incorporating writing

Issue 4 Vol 2 TRAVEL

Benedict Allen - Daljit Nagra - Robert Steinbeck

Incorporating Writing Contents (ISSN 1743-0380)

Editorial Team Page Editorial Managing Editor Travel 3 Andrew Oldham Andrew Oldham discusses all things Travel and the nagging question: Are we there yet? Interviews Editor Sarah Hesketh Interviews Benedict Allen 14 Articles Editor Sarah Hesketh meets the great explorer. Fiona Ferguson Daljit Nagra 32 Reviews Editor Sarah Hesketh spends time with the critical success that is... G.P.Kennedy Articles Columnists Jo’Burg Travels 5 Dan McTiernan, Andrew O’Donnell, Tom Spurling tackles travel writing and the Dave Wood, Sharon Sadle. South African city. Contributors Here Be Monsters 8 Janet Aspey, Katherine Blair, Claire Ben Felsenburg looks at the eco-crisis Boot, Caroline Drennan, Ben hitting the travel writer. Felsenburg, Cath Nichols, Helen Shay, Tom Spurling Childe Harold’s Ticket to Ride 24 Caroline Drennan looks at the restless Cover Art nature of Byron. Gemma Cumming Steinbeck’s Travelogue of War 44 Design Claire Boot looks at Steinbeck at War. Marsh

Contact Details Columns http://www.incorporatingwriting.co.uk Dislocation, Dislocation 11 [email protected] Dan McTiernan discovers one doesn’t have to travel to be lost.

Cubicle Escapee 22 Sharon Sadle tries to relax. Artwork Incorporating Writing is an imprint of The Incwriters Society (UK). The magazine is managed by an editorial Perfect Eye 28 team independent of The Society’s Constitution. Nothing in this magazine may be reproduced in whole or part without Cover artist, Gemma Cumming, exhibits permission of the publishers. We cannot accept responsi- some of her work. bility for unsolicited manuscripts, reproduction of articles, photographs or content. Incorporating Writing has endeav- oured to ensure that all information inside the magazine is Reviews 35 correct, however prices and details are subject to change. Individual contributors indemnify Incorporating Writing, The Incwriters Society (UK) against copyright claims, monetary claims, tax payments / NI contributions, or any News and Opportunities 48 other claims. This magazine is produced in the UK. © The Incwriters Society (UK) 2005 3 incorporating writing

Are we there yet? Editorial by Andrew Oldham

and reading equally bad literature? And felt good about it? Openly braggedabout fucking up the country you holidayed in? And we all do it, we go to gems hidden amongst the lapping waves of some undiscovered place. These solitary hideaways where we find ourselves, find peace, discover beauty and feel at one with the world. And, a fortnight after returning home, we have told all our friends, family, colleagues, lovers and any I abhor travel. Maybe that is a little passing stranger or old school friend what harsh but trust me when you’ve landed a great place we’ve just holidayed in. sideways in an air plane at O’Hare, What do they do? They go there! The buffeted by one of the worst hurricanes cheek. The sheer bravado! What happens the USA has ever seen, it tends to put then? They tell all their friends, family, you off the act of travelling. I love to go colleagues, acquaintances of their pets places though, so I am in a Catch 22 about a great place they’ve just been situation. Many of us now baulk as we too. Oh, the beaches! Oh, the people! The face the new guru catch word - carbon culture, the food, the warmth! - LOOK AT footprint; a catchphrase dreamt up in OUR TANS - and what happens then? some PR company, to make us all feel They go! And then more people go there, guilty that the planet is indeed warming then actually live there. Four years later, up, whilst human compassion, trust and you meet the first person you love amongst fellow men and women is recommended the gem to and say quite distinctly dropping down the temperature calmly and in that innocent voice, “I went scale. Let’s face it, we’re stuffed. back on holiday there, but I wouldn’t go again - it’s so commercial, there’s no So, how big is your carbon footprint? Is it culture left. There was even a burger bar so big that you can now actively brag to next to a temple! The people have sold male friends about it? Is it big enough to out” make even China go weak at the knees? Let’s face it, this is how the whole travel What do you expect? You waved great problem is being pitched at us - we are fistfuls of dirty money in their faces. Sure, being made to feel incredibly stupid and beauty is wonderful, empty tranquil guilty but there is no real mention of the beaches that stretch off to the blue companies that are also to blame or even horizon are great but you don’t live there the governments. all the time. You don’t realise how poor some of these countries are and how Yet, our lust for travel and the throwaway much the humble tourist has them over a lifestyle is contagious. Come on, who barrel. Money or poverty? Money or hasn’t amongst you told friends that you starvation? The irony is though, that went to somewhere warm and sat by the England too is becoming a tourist trap. pool for a fortnight, drinking bad wine It’s the fastest growing market in the UK incorporating writing 4

at the moment. Will we adapt though to being the one’s accepting the money and bending backwards over a barrel to do it? Could we, after so many decades of package holidays, shouting for food in slow and clear English in the Costa del Sol, Lyon, Delhi, Rhodes and Paris actually welcome the same back? Package holidays are coming back to roost, and I wait with baited breath for the first Spanish Man to shout slow and clear in some greasy spoon, in Spanish of course, that he wants paella. “What do you expect? You waved great fistfuls of dirty money in their faces”

In this issue, the great and good of travel explore their own times abroad. Benedict Allen explains the need for exploration over travel, Daljit Nagra speaks of travel in the UK. We look at Byron abroad, at eco-travel and the mighty carbon footprint (it does sound like a heavyset smoker with a neverending supply of fags CALL FOR WRITERS in his mouth), the jewel of South Africa Incorporating Writing will go quarterly in and the hidden mess kept away from the 2007. Themes for 2007 include tourists and we look at Steinbeck at War - REGIONAL REVOLUTION (July) and FOOD even this became a travelogue. Dan (October). Guidelines can be obtained McTiernan and Sharon Sadle look at the from the editors below act of dislocation and relaxation respectively. Gemma Cumming shows us All enquiries and deadline details are the beautiful side of postcards in Perfect available from: Eye. Bon voyage! Comprende mush? Andrew Oldham (Managing Editor) [email protected] Fiona Ferguson (Articles Editor) [email protected] Andrew Oldham is the Managing Editor of G.P. Kennedy (Reviews Editor) Incorporating Writing. He is an award winning [email protected] writer and academic. His work includes papers on Ray Bradbury, BBC Radio and TV programmes, www.incorporatingwriting.co.uk music and literary journalism and several collections of poetry. He recently won a NW Vision award. 5 incorporating writing

Jo’burg Travels Article by Tom Spurling

Writing about our own travels is no stations, lots of misread maps - and use to those who choose to run away. But partly because it’s half-human to wonder. we all write and travel for different But who really wants to know about other reasons. Mark Twain travelled to pay off people in whom they cannot recognise his debts, Paul Theroux travelled to pay themselves? Who really wants to travel off his novels, Evelyn Waugh travelled to for a living? appease his own neo-colonial guilt, but perhaps it’s more like Bruce Chatwyn So what to do, us travellers, us writers? once said, and most of us travel cos we Travel and writing may be somewhat can. spiritual pursuits, but Travel Writing alone is strictly business. To travel alone is ‘Ubuntu’ is a term used to describe more lonesome than writing, but group African humanism. It means that we’re all travel is mostly pretend. Perhaps we connected, all the time, no matter how should pack it in altogether in pursuit of far we roam, no matter how spicy we like peace of mind? Well, funnily enough, it’s our chicken (local flavour is crucial to not likely to happen in this world of cheap good travel writing). Travel writers often travel and paid writing because most of espouse universal ubuntu. They us aren’t nearly good enough at either to encourage us to see the world in stop - or we still have something half miniature, to see our own lives as exotic. decent to say, somewhere half decent to This is partly because travel is often dull go - and many of us still stubbornly cling and frustrating - lots of waiting in train to a life where one can fund the other. incorporating writing 6

The travel in this writing takes place in together inside. “Here it’s the Johannesburg, or Jozi, the old, gold, Mozambicans climbing through your abused boom town gone bust. Jozi hits window,” Trish said. “In Botswana, it’s the the pits hard and rises high around the Zimbabweans.” edges. She’s a daylight city, a grit-and- bare-it city, and anyone’s after dark. Travel writing will always take you away, Travel writing is not always romantic. Jozi unexpectedly. Second time round the is where this travel writer starts, in an clock we wake at noon Melbourne time, airport hotel with no shower. He’s strung but still in Jozi, pitch black with cats and out halfway across the Indian Ocean, with robbers. We sit idle til Ntombi the hired a girl who was promised a holiday, and help comes to collect us for a tour we instead got me, to make two out-of-town never booked. Accidental tourism, but do-gooders in transit to Limpopo, four we’re glad to see her. And so we waltz hundred clicks north and counting. down tree-lined Walton with our guide at hand, our book in bag, and pile into one But travel writing can both guide you by of eleven mini-buses for a Taste of Africa book, and book you a room for the night at one-sixty rand or your money in on Seventh Street, Melville; an oasis of dollars. First stop, (fifth if we’re urban harmony in a city under permanent counting), is the Apartheid Museum, and siege. Melvile is an ideal South Africa that I’m thinking, should I take Ntombi a cool nonetheless bars its doors. There, my drink while she waits outside in the sun? travel partner and I eat stuffed agnolotti, No, no, she can manage, she’s seen it all and Macau salads, buy the new album before. Inside it’s horrible, of course, but from Cape Town indie darlings Rock Tock nonetheless important and worthwhile, Tik (average), and wax half our legs. We but yes, we should leave soon, Ntombi watch black guys drive hot cars and kiss will be waiting. Soweto is suddenly all hot girls who walk home late alone. It’s the more urgent, but when you get there, healthy, if not safe, but promises more the guilt in your mouth gets covered in than big cats and big country. At least dust, and the 20-something migrant from more than you’d ever read about. the Eastern Cape takes you to her baking hot tin hut beside the river of ‘pig’s food’ Travel and writing are each full of chance where not very long ago some Zulus went meetings and anecdotes that will, on to town on hundreds of screaming souls occasions, reveal certain truths about the and the ‘Bang Bang Club’ got famous state of a nation. One afternoon in taking pictures. Melville I picked up a hardback copy of the Best New South African Writing, Travel is nothing like writing. Anyone can (published the year I was born), and met write, and anyone can travel. These days the black as black local comic co-star you can fly to Ireland from Italy for from soon-to-be-released MTV film twelve bucks fifty, and blog round the ‘Bunnychow’. “Man, you should stay in world for free. But travel writing will Australia,” he laughed. “Ain’t no black forever be the ‘middle-man’ of literature, people there!” Returning to my pension for the best travelers rarely write, and the that evening, I bantered AIDS and Africa best writers rarely travel. But they both with Trish, the affable ex-British owner need the other to inform our own lives, to whose two blond daughters squawked help us to stay or to help us go. into saliva-stained recorders and played 7 incorporating writing

“But who really wants to know about other people in whom they cannot recognise themselves? Who really wants to travel for a living?”

Tom Spurling is a freelance travel writer from Melbourne, Australia. He has recently returned from India on assignment for Lonely Planet, and is now a writer-in-residence at Amazwi Media Arts School in rural South Africa. ‘Amazwi’, meaning ‘voices’ in Zulu, trains local women to tell their own stories and to produce a community newspaper. The program also produces a. magazine - Africa’s first literary journal - which specialises in creative non-fiction inspired by the continent. www.amazwi.org Hereincorporating Be writingMonsters: 8 Travel Writing In The Eco-Age Article by Ben Felsenburg

Travel writing may be as old as words. Bruce Chatwin in Patagonia spelled a Cuneiform must still have been a novelty challenge in the seventies and eighties. when someone sent a clay tablet stating Transport, politics and expense set these ‘Wish you were here.’ Even the Old destinations aside for only the more Testament doubles up nicely as a guide determined tourist of these decades, but book to the Middle East, from Mounts they were reachable. Ararat and Sinai to the river Jordan, albeit a little heavy on the historical and bloody Now, when globalisation and cheap air local colour. travel have rendered India’s beaches into the Costa Del Sol de nos jours and the Travellers’ tales largely fall into two Himalayan peaks are all but thronged categories. Some describe places the with tour parties, these distinctions have reader probably will never see: worn thin. Bookseller employees place Renaissance Italians would likely know Marco Polo in the same section as In the Silk Road only from Marco Polo, just Search Of Elvis, and VS Naipaul, Theroux as, bar the colonising few, the Victorian and Chatwin are set just a few shelves Englishman turns to the pages of Sir away from the pleasantly quotidian wit of Richard Burton to discover Africa. Then Bill Bryson. Can their notions of travel all there are journeys the reader may well be said to be in accord with Francis have made already or even, perhaps, Bacon’s definition: ‘part education, part shall be inspired to take by the book in or experience’? an in-between state of affairs. Paul Theroux in China and the incomparable It’s a question of some urgency for our 9 incorporating writing

eco-aware times. Where once ‘here be spent in its research?’ monsters’ marked those parts of the globe we did not know, now that we have And there was I thinking entertainment stained the entire planet with our works, beat moral purpose hands down every the monsters are us. As Ian Jack notes in time a book is opened. Still there’s no Granta’s most recent travel collection doubt such thoughts threaten to consign (Granta 94, ‘On The Road Again: Where vast sheaves of writing to that damned Travel Writing Went Next’), ‘Travel no realm reserved for the immediately dated longer seems so innocent or beneficent recent past. But perhaps that’s no bad (“travel broadens the mind”), unless one thing: look at the blurb of the 2006 journeys in some pre-industrial carbon- Lonely Planet anthology ‘Tales From neutral way, like Thomas Coryat walking Nowhere’. ‘We’ve all been to Nowhere,’ it all the way from Somerset to India in the assumes, no doubt to appeal to the early seventeenth century, or R. L. suited professionals wistfully nostalgic for Stevenson on his donkey in the their grungy backpacking twenties Cévennes, or Queen Victoria getting up identified by the marketing Pilatus on her mule.’ demographics. ‘It might have been in the middle of Borneo or Beijing.’ Yes, you “You want to know about teeming millions count for nothing against my vague sense of alienated another continent? You disorientation having just come off the can’t go there just for the plane. ‘Nowhere is a setting, a situation and a state of mind.’ Just in case you hell of it — but you can were wondering. The tales within are read all about it” perfectly serviceable as a series of effectively racy extended anecdotes, but that blurb stands for the whole hoary You could take issue with Jack. There is notion of travelling to discover ourselves. no such thing as carbon-neutral travel: The game is up for that particular jig, if even if we all journeyed only on mule and we accept the body of evidence that says by foot, there’d still be the eco-cost of the our wanton travel is at least partially fossil-fuel-based mass fertilisers that are responsible for climate change, and if we needed for the food to feed such energy decline the hell-in-a-handcart-so-what’s- expenditure. Journeys are not in the-use option. themselves deleterious. The problem is the sheer numbers in which we live and So where now? Travel literature could be move. reinvigorated by the eco-crisis. You want to know about another continent? You In any event, Jack outlines the future way can’t go there just for the hell of it — but for writers and their journeys: ‘...it seems you can read all about it. We’ll have come to me that if travel writing is to be more full circle, back to those medieval reports than a persuasive literary entertainment and rumours from exotic far-off places. — if it’s to have some genuinely Let’s not forget our globalisation offers illuminating and perhaps even, these times being what they are, some moral purpose — then the information it contains needs to be trustworthy. How else do you justify the carbon emissions continued page 13...

11 incorporating writing

Dislocation, Dislocation Column by Dan McTiernan

arse out of that!”, “for f%!*$ sake!” and “Why, God, why?” The lack of a cooker means a whole new world of ready meals has opened up to us. We saunter round supermarkets like gastro-tourists cherry picking the finest film-wrapped slurry from around the globe. Ooh, prawn toast, ooh chicken dopiaza. We’ve started to accumulate complimentary crockery as a result of the vast volumes of “have a night in” ranges we purchase.

Even though I’m almost one hundred “My fervent reading of the percent convinced there was not one Escape section of the utterance of it on the estate agent’s details, it appears we’ve bought a house weekend paper would in Mordor. suggest that, I for one, am Since we bought it in December, ceaseless horizontal torrents of Pennine- riddled with the virus” iced rain have pitted away at the crumbling stonework of the building and Then there’s the party wall that at our morale. separates us from them next door and The dark slough of moorland the discovery that it’s apparently made of opposite – something that appealed at rice paper. At weekends the waft of their the time of purchase – looks so saturated SuperKings seeps through into our that it might slide towards us at any bathroom and living room, their moment, taking out the council estate consumptive hacking acts as our 8am further up the hill and depositing its alarm, their little girl’s daily teatime hour Jeremy Kyle-watching inhabitants onto of skipping sends enough violent judders the railway tracks just the other side of along our floorboards to cause Vibration our apocalyptic garden. Whitefinger. For the past several months now Oh, and my wife is due to give birth my weekend residence has been the to our first child two weeks yesterday cellar - jovially described as a kitchen by Sauron Property Inc. – as my endlessly I need a holiday. You know the type; the patient friend Jay and I tackle the damp, one where you sell the house and run the drunken angles of the walls and away to Southern India forever to set up ceiling and our own glaring lack of an eco-backpackers lodge. Extreme Makeover experience. Our I can see in Johanna’s face as she favourite grunted Orkish phrases include wades through the piles of dust and half such gems as: “We’ve made a right cod’s unpacked possessions in her wellies – we incorporating writing 12

wear them indoors rather than out at the Buddhism. I want a really good sun tan. I moment for hygiene reasons - that it want to wear flip flops not wellies! wouldn’t take much to get her to agree to But even if I don’t get to my my little sojourn. tropical paradise this week I know that at To be honest that’s our usual least we are moving forwards. There is no modus operandi anyway. Build our such thing as stagnation in our lives careers up, start to settle in somewhere because impatience breeds dynamism. and meet people, begin to feel calm, then That’s the part I love; the fresh change dump everything and bugger off that sweeps through every six months or somewhere new because we’re restless. so taking us in kaleidoscopic directions. It’s a habit that I both love and loathe As much as I might moan about about our existences because it kitchen fitting, I actually enjoy it really simultaneously means adventure and and, as we’re planning to build our own dislocation. house in a couple of moves’ time anyway, I often wonder whether it’s because it’s pretty essential practice. of us as people; the fact that we mainly And we’re having a baby! Talk work as freelancers, the fact that we’re about travelling to somewhere completely from different countries and are new! I’m incredibly excited about it all constantly torn between Britain and and I can console myself with the thought Finland, the fact that shambolicism is our that existential angst will most probably mantra? Or is this lack of rootedness be subsumed by liquid poo, for the time simply a manifestation of a wider being at least. phenomenon? Is it, in fact, a generational I wonder if they do wellies in size 0- disease to which our immunity 3 months? periodically dips, like Malaria or cold sores? Are we carriers of some sort of existential travel bug? My fervent reading of the Escape section of the weekend paper would suggest that, I for one, am riddled with the virus. It’s terrible really because I have most of the things a man’s supposed to want and have. I have a supposedly meaningful job working for an environmental charity, I’m about to be a father, I have a car with a mock walnut dashboard, I have a pebbledashed garage in which to store my tools for the infinite DIY projects that line the rickety path of my future. What more could there be? And yet time after time I want to run off with Johanna to tropical escapism land and bum around. I want to shirk Writer, magazine editor, film maker and film responsibility, to say bollocks to my newly lecturer, Dan McTiernan schizophrenically acquired mortgage, to live in an A-frame wanders through his well travelled working life safe in the knowledge that underneath the media hut on the beach and read about façade, he’s really an eco-builder and smallholder. 13 incorporating writing

...continued from page 9 solutions to every problem, even the ones it’s made itself. “Now, when globalisation and cheap air travel have rendered India’s beaches into the Costa Del Sol”

James Attlee’s book ‘Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey’, is an account of the city’s rich diversity, where the recent and most visible arrival of a host of nationalities has transformed community – witness ‘Jamaican, Bangladeshi, Indian, Polish, Kurdish, Chinese, French, Italian, Thai, Japanese and African restaurants’ – Attlee asks, ‘Why make a journey to the other side of the world when the world come to you?’ Curious about the foreign and far-away? Read a book. Or just look next door.

19 Abercromby Square

Liverpool, L69 7ZG

[email protected]

www.thereader.co.uk

Website includes news, events, shop, blog, podcasts.

First published in 1997, The Reader has always been a platform for passionate responses to literature. If you love read- Were it not for his fear of flying and neurotic ing, you’ll be delighted to find The addiction to cycling, London writer and congenital stay-at-homer Ben Felsenburg would be doing Reader, the literary magazine written with his damnedest to drag down the planet along with you in mind. The Reader organisation the rest of the crowd. He very much loves his also delivers a variety of innovative liter- partner but still doesn’t understand why she ary events and community projects in the bewails his tendency to leave the tap running North West. when brushing his teeth, but it’s okay for her to fly off for a three-week tour of China leaving a Subscription: (1 year/4 issues)£24 carbon footprint the size of dinosaur claws. incorporating writing 14

Benedict Allen: Explorer Not Traveller Interview by Sarah Hesketh Photios by portraitsiberuttrek 15 incorporating writing

I get a little travel sick on the tube, of the journey it all went wrong. I had to and not being a Londoner my knowledge survive in the jungle by myself and I of the capital is based entirely on multi- think that gave me a drive. Having map. So I feel a little fraudulent turning survived it I think I needed to understand up to interview Benedict Allen, a man it. I’ve never really talked about it with a who has walked the 1000 mile Gobi psychiatrist but this forest had almost desert alone, undergone a brutal initiation wiped me out and I think I needed to ceremony with the Niowra ‘crocodile understand how that had happened. I people’ in New Guinea, crossed the was there for weeks and fighting every Amazon basin at its widest point (the day. So I think that explains why I then expedition there hit a few hitches and he did another expedition, and it was a very was forced to eat his own dog), trekked rash thing, of going through an initiation Siberia nearly killing himself and his ceremony in New Guinea. Maybe just to dedicated team of huskies, hung out with relive this trauma. I don’t really know, shamans and witchdoctors and once but that seems to be where I got that found time to be the first man to walk the drive from. It has scared me that I had a length of the Skeleton Coast in Namibia. tendency just to be an adrenaline junkie. The most remarkable figure in modern It’s certainly what used to worry my mum exploration, it’s a little incongruous to and dad. That I was wanting to do find him in Shepherd’s Bush on a street something more dangerous in order to lined with white picket fences. get attention.” Allen has always laid great emphasis on “I get a little travel sick on the fact that he is an explorer, not a traveller. Immersing himself in indigenous the tube, and not being a communities, learning from them the Londoner my knowledge of skills needed to survive in some of the world’s harshest environments, his TV the capital is based entirely programmes have usually involved just on multi-map. So I feel a him and a hand-held camera. His first expedition at the age of twenty-four was little fraudulent turning up crossing the Amazon Basin, a trip which to interview Benedict Allen” ended in near disaster, but it seems to have provided the impetus for all his Yet he’s quick to disagree with Robin subsequent trips. It also seems to have Hanbury Tension’s self-aggrandising been this which gave rise to a distinctly assertion that, ‘a traveller reports back, reflective side to this man of action, a but an explorer changes the world.’ ‘professional adventurer’ as he terms “I felt that on my expeditions I himself. Each of his trips has produced a should be the one who’s changed. The book, and this notion of reporting back on place should have an effect on me and what he has seen and done appears that would be a sign of a successful central to his conception of both himself expedition. And settling down to write the and his journeys. book was crucial. It kept me sane in a “I just did this one-off trip, as it way. It was only when I had written the was going to be.” He slips readily into the book that I was able to move on. Each role of storyteller. “I wanted to be an experience had to be sort of answered by explorer; off I went and towards the end a book, or closed by a book.” incorporating writing 16

Interview by Alexander Laurence

portraitsiberuttrek

Many of Allen’s books have been as the first westerner to make contact dedicated to local residents who have with tribes in New Guinea. Some of his helped him on his travels. And the critics saw this as an ethically dubious structure of his journeys: a spell with move. But he’s happy to defend the indigenous people, followed by a period of expeditions, solitary trekking, seems to reflect this “Both times I thought about it a bit. dichotomy of action and reflection in his It was way back in my career,” and he character. “It is a sort of mixed thing. I do speaks with an obvious sadness at seeing like being with people but in the end I whole belief systems collapsing and sort of feel I have to test myself. And I’ve cultures destroyed. never understood why. I rode for three “We were in Papua New Guinea with and a half months with the Mongols the Yaifo, and that was tragic. Gold before I even got to the Gobi and the miners were moving into the area and I challenge bit. But I could never really tell was only one step ahead of them. And what I’d learnt from the locals until I was the Yaifo were making little nests in the alone. I thought, I’ll only know if I’m any trees for helicopters. It was difficult to good if I’m exposed to the place. So I do know what they were really thinking. But have that sort of personal challenge they had heard that these helicopters aspect and it does excite me I have to would come down and bring wealth to say. There is that side of me. Though I them so they were trying to encourage don’t think I always particularly like it.” them.”

His fascination with remote peoples led to It must have been a terrifying experience his series on medicine men and his trips for these people? 17portraitsiberuttrek incorporating writing

“I do like being with people but in the end I sort of feel I have to test myself. And I’ve never understood why” incorporating writing 18

“Well, the yaifo were looking forward to apologise to the monkeys who they were it. Wow, wealth at last. It fitted in with a going to hunt and say, ‘sorry, if I kill you. lot of their belief system. The white man Don’t worry, we’ll take your head and bringing heavenly wealth. So they were decorate it beautifully and your soul can bewildered though excited. I’d like to live on in our house. Ok, you’ll lose your know what happened.” flesh but don’t worry about it’. I make it sound very silly, but there is this word “The problem with travel is bajou, which means harmony. You have to respect everything’s bajou, which is a on a mass scale. We’re now sort of radiating force. It was a lovely living in an age of mass philosophy and I found the people very tourism and that is doing generous to me. an enormous amount of But then that could be said right across the board, and I’ve found people aren’t environmental damage. But very different. So-called head hunters in societies and humans as a New Guinea are just as nice as everyone else. They might be more whole have had to aggressive to an outsider. But deep down investigate their you find the same range of the meek, the surroundings and the key is mild, the horrible, the mean.” reporting back” With Green Taxes high on the current political agenda, we’re perhaps more aware than ever of how irresponsible our He was especially struck by a young boy travel can be. Has he ever felt the need of about twelve. “He was so keen and to justify his journeys as scientific excited by the world. I wonder what missions? happened to him for example. Was he “No, not really. The problem with going to become a gold miner? Was he travel is on a mass scale. We’re now going to retreat further into the forest? I living in an age of mass tourism and that don’t know.” is doing an enormous amount of environmental damage. But societies and So has he developed a favourite tribe? He humans as a whole have had to smiles reluctantly. investigate their surroundings and the “I’ve tried not to. It’s terrible, like having key is reporting back. I’m writing an favourite nephews and nieces. But I can’t account, I’m making TV programmes and help but particularly like the Mentawai in so on. But the world is no longer a place Sumatra. They are heavily tattooed from that we can just view as a playground. I head to foot and they seem like hippies. think we have to justify our travels now. Their whole philosophy is to do with People have said to me oh, that is very harmony and balance. We would go out mean. Why shouldn’t we go on holidays, hunting with them and they would talk to and I don’t know quite what the answer the trees and say look, ‘we’re really, really is. I’ve just come back a few days ago sorry for any harm as I run through the from France, on holiday and I think it’s forest trying to hunt’. They wanted to keep the tree spirits happy. Then they’d continued page 21... 19 incorporating writing “And the world has got smaller. The journeys I wanted to do when I was little have sort of been done. Or it’s getting to the point where it’s silly to hire a camel”

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For further information email: [email protected] www.incorporatingwriting.co.uk 21 incorporating writing

...continued from page 18 a kind of friction between that and the those journeys that are going to have to man of action. So I imagine I will do be questioned in the future. But if we something. I can’t imagine just sitting. stop going out to investigate the world Maybe that means fiction. But that will then I think we’re finished as a species mean going off to the Congo or wherever, because part of the human condition is to to get the material.” explore.” He couldn’t just sit there and make his So what of his own future plans then? At own imaginative journey? the end of Into the Abyss, his most “I like to think I have the skills now recent book, he wrote that he felt “a as a writer to do imaginative leaps. More circle had been closed”. Does this bode to the point I suppose there is a badly for fans of his work? restlessness in me, still, I want to “I don’t know what it actually experience these things. But I’m means but I just felt it was right to write fascinated by Steff Penney who just won that. I thought, I don’t want to say that the Costa. It rather horrifies me that it’s the end to my travels. But I felt that I someone could win a prize without having had less need to go away. I think I will been to the place they’re writing about. In still go away but I don’t think I will risk a way it’s sort of trickery isn’t it? I know my life so much. I’ve done a lot of risking she’s not trying to trick anyone and I and it suddenly didn’t seem so necessary don’t mean she’s a fraud at all. But it anymore. It would be terrible if I didn’t worries me how we can all accept that go anywhere because that would be the truth that isn’t a first hand truth. It end of my career. But that original drive I worries me about the human condition. was talking about, I think that has gone. We can’t discern the difference.” I love the idea of getting some camels, There’s a very long pause while he going across a desert and just walking. drinks his tea, and I notice directly above But I think that’s a feeling that we all his head there is photograph of himself have, rather than this extra thing which and David Attenborough, with a desert was almost manic. This desire to throw landscape in the background. myself against a place. And the world has “Maybe I could do all of what I’ve got smaller. The journeys I wanted to do done simply from my armchair. What an when I was little have sort of been done. interesting thought. And what an Or it’s getting to the point where it’s silly encouraging thought, really. Let me show to hire a camel. Maybe when I said the you these warrior shields I saved from circle had been closed it might be that gold miners in Papua New Guinea.” I’ve sorted a lot of the things out inside myself. It might be that I’ve just grown It seems unlikely he’ll be taking a total older at last, or grown up.” trade on the camel for the pen, anytime in the near future. I gesture at the small collection of engagement cards on a table. “Yes, that’s a whole new thing to explore. But I do hope I’m not going to be tired and boring and just sort of sit around. There is this Sarah Hesketh is Deputy Editor (SE)/Interviews for Incorporating Writing. Originally from East side to me that is the writer side, the Lancs she is now enduring the flat lands of Norfolk observer side, and there has always been and studying for an MA in creative writing at UEA. incorporating writing 22

Cubicle Escapee Column by Sharon Sadle

a dollar and as unique as the messages I wrote on the back) and on-the-go food and the accompanying stomach aches. My attempts were abridged, aborted, slightly censored and absolutely lessened the moments in which they occurred. Vacation travel is about cramming a whole lot of experience into a small space of time. Every moment is precious and each day must be filled to its utmost capacity. This kind of travel is compressed, frantic and the end result must match expectations lest the whole effort be remembered as a waste. “The feeling is not so much I used to have a most unhealthy the wonder of seeing what relationship with travel. Being away from I’ve never seen before as home was something extraordinary because it rarely happened. In preparing the forming of a series of for travel, I chose to be a passive strong impressions” participant. I browsed guidebooks written by those who’d cleared a well worn out path before me. In order to get the most I propose a more relaxed approach. Lots out of my experience, I looked for advice more presence in all the little moments about what attraction would be worth a and lots less effort attempting to capture precious slice of my tiny time allotment them. I love to gaze around and soak up known as a vacation. I reread the smallest details: the mysteriously dim descriptions, checked the weather and lair behind an open restaurant door, local calculated my odds: Would I feel fulfilled? yard decorating customs, the odd colors Would the effort to visit a particular place of official vehicles. I like to smell these be worth my time? A very unhealthy things if I can, lie in the grass (yes, right relationship indeed. in the grass) in the sun and think about them, fall asleep and wake up to strange While traveling, I tried to capture and sounds. I invite the surroundings to preserve the fleeting moments as they permeate me, carry me off to somewhere ticked and flowed most uncapturably I might need directions to get back from. together. By-products of this preservation And it is then that I’m visited by that effort included: photographs of very often most elusive feeling I now associated photographed locations including my with travel. The feeling is not so much head as proof of my effort and presence, the wonder of seeing what I’ve never postcards sold where vacationers might seen before as the forming of a series of be inclined to visit (35 cents each or 4 for strong impressions. Waking up in a 23 incorporating writing

foreign landscape, the silhouettes and shadows of which I’ve driven a good part of the night through is as pleasantly unfamiliar as it gets. No matter what my time allotment, I’m infinitely more enriched when I allow the time to pass and get lost in the making of the moment. My strongest recollections aren’t jogged by photographs, but sometimes reignite themselves, sparked by a smell, a sound or a color. I’ve healed my relationship with travel and think of it now as a constant companion, whether I’m on the move or not. Pat Borthwick Milner Place Ian Parks with foreword by Esther Morgan

The Sea £9 with free P&P

“All three poets are expert readers, the audience so entranced they hardly make a sound. It’s a pleasure that Incwriters, through their imaginative sponsoring of this recording, has allowed us to join with them, gathered around the firelight of their voices” - Esther Morgan

The Sea CD brings together several live events from an eight month tour that took in Liverpool, Penrith, Manchester, Bradford Book Festival, and Whitby. The Sea captures the voices of and work of Pat Borthwick, Ian Parks and Milner Place before a live audience. The Sea CD is Sharon Sadle escaped her cubicle on september approximately 50 minutes long. Taken 22, 2005. she’s been traveling away from her from The Sea Tour 2006. hometown in florida by car, north and west, ever since. From the road, Sharon writes about coffee with strikers, darts with bartenders, forays into Available at: abandoned factories and contemplative discompo- sure along the byways of the United States. Her www.incwriters.co.uk stash of socks totals 44 pairs. incorporating writing 24

Childe Harold’s Ticket to Ride Article by Caroline Drennan

“Even more than many restless young men, Byron found potential dangers exciting rather than daunting” 25 incorporating writing

Friends may have our best interests at proved an unprecedented success. heart. Yet when John Cam Hobhouse encouraged Lord Byron to burn his early “Byron was anything but a journals and ensured that later memoirs were destroyed after the poet’s passive observer; his views unexpected death, apart from invaluable on war providing one of the insight into Byron himself, Hobhouse deprived the world of a wealth of acute many interruptions to observations by a man much travelled for Harolde’s adventures” his time. Fortunately, letters (and there are many of them) that Byron wrote on ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’ was not his travels to his mother and selected designed to be a travelogue but it has friends remain as vivid, entertaining many of the qualities of intriguing travel records. And many of his poems give an writing. The well off and educated, their intense flavour of early nineteenth travels curtailed by revolution and war, century Europe, or an exotic near East, delighted not just in Harold’s brooding enhanced by Byron’s personal reflections nature, but also in Byron’s engaging on what he saw and experienced. descriptions, the dramatic portrayal of Portuguese Cintra as a ‘glorious Eden’: Even more than many restless young men, Byron found potential dangers The tender azure of the unruffled deep, exciting rather than daunting. If the The orange tints that gild the greenest direct route across Europe were barred in bough, 1809, as a consequence of the war with The torrents that from cliff to valley leap, France, then the boat to Constantinople The vine on high,the willow branch below, would do. And if the voyager missed the Mix’d in one mighty scene, with varied boat, as Byron did, a change in the beauty glow. itinerary was no great hardship. Boarding a ship to Lisbon, for the best part of two Or a more gentle note on moonlight, ‘How years he directed his Grand Tour through softly on the Spanish shore she plays/ Portugal and Spain to Gibraltar, sailing Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest from there to Malta and then on to brown.’ Greece and Turkey. En route, Byron’s travelling ‘musts’ were often suggested Readers enjoyed the taste of unfamiliar by his extensive reading. If the classical cultures, ‘the glittering minarets of hero, Leander, could swim the Hellespont, Tepalen’, ‘the wild Albanian’s ‘shawl-girt then so could Byron, at least out if not head and ornamented gun’ or extracts back as well, a 70 minute achievement of from Albanese songs. A brief reminder of which he had a right to be proud. English Sunday pleasures is followed by a Alongside his journals, Byron set out to breathtaking account of Spanish produce an ambitious work. The poem he bullfighting from stirring start to gory began on his travels was a lengthy conclusion: romance, two full cantos of Spenserian stanzas peppered with archaisms, ‘Foil’d, bleeding, breathless, furious to the charting the adventures across Europe of last, one disaffected ‘Childe Harold’. From a Full in the centre stands the bull at bay, twenty first century perspective, the work seems an unlikely best seller but it incorporating writing 26

And now the Matadores around him play, financial considerations. Byron’s Shake the red cloak, and poise the ready identification with his eponymous hero is brand: more obvious now and most of the poem Once more through all he bursts his is written in the first person, travel thundering way – writing as confession; the itinerary is Vain rage! The mantle quits the conynge closely bound up with Byron’s emotional hand, state, and philosophical digressions Wraps his fierce eye – ’tis past – he sinks outweigh his description of the sights. It upon the sand!’ is fitting that Harolde’s travels begin on ‘this place of skulls/the grave of France, Although, he had chosen a ‘safe’ passage the deadly Waterloo,’ a year after the for the time, Byron did not escape the crucial battle took place. Later Byron is in impact of war. Like any modern fine frame of mind to be soothed by commentator, he draws our attention to ‘Clear, placid’ Lake Geneva or to revel in its effect on the landscape, citing a the sublime drama of a sudden alpine Spanish rustic’s fear that his vineyard will storm, be ‘blasted’ and presenting the fortified Sierra Morena, ‘How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, ‘ far as mortal eye can compass sight, And the big rain comes dancing to the The mountain-howitzer, the broken road, earth! The bristling palisade, the fosse And now again ‘tis black, - and now, the o’erflow’d, glee The stationed bands, the never vacant Of the loud hills shakes with its watch ’ mountain-mirth ’

Byron was anything but a passive The publication of the third canto of observer; his views on war providing one ‘Childe Harold’ began a relatively settled of the many interruptions to Harolde’s period in Italy. Here Byron produced adventures. And where the structure of ‘Beppo’, a poem very different in tone the poem might have been compromised, and scope from ‘Childe Harold’, comic, he contributes further information, much more domestic, and direct. Byron explanation or comment in the form of clearly delighted in the differences he appended notes. One memorable found between Italian and English food, example is his frank discussion of the language, women and, inevitably, ‘dastardly devastation’ caused by Lord weather. Tips to travellers from England Elgin and others through the removal of include instructions to carry a good relics from Greece. supply of sauces, ‘Ketchup, Soy, Chili- vinegar and Harvey/Or by the lord! A Skills Byron honed on this first excursion Lent will well nigh starve ye.’ If the abroad were well polished by the time he Italian language ‘ melts like kisses from came to write the third canto of ‘Childe a female mouth/And sounds as if it Harold’ in 1816. Europe may have been should be writ on satin,’ it is not more peaceful, but Byron was in a state surprising that the women also appeal: of turmoil, taking on the role of exile, driven away by the troubles and rumours ‘From the rich peasant-cheek of ruddy surrounding his divorce, and by serious bronze, 27 incorporating writing

And large black eyes that flash on you a unfinished, Byron set out to fight for the volley Greek nationalist cause, although a Of rays that say a thousand things at mortal fever prevented his engaging in once, any serious action. Despite his dying To the high dama’s brow, more request that his remains should be kept in melancholy, Greece, they were returned to England. In But clear, and with a wild and liquid that sense, and in that sense only, this glance, ‘citizen of the world’ came home. Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes, Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies’

England’s ‘chilly women’ with their ‘northern whistling, grunting, guttural’ could not possibly compete. “Tips to travellers from England include instructions to carry a good supply of sauces”

Byron’s best known and greatest work, ‘Don Juan’, is a mature and complex fusion of observations Byron made on his travels, creative echoes of his experiences, his reading and his wide ranging thoughts. Like many travellers, he has moved beyond the stage of wonder at new environments and landscapes to a cynical response to peoples and nations. The scope of the poem is huge, the hero wandering through Europe like Byron in his youth but also taking in Russia, which Byron did not visit, and finally reaching England to which Byron himself never returned, although he followed the fortunes of the country with considerable interest. In this work, comic satire evident in ‘Beppo’ is given full force, demonstrating Byron’s desire ‘to show the different ridicules of the society’ in many countries, and to Caroline Drennan is a writer and a teacher. fight for ‘the good of mankind.’ Runner up in the Orange Short Story competition in 2005, she has recently gained an MA in Creative Writing from the University of In the final year of his life, ‘Don Juan’ still East Anglia incorporating writing Perfect Eye:28 Gemma Cumming 29 incorporating writing

Lisha Aquino Rooney incorporating writing 30

Lisha Aquino Rooney 31 incorporating writing

Gemma Cumming graduated in 2006 from Loughborough University School of Art and Design with a BA in Fine Art. She has since been in numerous exhibitions and sold work to public collections. Her work deals with notions of anticipation and tourism, utilising tourist images to create giant painted postcards with an ominous twist. incorporating writing 32 Daljit Nagra Interview by Sarah Hesketh

© Sarah Lee

“So our tube stopped in the tunnel So how does a first time writer get Faber, because the police were investigating arguably Britain’s most prestigious poetry some sort of incident, and there’s this publisher, to publish a first collection? guy who’s been cutting up pieces of He grins, “Well, it’s quite simple really. plaster with a pair of scissors and sticking You submit a manuscript and then you them all over himself, and suddenly he sweat it out for a year and a half waiting starts kicking off in the carriage. I mean, to get some sort of response. It was just you don’t mind the odd weirdo on the this incredible, wonderful surprise.” tube but when he’s waving a pair of All the publicity surrounding the book scissors around ” gives the impression that Nagra has just exploded onto the scene. In fact, he was Daljit Nagra is an incredibly nice man. already a bit of a regular on the reading Exuberant, chatty, full of energy about his circuit following the publication of a writing, his job as a teacher in a Jewish pamphlet with Smith/Doorstop in 2003, School and how helpful and enthusiastic and the title poem of this book won the everyone has been about his first Forward Prize in 2004. So why the delay collection. Perhaps I should’ve known in getting a collection out? what to expect from the book. Look We Have Coming to Dover! is a lively volume, “Well, I’d more or less finished up but it full of energetic and often colliding still wasn’t right. Even after Faber took it languages which seek to give an I was still working on pieces that needed impression of the Indian experience of it and they were really supportive. One of Britain. the first things I said to Paul Keegan (Faber’s editor) was,Lisha you’re Aquino not expecting Rooney 33 incorporating writing

me to change any of the ways I write or But his mum was completely illiterate. the stupidities of the style or the jokes “She went to school for half a day when and he said no, it’s fine. I’m very happy she was about five or six. Then their with it the way it is. I think I had this fields flooded and she never went to kind of inner fear that if you go to a big school again. She came from a real point publishing house they’re going to try and of poverty, but my dad had a bit more dilute your style into a house style. But I money, so they could’ve stayed in India think that the good thing about Faber’s and had quite a comfortable lifestyle. But poetry is that there isn’t really a house like other people my dad was quite style.” tempted by the idea of earning a lot more money in England and then taking it back “After a few abortive home.” attempts at writing in his Many of the poems in the collection deal first year of university, he with individuals who are struggling to find a place in British society, whilst also gave up. ‘I just didn’t have clashing with the older, Indian immigrant the confidence. I thought community. But his own experience of growing up in white, West London doesn’t you’d have to be really appear to have been too traumatic. clever, really “It was a proper white, working class area. And at the time we were one of two knowledgeable and even Asian families in the area. But I did enjoy when I started writing it it. It was quite rough and ready and you had to watch yourself but it was ok. Then was just to fulfil a need’” when I was sixteen my parents bought a shop in Sheffield and that was a difficult Nagra was born in West London, “Just off time because I really missed my friends the terminal runways really”, to parents and it was hard settling in to a new who had left India, spurred on by British culture. In Sheffield people were so advertising to Sikhs-Punjabis to come resentful of southerners. I went to a very and fill the post-war demand for labour: nice middle class school and it was “Because Sikhs had been pretty good in terrifying. These kids were super- the mutiny. They were seen as fighters educated and I just had a handful of and sturdy, steadfast people so they’d be CSE’s. It was frightening the way these good in factories on these 24 hour kids were talking. It was like watching production lines.” the nine o’clock news. We did Roald Dahl’s tales of the unexpected for our His father arrived with a relatively good CSE English Literature. I didn’t know grasp of English. In fact, his dad was a anything about Shakespeare.” champion wrestler, “and he could’ve gone to the olympics and stuff but he never After a few abortive attempts at writing did, and I think because of the wrestling in his first year of university, he gave up. he got into college. He got a scholarship. “I just didn’t have the confidence. I But I don’t know how much work he did. thought you’d have to be really clever, He was probably one of these macho really knowledgeable and even when I types just lording it.” started writing it was just to fulfil a incorporating writing 34

need.” It took a late discovery of contemporary poetry to spur him back into writing.

“I think traditional lyric poetry just didn’t suit writing about the Indian in Britain. I think dramatic monologues suit my characters better. I thought, if I’m going to put Indians into this kind of priestly form of poetry, I might as well just let them speak for themselves. So there’s a lot of playfulness and I wanted the characters to come through and sound excited about their lives. Even when they’re in conflict with family, it’s an energised conflict. And that’s the way I see my background. They don’t talk quietly in my family. They’re loud and I wanted to capture some of that hustle and bustle house mania. These people needed to externalise in order to deal with their new surroundings.”

So finding himself the new voice of the Indian community in Britain, has he visited India often?

He laughs. “I went when I was about five Red Ink 2 and nearly died of it. I got really ill there and had loads of hospital treatment. Then Summer 2007 I went again about fifteen years ago and (ISSN 1751-1496) I was fine. Me and my partner are going over Easter. And that’ll be nice because £2.50 it’s the first time I’ve been a tourist in India.” He grins. “I’m like everyone else Eds. Peter Lewin & Andrew Oldham really. I just want to see the Taj Mahal.” Cover Art: Lisha Aquino Rooney. Poetry: Jadwiga Kindermann, Ashley Chantler, Naomi Bagel, Jacqui Dunne, Matthew Griffiths, Chishimba Chisala, Matthew Friday, F.J. Milne, Peter de Ville. Story: Gemma Caunce.

PDF PUBLICATION, SENT TO YOUR Sarah Hesketh is Deputy Editor (SE)/Interviews for Incorporating Writing. Originally from East EMAIL ADDRESS BY INCWRITERS. Lancs she is now enduring the flat lands of Norfolk and studying for an MA in creative writing www.incwriters.co.uk/shop.htm at UEA. 35 incorporating writing

Recommended Read Small Island Andrea Levy Review Books, 2004 £7.99 ISBN 0 7553 2565 6 531pp

rare thing, an award winner that gave me joy and not a general sense of reluctant displeasure. Told from the perspectives of four very different and equally flawed characters, Levy’s narrative unfolds around the aftermath of the Second World War in 1948, and the personally significant years leading up to it for each of her principal characters. Coming over to Britain on the SS Windrush, Small Island’s most likeable character, Gilbert Joseph, arrives in Britain with the misguided hope that the “Mother Country”, for whom he fought with pride in the RAF during the War, will give him the opportunities to study law and live the life he was promised upon his demob - everything that the Small Island “This is a small island. of the title, Jamaica, cannot give him. Man, we just clinging so we Throughout the narrative we follow the undiluted racism that Gilbert has to don’t fall off.” endure as he strives to make a life for himself, with great dignity, often making Levy won several awards for this the prose very uncomfortable and novel, principally the Whitbread Book of challenging to read, not least because the Year and the Orange Prize for Fiction, such attitudes are still prevalent in today’s and so I approached the book with society. When Gilbert reaches a low, his general suspicion. Many books that win inherent optimism faltering, Levy drives such glittering literary prizes, more often home this point succinctly. “What a than not, imbue a reaction of forlorn desire to seek indifference.” We disappointment in me, mainly because see that Gilbert has only left one small one goes to the book with too many island for another. expectations of its greatness. However, Levy deserves the praise that has been And yet Levy never lets the story purely generously metered out, for this truly is a become a story about racism, never lets sublime work of fiction. Andrea Levy is a the narrative be dictated by issues or incorporating writing 36

destroyed with worthiness. Her primary live, and the attitudes prevalent inside interest, thankfully, is the characters and them. It is in their insecurities and in how events have shaped and changed their need to belong. Each are afraid them, making this a story principally there is no role for them, that they will about humanity in all its warped and simply fall into oblivion if they don’t cling glorious forms, and this is where her skill on to something, be it the past or the as a writer truly lies. She vividly recreates belief in change. a world for her characters to inhabit and writes with unreserved honesty, holding a “Humanity is upon every mirror up to each part of the societies she describes, illustrating the inherent page. It is in the snobbery and suspicion that is sadly a disappointment felt by each part of humanity, no matter what colour our skin is. Hortense, the most unlikeable of the characters as their character in the novel is also the best hopes are steadily quashed example of this. With her golden hued skin, she believes herself better than her in the aftermath of war” fellow darker-skinned Jamaican’s, and her snobbery and self importance over Andrea Levy’s Small Island is both an everyone she meets is just as hard to enchanting and disturbing read. It read in its ignorance, as the insults challenges you, not only as a reader but thrown out to Gilbert by the Londoners also as a human being, because Levy and, particularly, the Americans he makes us care for her well-drawn encounters. characters and for each of their fates. She takes us with her on an important and Not only has Levy given each of the informative journey in rediscovering our characters a distinctive first person collective past. Not only is this a narrative style but she has also, with successful and intelligently written book, great success, injected life into the but it is also a compassionate and historical fiction genre. One never feels humorous one. Janet Aspey they are reading transcripts of fusty lessons once delivered by corduroy suits patched with leather at the elbows, but rather reading real life accounts by people who were there, living and breathing each unsavoury moment of the Second World War. This is, in a large part, due to Levy’s strong ear for dialogue, and her ability to recreate the rhythms of dialectical speech with such aplomb.

Humanity is upon every page. It is in the disappointment felt by each of the characters as their hopes are steadily quashed in the aftermath of war. It is in each character’s sense of identity, largely shaped by the communities in which they 37 incorporating writing

After Jane Hirshfield Bloodaxe, 2006 £8.95 ISBN 978-0060779160 95pp

leaving the upturned pot in the dish rack after the moon has wandered out of the window.

This poem (After Long Silence) contains a line that seems to be the poet’s instruction to herself, ‘The untranslatable thought must be the most precise.’ She is saying ‘what cannot be said I will put into words, and I must do so with absolute accuracy and care.’ “It seems a stark place to be, but also quite wonderful” After is deceptive: some poems you might skim as easy narrative, but later This is a form of contemplation, and poems trip you up; when you go back indeed she has various translation credits and read the ‘simple’ poems over again of a spiritual nature in her you realize that they weren’t so simple Acknowledgements. Some of her poems, after all. I feel that I could talk about particularly a group she calls ‘pebbles’ each of the poems in here endlessly, as have the resonance of haiku or tanka: there’s nothing that’s slack or ‘filler’. Hirshfield is astute, profound, and yet The lake scarlets accessible. the same instant as the maple. Let others try to say this is not After suggests after someone is gone, passion. (Maple) and there is a tone of loss, but Hirshfield is not a confessional poet. It is as though In a darker humour she writes ‘Ecstasy’: the loss has left a space around her Czechoslovakia, 1933 through which she sees with remarkable clarity: The actress was only seventeen,

A small anchovy gleam continued page 39...

39 incorporating writing

...continued from page 37 to know if the distance between two things can be leapt. and so the director arranged to have her pricked lightly with pins The reader has to stay focused here on at the needed moments. the word ‘judgement’ (which is the ‘you’) or you might miss that Hirshfield is Her poem ‘Theology’ tells the story of a talking about the cat’s sense of judgment. friend, whose rescue dog is ill with Later she writes of the severity of distemper and ‘crawled under the porch judgement, ‘weighing without pity your to die’. Hirshfield’s friend crawled after, own worth’, and its tenderness, ‘I have ‘pulled her out, said, ‘No!’ seen you carry a fate to its end as softly as a retriever/ carries the quail.’ She As if it were just a simple matter of concludes with a meditation on aesthetic training. judgement, a stripping away of the need The coy-dog, startled, obeyed. to turn things (the dawn) into reflections Now trots out to greet my car when of humanity. I come to visit. when I have erased you from me The poem could end here, but Hirschfield entirely, returns to its beginning where she has disrobed of your measuring observed that ‘If flies did not hurry adjectives . themselves to the window/ they’d still die When the word is horsefly, coal somewhere.’ Now, after the dog story, barge, and the dawn the colour of she says ‘Only a firefly’s evening blinking winter outside the window,/ this miraculous butter – story, but everyone hurries to believe it.’ not beautiful, not cold, only the It’s a shock for the reader that she might colour of butter – be ‘telling stories’, but the neatness of the then perhaps I will love you. conclusion is even darker: re-using the flies, the window and the choice of verb It seems a stark place to be, but also from the opening of the poem leave an quite wonderful. Cath Nichols echo that we all die sometime.

Hirshfield also presents a type of poem she calls an ‘assay’; in chemistry you assay a substance to find out what it is made of. Some of her ‘assays’ are on tangible subjects – sky, tears, termites – but others are not – hope, ‘of’, hesitation. An early assay on ‘judgement’ plays with these variations:

You are not an artichoke, not a piano, or cat – not objectively present at all – and what of you a cat possesses is essential but narrow: incorporating writing 40

Moral Disorder Margaret Atwood Bloomsbury £15.99 257pp

novels. Gibson, a writer and naturalist is also Atwood’s husband. This very personal borrowing seems to add even more weight to the body of work, which explores relationships between parents and children, husbands and wives, sisters, as well as humanity’s relationship with narrative. “Atwood’s ability to draw out the insecurities and fears of childhood from her characters’ reminiscences brings the reader utterly and totally into another world” Margaret Atwood proves once again, that she is still well and truly on top of Atwood has the ability to draw you into a her game with this collection of stories, situation and see it perfectly from the which we are told, is ‘almost a novel or narrator’s viewpoint. She mixes the a novel broken up into eleven stories.’ deeply emotional with the realistic The award-winning Canadian writer, actuality of the here-and-now. Spanning whose career has spanned the decades, the decades we dip into the 30s, the 50s, has more than thirty works to her name 60s, 70s and the present-day. including a Booker Prize for her 2000 novel, The Blind Assassin. She has The first story, ‘The Bad News’ hones in certainly not rested on her laurels with on an aging couple, who live in fear of the this, her latest in a long list of intensely outside world, and then switches rather insightful books. inexplicably to an ancient world. This, I felt was an unsettling start, but with the The title, Atwood acknowledges in her second story, ‘The Art of Cooking and notes at the end of the book, was Serving’ we are into the acute writing and borrowed from Graeme Gibson who, in rich storytelling of which Atwood excels. 1996 was working on a book of the same Atwood’s ability to draw out the title when he decided to stop writing insecurities and fears of childhood from 41 incorporating writing

her characters’ reminiscences brings the even join in. She’s no longer voluble, she reader utterly and totally into another can’t carry a plot, not all by herself ” A world. The main character’s relationship further example lies in ‘The Labrador with her sister is unsentimentally drawn, Fiasco’ wherein the daughter bears and very visual. In fact, Atwood’s ability witness to her father’s demise; “I’ve tried to engage with all our senses means the recordings of bird songs, but he doesn’t shift to her world is utterly controlled and like them: they remind him that there’s all-encompassing. something he once knew, but can’t remember. Stories are no good, not even In ‘The Last Duchess’, the reader is short ones, because by the time you get brought back into perhaps his or her own to the second page he’s forgotten the fond memories of a favourite, pivotal beginning. Where are we without our teacher, and we are reminded about those plots?” Where indeed? Atwood draws a familiar surroundings that surely form very clear correlation between the strong points of references for most of us. necessity for stories, for beginnings, “The classroom was too hot; it was filled middles and endings, for memories, as with a vibration, the vibration of its much as for the more commonly agreed newness – the blond wood of its curved, necessities of life; water, oxygen etc. So modern metal-framed desks, the here, her stories – which seem so greenness of its blackboards, the faint personal, one can’t help suspecting – humming of its fluorescent lights, which partly autobiographical, include not only seemed to hum even when they were memories, not only dwellings of the pain turned off.” of life, but also on our reliance as a species, on narrative. She describes acutely the trepidation of a student, wondering if she will be called on This is a book that is easy to pick up and in class; “At such times my mouth would become engrossed in, but very difficult to fill with words, too many of them, a put down. Even when you do, the glutinous pudding of syllables I would characters stay with you, almost like have to mould into speech while Miss memories from your own life. Atwood has Bessie’s ironic narrowed eyes beamed the ability to move around the genres of their message at me: You can do better writing with the skill of a chameleon, but than that.” what she retains utterly is her ability to access her characters’ deeply held Clearly, though, Atwood is doing a lot of emotions, and complete understanding of thinking about the ageing process. There what makes them unique. A witty, is a sense of the aching loss of old age intelligent, often beautiful and lyrical both for those experiencing it, and for read, Moral Disorder is a book for Atwood loved ones watching it happen. Several of lovers, and those new to her writing alike. her stories incorporate this theme. In ‘The Katherine Blair Boys at the Lab’, it is daughter dealing with her dying mother who finds it is her ‘function’ to relate back the stories of her mother’s life. “The stories she most wants to hear are about herself, herself when younger; herself when much younger. She smiles at those; on occasion she might incorporating writing 42

Black Dogs Ian McEwan Vintage 1998 paperback ISBN 0-9780099277088 £6.99 176pp Thorndike Press 2003, hardback ISBN 0-78625132-8 £14.15 176pp BBC Audiobooks 2006 Read by Jack Davenport ISBN 1 40567153X £34.95 4 hours 43 mins

each other. “The book excels at describing defining moments” Although a relatively short work, ‘Black Dogs’ covers wide issues and themes as McEwan’s narrator, Jeremy, is unusual universal than McEwan’s more celebrated and endearing. Orphaned early in life longer novels, such as ‘Enduring Love’ (though in circumstances never fully and ‘Atonement’. It is no surprise that it explained), he has a pathetic fondness for has previously been shortlisted for the the parents of friends and Booker, despite its brevity. contemporaries, eventually finding his true surrogates in his in-laws, Bernard The narrative is, on the face of it, very and June Tremaine. Through these two simple – the story of a marriage, centring contrasting characters, McEwan on an incident in France in 1947. juxtaposes the life of the spirit (espoused However, the book manages to by June) with the life of the intellect (to encompass Western sentiment towards which Bernard clings) - mysticism versus the Marxist movement since the Second logic. In the end, it seems that neither World War, leading up to the fall of the character fully succeeds on their chosen Berlin Wall. Flashback alternates with path and what matters more is the recent times, as if the past and present exploration en route. Their daughter, are constantly trying to make sense of Jenny, comes close to representing a 43 incorporating writing

compromise, but is under-developed as a come of a Europe covered in this dust, character, being one of the few these spores, when forgetting would be disappointments of the book. inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?’ However, ultimately it is the image of the Central to all this, is the symbolism of the black dogs and how each character (not black dogs of the title. On one level, to mention each reader) views them, these are the Gestapo dogs of the story. which dominates the novel. The writer’s McEwan maintains the intrigue over these sympathies remain with June’s conclusion animals until almost the end. The that ‘the work we have to do is with denouement is given but it is left to the ourselves, if we’re ever going to be at reader to elect to believe the exact details peace’. or not (yet another choice between the fantastical and the logical). Mythological All in all, this is a fascinating novel, associations are also evoked, from despite being superficially narrow in Cerberus onwards and down the long line scope. Its simplicity and depth are of hellhounds, Baskervalian and testimony to how, in fiction, less can so otherwise. However, the real black dog at often be more. Helen Shay the centre of the story is the more colloquial one. Churchill famously referred to depression as his ‘black dog’, a phrase still present in many localities. In the novel, June also sees it as such and goes on to equate two black dogs with a more general malaise in society i.e. the human condition. However, she goes further in her own personal encounter with such animals and paradoxically finds them to be a proof of evil, leading to proof of God. REVIEWERS Janet Aspey is a recent MA Creative Writing The book excels at describing defining graduate with a drama background. She is par- moments, one of the most effective being ticularly interested in feminist history and litera- the confrontation between skinhead- ture, and is currently working on her second novel. mentality German youths and a die-hard communist waving a red flag (though his Katherine Blair, originally from Canada is a dark skin and immigrant origins seem the former CBC television reporter, ITV television real catalyst for the violence that producer, and now a university lecturer in York, ensues). Drawing on time spent in UK. She is also an unpublished novelist. Germany as a child, McEwan evokes the Cath Nichols’ publications include Tales of Boy Berlin of the late 80s as vividly as he did Nancy (Driftwood, 2005) and the forth-coming My that of the post-war era in his earlier Glamorous Assistant (Headland, 2007). She has work, ‘The Innocent’. One constant been the recipient of several Arts Council of theme is how to come to terms with England awards. history, which is emphasised through the Helen Shay writes in various forms and performs description of a visit to a Nazi death poetry, with drama staged at the Fringe/small camp. As Bernard is forced at one point theatres. She recently completed a fantasy novel to postulate, ‘ what possible good could for a creative writing MA, gaining a distinction. incorporating writing 44

Steinbeck’s Travelogue of War Article by Claire Boot Photographs by Andrew Oldham

It’s a reflection on the state of the it down in words and fell in step with the world that any poetry you stumble across American troops in Britain, North Africa in the course of a day is most likely to be and Italy. One can’t quite imagine Zadie contained in a pop song. Similarly, the Smith volunteering for a tour of duty in most common source of travel writing if Afghanistan or Iain Banks signing up for you’re not specifically looking for it is in Iraq, but Steinbeck wished to serve his war journalism. country in a conflict that, while no less global than today’s, was at least more In one respect, it’s little surprise. The defined in the terms, let alone the word ‘travel’ arrives in English from the purpose, of engagement. Old French ‘travailler’, which is familiar to us from school French lessons as the verb The result, a series of dispatches for the ‘to work’. It seems that the often-scoffed New York Herald Tribune, is collected in complaint of holiday show presenters, Once There Was a War, published in that it really is hard work, may actually 1958. It’s a curious cross of literature have something in it. meets travel writing meets war reportage. Steinbeck’s spare and humane prose In June 1943 – between Of Mice and Men features sunny islands and sandy (1937) and East of Eden (1952) – John beaches, candlelit churches and historic Steinbeck went to war. Not in an Elvis- cities, English castles and Italian bars. He Presley-one-of-the-boys way, but to do reflects on the souvenir-hunting instinct what he knew best, to write. He packed of his fellow countrymen abroad; he up his ability to pay attention and to get makes wry observations about getting on with the locals. 45 incorporating writing

But this is war. Normality, along with the just like this and we get it for nothing.” travel writing genre, is inverted. It’s like “I’d rather be home on Tenth Avnoo,” said looking at a negative, where the shapes the kid. “I’d rather be there than any are recognisable but the colours are all place.” wrong. The collection begins with ‘Troopship’, an account of the “One can’t quite imagine transportation of American soldiers across the Atlantic. It reads like an inverted Zadie Smith volunteering cruise ship narrative, like a cheerful song for a tour of duty in heard in a minor key. The passengers, with military numbers rather than names, Afghanistan or Iain Banks are loaded into every available space, to signing up for Iraq” sleep in ballrooms and dining rooms and out on deck. The journey, far from a Another curious consequence of travel pleasurable cruise, is shot through with writing and war reporting is that the fear of what enemy submarine might Steinbeck can rarely be specific about lurk beneath the waves. The anticipation where he is. ‘Somewhere in the of arrival, normally a source of Mediterranean War Theater’ would hardly excitement, is marked with an underlying satisfy the editor of a weekend tension about what happens next. And, newspaper travel section but, as just like on a cruise ship, there’s Steinbeck explains in his Introduction, organised entertainment. An acrobat any more detail could jeopardise the struggles to complete her act as the ship entire Allied war effort. It was self- pitches and rolls; a blues singer tries to censorship on the part of the perform despite the lack of a microphone. war correspondent; “I was so secret,” he Unlike on a cruise ship, the audience is writes, “that I don’t remember where willing to overlook the shortcomings: they happened.” “In all the acts the illusion does not quite Steinbeck does allow himself some come off. The audience helps all it can specifics of place, however, and offers the because it wants the show to be good. occasional distinctly war-time travelogue. And out of the little acts, which are not He describes the tedium of destruction in quite convincing, and the big audience Dover where, “with its castle on the hill which wants literally to be convinced, and its little crooked streets [and] its big, something whole and good comes, so that ugly hotels”, the people are “incorrigibly, when it is over there has been a show.” incorruptibly unimpressed” by the German firepower that blows in their The travel writing inversion continues, for windows and breaks the bud off a man’s Steinbeck finds himself at locations that prize rosebush. In another continent, the should be envied holiday destinations yet, exoticism of Algiers reaches fever pitch. in 1943, are places that no-one would “Always a place of strange mixtures,” choose to be. In ‘Over the Hill’, two decides Steinbeck, “it has been brought soldiers wade into the waters of a North to a nightmarish mess by the influx of African beach on a warm night: British and American troops.” The streets declare the clash of cultures, where “Pretty nice, eh, kid?” said Sligo. “There’s “jeeps and staff cars nudge their way guys used to pay heavy dough for stuff incorporating writing 46

among camels and horse-drawn cars” and “[r]arely is one whole conversation carried out in just one language.”

Steinbeck completes his collection with ‘Ventotene’. He obliges with a description of this small island off the coast of Naples straight from a guidebook: “The main harbor of Ventotene is a narrow inlet that ends against a cliff like an amphitheater, and on this semicircular cliff the town stands high above the water.” Ventotene housed a key German radar station and, with this picturesque setting, Steinbeck relates the tale of its astonishingly non- violent liberation. Landing at the harbour at night, the American paratroopers, by a mixture of luck and bluff, convinced the 87-strong German radar crew to surrender to a force less than half that number.

Paradoxically, there’s something heartening about Steinbeck’s Once There Was a War. Once there was a war in Dover and Algiers and Ventotene; yet only half a century on, Europe is at peace. These places are more likely to feature in a travel book than a conflict report. War turns life upside down but peace turns it the right way up again – who fifteen years ago would have contemplated a trip to Croatia? According to the UN World Tourism Organization, Croatia is now in the top twenty of tourist destinations, with 8.5 million visitors in 2005 alone. That’s the hope – that Basra and Baghdad and Kabul will be purely travel, and not travel plus war, destinations, featuring more frequently in literary travel writing than in war journalism. War reportage reminds us, with pain, of what we’ve lost in these Claire Boot grew up by the sea in Cardiff before places. Travel writing reminds us, with leaving to study in Birmingham. In need of the celebration, of what we have. sea again, she lived on a ship in Africa while writing for the medical charity Mercy Ships. Now back in Cardiff, she’s mostly writing scripts, designing websites and reading Asterix books. “The47 travel incorporating writing writing inversion continues, for Steinbeck finds himself at locations that should be envied holiday destinations yet” incorporating writing 48

SAY IT LOUD: POEMS ABOUT JAMES BROWN Industry News and Reply to: [email protected] , and [email protected] Opportunities Deadline: December 31, 2007

Edited by: Mary E. Weems, and Thomas Sayers Ellis. We grew up on James Brown’s hit me! When string has arguably been the strongest symbol he danced every young Black man wanted to for ‘rootedness’, I would like to suggest, however move, groove and look like him. Mr. Brown wasn’t morbidly, that our buried bones is another one to called the hardest workingman in show business consider. The question of death, and the where of because he wasn’t. Experiencing a James Brown it, often brings into focus that other old traumatic show was like getting your favorite soul food question: where de hell is home? So Grace twice, plus desert. His songs, like black power Nichols’ Fat Black Woman ”wants a brilliant fists you could be proud of and move to at the tropical death/ not a cold sojourn/ in some North same time. When Mr. Brown sang make it funky Europe far/forlorn”. And Evan Jones’ Banana Man we sweated even in the wintertime. Losing him laments, “Gyal, I’m tellin’ you, I’m tired for true/ was like losing somebody in our family. Tired of Englan’, tired o’ you/ I can’t go back to Jamaica now/ But I want to die there anyhow.” This is a shout out for poems about the impact This new anthology, ‘Wherever We Bury Our James Brown had on our lives. Poems that will Bones’, is seeking work by writers working at the help people remember, honor, and celebrate very top of their craft. We are interested in fiction, his legacy. Don’t be left in a cold sweat, send us personal essays, and poems that navigate close to your old and new James Brown poems today. or fully inhabit the broad question of: how does the migrant face death? Writers and stories Submission Guidelines: included in the final anthology will hopefully 3-5 Unpublished and/or published poems with represent the widest range of peoples and acknowledgement diasporas. included. No longer than 73 lines Prose submissions should be no more than 6000 Deadline: December 31, 2007 (Receipt not words. Poetry can be of any length. postmark) Send hard copies along with a Word Document Submissions should be emailed before the and short bio on a CD to: deadline of June 1, 2007 to the editor Kei Miller at [email protected] . Emails should have Dr. Mary E. Weems ‘Anthology Submission’ in the subject and include English Department a brief bio. Kei Miller is editor of the anthology, John Carroll University New Caribbean Poetry. He is also the author of 20700 North Park Blvd. the Fear of Stones, shortlisted for the 2007 University Hts., Ohio 44118 Commonwealth First Book Prize, and the poetry collection Kingdom of Empty Bellies. Send via e-mail attachment (Word Documents Only) to: [email protected] , and Cartwright Hall Art Gallery , Lister Park , [email protected] Bradford BD9 4NS The Agony and the Ecstasy 3 February – 6 May WHEREVER WE BURY OUR BONES: AN 2007 ANTHOLOGY OF DEATH AND DIASPORA This is our fabulous Spring exhibition devoted to Deadline: June 1, 2007 the history of shoes; from ancient sandals to the Reply to: [email protected] latest Manolo Blahnik’s and Jimmy Choos, via CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS amazing artist designed pieces and impossible heels. Short Shoe Story; a writing competition on As the migrant travels from one home to another, the theme of shoes will encourage writers to and then maybe another, she realizes home is explore in the most creative way their thoughts, complicated, tentative, fragile, multiple. Yet, from feelings and fantasies about shoes – the prize is birth she has been searching for rootedness, a the ultimate treat; an exquisitely fashioned, life- portion of earth to belong to completely. She size shoe made entirely of chocolate by the artist thinks about where she was born; she thinks Prudence Emma Staite; the partner to the shoe in about where she now lives. While the buried navel the exhibition. 49 incorporating writing

Stories must be no more than 200 words and past 50 years. DJ and music promoter Rita Ray must have shoes either particular or general as kicks off the new website with her preview of their starting point. We hope to post a selection of Ghana-related events this year. There’s an entries on the website for the Agony and the interview with playwright Ama Ata Aidoo whose Ecstasy exhibition which is a link to Cartwright classic play Dilemma of a Ghost will be revived in Hall’s own website at www.bradfordmuseums.org. London later in the year. You can browse a Visit the show for inspiration photo gallery of Max Milligan’s extraordinary Competition rules: images of Ghana and read about innovative Entries must be original and not previously Ghanaian company Theatre for Change. Coming published, self published, published on any soon will be features on Ghana’s up-and-coming website or broadcast. new writers, and more Ghanaian music from old- Entries must not show the name and address of style highlife to reggae to hiplife. the entrant – these must be included on a separate piece of paper, or email attachment. Tessa Watt, programme director, Africa Beyond Worldwide copyright remains with the author, but says: “Our aim is to keep a high profile for African Cartwright Hall Art Gallery will have the arts through the website and other media, and unrestricted right to publish a selection of entries through lively public events. We are working with on the Bradford Museums website. as many partners as possible to maintain the links Entries should be submitted by 9am. Monday 23 between mainstream and grassroots April. organisations, to build a network of support for Entrants must be over the age of 18. African arts in the UK and to keep African culture in a central position within the modern cultural Judge: Joolz Denby. Joolz has been a professional landscape in the UK.” writer, spoken word artist, photographer and illustrative artist for over twenty-six years. Africa Beyond carries on the BBC’s African web Submissions by email or hard copy to: Suzanne coverage where the Africa 05 festival left off. Rennie at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery or Africa 05 left its mark with many high profile [email protected] events such as Africa Remix at the South Bank, Back to Black at the Whitechapel Gallery and NEW BBC SITE CELEBRATES LITERATURE, Africa Live at the British Museum, and even CINEMA AND OTHER ARTS IN AFRICA incorporating commercial partners such as Time AND THE DIASPORA Out, Starbucks and Borders and Books Etc. David http://www.bbc.co.uk/africabeyond Lammy, minister for Art and Culture says: “As a legacy, the Africa Beyond programme could, and London, UK, 6 March 2007 - the BBC launches should, form a strong platform for maintaining the new website Africa Beyond www.bbc.co.uk/ and supporting these art forms in the UK, and africabeyond celebrating African arts in the UK. encouraging a broad range of audiences to Africa Beyond casts its net right across the recognise the global impact of African cultural African continent to illustrate the diverse and expression.” complex cultures of the 54 African nations and the Diaspora - in cinema, television, photography, The Africa Beyond programme will also include literature, music, architecture, visual art, history, live events, including the Word from Africa craft, design, performing arts, workshops and festival, a week long celebration of African debate. languages which launches on 2 June with an event at the British Museum featuring musicians, The website will be a hub for information, poets and storytellers in the galleries and theatre discussion and exploration of African arts, beyond halls. Further events will be happening in African the geographical borders of the continent, and restaurants around London. Africa Beyond is beyond any preconceptions about Africa and its supported by the BBC and Arts Council with other culture. The new site brings under its wing the core partners including inIVA (Institute for BBC’s existing music website Africa on your International Visual Arts), the British Museum and Street, with its interviews, features and CD South Bank Centre. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ reviews covering everything from Afrobeat to africabeyond. For more information please contact Hiplife to Mbalax, plus gig listings from Ilka Schlockermann on 079 3206 across the UK. Coinciding with Ghana’s 50th year 6624 or email [email protected]. of independence there will be a special focus on Ghana’s impact on the UK arts scene over the incorporating writing 50

Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize recording has had a very limited release we will 2007/8 consider it.

Submissions are invited from publishers or For more info visit: http:// individual poets for The Jerwood Aldeburgh First www.goingdownswinging.org.au Collection prize, 2007/8. This annual prize is submissions.htm. awarded to the author of what in the opinion of the judges is the best first full collection of poetry You may email MP3s or questions to published in Great Britain and Eire in the [email protected]. preceding year. This year the judges will be Gillian Submissions close on April 1 Allnutt, Vicki Feaver and Michael Laskey (Chair). 2007. We can pay international performers a The winner will be announced at the 19th small fee for every work published (AUS$50– Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, which takes place 2 – 4 $100), in addition to two free copies of the November 2007. S/he will receive a cheque for magazine. Contributors must fill in a submission £3,000, a week of paid ‘protected’ writing time cover sheet, which you can download from the and a fee-paying invitation to read at the website. Aldeburgh Poetry Festival 2008. Any first collection of at least 40 pages published in Great New free content has just been added to Britain , Northern Ireland or the Republic of www.route-online.com Ireland between 1st August 2006 and 31st July Skin - Editor Crista Ermiya 2007 is eligible. To enter send three bound or A mixture of fiction and non-fiction stories are to proof copies with a note of the date of publication be found in this new byteback book edited by by 31st July 2007 to: Jerwood Aldeburgh First Crista Ermiya on the theme of skin. In her Collection Prize, The Cut, 9 New Cut, Halesworth, introduction Crista describes skin as ‘a border Suffolk IP19 8BY. frontier, the porous barrier between what’s on the outside and the inside; appearance and reality.’ The Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize is New Gallery To complement the skin collection, organised by The Poetry Trust with funding from we have also posted a photo gallery generated by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation. The prize was Melanie Ashby; twenty-seven startling portraits established in 1989. Recent previous winners that intimately captures the body’s surface. include Collette Bryce, Nick Laird and Henry Shukman. CAMBRIDGE SEMINAR ON CONTEMPORARY Helen Mitchell LITERATURE Development and Communication Reply to: The Poetry Trust [email protected] t. 01886 835950 / 01603 454016 e. [email protected] 7 - 13 July 2007 www.thepoetrytrust.org The British Council’s Cambridge Seminar on contemporary literature has influenced discussion, GOING DOWN SWINGING #25: CALL FOR performance and debate of literature for 30 years. POETS The Seminar brings together an impressive group Reply to: [email protected] of contemporary British writers and critics – including well-known names and the new Going Down Swinging #25: a spoken word generation - and offers delegates an unrivalled extravaganza. Going Down Swinging (GDS) is an and unforgettable literary experience consisting of Australian literary magazine featuring fiction, a lively mix of talks, panel discussions. The event poetry, comics and spoken word. It’s been is fully residential and is organised by British publishing since 1980 to widespread acclaim and Council Seminars and the Literature Department. is seeking previously unreleased material for it’s The 2007 programme is at present under 25th issue—a double CD of spoken word development and will feature from Australia and around the world. many well known, as well as innovatory new names among prose writers, WE WANT YOUR SUBMISSIONS! We love all poets and critics. For further details, including fee sorts of spoken word, be it live recordings, home information please go to recordings, with music, without, sound poetry www.britishcouncil.org/seminars-arts-0702.htm whatever it is you do. Ideally we are seeking to Or e-mail publish previously unreleased material, but if your [email protected]