incorporating writing

Issue 4 Vol 3 REVOLUTION

REVIEWS Jocelyn Hurndall Lionel Shriver CK Williams Roddy Doyle Anthony Capella and much more

4 pages of opportunities and industry news

George Szirtes - Marina Lewycka - E-Revolution

Incorporating Writing Contents (ISSN 1743-0380)

Editorial Team Page Editorial Managing Editor New to the Neighbourhood 3 Andrew Oldham Sarah Hesketh introduces this issue and tells us about her auspicious start. Deputy Editor SE/Interviews Sarah Hesketh Interviews Marina Lewycka 14 Deputy Editor Midlands/Articles Sarah Hesketh meets the author. Fiona Ferguson George Szirtes 32 Deputy Editor NW/Reviews Sarah Hesketh catches up with the poet and discusses the future of UEA. G.P.Kennedy Articles Sales & Marketing Manager The Name Means Voices 5 Graeme Hind After Tom Spurling tackled travel writing in the last issue, readers have called for more. Columnists Dan McTiernan, Andrew O’Donnell, Flax Books: A New Voice 8 Dave Wood, Sharon Sadle. Sara Hymas of Flax Books, tells us about what they hope to achieve. Contributors Janet Aspey, Claire Boot, Ben Words in Wales 24 Felsenburg, Sara Hymas, James Claire Boot reveals the new face of Johnson, Tom Spurling, Bridget literature in Wales. Whelan, Rebecca Wombwell Columns Cover Art A Novel Death 11 Samantha Mills Dan McTiernan talks candidly about his own revolution. Design Marsh EDITORS NOTE: Sharon Sadle’s column has now come to an end and will be replaced Contact Details from the next issue. http://www.incorporatingwriting.co.uk [email protected] Artwork Perfect Eye 28 Cover artist, Samantha Mills, exhibits

Incorporating Writing is an imprint of The Incwriters some of her work. Society (UK). The magazine is managed by an editorial team independent of The Society’s Constitution. Nothing in this magazine may be reproduced in whole or part without Reviews 35 permission of the publishers. We cannot accept responsi- bility for unsolicited manuscripts, reproduction of articles, photographs or content. Incorporating Writing has endeav- oured to ensure that all information inside the magazine is News and Opportunities 47 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 other claims. This magazine is produced in the UK. © The Incwriters Society (UK) 2005 3 incorporating writing

New to the Neighbourhood Editorial by Sarah Hesketh

processes which govern the Incorporating Writing editorial process, has come to hold the title Revolution (in the regions) I can admit to a vested interest in at least two of the pieces. A Lancastrian by birth, the work of Flax publishing goes a long way to dispelling my prejudice that the Northwest has never put much store by its literary talents. East Lancashire’s top celebrities include: Wallace Hartley - fiddled on the Titanic whilst every other sensible bugger was trying to get near a lifeboat, Betty Boothroyd – high-kicking former Madam speaker, Carl Fogarty – World Superbike ‘legend’, and John Simm It was hardly the most auspicious of – recent star of BBC’s nostalgia-fest Life job applications. I had one of the worst on Mars and the first and only famous colds of my life. Two days after New Year alumni of the now defunct Edge End High and I was still feeling the after effects of School, Nelson. I was sixteen years old midnight excesses which included making before I realised Sylvia Plath was buried lemon pigs and singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ up the hill and Mytholmroyd was in fact stood on a bench on the top of the birthplace of Ted Hughes, not just a Parliament Hill. Disastrously, my hippy village on the outskirts of Burnley. interview subject had stood me up and so Although all credit to Accrington Arts I was forced to cobble together an article Centre for introducing me to my first based on facts cribbed from a few vague professional poetry reading. The late, press releases with only a leftover batch lamented Michael Donaghy arrived late on of Marks and Spencer’s reindeer shaped the rattling Transpennine, looking unsure biscuits sustaining my will to live. Yet as to why he’d come at all and wondering here I am, newly installed as if he should have brought his passport. Incorporating Writing’s Interviews Editor. It’s funny how things can turn out. I’ve More recently, I’ve been sampling the already had the pleasure of meeting heady artistic atmosphere of Norwich. It’s Benedict Allen (frighteningly articulate, a town where you can’t move for fear of anxious to show off his warrior shields) running into a writer’s group and a new and Daljit Nagra (desperately nice, religion of culture has replaced the old bought me a cup of tea), and I hope to one, as the majority of the city’s famously be bringing you more insightful comment numerous churches are now bookshops, from figures in the culture business in the or gallery space or an arts centre. Arts future. council funding is pouring into the county (in a daring escape bid from the Olympics As for this issue which, via the mystical committee, perhaps?) and my interview incorporating writing 4

with George Szirtes examines the future word. Claire Boot examines the of the local monolith that is the UEA remarkably vibrant potential in that Creative Writing Course. strange negative ‘devolution’, exploring how Wales has become the British capital of literary festivals. Marina ‘East Lancashire’s top Lewycka talks about what it means to be celebrities include: Wallace a Ukrainian in Yorkshire (and indeed a Yorkshire woman in the Ukraine) and Hartley - fiddled on the George Szirtes a Hungarian in Norfolk. Titanic whilst every other Plus we’ve got reviews of Anthony Capella, Roddy Doyle and CK Williams. sensible bugger was trying Not much change from the usual to get near a lifeboat’ international flavour then. I’ve only just moved to the neighbourhood. But it’s going alright thus far. Ask me ten years ago to give you an example of ‘regional literature’ and I’d probably have thrust James Herriott’s collected works at you – books that told me about the landscape in which I was living. Since leaving university I haven’t lived in the same county for more than nine months, what’s my regional character now? Can I still claim to be Lancastrian if no longer pronouce ‘coke’ and ‘cork’ exactly the same? Am I going Sarah Hesketh is Deputy Editor (SE)/Interviews to start searching for justification for my for Incorporating Writing. Originally from East Lancs she is now enduring the flat lands of irrational hatred of the Yorkshire cricket Norfolk and studying for an MA in creative writing team? I genuinely hope not. But as both at UEA. Szirtes and Marina Lewcyka (both survivors of their own, bloodier revolutions) highlight in this issue, the world gets ever smaller. The massive CALL FOR WRITERS movements within the EU mean that Incorporating Writing will go quarterly in countries like Poland and Hungary are 2007. Themes for 2007 include FOOD just as important a part of our region (October). Guidelines can be obtained now. Their inhabitants are our neighbours from the editors below and, important and fun as it is for literature to assert a local character it has All enquiries and deadline details are to bear in mind that that local character available from: is no longer the figure it once was, and Andrew Oldham (Managing Editor) might be as prone to a shot of vodka [email protected] these days as it is to a pint of Black Fiona Ferguson (Articles Editor) Sheep. [email protected] G.P. Kennedy (Reviews Editor) What else do we have in this issue then? [email protected] Tom Spurling gives us the second of his astonishing reports from South Africa, www.incorporatingwriting.co.uk where revolution is still a dangerous 5 incorporating writing The Name Means Voices Article by Tom Spurling

A bakkie-load of Shangaan construction Kruger National Park, fifteen young workers huddles tightly in their rainbow Shangaan and Sotho women are learning beanies. The young men slap backs and to tell their stories straight. flash smiles as they scoot past a bevy of Boers dressed head-to-high-knee in It’s the first Wednesday of the month, khaki. The property developers suck their and time for the Editorial Meeting. The skafes and puff steam rings through the first edition of the signature publication, icy air. It’s Wednesday morning in the The Amazwi Villager, is just three weeks Hoedspruit Wildlife Estate. away, and the students are restless to see their names on the page. Lydia, fresh Across the R40, a stream of Toyota Hi-Ace from her Rise & Shine snack stall, sits taxis pull up in front of La Bamba quietly in a huge apricot sun hat; supermarket. Farmhands and well-made Constance dishes out sweet cherry wives banter in circles on the steps and bubblegum at a rand for six pieces; and chew fried chips, the air already full of Maria, the dressmaker, in her black velvet sweat and laughter. Army green safari boots and a white woolen sweater, laughs vehicles crowd the petrol bowsers, and to herself, no longer ‘crying beneath a from a cloud of dust comes the inaugural Marula tree’, no longer so ready to quit class at the Amazwi School of Media Arts. the bush beat.

Here in South Africa, where history is The newly built classroom of clay- delicate and fresh, revolution is a coloured concrete, thatched roof and high dangerous word. Hundreds were exiled wooden beams echoes with Tsonga for imagining a post-Apartheid state, and whispers. The students are reluctant to millions suffered trying to outlive it. But present their new assignment ideas. The in this sleepy tourist town, on the edge of editor is ready to bend their ideas to fit. incorporating writing 6

As one-by-one the topics are revealed, potato salads, cream-filled fatties, the threads are hope and life and packets of Big Korn, Tupperware struggle, but death, it seems, is containers of thick beef stew, bags of wet everywhere. There’s a profile of a peanuts and dry mopane worms. Copies prosperous coffin-maker, a tombstone of the Daily Sun change hands like winter carver, an investigation into Burial gloves, and Gloria, this week’s blogger, Societies, a day-in-the-line at a hospital, writes a celebration of feminine might. plus a staple diet of abortion, AIDS and TB. According to a survey conducted by the Media Monitoring Project, in 2005, only ‘Similarly disheartening is 26% of news coverage in South Africa focused on women. Furthermore, the the way in which gender huge majority of this coverage presented stereotypes are upheld by women in reference to their families, or as unfortunate victims of crime. This in a South Africa’s influential country with a nearly 52% female tabloid press’ population highlights a discrepancy in gender representation. The old boy’s club, it seems, has only changed colour. We break for lunch, and the students burst into sing-song relief. “Aish, this Similarly disheartening is the way in journalism stuff is too hard!” moans which gender stereotypes are upheld by Thandi, 22, for whom writing stories is in South Africa’s influential tabloid press. fact too easy. On her first assignment, For every story of witchcraft and fraud, it Thandi spent an evening at a local seems there are two dealing with sexual shebeen (unlicensed bar), witnessed one assault. “There is a lot of media reporting stabbing and another near-death, and on rape,” states the Media Monitoring wrote it all up with poetry and poise. Project report ‘Who makes the news?’, “but it tends to victimize women or keep Her Group B teammate, Siphiwe, 27, is a them silenced.” The report continues that, bronze Sotho athlete with high on February 16 2005, a prominent soccer cheekbones — the right side stamped star was charged with raping an underage with a ceremonial scar — and a broad, girl. The married celebrity denied the ready smile. She wants to be a sports charge, but much of the media attention broadcaster, but for now, it’s an illegal was on his celebrity status, rather than immigrant from Mozambique who fills her the allegations themselves. Likewise, a days. Meanwhile, Bongekile, the study in the Rhodes Journalism Review accomplished, unofficial matriarch of the found that “South Africa’s women group, is trying to sort through the mess journalists not face a glass ceiling, but of government housing. indeed one made of concrete. Revolutions can take at least four drafts In light of South African women’s to finish, usually handwritten and always misrepresentation in the media, the role double-spaced. Once submitted, everyone of Amazwi, which mean ‘voices’ in Zulu, is heads for Pick n Pay. Like a high school political as much as social. Rural stories cafeteria, the class-come-newsroom struggle to be told in South Africa, as bristles with mess and noise. Milk cartons journalists must give precedence to the - Maluti Fresh - twice-fried chicken, stories that affect their readers’ lives. As 7 incorporating writing

scores of men rush for the cities to find employment, many women are left behind, and life goes on unreported. ‘Revolutions can take at least four drafts to finish, usually handwritten and always double-spaced’

Yet here in the poor northern province of Limpopo, where news is usually bad, the women of Amazwi are blessed with an added responsibility. Rather than merely entertain the urban middle-classes with the oddities of the outback, they must Tom Spurling is a freelance travel writer from Melbourne, Australia. He has recently returned bring everyday life to the breakfast table from India on assignment for Lonely Planet, and is of the communities in which they live. It’s now a writer-in-residence at Amazwi Media Arts a tough job, but there’s no need to hurry. School in rural South Africa. ‘Amazwi’, meaning It’s slow news that sometimes burns ‘voices’ in Zulu, trains local women to tell their brightest. 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 incorporating writing 8

Flax Books: A New Voice Article by Sarah Hymas

Litfest, the Lancaster-based literature The first two anthologies have presented development agency, has been quietly that range of voices, lives and revolutionizing the approach to regional perspectives. It is from this diversity we publishing since its first poetry want to build an identity - not only of competition in 1979. The annual festival excellent production values and spirited has a long history of commissioning new writing, but - of a literary ecology that work for performance from emergent will grow beyond its initial boundaries and writers. But never an organization to be fertilise thought and understanding of an static, this has fed the genesis of Flax area of England that itself is always Books, the new publishing imprint growing. committed to highlighting contemporary voices from Lancashire and Cumbria. The two digital anthologies celebrate and explore the potential of digital publishing. There are a host of small presses already It is the inevitable future of literature, if in existence, publishing some astounding Random House, Bill Gates, Google and new work, but none focus solely on these the others have their way. This is a two counties. Is this a rod for our back? publishing revolution that Flax Books are Reducing the scope of writers we publish keen to be a part of, and making the might sound like a recipe for most of the medium. parochialism; but this is not the case. It is the dichotomy of the region, the There are new sensory possibilities tension between the rural and urban, the unique to the medium, replacing the ex-industrial and eco-tourism that we’re tactile with the aural and visual. Audio interested in. clips are linked to our anthologies, so the 9 incorporating writing

reader can experience the difference ethos of a symbiotic relationship, between their reading of a work and the between Flax, themselves, and the other writer’s reading. The anthologies walk the writers in the publication. wire between traditional and contemporary design to reflect the “I’ve been amazed really how far that subjects and styles that the writers of this single story and being involved in the region are absorbed by. They throw the Square Cuts stuff has got me. It’s done a local detail into the global context that lot for my confidence and has certainly Internet distribution offers. made it possible to get a little closer to being a ‘real’ writer - I now have an Perhaps it’s best to let featured writers agent, which wouldn’t have happened speak for themselves: had I not been chosen for the anthology. Being involved in Flax and the litfest has “It’s very exciting – I think that digital done more for my career than anything publishing will inevitably become more else. I think writers spend so much time and more popular in the next few years on their own tapping at little plastic keys and so to be in on it at the start, so to that it’s very rewarding and reassuring speak, is great. The potential readership when people who are clearly passionate is phenomenal when you think about it. I about literature want to hear your work like the way the anthology looks as well - and believe in what you’re doing.” which is important - it’s easy to access and visually interesting and of course it The professional development ties in with can do things that a paper book can’t. “ marketing. We have organised a series of readings for each anthology, and it’s Traditional forms are still hugely valued, great to gather most of the writers however, and we recognise we’re not together, hear the differences and chords alone in this. The writers in each in their work. anthology are provided with publicity materials, specifically postcards, to ”The readings I enjoyed very much, and enable them to promote the work felt that I was getting better and better themselves, but also to have something each time I read. It was such a tangible with their work on, that they confidence boost to have people in the could pass around to friends and audience and organising the events who colleagues, a companion to the anthology were so passionate about writing.” itself. “The readings were great – fantastically As well as publishing the best writing of organized. The Lancaster reading was the region, Flax aims to ensure the the most ‘profitable’ for me in terms of writers are best prepared to profit from confidence, exposure and eventual their work being in the world. We are as outcome. I met agent, who is now interested in the professional representing me.” development of the writer as we are in their writing. To this aim, a bespoke There are plans for 2008 to publish print development programme for the volumes that will focus on fewer writers. published writers has been set up. This These also will show an enthusiasm for includes web-based profiles, skills- detail and design, and be books to exchange schemes and one-to-one mentoring programmes. So the writers continued page 13... we take on need to be committed to this incorporating writing 10

A Novel Death Column by Dan McTiernan

and my mother just couldn’t cope with it.

At night we drank too much because nobody could sleep; that’s what people do in those circumstances and it’s amazing how prescriptive the process is. On night three I had a blazing row with my mother which when I went to bed felt like the end of our relationship, but in the morning was accepted by both of us as a symptom of bereavement. We both moved on as if it needed to happen but then no longer mattered.

- It doesn’t get any better, it’s just that ‘Four months later I I think about it less often. - Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe that’s how it start to wonder what it is works. It’s still shit after all. that a novel can teach me

My step-father died unexpectedly of heart about life that I can’t learn failure nearly four months ago at the age by simply living it’ of 53. The term step-father immediately gets a different reaction when you tell I was frustrated in the days following his people the news. Oh, it’s just your step- death because I was unable to read. I father, thank God it’s not your real father. couldn’t concentrate on the words on the Well, even though I resisted his arrival in page because I was stressed and our lives when I was a hormone-fuelled exhausted and often had had too many teenager, he became my father slowly, glasses of red wine. But surprisingly it and my dependence on him and sense of was books that kept coming back to me loss at his death, both stand as testament at night. I kept recalling passages from to his success in that role. Step or not, it novels I had read that now meant more feels like my dad died. than they had at the time.

Amongst the tumult of immediate post The dull shock in Annie Proulx’s Shipping death activity I noticed myself behaving News as her protagonist learns of his in a way that seemed familiar to me but wife’s untimely demise in a car wreck. only through fiction. I made repetitive The weight that ambles behind him like a phone calls to friends and family in which shadow as he tries to make sense of a life I broke the news to them, and they cleaved in two. Or the internal chitter reacted like they’re supposed to, with Raskolnikov is plagued by following his shocked denials and tearstained murderous act in Crime and Punishment. platitudes, and when I hung up I sat and Even though I hadn’t committed a crime, cried outside in the garden because I’d never talked to myself as much in my phoning people is the job nobody wants 11 incorporating writing

life. I constantly questioned the archetypal fictitious equivalent, imbuing motivation for my refusal to accept his both the real and the unreal with more dinner invitation on the night of his death importance than either would otherwise and repeatedly indulged the regret that I deserve. didn’t offer more of my time to him whenever he had wanted a chat on the Of course Ron’s death is important phone. The subconscious language of regardless of whether Stevens’ father dies grief was strangely being translated into in The Remains of the Day. But I think, plain English through my memory of had I not been able to judge my reaction fictional accounts of loss and disturbance; to death against Stevens’ mute frustrating and while I was unable to read, I acceptance, my experience may have contented myself with a time when I been different and perhaps less rich. could. ‘The cliché that when Four months later I start to wonder what it is that a novel can teach me about life someone dies suddenly you that I can’t learn by simply living it. hear people talking about Death, the most natural of states needs to be seen to be believed, but I’ve seen it death all around you now and am starting to learn. Most has been true for me’ obviously the novel gives us the experience by proxy. A novelist opens up Frequently my mind slips back to a worlds and experiences hitherto unheard chapter in Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird of and by reading novels we literally Chronicle in which the narrator finds transport ourselves to other dimensions. himself trapped at the bottom of a dried James Hilton’s Lost Horizon irrevocably up well for several days. He mulls over altered the West’s perception of Tibet and the long story Lieutenant Mamiya had told the Himalayan region because it was him about a time during the WWII in written at a time when hardly anyone which he too found himself trapped at the white had been there (including the bottom of a well. Faced with nothing but author). himself and the dank walls of his prison, Toru Okada finally begins to understand But what of the quotidian experience in what happened to Mamiya all those years novels; the daily grind that sometimes ago. serves as a story’s necessary backdrop? While the narrative leads us to something Enveloped in almost total darkness and in out of the ordinary, the majority of Jon terrible pain, Mamiya’s despair was McGregor’s If Nobody Speaks of dangerously overwhelming until the angle Remarkable Things comprises of of the sun above him caused a warm suburban residents going about the dull shaft of light to bathe his entire body for minutiae of their lives. Yet what McGregor a few precious seconds before arcing offers us as a reader rather than as a further and returning the well to gloom. simple observer of our neighbours Those few seconds became the central washing their cars and putting out their point of Mamiya’s life and as the same rubbish is a claim to the importance of event occurred on each day of his these events. Everything in a novel is incarceration, the sensation of the there for a reason and when we importance of this light increased. So experience something similar in reality we much so that when he eventually escaped may make a subconscious link with its incorporating writing 12

and, via a Siberian prison camp, made it moment. His books are not short on home years later to Japan, and even tragedy and I wonder sometimes if I nearly forty years subsequently, the ray should be wallowing instead in some of sun that touched his skin was still the puffball soul-massager like the travails of crowning moment of his life. Precious Ramotswe rather than the gritty reality of Brooklyn existentialism. Yet I When I first read that chapter I was feel deep comfort in the intensity of moved by the reality of a life that Auster’s writing and understand that what continues beyond a point at which it could he is saying is not that life is difficult, but happily stop. Mamiya lives for many years simply that life is this and the sooner we after that event but feels like he hasn’t can assimilate that notion into ourselves, really lived a day longer in any the sooner we can engage fully with it. meaningful sense. When I sat down to write the first clumsy draft of Ron’s The notion of finding real life in the pages eulogy, I tried to cling on to that notion at of fictional novels may seem bizarre, but least in some abstract way. It is better to the act of reading, like meditation, is one have lived happily for a short time, to of reflexivity, an investigation of ourselves have impacted so positively on other that means more than the mere act of people’s lives, than to grow old and not living and breathing by itself. have achieved those things. Perhaps the meaning of Ron’s life had been fulfilled My mother has asked me to go collect already and anything else was just a Ron’s ashes from the funeral director as gradual slide into decrepitude and they’ve sent her a letter asking that this obsolescence. I’m not sure I believe that, happen soon. I don’t even know whether as I think he still had a huge amount to they’ll be in an urn of some description or offer the world, but I’m in no doubt that just a small cardboard box. Ron used to Murakami brought me some solace at the be six foot three and weighed over twenty time. A great painter can make us view stone. He was a sod for not fastening his the physical world around us differently, seatbelt but this is one journey I’ll make but a great writer may permanently sure he does. colour our perception of the internal landscape of emotion.

The cliché that when someone dies suddenly you hear people talking about death all around you has been true for me. It seems everything I read involves pulmonary edema or men dropping like flies of heart attacks in their early fifties.

I’ve been on somewhat of a Paul Auster binge lately, feeling the need to start again almost immediately with his next novel after finishing the previous in order to maintain a single tonal clarity to my Writer, magazine editor, film maker and film lecturer, Dan McTiernan schizophrenically reading. Auster seems to understand the wanders through his well travelled working life random brittle nature of our lives in a way safe in the knowledge that underneath the media that works for me extremely well at the façade, he’s really an eco-builder and smallholder. 13 incorporating writing

...continued from page 9 treasure, reflecting the passion Flax has for writing, writers and its region.

“I would absolutely recommend that people send work to Flax. I felt that there was a genuine passion for the writing and a real interest and focus on the writers themselves (which did an awful lot for my confidence as well). The events and the anthology have been produced with professionalism and dedi- cation. You can’t ask for much more than that.”

For more info on Flax Books, see: www.litfest.org

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- ing, you’ll be delighted to find The Sarah Hymas is the Publishing Development Manager for Litfest. She edits Flax Books, and Reader, the literary magazine written with organises professional development sessions for you in mind. The Reader organisation writers throughout the region, both on a one-to- also delivers a variety of innovative liter- one basis and for groups. ary events and community projects in the North West. She is also a published poet, most recently in the British Council’s New Writing 15, and collaborates with a musician to create sonic art for Subscription: (1 year/4 issues)£24 performance, writes for other performers and is a children’s puppeteer. incorporating writing 14

Marina Lewycka: Tractors and Caravans Interview by Sarah Hesketh Photos by Ian Phillpott 15 incorporating writing

“It is a shame really,” sighs Marina said, ‘Oh, you’ll be interested in this.’ It Lewycka, “but Ukraine is a new country was called ‘Gone West: Ukrainians at trying to find it’s place in Europe, and I work in Britain Today’ and it had just can understand it doesn’t want to be been published by someone from the represented on the world stage by a TUC. I thought, oh, there’s a story in this, woman with enormous breasts and an and indeed there was.” incontinent old man. I hear it’s going into Chinese shortly, though.” It’s certainly a ‘She cites James Joyce as heavy dose of irony to bear, that despite the thirty or so languages Lewycka’s one of her greatest loves, best-selling first novel, A Short History of and isn’t it a terrible Tractors in Ukrainian, has been translated into, it remains unavailable in her mother Joycean thing, to hang your tongue. Beloved by book groups and work on the framework of critics alike, the “tractors book” as she likes to shorthand it, got a spot on the someone else’s writing?’ Orange shortlist, saw her become the first woman to win the Wodehouse Prize and Her new novel certainly seems more was a favourite with the nation’s over socially aware than the first, with it’s cast fifties, picking up the Saga Award for Wit. of migrants, traffickers and employers Her new novel, Two Caravans, (at a quite happy to exploit their cheap recent appearance at the UEA Literary workforce. Was it a conscious shift away Festival, an audience member queried from the family-oriented focus of the first whether all her books were going to book? feature some form of transport) continues “Well, I started off quite happy to with the theme of the immigrant write a sequel, and everybody said, no, experience, exploring the adventures of a you mustn’t do that. Sequels never do group of Ukrainians and Poles who are well. And then as Tractors was more and trying to earn themselves a piece of the more successful my publisher said, well, good life, fruit-picking in the fields of actually, do you think you could manage Kent. With current political wranglings a bit more of the same? So I sort of went about EU expansion, and this year’s May for the same but different. So it’s still a Day march focusing on the rights of story about migration and people starting migrant workers, she certainly seems to off in one culture and ending up in have produced a timely set of books. But another. I very much wanted these was that a deliberate move? characters that had brought their stories “Not at all,” she insists. “There were with them and were acting them out in a two other unpublished novels before the strange and sometimes completely Tractors book, and a lot of false starts as inappropriate setting. They’re all still well. I think that I was aware that there’s living through those issues and dilemmas been a huge surge in interest in migrant which really belong in their home country literatures. But I think the main reason it and not in England at all. And I just hope was so successful was that the story it doesn’t put too many people off about the older man who falls in love with because when people say the phrase the younger woman is an age old story, ‘condition of England’ novel my heart it’s universal. With the new book it was sinks really. But I guess if I’m honest, less of a coincidence, because when I’d that was part of what I had in mind. finished the tractors book my husband shoved this pamphlet into my hands and And of course, in both books there’s this incorporating writing 16

senseInterview of these by Alexander huge global Laurence churnings and suppose, but also beautiful. To be out in people being swept around and swept out the fields, in the sunshine, and to feel and being put on trains and ending up in part of this community. And along with completely different places. It’s the same the dangers faced by migrant workers, I huge churn and upheaval that happened wanted to capture some of that wonderful after the Second World War, but it’s just feeling in Caravans.” got a different name now. It’s globalisation.” It’s a dichotomy perhaps represented in the choice of her epigraph from Chaucer, ‘You’ve lived all your life as being preceded by a dedication to the Chinese cockle-pickers who died working one person and suddenly, off the coast of Morecambe Bay. It is a bit just as you’re thinking of of a strange contrast, she admits. “But you know, recently we’ve all this retiring you become commemorative stuff about the abolition another person’ of slavery. But you have to remember that now, on the shores of the Mediterranean, bodies of young African It’s thanks to that historical churning that men are being washed ashore every Lewycka’s family found themselves in week. But people don’t call it slavery England. (“Well, I’ve always thought of anymore because it’s a part of these huge myself as thoroughly English really.”) She movements of labour. It was such a was born in a refugee camp in Kiel, and hugely ambitious thing, but I wanted to by a stroke of luck her family found try and encapsulate that movement in themselves in the British occupied zone at two caravans. Two tiny spheres. Originally the end of the war. “It was a complete it was going to be one caravan which was chance of history, because my mother going to be like a small round thing was from Eastern Ukraine and should perched on the top of a hill and it had the really have been sent back. But her father whole world inside it, but of course that was moving around at the time she was didn’t really work, but that was definitely born, in what was at one time Poland. So the image I started with.” for the purposes of migration she was classed as Polish and she was allowed to So what about the Chaucerian aspects of stay. But otherwise they would have been the book? sent back and put into the camps.” “Well, what I hoped I took from him was the sense of fun combined with quite a Her family started life in the UK in a serious purpose. Structurally, also, it’s refugee camp in Surrey, before moving to kind of Chaucer in reverse, all these Sussex, “when we lived with Malcolm characters starting together, but then Muggeridge’s mother-in-law,” she muses. spinning out. I think the interesting thing “Mum was basically a domestic and dad about Chaucer is he never overcame his went off and drove tractors somewhere, structural problems. He never even in fact. He worked as an agricultural finished the Canterbury Tales. He’d set worker and then it was after the war himself an impossible task really, but he ended, when I was about three or four, doesn’t let that get in the way of his that we moved up to Yorkshire.” She sheer enjoyment and the characters. It recalls this time, working with her mother still sparkles, that sheer sense of fun and in the fields as a picker, as an extremely pleasure which you get from reading it.” happy one. “It was objectively horrible I 17 incorporating writing

‘I started off quite happy to write a sequel, and everybody said, no, you mustn’t do that. Sequels never do well’ incorporating writing 18

For the avid reader, there are a set of like sonnets and villanelles. And so I correspondences to be spotted between really wanted to write a novel in a kind of her own characters and those of demotic voice because I think the Chaucer’s pilgrims. “Martha, for example, demotic voice is the contemporary voice is a kind of prioress figure. You know, the as well. Moving from talking in a certain fact that she loves animals, and she’s voice to writing in that voice is a very big very dainty in her eating habits. I didn’t step. But actually, once you hear the want to put a little pendant in and make it rhythm you don’t have to hear the exact too obvious, but she does speak French sentence, and often it’s just to do with you’ll notice and all of them have got a the absence of articles. I’ve found posts kind of Chaucerian equivalent.” on blogs by Russians or Poles and they’re wonderful, they’re magic because they ‘My parents were certain just come straight out with these wonderful sounds and you think, God, I that their familiy wouldn’t wish I could write like that.” survive, but they did’ It’s Polish immigrants that have taken the share of media attention in Britain thus far. “Which is very nice for the Poles but She cites James Joyce as one of her it’s very hard for the Ukrainians being out greatest loves, and isn’t it a terrible of the EU. Because they’ve always been Joycean thing, to hang your work on the very close as nations, and one lot being in framework of someone else’s writing? and one lot being out is very difficult for “Well, it’s a game, really, isn’t it. It’s fun. them. The Ukraine has applied to join, It’s a game that you play with your but they won’t be allowed to. Possibly readers, though not with all your readers ever, certainly not for 20 years. It’s all to because not all your readers want to play do with this terrible phrase, ‘enlargement that game. But for those readers who do fatigue’. And now there are all these like Chaucer like I do, it’s an extra little issues about Turkey and I don’t know something. And it’s the same with the what will happen. But it does seem Bob Dylan lyrics really, that’s a similar terribly unfair that the Ukraine shouldn’t sort of game. Though there are some be in. Because Ukraine is no longer in the parts where Tomasz makes Soviet Union, it’s not in the European pronouncements which sound as if they Union, so where is it? What they’re going ought to be Bob Dylan but actually they’re to try and do is shove it into NATO which not. I made them up.” will actually be a very destructive thing because the Eastern part of Ukraine really Perhaps the most distinctive feature of won’t accept NATO. Whereas the western the Tractors book, and one of the most part will probably be very keen on NATO, praised aspects of her writing, is so that will exacerbate that split. The Lewycka’s ability to transcribe the slightly whole country’s basically split between a broken English of her characters, as it pro-Russian half and a pro-Western half.” sounds to the ear. Her writing has certainly brought her “I think that was the mistake of my non- closer to her Ukrainian heritage, and even published novels, that they were actually brought about a reunion with some long- very literary, which now seems very old- fashioned. But I’ve always had a very good ear for listening to sounds and continued page 21... rhythms. I’m very good at poetic forms 19 incorporating writing

portraitsiberuttrek

21 incorporating writing

...continued from page 18 family of sorts, as well? “Yes, it was very nice. But it is also very lost relatives via the magic of the strange to have such major upheavals so internet. “My parents were certain that late in life. You’ve lived all your life as one their familiy wouldn’t survive, but they person and suddenly, just as you’re did.” Whilst researching her family thinking of retiring you become another history for Tractors, she made a tape of person.” She smiles and you can definitely her mother, recounting details of her hear the Yorkshire twang. “No Ukrainians past. “After mum died I realised that in the next book.” there really wasn’t enough there to make a story and I was going to have to make a lot of it up. But when I was reunited with the family in the Ukraine I discovered that my mum’s sister was still alive and she had no idea what had happened. She was seven or eight years younger than my mum and her sister had just sort of vanished into thin air. But I still had this tape and suddenly I was able to give her a tape of her sister, speaking in her own language. It was so lovely and so sad.” Sarah Hesketh is Deputy Editor (SE)/Interviews for Incorporating Writing. Originally from East So not just a bestseller and a strong Lancs she is now enduring the flat lands of Norfolk future career as a novelist, but a new and studying for an MA in creative writing at UEA. www.incwriters.co.uk Incwriters Award 2008 Outstanding Contribution to Literature (Magazines)

Are you a magazine with Literature and Arts content? Would you like support in kind worth up £1500? Then enter your magazine for the 2008 award, entry forms and further details can be found at: www.incwriters.co.uk/award.htm

Incwriters is a promoter and e-publisher, founded in 2002. It continues to be a one stop shop for readers, writers and promoters. The website is run by members of Incwriters. It is free to join and have a voice in the world of Literature. The site has free downloads, audio, imprints, forum, chatroom and much more.

Judges for 2008 are Andrew Oldham (Incwriters Founder), Libby Tempest (Manchester Libraries), G.P. Kennedy (Reviews Editor for Incorporating Writing), Steven Waling (Poet, published by Salt and Smith/Doorstep) and William Park (Magazine Listings Editor and published by Spike). For further information contact Claire Summers, [email protected]

“This site is welcome alternative to the world of glossy promotion and gross retailing. Makes you feel that writing matters, and that it is thriving in all manner of ways” - David Constantine, Modern Poetry in Translation.

“Has everything you are ever likely to need know about poets and poetry” - Orbis

“If one word sums up Incwriters, we could choose no better one than integrity” - Quarterly Tadeeb International Red Ink 2/Summer 2007 (ISSN 1751-1496) £2.50 Eds. Peter Lewin & Andrew Oldham 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.

A PDF magazine publishing a series of poems by poets and publishing prose of any length from micro- shorts to novellas. This issue sees exceptional work from Naoimi Bagel and Gemma Caunce, a prose writer to look out for. With over 40pp in each issue, buy a one issue or subscribe for two years for tiny sumof £7.50

Anthills and Stars by Kevin Duffy (Bluemoose Books ISBN 0955336708 ISBN 13: 9780 955336706) £7.99

Fiction. It's 1968, and in Paris the students are rioting but in Broughton, 20 miles East of Manchester the Permissive Society has just arrived, driving a multi coloured VW camper van...Mrs. Hebblethwaite thinks the devil himself has arrived, he has.

Bluemoose is part of the Incwriters Affiliate Scheme, for further information on the scheme, email [email protected]

The Bridge Between By Nathan Vanek (Bluemoose Books ISBN 0955336716 ISBN13:9780955336713) £ 7.99.

Non Fiction. Born and raised in Toronto, Nathan Vanek, Yogi and Guru, spent much of his adult life in India. He communicates the essence of his knowledge and insights into the dramatic contrasts between the two countries, and the essential oneness of us all.

Bluemoose is part of the Incwriters Affiliate Scheme, for further information on the scheme, email [email protected]

ALL TITLES AVAILABLE FROM WWW.INCWRITERS.CO.UK/SHOP.HTM

For further information on any titles, email the book team at [email protected] incorporating writing 24 Words in Wales Article by Claire Boot

Wales is big on words. Actually, about five people in Wales speak Welsh and it’s six foot six big. That’s the size of the a policy of the Welsh Assembly (our letters over the entrance of the new version of the Scottish Parliament) to Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff. Home make Wales a truly bilingual country. to Wales’ national dance, opera and literature promotion companies – and to Writing in Wales is enriched by an alien hospital run by un-Hippocratic bilingualism. We’re not talking cat nuns in the BBC’s Doctor Who – it’s a straightforward signpost-style translation veritable powerhouse for culture and the – Millennium Stadium versus Stadiwm y arts. As the writing on the wall over the Mileniwm, for example – but the creative entrance declares, ‘In these stones cross-pollination of different phonetics, horizons sing’. phrasings and philosophies. Bilingualism means that our small country sustains It also says, ‘Creu gwir fel gwydr o two high quality literary magazines, the ffwrnais awen’, which translates as New Welsh Review in English and Taliesin ‘Creating truth like glass from the furnace in Welsh. A470, the quarterly magazine of of inspiration’. For not only is Wales big the Welsh national literature promotion on words, but we have twice as many to agency Academi, is named for the mother play with. Welsh is the most ancient road that links north to south. Split language in Britain, most closely related evenly between Welsh and English, it to Cornish and Breton but very much features independently-written articles on alive and kicking. Gone are the days literary news and events this side of the when Welsh schoolchildren were beaten Severn Bridge. Competitions for poetry, for speaking in their mother tongue; fiction and drama in either language today, they’re eligible to win £10,000 for regularly bubble up. As well as a Welsh Welsh Book of the Year. Currently, one in writer getting their hands on a nice 25 incorporating writing

trophy and a nicer cheque for the Book of festivals, celebrating Welsh art and the Year, as mentioned above, there’s an culture find their beginnings in 1176. Lord English language category too. The Rhys of Cardigan invited poets and recently announced short-list showcases musicians from across Wales to his manor an impressive variety of works; there are and duly rewarded the best with a seat at essays on climbing by Jim Perrin, a Welsh his lordship’s table. Over eight hundred ‘Arabian Nights’ from Lloyd Jones and years later, writers are among those who lyrical poetry by Christine Evans for the have made a significant contribution to English, with a biography of Welsh Welsh culture – from opera singer Bryn nationalist Saunders Lewis from T. Robin Terfel to rugby player Gareth Edwards – Chapman, historical fiction by Gwen still honoured with election to the Pritchard Jones and a Cardiff-based novel Gorsedd (‘throne’ or ‘high seat’) of Bards from Llwyd Owen for the Welsh. Both at the annual National Eisteddfod. winners will be announced in a glittering ceremony in the Cardiff Hilton on July 9. At the other end of the timeline, the nine- year-old BayLit Festival in Cardiff Bay is ‘This revolution may not be becoming a regular fixture in the literary calendar. This year’s events saw televised, but it’s certainly collaborations between Welsh and Catalan worth watching. And it is writers, an open mic evening for emerging performance poets and a not that this surge of thoroughly genteel face-off between literary and cultural activity Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate, and Gwyn Thomas, National Poet for Wales. Motion is a new thing; its artistic and Thomas’s readings of and musings on soul is as old and as deeply poetry were chaired by Gwyneth Lewis, herself a former National Poet for Wales embedded as its ancient and the person responsible for ‘shaping’ stones’ those words on the front of the WMC from suggestions by over one thousand people. Thanks to bilingualism, we have literary Dylan Thomas, probably Wales’ most festivals coming out of our ears – not bad famous literary export, inspired his for a country where sheep outnumber birthplace – the “ugly, lovely, town” of people four to one. In fact, according to Swansea – to establish an annual festival the Arts Council of Wales, one in five as well as a theatre, an arts centre and a Welsh adults attended an arts festival in literary prize in his honour. In fact, 2005. The Hay Festival in Powys, Thomas-related festivities abound; this famously described by Bill Clinton as “the spring saw the inaugural Laugharne Woodstock of the mind”, attracts around Weekend in the small town where his 80,000 visitors each year alone, thereby beloved Boathouse still stands. The engulfing the town’s resident population Weekend, fittingly eclectic, went from of 1,450. With 39 bookshops stocking an Keith Allen to Rachel Tresize via a live estimated one million books, Hay-on-Wye reading of cult film Twin Town with Rhys is a magnet for writers and readers Ifans and a discussion on life on the run outside of festival week too. with Howard Marks. Words also enjoy a prominent position in There’s a few more Welsh-born writers the Eisteddfodau. These ‘gatherings’, or waiting in the wings for an eponymous incorporating writing 26

festival. Much-loved children’s author Roald Dahl was born in Cardiff to Norwegian parents and christened in the Norwegian Church now standing in Cardiff Bay. The Welsh capital also produced Andrew Davies, the literary adaptation supremo responsible for small-screen versions of Pride and Prejudice, Bleak House and The Line of Beauty. And, bringing us back to where we started with cat nuns in Cardiff, Swansea boasts Doctor Who dynamo Russell T Davies as one of its own.

This revolution may not be televised, but it’s certainly worth watching. And it is not that this surge of literary and cultural activity is a new thing; its artistic soul is as old and as deeply embedded as its ancient stones. It’s not a sudden uprising from within, but a growing awareness from without; from the rest of the UK and Claire Boot finds herself back in Wales after beyond. The revolution has arrived simply stints in England, Benin, Liberia, South Africa and the USA. Phew. She might just stay put for because the rest of the world has begun a while, unless or until another globe-trotting to sit up and take notice. opportunity comes her way. 27 incorporatingPerfect Eye:writing Samantha Mills incorporating writing 28 29 incorporating writing

Lisha Aquino Rooney incorporating writing 30

Lisha Aquino Rooney 31Samantha Mills’ surface images are incorporating writing based on photographing vernacular surface’s (details from different images appear here as the final prints are larger than A4 - contact artist for dimensions and costs) that are deconstructed and digitally manipulated, to enhance the surface for various types of media. The image of ‘Lost’ and ‘singer’ influenced by the punk era and fly posting on various surfaces that are worn away to create a vernacular artwork and textured surface, which leads on to the ‘red rubber’ laminate and liquid design the study of deconstructed materials to create surface Images by photographing and manipulation of surfaces, for surface pattern for various media.

E: [email protected] incorporating writing George Szirtes:32 Revolution Interview by Sarah Hesketh Photographs by Caroline Forbes

‘I think Norfolk has increasingly come to act as a kind of antithesis to Budapest’ Lisha Aquino Rooney 33 incorporating writing

If you wanted a measure of exactly how restructuring programme has seen pervasive the arts are in Norwich, then Lavinia Greenlaw poached from the rival you need look no further than a recent course at Goldsmith’s and current hot piece of graffiti scrawled above the property Giles Foden drafted in to cashpoint outside the city centre Tesco address what was perhaps perceived as a Metro. Instead of the usual expletives the lack of ‘big-name’ tutors. “I think the green chalk screams enthusiastically ‘Kiss chances are good for UEA maintaining its my Art Hole!’ reputation for unearthing the best new talent. Partly because of the long It’s over thirty years now since Malcolm tradition here, but also because of Bradbury first set up shop at UEA, Norfolk itself. I suspect Norfolk is on the establishing what is still referred to as rise and the proximity of Norwich to the The Creative Writing course. The names sea on the one hand and to London and McEwan, Ishiguro and Tremain have Cambridge on the other might be a become a kind of local mantra, but with draw.” recent headline grabbing appointments like that of Martin Amis at Manchester, Szirtes and his family first moved to and the current explosion of creative Norfolk in 1994. “For the terribly prosaic writing courses in higher education reason of employment.” Norwich Art across Britain, can Norwich really hang School has always contributed as much onto its status as England’s centre of as UEA to the artsy vibe of the city, “Its literary excellence? students certainly tend to get out more, I “Well,” muses George Szirtes, in his think. And I was asked to design and gently blinking way, “That will depend on deliver a creative writing course as part the quality of the course, the staff and of the Cultural Studies BA.” His wife, an the level of investment.” Szirtes has artist and photographer, took up a acted as tutor on the poetry strand of the teaching post at a local school and the UEA MA course for a number of years two have been settled in the local village now, and this year saw his student of Wymondham ever since. numbers fall to an all-time low of just three. “Which is probably down to a It certainly seems a remarkably settled number of factors. Applications for arts end for a writer who was born at the MA courses were down across the board centre of a metropolitan, European this year and we’re not quite sure why. It conflict. Szirtes was five years old when might have something to do with top-up he and his family fled Hungary after the fees coming in – people certainly seem to 1956 uprising, slipping over the Austrian be waiting a few years after their BA to border in the middle of the night. They come back to creative writing, which in came to England as refugees and it my opinion is no bad thing. We certainly wasn’t until 1984 that Szirtes began to had more than three applications this actively write about his native city of year, but Denise [Riley – his co-tutor] is Budapest. His most recent collections The not one to stint on quality, and get bums Budapest File and the TS Eliot Prize on seats for the sake of it.” winning Reel have both returned again and again to the city of his birth and The defection of Patricia Duncker (also to most of his poetry seems deeply rooted Manchester) seems to have heralded a to a sense of place, or rather an exile’s new awareness in the UEA corridors that uncertainty and fascination with place. So now is not the time to be complacent has Norfolk entered that catalogue of about their reputation, and a recent imaginative landscapes upon which he incorporating writing 34

can draw? artists. And we already have about “I think Norfolk has increasingly fifteen poets signed up for next year’s come to act as a kind of antithesis to course,” he smiles. “There’s room for a Budapest. They’re the landscapes that little more literature yet.” have book-ended my life. Budapest is urban, European, war- and revolution- ‘I think the chances are torn, and much changed. Norfolk represents not violent change but good for UEA maintaining erosion, a kind of residual version of its reputation for pastoral. That is to put it rather crudely. Budapest is fast, spectral, troubled, unearthing the best new filmic: Norfolk is slow, natural, communal talent. Partly because of and ageing. It is itself a residual part of a historical England I recognise from my the long tradition here, but early years in the country.” His own also because of Norfolk sonnet sequence, Backwaters: Norfolk Fields, dealt explicitly with Norfolk as a itself’ real and imaginative landscape. “It was dedicated to the then living, WG Sebald, another foreign writer who settled here, of course. And in another related long poem, ‘Meeting Austerlitz’ a Norfolk field is the cross-over point where I meet with the ghost of Sebald. I’ve also written quite a lot of poems about the coast and about the local area generally but they tend not to be purely descriptive but part of an attempt to understand England, its history, and my own place in it. As well of course as the history I bring with me.”

His fellow UEA tutors also seem to be catching the Norfolk bug. Trezza Azzopardi’s new novel Winterton Blue is set in a nearby town. “I think there is in fact a strange power in the place.” But what about it’s relative isolation from the rest of the country? Does that help or hinder the work that’s produced here? “It is a predominantly white area, though that is changing. I don’t imagine it becoming a centre for hip-hop in the near future, but it has a big international student population and large numbers of Sarah Hesketh is Deputy Editor (SE)/Interviews poor immigrant workers from various for Incorporating Writing. Originally from East parts of the New Europe. It is slowly Lancs she is now enduring the flat lands of unbending. Our street in Wymondham Norfolk and studying for an MA in creative writing has Australians, Russians, poets and at UEA. 35 incorporating writing

Tuck In Reviews column by G.P.Kennedy

World, as reviewer Janet Aspey asks us to, ‘Imagine if you will the plot of Sliding Doors, Gwyneth Paltrow wearing a particularly unattractive, mousy wig, bad clothes and a permanently solemn expression!’ ‘By looking at titles that are current or classic, in book form or other media, across the myriad genres of literature, I hope you will be both entertained and inspired’

The reviews section is burgeoned further by Pulitzer-winning poet CK Williams’ Welcome to the Reviews section of our celebrated Collected Poems, and the book wonderful magazine. This issue’s offerings on tape version, or more accurately on remain faithful to my quest to offer a CD, of Roddy Doyle’s rip-roaring Paula tranche of the literary world that brings Spencer. interest, variety and innovation. Last but by no means subject to cliché we By looking at titles that are current or welcome aboard a new reviewer as recent classic, in book form or other media, Fine Art graduate Rebecca Wombwell across the myriad genres of literature, I serves us a consummate micro review of hope you will be both entertained and Anthony Capella’s epicurean delight, The inspired. Food of Love.

The featured review for this issue is Defy Tuck in. the Stars, Jocelyn Hurndall’s stunning biography of her photojournalist son, Tom, who was killed on the Gaza Strip as he carried a Palestinian child to safety. Reviewer Ben Felsenburg’s piece tackles the bristling subject matter with his trademark brio coupled with candour and GP Kennedy is the Deputy Editor (NW)/Reviews. acumen. He is a writer, lover of language and would-be goliard. Further he is a passionate pedagogue and We enjoy a bright and breezy tackling of an alliteration amateur. Deep-down he still wants Lionel Shriver’s latest, The Post Birthday to be a professional goalkeeper. incorporating writing 36

Featured Review Defy The Stars: The Life And Tragic Death Of Tom Hurndall by Jocelyn Hurndall with Hazel Wood Bloomsbury hardback £16.99, April 2007 ISBN 978 0 7475 8944 0

heard about Rachel he wanted to see what was going on in Gaza,’” Mohammed says in Defy The Stars, Jocelyn’s account of her quest to understand the circumstances of the shooting, and her pursuit of justice from the Israeli authorities.

From his mother’s depiction Tom was clearly a young man of almost manic energy and unashamedly high-principled, known by his family and friends as one of those rare types who never look the other way; instead, he kept an eye out for the younger kids who were prey for the Cui bono? It’s a question that needs to bullies and muggers of Tufnell Park in be asked of the killing Tom Hurndall, the north London. In her eyes, his leap into twenty-one-year-old International international politics through the ISM was Solidarity Movement activist who was a natural extension of his personality. shot in the head by an Israel Defence Force sniper in April 2003, dying nine Others might have seen the Old months later, having never emerged from Wkyehamist as naive, a bizarrely inverted the coma he entered almost immediately. successor to his public school imperialist forebears who had journeyed out to the Hurndall was the campaigning Middle East to impose their idealistic organisation’s second martyr of the year: visions of how the world should be, but Rachel Corrie had been felled by an IDF for his mother, Tom’s journey out to Iraq Caterpillar bulldozer just weeks before. to be a human shield in the run-up to the Indeed, according to Mohammed, the 2003 war was true to the boy who “even young Palestinian man Tom’s mother as a toddler was forever wanting to see Jocelyn Hurndall met in Rafah, the Gaza over walls and around corners.” After Iraq town where her son had arrived just days she had lost contact with Tom somewhere before he was mortally wounded at a in Jordan. The next she knew of him was checkpoint there, Corrie’s death drove the dreadful call that effectively told her him to come. “’Tom told me that when he that that, though his body would survive 37 incorporating writing

a while, really now he was gone. At the time Tom came to Rafah the second intifada had run for almost three ‘Tom was clearly a young years, and thousands had already died. The town was known to be one of the man of almost manic main tunnel runs from Egypt through energy and unashamedly which the resistance, or terrorists, were supplied with weapons and explosives. high-principled, known Anyone coming in could expect to find a by his family and friends high level of military activity and consequently that they would be as one of those rare types exposed to risk should they attempt to who never look the obstruct the business of either side in other way’ what was effectively a war. Handsome Tom Hurndall and Corrie — Jocelyn’s book has been co-authored with now the subject of the internationally a professional writer, Hazel Wood, and lauded play My Name Is Rachel Corrie — there are many neat turns of phrases and have been harvested by the movement pat descriptions that read untruly voiced. for their names and images to become a In between, the emotions of Jocelyn’s rallying call for radical students in search experience have been caught in aspic, of a cause. The sniper who shot Tom sometimes with curious results: much has been sentenced to eight years in play is made of the fact that one Israeli prison for manslaughter by an Israeli doctor explained Tom’s injuries were court, but she sees the Bedouin semi- commensurate with those inflicted by a literate as a fall guy for the army and baseball bat attack. It’s understandable authorities. It’s worth asking to what that at the time, bewildered and angry, extent the ISM who fired Tom’s passion she should have misunderstood this to be and facilitated his journey envisaged the a suggestion he had not been shot, but possible consequences and profit of surely it was simply an illustrative putting youthful idealists in harm’s way, description? yet the question is too terrible to contemplate for a bereaved mother who As Jocelyn wanders through the has nothing left of her son but his ideals. oppressive environment and complex Ben Felsenburg issues of Gaza, it’s again understandable that she should subscribe to the simple mantras supplied by those who had befriended Tom in his final days, but still the comparisons with a concentration camp and an apartheid state, at one point on a single page, are reductive and blasé. It’s odd too, considering the many suicide bombings and other attacks against Israeli citizens at the time, that Jocelyn finds the security checks she finds everywhere ‘almost provocative’. These thoughts belong to the instant judgement of a journal, not the reflection of retrospect.

39 incorporating writing

The Post-Birthday World Lionel Shriver HarperCollins, 2007 £15.00 ISBN 978 0 00 724341 9 517pp

up with Ramsey Acton to celebrate his birthday, something she has always done with Lawrence for several years. It is this evening that acts like a coat hook for the rest of the novel. Irina has her very own “sliding doors” or should I say “sliding kiss” moment. Should she kiss the “mockernee Cockernee”, leather jacket wearing snooker player, Ramsey Acton, whom she suddenly finds attractive after several glasses of wine and a “doobie”, or should she run into the bathroom, resist the kiss and thereby stay faithful to preppily dressed, nice but boring, Lawrence. She does both, and so we follow her for the rest of the novel in two parallel narratives. Imagine if you will, the plot of Sliding ‘I kept asking myself how Doors, Gwyneth Paltrow wearing a particularly unattractive, mousy wig, bad Shriver could hit me in the clothes and a permanently solemn chest and eviscerate expression, and you get close to both the plot and the protagonist of Shriver’s my senses’ latest novel The Post-Birthday World. Irina McGovern, a shy children’s book And this would be fine if Shriver allowed illustrator with Reynaud’s disease, has us to care for her characters. I wanted to long lived under the shadow of her long- care about them. I wanted to find both term partner, Lawrence. He is an of the men attractive in their different intellectual snob who, we are repeatedly ways. Most of all I wanted to like Irina told, works at a think tank specialising in and care about what happened to her. terrorism. Sex is routine, they don’t kiss, Sadly, I did not. But for the writing of and evenings consist of reading the Daily this review, I would barely have got past Telegraph, watching Newsnight Review, the first few pages. and eating homemade popcorn. I kept asking myself how Shriver could hit When Lawrence goes away on a business me in the chest and eviscerate my trip, Irina feels lost and reluctantly meets senses, as she did in “We need to talk incorporating writing 40

about Kevin” only to desensitise me to it never is anything but doubtful in the point of annoyance with “The Post- “Post-Birthday World.” The twenty plus Birthday World”? Why is the former such mentions of Lawrence working in a think a strong competent novel, and why is this tank does not make me believe purely simply not? on its being repeated to me. Nor is it enough to name drop famous snooker ‘In the most part, it is players or show Irina having a conversation with Mrs John Parrot to badly written, particularly believe in her version of the world of whenever Ramsey is snooker. talking. It doesn’t Then there is the crucial character of sound real, and the Irina herself. She always reads more like a self-plugging tool for Shriver than as a condescending air in character in her own right. I wish she which it is written makes it had read another newspaper, other than the one Shriver writes for, I wish she very hard for the reader to hadn’t got Reynaud’s disease, like see him as anything Shriver herself, and I wish she had even described a different dress for Irina’s other than a two award ceremony than the one Shriver dimensional character’ wore when she won the Orange Prize.

If you are not acquainted with Shriver’s My answer mainly comes in the form of work then do not make this your Shriver’s dialogue. In the most part, it is introduction. It lets down her talent as a badly written, particularly whenever writer and is nothing short of a Ramsey is talking. It doesn’t sound real, disappointment. Read “We need to talk and the condescending air in which it is about Kevin” and leave this one on the written makes it very hard for the reader bookshop shelves. Janet Aspey to see him as anything other than a two dimensional character. With lines such as “That’s bleeding decent of you, pet.” and “It’s queer how the thing what attracted you to someone is the same as what you come to despise about them” as well as constantly calling women “bird”, grates to the extreme. Speech rhythms that make accented speech so interesting are not present and are replaced by confused tenses and, worse, confused regional dialects. I kept expecting Ramsey to start dancing with his snooker cue and start singing snooker loopy in a chim chiminee chim chim charoo style.

Then there is the plausibility of the worlds Shriver is creating. This was never in doubt throughout “Kevin.” Unfortunately, 41 incorporating writing

Collected Poems C. K. Williams Bloodaxe 2006 £20 ISBN 1 85224 753 3 682 pp

years of fatherhood and father-loss. I feel the heat of his rage and I am again a television viewing, newspaper reading witness to events too shameful to be forgotten. I share his half hour wait in a dead mining town and look into the same mirror and feel the same cooling breeze; and it’s not daunting at all. There is a voice here that is tender and compelling and very human; but I don’t want to give a misleading impression. Williams is not an easy read, or a comfortable one. ‘Williams is not comfortable but he is often right’ Holding a man’s life in your hands is daunting, especially when you are His road to poetry was not entirely easy required to review it. either. A child of the Depression, he was born in the year that also produced MASH Collected Poems was published by actor and all-round good guy Alan Alda, Bloodaxe to celebrate C.K Williams’s 70th and I sense a kind of brotherhood and birthday and it covers four decades in gentleness of intelligence in these East chronological order. Described frequently Coast men, but Alda was born to acting in as the modern Walt Whitman, the a way that Williams was not born to Princeton professor has been awarded words. He was a jock, a college numerous literary prizes, including a basketball player, who felt that there had Pulitzer. Called the ‘most challenging’ to be more to life than dunking. He found American poet of his generation on the what he was seeking in an English course back cover, Williams is sometimes simply that he was forced to take and crossed described as the best. And here he is, over to the nerds. Poetry didn’t find me in sandwiched between 682 pages, and he’s the cradle, or anywhere near it, he said on my desk. later. I found it.

So, no pressure then. His first important poem was A Day for Anne Frank published in 1969 and it is I open it up at random. I dip through the also the first poem in this collection. It is incorporating writing 42

hard to understand how the Holocaust His passion for politics remains but he is could have passed by an educated young equally clear sighted about the personal. man growing up in a Jewish family in the In Waking Jed he watches his baby son. 1940s and 50s – he suggests it was both I insist, he resists, and then, with too shattering and too shameful for his abrupt, wriggling grace, he otters down parents’ generation to mention - but from sight Williams first learnt the truth from a friend when he was 22. One of the last poems in this collection Cassandra, Iraq captures the sense ‘Anne Frank contains which all of us who were opposed to the war in Iraq feel when we hear the news. images that still hurt There can be no satisfaction in knowing to read, as when he that every day we are vindicated on the streets of Basra. imagines Gestapo Because we, in our foreseeings, our children tumbling in having been right, are repulsive to ourselves, fat and haystacks of hair’ immobile, like toads. Not toads in the garden, who after all He agonised over an epic poem on the are what they are, subject. He wrote and rewrote it, never but toads in the tale of death in the satisfied with the result, until he started desert of sludge. to compose a letter to a newspaper arguing that Civil Rights activists were As one toad to another, I warned you: wrong to link American racism with the Williams is not comfortable but he is brutality of Nazi anti-Semitism. After a often right. Bridget Whelan few sentences Williams realised that he was the one who was wrong. the black experience was, indeed, as bad as it seemed, worse than it seemed. The poem and the rest of his poetry grew out of an ability to question his own cherished convictions and forge them into something intellectually more rigorous and morally more honest. Anne Frank contains images that still hurt to read, as when he imagines Gestapo children tumbling in haystacks of hair.

Their mothers must have thrown them into their tubs Like puppies and sent them to bed

Coming home so filthy stinking

Of jew’s hair

Of gold fillings, of eyelids 43 incorporating writing

Paula Spencer (Audio CD) Roddy Doyle Random House Audiobooks 2006 16.99 ISBN - 1846570360

daughters, has mesmerised readers across the globe into a better understanding of the paradox that is Eire’s two-headed dragon, a land divided yet not conquered. Which makes the unmitigated disaster of Paula Spencer such a head butt to the face. ‘As Ireland breathes in the smoke-free air of economic independence, so Paula sees her way clear of the Listening to a novel on an audio CD is a stale fumes of seventeen curiously deflating experience. If you’re years of spousal used to the touch of a rough book spine nestled in the palm of your hand, the abuse and alcoholism’ revelry of time lost whilst devouring lines as copiously as you might grainy images Paula Spencer is his second novel to use from a porno movie, then the audio CD the same title character, returning ten can only be a mockery. years later to the heroine he punch- baged onto the page in his superbly Perhaps therein lies the earth-shattering astute 1996 peon classic The Woman fault at the heart of listening, not Who Walked Into Doors. It is a timely reading. return following, as it does, the current fiscal revival of Ireland and its For the width and breadth of his literary replacement of religious fervour with career, Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle material consumption as an immigration has traversed the ever mutating influx feeds the limitless production landscape of his homeland Ireland, capabilities of the nation. scarred as it is by the political complexities of a country buried for years As Ireland breathes in the smoke-free air in the shifting tides of IRA terrorism and of economic independence, so Paula sees inordinate poverty. His rich canon of her way clear of the stale fumes of characters, each an embodiment of the seventeen years of spousal abuse and changing face of Ireland’s sons and alcoholism. incorporating writing 44

While the first novel dealt with the It is a crying shame that the book ignominy of physical abuse, the second seethes with a sentimentality of the attempts to address the mentally working classes that does little to honour demanding process of recovery. the harsh fight for survival, but more to heap further threadbare notions upon an ‘Paula Spencer is a already cliché-ridden echelon of society. plodding trawl through Despite its well-intentioned parallels the minutiae of a life between failed parenting and the national implications for Ireland, a country in lived in the shadow of recovery itself, Paula Spencer is a alcohol’ plodding trawl through the minutiae of a life lived in the shadow of alcohol. A novel marked out in junctures of time since the The novel begins four months and five ‘last drink’ became so torturous a path to days after Paula’s last drink. The daily venture down that I would find myself battle against failure is recounted in first reaching for the nearest bottle of person narrative as Paula lurches towardsSteinbeck’sVermouth ratherTravelogue than drag myself of War the dim light of catharsis, vaguely hopeful through the staccato Articlethree-word by Claire Boot of the redemptive qualities of sobriety. sentencesPhotographs littered like emptyby Andrew beer Oldhamcans on the highway of Paula Spencer’s past “But think about it. If you were running and present. away you wouldn’t actually be running. You’d have stopped.” Rather than feed my imagination, it diluted a multitude of characters down to It sounds desperately profound doesn’t the tawdry lone Irish voice of actress Ger it? And read out loud with a gritty Dublin Ryan. Unfortunate it is that the narrator swoon of tone, it can’t help but pluck at has such a grating voice that both my your oversized heartstrings. But look a interest and thoughts of masturbation fell little closer. Jeremy Kyle is as adept at by the wayside quicker than a drunk after offering pat observations. Same thing closing time. God knows I needed one for here. Occasional bouts of humour break the road. James Johnson Paula’s tense, disjointed delivery but do little to alleviate the monotone radio hiss actuality in which Doyle presents every aching second of Paula’s daily crawl from bed and into consciousness.

The question of what happens when we fail our children is the gin soaked, hardened aorta of the story and conceptually its only redeeming feature. While Doyle employs a simplicity of language to portray the depths to which the human spirit can stoop, his cardboard cut-out family are less human, rather more like the spurious side characters of a long-running televised hospital drama series. 45 incorporating writing

Food of Love Anthony Capella Time Warner Paperbacks; New Ed edition, 2005 £6.99 ISBN 0751535699 320 pp

contrasted with Capella’s characters where his writing is occasionally clumsy, plodding and unremarkable. In some ways this is very effective as is emphasises the main character, an American exchange student called Laura, in contrast to her newfound environment. Laura’s story unfolds as Tommaso enlists the help of his friend Bruno’s culinary skills in order to win her heart. ‘This writing style enables the contrasts within the novel. References to food Food of Love by Anthony Capella provides the reader with a raw taste of Italy. This and to Italy are written novel celebrates Italian food as a way of with an enthralling, deeply life, with a culture that revolves around eating to show social status, style and authentic style with a use knowledge. Capella travels extensively in of Italian phrases, recipes Italy and this is evident through his writing – Food of Love is a clear and and food based metaphors’ accessible reference that provides those who have not travelled to the country As Laura is besotted with the food, and with an insightful and colourful Tommaso, Bruno falls in love with her illustration. This novel is also a warm and (completing the triangle), as his cooking affectionate reminiscence for those who communicates his passion. Laura’s have experienced the country of Capella’s character becomes the most endearing – subject. perhaps as she is from a culture more similar to ours or perhaps because This writing style enables the contrasts Capella is aware of a predominantly within the novel. References to food and female readership. This character is then to Italy are written with an enthralling, maintained through the reader’s empathy deeply authentic style with a use of for her, caused by the passionate Italian phrases, recipes and food based descriptions of the enchanting food. It is metaphors. This honest clarity is these emotive elements that make the incorporating writing 46

reader more receptive to the novel as a whole.

The characters seem secondary in Capella’s style to the food, a tool to illustrate his culinary descriptions. The reader is placed as an equal among the characters through the social nature of eating within the plot, the subjectivity of food and writing in the 3rd person. This is the success of the book – the reader is included in the action and seduced, echoing the characters. Rebecca Wombwell

REVIEWERS Janet Aspey is a recent MA Creative Writing graduate with a drama background. She is par- ticularly interested in feminist history and litera- ture, and is currently working on her second novel.

Pen for hire Ben Felsenburg is currently covering prime-time TV for a national newspaper and scribbling contemporary dance reviews while busily not writing a novel on death, golf and post- colonial cuisine.

James Johnson With his first feature film script about to be shot in Manchester, James remains hopeful that a trip across America in ‘search’ of artist Felix Gonzales Torres will provide him with the impetus he needs to keep pen to paper and continue writing what he really wants.

Bridget Whelan

Rebecca Wombwell 47 incorporating writing

No-one is excluded from entering a new Industry News and scriptwriting competition, although Red Planet Pictures are seeking new writers rather than those Opportunities who have been writing for top shows for some time. The annual writing competition will result in a new writer receiving a £5,000 prize, ‘liming’ culture with the cosmopolitan styles representation from an agent and a commission of London - a chilled-out eclectic vibe at which from Red Planet Pictures, the production company people can mix, drink, dance and experience the set up last year and sponsors of the award. best in spoken word. The event offers short bites of Poetry, Fiction, Comedy and Commentary, Submit no more than ten pages of a script and a interspersed with Soca, Brazilian, Reggae, Soul covering letter with a half page on your work. and dance tunes all evening. Jump up, wind down Those sending a full screenplay will be & feast your eyes and ears on some of the UK’s disqualified. All entries must be sent in best spoken word writers & performers and screenwriting format. Shortlisted writers will be special guests. Featuring: Patience Agbabi, Metis, invited to submit a full script in a second round. Sophie Woolley, Sureshot & Polar Bear. Hosted by Melanie Abrahams & Nicholas Makoha. Finalists will be invited to a workshop day with www.renaissanceone.com writer Tony Jordan and will receive mentoring www.myspace.com/londonliming from Red Planet Pictures. Tony Jordan has advised those entering to write from the heart since the ’A night out at London liming is a unique search is for good writers and if you can write, the experience offering a mix of vibrant music and judges will spot it. excellent performances from some of the best writers around. The delicate balance between the Entries may be emailed readings, performances and music is nicely [email protected] achieved, there is saying at London Liming that goes ‘If you have legs, then you can Closing date September 1, 2007. dance’. Chroma Magazine

Screen Yorkshire’s Spark scheme is Poetry And Picnic In The Park. It is to be held encouraging writers to develop their feature film on Wednesday 1st August, In Hyde Park London . and television scriptwriting skills. The scheme We will be meeting between 12.00pm and 1.00pm assists writers who live or work in the Yorkshire at Speakers Corner, then moving on to a suitable and Humber Region with strong ideas and a spot in the park. Those attending to bring with passionate desire to become a professional them their poetry, picnic, beer/wine. screenwriter to develop their concepts into treatments, and ultimately into scripts. ON WHOSE TERMS? CRITICAL NEGOTIATIONS IN BLACK LITERATURE AND Selected participants will join a development THE ARTS Reply to: [email protected] programme of residential workshops and tutorials. Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK Participants will then be expected to submit a March 13th-14th 2008 detailed treatment of their feature film idea. This conference focuses upon local, international All treatments will be assessed by Screen and transnational engagements with Black British Yorkshire and projects with potential will be literature and the arts – in relation to its supported to develop further either to a revised production, reception and cultural position. treatment or first draft script. Through the multiple disciplines of the arts, it creates a meeting point for prominent and For details, see http://screenyorkshire.co.uk emerging scholars, writers and practitioners in order to explore the impact of this field, both at LONDON LIMING Friday 20 July, doors from home and abroad. The context is one of critical 8pm, performances at 8.45pm and 9.45pm investigation and celebration; a journey along The Rich Mix, 35 – 47 Bethnal Green Road London diasporic and aesthetic routes. E1 6LA 9.00 / 7.00 concs (Box Office 0207 613 7498). Renaissance one & Tilt in association with EVENTS: Rich Mix presents London Liming: a spoken word Andrea Levy interviewed by Blake Morrison party. London Liming is a spoken word event that Kwame Kwei-Armah in conversation with Britain’s combines the carnival atmosphere of Trinidad key Black directors Malorie Blackman leading a incorporating writing 48

forum on young people’s writing and writing for published in Britain over the past three young people with Deptford Secondary School centuries – although there is no extant evidence pupilsMalika Booker performing her acclaimed of this in drama before the twentieth century. one-woman show Unplanned What are the lines of descent and tradition that connect writers and performers across time and EXHIBITIONS: place? What were the formative conditions of A History of Black Theatre in Britain (Victoria and production and reception for early black writers Albert Museum) Black British Lesbians and artists in Britain? What part do contemporary (photographs by Ajamu Fotographie) historical novels, poetry, visual arts, or drama play in retrieving and reviving past times, to KEYNOTE ADDRESSES AND INVITED SPECIALIST recirculate and celebrate marginalised voices? PANELISTS (iv) Publishing. Black presses have played a vital Hilary Carty, Joan Anim-Addo, R.Victoria Arana, role in getting black writers into print. Small Neil Astley, Simon Gikandi, Gabriele Griffin, Les presses such as New Beacon Books, Karnak Back, Margaret Busby, Bénédicte Ledent, Valerie House, Bogle L’Overture, Peepal Tree, Mango and Mason-John, Susheila Nasta, Nii Parkes, Lyn X-Press (to name a few) have devoted themselves Innes, Kadija Sesay, SuAndi, Mark McWatt, to fostering black people’s writing. Wasafiri, Sukhdev Sandhu Calabash, SABLElitmag and Third Text have also played a crucial part in providing a platform for CONTACT writers, securing audiences and engaging with [email protected] new work. Other non-specialist presses too, such as Sheba Feminist Press, Virago, Methuen and Deirdre Osborne (Goldsmiths, University of Nick Hern Books have been instrumental in London), Mark Stein (University of Muenster, publishing poetry, novels and plays by black Germany), Godfrey Brandt (Birkbeck, University writers. How is sustainability a factor today and of London) what interventions are being made in the light of Danuta Keane’s Arts Council-funded reports into CALL FOR PAPERS publishing In Full Colour and Free Verse? We invite papers across a broad spectrum of (v) Celebrate or segregate – the problematics of a interests: drama, poetry, prose, performance, Black British canon? When Marsha Hunt instituted film, visual arts, curating, arts management and the SAGA Prize for Black British-born writers in history. Areas ofdiscussion might connect with the 1995, this registered both indigenous black following ideas: people’s literary output and the fact that it was (i) At home and abroad – sights and sites of not yet a customary inclusion in the national reception. Critical engagements with Black British cultural landscape. If the canon is key to literature and the arts differ according to political artistic longevity and revival of work, what part and geographical contexts. Many artists and does canonisation play for Black British literature writers themselves embrace diasporic and and the arts? transnational identities and aesthetics. What are (vi) Arts bodies, cultural policy and education. the consequences of this multiple reception and Challenges to publicly-funded educational and arts affiliation? How is an indigenous notion of Black bodies raise questions about the criteria for and British culture affected? Which critical beneficiaries of subsidy. Can policy initiatives and vocabularies are employed, which critical educational programmes reshape the cultural agendas enacted when discussing Black British industries? What kinds of pedagogical approaches cultural production? On whose terms is Black have been developed in disseminating and British cultural production created, distributed teaching Black British literature and the arts and evaluated? both inside and beyond the UK? How do they (ii) Securing credentials. Chris Ofili has been impact upon experiences of multiculturalism and accused of “playing to the audience” (and to the Black artistic production, here and elsewhere, judges) thereby securing his credentials as a and how do they shape understandings of Black “black artist”. In contrast, some writers and British culture? practitioners steer clear of the term and (vii) Sexual/textual practices face the charge of effacing their black heritage as Articulations of gay, lesbian and trans-gender they encounter mainstream and commercial experiences have regularly side- lined the success. What is the relationship between perspectives of black people. Black sexual- mainstream acceptance and opportunities for gender politics have also contended with producing radical black- centred work? feminism’s inadequacies. How are socio-sexual (iii) Historicising the field. Black writers have been categories negotiated and represented across 49 incorporating writing

forms, disciplines and sites of writing and be held in The Wordsworth Museum at Grasmere performance? Who are the boundary breakers? at 6.45pm, with wine served at the interval. The Which aesthetic principles are at work? event is free but you must reserve a ticket in (viii) Carnival and Spectacle. The Notting Hill advance as space is limited. Please contact Julie Carnival has developed from a small, community- Nattrass by 25 July - email: based event, (celebrating still-retained links to [email protected] or tel: 015394 63527 Caribbean culture), into a key feature on the Copies of The Thorn Apple can be purchased on London calendar, showcasing the presence of the the night (price £5) or after 25 July from Caribbean diaspora. Over recent decades, wordsworthshop.co.uk (price £5 plus p&p). Copies establishment anxieties regarding public control, of Used Rhymes can also be purchased, price £5. media representations and political agendas of inclusion and multiculturalism have exacted an SCRIPTEASE REVEALED increasingly distorting process upon the Carnival’s ‘SCRIPTEASE REVEALED’ is a cabaret style future and integrity. Where is Carnival placed evening of new writing performed by professional within contemporary British culture? Papers and actors and compered by a mystery guest - at the visual materials are welcomed which cover any time of going to press all we know is that he, or aspect of Carnival anywhere in the UK and its she, is one of the funniest poets and compeers on history up to now. the circuit - all will be revealed at a later date. So

First Call for Papers Would you like to submit a script? If so, then send Please send your abstract (250 words) and a your previously un-performed five minute play short bio to: [email protected] about ‘revelation’ to: Rachel Ashton, Old Fire DEADLINE: 15th September 2007 Station, Abbey Road, Barrow-in-Furness. The http://onwhoseterms.org/ submission deadline is 13 August, and selection on 15 August - and don’t forget to put your name TWO NEW ROYAL LITERARY SOCIETY and address on it! FELLOWS - FROM CUMBRIA Kathleen Jones has been appointed a Royal CUMBRIAN LITERARY GROUP Literary Fund Fellow to Teeside University and Apart from making mention of Michael Baron’s John Murray to appointed to Lancaster University, recent talk on Tom Rawling to the Cumbrian with both taking up their Fellowships in Literary Group, their events have until now fallen September. The Royal Literary Fund’s Fellowship below the All Write radar! All that is about the scheme for writers was launched in 1999 and is change, as the Group has sent details of its based mainly in UK universities and higher forthcoming events, which I reproduce in their education colleges. RLF Fellows are established entirety here: professional writers of literary merit, representing Saturday 18 August 2.30pm a wide range of genres, including biography, Philip Edwards, Emeritus Professor of English translation and scientific writing. Fellowships run Literature, University of Liverpool and Fellow of the course of an academic year from mid- the British Academy, will give a talk on ‘The Major September to mid-June and the Fellow commits to Tragedies of Shakespeare’. be available for contact with students on two Saturday 15 September 2.30pm regular days a week, with an additional half-day Members’ Anthology: ‘The Film of the Book’ (a each week spent in preparation/liaison with staff television or cinematic adaptation of a literary and RLF/review, etc (though this time need not work). always be spent on campus). Members may volunteer to speak for approximately four minutes on a work of their BOOK LAUNCHES AT THE WORDSWORTH choice. Always a wide-ranging spectrum to enjoy! TRUST Non-members are welcome to all sessions, which Two book launches in one evening will be held at are held in the Methodist Hall, Southey Street, the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere on Tuesday 31 Keswick. The cost is just £2, and there is ample July. First, there will readings by colleagues and car-parking on site. Further details from Secretary friends of Sally Woodhead from Sally’s selected Joyce Fisher: [email protected] poems The Thorn Apple, posthumously published by The Wordsworth Trust this year, then Mark COMPETITIONS GALORE Ward will be reading from his new volume of If you want really comprehensive coverage of all poems Used Rhymes (Aussteiger Publications) the writing competitions around then Carole and from his forthcoming collection Thunder Baldock of The Competitions Bulletin tells me that Alley: Sonnets and other Poems. The readings will her magazine is the one to go for. There are incorporating writing 50

hundreds of chances to win umpteen kinds of at Chorlton Library (side door) Manchester Rd/ prizes with opportunities for publication as well as Longford Rd for a map, enter M21 9PN in prizes. Details of all the current UK writing multimap.com all welcome • £2/£1 • opportunity competitions are there, with around £100,000 in to read your own poem too MC copland smith prize money in each issue, which may have • floor poets • live music around fifty-plus competitions for poetry, forty Pictures of Adèle and more details available on forty short story competitions, plus opportunities http://adelegeras.com/ for collections, anthologies, playwriting, non www.mankypoets.tk fiction, books etc. The Competitions Bulletin. Each issue costs £2.50 post paid, and you can Canada’s Forgotten and Neglected subscribe for as many issues as you want. Write Arc Poetry Magazine Resurrects 13 Dead to Carole Baldock, 17 Greenhow Avenue, West Canadian Poets You Should Know But Don’t Kirby, Wirral CH48 5EL, enclosing cheque/PO Collection of Essays the First of its Kind to payable to Carole Baldock - and don’t forget to Acknowledge the Contribution of 13 Canadian include your name and address. If you want to Poets Not Recognized in their Lifetimes or Too- know more, you can email Carole at Soon Forgotten [email protected] www.ArcPoetry.ca Ottawa, Ontario, June 11, 2007 — Arc Poetry TRESPASS MAGAZINE Magazine launches a special issue featuring Reply to: [email protected] poetry by 13 “forgotten and neglected” Canadian Deadline: August 5 2007 poets. The work of each of these poets is Boundaries important beacons, neon signs featured alongside photographs and essays by showing us where the fun stuff is, or suffocating Canada’s best contemporary poets and critics, strictures designed to smother? Contrasts who argue why their work ought to be revered like good/evil, prostitutes/saints, do they need and remembered. Arc’s Forgotten and Neglected each other to exist? In the vacuum of bland issue was launched at a reading in Ottawa on neutrality, what is beauty? How will we know Saturday, June 23, 2007 at 5 pm at the unless we have the repulsive to compare it to Manx Pub, 370 Elgin Street. The issue hits Who defines what is repulsive/beautiful? We are newsstands across the country just in time for looking for submissions for a new magazine which Canada Day on June 30, 2007, and will be is set to come out in September. We can not pay available through December. Issues of Forgotten contributors but anticipate a high level of and Neglected can be ordered directly through exposure. Theme: ’Trespass’ and everything the www.ArcPoetry.ca. The issue’s launch will be word embodies. We are looking for: accompanied by special podcasts on Arc’s Art website that feature works by the Forgotten and Photography Neglected poets read aloud by the essayists who Poetry wrote about them. Short fiction Music More reports and reviews from the Faßbinder, Articles: (Such as the importance of innovators, Rossellini retrospectives in Berlin: rule breakers, www.parametermagazine.org iconoclasts) The Editor will consider suggestions. RED INK 2 www.incwriters.co.uk/shop.htm Featuring poetry by Jadwiga Kindermann, Ashley Submissions must be: witty, well researched (if Chantler, Naomi Bagel, Jacqui Dunne, Matthew article), can be sexy although not pornographic. Griffiths, Chishimba Chisala, Matthew Friday, F.J. Deadline is August 5 2007. Milne, Neil Elder and Peter de Ville with fiction by Please email the Editor, new-comer, Gemma Caunce. Red Ink 2 is edited [email protected] by Peter Lewin and Andrew Oldham. The only PDF magazine in the UK to publish prose of any m a n k y p o e t s length, from a series of micro fiction to a novella Adèle Geras (that’s Adele with a grave accent, in (in any genre), and to include a series of poems case your browser has garbled it) is a renowned by individual poets in each issue - giving you a writer for children and adults and used to be wider and deeper taste of Literature. conspicuous on the poetry scene. I have tempted Submissions are welcome from poets and writers her out of her poetic lull and she will, with her from the 1st June - 31st August each year. usual wit and charm, read her poems on Friday 20 July 7.30 to 9.30