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.