New post on literaturenetwork.org: Big Game Hunting in the Bookshops

My new post on literaturenetwork.org is now live: Big Game Hunting in the Bookshop. It's about the disappearing world of the secondhand bookshop and is unashamedly nostalgic. Writing it has put me in the mood for spending a weekend exploring Brighton's secondhand bookshops. Anyone up for an expedition next weekend?

"I love buying things on-line. No matter how strange or obscure the item I want, there always seems to be someone selling it. The most interesting thing I’ve bought recently is a mid-nineties guide to British second hand book shops. This book, by the mysterious Driffield, is long out of date: most of the shops listed that I remember from 15 years back are no more. The guide would likely be little use in navigating present-day second hand bookshops (although I sometimes day-dream about trying)."

Easter Rains – A new story published in Penumbra #4

I'm a bad person: I meant to post a month or so back about the new issue of Penumbra magazine, which includes a story of mine called 'Easter Rains'. Here's the opening:

"Ghost songs. They’d been drinking beer, kind of bored, when someone mentioned this radio station out in the woods that broadcast to no-one. Some guy had a radio transmitter and broadcast his favourite songs, not caring if anyone listened or not. A passing car might pick it up, if anyone actually drove out that way.

So they’d gone into the country, turning the dial until they found a station that was playing the Sid Vicious version of My Way. They pulled over and sat on the bonnet drinking beer. Song followed song with no adverts or idents, mostly cheesy rock, each record becoming something more in the moment. And he often thought he’d never have felt like he did now if making music meant as much to him as transmitting it had to that man."

Easter Rains recounts the last few days in the life of Kurt Cobain. I was a huge Nirvana fan at the time Cobain died and have read most of the biographies published since his death. What fascinates me is how the story has changed over the years. Initially the books recounted a doomed love affair between Kurt and Courtney but some later volumes have taken a more cynical turn

Listening to Doll Parts again recently ('yeah, they really want you, but I do too'') brought back the freshness, the innocence of those early accounts. I miss the story of Kurt and Courtney how it was originally, two lost people who found in each other the missing parts of themselves. Whether or not the later accounts are more accurate, for me the earlier books told the better story.

I wrote Easter Rains in Coventry last summer. It's closely based on factual accounts of the hours preceding Cobain's suicide, most notably the Cross biography and Everett True's stunning work, Nirvana: the True story. But, as you'll find if you read it, I tinkered with the end a little.

As mentioned above, Easter Rains can be found in the new issue of Penumbra. Copies can be bought from the Penumbra website for £4.95 which includes P&P. Thanks to Alex and Elle at Penumbra for publishing the story; and to Rosy and Ian for their feedback on the earlier drafts.

Some odds and ends

  • My friend Justine's novel Advice for Strays now has a cover and is available for pre-order on Amazon. I'm very excited as I've been waiting to read this for ages.
  • Drew Gummerson had a contest for 50-word stories about the moon and has posted some of the entries on his blog. One of them is mine.
  • Speaking of Mr. Gummerson, ages ago I meant to post a link to his story When the Chips are Down. Go read it!
  • A Surprisingly Common Omission is a great 'drabble' by David Langford which he acknowledges may have been too subtle for its own good.
  • One of my favourite short story collections is Kelly Link's Magic For Beginners.  Much of this is now available for free downloadStone Animals
    is a fantastic spooky story but the highlight for me is the story Some
    Zombie Contingency Plans.  It's not 'about' zombies – it's more
    wonderful and subtle than that.  "It turned out that everyone in the prison had a zombie contingency plan, once
    you asked them, just like everyone in prison had a prison escape plan, only
    nobody talked about those.
    "

Latitude 2009

I arrived back yesterday from the Latitude Festival. Many commentators sneer at Latitude for being 'middle-class' without saying why that is a bad thing. I had a great time, seeing lots of acts I'd not normally seek out and watching a lot of poets.

The weather was appalling, with an unpleasant thunderstorm on Thursday night and more rain throughout. Despite that the festival ground didn't turn into a swamp, unlike some other festivals I've been to. However, having my Mum & Dad's caravan to retreat to probably made things easier than they might have been. Among the highlights for me were:

  • A fantastic line-up in the comedy tent, including Stephen K. Amos, Shappi Khorsandi and Matt Kirshen. I was sad to see the talented Janeane Garofalo's set, which ended after 6 awkward minutes. (UPDATE: what happened next)
  • I didn't see many bands, but was delighted to discover The Vaselines were playing. They were charming and I remembered most of the songs they played. There was also a stunning set from Tricky, who I'd not seen play for about 10 years.
  • The film tent featured some fascinating events. Sadly Jeffrey Lewis missed the slot for his lecture on Watchmen, but Richard Dedomenici's lecture on plagiarism was fantastic. It included his response to people saying "I could have done that" when confronted with modern art: but why would you be doing it?
  • I spent most of my time in the poetry tent, which featured some fantastic acts including Mik Artistik, Jessica Delfino, Ross Sutherland, Byron Vincent, Nathan Filer, and Jay Bernard. The poetry tent had a rapid turnover of acts and ran for about 14 hours a day, so was always a good place to return to between other events.

All in all, a fantastic weekend, and possibly the best festival I've been to.

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A fun few days

Today I'm having a relaxing day after a busy end to last week. After ages staying in I went to two gigs on Thursday. I started out at the launch of Hattie Snooks' new EP, Bon Appetit. It's absolutely stunning and I've been playing it repeatedly. My favourite track is the first, Jericho, which made an amazing opening to Thursday's performance. After Hattie's set I headed to the Hope where Rufus Moonshine was celebrating his birthday. I saw three amazing bands there: Kinema, John-John Slave and the stunning AK/DK (who featured Rufus Moonshine on vocals for a song). Well worth the slightly late night.

Friday night was the public opening of Fabrica's new exhibition, The Elephant Bed. I wasn't sure about the scuplture at first but warmed to it over the evening. There is a video featuring interviews with the artist that does a good job of explaining things and also features a fascinating time-lapse video of the work's installation.  Like many of Fabrica's exhibitions there is something calming about the space and I'm looking forward to making some calming lunchtime visits.

Hattie

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Busy, busy, busy

I didn't get much done last week. I wasn't feeling great (possibly a side-effect of cutting out caffeine) so took things easy. I didn't even do any writing, just concentrated on getting some sleep.

At the weekend I journeyed up to Lancaster for a conference, The Critic As Artist, which looked at the fusion of literary criticism and creative writing. Creative critical writing is different to every other type of writing and each of the papers I watched was delivered in completely different ways, including powerpoint experiments, fictional scholars, and post-it notes. Most fascinating for me was a paper by John Goodby that was edited into a poetic form and discussed "high street" poetics vs the experimental. I also saw presentations by a couple of University of Sussex poets, Abi Curtis and Sarah Jackson

I wasn't sure how I would find the conference after a couple of years outside academia. The ideas and techniques used left me invigorated. I know there was a lot I didn't understand but I was fascinated by what I did get.

One advantage of being in Lancaster was bring able to visit my cousin, as well as meeting his new daughter for the first time. I spent Sunday morning visiting the playground with my cousin's family before braving the train network, the only downside to any weekend away.

I've returned with Lancaster for various ideas on my work, as well as a renewed excitement. Which is a good thing as I have various projects people are waiting on. One is my reading in this year's Melbourne Festival (Melbourne, Derbyshire, that is). I've been thinking yet again about Matt Webb's presentation at dConstruct 2007, which is one of the most provocative talks I've seen. It dispenses with the usual structure of 'say what you'll say, say it, then say what you've said', in favour of 'a fool's alphabet'. I'm going to try something similar for my Melbourne Festival piece and see what that leads to.

I'm also possibly reading some work between bands at an event this weekend, which is something I've not tried before. I've been looking for pieces that will work best in this context, as well as writing some new ones. I'm most excited about 'Michael Jackson in heaven' which I wrote last night.

I'm also running again after a couple of weeks injured . I've signed up for the Brighton Marathon in 2010 and am very excited. A little exercise will do me good too – I was shocked by the photos from the last Short Fuse where I look more like Alfred Hitchcock than I'd like. I'm suspect this is what led to one of the poets at the conference remarking that I 'didn't look like a vegetarian'.

My latest post on literaturenetwork.org

My new post is up on literaturenetwork.org: Let's have a golden age:

"Every year 1,300 creative writers qualify from British universities. Every year. Think how much raw talent that represents. Thousands upon thousands of people capable of crafting their experiences, hopes and fantasies into decent prose and poetry. So where are they? Where are all the little magazines, spoken word nights, pamphlets and small presses? There are some out there, but not enough to reflect the work of 1,300 additional writers a year. It’s an artistic version of the Fermi paradox: if they’re out there how come we don’t see them?"

One of the things I've enjoyed most about writing for the literature network is exploring different aspects of the explosion in creative writing. In this post I'm considering the huge potential of the huge number of people studying creative writing. Please have a read and add a comment. Thank you!

A week off

I've spent the last week on leave from work. It's been a very busy week and I've not done half of the things I planned to do (while managing to do a few things I hadn't expected).  A few exciting opportunities have also opened up, which I will be working on for a while.

  • Last Sunday I went back to Henfield, the village where I grew up.  I visited Jake Spicer's art show as well as looking round the village, comparing it to the one I remembered. The roads all seemed far smaller than they were when I was young.
  • Monday I was in London for Ride the Word X, a collaboration between Spread the Word and Ride the Word. The reading seemed to go very well. It was lovely to see Alex and Elle from Penumbra, as well as meeting Vincent de Souza and Jay Merill, who read a fantastic story called Billericay.
  • Tuesday was Telling Lies. We had some amazing performances from Rosy, Chris Parkinson and Bill Jones, with fantastic musical interludes from Madame's Butterflies. The set was dressed by Jake and the pictures looked amazing. Thanks to everyone who came along and all the people who helped out.
  • Wednesday was my birthday, which was celebrated in Brighton and Derbyshire. Rosy, Kitty and I shot zombies on the pier and then went on the helter-skelter, which provided great views and friction burns. We had lunch at Terre-a-terre then I headed off to Melbourne to see my sister before she went to Chicago, and ate lots of Indian food.
  • Friday I visited my friend Sarah Harvey's sound installation, Chambers. This was based on some ECG recordings, which had then been transcribed to musical recordings and performed by voice, double bass, saxophone and piano. It sounded incredible – the urgency of the rhythm made me very aware of my own physicality, almost disorientatingly. It was well worth the detour to Wimbledon.

I'm now back in Brighton for a while. Tonight is the next Trailer Trash night, Tarantino, then things are going to be less hectic for a week or two. I'm looking forward to doing some writing.

Below are some of the photos I've taken in the last week.

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Jake Spicer's art show

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Kitty Peels rehearsing for Trailer Trash

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Chris Parkinson performing at Telling Lies

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A tasty cake made by Rosy

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Rosy and Kitty on the Helter Skelter

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Sarah Harvey's Chambers installation

I’m reading at Ride the Word in London on June 15th

I had a fantastic time at Short Fuse last night.  There was an excellent line-up and it was lovely to read just before Rosy, who has done some amazing performances recently.  The night ended with stories from David Bramwell and Ros Barber, both of whom were enthralling.  I loved being be part of such an exciting, friendly night.

I'm currently very excited as Alex and Elle, the folks behind Penumbra Magazine, have invited me to
read at Ride the Word X on Monday June 15th.  The night is organised by Salt
Publishing
and features a range readers, including Salt poet Vincent de Souza and short story writers Jay Merrill and Richard Bardsley.

Alex and Elle are doing a talk at the start of the evening, which will feature readings from myself and Luke Roberts. I've been asked to read LIBRARYS, a story of mine that was published in Penumbra's first issue.  It's probably my favourite story, but I'd not considered reading it aloud until Penumbra suggested it.  I'm very excited about reading this piece since its formatting makes it interesting to reproduce orally.

The event takes place at Stratford Library, E15 1EL (map here).  Admission is free and the night starts at 7pm, continuing until 9:30pm. It would be lovely to see some familiar friendly faces there.

I’m reading at Short Fuse tonight (June 7th)

I was asked last night if I could read at Short Fuse in Brighton tonight as one of the other performers was unable to read.  I am going to be reading my story Puddlejumping.  Also reading tonight are the stunning Ros Barber, as well as Cheeky Guide author David Bramwell and my friend, poet Rosy Carrick.  The theme for the night is True Stories.  Ros is reading an award winning piece called 'Re-Shape Whilst Damp', and David Bramwell has "an hilarious
story set at a Saltdean Seance
".  It's going to be a fascinating and exciting night, so do come along.  The night is held at the Komedia's Studio bar and doors open at 8pm.  Entry is £5.