accidental poet

flash fiction

2011-11-29T12:33:00.000-08:00

The Prevention of Sasquatch

She misses the forest in her shorts, but, you know, the wolf. There. Waiting to make pretty girls dogs in the dark.

Once, we heard about a woman with sasquatch under her arms. My friend came with me, on our bikes to see. Gross. We looked through the launderette window and saw a fat woman make change, sell suds and empty machines. She stopped, slipped one hand under her arm to stroke sasquatch’s head, calm as petting a cat.

‘Do you think it feels soft?’ my friend said.

I didn’t know. Something like that could bite a hand. Undergrowth must be controlled. On the way home, we stole Nair from the drugstore. Smooth. We thought it would be easy, but losing the forest we heard hair like felled trees. Rustling. Rabbits ran for cover and found no place. The log cabin burnt. The wolf sloped, tail between legs. We are safe, but some nights, stroke fur on our sleeves, lonely for wolves serenading moons. I know my friend misses leaves, red streaking through shade. Just knowing the wolf’s there is something, red cap on its tracks, cape held above her head like she’s made a kite of her arms.

This is an entry for the Mookychick blogging competition, FEMINIST FLASH FICTION 2011. Enter now.

("FEMINIST FLASH FICTION 2011. Enter now" should link to http://bit.ly/femflash)

feminist flash writing competition

2011-11-29T08:56:00.000-08:00

The Incident

The night of Miss Military Beauty, we crossed the line. A brick wrapped in a blanket, our baby, hushed a smashed window, in we went. Beauty rushed past us, girls twirling the baton of talent, smiles bikinis strung over flaws. Feet tap-danced towards nodding Gods, judges with scorecards of how easy they were to love. Then, there was us.

We rushed the stage, faces drawn, not our best sides, just what was fired onto the spot. Here, once, only, us, no captive of appraisal’s loaded gun. Our skin held its match to oil paintings we’d never be, triangles ironed between our legs. Odd mouths, lipstick pink scars took tiny bites out of the lean meat of vanity. We just couldn’t hide the cut of evenings we wore, the pearls of burns, glitter in our bones. Blink, and miss our speeches; they were scored to our face.

Only one woman spoke. Veil lifted her veil to bare roses, corsages scalded to her breast, she said only, ‘I forgive.’ We waited, for applause, bouquets, to accept cuffs on our wrists gracefully as being lead to dance.

We lowered our heads for tiaras of broken glass, tears in rust smelling rooms, our crown.

This is an entry for the Mookychick blogging competition, FEMINIST FLASH FICTION 2011. Enter now.

("FEMINIST FLASH FICTION 2011. Enter now" should link to http://bit.ly/femflash)

Why Write Poetry?

2011-01-31T05:13:00.000-08:00

Fresh

2008-06-02T03:07:00.000-07:00

I haven't been here for what feels like a long time. Things have been peculiar, sorting I think. I've done alot of that this year, and some things you never find a place for, some questions will never be answered. My confidence hasn't been great alot of the time, but I've certainly been working on it.

There is work being done to the house too, the ceiling got ripped down and the room is in the middle of being reassemled- slowly and messily! But my office, is feeling like a reclaimed space. It's as it after years of dicking about with writing I've finally accepted this odd little habit of mine. I've looked round my room and thought- why do I sit at a desk I had to buy off an ex boyfriend?! I went out and bought my very own desk,and spent a week stripping the old paint off it. It is my desk now, yes, I thought, I deserve my own desk, that has the positive association of knowing I made good of something old. I repainted my room and got rid of anything that has a negative association, and filled it with things that have happy memories (or else are just strange little things I love- these things always look like crap to other people :) I finally accepted - that I'm going to write- regardless, so I may as well embrace it and give myself a nice place to do it. I've been big in giving myself treats, congratulating myself on small accomplishments instead of beating myself up about failures, as if I am a dog that I can train into co operation.

There still seems to be alot of junk to sort though- mainly files, piles of paper. I think they must breed. One amazing thing that has happened this year is that in March I wrote a short story. I suppose this seems quite ordinary, except that I gave up on them 6 years ago, following the MA. They feel like secret mini holidays. I'm finally saying, if that English teacher on the MA said of my stories ' yeah, they're interesting but no one will ever publish them' I don't have to listen. Then, maybe. Not now. If I enjoy writing , I can do so. I can consider the soure of the negativity and realise it's not gospel. Instead I remind myself of the few small bits of encouragemet I've had. Mostly I can just write, and say to hell with it.

Acually I'd like a fresh start. I want to leave Newcastle and just start over. I am doing what can do right now though, making room in the place I am in, until that day comes.

sadness

2008-02-17T12:13:00.000-08:00

february is crushing. My dad just died, then today found out a friends mam died.
wjat else to say?

Hurray!

2008-01-13T16:29:00.000-08:00

Happy New year ! I'm so pleased I've been able to finally remember which email address I use here, and struck lucky on my password after so many attempts! This time I'll write them down, instead of relying on my computer (which has crashed 3 times last year) to remember them for me. Third time's the charm.

2007 was a good year in many ways- book out, nearly pulled by me, then actually out, got married, finally had a holiday, reached target weight. On the down side, I had alot of self confidence issues, and addressing them was hard work, and I wasn't able to launch Strip (a weird feeling, all that work than out without so much as a whimper or a single friend to see it and feel happy with me at the time.) I'm not sure what his year will bring- no holiday- but now I've been somewhere I really want to travel again. It is also seeing the end of mumus for me as i sort through my clothes and finally accept what fits and what just doesn't. (Took so long to do this.)

Finally i am having a belated launch for Strip in February- mostly because I didn't celebrate it at the time, and it seems as if people expect or want me to- they are right. If I only hide from people there is alot I'm mising out on potentially, as well as being sheltered from. I only sold 2 copies of Strip in Newcastle, but on the plus side I've heard of one or two people who liked it, which was lovely and encouraging to hear.The Crack gave Strip book of the month.

I was also thrilled to end 2008 with one of my poems being selected for analysis by Freida Hughes in The Times.

Me? In a newspaper I didn't print off on my computer? How weird is that?

Happy 2008 everyone- may all your dreams come true (except the weird ones involving finding yourself naked in front of your class mates!) :)

Ax

practise

2007-09-25T02:08:00.000-07:00

I'm practising how to read my work, I bought a mic but it was so awful i had to return it (seriously gave me a really bad lisp and was very muffled.) I'm going to borrow a better one. I've been listening to Paul Mckenna every day, and trying to read a poem out loud in my kitchen most days, sometimes 2 or 3. To start with I've just been doing short poems, and then poems that are a little longer that I can't wait to read. I've found a good exercise is to think of some poets you know and how they read, then try to stand like them, and read your work like them. We guessed who each other was doing this, and most poets could be guessed in less than two lines- just by how they stood and how they pause between words. It was good fun, it was interesting to male poets who stand with a 'my testicles are too damn big' stride, interesting to see how the work becomes chatty with some poets tone, mystical with others. Just standing like someonelse feels alot better. The next stage of the exercise is I then tried to read my poems incorporating bits of the other poets into how I'd read it, and some bits of how I woulda done it- the tone definitely felt more upbeat, which is a lot better than my Wednesday Addams diary entries.

The book cover issue is still unsettled, so I'm thinking about making some crabapple jelly or lemon curd to keep myself happy (I've never made either, but the apples and lemons are piled high, and i like the idea of something i can make a label for :) Also I have fuzzy felts arriving in the post tomorrow (hopefully). I got to thinking about fuzzy felts of my youth, and had nothing but good memories of them. All those bright colours and rearranging, so I decided to buy a set to keep by my desk that I can rearrange in the same way men in the 80's used to play with metal balls and mini snooker (ah, primary colours, nice composition, now back to work.) I couldn't find circus fuzzy felts though, I remember them from the 70's- but there is no trace of them anywhere now, so I'm wondering if it is something I remember that didn't exist. These nice distractions and chutney envy are keeping the balance right :)

Proof

2007-09-18T03:25:00.000-07:00

Life has been a bit manuscript focused all in all. I've been working on getting the Strip manuscript in the right order, cutting things, and now proofing.

I'm onto my 4th proof from the publisher, and I keep reading it to find those little words some sort of formatting goblin takes out, sentences he stashes away, and the odd word he'll put in just to keep me on my toes. I'm trying to focus on that, and not the fact that I'm a bit worried. I'm not worried that I haven't done enough work on the text, I'm more at a funny stage of feeling a mixture of excitement and fear. The excitement comes from being able to see the book take shape more each day. The fear is what people will think of it, and if anyone will buy it.

None of this is helped by the fact that I've been on a waiting list at my GP's since Christmas, in order to see someone who will help me have less negative thoughts about myself. I don't want them, it is just a reflex. Part of me will think- a new book, you've worked at it to make the poems take shape- great, get it out there! Part of me thinks 'Oh no one likes you, it doesn't matter what you write because you are so unpopular and lacking confidence as a person that it just puts everyone off and no one will give the work a chance.' This is no good to me at all. It is making me wake up early each morning, just so I'll have longer to think pessimistic and unhelpful things about myself.

I wish I was a nice shiny girl, a sparkly one, who knows what to say to people, so I could service the work better. I wish I was funny, and had a nice accent. (Even these thoughts are unhelpful.) I'm trying to think of what I can do to become someone more appealing, but I'm a bit limited, still waiting on that list. (The answer of course is I need to stop thinking I'm so unappealing, and I'll feel a a lot happier and be allowed to enjoy things.) In the meantime, the poems themselves has really taken shape, and for the first time the cover is being thought about. (I didn't let myself think about this for a long time, because technically it's not my call, but I can't help thinking about it now. I dream of dolls and sparkly shoes...)

Covers are exciting, it's the bit that made me excited again. They sent me a very nice cover, but somehow it didn't look like the contents of the book, so inbetween proofs I've been trying to think about covers, and had fun dicking about with dolls. That, and blackberry picking , are keeping me sane :)

reintegration

2007-06-21T02:53:00.001-07:00

When we get home I miss breakfasts. There are lots of people to see, who seem to not believe we are back until they have seen for their own eyes. Odd that, it's only been a fortnight, people we usually see less often than once a fortnight who we saw before we went. I am glad to be home, but have a while of feeling as if it was all a dream I need to reassemble in my head, and that takes quiet.

Part of me wishes I didn't have reservations about having parties. There has been so much to do there hasn't been time to take in getting married; I consider having a party and it seems like saying look at me. My problem with parties is the assumption of them. Something like having a party is like assuming people are bothered, it's a celebration of yourself, to have a party you have to be confident somehow. I am not. I don't want to be any bother to anyone, take any of their time, I don't want to seem presumptuous or an inconvenience so we decide against the idea. I am amazed at how pleased my mother is about the whole thing, well done she says. What I am thinking is I haven't done anything, just got married and even an idiot can do that. Funny, she was a lot less congratulatory when I told her I had a book coming out, or that I won a competition. It's good she is happy, but I'm not sure I understand people at all. She complains about my refusal to change my name, but I stick to my guns. It is not that I love my name, more just that it is my name. I will continue to be myself.

We buy ourselves new sheets and a stove top kettle to celebrate to ourselves, and make plans for a camping trip to the lakes when the weather improves. One day we say, we will get a new bed. We don't say why.

I like it here. The herbs have taken off, and when we walk through the front door I am surprised at how tidy I left the unfinished hall. I think about all the pictures I took down when I painted the walls, and wonder which ones will go back up.

I get on the scales with my fingers crossed, somehow or other (even with so much good American fayre) I have managed to lose 6 pounds. I am temporarily banished from Slimming World, since they charge you £4.50 if you lose more than three pounds than your target weight. I see the group leader's car in Asda car park and am momentarily tempted to try and find her, to look in her trolley and see what she buys. But I know if there are no chocolate biscuits I will be disappointed, so I leave the thought there.

My ankles are cold. I look at the sky and wish for sun to wear 3/4 trousers again.

2007-06-21T02:50:00.000-07:00

We arrive in LA with crossed fingers, so many cars, so many lanes. What it looks like is the drive to hell, and I'd always thought Chris Rea was on about the A19 when he wrote that damn song. In terms on scenery, there is none. This is the only place that is just quite ugly, endless freeway after freeway, malls, parking lots and palm trees shoved in random places like frilly toilet brushes artfully positioned to hide stains on worn lino. We discover quite quickly that because LA is so big it is actually like a series of towns with busy freeway in between each, if you want to see anything you have to have a car. I think this is what disappointed me most about the place, the smog you have heard of but then experience makes the place feel quite dark and gloomy compared to elsewhere on the West coast. Sky wise it is neither here or there. The sheer quantity of cars and the amount of traffic makes it slow to get anywhere, and there isn't really many places to go for a walk to by our hotel, which means after dark we are stranded there. Luckily it is nice hotel, and something has changed, since I arrived something in my head has flicked a switch and is starting to think about home for the first time since I got on the plane. Is everything being looked after? Wonder how so and so's thing went? Is my luggage going to be within weight?

I have had a good time, but I am ready to go. We spend a day on a mission for Wastelands and then look round Hollywood, which is grubbier and dirtier than we expected, and I find Marilyn's hands like in one of my poems. Unlike Traci my hands aren't made to fit, my fingers are too short and stumpy, and my feet are way too big. Mary Pickford's hands fascinate me, her hands and feet are like the prints of a doll- tiny and perfect. I am glad I wrote my poems before I came, since the idealism and hope of the teenage girl narrator wouldn't have been present if I'd been here and seen just how dirty and smoggy the place was. The narrator in the poems hasn't been there either yet, she thinks it will be beautiful.

It is more expensive in LA than anywhere else we have been. I haven't been impressed by there being nothing to see between anywhere (the freeways are lined with high concrete walls.) Everything being so far apart means there is more time spent getting to places than time there. But I decide to give the place the benefit of the doubt, and admit that maybe I'd have felt differently and enjoyed LA for what it is if it hadn't been the last stop on a visually breathtaking trip. As if was, it was the visual equivalent of going from the bahamas to grimsby. As for tinsel town? What a let down, nothing sparkly in sight.

While I am here I feel fat, everyone around me is so much thinner than me, and I start to think about how much weight I've put on. Time to think of that the day after tomorrow when I will be home, all the way there I will think- I have done it. I actually went. No one is more amazed than me.I hope I won't forget, and that just having been somewhere changes me.

New food tried (for the last time): Jalpeno cheese corndog
Verdict: Too much pastry, needs more cheese and pepper, but I can feel my arteries clogging even remembering it.

Falling asleep to: South Park

staring in

2007-06-19T03:32:00.001-07:00

More coffee and head to Grand canyon viewing points. I am feeling a little tired and for the first time all trip dispirited. This is also the first place we have stayed only one night, and I hate how nice the room is, and then having to pack the bags and clear out no sooner than we have arrived. It would have been nice to have arranged to stay here another night. So after yesterday drive and arriving late, I see the Grand Canyon for a little while and am back in the car. Arizona is full of flies, giant ones, tiny ones, ones that buzz like fighter planes. Tourist information list animals in the area- tarantulas, snakes, mountain lion, wolves, basically anything that might want to kill you. I look into the canyon, the canyon doesn't look back. The sheer size of it makes me feel empty, small. Gazing in I am nothing.

Back in the car, on the first drive I've found boring because so much of it is doubling back. i don't like to go back, and the rest of the trip has been about heading forwards and inevitably onwards. Flies, flies flies, whenever we open the door at least 2 dozen get in and I spend the journey pounding them to pulp with my fist. The whole journey is polka doted by the shadows of departed flies. I don't care, I keep pounding flies as we pass car after car filled with men in bandana's and what look like members of zz top.

When we arrive at Havusu we drive past London Bridge, the one they rebuilt brick by brick, and I want to know who swindled who? How did it happen? Havasu is red hot. Look at the lake is about all there seems to do. The hotel is more like a motel than it looks on the page, and its magazine of things to do is a list of shops, with starbucks as an attraction on its own. Again this is a one night stop so I don't unpack my case. Getting in the car so soon after I got out has done me in abit, so I put on my bikini and spend some time in the hottub, flake out on a lounger. Today I don't need to see everything, not even the chain restaurant we can see across the street in the distance for tea. I drink a beer and sit on the balcony, watching the monster trucks go past. I take a shower, order pizza, re charge. Havasu? I am not really here.

Me, a dress, a circus outside

2007-06-15T04:46:00.001-07:00

Leaving Las Vegas

2007-06-15T04:43:00.000-07:00

We pack up. We are leaving Las Vegas today, but first there is stuff to do. It's his idea to go to a chapel and get married before we get in the car and drive to the Grand Canyon, and by the time we have got cleaned up we are starting to worry about the time. We have been warned the drive is long, to stock up on fuel every chance we get on the journey.

'Where you guys from? newcastle? That's where the brown ale is from! Where nou heading? Grand Canyon? Guys stock up on gas every chance you get, between here and there is nothing.'

I am feeling abit stupid in my dress as I walk through the hotel in my shades. I walk the way I would walk in fancy dress, act as if you are wearing a suit, something normal, don't hesitate just walk. I don't want to look at passerby's in the eye to see how stupid I might look . He is luckier, he wears jeans and a shirt, and not for the first time I wish I was a guy. The first place we go is the chapel where Bon Jovi got married, we liked the look of this because it is Graceland. We look at the leaflets of the wedding packages and I change my mind. What they are offering is for Elvis to walk me up the aisle, and sing three songs. Since there are just the two of us the idea makes me mortified- some poor Elvis singing to just the two of us, and us having to applaud? Me trying not to laugh the whole time. It also occurs to me I don't want to walked down an aisle. I don't belong to anyone to be given away, not even a fake Elvis. The walk will seem long with the minster and him looking. I don't like to be looked at I decide.

We head to the drive through chapel, where a man comes to speak at our car window as soon as we pull up and whispers to us in a husky voice.

'You guys wanna get married? You can do it here sure, yeah, right, you wanna stay in your car? Yeah, yeah I can do you a deal'

There is something in his tone that sounds like he has illicit marriages tucked inside his coat. We are already here, but this is Vegas, and it wouldn't be vegas if there wasn't some kind of hustle and striking of a deal. The car in front of us in the drive through has broken down, so we leave the car and hop onto the back seat of a cadillac, through the window like so many where you can pick up burger and fries the Native American minister says his stuff.

He is wearing his shades most of the way through, a safety guard I suppose, and I laugh most of the time at nothing in particular, except that I am in a silly dress, perched on the back of a cad. I laugh coz someone has to and he won't.

'I now pronounce you man and wife'.

And here I am 5 minutes later, slipping on shorts and pulling the dress over my head in the parking lot, sipping a much awaited coffee and watching the next wedding to go pull up. The bride is gone in a blink, all that remains is the sparkly shoes and the garter I wear over my shorts as some sort of self evidence.

Just married, apparently. We hop in the car and just drive. Drive towards Arizona and the over Hoover Dam. We drive in the heat mistaking sounds of tiny flies bombarding the windshield, me for confetti, him for rain. When we arrive it is dark. We are just in time to see the canyon be lost to the dusk.

Falling asleep to: the jingle of ice cubes in my own unfinished glass

Aladdins Lamp

2007-06-14T06:35:00.000-07:00

Waking time: 7am

I start the day with a quest for coffee, and return with bagels, coffee and sticky buns.Getting coffee is strange since downstairs many people are still on Friday night and sit at card tables with cocktails in their hands.Later, I say, i'll play some machines. It takes us a while to get out and about today, since we are both struck with some kind of food poisioning we can only attribute to yesterday's Mexican/Italian meal. Vegas is without a doubt the most environmentally unfriendly place I have ever stayed, since everything comes in plastic punets and on paper plates. The food we had wasn't awful at the time, it was disappointing though and a bit bland, since we are used to chilli's we make ourselves, and the Indian takeaway over the road. There is nothing in our Mexican that resembles spice, but since it's inoffensive we ate it anyway. We don't complain, since we are convinced since it is Mexican food the people in the restaurant will attribute it to English people not being used to spicy food, and there will be nothing we can say to convince them otherwise. To be honest I am a little relieved when he is also struck down, it reassures me that feeling a little queasy is not just the result of the feeling I have woken up with resembling stagefright.

We head out, buying bus passes, since the memory of our aching feet is so fresh. We are heading downtown. He says he wants to find the Marriage License Bureau. The building is surrounded by people hustling, handing fliers for chapels to couples and running a spiel to them about their place, 'Come with us, we could drive you right over now.' Couples take the leaflets and join the queue which is out the door, and I remember that Vegas is also one of the quickest place in the world to get divorced. It seems a shame there isn't a divorce papers bureau right next door, with a queue twice as long to serve its cautionary tale. They could put a revolving door between them and save alot of time. I watch the couples in the queue, listen to snippets of conversations at the bullet proof hatch.

'the last time we were here it was 2 in the morning and we just got right through'

'Sure, we both turned 21 now.'

Quite a few pregnant women, lots of people who look very young.Something that makes me a little sad about the whole place. I try to keep the boredom at bay by secretly guessing which couples have been together for less than a year, and decide I can spot them a mile away. This is about when he puts his arm around me as if he is thinking the same and doesn't want to lose face.

After the bureau we head to Fremont street to see the old signs we've seen on TV, that have been restored after the hotels where knocked down. It is a nice atmosphere, the place is more laid back and less hustle, blissfully shaded by a canopy. It is early afternoon, and 32 degrees. Tomorrow we leave Vegas. He has a license with our names on in his bag and I am wondering what happens next as we head back in search of stripper attire shops. Wondering what i'm so afraid of, wondering if there'll be a sign.

It is Friday night for real now and we sit drinking beers watching the lights, and cars come to collect waiting brides. I am feeling chilled. The lights wash over me, and this seems like quiet time. One more beer and I could be ready, we could wander over to that chapel, get it over with, come back and have an excuse to get pissed. I wait for suggestions, but they don't come, so we get something to eat and head back to the room, the could have been wedding day slipping away as he lies back on the bed and prays to break wind.

New food tried: Finding it hard to find new foods to try in Vegas, lots of take out places with meals for the masses.Overall not impressed with the food here, no local delicacies except cactus candy, and not that big on vegi meals. The food is disposable, quick, afterall there are machines waiting to be gambled on.
Slot machines: I had a whole punnet of change ready but I think my mistake is I was looking for Scarbrough, and getting excited at the thought of lots of little horse racing games and one arm bandits with pictures of cherries on. Most of the machines don't take cash and you have to use your credit card or buy coupons. There isn't a single ledge in a glass case with a shelf of silver overhanging to roll 10p's in so I give in, since there isn't a single game here I understand.
Falling asleep to: I don't turn on the set, since the whole of Vegas feels like one giant TV

Toto, I don't think I'm in Blackpool anymore

2007-06-12T13:23:00.000-07:00

What it looks like: Vegas

So here I am in the land of bright lights, nervously chattering slots, man made waterfall and bridge after bridge. Inside the casino's take forever to navigate and it is Friday night 24/7. It is loud and so air conditioned inside the casinos in a footstep I go from a hairdryer on full type breeze to teeth rattling and goose bumps with the cold. Inside smells like freshly sliced orange and cigarette smoke, outside smells of bergamont and drains that don't get enough rain. The builders are everywhere, dust in the air. After the long journey we walk along the strip past boxes of free papers with girls on the front with stars where their breasts should be.

Little Darlings

Aisian and Young

Older women

'I'm new in town and learning to entertain.'

I wonder what I am doing wrong when the men push flyers for hookers into his hands. Do I look like a woman whose partner might need a hooker? Most definitely, probably. So this is Vegas I tell myself, as I sip a beer and it takes about an hour to get used to the lights and the constant din. A bit of time on the strip and we head back for a beer, and food, but the city has tricked us with time, and we are too late for dinner. The trouble with Friday nights twenty four seven is losing track of the time. The only place still open is Subway, and I remember the smell of the freshly baked subs on Chilli Road that have made me delirious for the past few slimming months. When I eat the foot long it is just a sandwich it seems. Not bad, but not as good as my food addled head has lead me to believe.

The next day we head out to see Vegas in the light, and walk past Stratosphere to a shop I've seen on the net. It is hot, the walk is long, through the arts district (could it be any other way?) Amazingly I don't buy the pantaloons I love in the shop where you have to pay to get in. When we get back to the hotel we go out again, the other way, and walk the full strip and back. When we get back we have walked about ten miles, and my feet wince whenever they make contact with the concrete. Some of the hotels I've seen in movies have been knocked down, instead I look at gold lions, a techni coloured New York, the eifel tower, Venice, waterfall and fountains dancing to the pink panther tune. The whole place is water everywhere and not a drop to drink, so much man attended to water your feet aren't allowed to paddle in, and you can't drink.

Locals speak randomly to me like I'm some odd species they must identify.

'Cowgirl, damn.'

'Cowgirl. Where you from? England? I love England.'

'You ever been?'

'No, but as soon as I get a vacation that's where I'm going. England, yup.'

'Photo's for tips, get your photo taken with Elvis, filthy degenerate Elvis.'

'I live in Florida, I've been here 12 times in the last 11 years. I only gamble 100 bucks a time. A guy came to me and said I'm starving give me a dollar for a meal, I told him there's a place over there does hotdogs for a buck I'll take you there and buy you one, but he said know. If you're starving you'd go, I said you just wanna the cash to gamble am I right? That's Vegas, a lot of people come here, they don't all go home.'

New food tried today: The heat has made me forget to eat properly.

Falling asleep to: The Dawg (a show about a bounty hunter who looks like a cross between Peter Stringfellow the beast from 80's show Beauty and the Beast, and his comically breasted wife.)

Bear Attack

2007-06-11T03:15:00.001-07:00

It's such a long drive, I eat sesame seeds, and try to take off the shells in my mouth with only my teeth. I can see how a cowboy could do this, without using his hands at all, the sort of man good at spinning a toothpick in his teeth, but it isn't happening for me. It gives me something to do, picking up the splintered shells.

I sit and flick through the leaflets I picked up in Mammoth as the dessert waves at me and the sun pretends.

LIVING WITH CALIFORNIA BEAR

I like the idea of being a woman who knows what to do when face to face to face with a bear, even though we are heading away from them. Nonetheless this is useful stuff I decide I need to know.

The leaflet says when face to face to with a bear:

Do not approach a bear, give it plenty of room.

If you come face to face with a bear

Do not run- You cannot outrun a bear, and running will trigger the bear's innate chase and hunt instinct.

If a bear approaches- Try to demonstrate to the bear that you may be a danger to it.

Make yourself BIG as possible. raise your arms, open your jacket

Make alot of noise, yell at the bear, and make as loud and threatening a sound as possible.

I sit in the car and try to imagine what i will do if a bear comes for me. I am a bit of a short arse, so the idea of me making myself big enough to scare a bear is impossible. Also I am no good at shouting, I can't imagine making a deep enough sound with my voice to sound ferocious to a bear. I sit in th car and practise growling. I wonder how big I can make myself be.

I practise every sound I have ever heard so see which would be most intimidating. I construct my bear facing personae. I decide that the scariest thing I can do to a bear is sing, when the bear comes I will start singing as loud as I can. Since I can't make myself very big I hold my arms above my head and dance, to the Tales of the Unexpected music. Me, la la la laing that old spooky music and dancing the Tales of the Unexpected Dance- that will be my stance. Maybe I will not appear scary to the bear in a conventional sense, but I might just be weird enough to freak it out. That is the plan.

VEGAS 100 miles

Viva Las Vegas

2007-06-11T03:11:00.000-07:00

Today we leave mammoth with no fuss. The air is changing, the smell of eucalyptus and pine disintegrating. Mammoth was pretty, but I won't miss its attitude too much. Snowboarders talking in coffee shops.

'No Trent Reznor is way knarlier than that.'
'My Mom has Johnny Cash on tape reading the bible.'
'He shouldn't have done that dude after the life he lived.'

I want to protest, but I am distracted by the news and a courtcase about a 9 year old girl who was abused and became pregnant. So much seems impossible I don't know what to think.

Mammoth is full of people who start fake coughing when they someone with a cigarette 100 feet away, surrounded by nothing but trees, and the whole thing irritates the hell out of me. I know alot people are offended by smoking. They are right; it is a horrible habit. But here it seems a little mean, when someone is standing near nobody with nothing but trees. Self important people, getting into gas guzzling hummers, not there to see me doing the universal symbol for wankermobile as they spew away.

The smell changes quite quickly, things heating up, cooling down as we head to death valley which smells like a melted wax crayon.

ELEVATION
4,000 ft

ELEVATION
2,000 ft

ELEVATION
5ft ABOVE SEA LEVEL

SEA LEVEL

Death Valley is as hot as they say, and somehow stunning in its emptiness. There is nothing around for miles, it is a long drive past desert, flat, Mud canyon, red dust and rocks, Joshua Tree and sand dunes. We stop at Stovepipe for more water, the man behind the counter is friendly as he looks at me.

'Where you from?'
'England'
'I had a girfriend from Carlisle once, she used to call me a useless article... Yeah, I felt like one too.'

With postcards in my hand I am gone. I remember I like Nevada, there is something down to earth about the people, no frills that I respond to, a down to earthness I guess that comes from having to wipe dust from your face everyday.
The air con is on, and the sat nav lady is quiet. She refused to come to Death valley with us. I sip my water with my feet on the seat, as the carrier bag rattles and I imagine all the snakes that could have stowed away when I left the car.

Moment to mention snakes, as an environment loving vegi I'm obligued to remind myself I love all living creatures. This is not strictly true, there are a few human beings we could all live without. There are also creatures, less so. Snakes are it. Now I know they don't feel cold or slimy,I remind myself of the time I held a boa constricter to overcome my fear, so i know what is true. I just don't like them though, I don't see the need for them. It is almost hatred, the way they have two sets of eyelids boils my blood, the way they move, everything. Anything that moves that way can only be evil. I sit in the car thinking of snakes and can almost feel them, again I miss the snakebite kit I didn't buy and moreso a rod with spike on the end.

Journey so far:
california, nevada, California, Nevada

We drive. Through Beatie a town that seems to be mostly trailer parks, and back into beyond. the desert is ganging up on us, mirages on the tarmac of silver pools to wash my feet, little lakes conjured and snatched away by the sun.

Viva Las Vegas. Elvis I'm trying, but the desert has somethingelse to say. The road keeps unspooling. I am on my way.

Ghosts

2007-06-09T04:10:00.001-07:00

Ghost Town

2007-06-09T03:58:00.000-07:00

We start the day by heading to the New York bagel company for breakfast, and sit trying to decide what to do. What we had planned was to go see devil's post pile monument and then drive to yosemite national park. Unfortunatley we forgot about snow, both roads are snowed off and impassable at this time of year, so need to make other plans. Nearby it seems people ski and snowboard to fill their days. I haven't brought those sort of clothes to give this a go, so we find the visitor centre, and flick through leaflets about local attractions surrounded by blue jays, chipmunk and squirel. We are watching the trees when we are surrounded by cops, three cop cars pulling up around the dodge, three officers stepping outwards us. We have to explain ourselves, what we are doing, where we are from, where we are heading before they will leave. It seems that the problem is that we are taking photo's of the trees, which is close to the park rangers station we didn't realise is a federal building.

Here pops another reminder of home, leaving san Fran I took notice of a sign towards Stockton, and here we pick up leaflets for a town called Bishop. Neither one tempts us to see their sights.

We drive past the unflinching Mono Lake, the blushing lilac mountain peering demurely in, and there isn't a photo I can take to do it justice again. We have decded on Bodie, a ghost town somewhere North.

'Turn left' she says.

We head down a road that says 30 miles an hour, but it is a road of orange dust and rocks, and we are never able to drive over five. I am beginning to wonder if this is a wild goose chase, but there is no turning the back, the road is too narrow, we are surrounded by dessert, steep drops, canyon faces and rocks. When we finally reach tarmac again he looks as if he would like some time alone with it, but that's Ok. There's already been some floor kissing of my own going on. In Bodie the mountains seem very far away, we are deep in the desert, with nothing around for miles. A town as people left it, buildings standing defiantly against the unflinching sky and wood curling into exotic blooms in the wind. It is sunny and hot, I get out the sun cream and he shakes his head. Later he will look like a man who tried to fly into the sun, with bright red markings on cheeks and chest the shape of a stencil of Santa Claus.

We stay in Bodie for a fair few hours, a whole town, evidence of lives lived, a population of 20,000 dwindling to 200 when the gold ran out, until only two dozen people remained. I wonder what it would have been like to be in the last dozen, what made them stay. I peer into windows at easy chairs still in place, wallpaper hanging by hope alone, peeling, curling into its own bouquets. Any minute someone could come home, people have been here, left something behind.

Back at the hotel it gets dark, we forget to buy dinner, and eat Reese's and nuts. I write postcards to try and name what I have seen.

New food today: Garlic bagel, reese's crispy crunch
Song in my head: been to the desert with a horse with no name- who was that by? Google seems very far away
Falling asleep to: A show about Folsam prison

mammoth

2007-06-08T03:04:00.000-07:00

Waking Time:5.30am

Today we leave Tahoe, heading down and into desert, and climbing back to snow, past canyons and orange and into the blue, past small clusters of buildings that seem to be closed and back into wide open space. On the way we stop a few time to look at views, and there isn't a wide enough les on my camera or a word to do them justice. The pale blue expanse of Mono Lake, full of salt deposits, closed as the inner eye of a snake.

The sign near the road says

SCENIC ROUTE

and points the other way. there is nothing for miles but lake and sky, and scenic do they want to get?

Finding Mammoth isn't a problem, but the sat nav lady doesn't recognise mountains, turn left she says, into a snow drift that used to be road.

Our hotel is high in the mountain, and my eyes are worn down stubs grown sore from being rubbed against so many stones. The hotel is quite pretty, antler chandeliers and high wooden beams, an open fire in the foyer and a rocking chair made of sticks. Val Doonican would have liked it here.

Everything looks as it should look but the staff at the hotel are a little snotty and unfriendly, and we are afraid to of the lack of prices on anything to venture into the restaurant for food. Instead we head down to town, California style, which looks like a parking lot dropped into the mountains with stores on the side- what do people actually do here? It is pizza or KFC, we settle for pizza, and eat, heading up the mountain in the dusk with out fingers crossed we don't get lost, and looking out for the coyote we saw sniffing outside.

What it looks like: A 70's Milk Tray ad, and I expect to see a man in black skiing down the mountain to leave chocolate on my window ledge anytime.

New Food tried today: Reese's granola bar

Warning: Coyote's may appear smaller than indicated by Warner's, and express no interest in ACME products.

Falling asleep to: Him videoing out of the window waiting for Coyote's

Virginia City

2007-06-07T01:40:00.000-07:00

Waking Time: 5.30am

In a slow blink I have gone from writing down mornings in seawashed pinky dawn to being a woman at a table inside a snowglobe. The whole town is abecoming a wedding cake as the snow continues to steadily fall, frays from an indifferent sky. The town is quiet and laid back, at the coffee place an American man speaks to me to comment on my boots.

'Are those things metal?'

'Yes they are.' I say something I can't remember about snow and he smiles.

After breakfast we take a short walk and and decide where to go. It is too cold to take a boat trip on the lake, so we decide to drive to Virginia City, a small town North east, one of the gold towns in the 1800's, with many of the original buildings intact. The drive is leisurely with views of the mountains and lake, down a hill and into a whole other world where the land is yellow, dry and bare. This really looks like America, which should be no surprise and yet it is. Dessert, cliff faces and drops, and the dust, and me starting to think about the snakebite kit I haven't bought yet. This looks like hard times, disused mining equipment rusting inresilient blue sky, homes with tin sign gardens and rockeries of bones. I am half expecting a man in long johns to appear with a gunand tell us to get of his land when we see a sign.

SEE THE FAMOUS SUICIDE TABLE

This tells us there should be people to see, and we are allowed to be here, though I wonder if this is a table tourists strap themselves to while blindfolded locals throw knives. The high street is a wave of wooden sidewalk, shop fronts and people stepping back in time. Inspite of the giftshops there is something here, a slow sun hanging on and the out of place brick church they couldn't put a price tag on.

Built: 1860

Burnt down: 1864

Rebuilt: 1868

The people in the shops are laid back and friendly,

'Howdy folks'

I put to one side a conversation I overheard.

'So that's what he said about guns. Can you believe it? I told him out here we kill people, that's just what we do.'

We stay longer than we need, just soaking it in. I like it here. There's no rush in gold town at all.

New food tried today: Chai spiced latte, sasparella

Verdict: No way can I make this, which is a shame.

Awkward moment: In Virginia city he heads over to a glass display case of rings, and asks me to try one on. I am feeling weird, embarrassed, shy and just in a situation out of my realm. What am I supposed to say or do? What is his motive? Is it right? This all seems hugely impractical- an 1860 ring from gold rush town, when each night we watch a 25 year old TV. I am thinking about etiquette, what is the right thing to do in this situation? More importantly why hasn't anybody told me it? What do girls do? I know women who would have no problem with this, women who'd take the ring, and be honest about the one they like. Women who'd go into Tiffany's without wondering if they are suitably dressed. These are the women who know ettiquette, they have rules, that a ring should cost a certain amount, that taking it is fine as long as it costs no more or less than a month's salary.

What I feel is different. I find it hard to take things, ask for or accept them. There is that practical bird on my shoulder squawking in my ear, 'for that kind of money you could buy a shower cubicle.' There is that nice girl who just doesn't like to be any trouble and wants to point him in the direction of the ring with a pricetag on he has ignored, which will only buy less essential bath mats to put outside the shower door. Then there is the me who has tiled the bathroom, stripped, filled the walls, painted over ten rooms. She hasn't worn any sort of jewellery in ten years and thinks it might be nice to be that sort of girl. But there is no one to tell me how to play out this scene, and which thought is correct so I mumble something about wanting coffee and we file out of the store with him trailing behind. After the coffee he says he wants to go back, but when we get there the store is closed. We drive back to Tahoe, part of me releived the decision has been taken from my hands, and part of me a little sad that I couldn't have been that girl who just knows how to act.

Falling asleep to: Spiderman.

(There is something in Toby I always believe.)

On the road

2007-06-06T10:00:00.001-07:00

Waking time:6am

Destination: Lake Tahoe, casino

What it looks nearest like: Twin Peaks

I start the day by walking to Pier 39, to say goodbye to the seals, and when I leave the hotel leave the maid her tip by the coffee machine. There is something about it that looks incomplete and for no reason I wish I could leave it tied in a pink ribbon under a white paper crane.

I haven't been looking forward to the driving bit, and the first part is the worst. We spend two hours just trying to get out of the city, so many one way streets, and trams and hills, and the sat nav woman keeping her lips stitched shut. By the time we make it onto Route 80 I am so happy I understand why the pope is so fond of kissing the floor. The sat nav has resumed her sweet nothings and he can't get enough. The terrain is changing once we are past Sacramento, climbing roads entwining the trees, pine looking on as the breeze tickles ancient chants from their bones. Past Jackson, log cabins. Forest, waterfall and Lake.

When we arrive in Tahoe he takes the sat nav box off the dash and kisses it. He has to keep his baby sweet. I am tired and starting to feel it, looking out of the window at the blue lights of the casino opposite and the reflections of fireworks behind us in the windows opposite filled with dark stone columns of people staring out. I've definetey looked better. I take a short walk, eat and take a bath. All day I look forward to taking off my shoes and looking at my feet.

New Food tried: Swordfish

Verdict: Turkey-fish

New food tried: California roll sushi

Verdict: Mm, can I make this?

Tahoe feels like a different country, without me realising we were ever leaving one.

Falling asleep to: Something on the Discovery Channel involving penguins and seals.

Out on the town

2007-06-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

Waking time: 5am

What it looks like: Vertigo, and something I haven't seen on TV

Yesterday we were lead to places we needed to see, safely tucked into a coach. Today we are on our own. The streets are still dark as I sit in an armchair in starbucks writing out days as if I can make them into something to take home.

6.20 am He passes by the window, marching, fag in hand. I have seen him without permission only once or twice before, always storming from A to B , and I wonder if the slow meandering he has to adopt to escort me gets on his nerves. I am slowing him down. Eventually we will find each other, there's plenty of time. The sun is shining, and the bay is a jealous eye as the sun hits my face and we wait for the tram. I'm not in a hurry, I'm starting to think I am finally here. We take the tram and walk down into China town, which is crowded pinks blues and greens, old Chinese ladies navigating the streets with tennis balled feet. The place is chocked with corners, satin showing off cherry blossom and dragonfly, and myseerious mushrooms cursing the sun. From here we head to North Beach and City Lights Bookstore, not far but a million miles from t-shirts like bunting drying on fire escape, the sounds of defenceless chickens and what looks like a dead griffin in a window, plucked of scales.

Next we walk the financial district to market street for a bus to the bottom of Haight. For what seems forever we walk up the hill past Victorian homes that turn into shops stacked with incense. Tie-die, handmade paper, vegan cafes with psychedelic fronts. The whole area is buzzing, and I remember back home for a moment when I wonder if they asked Pete Mortimer to help decorate. It takes a good few hours to do Upper haight properly. I am lured into Vintage clothes shops with the promise of wearingf someonelse's shoes, while he camps in an old bowling alley come record store where he'd be happy all day. We sit in Golden gate Park and watch people file past, hippies, skaters, rappers, all sorts of kids and people, and don't worry about where we fit in.

At about 8 the sunburn on our faces and the pistons in our calves make their presence felt and we head back to the hotel to drop off bags and get something to eat. We are warm, aching, but accomplished feeling. We searched out places for ourselves and found our way back.

Tomorrow we leave. I will remember a song from the bus.

'I left my heart in San Fransisco.'

Maybe. Just a small chip, crumbling into the dust of the rock.

Weather: Hot, bright, but nice like the best of an English summer.

New Food tried: Red Snapper

Verdict: Bit too much like cod to be worth the extra dosh

Falling asleep to: Dusk till Dawn

The streets of san fransisco

2007-06-01T03:17:00.000-07:00

The Streets of San Fransisco

Waking time:5.30am

I start the day with coffee at Starbucks, but my body believes it's midday. (Starbucks is my guilty secret, I want to not go there, ever. The idea of it, all those people working for Starbucks is something I disapprove it- but my tastebuds are good at ignoring my conscience and want their latte, I am good at ignoring them. I allowed myself one last at Christmas, for the first time in months.) Starbucks is alot cheaper here, and I am glad I am not on the diet till I'm back. Last night I dreamt about a baby duckling that wouldn't eat, as much as everyone tried to feed it it just would take nothing in. there was only me it would accept the feeding from, and even then only by me breaking up small pieces of cereal, wetting them and mushing them into my arm where it would suck them from the wool of my cardigan. But now is breakfast time, and not a baked bean in sight, we stock up on a big American breakfast incase we don't see food again. I am trying to figure out how when I get home I can make fat free hashbrowns and eat as many of them as I like (I think there's a way.) I can hardly move by the time I've eaten my vegi omelette and sour toast, just as well. There isn't time for lunch.

10am and a coach picks us up, to take us on the one sigh-seeing excursion we have booked. We start with Alcatraz, and take a boat over to the island. The sky is heavy and the wind is cold, and this seems fitting. For some reason I don't want my Alcatraz photo's to depict a sunny day, it wouldn't seem right. There is a lot I could say about Alcatraz, but I am still thinking about it.

Seniorita on the boat,
embraces Elmo
all the way to Alcatraz.

The tour takes a few hours to take it in, and is without exception the best sight I have seen. The way it is organised feels just right, each visitor walks the spaces with a headset with an explanatory audio on it, and this feels right, a private public space unbrightened by cheery tour guides. I am not someone who believes in doing the same holiday more than once, if if I am ever on this coast again I will certainly see Alcatraz again. On the way back the birds are everywhere, seagulls play chicken with the ferry and I watch the rock get smaller all the way back to land. There isn't time to take it what I have seen, or decide what I think.

Skirt making polka waves.
A shivering girl directing
a telescope at the rock

2.00pm We meet the coach once again, and head out on the bus tour of San Fransisco, up to Twin peaks to see the city from a height, it's lego shapes and clicks where one building seems to slot so easily into another without people getting in the way. Next the Golden Gate Bridge, Pacific Heights, presidio and it's multi million dollar homes, round to China Town, the banker's heart statue of pure stone (which I am surprised they actually put outside a bank in the financial district), union square, castro , back round to Fisherman's wharf. Slopes, twists, hydrangea everywhere, rainbow flags while the painted ladies stand firm in their majesty and no one goes to see their peeling paint round the back. There was a lot to take in. A few things surprised me.

How could I have forgotten about the earthquake?

In the hottest part of summer the city is covered in fog.

Property is even more expensive than Jesmond.

Homes are taxed on what you paid for them. (Surely this makes the old rich and young families poor?)

Just like Jesmond, there is no place to park, and no back gardens for all your bucks.

Bag lady smells
hydrangea. Mickey Mouse
strapped to trolley sails away.

I've always wondered about people who live in climates with extreme weather- people who wait for volcano's and earthquakes to take away their way. I'd watch and wonder- what makes people stay? Lots of things I guess, like anythingelse, family, friends, work, habit. I seem to have some sense of fairness about weather, an oh well, if it's beautiful weather everyday, an earthquake every 20 years in the price that is paid, and people take their chances for all those good days. But if it's foggy in the heart of summer- where's the pay off for the risk? It's an odd one. Otis Reading isn't here to ask questions to, but I imagine he knew, sitting on the bay and watching the ships going in and out again.

6pm The rain comes and we walk along to Pier 39. the seals are sleeping with only the small ones bickering and competing with Disneyland; they have something to prove. The rain seeps in and we buy clam chowder and beer at 10 to take back to the room.

New Food Today: Clam chowder (served in a bowl of sourdough)

Verdict: Perfect, as no long as no one is watching you eat the last lap.

Falling asleep to: A show where people pretend to be minors on the internet and then the crew goes to film the men going to meet who they thought was a 14 year old girl flirting with them.

Verdict: Is this entertainment? What have we become?

Am i there yet?

2007-05-31T13:01:00.001-07:00

Am I there yet?

Arrival: 2.30pm local time.

Travelling is such a process, a series of them. I don't mind most of them, the non time of flight time seems like a necessary thing to clear way in your head for new things. The next bit is always my least favourite part, that waiting and queuing to get into the country. As sson as the plane has landed I am aware that my leaving section is over, and now I am here, and tapping my fingers about the not quite here yet parts that follow. The security getting in is as bad as I expected. I wonder if there was ever some nice easy going guy who was fired from airport security for having a face that can't help but contain a smile. Amazingly nerves did not kick in, and I didn't blurt out 'I have a shit load of of meat and veg in my bag and a fake moustache.'

Collect car : 5pm

The car we are given is a white dodge calibre. Already I am quoting a line from one of my poems in my head.

'When the old dodge pulls in at ten on the dot

I look at my watch'

I am happy at the coincidence. After 12 hours of being given things we emerge out of our childlike state and are behind the wheel, lurching and blinking into the daylight as we leave the parking lot with the parking brake still on. I am crossing my fingers, making my signature with my hand to tell left from right as I sit on the wrong side, and wonder if I will have to right L and R on the back of my hands like on the toes of the sandshoes I had when I was young, afterall I am learning, back to square on again.

The sat nav woman is clear as a bell.

'Keep right'

I wonder why the voices of computers are always women and American.

On the way to the hotel there is one wrong turn, and we detour into a neighbourhood of baby blue clad houses with peachy windows and American flags on the lawn. Lemon trees. I am looking at everything, waiting for it to tell me something. It is sunny with a cool breeze not yelling instructing flags how to react.

I do not sing Are we going to San Fransisco like I have been for a month. He is looking straight ahead, listening to the satellite woman, and there is nothing I have as important as what she has to say.

'Keep left'

She always knows where she is going, her voice clean as a chip. He is hanging on her every word.

'Keep right'

'Areet pet nee bother, don't you worry about that.'

I do not think Ms sat would appreciate being called pet in the slightest. She is making him nervous when she withholds her voice.

'I worry she just shuts up when I do anything wrong.'

6pm We arrive at Holiday Inn, Fisherman's Wharf, and take a walk out along the wharf, past Fish vendors, Alcatraz reject t-shirts, show globes filled with tiny bridges flashing from shop doorways, and a man who has had somebody pimp his hat as he slides along to a Jamariqui soundtrack. The first place we stop is an Irish bar for a beer, this isn't deliberate, we are waiting to realise we are here. A woman opposite eats overcooked bangers and mash and I want to take the glass of red wine from her hand and replace it with a bottle of brown ale.

There are homeless people everywhere, but they are all very quiet, as we walk by none of them say a word and none of them are holding signs.

The weather is a little chilly, the sky is gathering speed. This is San Fransisco, but as we walk it takes me to slot in pockets of Whitley Bay and Saltburn. I am feeling the cold slightly, and the cardigan I didn't pack nags me from the post of my bed about being placed in the case and taken out again. I think about the advice of a song I didn't heed.

'Hates California it's so cold and it's damp'.

Is this why the lady is a tramp?

The homeless lady who stops us for a cigarette is very polite, in a cowboy hat. Her legs more tanned than my thickest pair of tights.

'You're from England? My brother lives in Paris' she says, then her trolley is rolling away, and she is gone.

'Have a nice day.'

It is time to eat, in England dinner is long gone and the other me is sitting in bed while everyone sleeps watching My name is Earl. We head for the crabshack, and spend a good length of time discussing what is right and nice to tip. What I keep asking is are we really here?

On the way back to the hotel we are collared by the comedy police, for not smiling, enough and he is cited for not holding my hand because I'm 'too cute.' He is actually a charity mugger, but it's a novel approach, we give him some money and I look at the sticker he gives me as I walk away. It is yellow as warning sign, capital letters.

ARE
WE HAVING
FUN YET?

I am not not having fun, but it is hard to say since part of me doesn't know I am here.

First Impressions: The streets of San fransisco are very clean indeed, and everywhere there is neatly pruned shrubbery.

Weather: Closing in a bit, slightly chilly

New Food tried today: Malibu Shrimp. Bud Light.

Falling asleep in the hotel to: Pimp My Ride.

Home

2007-04-10T16:49:00.000-07:00

Hello. I'm so glad to be back here. My PC went to pot and on it were all my saved passwords and things, when it came back from repair all my bookmarks with them on were gone. I spent months trying to get back in, typing every name I ever heard in the vain hope it would be a password. It wasn't. I've been cheating on this lovely trusty blog with myspace. I didn't mean to. I just got trapped in a world of emoticons, but sometimes there isn't a round yellow face that matches the one I have.

Writing wise there have been a couple of small developments, in terms of feedback from the outside world. One of these was a promise award from New Writing North, another was Ragged Raven published my pigs sequence, and Dreamcatcher are going to publish a long poem I have in the new book called One thing. It is probably my favourite poem in the entire book. It took me ages to write, to build up to write it, and when i had the first draft down I was exhausted. I've been back to it since and worked on it, and I have never disliked it (which is unusual, at some stage I'll hate all poems, then I'll forget about them, or work them and like them abit more.) I was pleased someone liked this poem, as I knew it isn't a cosy poem that everyone will like (it was read at a poetry gathering once and no one said a word about it!)

On the inner writing world I settled on a title for the book, which is Strip. Nobody at all disliked it. Nobody was scared or elated. This is a worry ( of course I worry people will feel nothing about the poems either. ) On the other hand, at least it is a title that won't put people off before they even see a word of poem.

Other than writing everything is changing. Even I'm changing. (I've lost nearly 3 stone since September. They gave me a little sticker and a badge and everything. I've become one of those people now who goes and asks for everything to be made with skimmed milk, I walk past Starbucks and the lure of caramel coffee. I've even eaten fruit, found out what quark is, dabbled with particle board impersonating crackers.) The whole thing seemed to come with Luan visiting me last year. She encouraged me about losing weight, and told me off for wearing men's jeans and boxer shorts. She was right, they did nothing for me at all. They made me feel as bad as I looked, maybe worse. Losing weight is a surface thing, but it comes from somewhere else, a desire for change, discovery, resurfacing in a different light. With the weight loss came more superficial changes, having to wear different clothes because nothing fit. But more than that, wanting to wear different clothes, and things that fit, for the first time in a longtime. I had key moments of feeling good- one was getting into a suit I bought 7 years ago, wore once, then it no longer fit me. I always loved that suit, it looked like who I wished I was. The next was fitting into a dress I wore once 13 years ago, a vintage dress I just loved. Next I fit into a 60's dress I wore once when I was 20- no I won't wear it now, but it was a good feeling.

I've been looking around thinking what next? Next is to work on my confidence. I'm trying, but I'm not sure how to begin. In asking myself questions came a realisation of being too much a creature of habit, safe world indoors, working in the house and being practical all the time. Some is good, most even. What I did about this was book a holiday. I couldn't believe I did this myself, sure I'd been saying I should for years, all the more reason not to believe me. I booked a holiday and had to keep quiet about it for a month. I hid the tickets in a pair of socks and wrapped them up and gave them to my boyfriend for Christmas. (Yes, it was one of those presents that is of partial benefit to the giver, like when you get him a Nick Cave cd or aftershave or that minty foot lotion, but I thought about it and figured it was OK. He hasn't had a holiday, other than camping last year, for nearly eight years.) I didn't know I could book a holiday. I didn't know I couldn't keep a surprise either. It wasn't like me at all, but it felt great.

So this year I have thrown all my mumu's away and I am going on holiday. I'm doing what everyonelse does, and might actually find I have fun. I've acquired some vintage dresses and red sparkly shoes that are hugely impractical, but I think that's OK since I always carry a screwdriver, a bandaid and a torch in my bag.

Titles

2007-02-16T03:55:00.000-08:00

The book is plodding along. I am changing poems and am quite often left thinking this poem is no better or worse for the changes I have made- does this mean I should still change them? Alot of tinkering and time to have something a line shorter, not because the line was necessarily rubbish, just because it isn't essential. I do have to still change them, I know, but it's less fun when the poem is no better for it. I'm providing breaks from editing and sorting by writing in a notebook and writing odd little poems that have no purpose. They are a welcome break though sometimes.

Mostly I'm title obsessed. The last title was just right. This book hasn't found one for itself.
I've tried brainstorming words, looking through poems for lines, going on the net and looking up keywords for things in the collection- it's endless.

Anyway current titles under consideration are:

Strip

(I like the one wordness of this, any connotations are by the reader rather than me. I like that it refers to an act in the book, but also the stripping away of glamour to find real lives, and film strip notion that suits the work.)

Fistful of Blondes

( I like the slight violence of this and the movie connotation. Unfortunately I've heard two negative comments on this one- one being that it reminds you of Margi Clarke and her movie Blonde Fist, another that it reminds someone of bad puns like a rolling stones tribute band and Mick dagger's girlfriend Marianna Fistful. I was just thinking movie reference and stuff.)

Showing Pink

(I liked this in that it refers to the act but also how the poems are really looking at images of women, but I am scared of this title. I am scared it will put more people off reading the book than make them interested, and will alienate male readers and less brave women ones too. I know with any title there is this consideration, and that realistically not many people read poetry anyway, but I would like this work to be given a chance before it is dismissed somehow.)

Heartbreakers

There is a poem that refers to a heartbreaker tattoo, called Heartbreak Motel. But that's about all I can say about this one.

Then there were just a bunch of titles that can from the same sort of place, which I'm also considering.

The Gentleman's Club

(sounds nice, but i dislike how the focus is on men here when women are the focus of the book.)

The Pussycat Lounge (or Dancing at the Pussycat Lounge)

Eye Candy

The Porcelain Dollhouse

(What I liked about this is that in addition to being the name of a strip club it had the conotation of showing and also childhood, the construction of femininity somehow- which the poems are concerned with.)

I looked up the names of strip clubs- I want to go to one actually as research (but I don't know anybody who will come with me) enjoyed the array of names. Cherries, Sugar doll's, Heartbreakers, Baby Dolls, Centrefold Palace, Centrefold Lounge, Little Darlings, Eye Candy, Pussycat Lounge, Pink lady, Peelers, America's Dollhouse, to name but a few- any of these could of been a title, but which? And what do I have to add to it?

I've looked about for slang as to what beautiful girls are referred to, but haven't hit gold. (No way am I calling this thing Beavers for fucksake.)

Then I'm thinking of Marilyn and would quite like include her somehow, but can't find a way.

Proper writers never tell you about having problems with titles! I haven't heard from my publisher in a fair few months, and part of me wants to give up, and let them give it a title- but wouldn't that be like having a baby and opening the yellow pages and using a pin to give it a name? Just can't do it.

People keep saying it will come when I'm not thinking about it, but I can't stop thinking about it.
Aaaaaaaaaaargh! Women. What do people say about them, what do people call them, beauty and blondes- how can I capture all that?

Going nuts with the thinking about it, so here is a picture of me as a squash, if you pick me up my eyes jiggle back and forth.

To do List

2007-01-29T05:44:00.000-08:00

I want to clear everything out again. Everything is looking decidedly pokey. I want to sort through everything and give things to the charity shop. I want to find a place for everything, but it seems impossible. I find myself sitting on steps, knees to my chest in doorways, neither in nor out, looking in for things to throw away. But this feeling is premature. It isn't that long since I did this, sorted through clothes and got rid of loads. Rearranged everything so I could fit in.
I think it is an overspill from sorting through poems, editing, re-working, looking again, and I'm doing this almost everywhere. I find myself wanting to put useful but critical post-it notes everywhere I go- on the neighbours fencepost 'This is looking dry and could do with a coat of creosote','If you shut your back gate it looks more like you are home', on the kettle at my friends house 'If you moved the mugs from the bottom cupboard it would be easier on your back. You could make a cuppa in 50 per cent less moves'. I want to do this all around the house- cover the place in question marks on bits of paper, problems of everyday life to be solved- what is a good method for storing ties?, where should gloves and scarves go?, how do you stop tights tying eachother into one great big ball? Mostly, what will this collection be called? What is missing? What still needs writing, what must go?

Everything does look dog-eared. I think the real reason is the lack of light, it's been a blah sort of winter, no snow to brighten things up. I miss snow. Last week I walked round to slimming world and it was snowing. The sky was busy but everything was quiet. People scurried indoors. When I came out the meeting it was gone. Is this it? When I opened the curtains next morning I felt excited. The snow would be waiting. It was like opening a present wrapped in sparkly paper and finding only an empty box inside when the snow was a no show. When I was younger I never liked snow. I remembered the ordeal it was at school, how the big boys would pelt you with showballs on the way to school. Snow their hands had rubbed into ice, snow that left red marks on your skin and slithered down your spine. Your eyes would water. Your hands turned to marble, as you ran, ran, and when you couldn't run anymore found a vestibule and curled into a ball till the boys got bored. As a young adult I was practical. With snow comes caution, the wearing of less pretty shoes, the zipping into woollies. I lived in a damp flat, hunched by a little electric fire. How was I supposed to get these wet things dry? The snow slid from the roof in sweeps. I could see my breath and windows wept.

I was too busy being practical to look at the snow. I've changed somewhere. I don't know when. I'm still practical, when I'm not looking out the window and waiting for the snow.

Hello

2007-01-20T17:40:00.000-08:00

To everyone I've met before but didn't have the balls to go up and speak to at Winter Babies - Hello.

That's all I want to say, that and a smile.

Coming out the closet

2007-01-05T05:01:00.000-08:00

So 2007 is here, we knew it was coming. What's so important is the possibility of a fresh start somehow, the chance to do those things we meant to and didn't get round to, the chance to be slightly better somehow. We can do this anytime, but sometimes need a new calender to remind us to think about it again. It's like that feeling when you are at school and you reach the end of your exercise book, can't wait for the new one so you can write more neatly, and for the first few pages there are no mistakes.

I think I've already laid the groundwork, spent a great deal of 2006 thinking about things that aren't quite as they should be, and wondering how this can change. I decided I didn't know how to have fun anymore (I thought I did, but just drinking a few beers I realised isn't the same.) I am too shy, too awkward, find it hard to open up, to string a sentence together and talk to strangers (and sometimes friends.) The result was that people found me aloof, arrogant, distant or just a miserable twat. I think for years I blamed people for this, but it would have been simple to set them right, make them reconsider at least with a bit of conversation or a smile. If I don't give them anything to go on what do I expect? These aren't things I can change overnight, it takes a lifetime to make you shy and doubt what you have to say will be of interest to anyone, but I am trying. I am blogging, being open- it's a start.

I realised you don't automatically become self important, a show-off, insensitive or attention stealing by just being visible. I have been the invisible woman in so many ways, not saying things, hunching into nothing, giving off an air of being sorry for breathing your air. Sometimes invisibility is something that is done to me, most times I do it to myself. I don't want to be overly visible, I just don't want to come back from every social event feeling misunderstood and pissed off with myself that I really would have liked to speak to so and so, and ask them about that poem, but in the end decided they wouldn't be interested. I need to give myself a chance, by not doing so I'm not giving much chance to other people either. This is something I'm going to work on in 2007. My main resolution is that I'm just going to be kinder to myself. I don't have to love myself, not entirely, but I don't have to flush my head down the bog and steal my lunch money either.

So, in the interests of self improvement and less apology, this is a photo of me on New years Eve. Someone messaged me recently and mentioned a photo of me they had seen on the web- and I realised, that for all my careful exclusion of photo's, if people are curious about what you look like they can find them out there. I had my entire website done without a single one, which seems a bit unusual. I want to say this is purely because I have strong opinions about writers being judged exclusively on their work, not their appearance (I do think this, but that's not all.) The truth is I was just hiding, and I was being mean to every photo I considered- 'too fat', 'too miserable looking', 'too weird looking', 'too ugly'- the list goes on. The fact is people seem to like to put a face to a voice. I look at photos of writers and think they look quite laid back, like their work, or this person looks very outdoorsy; they must write on their mountain bike. That's about it. It's rare for me to look at a photo and think what a twat, and if it was an awful photo would it stop me reading the work? Not really.

So happy New year.
This is me, putting on the slap, about to step through the mirror.

2006-12-27T18:45:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-20T04:26:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-19T16:53:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-19T16:18:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-14T05:53:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-14T04:35:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-11-17T03:56:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-10T08:41:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

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

2006-10-21T04:47:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-12T02:52:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-02T09:52:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-28T05:33:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-25T06:32:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-23T17:08:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-09-19T07:50:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-19T07:12:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-10T17:22:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-02T17:15:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-31T17:36:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-08-13T06:44:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-13T04:36:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-17T03:33:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-11T03:41:00.000-07:00

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.

The Happiest Day of the Year

2006-06-09T05:46:00.000-07:00

I am staying away from my blog for a little while, I started to worry that it is turning into Eeyore's ponderings. I did have one rejection that at least told me their favourite of the ones I sent, which I actually felt was the least interesting poem I sent (though perhaps the only one that could have been written by somebody alot older than myself.) So who knows?

Last week I have been doing some research by reading two biographies about the same person, and listening to Paul Summers Home in three bits CD, which is brilliant, and a real example of what can (and should more often) be done in the presentation of poetry which can appeal to a wider audience. This week I have been writing poems inspired by what I read, and have ended up with a few poems which i think surprised me. I expected to be writing about the woman the biogs are about , and ended up writing a fair deal about a man in her life and the players who weren't there except in the back of her mind I suppose. So much of who we are is by what we compare ourselves to and struggle against, that I suppose this was inevitable, but it wasn't what I thought I'd be writing about until I sat down and wrote.

Anyway, as Marilyn said everyone likes a happy girl, and I don't want to Eeyore you, so I am going to stay quiet until I have something more positive to say, till the recjections are all in (or cease to mean anything).

Extract

2006-05-29T05:44:00.000-07:00

Extract from a poem

The leaves quiver an elderly hand,
so slight I need to adjust my eyes.
Rustle of breeze like a prom dress
being tucked into a car,
hum of tractor far away
as Mom's hoover at the foot of the stairs.

I saw a picture of sunflowers once,
a swirl of sky so angry you knew it cared.
There is just this, warm, light.
With my eyes half-shut
I have learnt to be my own Van Gogh.

Rainy Bank Holiday

2006-05-29T05:33:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a dream that my tongue was involved in some sort of accident with a fishing rod, and I had to live without a tongue- couldn't speak, taste a thing, and it made me quite depressed in the dream. I woke up, couldn't get back to sleep right away, and later dreamt that I had a butterfly in a jar, it was an amzing thing, I had caught and wanted to show to someone before I released it, but I was in my old school and none of my schoolmates would look at it.

This morning I woke up to another rejection from a poetry magazine, the bog standard variety. One of the poems I sent is probably one of the best I've ever written, or at least that's how I feel about it. The problem with sending to mags is the ability to hold on to how you feel about your work is threatened, maybe this can sometimes be a good thing. It was a sad poem, not neutral feeling at all, and I am wondering if this is a problem. Seems emotion in alot of work magazines favour can be a liability, and not something that can be harnessed. All day today I am clashing my tongue against the back of my teeth to see it is still there, wondering if I make a sound- and if it exists if no one hears it.

The proper poets

2006-05-28T04:39:00.001-07:00

This week I have been working on how to approach the life of a Cheesecake pin-up model in poetry form. There has been a problem getting into it, because I have found so much contradictory information about her life. The question is who do I beleive, and having to decide which side I will take somehow. In the end I wrote a poem in which I described one event twice, projecting both versions of events, which seeemed more interesting than I imagined, in questioning what truth is, how memory is constructed. Perhaps both versions of events are reliant upon eachother to exist. Really I should have been writing prose this week, but the research I had done was pressing upon me to make a commitment and decide how I would tackle it. I wanted to tie up poetry loose ends before delving into prose because I always feel with prose I never know how long it will take. I don't with a poem, but at least a draft is in sight.

Also this week I went to two poetry events. The first was a reading by Paul Batchelor and W.N Herbert at Newcastle University. I was uncertain about going to this event, I think because it was at the university, and because it was required to book a place to attend (I worry that events which do this potentially exclude people who may not know if they can attend until on the night itself, or people like myself who can't speak on the phone.) I am sort of very wrong at the uni, the room was full of academics and proper poets, lots of people who don't know me, and lots of people who have met me once or twice but don't really want to speak to me (just as well, I am even more useless in this context and sort of hear my voice bleat useless hello's, but am too intimidated to have anything else to say.) (OK, a quick diversion to describe what I mean by proper poets, I think this is something I need to think about. I suppose the term refers to people I consider to be serious poets somehow, either by the content of their work or by the fact that they are recognised, known and respected as poets. Proper poets leave me feeling somehow improper I suppose, somehow inferior because of the things I write about maybe, but also because I'm not there. I am not a hobbyist with my poetry, as it is something I am passionate about, but somehow respectable poets leave me feeling like a poet YTS.)

This event was really packed out, literally every man and his dog (the proper poets can really rake them in.) There was a good mix of men and women in the audience, which was unusual. (Last month there was a reading by female poets and the audience was exclusively female (this doesn't beg the question to me, it screams it- what lies at the heart of this? It seems to indicate that women who like poetry are interested in hearing it whatever its source, but this does not seem to apply the other way around. I refuse to accept that male poetry lovers are somehow more discerning, or that the quality of poetry by women is generally inferior to that by men. I am still thinking about this, and have noted that when I have seen lists of poets favourite poets it is very very rare for female poets to be included on the lists of men. Is it just me who finds this insulting?)

Batchelor read from his new pamphlet To photograph a Snow Crystal (everyone knows this is a poet on the rise, and I mean this in an actual way, not in how we usually use this term to talk kindly about poets who aren't yet known, so I won't go into the quality of his poems- we all know it, since the poems are a competition winner.) I almost feel as if some poets are a different type of species to myself, perhaps because of the quality and content of the work, and I feel ill-equipped to venture my opinion when the poets are academics. Batchelor's poems are very clean and precise, at their best they are like a crystal through which we can see the real nature of light. My favourite poems in the pamphlet are those which illuminate specific details of real life (sometimes the ordinary becoming extraordinary, as in Butterwell, a poem which is not in the pamphlet which the poet ended the reading on, in which the simple act of his father returning from work is transformed.) The poems are controlled, almost scientific, but if the poems are a science they are a science of the human condition, providing space for thought. My favourite poems in the pamphlet are those which seem somehow haunting, almost lonely.

' A day
with nothing to say for itself, and morning
making light of it. Who in the world
might she have been? You draw the blinds
& turn back to the bed as one
by one the panes fill up with snow.'

(from Snow, To Photograph a Snow Crystal- Paul Batchelor)

In contrast to some of the poems I was surprised at the humour, and humanity of his introductions to poems. Like I said, this is an event of a whole different poetry species ( the respected poets) so I didn't expect humour and honesty at an event at the university (don't ask me why, something to do with my own fear that middle class/academic people are somehow robots, I am prepared to accept that many of them may not be, but they usually have to demonstrate otherwise somehow first!) Batchelor seemed to create an atmosphere of inclusivity for the audience by allowing chinks of humanity to be glimpsed in his introductions to the poems. (I think introducing a poem well is a skill that isn't thought about too much, the danger of saying too much or negating the poem is always present, and the tendency to say too little is there. What I actually realised is that audiences do like to hear little bits to create the illusion that they know the poet a little, that he/she is sharing something of themselves with them. This is something I need to work on, since I have the feeling that the less I can share of myself the better, as I hope the poems are alot more interesting than I am.) There was a comfort in hearing Batchelor's mother said she ' liked this poem, it reminded her Ruby don't take your love to town, by Kenny Rogers', and it was this sort of revelation that was surprising in the midst of (some of) the poems.

W.N Herbert read following Batchelor, and I was again surprised at the energy he put into presenting his work, and the inclusion of humour in the poems and the presentation of them. I haven't seen this poet read before, and he wasn't as I imagined him to be at all. The audience lapped it up. The only thing that I was slightly disappointed by perhaps is that although the poems were presented in a very confident and engaging fashion, there was less of that illusion of the poet revealing something of himself to the audience, and I was left wondering what this poet may actually be like really under all of this. The advantage of this of course could be the creation of intrigue. I will certainly be reading more W.N Herbert in the future, not only because it was of a high standard (like I said why go there? since this is a uni event and a Bloodaxe poet we knew that) but perhaps because I want to see if there is any sense of who this poet really is to be gleamed from inspection of the poems.

The following night I went to Colpitts in Durham, to see Jackie Litherland read from her new book The Work of the Wind (I really can't wait to read this book from cover to cover.) This was another extremely well attended event, and I suppose another situation in which I am uncomfortable in. (What I discovered from the two events being in sucession was that people's reaction to seeing me at events is to say 'I haven't seen you in a long time. are you alright?' This really surprises me since I do go to a fair few events, not every event granted (or there wouldn't be time to write, or do those pesky things that need doing in life to ensure free head space for writing time- in my case, at this time of year re-potting plants, and sorting through rooms with binbags of things for the charity shop, things for recycling, things that will get in the way when I have to gloss the skirters.) (Perhaps people say this because they just don't know what to say to me, because after all these years I've still never managed to have a conservation with any of them beyond how is work?) Jackie Litherland's reading was amazing in so many ways, the sheer volume of work in this book is intimidating in alot of ways (the fact that there are 60 sonnets in the book is something that makes me realise how far I have to go.) The poems are lyrical, sad, and at times funny, but always ferocious with life, and she defly combines all these elements in deeply personal poems which never contain an ounce of self pity, bitterness, or anger. What the poems do is present loss, grief, the ordinary things that become extraordinary in everyday life, and most of all love, a very human tenderness is in these poems, and we see love, relationships that are sometimes mundane, predictable but always magical. This is a love that is sometimes full of holes that have had to be darned again and again in different ways, the poems show this working, love happening between different people negotiating who they are and what is there everyday. I felt extremely moved at the reading to hear poems about her father, poems about alcoholism, life and grief. I forgot about class, and didn't care, the poems seemed so specific and yet universal. I forgot how uncomfortable I was, how I didn't fit right, how I hate my hands and couldn't seem to hide them, and was transported by the poems. A poem which was a celebratory tide of a baby forming cyllables on the beach seemed to demonstrate the remarkable skills of this poet, a subject which could so easily become sentimental and be difficult to tackle in a poem flowed effortlessly, beautifully, a celebration. This was truly an inspiring night, a humbling night, and something that has made me think about how there are still things I've never been able to write about to any satisfaction, and perhaps never will.

Holy smoke

2006-05-19T07:17:00.000-07:00

Having an odd week, after such a good week last week with the writing of poems about pigs. I've just returned from a few days away in Holy Island , a writing retreat with some poetry colleagues. Came back feeling? Odd. That's about the only word. I haven't stayed on Holy Island before, and the place is so different to anything I've experienced before, it is such a beautiful place, and I went expecting the isolation. What I didn't expect was that because the island is so small you can never really be alone, you go for a walk and there is always someone everywere you go, strangers. It is a quiet place were I seemed unbareably loud, the jangle of change in my pocket, the buckles of my boots, I felt invisible in many ways when I was there, and yet almost wanted to be because the place demands it. Travel is a funny thing, you start to think too much, because there is no one there who knows you, about who you are really, and it seems a difficult question to answer. We are all so constructed by the people around us, what they see, what they reflect back to us, that being away makes you wonder what is really there, wonder if there's anything at all. All around the island there are notices, signs to make you aware of things that could happen, intructions: Beware of falling rocks,
We are not a cafe,
Naturally occurring poisonous algae,
a strange feeling of an awareness of visitors the islanders don't want to bother with. I have quite a high threshold of being able to be alone, but this feeling of not quite being alone is new to me, and something that made me an unwelcome visitor in my own skin.

As well as the physical aloneness I suppose there was that awful feeling of being misconstued, things you have said that have been re constructed by interpretation, which make you feel invisible in a more sad sort of way. I sat around worrying about not being entertaining, about being quiet, about people thinking I was not really there and engaging with them, and it was a feeling of being exposed I suppose, of people discovering the parts of you that are worried about on a bad day- what if I'm boring, silly,no good at it all, what if I just have nothing to say? I wanted to have jokes, to wear them like a mask and nothing would come. I just felt quiet, as if I was thinking about things I couldn't identify yet. In terms of the writing I took scattered notes and that's all, and I realised that my process has changed. I used to be a workshop poet, could write something there and then and have something to show. For some reason I'm not like that anymore (mostly those workshop poems could never be used again anyway, maybe 1 in 10) , something has changed and i'd be interested to know why. I just take notes now, the odd line, which I have to put away and return to, and be at my desk to sort out. To see the poems typed as I make them seems essential, for the spacial awareness. If I was to describe now the way I used to write I'd say it was like making a stir fry,so many colours, a little flash tumbling into one another, now it is more of a casserole, plainer but needs to simmer for so long. I didn't know this about myself, I think something about being given the time to spend on my writing may have something to do with it, I can approach everything alot more slowly,have more time to think. I didn't see that I am working in a different way, and just sort of needed time to process the things I had thought about there. When I came home I was able to process all those odd little notes more I think, and have written two poems (one of them quite long, one short.) I am saying this stupidly, as if size matters, and maybe sometimes with me it does, most of my favourite poems are quite short, but when it comes to my own work I somehow feel more justified to myself if I have produced more lines (which is just so wrong, and something I hope will go if I can gain more confidence in my abilities.)

The whole experience was interesting. The negative thing about it was thinking too much, being faced with my own limitations, and wondering if my poems are any good and if I will get them out there. I think I am thinking about this because I am at a stage with the current poems were I have been writing away, and am in need of some reaction to them/feedback, as the doubts are trying to creep in before I've actually given the poems a chance. My hunch is they are different to my previous work, but are they better? They are certainly simpler, but am not sure if that's a good thing. They are more assured in the respect that they do not try to be clever or witty in any way. But I don't know if this is a bad thing. I was trying to think of working class women poets who have made good, and couldn't think of many at all. In terms of poems in magazines, poets who win competitions, etc etc they seem to have alot in common, a sort of class neutrality, and often location neutrality, which doesn't allow for exceptions.Don't get me wrong, they are always good poets, but is it possible that poetry isn't as open to diversity as much as we would like think? Cultural diversity seems to be embraced by poetry, with this one exception. It also seems to be somehow more acceptable to be a working class man than a working class woman. I worry about this a great deal. If I wasn't so working class, infact even if I was a man would magazines etc be more interested in my work? These are things I don't want to think about, that suspicion that I'm just not the right type of poet, but maybe I have to. So the question is what can I do about this?

I wanted to wear the shoes in the picture when I was away, because I so rarely am anywhere were I don't have to wear big shoes to be taller, but the weather didn't allow it. When I got back all the cherry blossoms I could see from my office window had gone.

oops- forgot

2006-05-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

Oh , forgot to actually say what I've been up to. Came 2nd in an internet competition to write a poem about new year (was such a bummer to come second, in a way would have been better not to be placed at all, because the prize for 1st place was an ipod, and i'd love one- so near and so far!) I have no use for the second prize, some simm card back up thing, so just gave it to a friend. Still, I suppose these minor triumphs get us through the day. The poetry perculating bore fruit. Worked on a huge sequence last week about pigs, the first draft was finished on Friday, and it ended up having 16 parts (16 being the age it ends at, before the story has already been told, or rather seen.) Also been considering images and stuff to go with the porn poems (actually I call them that, there's very little adult content in them, it's just a working title I guess that I stick to). I think it would work nice as a package with images at a reading, so it's been a nice hobby for me to consider this at my leisure. Took a lovely little bit of footage of the tree outside blowing in the wind, but now need to find out if there is a way for it to be projected bigger without it losing all the definition (when blew it up on the PC became more pixilated the bigger it got- this is a huge problem, since had the camera on highest res possible. Wonder if doing it on a proper digital moving image camera would improve it or not?) I think I need to learn more about stuff like this, but am not sure how or where to start. There are so many more things I don't know than I do it's amazing some days, and scary others.

rejection

2006-05-10T08:18:00.000-07:00

It didn't take long, sent out first bunch of work to magazine in 6 years last week, and got my first rejection today, less than a week since I sent it. It was the standard photocopied slip, no comments, the usual. I couldn't help but notice how pristine the poems seemed, wondered if they'd even been read. I think I'd have felt better if the magazine had kept hold of them a little longer somehow. Still, I knew this was coming, just didn't know how soon. I am looking at the poems wondering what it may be that they didn't like about them, and can come to the conclusion that maybe they aren't poemy enough. They probably don't have that poem tone somehow. I'm not sure how I define this, it is the sort of thing you know when you see it, when you read the poems that do make it into magazines. Quite often the poems that make it into mags are fairly quiet in tone, seem somehow mystical and mysterious. The poems I sent are new ones, and have a plainess to them, not complicated really, no tricks to them. This may be what will be wrong with them to the poetry world, I dunno, time will tell. I'm still wondering if sending work to magazines serves any function , other than to fluff the poet's own ego, and reinforcing their feeling of being a poet. Think people need this from tme to time perhaps, but is that all it does? I don't think I know anyone who has gained collection publication or readings or anything from getting work in magazines, I don't even know if it sells books, or any feedback from the poems is passed on and is useful. If you've experienced anything positive from sending work to mags let me know, I think I'd like to hear it's not just fluffing.

Also, this week I heard that Colpitts in Durham has limited days. This is really sad to hear. Colpitts is the only regular poetry night in Durham, and has been going for thirty years. It seems that alot of poetry nites are sizzling out, and I worry about this. There are alot of theories buzzing about about why nights may be disappearing: that they aren't getting the audience figures, aren't reaching new audiences, that the arts council have changed their funding criteria, that large arts institutions like The Sage and The Baltic mean there aren't enough funds to go around. I really don't know what the case is, maybe a combination of things. I just know that i would be sad to see Colpitts go, and that I worry about the future of poets in the region. It seems that poets plod along and there are less and less places for them to get together, read their work, and sell their books. There are alot of problems for poets, one of them is that book shops simply will not stock poetry (particularly by small presses.) (Recently I was on a quest to buy some poetry by Sharon Olds, I went in several book shops looking for her work. Not one poetry section had a single one of her collections. I eventually found one shop which stocked her selected works (but being a purist of readuing a collection as it was intended, this isn't reallty the same thing. yes, I could have asked them to look her up on the computer and order a book, I would have to go back for in a few weeks time, but the thing is, I wanted to see a few of her colections on the shelves, have a flick through them, and select the ones I felt held most value for me. Poetry in these shops isn't selling, I'm not surprised. Few people will buy what they cant see. Potentially I would have bought three books that day, in the end I bought none.) I wonder if independent presses will become a thing of the past if there are no regular poetry nights in existence where their books can be sold. What will happen to all the poets?

The general reputation and accessability of poetry is a huge problem. It seems the majority of the population just are turned off by it. There are many many writers producing exciting and vibrant work which I think could change people's minds about their associations with poetry being nothing other than stuff that seeemd irrelevant to them when they were made to study it at school- the problem is trying to get people aware of it. One way audience figures have improved is by incorporating music or comedy into poetry events, and this has worked well. But speaking as a writer I think poetry spaces which do not want to go down the open mic or slam route should be maintained and are due for a re evaluation, and re appreciation. I have read at both types of events in the past, and think both are vital for bringing poetry to life away from the page. Unfortunately the simple fact is books don't sell at events with musicians and comedy. The audience may be younger and therefore do not have the funds to buy books, and I have been to many poetry events were people attend for an open mic or a slam to read their own work and do not stay for the poets (or do not listen.) At events like this poets who are performance or comedy poets are able to gain the attention of the audience, but for those less skilled in this area it is a struggle. There are poems even skilled performers will not read at such events, because they are quieter or more serious poems, and there needs to be a space for poets to read good quality, though not necessarily funny or immediate work. I read at Colpitts a few years ago, and went there worried and holding perhaps some of the prejudices some people may have about such poetry nights.I was worried about not being middle class, about having a regional accent, and about how I would be received. The truth is I was delighted to find something unique there, that is a place were the audience really listen. This is somewhere that doesn't feel like a poularity contest, a battle of charisma or confidence to make the work heard, an attempt to be read your funnier stuff (that in your heart you know isn't as good as some of the serious poems in your bag that you daren't read because there is silence after them)- this is a space that is all about the words. It didn't matter how I read them, who I was or wasn't, words were allowed to stand up by themselves. (And I sold more books as a consequence than I had sold in the last 6 gigs combined.) I am ashamed to say that I am not currently a member of a library- how odd is that for a writer? The reason is that libraries have changed. The library were I live has been closed down. Libraries have been transformed somehow from what they used to be, and the concept of quiet and a librarian saying ssshhh is a thing of the past. Libraries are full of children, teenagers, mobile phones and people who come in to use the computers, and the need for quiet seems to have gone with the digital age. I don't like what they have become. I don't beleive poetry should be something in the exclusive domain of libraries, but nor should it belong exclusively to the domain of pubs. I am grateful that something like Colpitts still exists, an event that I can go to hear good quality poets, were the space a good poem needs is provided and understood.

Colpitts aim to re-apply and ask for reassessment of the decision to stop their funding, and I hope it is sucessful (or like I said, is the future of poetry performance poetry only? I don't think anyone would see this as a good thing?)

As for poetry being so poorly available in shops, I am extremely continually disappointed that The Baltic fails to stock a selection of regional writers in the book shop. A poetry section of regional writers in the Baltic bookshop would take up little space, and be a welcome addition, and way for an arts funded project to show support for artists in the region. It is easy, it's simple- so why don't they do it? Who knows. I also know that phoning to ask about this, or sending an email gets absolutely no response (hey, even a response explaining why this isn't their policy would be nice, and a courtesy.) What started me on this was reading with the Finns at the bookshop in The Museum of Modern art in Helsinki (which is a hell of a building, amazing) , who were very nice to the poets and happy to stock the book. Yet a reply could not be gained as to the prospect of The Baltic stocking the book from the Baltic poetry exchange. Seems that if somewhere like The Baltic would stock regional poets it would become somewhere that could host the ocasional reading in their bookshop (and given the aspect of the shop what better way to get people to see contemporary poets, people pass by on their way in and out.) One art institution supporting in these small ways artists, and smaller arts projects in the region, seems logical and couldn't be easier. Why don't things like this happen? Is poetry dying, and who's going to miss it when it's gone?

Writing in April

2006-05-05T10:12:00.000-07:00

The research has been getting to the good bits. Research is like that, so much wading through irrelevant stuff and then bam! Something that gets you going, pen moving away, can't wait to get it all down. I haven't felt as if I've gotten as much writing done this month, but I think it's a false verdict in a way. All it takes sometimes is a period of getting lots and lots of new stuff on a page so that what follows seems lazy in comparison. All that new stuff has to be sorted, waded through, and spotting the mistakes and improvements takes time, sometimes more time than that inital rush. I haven't sat and counted how many poems there actually are for the biographical set, I slowed down, and what came out seemed more ready and in need of less work. I wrote the gaps that needed to be filled out once I sae it, and I think I'm done with that. There is still an end poem conspicuous by its absence though, something that feels like an end, without tying too much up this is a tough one.

I have spent my evenings in spring cleaning mode, painting the walls a boring colour I never thought I'd entertain. I must be becoming a beige person in my old age. I just wanted something cheap, clean and tidy. When I got back to work I got stuck into a poem about pigs, it had been bubbling away while I worked. I have one book left to read I think until I need to change my routine to better accomodate prose. The poetry has worked well as some actual writing while I'm doing research, but I'm at a point were I need to wrap up lose ends then flip to researching poems while i write some prose.

And yes finally I've done it, I've been psyching myself up most of the year to send some work to magazines. I sent one some poems this week. I tried to guess what the mag would ike, but to be honest I just can't tell. Mags are funny, now I'll wait for the rejection. I heard it's a 1:30 ratio of rejections over acceptances, just 29 more mags to send to then!

Easter

2006-04-26T05:59:00.000-07:00

The season seems to have finally changed after so many false starts, and I've had a few days off writing over Easter. It was getting to a stage were so many jobs round the house had built up, and all that stuff was threatening to come crashing into writing time, so it was a good idea to take a week away from it. So I spent the week painting a room, and varnishing the floor and stuff, and am so stiff with doing the ceiling and gloss that I was glad of my time off to come to an end so I could sit at a desk again. During time off I kept away from writing events too, and had some relaxation at the end of the days watching movies. ( Really loved Walk the Line, most the other movies I saw were pants.) Sometimes I think taking time away from writing can be good, I sometimes find that getting stuck in to manual work can be a good thing if it follows productive writing time. At first you don't tend to think about writing, and get on with the painting, but eventually you get bored and find that something in the back of your mind must be working without you. Found that at the end of the day I had some ideas regarding the porn sequence when I didn't know I had been thinking about it, and also have a new poem idea sort of perculating around which I need to do some net research for.

So pretty much quiet and uneventful here. The only thing to tell you really is that I found a copy of my book in Oxfam the other day. I know logically that this is bound to happen at some point, if anything gets published sooner or later it will wind up in a charity shop someplace i guess. I had a conversation with Adam Fish once were the idea of seeing my book in a charity shop had just occurred to me, and I said how awful. Adam must be more of a glass half full guy than me, as he thought it was pretty cool, and said he would buy his own book and ask the lady at the counter of the charity shop to sign it! It was so sad to see it there though, it is so little compared to all the other books next to it. I had to buy it because it seemed so sad, and also to stop me checking next time i'm in the charity shop to see if anyone has bought it (and feel like it's a rejection everytime they haven't!) I came home thinking someone thought my book was shit, someone hates me, thinking it must be someone I know (whoelse bought it?) I took some consolation in the fact that there was another Diamond Twig book in the shop, so I'm assuming they have come from the same person, next to mine (which I have and is good), so it helped me take it less personally. (She is a good poet, and someone even gave their book away, so it doesn't matter if they gave mine away too- maybe they don't like poetry full stop. Maybe they beleive in recycling, maybe their ex partner chucked it when they found them in bed with a sheep, maybe, maybe- the list goes on, but there was definetely comfort in not being the only reject, however sad that is.) Thing is, now I am going to be looking at everyone with suspicion, wondering if they are the one. Well, I'll take my leave now, I have to sort through some things in my office, and go through some books for the charity shop.

Morden Tower

2006-04-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to Morden Tower. Bob Beagrie and Kalle Niinikangas were reading from Perkelle, accompanied by Milo Thelwall and Shaun Lennox. The night was compared by Kate Fox. I went along to show support, but ended up being asked to read at last minute (good job I washed my hair afterall before I went out.) It was an odd night, a night of powerful performances of poetry with music which I enjoyed, which was overshadowed by a feeling of disappointment on my part by the lack of audience. The quality of the poetry and its pairing with the music, made this a really magical night, and an enjoyable one- so why people didnt come I don't understand. The event was plugged in various e-mails, and has been plugged at other events-so I have no idea. It makes me sad for the Finns who have come so far more than anything else, but makes me a little bewildered as to where all the poets are (if we assume there are no poetry fans, that every poetry lover is infact a poet- which i am starting to believe.) Is it a case of cliques? Do people only to come to events featuring their friends? (which would explain why poets from Middlesbrough and Darlington are unable to get an audience in Newcastle.) It saddens me particularly because what poets like Andy Willoughby and Bob Beagrie are doing with musicians is so good, unique and entertaining (yes, entertaining, I can't say that for all the poetry readings I've been to unfortunately.) (Isn't it sad that when we think of poetry one of the words that doesn't readily come to mind is 'entertaining' come to think of it, if we are to expect people to sacrifice their time and energy coming out to things we should make the effort to make them entertaining more often.) I'd feel better if it was only OK, reasonable poets and the music was alright, but there is something so disheartening about knowing something is good, and not being recognised sufficeiently. Once again i will give the poetry scene of newcastle the benefit of the doubt, and say that perhaps people didn't come because it was Good Friday, and people tend to go away for the weekend at Easter. (To be honest even i wasn't enthused about the prospect of having to put some slap on and leave the house, when I would have rather liked to chill out in comfy clothes with a can of beer, but it was worth it.) A friend suggested to me that maybe people think Finnish poets and assume it will be boring,but I don't think most people have enough of a concept of what the Finn poets are about to reach this conclusion.

The tower opened the portal and magic happened, as it is prone to at the tower. When faced with disappointment the poets stepped up a notch and pulled out all the stops. I particularly enjoyed Andy Willoughby's performance of Sexy Baz's Birds, with a punky accompaniment (this really is a great poem anyway though, check it out in his collection 'Tough'.) I read first, but to be honest not very well. I wasn't expecting to read, and I hadn't had the advantage of working with the musicians in advance of the gig. I could have read better if I had read poems from Hardcore which I had previously done with Shaun, but I felt that this would be a cop out. Seems that the one advantage of having so few audience is that an intimate space is created, where you can experiment and share new work. Since there seemed little point in plugging the book with so few there, that's what I opted for. So my performance was decidedly average, but I was pleased to get the opportunity to read some of my new poems. I'm still not sure what anyone thought of them (people aren't that good at coming forward to say what they think , and I think my bad performance might have prevented people wanting to say what they thought of the poems, or of course there is the possibility that people just thought the new stuff is shite- which is always what you are gonna have buzzing about in your head at a later date.) (Also, other people's launches aren't good places to read new stuff I suppose, since you're just sort of something people have to sit through before they can see the main turn.) Anyway, it was a good night other than that, and I was pleased to have the chance to try out reading poems I've never read before.

Writing in March

2006-04-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

Writing in March

The life story of a porn star sequence has reached its end. This month I have written a couple of poems that were drawing an end to the porn poems set, including a poem about gardening (of all things, quite a surprise to me!), one about Sploosh (there is something wrong with this poem, and I haven’t been able to put my finger on what it is yet), and a final postcard poem. I have also been doing re-writes on the poems I wrote last month, and in research mode, reading about a counterfeit king, Liz Taylor and Marilyn Monroe. I managed to track down a couple of books from America, which don’t seem to be available in this country whatsoever. I read two books about a cheesecake pin-up, and I hope they will help me to write one or two poems that will relate to the porn sequence (they will be about a different character, though still set in America, and in a very different and more innocent era.) I am also reading a book about female criminals, which is sketchy and sensationalist, but may provide one or two names for people I would like to research further at a later date.

Writing in february

2006-04-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

Writing in February

There have been times when the gigs got in the way, and I wasn’t able to write all week when the Finns were here. I have been breaking up the research with poetry. It has been very productive, a good mix of research, writing and editing. The Traci Lords research I did came out in some new poems. The process of writing these new poems was interesting to me. For one thing, I made myself write them in chronological order, I don’t know why. But it felt important to do it that way. I wonder if this was because I didn’t want to jump into the more grim subject matter right away, and it was a way to avoid it for a while. I found myself sort of writing from someone else’s point if view, which I have done before, but it seems not so deliberately and intensively, and using language which isn’t even close to my own (dialect, colloquial ways of speech, use of words etc.) There are so many limitations, and a sort of freedom with this, which was interesting. I found myself putting off writing the first sex poem by spending two days writing short poems to scatter throughout the piece, that are sort of a journey.

Then I had to get into the sex stuff and I found it physically draining to write the poems, a new sensation with writing that hasn’t come to me before. Sure, I’ve been tired, or sick of seeing a monitor, but I felt like I had been digging in a field after spending the day writing the sex poems. I knew I didn’t want to go there, and then made myself go there anyway. This leads me to ask why I did that, why I pushed myself to write about something I must find so distasteful, when I don’t have to. For the past year I had been writing with a collection in mind, a publisher already there, and knew I had to get on with writing poems for that collection to complete it. But this time, there is no such external need for the work, which makes the question of why I made myself write something so mentally and physically demanding all the more challenging. I don’t know. The sex poem that came out is the longest poem I have ever written, and yet it seems that there isn’t the option of cutting it, as it doesn’t seem unnecessary, or gratuitous. It surprised me, in dealing with innocence, expectations, a transition, and yes sex, but also love. Love is what surprised me the most. I suspect it is the kind of poem people really wouldn’t want to hear at a reading. It is probably the saddest poem I have ever written, and yet the most tender. Without the length it would seem unredeemable, I had to make it worth it with other things in it beside the acts. I came away from writing the second draft feeling drained, a bit like you do when your blood sugar drops, and had a can of beer to sort of distance the process. I’m amazed writing can do this to me; it’s a new sensation.

A few weeks later I showed the poem to Jo Colley and Kate Fox, they are my new poetry buddies, and we try to meet up now and then to sort of get some feedback and sound out new work. This is so great, it’s hard to find people who will look at your new poems, and even harder to find people you trust to give feedback. I had a feeling of wanting to show them the new poems, but also wanting to drag the sheet out their hands and bury it with this one particular poem. Wanting to show the poem, and not wanting anyone to see it- I think because I knew it was a miserable poem, and I felt guilty for making them go to a miserable place to hear it. As for reading it, in a way I didn’t want to read it, because it was hard to read, hard to keep going when I could hear the silence in the room and sense them really actually listening. There is always that oddness of reading, if you are reading a darker poem, the silence of the audience is almost unbearable. It is lonely to read serious poems, and have that silence around you, you wonder if people are bored, if they think it’s crap, part of you wants to make a joke half way through to get something back. It must be nice to have funny poems to fall back on, to get some reassurance. I think it the silence must be something we should get used to, and respect, but it’s hard when there is always going to be the element of wanting to feel liked. This particular poem seemed to magnify this feeling. I read to them, and we were quiet for what seemed like ages after, though it was probably only a few seconds. I hope they liked the poem, and I am sorry if it is a hard poem to hear. Thing is it feels like a personal poem probably to listen to, even though it is about someone else and uses their voice. I was pleased with poem in a way, though it isn’t one I will ever send out due to its length.

Later in the week, and the one after, I had to continue with the sex poems. This time I had to do research, of buying a porn mag. This was so dreadful to me; I have never bought one before, and sort of felt implicated in the whole industry by doing so. I could have not bought one and guessed I suppose, but it felt like cheating. It took me a week to pluck up the courage, and I ended up putting on a big coat and going to a newsagent near Byker where no one would recognize me in order to do it! This is so silly, I have always thought I am quite open minded, and sure I have seen porn mags before (I house-sat once in my early 20’s and found a big stack of them, quite out in the open, in the house of a friend’s aunty. We were grossed out, but did in fact read them for the whole fortnight, a sort of morbid fascination, a ‘yeah right’ to the letters page, and a ‘yuk, but how are they doing that?’ to the pictures.) I bought lots of other magazines to sort of disguise what I was actually buying, and was very aware of some young student lad in the queue behind me looking at what I was buying as the shopkeeper struggled to find the barcode. All the way home I wondered if he was thinking, yeah, a woman buying porn! When I got home I had to hide the magazine, I have no idea why, and then go back and look at it the next day. I was surprised by my reaction, of feeling so sad, and so yes, shocked. You hit 30 and think nothing will surprise you anymore, and certainly not shock. But I was shocked, shocked at the pictures, and the odd lack of eroticism in the pictures, shocked by what I was seeing, the glossiness, the letters page, and by the captions (one page was artfully called Hairy Russian Twats for god sake- is it just me, or could they have found a less sort for insulting way to describe what they wanted to?) The whole thing was a puzzle I couldn’t solve. In terms of research it is probably the oddest thing I’ll ever do, but also strangely satisfying to find reactions I never knew would be there. Now of course I’m stuck with the damn magazine, I can’t stand to put in the recycling pile incase the men see it and think thereafter that’s the porno house! How sad is that? Do you think it would be better if I put a post-it on the cover stating I bought this strictly in the name of research ?! Partly I am paranoid that one of the recycling men will recycle it in his own way, and that is even worse. I’m wondering what uses I can find for the damn thing, there is an evil side of me that wants to put a stack of Bella’s around it and leave it in the dentists, and a better side that wants to learn how to make handmade paper so I can make some with the thing and write something beautiful on it (and yeah, of course, send letters to nice people on it, like my mum!)

If you have any suggestions of what you would do with my porn mag, please email me them, and I will send the one I like most the magazine (if they so wish!)

Writing in January

2006-04-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

Writing in January

In January I spent time reading as research for things, and working on poems I had started at Arvon in December. I had to type them up first and see how they looked, and do some re-writing. Only a couple seem finished, and there are some I will need to go back to. The best of them is a poem called Tap I think. I spent some time thinking about poems I never got far with at Arvon, and finally got round to doing something about the snapshot exercise, which proved to be the most productive exercise of the week. So why was I reluctant to do much of it at Arvon? Seems the exercise was private and didn’t suit that public space. The idea was to write about a photo. I started and wrote two very short poems about photos of me as a child. In the end in January once I had the other things out the way and in the PC I spent some time writing a sequence of these photo poems. All of them are very short. I rarely write about my own early childhood, in fact never. I thought it would be a good way to write about it, quite simply, without bringing much that isn’t in the photo into it, so that there are gaps, things missing, to be figured out, which sort of relate to the child’s viewpoint of lack of judgment and few words. It shaped up not bad, but the title still isn’t there. The title was originally Snapshots before the Ugly Stick, which I quite like as a title, but when I showed them to Jo Colley and Kate Fox they felt that a judgment and awareness is in the title that isn’t in the poem, and I think they have a point. So I still need a title. I spent some time the following week writing a sequence that expands beyond the original, and is a sequence of poems about things you make as a child. It seemed to convey the relationships and things to aspire to as a child, without getting into a god-like voice about it all. They are very simple poems in a way, pared down with a lot cut out. One of them is the first poem that mentions my Dad, I seem to write about my mother and grandmother a lot, but he is conspicuous only by his absence. Maybe this is why I distrust them; some work is like that. The question over is it too simple has no answer. Titles though, they are tricky. Seems that there are poems you know the titles of instantly, and others never seem right.

April 12th 06

2006-04-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

April 12^th 06

Last night was the Hydrogen Jukebox. This is really what poetry nights should be, and never are. Hydrogen Jukebox always produces an excellent standard of work, and is a forum that inspires artists to produce new work and take risks. There is a lack of pretension and an atmosphere that is charged, poetry is alive at the Hydrogen Jukebox and you can feel it. Last night was no exception. The night started with Darlo band Too many Units, and then proceeded with Kate Fox’s Hydrogen Jukebox commission “How I learned to stop worrying and love Leonard Cohen”. The piece was a mixture of stand-up and drama, as Fox begins a stand-up act and girls representing her 16 year old self begin to unpick the year she was 16 and in the process deconstruct the comedienne’s persona. The story itself is fascinating, about identity, role models and a dysfunctional family (which include her parents swinging), but more than that is a deeply personal and moving piece which is ambitious and ballsy. The piece swings effortlessly from comedy to drama, and sadness, and brings out a new element in Fox’s performance which we haven’t seen before. The piece may well be about growing up, for those who have seen her perform before it is also clear that this is a piece in which Fox is growing as a performer, taking more chances, including more range, and delving into more adult and at times bitter sweet humour. The piece was directed by Andy Willoughby, and the physicality on stage created humour that both complimented and contrasted with the text. This will not be the last time you see this piece; there is a lot of scope for further development and expansion from this commission (such as drawing out further the different versions of events, and questioning what constitutes truth and memory) and it will go on to surpass its humble origins.

Following the break Bob Beagrie and Kalle Niinikangas launched their new bi-lingual Ek Zuban pamphlet Perkele. Perkele is an old Finnish deity, who became demonized by Christianity (and is now infact a finish curse word.) Kev Howard, Shaun Lennox and Milo Thelwall provided music to accompany both poets, and the result was spectacular. Both poets provided their best performances to date. Beagrie is a true wordsmith who seemed to become possessed by the poems, transporting us to other worlds, that we are not always comfortable in. His poems are lyrical, intense and lively, and are invocations that hold the audience under his spell. Mr Niinikangas followed Bob with a menacing performance of his hard edged urban realist work, in which humour snuck up on you in the most unlikely of places, and was all the stronger for the artists unique dead-pan style.

Later the night offered the song stylings of Shaun Lennox (the Leonard Cohen of Eston)- and the beautiful Rebecca Davison(Harrison?- it was loud in there, and I was straining to hear the intro) who sang like an angel who has fallen to earth. This was the best Hydrogen Jukebox I have been to in a very long time, the night sparked with energy and offered a smorgasboard of North east talent that is second to none (where were all these people when I read in February?! I’m really trying hard not to take these things personally, but at the moment it seems there is nowt like me to clear a room!) As always the night ended with an open mic, which was as eclectic and darn right odd as ever, regulars took the stage including Mr Cabbage- a singer/songwriter who sang his song about failed romance to an 80's synth pop backing track ( including the word y-fronts in the song.) Also I had to witness my worst nightmare, I always have a terrible fear of standing up in front of an audience (so many things could go wrong, I could fart, I could vomit, I could die, or equally as bad my flies could fall, down.) One of the open mic acts got up with flies down, that gradually fell further and further down throughout their act. (I did actually shout out flies, flies, tried to warn them, but since it was me people probably just assumed that I was refering to the imaginary insects crawling round in my brain.) It was terrible, I couldn't look at the stage, and still had to look now and then to keep an eye on the situation. Always always check your flies before going on stage, get button flies if poss.

All good things must come to an end I guess, and it is sad that there are only 3 Hydrogen Jukeboxes remaining. Hydrogen Jukebox has been running for six years, and for the last three years I’ve considered it my reading home. It emerged as one of the few sources of encouragement for me at a time when I just wasn’t reading, and was beginning to give up on writing. It has been the only place I can go to read, and try out new work. It has been the only place I can read certain poems (knowing that this is a unique place that makes no distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow subject matter, poetry is liberated and for once it is all about the words.) I have to get used to the idea of Hydrogen Jukebox not being there, and sort of feel as if it’s the end of my readings era (time to go back in the box.) I’m starting to look at my writing life and worry once I’m back in that box no one will open the lid.

Favourite lines of the evening:

Later it got freezing cold

& I found a refuge

in the roadside toilet

where I slept in the urine of Norwegian lorry-drivers

dreaming of beautiful girl’s shitting

(from Mountains of Toothpaste by Kalle Niinikangas,

in Perkele- Ek Zuban press.)

April 5th 06

2006-04-15T09:42:00.000-07:00

April 5^th 06

Last night I went to Exploding Alphabets at Morden Tower. This is the first time I have been to this event, which is on monthly ( I like how the dates work, as it is easy to remember, the 4^th of the 4^th, the 5^th of the 5^th, etc.) It was an enjoyable night, though a strange one. I didn’t know anybody there, and to be honest felt absolutely ancient since everybody there was in their early 20’s at the most. The night is ran in a very relaxed fashion, the idea is it is a place for new work, poetry but also songs, and there is no schedule for the night, people just get up and read when they want to. (The only problem with this is if you are shy you don’t want to just get up because you are worried that doing so may take time away from other people, and you are not sure how many people there have stuff they want to read- so maybe there are advantages of doing a quick head count of who may want to read at the beginning.) A problem I found was that because everyone there seemed to know each other no one said what their name was when they read, which frustrated me as I like to put a name to work.) What I liked about the night was the inclusion of music amongst poets, which is something that should be done more often ( a young woman who sang without accompaniment was brilliant, sang an amazing and uplifting version of Nina Simone’s Feeling Good- like I said, I wish people had offered their names.) I was amazed at the turnout, which was high, of mostly very young people. These are people I have never seen at poetry events before (where it is nearly always the same faces), and I am wondering why (would like to put it down to the venue, except for the turn out being so poor when the Finns read at the tower), wondering what it takes to get people like this to gigs. Quite a small percentage of the audience read work, so the obvious answer of people turning out to where they can read their work needn’t apply. It’s a mystery to me. I felt that if they like Exploding Alphabets they would have enjoyed the night the Finns read, where there was a good mix of performance, poetry, and music, but how do we get them there? I felt a bit out of place all night, on account of not knowing anyone really, and being too old (and had the feeling that the audience would be thinking, who’s this old bag? What’s she doing here?) I read a short little poem I wrote while I was sitting there, and later read a new poem I actually wrote on the day of the last Exploding Alphabets (thought never turned up to read it due to the snow- what a wimp!)

March 29th 06

2006-04-15T09:37:00.000-07:00

March 29^th 06

On a mundane level I’ve had a weird chest infection thing since I last blogged, was stuck in bed for the best part of a week eating only grapes and drinking from a flask of tea. When I felt well enough I finally got out of bed to go to a poetry event at The Chillingham Arms on 18^th March. It was a Poetry Vandals thing (why does that sound like it should be on a t-shirt? It’s a poetry vandals thing…you wouldn’t understand) , and I was interested in going to see the Canadian performance poet they had on Dwayne Morgan (also I felt as if I wanted to support the notion of poetry things on at The Chilli, and given it is so nearby would feel rather churlish for not attending.) The turnout wasn’t bad (people will come to poetry things in Heaton? Who knew? ) and it was an interesting night. As usual the night started with the vandals, who provided some interesting material, but I felt read slightly too long. (This is my only problem with the Vandals, quite often they play host to poets from various parts of the world, yet the balance often doesn’t feel quite right. I have been trying to figure out why this is, and I think it is a case of reading slightly too long, so that the guest poets seem to have to wait a long time before reading. The result of reading even one poem each too many can make the balance not quite right, as potentially that’s six too many poems remember. That being said, the Vandals read with good humour, and energy and managed to create a relaxed atmosphere. Highlights of the set included the bizarrely Shakespearian Scott Turrel’s extremely funny poem about Coitus Interruptus, Annie Moir’s highly relatable poem about being a poet (the odd secret shame we have about writing poetry), and Jeff Price. Price seems to epitomize what is good about the vandals at their best, that ability to treat language with a lack of reverence and play with it. Certain things are out there, in the public domain, and on top form the Vandals make this clear, and have fun with wordplay. The Vandals don’t intimidate an audience by making poetry seem holy, when they are in the zone they make poetry accessible to everyone and make us feel as if we wouldn’t mind giving it a try. There is something about the things Jeff Price vandalises that makes me quite inspired to give it a go (last year I was bored one night and ended up writing a vandalism of his vandalized version of Sunscreen), and I came home from the Chilli gig feeling inclined to write a vandalism of his Marks and Sparks poem. Words can be fun, sometimes we forget; Jeff Price seems to be able to remind me. It was interesting watching Kate Fox in her full on stage mode, who managed to become so likeable to the audience that she was later unable to read a serious poem she introduced. The problem seemed to be that she was so likeable and fun to the audience that as soon as she opened her mouth people laughed, so as she was introducing the serious poem people laughed, and the more people laughed the more she seemed to play along with the audiences expectations of her, and ultimately talked herself out of doing the poem. What was interesting about this was that while she was assisting Jeff with one his poems (she was required to read certain lines that were a female voice) she read (the part of Charlie) in a very different manner to the way she reads her own poems, using a voice that managed to convey gravity and purely present the words. I’m sure no one minded that Kate didn’t read the serious poem she introduced (since there was so much fun to be had in her introduction of it then its disappearance), but I would have liked to see it, see her step up and use her body language and voice (and minimal chat) to convey a conviction to read her serious poem (as she did for Jeff.) The format of the vandals on stage actually seems very good for facilitating changes of tone that may otherwise be difficult to achieve in a set, the whole process of reading a poem, stepping back or sitting down while other people do their stuff, and then stepping forward again seems as if you can come to the audience almost afresh for each poem. I think more gigs should have this format for poems, one poem, and then a break sounds good to me.

Sheree Mack read well, but I was disappointed she didn’t read a little longer, as she just seemed to be gone too quick. Still leaving them wanting more is always a good philosophy, and she certainly did that. Dwayne Morgan followed with his slam style poetry performance, of rhythmic words reminiscent of rap. Morgan seemed to have the polished confidence we have come to expect of slam poets, but also seemed to give more of himself to the audience than some performers tend to. He manages to convince the audience they know him a little bit in his set, which instantly gets them on side. The poems were sharp, lively and sexy, and he managed to seduce the audience with words (particularly in the extremely racy oral sex poem, which creates an unusual and effective metaphor. I think there was only me in the audience who was a little disappointed that the poem was a metaphor, as I initially thought I was in the presence of an AA style meeting where a bloke actually states he likes oral sex. You just never hear straight blokes saying such a thing, I was like, how brave, Praise be, Hallelujah! Then oh, metaphor, figures.) What I found particularly interesting about Morgan’s work was the way in which he talks about women. There was a great deal of respect for women in his set, an acknowledgment of feminist concerns, and a simultaneous admission that as a man he has been implicated in some of the things that are issues for women. It seems rare to see this in the work of male poets, and I was impressed by a male poet’s ability to address certain concerns, without coming across as holier than thou.

The following week I was a lot better, but was still suffering sort of that after ill feeling, where you just feel pretty wobbly and knackered (and are still coughing.) On Friday night I went to Colpitts in Durham, I don’t get to get there as often as I would like, but I really wanted to go as Jo Colley was reading from her Punchdrunk pamphlet. (Matt Fraser was also supposed to be reading, but had to cancel at last minute due to having a cold, and Andy Willoughby read instead at only and hour and a half’s notice.) Both were brilliant readings. I have seen both poets read several times, and still felt very moved by this reading (which is possibly Jo Colley’s best.) It is a long time since I have seen Andy Willoughby in quiet mode when reading his work, and it was nice to see the different elements of his work, and enjoy the strength and subtlety of the words alone (no music, no shouting, no “glibness of showman’s patter”.) They are two different things, reading and performing, Willoughby does both extremely well. I forgot how enjoyable no frills poetry readings can be, the power words can have.

Willoughby was followed by Jo Colley’s Punchdrunk piece, which involves projected images and sounds to accompany the poems about her father and alcoholism. The poems are razor sharp, intense, and extremely controlled, each one works well individually, but together they paint a vivid picture, snapshots from lives of scenes nobody ever took photographs off (the things nobody wants to remember.) It is bold work, with a lot of guts, and no apology, that deals with harsh subject matter. The work feels important, says things that need to be said, and the poems include brutality and tenderness effortlessly. Punchdrunk is the best pamphlet I’ve read all year. The overall effect of the presentation of the poems with the images and sounds is stunning, leaves the audience feeling melancholoy, introverted, gasping for breath. I wanted to sit in the dark a little longer after it had ended, just to let it sink in, and subside. But it was time to go home. I had a little chat with Jo and Andy and enjoyed a glass of wine with them. All felt good with the world, relaxed, pleasant, fun even- I forgot what it’s like to enjoy people’s company, to enjoy poetry and wine with friends.

March 13th 06

2006-04-15T09:35:00.000-07:00

March 13^th 06

Last night was the bridge poets gig at The Bridge. For those of you who don’t know, The Bridge poets group is a group which began over 5 years ago. Initially the poets attended a workshop with Jo Shapcott, and there was the notion that after this the poets involved would start off their own meetings for feedback on new work (as the initial Jo Shapcott workshops began with people being accepted only when they had sent work the result was a group of very competent poets, who could give each other feedback of a level that you wouldn’t usually be able to obtain in beginners poetry groups etc.) The meetings are once a month, and the people who turn up vary from month to month, due to the difficulties sometimes of being able to get poetry time on Saturday. I am guilty of sort of dipping in and out of the group, sometimes I might not go for six months, others I will go a few months in a row. I was unable to attend the last one due to being in London, and sometimes being anywhere at midday is really difficult, other times there will just seem to be far too many things to do that can only be done on Saturday when things are open and the car is available. They are doing maybe four readings a year, in which the line up of poets is always different due to the size of the group. I never offer to do these readings, but am happy to if asked, as I feel that maybe the opportunity should be given to people who make it to the group more often than me. My favourite thing about the group is the rule of silence, that when people are discussing a poem the writer of it is not permitted to speak whatsoever. I think this is a good way of just letting go, stopping your instinct of defense, and actually really learning something about your own work by allowing people to argue about what the poem is about amongst themselves. At the end of the discussion is when you can explain what you did want to do, and acknowledge the points made. It is often a matter of the individual, as always, that what some people don’t like or get others will, but there is always something to consider and take away to help you improve your poem in someway.

Among the readers last night were Bob Cooper, Ali May, Lisa Matthews and Sheree Mack, as well as myself. It was a rather small audience by previous attendance standards, but there were other events on, and also the snow and the metro not being on didn’t help. It’s funny how much harder it feels to read well with a small audience, that aspect of being scrutinized seems magnified by the fewer people there are. Also of course, there is that feeling of no response, in a small crowd there are no responses to hear, which makes being up there harder. The readers all read very well, with skilled work, and seemed very confident and at home. I was somewhat less so, I think part of that is that many of the poets felt among friends, have much better social skills than myself, and also get on rather well with the other poets. Don’t get me wrong, there are a few poets in Newcastle who I have felt to be supportive, who seem to make the effort and see me as an actual colleague (a real poet, it is hard to feel that way when there are so many brilliant poets.) But I am completely awful at social things, and make a point of always sitting by myself at events unless anyone asks me to join them or sits next to me, and as for the writing I never really know what the Newcastle poets actually think. It actually seemed I was getting a lot more encouragement, warmth and people liking my work before I was ever published, so I hope that it is a case of people making an effort to encourage new writers and not just thinking I am suddenly crap or arrogant and unreceptive of feedback. There are always going to be people who never comment your work, never seem to like it, never buy the book, and just don’t seem to like you or the stuff full-stop. I am still trying to figure out how poets maintain their confidence and keep going in the face of this, and I think the small amounts of feedback or support we are able to get is the answer. These little things become hugely important, and it may be a line of defending my own insecurities, but I think many poets may feel this way. After all, in a way it is a lonely occupation, seen by some as a hobby- which doesn’t help. Even those who succeed in having work published will be working away on a collection for a few years, that is an awful lot if silence, time to think, time to worry if the work justifies the self indulgence of the time spent. So we cling to minor small affirmations, no wonder.

The Bridge readings are a very positive thing because of they can provide the opportunity to make new work public, and I think that helps the writer to see how people feel about them, hear them out loud. Another thing I was struck by was that it felt like a real poetry gig. Now this term sounds worrying I know; how many poetry events are not real somehow? The term isn’t right I realise, but what I mean I think is that there seems to be two types of poetry events. One is usually held at nights which include music, or comedy and very confident performers, and the temptation with these gigs is always to try and include more funny poems, or poems that lend themselves to be performed more than read, as the audience aren’t a poetry audience as such, but may contain people who are experiencing live poetry for the first time. The other is a reading in which the audience is made up of poets, and people who are into poetry, and the pressure to perform poems is taken away, as it feels more about the words. Both types of event have their merits, one being the introduction of poetry to a wider and perhaps younger audience, and other in being a space for poets to try out new work, and for words to be heard purely on their merit, and not the strength or popularity of the performer. The world would be wrong in poetry if both types of events didn’t exist. Poetry would die out without ways of introducing it to non poets, and certain types of poems and poets would never be heard at readings if these pure poetry events didn’t happen. I was very aware of this being the first pure/real poetry reading I’ve done in a while, and was relieved to not have to select poems that may get a reaction from an audience, or appeal to audiences of a certain age, and was nervous at how these real poets would feel about the work. At the same time, there were poems I would have liked to read but felt I couldn’t because of the language used or the subject matter that I was worried proper poets would disapprove of! As usual I have a problem with fitting in, not being a proper poet enough to fit in with the proper poetry gigs, and not being funny or a good enough performer to go down well at the performancey gigs!

The theme last night was winter, though I didn’t know about this, but did make an effort to read some poems about snow. Another thing I didn’t know about the event was that the poems had to be new. This is a tricky category, since Sex with Elvis came out only the back end of last year the poems aren’t exactly old (I only read one poem from it anyway, Pornographic Snow People, because it seemed apt.) Also, the poems in Hardcore were only finished in December- but I was very aware that people may think those poems aren’t new, since they are in the unusual position of having been published so near completion (I am certain that some of the new poems people read are actually no newer than this, and yet I still felt worried that these poems would be seen as old work.) So what is it that makes a poem a new poem? Is it how long ago it was written, or its relation to the public? Can poems that may be years old can be classed as new poems if they have never been published or been read many times? Are poems that weren’t written too long ago automatically old poems if they have been out and about a little? I don’t know the answer to this, I wonder if anyone does, so I just had to hope people weren’t seeing me as cheating somehow. Fortunately, a friend of mine had planned to attend (who in the end couldn’t make it with the snow) who was interested in the new poems I have been writing, so I had planned to include four of these for her. Now these are poems I am certain are brand new since I only wrote them last month, and it was nice to have the chance to read them. In terms of how I read, I’d say not very well. I was definitely Angela rather than Angel, and with the proper poets there, no poetry allies there, and a small audience I wasn’t able to find the reading zone. I just had to keep going, a plain straight read, that was pretty intonation and personality free. Someone came up after to tell me they liked the new poems, and ask which actress the poems were based on, which really pleased me and made me feel happy about the poems, which you just couldn’t tell if anyone was enjoying while I was reading them. And another person came up and said they liked the set and wanted to buy Sex with Elvis and Hardcore. Both people are poets, and people I don’t know to talk to whatsoever, so it was nice to hear they liked my stuff- like I said small things.

All the readers at The Bridge were very accomplished poets and very relaxed on stage, but the highlight of the evening for me was seeing Ali May read (partly because I haven’t seen him read in such a long time.) It is always a real thrill to be in the presence of Ali’s poems and very effortless and natural style, which really makes an audience at ease.) For those of you who haven’t seen Ali, he is like a modern Zen poet- his pared down poems are glimpses of everyday life, and extraordinary in their ability of capturing a great deal beyond their words. The brevity of the poems means that he is able to read about twenty poems in set a set, with no explanations in between, and no intonation or emphasis in his voice, yet he is like a runaway train on stage. The poems keep the audience captive, and in an odd way so does the lack of performance to him ( I must speak to him one day and ask if he ever had to practice to obtain his non performance performance style, but I’m sure he’d say it is as natural to him as the poems.)

My favourite poem of the evening was Lisa Matthews’ The Waltham Zippy’s, which took a very everyday and seemingly light hearted subject matter (of zippy from rainbow in a shop window) and managed to infuse it with sadness and longing, which was so unexpected it was breathtaking.

March 7th 06

2006-04-15T09:34:00.000-07:00

March 7^th 06

I’ve been in London for a few days. The 4^th March was a reunion of the Arvon course I attended in December at Lumb Bank. To be honest I couldn’t decide whether or not to go, as I didn’t really say much to anyone on the course. The thing is I am bad at being in large groups of people; it always seemed that in such a situation I fail to make an impression of any kind. To be good in groups you have to have a certain kind of confidence that a) what you have to say is interesting, intelligent or funny, and b) that people respect you enough to want to listen to whatever that is. I have neither belief, so in groups I tend to hang back and sort of end of observing what is going on without being part of it. So why did I go? I think I wanted to go because I knew I had been sort of invisible at Arvon, and because I was hoping this time to get some positive feedback on something, either constructive feedback on how I can read my poems better, or some kind of approval for my work. At Arvon no one said much really about if they thought the work was any good or not, and I was disappointed by a sensation of coming home feeling worse about myself and my work than when I arrived- because I am someone who will interpret silence as polite disapproval. I think I was hoping to make it all better by having a positive experience of being in a group this time, sort of try to ask for feedback if it didn’t arrive, and be more involved. But I didn’t really manage it. This is silly really, and a good thing to bear in mind. If people don’t give you the feedback you require it is wise to ask questions, I could have tried and spoke to people on their own who I thought might have been most likely to understand the poems and ask them what they thought. People actually do like to be asked, I’ve never encountered someone who doesn’t so far, they feel pleased that you respect their opinion enough to take the trouble to ask, and are happy to say what they can. Knowing all this seems a lot harder than carrying it out for me though. I had exchanged a few emails with the lady who was holding the reunion at her house (Wow. what a house, it was like something from Grand Designs, the whole ground floor of my house could have fitted in her kitchen alone! I felt a bit scruffy as soon as I walked in, and was really glad I had stopped at her local before I turned up to tidy myself up after the long journey) and she seemed friendly, and to take writing seriously, and we had a few good chats about poetry and also the balance of getting poetry time in real life, so I thought it might be easier to be in a group with that one friendly face. The thing us though, it’s actually easier for me to be myself in emails than in real life, because in an email there is no possibility of that sort of competing to be heard that there is in a group. Of course in an evening with performance poets there is a lot of performing, not only in reading work out, but in being yourself. In groups it always feels that there are people who are stars of the show whatever the context in, the people who make people laugh, who everyone is listening to- some people are good at that, and seem to always shine. I’m someone who waits to be asked I think, so in situations where there are lots of people and no one does I don’t come across very well. I always go home acutely aware of the very real possibility that people don’t like me, that there has been nothing to like, and even worse, that they could actually think of me as stuck up, arrogant, aloof- shyness can be misinterpreted as those things, and it takes special people to get past that and pull out the person underneath. All this is my constant problem, and possibly why so few people, including writers and people I’ve seen around for years and know the names of, ever really talk to me. Maybe I seem disinterested even, given unless people talk to me first I won’t be brave enough to talk to them! It’s sad really, people always say things like I used to be shy, and I wonder when I will grow out of this- seems I am a bit too old now! There are one or two people in the group who it felt I could get to know better and allow to get to know me, but this wasn’t the occasion for it. I think there never will be. I caught someone looking over at me, who asked are you glad you came? I guess it was obvious that I am not easy in certain situations. I replied I haven’t decided yet, and I think that is still true. I think my favourite part of the experience was the next morning, having coffee in the kitchen with only a few remaining people, where it was easier to get a sense of what these people were really like, and easier to be myself a bit more. Someone asked me advice on how to order and sort their first collection, and it was really nice to be asked by a poet I respect, because it was the first time I’ve sort of felt any respect from any of the group, and got any sense of if they think I am any good or not! So, see- ask- people do like to be asked. I will have to try it myself.

Later on the Sunday I met up with Kate Fox, who was doing gigs in London- (I think she will be the next John Hegley, remember you heard it hear first folks!) We checked into a B&B in Bethnel Green called City Inn Hotel (think they could use an editor on the name- but maybe they couldn’t decide if they wanted to be thought of as something cozy like an inn or claim the importance of hotel, so I’ll let them off!) It was quirky little place, right next door to a chippy called Mr Cod. The entrance was just a door, and then a long thin corridor lit up with pink and blue and green strip lights, and felt a bit like the light and the tunnel would lead to stripper heaven. Inside it was very clean, and welcoming. The foyer was dominated by a big screen TV with sky one on, cream leather couches and members of staff sort of hanging out in ties. It was a bit like walking into someone’s very clean front room. There were odd family looking photos in frames, and a couple of framed pictures of Princess Diana, with no explanation. The room was clean and neat with white sheets and a clean bathroom with a shower, and our own complaint was the kettle in the room, but no cups and milk and t-bags. Later I went and asked for these items, and the staff was very obliging but very puzzled as to why we may want them. I could see them wondering if it has something to do with being from so far North, again this seemed to puzzle some members of staff, when I said we were from Newcastle (in the North) they asked if it was snowing in Bradford, and one told me he had been to Halifax. Another staff member wanted to know what my job in the Russian military was, and said my English was very good. The arts centre were Kate was performing was in walking distance, and a lovely building that looked new and bright on the outside, but was surprising on the inside. We climbed many stairs to find the workshop room, and found that it was a chapel of some kind, with old wood everywhere, and ornate carved things with little attic windows to the sky. This was the best aspect of the workshop, as I felt that it had been advertised as something different to what it was. A few participants left because it wasn’t what they had anticipated, and I was reminded of how often small things like how an event is advertised can so often go wrong, and need to be verified, and people in the workshop asked their expectations at the beginning. The workshop was for performance, not to deal with poetry, but the problem was that anyone getting to perform their work and be in receipt of tips of how to improve upon it could only get to do this in the last half hour of the 2 and a half hour session, so it all felt crammed in, and there wasn’t enough time for everyone who wanted to do this to have the opportunity. I really wanted to benefit from this, and possibly get up for the open mic, but ended up feeling that it was more important to give time to people who rarely got the opportunity to perform their work, since they were all dying to do it. It is a shame there wasn’t more balance in the workshop to allow everyone a go though.

It was interesting to see the performances later that night however. I have no experience of seeing London performance poetry events, and this is the first one I have been to. The standard was very high, and my favourite poet of the evening was Jay Bernard. Her poetry was dark, and very powerfully written, and the sort of poetry that works on the page, with images that leap out at you (I really wanted to buy her book, but there wasn’t one for sale.) Her manner of reading was very understated, and she didn’t offer much in the way of information about herself, but the audience was listening, really listening because the quality of the poems spoke for themselves. It was the sort of performance that leaves you wanting more, as if your appetite has been wetted and only the starter given to you, and I was taken by how rare this is. Often with performances of poetry it feels as if the poet has displayed a full package of work and themselves on stage for you to see completely, and even the best poems aren’t necessarily poems you feel you need to read, and want again.

(There are a few exceptions, one of them being Chloe Poems I wanna be fucked by Jesus poem, which I wanted to read as well as hear again almost instantly.) But on the whole this is rare. This is young poet you just know is the real thing, and the writing and its quality are priority. I was pleased to see how the audience appreciated this genuine and brilliant poetry, presented quite simply without any tricks and glitter. It restored my faith for a little while.

My relationship with performance poets is a difficult one, in that it is so alien to me, yet I can see how they are skilled and talented, and work hard. Often they manage to receive more appreciation, recognition, and positive affirmation than most non performance poets, which is inevitable since their work reaches the public more, and is more likeable. Although I can see the talent of such performers, there is a part of me that is a little disappointed that audiences don’t respond (or often even show) to events of more ordinary poets (I am not talking about the work of the poets, but the delivery.) A part of me is concerned that non performance poets don’t stand a chance. The fact is performance poets will always get more gigs, more audience members, and sell more books and CD’s than all but the big names of non performance poets. They therefore always receive more feedback, and it seems that there is a career ladder for them to climb. But I worry about the future of non-performance poets, where there seems to be no such ladder. I worry about how they keep going, how they know when they are getting better, what makes it all worthwhile?

The next day we went to the station and had to queue forever to buy a cup of coffee and a muffin at a place called The Waiting Room. Everyone in the queue was strangely accepting, and the staff strangely unapologetic. When I finally placed my order they handed over the coffee, and said they would bring the muffin over. We had been in there over 30 minutes, and still no muffin came. The problem was Kate and I score quite high on the autism quota. She had to have her odd little needs met, to know and have planned when the next mealtime will be, and I had to have mine sorted, to always be far too early for everything, so I am in the right place at the right time and nothing goes wrong. So it was weird, Kate was determined to get her muffin, and me looking at the watch worrying about the train. In the end Kate left with a pair of microscopic muffins in her hand she had to go and pester them for, and I left looking mournfully at the glass of lemonade I never had chance to drink more than a few sips of- it’s not called The Waiting Room for nothing I guessed, we were warned.

The train announced that we were in Darlington, and I literally whopped, just couldn’t keep the sound in my mouth. I had to be unfaithful to the North East it by going to London for the weekend. I forgot how much I love the North East, even if it doesn’t much like me.

1st March 06

2006-04-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

March 06

1^st March 06

It is only the 1^st of March, so I’m a bit early. Last night I went to the Lit and Phil to see Kevin Cadwallender, Valerie Laws, Kate Fox, Sarah Millican and Sheree Mack do their talks based on old Lit and Phil lecture titles. It was a really varied and interesting night. I love the Lit and Phil, the building is just perfect. I wish I worked there, but it is a distant dream since there’s no point in getting trained up to work in a library to be sent to one of those brightly lit places, where all the books are new and easy reach of the patrons. I liked the idea of the gig, to take old lecture titles and do something around them. All the performers used the starting point in different ways, and were all really good. But my personal favourite ‘lecture’ was Sarah Millican’s The Uses and abuses of sleep, which seemed to go down best of all with the audience, and felt really natural and fun. All I could think was I wish I’d had the chance to one, as someone told me the title of one of the ones on the list, which was Experiments with Balloons, and it seemed very very me. I can just see the slides! It was a fascinating night, to see the different approaches each reader took. I really admire comedians, all that confidence and presence. I feel sorry poets, it is so much harder up there when you can’t get the comfort of laughter and make audiences like you. Still, we do it; somewhere underneath it all we must have more balls than sense.

February 20th-28th

2006-04-15T09:31:00.000-07:00

February 20^th- 28^th

Read at Sam’s Place in Boro on Wednesday night, to plug Hardcore. Again, I had to keep it clean. I had to read first this time, as it was Chris Searle’s launch. Boro is a funny place for me, I have only read there three times. There seems to be this whole is she a Boro poet or Newcastle poet attitude, I think the poets in Boro think of me as a Newcastle poet, and the poets in Newcastle see me as a Boro poet. Nobody wants to take responsibility! Don’t blame ‘em! So I don’t get asked to read in Boro, unless Andy or Bob are doing an event. Last year was the first time I have really read there, and I was so nervous, more nervous than usual, because that whole hometown thing is difficult. It is like they know. Don’t ask me what, but they do. Maybe I worry they will dislike me for leaving the town they love. Truth is I don’t think I’d ever have been writing if I stayed in Middlesbrough, I think I had to go away and be anonymous to do it. You know, sort of no pressure to do well, but also none of those people who have known you as being bad at stuff to expecting you to fail. I would have still written, but would never have taken it out of the house I think. The gig was Ok, I felt very quiet in comparison to Chris Searle, who was one of those very authoritative male readers, you know the type, who sound so right reading poetry, so confident and well spoken that you always feel like you are being made to stand up in an assembly at school. I wished I was a man, so I could be louder and clearer. I wished I was posh and had no regional accent- which is funny, since this was a gig at Middlesbrough. I got through it though, and I hope it was OK. I realized that the whole class and region thing leaves my mind when I read with the Finns, which is wonderful, and so rare. I was the only woman reading at most of the gigs when the Finns were here, so I guess I could concentrate on that chip on my shoulder instead. I didn’t wish I was a man this time though, I think it had something to do with what I was reading.

On Friday night I read at the tower again. This time it was John Hegley’s gig, and Connie had phoned me out of the blue and asked if I would read. I have no idea how she got my number, since it is rare I give it out. Only about three writers have it. It is even more unusual I answered my phone actually. Either way, that’s how it happened. Shaun came up and we did some poems with guitar. I’m so glad he came, as he is such a pleasure to work with. All week I was struggling with what to read, part of me thinking I should go back and do some of the cheerier more performancey poems in Unholy Trinity, and part of me wanting to do newer stuff, not try to be funny just to fit in. In the end my compromise was to read one old poem, and the rest were stuff from Sex with Elvis and Hardcore. I figured I’d be better off just doing what I do, since to be honest even if I read funny poems it’s not as if people will laugh like they do to John Hegley. He has something very likeable about him that audiences respond to I think, even when he does some of the poems I think are actually sad poems about his childhood people laugh. I am always so odd at gigs, people there I have met before have am so bad at speaking to. I spoke to three people at this gig, managed to piss off Paul Batchelor by saying "Nice coat. Looks warm. You look like a policeman." See this is why I'm not allowed to talk to people. So I didn’t attempt to do anything but do my poems. For the first time ever someone came up after and asked if I had a CD which they could buy, which I don’t, but still, it’s nice to be asked. That phrase sort of summarises the whole night really.

So far this blog is misleading, it looks as if I am reading all the time, and going out. But the truth is I have done more readings in the beginning of this year than I did in total last year, which I suppose is shocking, given Sex with Elvis came out last year. People just don’t seem to ask that much. And that’s before Hardcore; imagine how unpopular I’ll be with the ‘spunk’?

February 13th-17th

2006-04-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

February 06

13^th-17^th February

The Finns came over, to launch the latest Ek Zuban pamphlet, and stayed with me for a few days. I had to go into that odd hostess mode to have them here, and spent a two days cleaning, as if I felt they would go back to Finland and tell everyone that Angela Readman , who they never heard of anyway, is a slob. It’s odd, in my experience no one really cares if your house is a mess or not actually, but the shame must come from somewhere and I had to keep it quiet. I found myself wishing for those nice little things of water by the bed with a glass that fits on the top, and realized how old I must be getting and sort of obsessive (speaking of which, is there a proper name for those things?) Something newly trivial to worry about!

It was great having the Finns here, but a sort of exhausting week, lots of racing about to different places for the launch. (Will I ever learn to drive? I’m still waiting for the first of the lessons I was promised for my 30^th birthday!) The audience turn out was really poor, and it was a shame that Tapani Kinuuen and Kalle Ninikangas traveled over a thousand miles to be met with such a trickle, as they read their poems wonderfully, and are really amazing poets. I’m surprised so few writers in the region wanted to see some Finnish poets, as they are extremely well published (Tapani has had 5 collections out in Finland) and very unique. I felt like I wanted to apologise for England somehow, not sure why. The tower gig was my favourite gig of the week, the atmosphere was really lively, and despite the small audience (numbers wise, I don’t think I saw any little people) everyone really got into their readings and gave it their all. Andy Willoughby read a seamless and energetic Flesh of the Bear (accompanied by Shaun Lennox on guitar and Milo Thelwall on violin and other things) and Bob Beagrie really went for it in an awesome version of 20^th Century Chicken. Bob is a poet who never ceases to amaze me, not only because of his work, but how he reads it. I remember seeing him read about 6 years ago, and he seemed very shy and a bit nervous, a few years later I saw him read again and he had transformed. He started off with very quiet poems and then just sort of flicked a switch and went for it at the tower, which was great to see, not only that it was poetry you felt wrapped up in involved in, the music just got to you, and the words jumped on your skin. Seeing how Bob has evolved as a reader really gives me hope, I used to think there are two types of people, those who are natural performers and have some sort of innate confidence, charisma and seem born to it, and those who are good poets and the readings are secondary. People like Bob have made me realise that reading your work as best you can is a skill you can learn, and become better at, even if you are not someone who finds it natural to be in the public eye. Tapani read his poems in Finnish, and amazed everyone by taking off his shirt and putting a pair of black tights on his head for the final poem (it’s ok, they were his wife’s’, but still!) It felt like a one off evening, that you just could never repeat, poetry felt live and full of energy and life, it came right out at you, and it seems I can count gigs like that I’ve been to on one hand.

As for me, I read last. I was thinking I might read second to last, as Tapani is the main turn kind of thing. It was odd to finally read the poems out loud in public, I wrote them, and they harder than my usual stuff, and then I realized I’d have to say words like spunk in front of people. The poems aren’t gratuitous; I had a reason for writing them. I wanted to write about some things we wouldn’t talk about, the lack of intimacy and knowledge in seemingly intimate situations, and the power relations between genders. I have made an effort in the past year to use words that make me uncomfortable sometimes, as it seems the only way to strip them of the power they have. But reading them aloud, saying them? I never considered that, and suddenly it was a worry. I figured the only way to do it was to be less apologetic than I usually am. I always apologise when I read, I have a sorry I exist sort of vibe that it seems I can’t shake, I feel that way and it comes out. I decided with these poems the only way to read them was not to apologise, or I wouldn’t get through them. Afterwards, the Finns got drunk, and when they came back to mine they wanted curry. Kalle spent about 20 minutes picking up rice he had dropped one grain at a time, with a look of concentration on his face. It seemed important to him, maybe it’s a Finn thing, so I kept out the way.

Later in the week, there were readings at Darlington Hydrogen Jukebox on Tuesday, and two readings on Thursday in Middlesbrough. It was a tiring day, one reading at lunchtime, and one in the evening. I had to be selective about which poems I could get away with for an older lunchtime audience, but it seemed to go down OK. Three different older ladies came to see me after and said they liked my nana poems, and it was lovely to hear. I suppose I’ve never considered that an older audience may like any of my work, so it was an eye opener, and really very unexpected. I suppose when I think of my work I imagine only girls in their twenties possibly liking it, of course you don’t see many of them at poetry events- which may be the problem.

January 06

2006-04-15T09:15:00.000-07:00

January 06

So this is the first blog entry, I’m new to this, and have been meaning to set up a blog since New Year. The funny thing is, when I’m writing the last thing I would think about doing is sitting down and writing a blog, it’s sorta that feeling you get when you have your dissertation to do when you are at Uni and find yourself turning monosyllabic- “oh damn, I have to write so many words”-seems a trial to waste any. I get the blindness, the can’t look a PC anymore, so it’ll be interesting as to how this works out.

I’m writing this in February. Summary of January is hard. It's that usual thing of cleaning up before Christmas, messing it up with Christmas, and then cleaning Christmas away. I think January is the hardest month of the year, as the winter seems so long, and after Christmas it feels like there is nothing to look forward to. What surprised me this year is getting back to work after New Year, it felt easier than usual. I wasn’t putting it off. I spent most of January in research mode, I read work by poets I’d been meaning to get round to, and started on some new books that finally arrived from America. I read some Leonard Cohen, and there was one book I couldn’t put down, which was the Traci Lords biography. I knew I needed it for research, but didn’t make any notes when I read it, which worried me. I think I just needed it to stay in my head for a while, knowing I might come back to it was enough for the time being.

At the end of the month I read at NWN up and coming event, where four poets read. I’m not that comfy with daytime readings, I wear too much make-up and look out of place, but it was nice to have a gig so soon in the year to feel like a poet again after the furry footed Christmas sensation. Alphabetical order, so of course I had to read last, which means following really good poets, which is daunting. The only thing about the event that seemed slightly odd was to call it an up and coming poets event, the reason is I wonder if that is something that will put audiences off turning up. I think these events are necessary, but I wish there was a better name for them- I mean, if you want to see a musician you go and see a musician, not a rehearsal. So if you want to see a poet, would you really want to go and see an almost poet? There must be another name for poets who aren’t well known yet that sounds more appealing. Any suggestions?