Author Archives: Lindsay Waller-Wilkinson

Lindsay interviews the poet John Gallas for LeftLion Culture

Home 12/06/2013 Leave a comment

The shortlist for the East Midlands Book Award 2013 is particularly strong.

The writers nominated for the award are:

• Will Buckingham – The Descent of the Lyre, Roman (LEICESTERSHIRE)
• John Gallas – Fresh Air, and The Story of Molecule, Carcanet
• Graham Joyce – Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Orion
• Jon McGregor – This Isn’t the Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like you, Bloomsbury
• Alison Moore – The Lighthouse, Salt
• Neil Roberts – A Lucid Dreamer, The Life of Peter Redgrove, Random House
• Jonathan Taylor – Entertaining Strangers, Salt

I have read and very much enjoyed Jonathan Taylor, Jon McGregor, Alison Moore and John Gallas. It’s definitely going to be a tough one…

You can read more about the writers and their work, and watch video clips of some of them reading at States of Independence in Leicester, earlier this year here.

This week John Gallas very kindly agreed to be interviewed for LeftLion Culture.

Lindsay: ‘The Story of Molecule’ reads like a 100,000 word novel condensed into 10,000 words of poetry. You’ve recently completed your first novel, ‘Bush’. How different did you find the two processes?

John: Aha. The novel novel. The real novel. It resembled writing poetry only in entering that dreadful Creative Zone, that timeless, laboursome, dark, thrilling, awful, to-be-avoided-at-all-costs yet irresistable place I go during, I guess, some equivalent of a First Draft. The bit that is all the hard work of the mind and soul, the bit that kills. Otherwise, it was far, far harder. This may sound paradoxical, but without the demands of rhythm, rhyme, limited space and time, form and imagery, single intent and an exit from the Dark Zone at least in sight somewhere, writing ‘Bush’ was far more demanding of time and energy than ‘Molecule’. Of course, it turned out a bit rhythmic, a bit poetic, if you like, which was only to be expected. What alarmed me was the violence, treachery, murder and blackest of humours that emerged as the thing progressed. Maybe it’s a longer look at the soul. I sort of hope not. It was fun, however, to be funny with characters in a complex way, in their interactions over years, and to play with highly complicated plot lines, and, yes, to write prose that can lurch from the ornate to the vulgar, and have room and time for it all to fit.

If you would like to read more of John’s fascinating responses, please click here.

Launch of 52 Euros, by John Gallas

Diary, Home 23/05/2013 Leave a comment
John Gallas upstairs at The Crumbling Cookie for The Leicester Book Festival with Debbie James from The Bookshop, Kibworth

John Gallas upstairs at The Crumbling Cookie for The Leicester Book Festival with Debbie James from The Bookshop, Kibworth

On Thursday 16th May we assembled for the launch of the new collection by John Gallas, 52 Euros, published by Carcanet.

52 Euros by John Gallas

52 Euros by John Gallas

Here we have a collection of translations from the work of 52 European poets, 26 men and 26 women, *one for each&every letter in the alphabet, some by well known peeps (Charles Baudelaire, Queen Mary,) most not (not to me, anyway!).

*Note: John never likes to make things easy for himself!

John was just back from London having received his Fellowship from The Royal Society of Literature. Deservedly so. And he was, as always, on excellent form.

Translations of poetry must, by their very nature, contain more than a little of the translator as well as (hopefully) the essence of the original. John says this in his introduction…

There is only one way for a poet to translate the poems of others, and that is by being himself. The poems in this collection all read, more or less, like me. They could not do otherwise. To work on a poem at the utmost is to call into service all the things that go furthest in one’s own abilities. To do less would be unworthy. To mimic forty-two poets would be only to do the police in different voices. It is better that they appear in the committed translator’s Force that that they remain on some incomprehensible Beat.

I find this a fascinating aspect of translated poetry and in this case, is exactly what makes the poems in this collection so delightful. John’s usual and accomplished word-play, neologies, rhythms, rhymes and musicality are all here in bucketloads.

John began by reading Mr Snail by Giuseppe Giusti, which is so charming I shall reproduce it in full:

.

Mr Snail

.

Hooray for the Snail,

hooray for a horganism

that is admirable

and umble

and probably

gave the idea of the Telescope

and the Winding Stair

to the astronomer

and the architect.

             Hooray for the Snail,

             dear little chap.

.

We might maybe call him

the Gastropodean Diogenes,

happy with the conveniences

God gave him.

He never leaves home

to go out:

he is safe and warm

in the little ways

of his own shell,

and never even gets the sniffles.

               Hooray for the Snail,

               dear little home-sweet-homer.

.

O let the tickle

of fantastical tucker

awaken appetites

of duller tummies:

this one feels just fine

where he is

and loves to gnaw

tranquillillilly

the sweet, sprout grass

of his native land.

               Hooray for the Snail,

               dear little sober chap.

.

We all know the world is not

made out of kindness:

generally it wants to be a lion,

not a donkey.

But the snail,

contrarilarily,

knows when to put

his little horns away.

he is not pushy:

he sizzles, and is silent.

                 Hooray for the Snail,

                 dear little peacenik.

.

Nature, who teams with

all sorts of phenominations,

has blessed the Snail

Above All Others

because (listen, O

Chief Choppers)

he can even resurrect

his own head,

which is a miracle,

but true.

               Hooray for the Snail,

               dear little enviable chap.

.

O you wisest Owls

who preach

at your fellow men

and teach them nothing,

and you vultures,

fat pigs, birdbrains,

rabid would-bes

and clapped-out won’t-bes,

let’s all sing

the chorus please –

                 Hooray for the Snail,

                 dear little good example.

.

Another lovely one was/is, The Dress, by Magda Isanos, which begins:

.

The Dress

.

Out of the moth and perfume trunk

my grandma took her young girl’s dress.

Thin and light like smoke

as if woven out of air.

.

The silky crinoline swishy-sad,

its ruffles all undone and snicked,

and social silhouettes, instead of light,

dance in the room, called from their age.

.

And lastly, one of my favourites, and a well-known one, Owls, by Charles Baudelaire:

.

Owls

Under the black house-yews

the owls file themselves

like strange gods,

darting their red eyes. They ponder.

.

Flickerless they stay there

until the glum hour when,

shrugging off the slanting sun,

darkness takes the place.

.

Their stand suggests, to a thoughtful man,

that we should turn away from

the tumult and twitch of the world.

.

A man high on a passing shadow

will always carry the charge

that he wanted to change his spot.

.

After a wine and fag break, during which The Man took this lovely pic…

John Gallas, in the 'garden'

John Gallas, in the ‘garden’

…we were treated to several requests. We got Origami Poems, A Poem in response to the Golden Road of Samarkand, and then a couple of new poems, one of which was written in Australia last year after prowling around a particular and ancient cemetary in Sydney for The Diseased. John discovered the grave of a young boy who died of the pox and was felled (to his knees) by emotion. I’m desperate to read/hear it again, so moving was it:

               …between the shot wife and a leper

                  lay the bones of Cecil Pepper…

and the plaintive refrain sang out:

               …And he said, is that fair?

                  And I said, no.

Go buy the book and any/all of John’s back catalogue, mostly available from Carcanet. I recommend them.

Goodbye to all that…

Diary, Poems 21/05/2013 Comments: 8

Salt's Last Stand...

Salt’s Last Stand…

‘So. Farewell then / Salt poetry books / With your lovely jackets …’

This is an interesting post. Please go and read it. Sonofabook is a blog posted by Charles Boyle of CB Editions, a rare, oftentimes esoteric, but always interesting independent publisher that I greatly admire, responsible for some wonderful books that adorn my library (and have been read, I hasten to add––they’re not just a pretty face) such as…

This is my (edited and added to) response.

How about self-publishing, but working with a shit-hot editor and yes, the author would have to pay for the editor’s services, and yes, have to pay for the printing, and yes, then market/promote the book, but with ref to one of your (CB’s) other posts, could achieve quite a lot of that for the price of a stately-home course? I’ve looked into it so I know.
I do believe there is a lot of good poetry out there that doesn’t/will not see the light of day and some poets may just be quite good at selling/promoting their own work.
The poetry world has always been quite snotty about self publishing––it’s only recently ceased to be called ‘vanity publishing.’ Perhaps we need to get over it. People (the general public) do love poetry and fall upon it eagerly during those emotional (sometimes terrifying, sometimes sublime) beyond ‘normal’ situations which we all, at various points in our lives experience, but often not the kind of poetry honoured, praised and published by the so-called intellectual poetry hierarchy, (think Poetry on the Underground, and the Bloodaxe “Being Alive’ etc Collections, to name a couple of BIG successes, think some of the stuff the Poetry Society and PN Review etc puts out, in contrast.)
I don’t see why poetry is the only literary form that feels it has to remain solely the property of the intellectual. None of the other forms are so prescriptive and I do believe there is room for different genres within the blanketing arm of ‘Poetry’. ‘Popular’ doesn’t have to mean of lower quality, simplistic, sentimental, or badly written.
On another note I’m often amazed at how many poets do not read poetry, how many writers submit to magazines that they themselves never bother to subscribe to (often claiming poverty as a reason––chicken and egg two words that spring to mind perhaps, but…) and, as you (CB) say, how few books generally people actually read.
What if we stop worrying about commerciality and money and returns and think instead about tapping into resources and individuals who do have money, as people used to in days gone by, and also, poets accepting they can’t expect to make a living by ‘it’ alone?
Lots to discuss, think about, even, perchance do…

If I’m going to invest my not-particularly-considerable-but-worth-doing-something-worthwhile-with-from-a-too-long-life-in-a-very-commercial-business-surely money, I’m thinking I need to set up a small-but-perfectly-formed-not-for-profit-but-hope-to-break-even-in-it-for-the-love press. What say you?

Writing about not writing… Or… On wanting to ‘cut it’…

Diary, Home 12/05/2013 Comments: 10
_DSC8751

Me… Looking remarkably carefree…

Because I’m rather in the doldrums of late. Somewhat lost. Not sure why. Think it’s a phase. Hope it’s a phase.

I think, perhaps, it’s a phase that many/most writers go through––when everything they’ve written suddenly/exasperatingly/depressingly, reads like shit/crap/worthless schmuck/dog-poo/not-up-to-the-markness.

Perhaps it’s down to the extensive reading I’ve been filling my days and nights with recently. The gap between the excellence of what I’ve read and my own paltry efforts yawns SO large I’m unsure how to bridge it, or whether I can. And if I can’t…

I only know this: I do not want to be mediocre. I want to move people (readers) as much as I am/have been moved. Nothing else will do. OK will not suffice. OK does not cut it. My writing does not cut it. And I want it to cut it.

But… I’ve attended some great workshops/events recently, which have/are (I think) helping. Here’s a round-up…

Mario Petrucci Workshop for South Leicester Stanza:

Thanks to Charles Lauder for organising and Nicky Lauder for the pics, the amazing pear and ginger muffins and that spinach/feta filo tart… Yum.

16 ways into writing.

Understanding that moment when one feels the ‘muse’ rumble, then take hold, in order to (possibly) learn to emulate (ideally at will) that moment, so one can enjoy and realise the spark of creativity, tap into one’s subconscious, use it, and then (hopefully) summon it when one has (at some point) a writing window.

Waiting. Holding off the moment of writing. Allowing the thoughts/images/ideas to burgeon, expand, develop, brew, fledge, birth.

Resistance can be a key to unlocking creativity.

Mario and I (I sat next to teacher) wrote these Haiku(ish)s

MP and LWW Haiku

MP and LWW Haiku

Don’t know what they are… But they’re here/there.

Mario is an engaging teacher. Generous. Well prepared. Hard working. I really enjoyed the workshop. I now have several beginnings in my notebook and some worthwhile ideas to mull over. Inspiring.

I’m reading his

Screen Shot 2013-05-12 at 21.05.06

Note: the beautiful cover is Mario’s own artwork, painted after a particularly vivd dream he had. He’s a bit of a polymath me thinks… Here is one from the collection:

i rather love

.

not things but

what lies behind

these the way a year

.

is sometimes glimpsed

past ear of corn or

december

.

come

out of blue to

one who knew only

.

sun – perhaps such

are best unsaid

so all might

.

speak of

corn & sky or

strip decembers

.

down to black-

scaffold

trees

.

where

life sings &

sings to death each

.

silenced thing

.

Word Factory Seminar with Michelle Roberts and Adam Marek, hosted by Cathy Galvin and Carrie Kania, at the Society Club Book Shop, Soho, London.

I’m in love with this book shop which is so much more than a bookshop, head-over-heels with this space/place… It’s all black painted wood, dim corners hiding erotica, alcoves stuffed with rare first editions, shelves stacked with personally selected volumes, vaguely decadent, wonderfully aspirational and inspirational. it seeths with intellect, instills curiosity, encourages investigation and smells like some kind of spirit I want to be a part of, want to ingest. Deeply.

Michelle Roberts had us writing almost immediately. About Us. About sex. Fearlessly. And we read. And we laughed. And we cried. We were moved.

Adam Marek was gentle and kind and funny and interesting and he shared and informed.

Carrie Kania was wise. She was ascerbic. And witty. And trenchant. And informative.

Cathy Galvin was lovely. Welcoming. And facilitating. Someone you are glad to have met.

Included in the course was a critique of a piece of writing and the comments I received from both Cathy and Carrie were considered, useful and thought provoking.

Also included was a goody bag containing among other things this FANTASTIC short story collection. These are some of my favourite short stories, ever. They are funny, wise, powerful, emotionally true and some of them made me cry. Try them if you haven’t already, and enjoy.

If I loved you, I would tell you this by Robin Black

Screen Shot 2013-05-12 at 23.24.09

It was a very good day. I recommend the venue, the sensibility, the content, and if there’s another I’ll want to be there.

Lionel Shriver at The Word Factory:

(Thanks to The Man for the pics…)

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At 6.30 the wine was opened, cocktails proffered and Ms. Shriver arrived. We were much honoured, for she can command far bigger audiences. She was friendly, open, willing to engage and therefore thoroughly engaging. I enjoyed her readings, the talk, Cathy Galvin’s intuitive questioning, and the informative Q and A afterwards. She read from her new book, Big Brother, (which I purchased of course) and later treated us to her excellent short story Prepositions from the Waterstone’s Red Anthology (a perfectly formed, beautifully textural and handsome volume) edited by Ms Galvin, which begins thus:

September 9, 2011

Dear Sarah, 

I apologise for the formality of a letter, but I can’t trust myself to get this out over a glass of wine, especially while still unsure what I want to say.

Trust that I’ve treasured your friendship always. On that hilking trip through the Sinai desert when we all met, what brought our two couples together was a shared disinclination to complain. Other tourists whined ceaselessly about the heat and the food, but we four were intrepid. When you broke out in suppurating cold sores from too much sun, despite the injury to your vanity you trooped on as if nothing were the matter. Consequently, I’d hate for this letter to seem a complaint––but then, maybe it is a complaint.

Your husband died in 9/11. My husband died on 9/11. So much has ensued from these prepositions, a single one-letter variation in the alphabet…

Do, please, buy (both) the book(s) and read on.

What I love about Ms Shriver is her quiet erudition, her fierce intellect, her unflinching honesty, her wry sense of humour and her pride in and dedication to her craft.

John Siddique makes the inaugural reading for Leicester University’s Centre for New Writing:

I’ve long been a fan of John’s poetry so it was lovely to meet the man himself and hear him read.

John is an incredible poet who really gives of himself when performing. He read from Full Blood, Recital, Four Fathers and a couple of new ones, both about individual acts of rebellion. I really enjoyed the reading. Dr. Corinne Fowler hosted the evening with a heady mix of intelligence and elegance and invited The Man and I to join John Siddique, the novelist Irfan Master and herself for a beer, a divine helping of Dosas and great conversation. We were lucky enough to catch up with the charismatic Ben Okri (who had been delivering a master class for students and lecturers at the University earlier) in the pub and walked him to the station on the way to the restaurant. What a special night.

Here’s one of my favourites from John Siddique’s Recital:

Other People’s Children

.

He is eight and good at football. His mind

flits blacker and whiter than a magpie

from Playstation to plastic sword, chocolate,

internet, to nothing to do, to slamming the ball.

he has a will of iron. Can bend his mother’s

and my love for him like plasticine;

when he wears his stick on tattoos

in the same place on his shoulders as I have mine,

when he calls me ‘old chappy,’ as we scream

through the air as human aeroplanes.

I want so much to show him the world

I know, make it right for him.

Their Dad shows up every now and then,

it blows this family sideways, the guy ropes

twang off their pegs, until morning comes

and the wind dies down, and he goes off again.

I begin planting and parenting. Applying constancy

at the thin end of myself. But here is the boy

on a Saturday morning, next to me in bed,

hugging his mother and I together,

blowing at my chest hair.

.

Middle Stanley with Leicester Writer’s Club

Our long weekend away in the Cotswolds is an annual event for 16 lucky members, now in its ninth year. This is the second time I have been, and it’s wonderful. We run workshops for each other, we cook and eat together, we walk, we talk, we write, we think, we laugh, we cry (but maybe that was just me,) we drink and then we talk some more.

The house is ancient, elegant in a slightly dilapidated English way, rambling, charming, welcoming and definitely haunted, and the grounds are just so very, very lovely.

It’s special. The whole weekend was special and particularly valuable to me in my present Eeyore-like mood. I was given much good advice, pick-me-up encouragement, wise jewels of experience and general heart-warming friendship.

A weekend to be cherished.

Here’s some beautiful pics from The Man:

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And here’s some pics (of a slightly inferior quality) from me:

FYI The church is the magnificent St John the Baptist in Burford, a gorgeous Cotswold town that also contains a rather lovely clothes shop called Maggie White. A little shopping was done.

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Resolution:

I have realised that having so much time on my hands now that I

  • no longer have a day job,
  • the divorce is almost over,
  • the house-move is completed
  • ailing parents are no longer an all-consuming concern

has thrown up its own set of problems. I am suddenly unsure about what I want to write, how I ought to write, what I should write, whether I can write, and is what I think I want to write about worth writing about.

Also, I have always been used to ploughing through extremely busy days and when I had to fit my writing in around all the above, plus caring for three demanding boy-chiles and two recalcitrant boy-dogs, I managed to be very productive. Now the hours stretch, expand and unfold around me and I am feeling tossed about on a rough and seemingly infinite ocean of hours and then just as suddenly, washed up into some lonely, foetid backwater with only myself for company…

Changes must be made.

In order to encourage an escape from the doldrums these are the things I’m going to try to do (in no particular order:

  • Keep Writing
  • Stop worrying about what I’m writing
  • Be kinder to myself
  • Enjoy life more
  • Restrict my writing to certain times of the day
  • Plan my days better so I fit in; chores, reading, writing and relaxation
  • Take a course of acupuncture to unblock my chakras
  • Try meditation and look at enroling in some classes
  • Resume a meaningful exercise routine
  • Stop feeling frightened
  • Lighten up

Wish me good luck!

Blackout Poetry #1 through #13 (or is this poetry?)

Home, Poems 22/04/2013 Comments: 2

In response to another of Jo Bell‘s NaPoWriMo prompts. Some Blackout Poetry.

#1

#1

#2

#2

#3

#3

 

 

#4

#4

#5

#5

#6

#7

#7

#8

#8

#9

#9

#10

#10

#11

#11

#12

#12

#13

#13

I had no idea such fun could be had with scissors, a black marker pen and some newspapers.

Check out this link too…

Newspaper Blackout

Cambridge: A Fine Day out. (Oh God… We’re going to die…)

Diary, Home 17/04/2013 Comments: 2

Recently we took an Australian friend of ours, currently living in paris, to Cambridge because he’d never been before and it seemed like a good destination for a day trip. It was a bright blue-skied day, but bloody freezing, the wind whipping up an arctic storm through every nook and cranny, of which the historical town (as you can imagine) has many.

We lunched, wandered, browsed, shopped, oohed and ahhed at appropriate moments, took lots of pics, and punted, of course.

None of us are either particularly athletic or well-coordinated, neither the man, or the friend drive a vehicle and I’m not so foolhardy to imagine that cajoling a blunt nosed craft up stream, into the wind, with only a washing-line-prop to propel it forward would be easy, so we decided to take a manned punt and let someone else negotiate the surprisingly busy river Cam.

While waiting for our punt to come in we sat at an outside table of a nearby café, supped blistering hot drinks, bathed in a pallid imitation of sunshine. A man in braces and a flat cap wandered by and burped very loudly. The friend gave me a one-eyebrow-raised-look which got me giggling and I said ‘That’ll be our punter… just you wait!’ Seconds later a family of four, all extremely ample-bodied, sauntered by with drinks and a bag holding copious (we soon realised) supplies of cake and I said, “and that’ll be who we’re sharing the raft with…” To which I received another raised eyebrow and a derisive snort.

Sure enough… Ten minutes later, Burping-Man called us and the Family-Large to attention and requested we follow him down an alley to the punt.

“Oh God…” my friend breathed, “We’re all going to die…”

We didn’t die, but the family sat opposite us and all we could see if we looked ahead were carbohydrate consuming mouths atop XXXL pilled fleeces and all we could hear at every turn were loud exclamations in Afrikaans, my least favourite of all languages as I worry that I’m about to be spat on. We soon discovered that the flat-capped-burper in charge of our safety had a pathalogical hatred for ALL amateur punters and purposely steered into any boat within his sights, which made the whole journey rather like a teenage outing on the fairground bumper cars. But longer. And colder. And without the pop music blaring. But with the added edge of possible death by drowning.

We wrapped ouselves in a thin blue polyester scrap that the man optimistically called a blanket and in a slightly surreal way, I suppose we enjoyed ourselves. However, after half an hour, with wind-burnt ears and some relief, we pulled up to the deck. As we clambered back onto dry land I swear I heard our friend mutter, “Only in England…” and we battled our way, head to wind, back to the car, all of us looking forward to heated seats and the bliss of still air.

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It was quite pretty though…

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