use its got. I feel guilty for not having a twin-tub, and enough whites for a load.

The poems are really shaping up, I've started to look at them as a collection in progress. What sounds silly is that I didn't before, but I was just writing, about certain things, and don't think of it all together until a shape is beginning to emerge. I won't have a title until later on though, almost last, and I wonder if with everyone this is the case.

I've also been doing things that I've been told are useful, setting up a thing on myspace, with a bit about being a poet and some of the poems with music on there. Myspace is a funny thing though, seems like a popularity contest, like being at school, and you have to ask people to be your friends. I felt strangely cheated that Morrissey had 44,000 friends (the same way there was a voice in me, going yeah right when i heard him sing I'll never be anybody's hero now on his new album, although I loved the song, I wanted him to stay a shy outcast forever. How will he ever understand me now!?!?) I have I think 3 friends on myspace, though I think they should indulge the less optimistic and call these people associates or something like it. I did end up with a very strange email from someone I havent spoken to in 10 years, saying I know you, I saw you at the Kenaz gig, which was a bit weird. I ended email contact when he said he had some sweeties in his pocket. The net makes things different somehow, we can make references to things we never would, joke about it, admit it is a haven for stalkers, call ourselves one, google everyone we meet. I still fell guilty when I google someone, like I am pinching their washing off the line and taking it home. How stupid is that? Know I need to get over this, get on board with the digital age, where our concept of privacy has become a very public one. (And yeah, I'm mentioning this on a blog, less guilt, since i'm not stalking anyone, i suppose its more like the verbal equivalent of a flasher though.)

I've been reading 101 ways to make your poems sell this week (by Chris Emery.) It seems like a necessary evil. That part of you that is a poet and just wants to make your poems good flinches at the reality that unless you engage with the p word no one is ever going to read your work (and this makes you less likely to finish it.) The book uses the p word alot, both p words, and talks a great deal about promoting your work, and building your profile as a poet. A few years ago I would have threw this book at the wall, in sheer frustration and denial of the reality of the need to get your work out there (and the hard work it entails). All I wanted to do is write poems. When rejection comes knocking, or even worse the letter box whistles in the wind, we have all consoled ourselves so many times with the names of poets who never made it till they were dead. A book like this makes that seem preposterous. (There is something passive agressive about even thinking this that pisses me off somehow.)You won't find such comforts in 101, but you will come away with ideas on how to get your work read, sell some copies of your books, and let people know you actually exist. At times the book is harsh, makes no bones of the fact that self promotion is a necessary evil, suggesting that those who are unwilling to attempt it, who merely want to see their work in print, are better off self publishing, and leaving it there (ouch!) Poetry is approached as a business, your business as well as the publishers, something that you are selling, that comes in the package of selling yourself. As a meak writer squirreling away in a back bedroom there will be lots of people who find this book terrifying; it is infact in many ways completely alien to my natural tendencies towards shyness and not speaking till you are spoken to. The facts are hard, but there are some practical suggestions on things you can do to help your career. Some of them aren't too painful, just require a little effort, and some of them might be scary, at first, it would be useful to start the slow process of visibility by doing some of the things suggested in the book that don't seem too outside your realm of experience, and build up to some of the ones that you haven't encoutered.

At times, by presenting reasons, Emery has even managed to convince me to see in a new light things I have always been opposed to.
For instance, I have always been in complete denial, and felt horror when publishers etc have requested a photo (yeah yeah, all the usual, hate seeing what I look like, want people to see the work and not be put off by me, etc etc) but there is actually a compelling argument about providing photo's of yourself in this book, which I may still hate the idea of, but am convinced by. The authors's suggestion of looking at photo's of musicians you admire and constructing a photograph or selection of images of yourself in the same way you would think about a poem, asking what is the photo saying, what drama or story does it tell etc, is a good one, and some how makes the fact of the photo easier to swallow. This is a book I will keep for reference to be jolted into a reminder of the painful truths of the poetry game (when I am deep into writing mode and begin to fantasise that the quality of work will somehow allow people to know about its' existence. How do I knwo the quality is there if no-one has seen it?!?) This book will be a wake-up call (not for those who want to sleep blissfully on.) One step at a time...

Summer

The grass looks as if it is trying to remember how to be green. So much summer I don't know what to do with it. There is a weird feeling of being exposed by the sun somehow, having to wear all these clothes because it is so hot that feel like I am dressing up as someone else. My jackets are hung up and look at me accusingly. Truth is, it is just too hot to be smart. I wish I was one of those summery girls, who change colour at this time of year, wear strappy vests, walk barefoot and wash their long hair in milk pails like that old Timotei ad. I've been looking around at big girls who walk about in white shorts with their thongs poking out the top of them and realising it isn't even all about my size. I think I'm too old fashioned somehow to be very good at the sort of strip tease that this time of year demands.

I keep expecting a storm. A few weeks ago I caught in the heavy rain, walked home in it just letting myself get wet in my stupid flip flops. But it was over so quick. Something about good weather makes me feel guilty for not being outside, or on a picnic at the coast. I wonder how many people's lives are like that so they actually use the weather that way. I am enjoying the weather in a sense, like everybodyelse, but spend about as much time looking at the sky and wondering when it will break. A few weeks ago I went camping though, it seemed the right thing to do. I had only ever been camping in a tent once before, when I was 3 and my parents took me on holiday to Scotland. I don't remember much about it, except an orange tent, and that I fell in the lake. I didn't choose never to go camping again, I just somehow never went.

I wonder how many things are decided about the kind of people we are like this, not that we chose not to be certain types of people or like certain things, just found that opportunities never occurred where we would experience these things? Then before you know it you are a 32 year old who doesn't do camping, eat lobster, can't swim, whatever. I went to the Lake District, which I had only ever been through before, and was pretty amazed by it. I watched people in little boats, walked about, sort of just let the scenery wash over me, wash me out. I couldn't sleep the first night, not used to the light and being outside,I could hear the masticating sheep, and though this didn't worry me I couldn't stop listening. When I did sleep I dreamt of a new book coming out by Kevin Cadwallender (a poet whose work I really like), called Sex with Keith Armstrong. (I've actually never met Keith Armstrong, I just know his name and have read some of his poems, but for some reason it is a name I remember.) There were posters everywhere advertising it, with the cover on, which was a photo of the author in a pair of blue y-fronts and matching socks, it was quite a comical pose. This is a very strange dream, I wonder what the point is of people trying to analyse them. I woke up and heard the sheep crunching steadily behind the nylon.

So I have tried something new, and really enjoyed it. This is the first summer I actually went out and bought some open-toed shoes, which is incredible, how something so normal is something I have never done. I usually live in denial of summer, that it will pass soon enough and I'll get by in my boots. I was shuffling like a geisha at first worrying I might be like the girl in summery shoes I saw who kicked something and watched her shoe fly into the sky and onto the road. I reckoned I was too old and not pretty enough to get away with something like that, so I must watch my step. I'm asking why I stuck to my boots even in the heat before? And I have no idea, maybe because I wanted to seem taller, maybe a fear that someone will stand on my feet- whatever it is it's too strange. But maybe it was just something that happened, that one time I had a reason for not wearing open shoes, and although I've forgot what it is this just happened, and I became someone who never wears clothes that nod at the sun.

Last week I started tying up the Marilyn poems, I thought I had maybe one more poem to do and ended up writing 5. I think I needed a space between the ones I wrote about her life and these ones, before I wrote them. I can't explain why, it is a feeling of something like loss, but also a feeling of guilt, of somehow being part of a problem by writing about it. I think I'm glad to be finishing these poems though, as it is a world I don't want to stay too long in incase I never come out.

This morning I went to the post and saw another SAE with my name on it, and knew it would be more poems being returned me with the obligatory slip. (I have started to dread my own handwritten name.) When I opened it I was very surprised that they actually want to publish one of the poems in their magazine. It was a poem I wasn't even sure about putting in, because it is one I personally like, which always tends to be one other people don't rate. It is one of the poems from the Traci sequence.

So if you are counting, I had to get 9 rejections before I had one acceptance. 1 in 10 isn't bad compared to the 1 in 30 I was originally warned. (But to be honest I'm still trying to tell myself that!)

Reject ed Poets Anonymous

So I'm caving, I've been waiting to have positive things to say till I came back to this blog, and nothing different has happened really. I've had some more rejections from mags. Sometimes I have been unable to face sending more poems out and will simply put the rejections aside, knowing that I should get back on the horse, but the memory of that fall is too fresh in my head. Sometime will pass, and I will send some more poems out. But I've been thinking, maybe part of the reason the rejections feel so bad is that we assume that other people are so successful, we only ever see the success stories, see poets when they have been comissioned, getting paid gigs, are launching a pamphlet or book. We never hear about rejections, only the success, which makes our own failures harder to swallow somehow. Of course it is silly to take reassurance from other people being in the same boat, sort of like not doing your homework at school and feeling so much better when you discover who else hasn't either, but we do.

I wonder why poets don't ever mention rejections from mags etc? It would be reassuring to know that all of this is just the nature of the game. If I could hear about poets I know to be good poets being rejected now and then I think I'd feel better, not take it so personally when I experience the same thing, because the thing with rejection is it makes you quiz your own work, wonder if it isn't good, and it's really easy to think that about myself as it is.

I've been worrying that mentioning my rejections would be sort of exposing myself somehow, that people would suddenly see that my work is no good because of the rejections. Perhaps I think of an Emporers New Clothes situation, once they read all the rejections the things that have passed for poems will be revealed as an empty page. The temptation has been to change the subject, but since I think I would feel better for knowing this is happening to even good writers all the time I've decided it would be braver to fess up, and I hope this makes other people feel better somehow about their own experiences.

The rejections have been odd. Some are the standard slip with no more, but a few of them have come back with handwritten notes on the rejection. E.g

"I was really intrigued by these poems."
"Enjoyed these though, Tomatoes most"
"Enjoyed reading the poems, particularly Picturebook Life"

What I am then doing is sort of trying to decrypt what this actually means. Since they have taken the trouble to write something encouraging sometimes, I can assume (?) that the rejection isn't down to the quality of the work. The editors are sort of acknowledging that there is something good in them. When I used to send work out I was getting comments sometimes telling me that the poems were interesting but needed more work (I was young, and definetely wasn't as controlled in my writing; they had a point.) It was as if they saw something good in the poems and were encouraging me to shape my work more. But in this batch of rejections the comments are less easy to know what to do with. There is the tendency to pessimistically think people are being polite, but I don't think I buy that. Editors are anonymous, they don't know you and have nowt to lose by being abrupt. They are busy, and have to read alot of work and don't want to encourage people to send in more work for them to read if it isn't interesting. So I am left wondering what these sorts of rejections say about my poems, and am left thinking that perhaps these people are not rejecting them because they don't recognise they are good, but because the poems simply don't fit in with the type of work/tone of the magazine in question. I have been trying to tailor work to the magazine, but this is really difficult. Most often my work doesn't seem to fit the tone of any of the magazines. I am interested in what this poses- an option for me as a poet then to change the tone of my work somehow to become more like other people's? This seems to be a possible way to gain more recognition in terms of magazine publication. But there is some part of me that would feel unfulfillled by this, by ceasing to write about the things that seem important to me, and poems I hope are doing something I beleive in somewhere. I wonder how other writers negotiate these problems, wonder why the poems I write I rate above others are never the ones other people like? I suppose writers have to think about these things, and wonder what it says about their own work. I have been thinking about this, but I don't have answers yet.

Sometimes I tend to devalue work that felt easier to write, or that didn't make me feel anything when I read it after. Perhaps the work is tied up with the process, but sometimes there is more to it. Some work seems more acceptable because it has a reference point in terms of what it is like, about, or its tone, and maybe this is the work magazines tend to select because they feel comfortable with it. Some of my work isn't designed to make people feel comfortable, as I have been challenging myself to write about things that I am uncomfortable with, people who have broken the rules, and are sometimes untouchable. I am holding onto the belief sometimes that the work isn't bad, but that maybe it doesn't fit in, and I suppose hoping that someone will see some beauty in amongst all the ugliness, and maybe take a chance.

Writing wise the Marilyn poems are at a stage were they seem mostly finished, there are about a dozen of them I think, and I have been surprised by the tenderness in them towards the male characters. There isn't any judgement, and I didn't expect that. I thought that I thought all these men were bastards, but when I wrote I realised they were just people. Just people who loved someone, but didn't know what to do, didn't always know what to say.