Happy New Year

A new year, and a happy one to all. I'm a Christmas-born person, so I have a birthday year as well as a calendar year to reflect back upon at this time, along with a whole twelve months stretching out ahead before I add a new digit to my age. Apologies for Insta followers, as some of the following might seem a tad repetitive; some, maybe, but not all – and the point is, as a natural sceptic and cynic (who wouldn't be, joining the world as all around focused on scrambling to bagsy last-minute stocking fillers), I nonetheless try and dig out a bit of treasure, shine some light in the dark, as it were. Think positive thoughts, I suppose. and hopefully spread some inspiration along the way. 

I've spent the last year quietly (mostly) getting on with being 50 and I think it's worth mentioning all the things I've managed to get done at such a ripe old age. I've published not just one debut book, but two, one poetry (cache-cache, out with Contraband) and the other prose (Marine Drive, Broken Sleep Books), with a third (Using Language, Invisible Hand Press) pushed into the spring because, y'know, buses, and the significant makings of a full poetry collection as well as a new short story, and various other bits and bobs writing-wise, to take me across the threshold into 2023. I've also published poems and prose pieces in journals and anthologies, and I've written features for some cool magazines, out soon. I've written a lot of copy, a lot of which I don't shout about because it's kind of my day job, so huh. I've also edited a lot of copy, which offers me a sneaky peek into other topics and thoughts and even worlds besides my own. I've shown work in two exhibitions, in the form of concrete poems. I've started sketching and painting and not being scared to muck about creatively. I intend to do more: David has signed me up for a watercolours course and I'm hoping to sign us both up for a bit of collaging. 

I had an idea accepted for the Lancashire Stories project and was commissioned to create a brand-new piece and read some of it and discuss it at an event in a courtroom in a castle. As an offshoot of that, I got to stay on the Research Vessel Furor Scribendi, a pastel-hued canalboat-cum-library, complete with translations of Georges Perec and a bold as brass desk for scribbling and tennis balls for mugs and shells for plates. Being upon water and so close to it again was soothing. I also applied for a residency with Ilkley Literature Festival, the North's longest-running such event, and spent a good chunk of the year as Apprentice Poet-in-Residence, immersing myself in researching and reading and writing and performing and chatting and workshopping and mentoring. It was a fantastic experience, and you can read more about it in some of my previous posts.

I've taken up ballet, which has contributed to helping me recover from the fractured spine I sustained just before my 50th. It on occasion hurts my arthriticky hip like hell, but it's great for the old posture, and it's really good fun. It took a certain amount of courage to join a new class, but I did. I also joined an online group to discuss writing about place, and that proved fruitful and worth jumping in too, so, I suppose, face the fear, as Susan Jeffers kind of said in 1987. Don't get me wrong, not everything was great, and I had to fight hard to get justice in a couple of cases. I'm currently reading Rebecca Solnit's Recollections of my Non-existence, a suggestion from someone in the place-writing reading group, and she says of the "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" adage (thanks, Nietzsche; see also 'Opportunity To Build' in cache-cache): "what tries to kill you takes a lot of your energy that might be better used elsewhere and makes you tired and anxious." So imagine what else I could have achieved, but maybe that's what 2023 is for...

Best Reads of 2022, an outtake

I was asked to contribute to the webzine Northern Soul's "Best Reads of 2022", and happily offered some suggestions. You can read the full feature here, including some of my favourite poetry books this year as well as David Gaffney's third novel, Out Of The Dark. I'd also written about another author that I've been quite obsessed with, although those words didn't make the final cut, so I'm sharing them here...

Annie Ernaux, Exteriors (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

It’s not every Nobel Prize in Literature announcement that sparks me to leap up from my lunch and punch the air, but hearing Annie Ernaux’s name did just that. Rediscovering her experimental hybrid creative nonfiction this year, after being introduced to memoir La place (A Man’s Place) studying French at the University of Manchester, I had been busy trying not to over-drip-feed myself the English version, Exteriors, I’d bought of Journal du dehors, so small but intense each passage, recounting almost infraordinary encounters stretching over a number of years. I had also just picked up her latest tome (hardly, at a mere 27 pages) Le jeune homme in a wonderful Parisian bookshop; this telling of Ernaux’s affair with a much younger man will be available in translation with indie press Fitzcarraldo (who produce a lovely package) in 2023 – her explorations of difficult situations, approaching the most personal of experiences almost completely disconnected, are toe-curlingly good. 

'Pearl-like phrases' and 'clear precision'

My debut prose pamphlet Marine Drive has been given a rather good review by Desmond Bullen for Northern Soul, in which he says: “These pieces catch the light in ripples … A kind of musical exactitude, like a shell whispering against your ear.” Read the full piece, 'Pearl-like Phrases', here.

Andrea Mason (Waste Extractions, Broken Sleep Books), who gave Marine Drive a great blurb – “prose redolent of the clear precision of Lydia Davis, the material evocations of Sheila Heti, the visceral spikes of Ann Berg” – featured one of the stories in Mercurius. You can read 'Let's Go Round Again' here.

Thanks to both of them for their kind words.

More from our Yorkshire correspondent

The good folk at Ilkley Literature Festival quizzed me about my stint as Apprentice Poet In Residence for this year's festival, which you read on the ILF website here, reproduced below, and they've also published my commission, as mentioned in the text, here.

Can you remember the first poem you wrote?

Not really, but I was first published aged 12 after entering the WH Smith Young Writers’ Competition. I sent in a poem about mashed potato and won a fountain pen.

Who or what has influenced your work?

As part of my French degree, I studied OuLiPo, renowned for ‘freeing literature by tightening its rules’, and my BA thesis and part of my Creative Writing MA was based on Georges Perec, so messing about with words and working with constraints is a big part of what I do.

Which poem or poet do you never tire of reading?

Ever since I was small, I’ve been interested in languages (I’m half Welsh, so maybe that’s why) and how words sound as well as read, and I love Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.

What is your process of writing a poem?

Sometimes I start with a constraint and the poem takes shape (even literally) from there; sometimes a poem develops as a result of research or working on other writing, such as a short story or a piece of nonfiction or creative non-fiction, so the poem is a kind of offcut. Sometimes a poem just arises from an observation or an overheard that fits with something I’d jotted down in my notebook already.

Do you have any advice for someone wanting to write and publish poetry? 

Read a lot, write a lot, edit a lot. Listen to other poets at readings or open mics, and share your own work that way as well as through journals and competitions; there are plenty, so find the ones that suit and follow the guidelines. Sign up for workshops and courses – there are quite a few online that are free or not super expensive – and join or set up a writers’ circle to try out new work. It’s very encouraging to get positive feedback but also be prepared to accept criticism, just remember that you have the final decision on what stays and what goes. 

During your role, you focused on place writing, what drew you to this practice? 

I’ve always been drawn to texts that include places and spaces almost as a character – for example 28 Barbary Lane in Armistead Maupin’s Tales Of The City series – and, as a lapsed sailor, the sea and water are recurring themes in my work. I was inaugural Writer in Residence at Manchester’s Victoria Baths and this year was a resident writer on board the Research Vessel Furor Scribendi as part of the Lancashire Stories project – I’ve contributed a story about Plover Scar lighthouse; I’m also writing about a lock on the River Rhône in France. I’m interested in geography and psychogeography, and in questioning our surroundings, observing the infra-ordinary, and looking for clues in the familiar and unfamiliar, be that urban or rural. This year I’ve also taken part in a Critical Reading Group via The Centre For Place Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and a symposium, Talking Place.

What did your role as ILF Apprentice Poet in Residence entail?

One of the main features was writing new poetry for a performance during the festival and I was also tasked with running a creative writing workshop, which I called Places and Spaces – our texts took us from Yorkshire in ‘Bridge For The Living’ by Philip Larkin all around the UK, and we looked at pieces by Suzannah V Evans, Padraig Regan, Alice Oswald, Ella Frears and Liz Berry. Along with fellow apprentice Rebecca Green, I judged the Walter Scott Writing Prize and mentored one of the winners, and we hosted two Poet's Corner Reading Group sessions together, discussing pieces by writers who appeared at the festival in 2022 – we covered this year’s Poet in Residence Kayo Chingonyi, Zaffar Kunial, Kim Moore and a previous ILF Apprentice Poet in Residence Andrew McMillan. 

What did you enjoy most about your Apprentice Poet in Residency at Ilkley Lit Fest?

Being commissioned to create new work and share it with Ilkley audiences has been a real joy, inviting the audience to join me on a round walk – from the comfort of their church hall chairs – loitering at different landmarks to take in the scene. The opportunity has provided me with the chance to explore the town and the Moor, pour over maps and books on everything from Yorkshire dialect to Barbara Hepworth sculptures, and enjoy keeping lots of field notes, taking photos, pressing flowers and even making some drawings. I’ve also done a lot of writing, exploring some new approaches (including mirroring one of my charcoal sketches in the shape of one of my poems) as well as styles (haiku, for one), and pulling together the poetry map I set out to create. 

Place writing – Ilkley Literature Festival

Ilkley Literature Festival 2022 has come to a close and, with it, the main responsibilities of my residency. I was delighted and honoured to be chosen as Apprentice Poet in Residence for the North’s longest-running literature festival, and being commissioned to create new work and share it with Ilkley audiences has been a real joy.

The opportunity has provided me with the chance to explore and rediscover places and spaces in and around Ilkley, spend an enormous amount of time pouring over maps and books on everything from Yorkshire dialect to Barbara Hepworth sculptures, and get lost wandering the streets while staying in the town and down umpteen rabbitholes while carrying out research on the internet. I’ve learnt loads of stuff including plenty about art, and I even cracked open the charcoals and had a go myself. In other words, I’ve had a lot of fun.

I’ve also, of course, done a lot of writing, exploring some new approaches (including mirroring one of my sketches in the shape of one of my poems) as well as styles (haiku, for one), and pulling together the poetry map I set out to create. My initial route turned out to be too ambitious less than a year after fracturing my spine, but an explore of the Moor in itself proved fruitful, producing a sequence of six poems for my festival performance, and a few extra for good measure. I invited the audience to join me on a round walk – from the comfort of their church hall chairs – loitering at different landmarks to take in the scene. At some point I will hopefully publish the series together (I think the pieces work for page as well as stage), perhaps even alongside the basic map I drew, so others can follow in my footsteps and read my poems in situ as they wander the trail. It ended up just shy of five miles with a detour to the Cow & Calf Hotel, and took about three hours – encompassing a not insignificant amount of evidence-gathering: taking photos, pressing flowers, keeping detailed field notes, stopping to listen to rustling beasts and beech leaves prospering in the breeze…

For the residency, I was also tasked with running a creative writing workshop, which I called Places and Spaces – in it we questioned our surroundings, observed the infra-ordinary, and looked for clues in the familiar and unfamiliar… Our texts took us from Yorkshire in ‘Bridge For The Living’ by Philip Larkin all around the UK, and we looked at pieces by Suzannah V Evans, Padraig Regan, Alice Oswald, Ella Frears and Liz Berry. The participants all contributed well and were happy to share work they made there and then, and I was told it was “a brilliant workshop – I go to many workshops, this was one great”, and I couldn’t ask for a better comment, really.

With fellow apprentice Rebecca Green, I also judged a creative writing competition and we hosted two Poet's Corner Reading Group sessions together, discussing pieces by writers who appeared at the festival – our first group helped us with a close read of previous ILF Apprentice Poet in Residence Andrew McMillan’s ‘visibility’ and a piece from Kim Moore’s Forward Prize-shortlisted collection All The Men I Never Married; our second readers (some returning) looked at ‘Foxglove County’ by Zaffar Kunial and ‘St Guy’s and St Thomas’s’ by Kayo Chingonyi, another ILF Poet in Residence. Did I mention I’ve also done a ton of reading? And I even managed to get my two new tomes into the Grove Bookshop…