Poetry and la peste

Receiving snail mail (even email, if I'm honest) is even more exciting at the moment than it was pre-lockdown, and receiving the latest pamphlet in the Mid Life Crisis Zine Series is even more exciting than even that excitement! Thanks to Sally Barrett or including in The Virus Edition some of my brand-new Covid-19 work, which I based on Raymond Queneau's Exercices de Style and called Daily Permissible Exercises In Style. 

I told Sally when submitting: "I've been having fun creating this piece for consideration for the next edition of Mid Life Crisis. The background to it, if you need it, is that (inspired by Georges Perec) I sat and wrote down everything that happened, and that I thought about writing down, when nothing happened, for an hour 10-11am on 1 April. This quite long piece, I then condensed into the first piece here, retaining all the people who went by and discarding some of the other stuff. I then applied Queneau devices and other Oulipian constraints until I could take no more and had to go out into the sunshine, which I am now about to do." That was a week ago, when it was sunny.

More info. Story 1 is wordcount limited to 250 words; classic flash fiction. Story 2 is a lipogram, retelling Story 1 using words that don't include the letters C and V (the pandemic letters). Story 3 swaps out nouns in Story 1 with the nouns, in order, in the Foreword (by Umberto Eco) to the English translation (by Barbara Wright) of Exercises In Style. Story 4 is Story 1 told back to front. Since then, I've turned the discarded "other stuff" into another story and submitted it to a flash fiction site - fingers crossed on that front. 

Anyway, my thanks to Sally for the inclusion, the last-minute tweak, the copy of the magazine and the accompanying postcard; a Paris restaurant interior by Van Gogh. Above, I am modelling the fabulous pamphlet, while wearing my T-shirt designed by another of the contributors, Steve Hanson (of Manchester Review Of Books; in fact, there's a review of the zine here - "fine useage of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style"), which reads "sous les pavés, la vide" after the Parisian 1968 student protest slogan "sous les pavés, la plage". "Under the paving stones, the beach" (the setts the protestors removed from the streets were laid on top of sand) becomes "under the paving stones, the void", a reference to sinkholes and psychogeography, and, originally, "une histoire des années soixantes", which is my own reference to Perec's Les Choses. A Void is the English translation of La Disparition, a lipogram novel by Perec. Sorry. I'll shut up now. Email Sally via hoodwinked.mammal@gmail.com to buy the pamphlet!

The new normal

So, the world has started spinning at a very different speed and it's going to take a bit of getting used to. Lots of new words and phrases have become a part of our everyday vocabulary like we knew them all from primary school - self-isolating, social distancing, furlough leave... the latter has been imposed on me by my two-day-a-week job, my other regular gig has "gone dark". The rest, the freelance work? Bits and bobs are ongoing but who knows for how long. Not to worry, I'll maybe take some time out to breathe in the fresher air, tidy up the house and garden, maybe even do a spot of writing that's not about other people's stuff. I've already bashed out a small piece for a newly set up creative writing website, 100 Words Of Solitude (see what they did there?), which I'll hopefully get round to submitting this week, when not rustling up homemade soup from wild garlic foraged at a safe distance from other writers. I've also cobbled together a piece over here about possible funding options in the arts, so, y'know, keep positive, keep crafting...

An Oulipian 2020

Been thinking about New Year’s resolutions. Last year’s worked well - writing and submitting every month. For 2020, I might try and keep that up. I'm also going to do some kind of writing project related to stained glass, try and dabble in a bit of photography (pick up where my City & Guilds left off, maybe) and I’m going to see if I can read all the Perec books I own that for some reason I haven’t got round to reading. Here are some I’ve read in French and some I haven’t. I'm currently reading L'Infra-ordinaire. I was going to read all the French ones, but tbh I might read La Vie Mode d'Emploi in translation as Life A User's Manual as I've had the original since probably around 1992 (if I could be bothered going upstairs to look in the front, I could tell you the precise year, and probably where I was living at that point - but I'm busy writing this) and been overwhelmed by its immense pagination and tiny weeny font size. Tell me what else I might need to add to the reading pile. Be reasonable, like. No crosswords in the mother tongue, for example.

Big Macc

November already - how did that happen? It means it's only a couple of weeks until the first LIT Macc festival, a brand-new weekend of stories and light, with loads of activities lined up over three days - more here. On Saturday 23rd from 6pm, six of us will be standing up in a church, reading the short stories we've written especially for the Macc Stories event, and it's promising to be really fab - lots of different themes, lots of different styles, lots to get into and take away. Joining the party are David Gaffney, Abi Hynes, Nicholas Royle, Reshma Ruia, Joe Stretch and me, so three of the Victoria Baths Re/Place(s) gang reunited, three of the Refract:19 FaxFiction lot back together and two of the Story Cities crew. Really looking forward to it! What's more, each of the six stories is being treated to its very own image taken especially for the purpose by Simon Buckley of the Not Quite Light project and festival (see one of his Macclesfield images below) - yes, the man behind that Lowry-esque image recently featured in the Observer.

Join us in the United Reformed Church on Macclesfield's Park Green, aptly near the Silk Museum, which features in my story, the title of which will in itself take all my ten minutes to read ("A Blast Of Light And Then It’s Gone", which is a quote I've reappropriated from an interview I did a few years back with Miles Lambert, Curator - Costume at Manchester Art Gallery & Gallery of Costume, about an Ossie Clark exhibition, part inspiration for this new piece). There's a Facebook event page to go and like here; and tickets are on sale through Eventbrite over here, although you can always pay on the door. Switch the lights off when you leave, would you?

Integrated transport system

News just in – I’ve somehow managed to find my way onto the list of Best British & Irish Flash Fiction 2018-2019. This year, TSS Publishing put the BIFFY50 decision-making into the hands of Barbara Byar, Neil Campbell, Elisabeth Ingram Wallace and Rebecca Williams, so thank you to those guys.

My Victoria Baths Residency continues apace and this week sees me witnessing the Gala Pool being filled for only the third time since the complex shut its doors to the swimming public back in 1993, in readiness for the upcoming Swim For Restoration Weekend. Saturday will feature me performing some of my water-related flash fiction pieces written while I’ve been Writer-in-Residence, along with the announcement of the winner of the Splash Fiction Competition we launched at the Weekend Of Words and readings by some of the shortlisted writers – the hour-long event starts at 1pm; more here.

 From 1pm on Saturday 5 October, I’m one of six writers purveying their wares in a vintage caravan as part of the Burnley Literary Festival event Flash In A Van (geddit?). The others are Michael Conley, Kate Feld, David Gaffney, Tania Hershman and Fat Roland, so a fun afternoon should ensue. I’m putting together a set list of transport-related pieces. Expect boats, trains, possibly cars, maybe trams, and definitely a caravan.

The week later, on Saturday 12 October, starting at 2pm (all these afternoon gigs!), Sally Barrett launches her latest Mid Life Crisis Zine, ‘The Alice One’, at Chorlton’s Dulcimer. I’m one of the readers, as a slightly numbers-led, constraint-driven, experimental-y, Oulipian-esque story I wrote (inspired by overnight trains and canal boats) especially for the Alice In Wonderland-inspired tome while vacationing in Spain was accepted for publication, which was rather nice. The launch event will have Nell Osborne of No Matter headlining, and readings from (confirmed so far) editor Sally, Helen Clare, Joe Darlington, Anna Percy, and Tim Allen and Rachel Sills from Peter Barlow’s Cigarette. More here.

At the end of November, the 23rd, to be exact, I’m also due to appear at Macclesfield LIT Fest, and I’m expecting to announce further dates, including the launch of the Love Bites Buzzcocks-themed anthology coming out soon on Dostoyevsky Wannabe. Phew.