Saturday 3 November 2012

What is to become of Slush Poetry?

I have announced that Slush Poetry as we know it will come to an end at the end of this year. However, that is not altogether accurate. What will be brought to an end is the series of news-related poems that have been appearing on the Slush Poet blog, and its curtailment is not a recent decision but the fulfillment of a scheme conceived late last year.

What has been known until now as 'Slush Poetry' was always planned to be a one year (or, more strictly, a year and two days) project to chronicle what I hoped would be a remarkable year, 2012, a year in which there would be a Royal Jubilee and the London Olympics at a time of great economic, political and environmental turmoil. That is, something to write about. Its aim was to capture the zeitgeist of the year, rather than attempt any historical record, and it was always going to reflect my own views and interests. In fact, it is probably more a portrait of me at that point in my life than it is an objective record of anything else going on.

I have been amazed and delighted by the following the blog and my related Twitter feeds have attracted, and I am very grateful to everyone who has visited the site, commented on poems, corresponded, retweeted or engaged in any way with the project. I even feel I have made some friends, albeit ones I will probably never meet. It really is quite humbling.

I have been pondering two things: what to do with the current collection, and what to do next. Now I have decided.

The current collection will end when I post the last poem on New Year's Day. No promises, but it will probably have an Hawaiian theme because I will want to capture humanity's last moment in 2012. (For the same reason, the collection began in Samoa, which was first across the date line in January.) After that, is it too much to hope that I might find a publisher for all or part of it? I will be trying to. It even has a new title: The Year of Wringing Hands.

As for what to do next, the Slush Poet will go on but on a different blog site. The new site will (if all goes to plan) present a series of images combining photography with poetry, surface beauty with lingering thoughts. Imagine seeing a poem hung in a gallery surrounded by white space, that's where I'm heading to. And this new space now has a name: Ma Pottery [sic].

So wish me well and come along for the experience. I can't do this without my friends.

Slush.

Tuesday 10 April 2012

Beating up on the Buddha

I was saddened recently to learn that 'Buddha' could be a term of abuse. One can not imagine British newspapers using ‘Jesus Christ’ or ‘the prophet Muhammad’ in a derogatory sense, but, over the Easter weekend, at least 500 news stories appeared in the press or online using the term 'little Buddhas' to depict spoilt children, whose character flaws include laziness, hedonism and an inability to concentrate at school.

As a Buddhist my first reaction was sorrow that so many prominent voices could be attached to such ignorant minds. The very essence of Buddhist teaching — Buddhism 101, if you will — concerns training the mind to concentrate effectively on what is important. This Buddhist practice of mindfulness is empirically proven to improve concentration. As taught by the Buddha some 2,600 years ago, it would seem to be of great value in addressing some of the very flaws the so-called 'little Buddhas' are said to exhibit.

If such ignorance among journalists is saddening, a similar level of ignorance among scientists - scientists who purport to be experts in the origins of religious experience and thought, no less - is quite shocking, particularly disappointing to my rational mind.

S. Jay Olshansky, writing in New Scientist (7 April 2012), professed that the wellspring of all religions is a quest for immortality. He (the ‘S’ is short for Stuart) goes on to laud a new book by a fellow scientist, Stephen Cave, which asserts, in true reductionist style, that all societies rely on one of four narratives to assuage their fearful knowledge of their own mortality. Among these 'narratives' are plans ‘B... resurrection’ and ‘C... the soul’. Since plans ‘A’ and ‘D’ are not applicable to religion, and given the reviewer’s own expressed views and professed expertise, one must deduce that one or both of plans ‘B’ and ‘C’ are supposed by Olshansky and Cave to apply to Buddhist societies, which have existed for over half of man’s recorded history, and to Buddhists of today whom number some half a billion people (and ought therefore to be a touchstone for any credible theory).

I am well aware that such assumptions are commonplace, though most people who hold them would realize that that is all they are: assumptions. Let us restate them baldly: the quest for immortality, the desire to be reborn, the possession of a soul.

Now let us look at what the Buddha actually taught. The ultimate goal of Buddhist practice is nirvana (nibbana in Pali), which is a condition in which one ceases to be ‘reborn’, by which the Buddhist means that one's previous actions no longer control (or 'condition') one's life. Buddhist philosophy is emphatic that there is no soul, no permanent ‘self’ that experiences life and could live on after the death of one’s body. In fact, Buddhism insists that nothing can be permanent (impermanence in Buddhist philosophy is one of the three signs of existence, and therefore applies to all conditioned things). Buddhists aim to achieve peace in this life, not any other, by following a sensible ‘middle path’ between extremes, and by concentrating on what really matters.

Perhaps Buddhism is misunderstood because it does not seek to evangelise. Compassion and tolerance are central to the teaching, for the simple reason that hatred and intolerance are harmful to oneself. Perhaps it's because I'm quite new to the religion that I still care a little what other people think. I hope that this explanation improves people’s knowledge and understanding, and is helpful to them to this extent.


(c) 2012 Andy Hickmott

Friday 6 April 2012

Where have all the mile markers gone?

I’ve heard it said writing a novel is like running a marathon. Like hell is it. My first novel took a little over nine months to write. (I could have said 'gestate', but too many metaphors spoil the broth. It was in any case stillborn, at best a sloppy mess that I immediately set upon, working its twisted limbs to fashion a marginally improved version.) But at no point during its writing, or rewriting, did my novel ever lead me into that dark, despondent place that marathon runners must pass through in the middle of a race.

I quit running marathons because I realized I was never going to run a faster one. I started a novel partly because I suddenly had so much time on my hands.

I ran my first marathon in 2004, in New York City, finishing in a fairly respectable (and bitterly disappointing) 3:48. I failed to finish my second (Blackpool), and literally limped in after nearly five hours in my third (London). I had fractured my shin. After two long years of rehabilitation I finally finished the London Marathon in my best time: 3:40. Three years of pain and frustration to shave off eight precious minutes.

So when I compare writing to running a marathon, you can be sure I'm not basing my comparison on Wikipedia.


~~~~~~

People who haven't run a marathon seem to talk a lot about something called 'the wall'. I can only speculate about what that is, perhaps it's based on tales of athletes dropping out in the latter stages of the race because of some apparently catastrophic failure. Many physiological factors can lead to that. For example, depletion of glycogen, stress fractures, or plain old cramp. Been there, done that. But some runners keep going through those troubles, so I doubt they are the real causes of failure. That is something much, much worse.

And it's something that afflicts writers as much as marathon runners.

It's the aforementioned 'dark, despondent place' that occupies the space between mile markers thirteen and twenty. Between 'great, I'm half way there', and 'God, where have all the mile markers gone?' Runners give up the will to finish the race just seconds after they give up the will to live.

And writers? Where is this vale of despondency for them?

I only know where it came along my writer's journey. As I said, I finished the first draft of my masterpiece completely unafflicted by existential torment. (Deep breath.) I saw that it needed rewriting, so I rewrote it. I could still see room for improvement, so I wrote it again. And again, just for the sheer bloody-mindedness of it. And I beheld my masterpiece, and I loved it so much I could have written it a Sapphic ode.

And I bagged it up and sent it with a covering letter and a kiss for luck to, well, to literary agent Lucy Luck as it happens. It was too good an omen to ignore.

I was disappointed when Ms Luck did not sign me up by return post. But not deterred. Not yet.

I wasted no time getting started on my next novel, a work of such brilliance that it put even its illustrious predecessor in the shade. As before, I immersed myself in research and plotting and drafting, night after night, agonising page after agonising page.

~~~~~~

Press fast forward and witness me standing over my doormat staring fearfully at the ominous dead thing laying there. I knew what it contained. Just like all the others (and since I had long since lost count, let's accept for the fakery of precision that it was the thirtieth in its line) it would contain a standard letter, wishing me luck without the scantest sign that my beloved had even been read.

This was about the time I sank into that trough, when I was tested and found myself

wanting.

~~~~~~

I stopped working on my follow up novel. (There was nothing to follow up.) Suddenly the next novel seemed impossible to complete. Every conceivable excuse presented itself unbidden, in the same way that minor aches and tiredness make marathon runners reappraise the gentle uphill stretch ahead. 'No way! That must be one in ten and it goes on for over a mile!'

And like Paula Radcliffe at her nadir, I sat at the roadside with my head in my hands.

~~~~~~

But this is not a story about giving up. Nor is it about going on when all common sense says the way is blocked, your supplies depleted, the mission futile. If I'd quit back then, this story wouldn't be written at all.

And here I am, writing.

Somewhere along the way I outran that long, cold shadow, though I can't say precisely when. I think there was one key factor in my redemption, and that is that I kept going in whatever way I could. (That's how you finish a marathon; it isn't rocket science!) I decided to beef up my skills. I'd already read just about every self-help manual I knew about, so I went out looking for guidance, for someone to take me apart and reassemble me as a writer. I applied for MAs in creative writing, and got rejected. So I signed up for an undergrad course with the Open University. I got interested once again in poetry, and became the Slush Poet. I threw myself into a writers' group, joined the Poetry Society, started performing poetry, started tweeting, got out there.

~~~~~~

Yesterday I went to an open evening at City University in London, where Jonathan Myerson runs what is perhaps the best MA in the UK for novelists. We spoke about the prospect of my joining the course. Unlike the last time we met, I really felt that I belonged there, like I had earned a seat at the table. I even considered applying to be part of this year's intake, but I decided against it: there are things I want to finish first. My OU course, a year of Slush Poetry, my Spring reboot. I can do all this. I am beyond the dark, despondent place now. The wind is behind me, the finishing line in sight and it's all downhill from here.

And then a weird thing happened on the way home. I had an idea for a great new novel.


(c) 2012 Andy Hickmott

Sunday 25 March 2012

The making of a born writer

I'm a natural, me,
a born writer. No,
that's a lie. Let me, then,
atone with the truth...

I think I'm becoming a good writer within the bounds of my repertoire. That is, I am pleased with some of my writing when I later go back and read it afresh. This is an accomplishment.

It is, however, only a start. And it has come at the expense of much time and effort: the dozens of how-to books, books on viewpoint, on style, on characterization, on editing, on dramatization, on genre, on grammar; the prize-winning or short-listed novels, poems and short stories I have read and taken as my benchmark; the hundreds of pieces of writing I have reviewed on YouWriteOn in return for sometimes invaluable feedback from other writers and, occasionally, from editors (several of my works have made the coveted No 1 spot); the hours spent with fellow writers at Original Writers and with fellow members of the Poetry Society at Stanza Groups or in performance at the Poetry Cafe, and all the support and encouragement they have given me; the writing courses - Open University, Faber Academy, Arvon Foundation - that have brought me into contact with successful writers who have generously shared their insights and encouragement; the bale of rejection letters that has helped me keep everything in perspective.

And now I am chronicling the year - this year, 2012, the year of the London Olympics, of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, of global recession - in rhyme as the Slush Poet, a project that is stretching my abilities and keeping me safe from the 'Shiny New Idea Syndrome' (thanks to Ryan Graudin for the diagnosis!) that has previously afflicted me.

And taking up nearly all of my time.

Yet when the poet Katrina Naomi, who is my tutor at the OU, recently recommended to her students a couple of books that she said had inspired her early in her career, I didn't hesitate to buy a copy of both. 'Writing Down the Bones' by Natalie Goldberg is about letting go of the inner critic and just creating; 'The Artist's Way' by Julia Cameron is a twelve week course on inspiration. They sit before me now like fresh margaritas on a parched man's garden table.

But when the heck am I going to find to savour them properly with all my other commitments?

Aha, I have a plan. On 31 December 2012, when the Slush Poet posts his final poem, I will be free sip those margaritas, pick up some of those shiny new ideas and give them a jolly good rub. And here's what I'm going to do: the first three months of 2013 will be given over to reading them both, in parallel, all other work put on a back-burner while a relight my inner furnace. And to make sure it happens I am going to set up a new Twitter account called 'MyLyingSelf ... hold on a second ... there, done it. Now I'm going to tweet at myself (using Hootsuite to pre-schedule tweets en masse), so that my best-laid plan is actually impressed freshly upon me on the 1st of January - like a waiter appearing out of nowhere with those lovely salt-rimmed drinks on a silver platter.

Thursday 15 March 2012

In the vale of Slush poetry

I am almost three months into this project, writing as the Slush Poet to chronicle 2012 through the medium of poetry, so now would seem a suitable moment to pause, to set down my thesaurus, my rhyming dictionary and my fountain pen, and to take in the view. (That in itself is fanciful: I write almost exclusively on a computer using Google Docs, with frequent nods to Dictionary.com and B-Rhymes; but that's okay, we'll call it a metaphor.)

I am breathless. I keep falling behind; by the time I've wrung a poem out of my fickle muse, the world has moved on and there are new news events to versify. Today I am up to date, tomorrow I will begin once more to fall behind.

What can I see from my resting place? Poetry surrounds me, as does life itself; but what I'm most concerned about is the trail of poems I have left behind me. So far, I have written thirty-four poems, most of which I have published on the Slush Poet blog site. That's about one every two days. I've tried to vary the form, the timbre, the length, the voice. I want the poems to be enjoyable as a continuous sequence capturing the essence of, if not the year, at least my year, 2012 as I lived it and as it touched me.

But are the poems any good? I think some of them are. I've had a lot of encouragement from readers, not just from my friends but from people I previously didn't know. Some of the poems have had a better reception than others, but that doesn't mean the others should be omitted. Would you really want every day to be your birthday?

Who am I kidding? We all know it takes time to craft a good poem, a long time to craft a great one. It takes more than two days. So, why go on? Perhaps because the pressure to produce a poem every few days is what I need to make me grow. I'm realizing that deadlines (even self-imposed ones, maybe especially self-imposed ones) are a creative spur. Without that pressure to produce not just another poem but a different poem, would I really be so varied in what I write?

So where is the Slush Poet heading next? Like you, I'll have to open the papers tomorrow to find out.

Thursday 1 March 2012

The Zen art of literary Ex-Lax

We’ve all been there, squatted upon the same spot staring at the same blank space for hours on end while words and forms back up behind the strangulating sphincter of premature self-editing. Commonly known as writer’s block, straining to do the rewrite before the rough draft. It’s like trying to squeeze Mother Mary from your arse.

Last night I spent over three hours rearranging pairs of slant-rhyming words, trying to write a poem about, as it happens, the riots outside Bagram airbase. Result: flatulence. It stank. Every artefact I strained onto the page was a monstrosity. Eventually, more from frustration than from wisdom, I set about writing something completely different, a poem about my father, and this time the words flowed smoothly onto the page and then seemed to arrange themselves into lovely eight-line stanzas while I watched agog.

The difference, of course, was that I knew exactly what I wanted to say – and that I said it without a great deal of constipating thought. I won’t strain the metaphor as far as I might here, but be assured my writing was fluid. The lesson? It is so easy to criticize what you have written, but for heaven’s sake wait until you’ve seen what it is!

So relax. Now wait patiently, sculpting knife in hand, for the raw materials. Hail Mary!

Tuesday 28 February 2012

Watch out below, those might not be poems hatching!

I, the Slush Poet, am beginning to regret my decision to chronicle 2012 in verse. When I hatched the idea at the end of December, I failed to anticipate several factors: the voracity of my hatchlings, the paucity of inspiring news to feed to them and the fickleness of their eclectic appetites.
Writing a poem a day is easy (unless, like Niall O’Sullivan, you restrict yourself to terza rima). What is hard is varying the style and voice sufficiently to avert a suffocating boredom from afflicting both poet and reader alike. I think I have managed admirably so far, judging by the varied comments left on the Slush Poet blog or tweeted straight at me.
But it is becoming a strain. What occupies the world’s news media changes much more slowly than I ever imagined. There are only so many poems one can write about greedy bankers or royal arse kissing. And I don’t like to be too obvious in my responses to the news. Finding a tangential link that fertilizes my wordy organ is getting harder: I think it might be going numb from over-use. Each new day brings instead of fresh headlines a mounding urge to lay. I look for golden eggs, I find guano.

Friday 24 February 2012

My dad's mushroom

I have never told my dad that I love him. I have never felt the need before now. I am sure he knows anyway. But now that he's been diagnosed, now that the prognosis has been handed down - now that he has his Macmillan nurse - I want him to know he means more than the world to me. But, like I said, he probably knows already.

See, Dad is a lorry driver, a trucker, a haulier - or at least he was until he retired a quarter of a century ago. You can't have a conversation like that with a lorry driver. The years of retirement haven't softened him. He's greyer and he's nearly deaf, but he still fills every cubic inch of space ever allotted him. Outside he's lost none of his stature; it's inside he's doing a vanishing trick.

He has a tumour growing round his oesophagus. He calls it his mushroom. At eighty-six, doctors can do little more than slow its growth, its theft of my father, with radiotherapy. He says he's going to beat it, kill the filthy fungus before it kills him.

If I turned up and blurted out my love for him he might reappraise his odds. I'll write a Sapphic ode instead.

Thursday 23 February 2012

This is not a protest

A friend contacted me yesterday (in fairness, he contacted quite a few other people too) and asked me whether I could provide a poem in support of Bradley Manning, the poor sod being put through the nail-studded wringer that is the US justice system for leaking military secrets via those sterling folk (he winks) at WikiLeaks. I said I'll see what I can do. After all, I don't like to say 'no' to friends who ask nicely, not even to ones who come over as rather too earnest on issues I care little about.

But why didn't I care, or at least not care a lot? I think it's a question of perspective. Bradley Manning is said to have leaked material that he knew was classified, and knew that by doing so he would be breaking the law, and that as a private in the US Army he would be prosecuted through a court martial, and given the nature of the material he supposedly leaked, that his prosecution would be dissimilar to, say, a six month sabbatical on Hawaii. So he did something unlawful, he knew it was unlawful, he was caught and he is paying the price. What's to care about?

That's one way of looking at it. There is another. Take he did something unlawful, and change the last word to wrong. See what I did there? Move from a legal viewpoint to a moral one and the Bradley Manning case looks very different. Suddenly we can see how someone in Private Manning's situation - who is exposed to the reality of a military-political campaign that differs markedly from that being shown to the citizens of the United States and Britain (Bradley is a citizen of both; he was born in Wales); who witnesses the suffering inflicted on, and endured, by the people of Iraq and Afghanistan; and who became horrified at the deliberate misinformation of the folks back home by both the military and their political masters - might feel morally obligated to expose what he sees as crimes against humanity.

It seems to me that there are many wrong reasons to protest about the treatment of Bradley Manning: because he's one of your own, because he stuck it to the pricks in uniform, because he struck a blow for liberty (and you happen to believe in the power of crystal healing), because other people are protesting about it, because democracy has had its day, or because you believe in a Utopia where there are no secrets, no wars, no rulers.

But there is also a right reason: that maybe what he did was right. And if so, he has been abysmally mistreated, vilified when in truth he is a hero. I do not know if this is true. But if it is, I hope justice eventually prevails.

And that is what the poem I submitted, I am not a protester, says.

Monday 20 February 2012

I have fractured my creativity

I attended the T. S. Eliot memorial meeting of the Royal Society of Literature tonight at Somerset House in the Strand. Anne Chisolm introduced David Harsent, Lavinia Greenlaw, Emma Jones and Ahren Warner, who read poems and discussed what it is like to 'be' a poet.

David Harsent talked about how every poet is compelled to have a day job, a proper job that provides an income, and how the tyranny of the quotidian results in 'fractured creativity.' By 'day job,' he seemed to have in mind the hell of speaking engagements and writing residencies. He should try spending eight hours a day staring at a spreadsheet. Maybe it would inspire him.

It is London Fashion Week - dawn of the dud, the hip parade, top of the totty - and an event was in progress in another part of Somerset House during the poetry readings. It was like listening to Vivaldi when teenagers are playing Dubstep in the next room.

Sunday 19 February 2012

Back pain is not the best poetic inspiration

I arrived promptly at Faber & Faber's offices at 9:45am yesterday morning for day two of a three-day poetry workshop, keen as a whippet to draw inspiration from mere proximity to Jo Shapcott and Roger McGough. (Does that sound totally sycophantic? I do hope so.) I placed my books and pen on the table. I turned to place my satchel on a spare chair and - swore unpoetically as my lower back went into spasm.

I spent the rest of the day in a state somewhere between agony and what seemed like eternal damnation. I grimaced throughout Jo and Roger's sessions and left at the end of the day unsure whether I could make it as far as the Tube station, let alone whether I could make it back the next day.

Last night I barely slept. I deferred the terror of retiring to bed as long as I dared by playing a long session of online poker with a pillow stuffed behind my spine. I finally tumbled into the sack in the early hours for a night of wakeful tossing, yelping and unrepeatable cussing. By 6am I was back on the computer typing random characters which refused to coalesce into a meaningful poetic constellation. A good friend (you know who you are, Katia) pointed out that all the best poets live pained lives. However I can attest that back pain is not conducive to poetic inspiration.

At 9 o'clock I packed my pillow and a day's provision of ibuprofen into a rucksack and headed out nervously for day three of the workshop.

Saturday 18 February 2012

Oh, that Roger McGough

After lunch on Saturday our poetry workshop was led by Mr Roger McGough. There were several reasons why I should have been excited, perhaps even slightly awed, at this prospect. For one, Roger is the current president of the Poetry Society of which I am a member. (I should know this.) He is also the co-author of The Mersey Sound, the best (ever) selling poetry paperback in the UK. He presents Poetry Please on BBC Radio 4. (Where have I been?) He wrote big chunks of the dialogue for the Beatles' cartoon film Yellow Submarine. He was in the pop group The Scaffold which scored a number one UK chart hit in 1968 with Lily the Pink. He's a regular on Stephen Fry's QI television quiz show. He's got an effing CBE, for Christ's sake!

Oh, that Roger McGough.

Roger read to us several of his most celebrated (and some notorious) poems, including the stunningly satirical The Lesson about a schoolteacher who massacres his class, and the dark and disturbing Jogger's Song, as well as many of the playful and humourous poems for which he is best known. What a charming man, and what an honour to have sat at the same table.

What Jo Shapcott taught me

It's impossible not to learn from Jo Shapcott (On Mutability Costa Book of the Year 2010). Our workshop group at the offices of Faber & Faber in London worked through a series of exercises during Friday afternoon. These built on the work we had done with Daljit Nagra during the morning and continued to focus on specificity and concreteness, or as Jo put it, describing 'the cuppiness of this cup.' One consequence of this was that I wrote a poem, polished later in the evening and shared on my Poetrivia blog as 'In the mix,' that I could never otherwise have been conceived. A second poem, a sonnet called 'Getting into your pantry,' further stretched my poetic range; I had been challenged by Jo to write a poem about the 'Larder of ecstasy!' Job done.

The inspiration continued on Saturday morning (despite my acute backache which is a separate story) as Jo shared a couple of tips to get the poetic motor humming. The first tip is simply to assemble a group of unrelated words to be included in a poem. They might be chosen randomly from, say, a dictionary, or you could use Wikipedia's subject of the day as a theme to mix with a subject you already having mind - the odder the better. This forces you to look for unusual and often completely novel links. The seeded words can always be edited out later (after they have done their work). Jo's second tip is a way of expanding a poem that you feel ends too soon or fails to fully mine the seam of material available. She suggests putting the poem away overnight and taking it out the next day, covering all but the last line and then using that as the first line of a new poem. Again, the result can be edited later and might result in a longer, richer poem, in a sequence, or in two entirely separate poems. Go Jo!

Friday 17 February 2012

What's to eat at Faber & Faber?

Plenty, that's what! It's half time on day one of this three-day poetry workshop and while we await the arrival of the poetry goddess that is Jo Shapcott (Of Mutability, Costa Book of the Year 2011), those nice people at Faber & Faber bring out lunch. At these workshop prices you'd expect more than cheese and pickle sandwiches. Surely there should be a mustard-cress garnish at the least.

But what is this I see? Could that really be a quiche the size of hat box? Sure is. And look, its packed with mushrooms and vegetables. And there's a green salad, a rice salad, a pasta salad, a potato salad, a salad salad. And how many chickens have given their limbs in the name of poetry? Okay, cancel tonight's dinner; I'm going in...

Hobnobbing with Daljit Nagra

As if taking a time off the day job isn't reward enough for a life well spent, I spent this morning at the London offices of Faber & Faber (T.S. Eliot's desk is downstairs!) rubbing up against the awesome Daljit Nagra (Look We Have Coming To Dover!) trying to get a faint smear of his success, if not his abundant talent, to rub off on me. Only time will tell whether that worked. My head is buzzing. I think that's probably good.

Daljit is a kind and generous teacher (even though I'm paying Faber a small fortune for this three-day workshop), but it is hard to imagine a poet further removed from the personae who narrate his poems. This is such a relief since I have no desire to write in Punglish.