incorporating writing

Issue 4 Vol 2 TRAVEL

Benedict Allen - Daljit Nagra - Robert Steinbeck

Incorporating Writing
(ISSN 1743-0380)
Contents
Editorial Team Page
Editorial
Managing Editor Travel 3
Andrew Oldham Andrew Oldham discusses all things Travel
and the nagging question: Are we there yet?
Interviews Editor
Sarah Hesketh Interviews
Benedict Allen 14
Articles Editor Sarah Hesketh meets the great explorer.
Fiona Ferguson
Daljit Nagra 32
Sarah Hesketh spends time with the
Reviews Editor
critical success that is...
G.P.Kennedy
Articles
Columnists
Jo’Burg Travels 5
Dan McTiernan, Andrew O’Donnell,
Tom Spurling tackles travel writing and the
Dave Wood, Sharon Sadle. South African city.

Contributors Here Be Monsters 8

Janet Aspey, Katherine Blair, Claire Ben Felsenburg looks at the eco-crisis
Boot, Caroline Drennan, Ben hitting the travel writer.
Felsenburg, Cath Nichols, Helen Shay,
Tom Spurling Childe Harold’s Ticket to Ride 24
Caroline Drennan looks at the restless
Cover Art nature of Byron.
Gemma Cumming
Steinbeck’s Travelogue of War 44
Design
Claire Boot looks at Steinbeck at War.
Marsh

Contact Details Columns

http://www.incorporatingwriting.co.uk Dislocation, Dislocation 11
incorporatingmag@yahoo.co.uk Dan McTiernan discovers one doesn’t
have to travel to be lost.

Cubicle Escapee 22
Sharon Sadle tries to relax.

Incorporating Writing is an imprint of The Incwriters

Artwork
Society (UK). The magazine is managed by an editorial Perfect Eye 28
team independent of The Society’s Constitution. Nothing in
this magazine may be reproduced in whole or part without Cover artist, Gemma Cumming, exhibits
permission of the publishers. We cannot accept responsi- some of her work.
bility for unsolicited manuscripts, reproduction of articles,
photographs or content. Incorporating Writing has endeav-
oured to ensure that all information inside the magazine is
correct, however prices and details are subject to change.
Reviews 35
Individual contributors indemnify Incorporating Writing,
The Incwriters Society (UK) against copyright claims,
monetary claims, tax payments / NI contributions, or any News and Opportunities 48
other claims. This magazine is produced in the UK. © The
Incwriters Society (UK) 2005
3 incorporating writing
I abhor travel. Maybe that is a little
harsh but trust me when you’ve landed
sideways in an air plane at O’Hare,
buffeted by one of the worst hurricanes
the USA has ever seen, it tends to put
you off the act of travelling. I love to go
places though, so I am in a Catch 22
situation. Many of us now baulk as we
face the new guru catch word - carbon
footprint; a catchphrase dreamt up in
some PR company, to make us all feel
guilty that the planet is indeed warming
up, whilst human compassion, trust and
love amongst fellow men and women is
distinctly dropping down the temperature
scale. Let’s face it, we’re stuffed.
So, how big is your carbon footprint? Is it
so big that you can now actively brag to
male friends about it? Is it big enough to
make even China go weak at the knees?
Let’s face it, this is how the whole travel
problem is being pitched at us - we are
being made to feel incredibly stupid and
guilty but there is no real mention of the
companies that are also to blame or even
the governments.
Yet, our lust for travel and the throwaway
lifestyle is contagious. Come on, who
hasn’t amongst you told friends that you
went to somewhere warm and sat by the
pool for a fortnight, drinking bad wine
Are we there yet?
Editorial by Andrew Oldham
and reading equally bad literature? And
felt good about it? Openly braggedabout
fucking up the country you holidayed in?
And we all do it, we go to gems hidden
amongst the lapping waves of some
undiscovered place. These solitary
hideaways where we find ourselves, find
peace, discover beauty and feel at one
with the world. And, a fortnight after
returning home, we have told all our
friends, family, colleagues, lovers and any
passing stranger or old school friend what
a great place we’ve just holidayed in.
What do they do? They go there! The
cheek. The sheer bravado! What happens
then? They tell all their friends, family,
colleagues, acquaintances of their pets
about a great place they’ve just been
too. Oh, the beaches! Oh, the people! The
culture, the food, the warmth! - LOOK AT
OUR TANS - and what happens then?
They go! And then more people go there,
then actually live there. Four years later,
you meet the first person you
recommended the gem to and say quite
calmly and in that innocent voice, “I went
back on holiday there, but I wouldn’t go
again - it’s so commercial, there’s no
culture left. There was even a burger bar
next to a temple! The people have sold
out”
What do you expect? You waved great
fistfuls of dirty money in their faces. Sure,
beauty is wonderful, empty tranquil
beaches that stretch off to the blue
horizon are great but you don’t live there
all the time. You don’t realise how poor
some of these countries are and how
much the humble tourist has them over a
barrel. Money or poverty? Money or
starvation? The irony is though, that
England too is becoming a tourist trap.
It’s the fastest growing market in the UK
incorporating writing 4

at the moment. Will we adapt though to

being the one’s accepting the money and
bending backwards over a barrel to do it?
Could we, after so many decades of
package holidays, shouting for food in
slow and clear English in the Costa del
Sol, Lyon, Delhi, Rhodes and Paris
actually welcome the same back?
Package holidays are coming back to
roost, and I wait with baited breath for
the first Spanish Man to shout slow and
clear in some greasy spoon, in Spanish of
course, that he wants paella.

“What do you expect? You

waved great fistfuls
of dirty money in
their faces”
In this issue, the great and good of travel
explore their own times abroad. Benedict
Allen explains the need for exploration
over travel, Daljit Nagra speaks of travel
in the UK. We look at Byron abroad, at
eco-travel and the mighty carbon
footprint (it does sound like a heavyset
smoker with a neverending supply of fags CALL FOR WRITERS
in his mouth), the jewel of South Africa Incorporating Writing will go quarterly in
and the hidden mess kept away from the 2007. Themes for 2007 include
tourists and we look at Steinbeck at War - REGIONAL REVOLUTION (July) and FOOD
even this became a travelogue. Dan (October). Guidelines can be obtained
McTiernan and Sharon Sadle look at the from the editors below
act of dislocation and relaxation
respectively. Gemma Cumming shows us All enquiries and deadline details are
the beautiful side of postcards in Perfect available from:
Eye. Bon voyage! Comprende mush? Andrew Oldham (Managing Editor)
andrew_incwriters@yahoo.co.uk
Fiona Ferguson (Articles Editor)
articles_incwriters@yahoo.co.uk
Andrew Oldham is the Managing Editor of G.P. Kennedy (Reviews Editor)
Incorporating Writing. He is an award winning reviews_incwriters@yahoo.co.uk
writer and academic. His work includes papers on
Ray Bradbury, BBC Radio and TV programmes, www.incorporatingwriting.co.uk
music and literary journalism and several
collections of poetry. He recently won a NW Vision
award.
5 incorporating writing
Jo’burg Travels
Article by Tom Spurling
Writing about our own travels is no
use to those who choose to run away. But
we all write and travel for different
reasons. Mark Twain travelled to pay off
his debts, Paul Theroux travelled to pay
off his novels, Evelyn Waugh travelled to
appease his own neo-colonial guilt, but
perhaps it’s more like Bruce Chatwyn
once said, and most of us travel cos we
can.
‘Ubuntu’ is a term used to describe
African humanism. It means that we’re all
connected, all the time, no matter how
far we roam, no matter how spicy we like
our chicken (local flavour is crucial to
good travel writing). Travel writers often
espouse universal ubuntu. They
encourage us to see the world in
miniature, to see our own lives as exotic.
This is partly because travel is often dull
and frustrating - lots of waiting in train
stations, lots of misread maps - and
partly because it’s half-human to wonder.
But who really wants to know about other
people in whom they cannot recognise
themselves? Who really wants to travel
for a living?
So what to do, us travellers, us writers?
Travel and writing may be somewhat
spiritual pursuits, but Travel Writing alone
is strictly business. To travel alone is
more lonesome than writing, but group
travel is mostly pretend. Perhaps we
should pack it in altogether in pursuit of
peace of mind? Well, funnily enough, it’s
not likely to happen in this world of cheap
travel and paid writing because most of
us aren’t nearly good enough at either to
stop - or we still have something half
decent to say, somewhere half decent to
go - and many of us still stubbornly cling
to a life where one can fund the other.
incorporating writing
The travel in this writing takes place in
Johannesburg, or Jozi, the old, gold,
abused boom town gone bust. Jozi hits
the pits hard and rises high around the
edges. She’s a daylight city, a grit-and-
bare-it city, and anyone’s after dark.
Travel writing is not always romantic. Jozi
is where this travel writer starts, in an
airport hotel with no shower. He’s strung
out halfway across the Indian Ocean, with
a girl who was promised a holiday, and
instead got me, to make two out-of-town
do-gooders in transit to Limpopo, four
hundred clicks north and counting.
But travel writing can both guide you by
book, and book you a room for the night
on Seventh Street, Melville; an oasis of
urban harmony in a city under permanent
siege. Melvile is an ideal South Africa that
nonetheless bars its doors. There, my
travel partner and I eat stuffed agnolotti,
and Macau salads, buy the new album
from Cape Town indie darlings Rock Tock
Tik (average), and wax half our legs. We
watch black guys drive hot cars and kiss
hot girls who walk home late alone. It’s
healthy, if not safe, but promises more
than big cats and big country. At least
more than you’d ever read about.
Travel and writing are each full of chance
meetings and anecdotes that will, on
occasions, reveal certain truths about the
state of a nation. One afternoon in
Melville I picked up a hardback copy of
the Best New South African Writing,
(published the year I was born), and met
the black as black local comic co-star
from soon-to-be-released MTV film
‘Bunnychow’. “Man, you should stay in
Australia,” he laughed. “Ain’t no black
people there!” Returning to my pension
that evening, I bantered AIDS and Africa
with Trish, the affable ex-British owner
whose two blond daughters squawked
into saliva-stained recorders and played
6
together inside. “Here it’s the
Mozambicans climbing through your
window,” Trish said. “In Botswana, it’s the
Zimbabweans.”
Travel writing will always take you away,
unexpectedly. Second time round the
clock we wake at noon Melbourne time,
but still in Jozi, pitch black with cats and
robbers. We sit idle til Ntombi the hired
help comes to collect us for a tour we
never booked. Accidental tourism, but
we’re glad to see her. And so we waltz
down tree-lined Walton with our guide at
hand, our book in bag, and pile into one
of eleven mini-buses for a Taste of Africa
at one-sixty rand or your money in
dollars. First stop, (fifth if we’re
counting), is the Apartheid Museum, and
I’m thinking, should I take Ntombi a cool
drink while she waits outside in the sun?
No, no, she can manage, she’s seen it all
before. Inside it’s horrible, of course, but
nonetheless important and worthwhile,
but yes, we should leave soon, Ntombi
will be waiting. Soweto is suddenly all
the more urgent, but when you get there,
the guilt in your mouth gets covered in
dust, and the 20-something migrant from
the Eastern Cape takes you to her baking
hot tin hut beside the river of ‘pig’s food’
where not very long ago some Zulus went
to town on hundreds of screaming souls
and the ‘Bang Bang Club’ got famous
taking pictures.
Travel is nothing like writing. Anyone can
write, and anyone can travel. These days
you can fly to Ireland from Italy for
twelve bucks fifty, and blog round the
world for free. But travel writing will
forever be the ‘middle-man’ of literature,
for the best travelers rarely write, and the
best writers rarely travel. But they both
need the other to inform our own lives, to
help us to stay or to help us go.
7 incorporating writing

“But who really wants to

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

Tom Spurling is a freelance travel writer from

Melbourne, Australia. He has recently returned
from India on assignment for Lonely Planet, and is
now a writer-in-residence at Amazwi Media Arts
School in rural South Africa. ‘Amazwi’, meaning
‘voices’ in Zulu, trains local women to tell their
own stories and to produce a community
newspaper. The program also produces a.
magazine - Africa’s first literary journal - which
specialises in creative non-fiction inspired by the
continent. www.amazwi.org
Here Be writing
incorporating Monsters:
Travel Writing In The Eco-Age
Article by Ben Felsenburg
Travel writing may be as old as words.
Cuneiform must still have been a novelty
when someone sent a clay tablet stating
‘Wish you were here.’ Even the Old
Testament doubles up nicely as a guide
book to the Middle East, from Mounts
Ararat and Sinai to the river Jordan, albeit
a little heavy on the historical and bloody
local colour.
Travellers’ tales largely fall into two
categories. Some describe places the
reader probably will never see:
Renaissance Italians would likely know
the Silk Road only from Marco Polo, just
as, bar the colonising few, the Victorian
Englishman turns to the pages of Sir
Richard Burton to discover Africa. Then
there are journeys the reader may well
have made already or even, perhaps,
shall be inspired to take by the book in or
an in-between state of affairs. Paul
Theroux in China and the incomparable
8
Bruce Chatwin in Patagonia spelled a
challenge in the seventies and eighties.
Transport, politics and expense set these
destinations aside for only the more
determined tourist of these decades, but
they were reachable.
Now, when globalisation and cheap air
travel have rendered India’s beaches into
the Costa Del Sol de nos jours and the
Himalayan peaks are all but thronged
with tour parties, these distinctions have
worn thin. Bookseller employees place
Marco Polo in the same section as In
Search Of Elvis, and VS Naipaul, Theroux
and Chatwin are set just a few shelves
away from the pleasantly quotidian wit of
Bill Bryson. Can their notions of travel all
be said to be in accord with Francis
Bacon’s definition: ‘part education, part
experience’?
It’s a question of some urgency for our
9 incorporating writing
eco-aware times. Where once ‘here be
monsters’ marked those parts of the
globe we did not know, now that we have
stained the entire planet with our works,
the monsters are us. As Ian Jack notes in
Granta’s most recent travel collection
(Granta 94, ‘On The Road Again: Where
Travel Writing Went Next’), ‘Travel no
longer seems so innocent or beneficent
(“travel broadens the mind”), unless one
journeys in some pre-industrial carbon-
neutral way, like Thomas Coryat walking
all the way from Somerset to India in the
early seventeenth century, or R. L.
Stevenson on his donkey in the
Cévennes, or Queen Victoria getting up
Pilatus on her mule.’
“You want to know about
another continent? You
can’t go there just for the
hell of it — but you can
read all about it”
You could take issue with Jack. There is
no such thing as carbon-neutral travel:
even if we all journeyed only on mule and
by foot, there’d still be the eco-cost of the
fossil-fuel-based mass fertilisers that are
needed for the food to feed such energy
expenditure. Journeys are not in
themselves deleterious. The problem is
the sheer numbers in which we live and
move.
In any event, Jack outlines the future way
for writers and their journeys: ‘...it seems
to me that if travel writing is to be more
than a persuasive literary entertainment
— if it’s to have some genuinely
illuminating and perhaps even, these
times being what they are, some moral
purpose — then the information it
contains needs to be trustworthy. How
else do you justify the carbon emissions
spent in its research?’
And there was I thinking entertainment
beat moral purpose hands down every
time a book is opened. Still there’s no
doubt such thoughts threaten to consign
vast sheaves of writing to that damned
realm reserved for the immediately dated
recent past. But perhaps that’s no bad
thing: look at the blurb of the 2006
Lonely Planet anthology ‘Tales From
Nowhere’. ‘We’ve all been to Nowhere,’ it
assumes, no doubt to appeal to the
suited professionals wistfully nostalgic for
their grungy backpacking twenties
identified by the marketing
demographics. ‘It might have been in the
middle of Borneo or Beijing.’ Yes, you
teeming millions count for nothing
against my vague sense of alienated
disorientation having just come off the
plane. ‘Nowhere is a setting, a situation
and a state of mind.’ Just in case you
were wondering. The tales within are
perfectly serviceable as a series of
effectively racy extended anecdotes, but
that blurb stands for the whole hoary
notion of travelling to discover ourselves.
The game is up for that particular jig, if
we accept the body of evidence that says
our wanton travel is at least partially
responsible for climate change, and if we
decline the hell-in-a-handcart-so-what’s-
the-use option.
So where now? Travel literature could be
reinvigorated by the eco-crisis. You want
to know about another continent? You
can’t go there just for the hell of it — but
you can read all about it. We’ll have come
full circle, back to those medieval reports
and rumours from exotic far-off places.
Let’s not forget our globalisation offers
continued page 13...
11
Even though I’m almost one hundred
percent convinced there was not one
utterance of it on the estate agent’s
details, it appears we’ve bought a house
in Mordor.
Since we bought it in December,
ceaseless horizontal torrents of Pennine-
iced rain have pitted away at the
crumbling stonework of the building and
at our morale.
The dark slough of moorland
opposite – something that appealed at
the time of purchase – looks so saturated
that it might slide towards us at any
moment, taking out the council estate
further up the hill and depositing its
Jeremy Kyle-watching inhabitants onto
the railway tracks just the other side of
our apocalyptic garden.
For the past several months now
my weekend residence has been the
cellar - jovially described as a kitchen by
Sauron Property Inc. – as my endlessly
patient friend Jay and I tackle the damp,
the drunken angles of the walls and
ceiling and our own glaring lack of
Extreme Makeover experience. Our
favourite grunted Orkish phrases include
such gems as: “We’ve made a right cod’s
incorporating writing
Dislocation, Dislocation
Column by Dan McTiernan
arse out of that!”, “for f%!*$ sake!” and
“Why, God, why?”
The lack of a cooker means a whole
new world of ready meals has opened up
to us. We saunter round supermarkets
like gastro-tourists cherry picking the
finest film-wrapped slurry from around
the globe. Ooh, prawn toast, ooh chicken
dopiaza. We’ve started to accumulate
complimentary crockery as a result of the
vast volumes of “have a night in” ranges
we purchase.
“My fervent reading of the
Escape section of the
weekend paper would
suggest that, I for one, am
riddled with the virus”
Then there’s the party wall that
separates us from them next door and
the discovery that it’s apparently made of
rice paper. At weekends the waft of their
SuperKings seeps through into our
bathroom and living room, their
consumptive hacking acts as our 8am
alarm, their little girl’s daily teatime hour
of skipping sends enough violent judders
along our floorboards to cause Vibration
Whitefinger.
Oh, and my wife is due to give birth
to our first child two weeks yesterday…
I need a holiday. You know the type; the
one where you sell the house and run
away to Southern India forever to set up
an eco-backpackers lodge.
I can see in Johanna’s face as she
wades through the piles of dust and half
unpacked possessions in her wellies – we
incorporating writing 12

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

...continued from page 9

solutions to every problem, even the

ones it’s made itself.

“Now, when globalisation

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

19 Abercromby Square

Liverpool, L69 7ZG

readers@liv.ac.uk

www.thereader.co.uk

Website includes news, events, shop,

blog, podcasts.

First published in 1997, The Reader has

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

Benedict Allen: Explorer Not Traveller

Interview by Sarah Hesketh
Photios by portraitsiberuttrek
15
I get a little travel sick on the tube,
and not being a Londoner my knowledge
of the capital is based entirely on multi-
map. So I feel a little fraudulent turning
up to interview Benedict Allen, a man
who has walked the 1000 mile Gobi
desert alone, undergone a brutal initiation
ceremony with the Niowra ‘crocodile
people’ in New Guinea, crossed the
Amazon basin at its widest point (the
expedition there hit a few hitches and he
was forced to eat his own dog), trekked
Siberia nearly killing himself and his
dedicated team of huskies, hung out with
shamans and witchdoctors and once
found time to be the first man to walk the
length of the Skeleton Coast in Namibia.
The most remarkable figure in modern
exploration, it’s a little incongruous to
find him in Shepherd’s Bush on a street
lined with white picket fences.
Allen has always laid great emphasis on
the fact that he is an explorer, not a
traveller. Immersing himself in indigenous
communities, learning from them the
skills needed to survive in some of the
world’s harshest environments, his TV
programmes have usually involved just
him and a hand-held camera. His first
expedition at the age of twenty-four was
crossing the Amazon Basin, a trip which
ended in near disaster, but it seems to
have provided the impetus for all his
subsequent trips. It also seems to have
been this which gave rise to a distinctly
reflective side to this man of action, a
‘professional adventurer’ as he terms
himself. Each of his trips has produced a
book, and this notion of reporting back on
what he has seen and done appears
central to his conception of both himself
and his journeys.
“I just did this one-off trip, as it
was going to be.” He slips readily into the
role of storyteller. “I wanted to be an
explorer; off I went and towards the end
incorporating writing
of the journey it all went wrong. I had to
survive in the jungle by myself and I
think that gave me a drive. Having
survived it I think I needed to understand
it. I’ve never really talked about it with a
psychiatrist but this forest had almost
wiped me out and I think I needed to
understand how that had happened. I
was there for weeks and fighting every
day. So I think that explains why I then
did another expedition, and it was a very
rash thing, of going through an initiation
ceremony in New Guinea. Maybe just to
relive this trauma. I don’t really know,
but that seems to be where I got that
drive from. It has scared me that I had a
tendency just to be an adrenaline junkie.
It’s certainly what used to worry my mum
and dad. That I was wanting to do
something more dangerous in order to
get attention.”
“I get a little travel sick on
the tube, and not being a
Londoner my knowledge of
the capital is based entirely
on multi-map. So I feel a
little fraudulent turning up
to interview Benedict Allen”
Yet he’s quick to disagree with Robin
Hanbury Tension’s self-aggrandising
assertion that, ‘a traveller reports back,
but an explorer changes the world.’
“I felt that on my expeditions I
should be the one who’s changed. The
place should have an effect on me and
that would be a sign of a successful
expedition. And settling down to write the
book was crucial. It kept me sane in a
way. It was only when I had written the
book that I was able to move on. Each
experience had to be sort of answered by
a book, or closed by a book.”
incorporating writing
Interview by Alexander Laurence
Many of Allen’s books have been
dedicated to local residents who have
helped him on his travels. And the
structure of his journeys: a spell with
indigenous people, followed by a period of
solitary trekking, seems to reflect this
dichotomy of action and reflection in his
character. “It is a sort of mixed thing. I do
like being with people but in the end I
sort of feel I have to test myself. And I’ve
never understood why. I rode for three
and a half months with the Mongols
before I even got to the Gobi and the
challenge bit. But I could never really tell
what I’d learnt from the locals until I was
alone. I thought, I’ll only know if I’m any
good if I’m exposed to the place. So I do
have that sort of personal challenge
aspect and it does excite me I have to
say. There is that side of me. Though I
don’t think I always particularly like it.”
His fascination with remote peoples led to
his series on medicine men and his trips
16
portraitsiberuttrek
as the first westerner to make contact
with tribes in New Guinea. Some of his
critics saw this as an ethically dubious
move. But he’s happy to defend the
expeditions,
“Both times I thought about it a bit.
It was way back in my career,” and he
speaks with an obvious sadness at seeing
whole belief systems collapsing and
cultures destroyed.
“We were in Papua New Guinea with
the Yaifo, and that was tragic. Gold
miners were moving into the area and I
was only one step ahead of them. And
the Yaifo were making little nests in the
trees for helicopters. It was difficult to
know what they were really thinking. But
they had heard that these helicopters
would come down and bring wealth to
them so they were trying to encourage
them.”
It must have been a terrifying experience
for these people?
17
portraitsiberuttrek incorporating writing

“I do like being with people

but in the end I sort of feel
I have to test myself. And
I’ve never understood why”
incorporating writing
“Well, the yaifo were looking forward to
it. Wow, wealth at last. It fitted in with a
lot of their belief system. The white man
bringing heavenly wealth. So they were
bewildered though excited. I’d like to
know what happened.”
“The problem with travel is
on a mass scale. We’re now
living in an age of mass
tourism and that is doing
an enormous amount of
environmental damage. But
societies and humans as a
whole have had to
investigate their
surroundings and the key is
reporting back”
He was especially struck by a young boy
of about twelve. “He was so keen and
excited by the world. I wonder what
happened to him for example. Was he
going to become a gold miner? Was he
going to retreat further into the forest? I
don’t know.”
So has he developed a favourite tribe? He
smiles reluctantly.
“I’ve tried not to. It’s terrible, like having
favourite nephews and nieces. But I can’t
help but particularly like the Mentawai in
Sumatra. They are heavily tattooed from
head to foot and they seem like hippies.
Their whole philosophy is to do with
harmony and balance. We would go out
hunting with them and they would talk to
the trees and say look, ‘we’re really, really
sorry for any harm as I run through the
forest trying to hunt’. They wanted to
keep the tree spirits happy. Then they’d
18
apologise to the monkeys who they were
going to hunt and say, ‘sorry, if I kill you.
Don’t worry, we’ll take your head and
decorate it beautifully and your soul can
live on in our house. Ok, you’ll lose your
flesh but don’t worry about it’. I make it
sound very silly, but there is this word
bajou, which means harmony. You have
to respect everything’s bajou, which is a
sort of radiating force. It was a lovely
philosophy and I found the people very
generous to me.
But then that could be said right across
the board, and I’ve found people aren’t
very different. So-called head hunters in
New Guinea are just as nice as everyone
else. They might be more
aggressive to an outsider. But deep down
you find the same range of the meek, the
mild, the horrible, the mean.”
With Green Taxes high on the current
political agenda, we’re perhaps more
aware than ever of how irresponsible our
travel can be. Has he ever felt the need
to justify his journeys as scientific
missions?
“No, not really. The problem with
travel is on a mass scale. We’re now
living in an age of mass tourism and that
is doing an enormous amount of
environmental damage. But societies and
humans as a whole have had to
investigate their surroundings and the
key is reporting back. I’m writing an
account, I’m making TV programmes and
so on. But the world is no longer a place
that we can just view as a playground. I
think we have to justify our travels now.
People have said to me oh, that is very
mean. Why shouldn’t we go on holidays,
and I don’t know quite what the answer
is. I’ve just come back a few days ago
from France, on holiday and I think it’s
continued page 21...
19 incorporating writing

“And the world has got

smaller. The journeys I
wanted to do when I was
little have sort of been
done. Or it’s getting to
the point where it’s silly
to hire a camel”

portraitsiberuttrek
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www.incorporatingwriting.co.uk
21
...continued from page 18
those journeys that are going to have to
be questioned in the future. But if we
stop going out to investigate the world
then I think we’re finished as a species
because part of the human condition is to
explore.”
So what of his own future plans then? At
the end of Into the Abyss, his most
recent book, he wrote that he felt “a
circle had been closed”. Does this bode
badly for fans of his work?
“I don’t know what it actually
means but I just felt it was right to write
that. I thought, I don’t want to say that
it’s the end to my travels. But I felt that I
had less need to go away. I think I will
still go away but I don’t think I will risk
my life so much. I’ve done a lot of risking
and it suddenly didn’t seem so necessary
anymore. It would be terrible if I didn’t
go anywhere because that would be the
end of my career. But that original drive I
was talking about, I think that has gone.
I love the idea of getting some camels,
going across a desert and just walking.
But I think that’s a feeling that we all
have, rather than this extra thing which
was almost manic. This desire to throw
myself against a place. And the world has
got smaller. The journeys I wanted to do
when I was little have sort of been done.
Or it’s getting to the point where it’s silly
to hire a camel. Maybe when I said the
circle had been closed it might be that
I’ve sorted a lot of the things out inside
myself. It might be that I’ve just grown
older at last, or grown up.”
I gesture at the small collection of
engagement cards on a table. “Yes, that’s
a whole new thing to explore. But I do
hope I’m not going to be tired and boring
and just sort of sit around. There is this
side to me that is the writer side, the
observer side, and there has always been
incorporating writing
a kind of friction between that and the
man of action. So I imagine I will do
something. I can’t imagine just sitting.
Maybe that means fiction. But that will
mean going off to the Congo or wherever,
to get the material.”
He couldn’t just sit there and make his
own imaginative journey?
“I like to think I have the skills now
as a writer to do imaginative leaps. More
to the point I suppose there is a
restlessness in me, still, I want to
experience these things. But I’m
fascinated by Steff Penney who just won
the Costa. It rather horrifies me that
someone could win a prize without having
been to the place they’re writing about. In
a way it’s sort of trickery isn’t it? I know
she’s not trying to trick anyone and I
don’t mean she’s a fraud at all. But it
worries me how we can all accept that
truth that isn’t a first hand truth. It
worries me about the human condition.
We can’t discern the difference.”
There’s a very long pause while he
drinks his tea, and I notice directly above
his head there is photograph of himself
and David Attenborough, with a desert
landscape in the background.
“Maybe I could do all of what I’ve
done simply from my armchair. What an
interesting thought. And what an
encouraging thought, really. Let me show
you these warrior shields I saved from
gold miners in Papua New Guinea.”
It seems unlikely he’ll be taking a total
trade on the camel for the pen, anytime
in the near future.
Sarah Hesketh is Deputy Editor (SE)/Interviews
for Incorporating Writing. Originally from East
Lancs she is now enduring the flat lands of Norfolk
and studying for an MA in creative writing at UEA.
incorporating writing
I used to have a most unhealthy
relationship with travel. Being away from
home was something extraordinary
because it rarely happened. In preparing
for travel, I chose to be a passive
participant. I browsed guidebooks written
by those who’d cleared a well worn out
path before me. In order to get the most
out of my experience, I looked for advice
about what attraction would be worth a
precious slice of my tiny time allotment
known as a vacation. I reread
descriptions, checked the weather and
calculated my odds: Would I feel fulfilled?
Would the effort to visit a particular place
be worth my time? A very unhealthy
relationship indeed.
While traveling, I tried to capture and
preserve the fleeting moments as they
ticked and flowed most uncapturably
together. By-products of this preservation
effort included: photographs of very often
photographed locations including my
head as proof of my effort and presence,
postcards sold where vacationers might
be inclined to visit (35 cents each or 4 for
22
Cubicle Escapee
Column by Sharon Sadle
a dollar and as unique as the messages I
wrote on the back) and on-the-go food
and the accompanying stomach aches.
My attempts were abridged, aborted,
slightly censored and absolutely lessened
the moments in which they occurred.
Vacation travel is about cramming a
whole lot of experience into a small space
of time. Every moment is precious and
each day must be filled to its utmost
capacity. This kind of travel is
compressed, frantic and the end result
must match expectations lest the whole
effort be remembered as a waste.
“The feeling is not so much
the wonder of seeing what
I’ve never seen before as
the forming of a series of
strong impressions”
I propose a more relaxed approach. Lots
more presence in all the little moments
and lots less effort attempting to capture
them. I love to gaze around and soak up
the smallest details: the mysteriously dim
lair behind an open restaurant door, local
yard decorating customs, the odd colors
of official vehicles. I like to smell these
things if I can, lie in the grass (yes, right
in the grass) in the sun and think about
them, fall asleep and wake up to strange
sounds. I invite the surroundings to
permeate me, carry me off to somewhere
I might need directions to get back from.
And it is then that I’m visited by that
most elusive feeling I now associated
with travel. The feeling is not so much
the wonder of seeing what I’ve never
seen before as the forming of a series of
strong impressions. Waking up in a
23
foreign landscape, the silhouettes and
shadows of which I’ve driven a good part
of the night through is as pleasantly
unfamiliar as it gets. No matter what my
time allotment, I’m infinitely more
enriched when I allow the time to pass
and get lost in the making of the
moment. My strongest recollections aren’t
jogged by photographs, but sometimes
reignite themselves, sparked by a smell,
a sound or a color. I’ve healed my
relationship with travel and think of it
now as a constant companion, whether
I’m on the move or not.
Sharon Sadle escaped her cubicle on september
22, 2005. she’s been traveling away from her
hometown in florida by car, north and west, ever
since. From the road, Sharon writes about coffee
with strikers, darts with bartenders, forays into
abandoned factories and contemplative discompo-
sure along the byways of the United States. Her
stash of socks totals 44 pairs.
incorporating writing
Pat Borthwick
Milner Place
Ian Parks
with foreword by
Esther Morgan
The Sea
£9 with free P&P
“All three poets are expert readers, the
audience so entranced they hardly make
a sound. It’s a pleasure that Incwriters,
through their imaginative sponsoring of
this recording, has allowed us to join with
them, gathered around the firelight of
their voices”
- Esther Morgan
The Sea CD brings together several live
events from an eight month tour that took
in Liverpool, Penrith, Manchester,
Bradford Book Festival, and Whitby. The
Sea captures the voices of and work of
Pat Borthwick, Ian Parks and Milner Place
before a live audience. The Sea CD is
approximately 50 minutes long. Taken
from The Sea Tour 2006.
Available at:
www.incwriters.co.uk
incorporating writing 24

Childe Harold’s Ticket to Ride

Article by Caroline Drennan

“Even more than many

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

Friends may have our best interests at proved an unprecedented success.

heart. Yet when John Cam Hobhouse
encouraged Lord Byron to burn his early “Byron was anything but a
journals and ensured that later memoirs
were destroyed after the poet’s passive observer; his views
unexpected death, apart from invaluable on war providing one of the
insight into Byron himself, Hobhouse
deprived the world of a wealth of acute many interruptions to
observations by a man much travelled for Harolde’s adventures”
his time. Fortunately, letters (and there
are many of them) that Byron wrote on
‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’ was not
his travels to his mother and selected
designed to be a travelogue but it has
friends remain as vivid, entertaining
many of the qualities of intriguing travel
records. And many of his poems give an
writing. The well off and educated, their
intense flavour of early nineteenth
travels curtailed by revolution and war,
century Europe, or an exotic near East,
delighted not just in Harold’s brooding
enhanced by Byron’s personal reflections
nature, but also in Byron’s engaging
on what he saw and experienced.
descriptions, the dramatic portrayal of
Portuguese Cintra as a ‘glorious Eden’:
Even more than many restless young
men, Byron found potential dangers
The tender azure of the unruffled deep,
exciting rather than daunting. If the
The orange tints that gild the greenest
direct route across Europe were barred in
bough,
1809, as a consequence of the war with
The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,
France, then the boat to Constantinople
The vine on high,the willow branch below,
would do. And if the voyager missed the
Mix’d in one mighty scene, with varied
boat, as Byron did, a change in the
beauty glow.
itinerary was no great hardship. Boarding
a ship to Lisbon, for the best part of two
Or a more gentle note on moonlight, ‘How
years he directed his Grand Tour through
softly on the Spanish shore she plays/
Portugal and Spain to Gibraltar, sailing
Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest
from there to Malta and then on to
brown.’
Greece and Turkey. En route, Byron’s
travelling ‘musts’ were often suggested
Readers enjoyed the taste of unfamiliar
by his extensive reading. If the classical
cultures, ‘the glittering minarets of
hero, Leander, could swim the Hellespont,
Tepalen’, ‘the wild Albanian’s ‘shawl-girt
then so could Byron, at least out if not
head and ornamented gun’ or extracts
back as well, a 70 minute achievement of
from Albanese songs. A brief reminder of
which he had a right to be proud.
English Sunday pleasures is followed by a
Alongside his journals, Byron set out to
breathtaking account of Spanish
produce an ambitious work. The poem he
bullfighting from stirring start to gory
began on his travels was a lengthy
conclusion:
romance, two full cantos of Spenserian
stanzas peppered with archaisms,
‘Foil’d, bleeding, breathless, furious to the
charting the adventures across Europe of
last,
one disaffected ‘Childe Harold’. From a
Full in the centre stands the bull at bay,
twenty first century perspective, the work
………………………………………
seems an unlikely best seller but it
incorporating writing
And now the Matadores around him play,
Shake the red cloak, and poise the ready
brand:
Once more through all he bursts his
thundering way –
Vain rage! The mantle quits the conynge
hand,
Wraps his fierce eye – ’tis past – he sinks
upon the sand!’
Although, he had chosen a ‘safe’ passage
for the time, Byron did not escape the
impact of war. Like any modern
commentator, he draws our attention to
its effect on the landscape, citing a
Spanish rustic’s fear that his vineyard will
be ‘blasted’ and presenting the fortified
Sierra Morena,
‘…far as mortal eye can compass sight,
The mountain-howitzer, the broken road,
The bristling palisade, the fosse
o’erflow’d,
The stationed bands, the never vacant
watch…’
Byron was anything but a passive
observer; his views on war providing one
of the many interruptions to Harolde’s
adventures. And where the structure of
the poem might have been compromised,
he contributes further information,
explanation or comment in the form of
appended notes. One memorable
example is his frank discussion of the
‘dastardly devastation’ caused by Lord
Elgin and others through the removal of
relics from Greece.
Skills Byron honed on this first excursion
abroad were well polished by the time he
came to write the third canto of ‘Childe
Harold’ in 1816. Europe may have been
more peaceful, but Byron was in a state
of turmoil, taking on the role of exile,
driven away by the troubles and rumours
surrounding his divorce, and by serious
26
financial considerations. Byron’s
identification with his eponymous hero is
more obvious now and most of the poem
is written in the first person, travel
writing as confession; the itinerary is
closely bound up with Byron’s emotional
state, and philosophical digressions
outweigh his description of the sights. It
is fitting that Harolde’s travels begin on
‘this place of skulls/the grave of France,
the deadly Waterloo,’ a year after the
crucial battle took place. Later Byron is in
fine frame of mind to be soothed by
‘Clear, placid’ Lake Geneva or to revel in
the sublime drama of a sudden alpine
storm,
‘How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric
sea,
And the big rain comes dancing to the
earth!
And now again ‘tis black, - and now, the
glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its
mountain-mirth…’
The publication of the third canto of
‘Childe Harold’ began a relatively settled
period in Italy. Here Byron produced
‘Beppo’, a poem very different in tone
and scope from ‘Childe Harold’, comic,
much more domestic, and direct. Byron
clearly delighted in the differences he
found between Italian and English food,
language, women and, inevitably,
weather. Tips to travellers from England
include instructions to carry a good
supply of sauces, ‘Ketchup, Soy, Chili-
vinegar and Harvey/Or by the lord! A
Lent will well nigh starve ye.’ If the
Italian language ‘…melts like kisses from
a female mouth/And sounds as if it
should be writ on satin,’ it is not
surprising that the women also appeal:
‘From the rich peasant-cheek of ruddy
bronze,
27 incorporating writing

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

England’s ‘chilly women’ with their

‘northern whistling, grunting, guttural’
could not possibly compete.

“Tips to travellers from

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

Gemma Cumming
29 incorporating writing

Lisha Aquino Rooney

incorporating writing 30

Lisha Aquino Rooney

31 incorporating writing

Gemma Cumming graduated in 2006

from Loughborough University School of
Art and Design with a BA in Fine Art. She
has since been in numerous exhibitions
and sold work to public collections. Her
work deals with notions of anticipation
and tourism, utilising tourist images to
create giant painted postcards with an
ominous twist.
incorporating writing
“So our tube stopped in the tunnel
because the police were investigating
some sort of incident, and there’s this
guy who’s been cutting up pieces of
plaster with a pair of scissors and sticking
them all over himself, and suddenly he
starts kicking off in the carriage. I mean,
you don’t mind the odd weirdo on the
tube but when he’s waving a pair of
scissors around…”
Daljit Nagra is an incredibly nice man.
Exuberant, chatty, full of energy about his
writing, his job as a teacher in a Jewish
School and how helpful and enthusiastic
everyone has been about his first
collection. Perhaps I should’ve known
what to expect from the book. Look We
Have Coming to Dover! is a lively volume,
full of energetic and often colliding
languages which seek to give an
impression of the Indian experience of
Britain.
32
Daljit Nagra
Interview by Sarah Hesketh
© Sarah Lee
So how does a first time writer get Faber,
arguably Britain’s most prestigious poetry
publisher, to publish a first collection?
He grins, “Well, it’s quite simple really.
You submit a manuscript and then you
sweat it out for a year and a half waiting
to get some sort of response. It was just
this incredible, wonderful surprise.”
All the publicity surrounding the book
gives the impression that Nagra has just
exploded onto the scene. In fact, he was
already a bit of a regular on the reading
circuit following the publication of a
pamphlet with Smith/Doorstop in 2003,
and the title poem of this book won the
Forward Prize in 2004. So why the delay
in getting a collection out?
“Well, I’d more or less finished up but it
still wasn’t right. Even after Faber took it
I was still working on pieces that needed
it and they were really supportive. One of
the first things I said to Paul Keegan
(Faber’s editor) was, you’re
Lisha not expecting
Aquino Rooney
33
me to change any of the ways I write or
the stupidities of the style or the jokes
and he said no, it’s fine. I’m very happy
with it the way it is. I think I had this
kind of inner fear that if you go to a big
publishing house they’re going to try and
dilute your style into a house style. But I
think that the good thing about Faber’s
poetry is that there isn’t really a house
style.”
“After a few abortive
attempts at writing in his
first year of university, he
gave up. ‘I just didn’t have
the confidence. I thought
you’d have to be really
clever, really
knowledgeable and even
when I started writing it
was just to fulfil a need’”
Nagra was born in West London, “Just off
the terminal runways really”, to parents
who had left India, spurred on by British
advertising to Sikhs-Punjabis to come
and fill the post-war demand for labour:
“Because Sikhs had been pretty good in
the mutiny. They were seen as fighters
and sturdy, steadfast people so they’d be
good in factories on these 24 hour
production lines.”
His father arrived with a relatively good
grasp of English. In fact, his dad was a
champion wrestler, “and he could’ve gone
to the olympics and stuff but he never
did, and I think because of the wrestling
he got into college. He got a scholarship.
But I don’t know how much work he did.
He was probably one of these macho
types just lording it.”
incorporating writing
But his mum was completely illiterate.
“She went to school for half a day when
she was about five or six. Then their
fields flooded and she never went to
school again. She came from a real point
of poverty, but my dad had a bit more
money, so they could’ve stayed in India
and had quite a comfortable lifestyle. But
like other people my dad was quite
tempted by the idea of earning a lot more
money in England and then taking it back
home.”
Many of the poems in the collection deal
with individuals who are struggling to find
a place in British society, whilst also
clashing with the older, Indian immigrant
community. But his own experience of
growing up in white, West London doesn’t
appear to have been too traumatic.
“It was a proper white, working class
area. And at the time we were one of two
Asian families in the area. But I did enjoy
it. It was quite rough and ready and you
had to watch yourself but it was ok. Then
when I was sixteen my parents bought a
shop in Sheffield and that was a difficult
time because I really missed my friends
and it was hard settling in to a new
culture. In Sheffield people were so
resentful of southerners. I went to a very
nice middle class school and it was
terrifying. These kids were super-
educated and I just had a handful of
CSE’s. It was frightening the way these
kids were talking. It was like watching
the nine o’clock news. We did Roald
Dahl’s tales of the unexpected for our
CSE English Literature. I didn’t know
anything about Shakespeare.”
After a few abortive attempts at writing
in his first year of university, he gave up.
“I just didn’t have the confidence. I
thought you’d have to be really clever,
really knowledgeable and even when I
started writing it was just to fulfil a
incorporating writing 34

need.” It took a late discovery of

contemporary poetry to spur him back
into writing.

“I think traditional lyric poetry just didn’t

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

So finding himself the new voice of the

Indian community in Britain, has he
visited India often?

He laughs. “I went when I was about five Red Ink 2

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

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Sarah Hesketh is Deputy Editor (SE)/Interviews
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35
“This is a small island.
Man, we just clinging so we
don’t fall off.”
Levy won several awards for this
novel, principally the Whitbread Book of
the Year and the Orange Prize for Fiction,
and so I approached the book with
general suspicion. Many books that win
such glittering literary prizes, more often
than not, imbue a reaction of
disappointment in me, mainly because
one goes to the book with too many
expectations of its greatness. However,
Levy deserves the praise that has been
generously metered out, for this truly is a
sublime work of fiction. Andrea Levy is a
incorporating writing
Recommended Read
Small Island
Andrea Levy
Review Books, 2004
£7.99
ISBN 0 7553 2565 6
531pp
rare thing, an award winner that gave me
joy and not a general sense of reluctant
displeasure.
Told from the perspectives of four very
different and equally flawed characters,
Levy’s narrative unfolds around the
aftermath of the Second World War in
1948, and the personally significant years
leading up to it for each of her principal
characters. Coming over to Britain on the
SS Windrush, Small Island’s most likeable
character, Gilbert Joseph, arrives in
Britain with the misguided hope that the
“Mother Country”, for whom he fought
with pride in the RAF during the War, will
give him the opportunities to study law
and live the life he was promised upon his
demob - everything that the Small Island
of the title, Jamaica, cannot give him.
Throughout the narrative we follow the
undiluted racism that Gilbert has to
endure as he strives to make a life for
himself, with great dignity, often making
the prose very uncomfortable and
challenging to read, not least because
such attitudes are still prevalent in today’s
society. When Gilbert reaches a low, his
inherent optimism faltering, Levy drives
home this point succinctly. “What a
forlorn desire to seek indifference.” We
see that Gilbert has only left one small
island for another.
And yet Levy never lets the story purely
become a story about racism, never lets
the narrative be dictated by issues or
incorporating writing 36

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

Humanity is upon every page. It is in the

disappointment felt by each of the
characters as their hopes are steadily
quashed in the aftermath of war. It is in
each character’s sense of identity, largely
shaped by the communities in which they
37
After is deceptive: some poems you
might skim as easy narrative, but later
poems trip you up; when you go back
and read the ‘simple’ poems over again
you realize that they weren’t so simple
after all. I feel that I could talk about
each of the poems in here endlessly, as
there’s nothing that’s slack or ‘filler’.
Hirshfield is astute, profound, and yet
accessible.
After suggests after someone is gone,
and there is a tone of loss, but Hirshfield
is not a confessional poet. It is as though
the loss has left a space around her
through which she sees with remarkable
clarity:
A small anchovy gleam
incorporating writing
After
Jane Hirshfield
Bloodaxe, 2006
£8.95
ISBN 978-0060779160
95pp
leaving the upturned pot in the dish
rack
after the moon has wandered out of
the window.
This poem (After Long Silence) contains a
line that seems to be the poet’s
instruction to herself, ‘The untranslatable
thought must be the most precise.’ She is
saying ‘what cannot be said I will put into
words, and I must do so with absolute
accuracy and care.’
“It seems a stark place to
be, but also quite
wonderful”
This is a form of contemplation, and
indeed she has various translation credits
of a spiritual nature in her
Acknowledgements. Some of her poems,
particularly a group she calls ‘pebbles’
have the resonance of haiku or tanka:
The lake scarlets
the same instant as the maple.
Let others try to say this is not
passion. (Maple)
In a darker humour she writes ‘Ecstasy’:
Czechoslovakia, 1933
The actress was only seventeen,
continued page 39...
39
...continued from page 37
and so the director arranged
to have her pricked lightly with pins
at the needed moments.
Her poem ‘Theology’ tells the story of a
friend, whose rescue dog is ill with
distemper and ‘crawled under the porch
to die’. Hirshfield’s friend crawled after,
‘pulled her out, said, ‘No!’
As if it were just a simple matter of
training.
The coy-dog, startled, obeyed.
Now trots out to greet my car when
I come to visit.
The poem could end here, but Hirschfield
returns to its beginning where she has
observed that ‘If flies did not hurry
themselves to the window/ they’d still die
somewhere.’ Now, after the dog story,
she says ‘Only a firefly’s evening blinking
outside the window,/ this miraculous
story, but everyone hurries to believe it.’
It’s a shock for the reader that she might
be ‘telling stories’, but the neatness of the
conclusion is even darker: re-using the
flies, the window and the choice of verb
from the opening of the poem leave an
echo that we all die sometime.
Hirshfield also presents a type of poem
she calls an ‘assay’; in chemistry you
assay a substance to find out what it is
made of. Some of her ‘assays’ are on
tangible subjects – sky, tears, termites –
but others are not – hope, ‘of’, hesitation.
An early assay on ‘judgement’ plays with
these variations:
You are not an artichoke, not a
piano, or cat –
not objectively present at all –
and what of you a cat possesses is
essential but narrow:
incorporating writing
to know if the distance between two
things can be leapt.
The reader has to stay focused here on
the word ‘judgement’ (which is the ‘you’)
or you might miss that Hirshfield is
talking about the cat’s sense of judgment.
Later she writes of the severity of
judgement, ‘weighing without pity your
own worth’, and its tenderness, ‘I have
seen you carry a fate to its end as softly
as a retriever/ carries the quail.’ She
concludes with a meditation on aesthetic
judgement, a stripping away of the need
to turn things (the dawn) into reflections
of humanity.
when I have erased you from me
entirely,
disrobed of your measuring
adjectives….
When the word is horsefly, coal
barge, and the dawn the colour of
winter
butter –
not beautiful, not cold, only the
colour of butter –
then perhaps I will love you.
It seems a stark place to be, but also
quite wonderful. Cath Nichols
incorporating writing
Margaret Atwood proves once again,
that she is still well and truly on top of
her game with this collection of stories,
which we are told, is ‘almost a novel … or
a novel broken up into eleven stories.’
The award-winning Canadian writer,
whose career has spanned the decades,
has more than thirty works to her name
including a Booker Prize for her 2000
novel, The Blind Assassin. She has
certainly not rested on her laurels with
this, her latest in a long list of intensely
insightful books.
The title, Atwood acknowledges in her
notes at the end of the book, was
borrowed from Graeme Gibson who, in
1996 was working on a book of the same
title when he decided to stop writing
40
Moral Disorder
Margaret Atwood
Bloomsbury
£15.99
257pp
novels. Gibson, a writer and naturalist is
also Atwood’s husband. This very personal
borrowing seems to add even more
weight to the body of work, which
explores relationships between parents
and children, husbands and wives, sisters,
as well as humanity’s relationship with
narrative.
“Atwood’s ability to draw
out the insecurities and
fears of childhood from her
characters’ reminiscences
brings the reader
utterly and totally into
another world”
Atwood has the ability to draw you into a
situation and see it perfectly from the
narrator’s viewpoint. She mixes the
deeply emotional with the realistic
actuality of the here-and-now. Spanning
the decades we dip into the 30s, the 50s,
60s, 70s and the present-day.
The first story, ‘The Bad News’ hones in
on an aging couple, who live in fear of the
outside world, and then switches rather
inexplicably to an ancient world. This, I
felt was an unsettling start, but with the
second story, ‘The Art of Cooking and
Serving’ we are into the acute writing and
rich storytelling of which Atwood excels.
Atwood’s ability to draw out the
insecurities and fears of childhood from
41
her characters’ reminiscences brings the
reader utterly and totally into another
world. The main character’s relationship
with her sister is unsentimentally drawn,
and very visual. In fact, Atwood’s ability
to engage with all our senses means the
shift to her world is utterly controlled and
all-encompassing.
In ‘The Last Duchess’, the reader is
brought back into perhaps his or her own
fond memories of a favourite, pivotal
teacher, and we are reminded about those
familiar surroundings that surely form
strong points of references for most of us.
“The classroom was too hot; it was filled
with a vibration, the vibration of its
newness – the blond wood of its curved,
modern metal-framed desks, the
greenness of its blackboards, the faint
humming of its fluorescent lights, which
seemed to hum even when they were
turned off.”
She describes acutely the trepidation of a
student, wondering if she will be called on
in class; “At such times my mouth would
fill with words, too many of them, a
glutinous pudding of syllables I would
have to mould into speech while Miss
Bessie’s ironic narrowed eyes beamed
their message at me: You can do better
than that.”
Clearly, though, Atwood is doing a lot of
thinking about the ageing process. There
is a sense of the aching loss of old age
both for those experiencing it, and for
loved ones watching it happen. Several of
her stories incorporate this theme. In ‘The
Boys at the Lab’, it is daughter dealing
with her dying mother who finds it is her
‘function’ to relate back the stories of her
mother’s life. “The stories she most wants
to hear are about herself, herself when
younger; herself when much younger. She
smiles at those; on occasion she might
incorporating writing
even join in. She’s no longer voluble, she
can’t carry a plot, not all by herself…” A
further example lies in ‘The Labrador
Fiasco’ wherein the daughter bears
witness to her father’s demise; “I’ve tried
recordings of bird songs, but he doesn’t
like them: they remind him that there’s
something he once knew, but can’t
remember. Stories are no good, not even
short ones, because by the time you get
to the second page he’s forgotten the
beginning. Where are we without our
plots?” Where indeed? Atwood draws a
very clear correlation between the
necessity for stories, for beginnings,
middles and endings, for memories, as
much as for the more commonly agreed
necessities of life; water, oxygen etc. So
here, her stories – which seem so
personal, one can’t help suspecting –
partly autobiographical, include not only
memories, not only dwellings of the pain
of life, but also on our reliance as a
species, on narrative.
This is a book that is easy to pick up and
become engrossed in, but very difficult to
put down. Even when you do, the
characters stay with you, almost like
memories from your own life. Atwood has
the ability to move around the genres of
writing with the skill of a chameleon, but
what she retains utterly is her ability to
access her characters’ deeply held
emotions, and complete understanding of
what makes them unique. A witty,
intelligent, often beautiful and lyrical
read, Moral Disorder is a book for Atwood
lovers, and those new to her writing alike.
Katherine Blair
incorporating writing 42

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

“The book excels at

Although a relatively short work, ‘Black
Dogs’ covers wide issues and themes as
universal than McEwan’s more celebrated
longer novels, such as ‘Enduring Love’
and ‘Atonement’. It is no surprise that it
has previously been shortlisted for the
Booker, despite its brevity.
The narrative is, on the face of it, very
simple – the story of a marriage, centring
on an incident in France in 1947.
However, the book manages to
encompass Western sentiment towards
the Marxist movement since the Second
World War, leading up to the fall of the
Berlin Wall. Flashback alternates with
recent times, as if the past and present
are constantly trying to make sense of
describing defining
moments”
McEwan’s narrator, Jeremy, is unusual
and endearing. Orphaned early in life
(though in circumstances never fully
explained), he has a pathetic fondness for
the parents of friends and
contemporaries, eventually finding his
true surrogates in his in-laws, Bernard
and June Tremaine. Through these two
contrasting characters, McEwan
juxtaposes the life of the spirit (espoused
by June) with the life of the intellect (to
which Bernard clings) - mysticism versus
logic. In the end, it seems that neither
character fully succeeds on their chosen
path and what matters more is the
exploration en route. Their daughter,
Jenny, comes close to representing a
43
compromise, but is under-developed as a
character, being one of the few
disappointments of the book.
Central to all this, is the symbolism of the
black dogs of the title. On one level,
these are the Gestapo dogs of the story.
McEwan maintains the intrigue over these
animals until almost the end. The
denouement is given but it is left to the
reader to elect to believe the exact details
or not (yet another choice between the
fantastical and the logical). Mythological
associations are also evoked, from
Cerberus onwards and down the long line
of hellhounds, Baskervalian and
otherwise. However, the real black dog at
the centre of the story is the more
colloquial one. Churchill famously
referred to depression as his ‘black dog’,
a phrase still present in many localities.
In the novel, June also sees it as such
and goes on to equate two black dogs
with a more general malaise in society
i.e. the human condition. However, she
goes further in her own personal
encounter with such animals and
paradoxically finds them to be a proof of
evil, leading to proof of God.
The book excels at describing defining
moments, one of the most effective being
the confrontation between skinhead-
mentality German youths and a die-hard
communist waving a red flag (though his
dark skin and immigrant origins seem the
real catalyst for the violence that
ensues). Drawing on time spent in
Germany as a child, McEwan evokes the
Berlin of the late 80s as vividly as he did
that of the post-war era in his earlier
work, ‘The Innocent’. One constant
theme is how to come to terms with
history, which is emphasised through the
description of a visit to a Nazi death
camp. As Bernard is forced at one point
to postulate, ‘…what possible good could
incorporating writing
come of a Europe covered in this dust,
these spores, when forgetting would be
inhuman and dangerous, and
remembering a constant torture?’
However, ultimately it is the image of the
black dogs and how each character (not
to mention each reader) views them,
which dominates the novel. The writer’s
sympathies remain with June’s conclusion
that ‘the work we have to do is with
ourselves, if we’re ever going to be at
peace’.
All in all, this is a fascinating novel,
despite being superficially narrow in
scope. Its simplicity and depth are
testimony to how, in fiction, less can so
often be more. Helen Shay
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.
Katherine Blair, originally from Canada is a
former CBC television reporter, ITV television
producer, and now a university lecturer in York,
UK. She is also an unpublished novelist.
Cath Nichols’ publications include Tales of Boy
Nancy (Driftwood, 2005) and the forth-coming My
Glamorous Assistant (Headland, 2007). She has
been the recipient of several Arts Council of
England awards.
Helen Shay writes in various forms and performs
poetry, with drama staged at the Fringe/small
theatres. She recently completed a fantasy novel
for a creative writing MA, gaining a distinction.
incorporating writing
Steinbeck’s Travelogue of War
It’s a reflection on the state of the
world that any poetry you stumble across
in the course of a day is most likely to be
contained in a pop song. Similarly, the
most common source of travel writing if
you’re not specifically looking for it is in
war journalism.
In one respect, it’s little surprise. The
word ‘travel’ arrives in English from the
Old French ‘travailler’, which is familiar to
us from school French lessons as the verb
‘to work’. It seems that the often-scoffed
complaint of holiday show presenters,
that it really is hard work, may actually
have something in it.
In June 1943 – between Of Mice and Men
(1937) and East of Eden (1952) – John
Steinbeck went to war. Not in an Elvis-
Presley-one-of-the-boys way, but to do
what he knew best, to write. He packed
up his ability to pay attention and to get
44
Article by Claire Boot
Photographs by Andrew Oldham
it down in words and fell in step with the
American troops in Britain, North Africa
and Italy. One can’t quite imagine Zadie
Smith volunteering for a tour of duty in
Afghanistan or Iain Banks signing up for
Iraq, but Steinbeck wished to serve his
country in a conflict that, while no less
global than today’s, was at least more
defined in the terms, let alone the
purpose, of engagement.
The result, a series of dispatches for the
New York Herald Tribune, is collected in
Once There Was a War, published in
1958. It’s a curious cross of literature
meets travel writing meets war reportage.
Steinbeck’s spare and humane prose
features sunny islands and sandy
beaches, candlelit churches and historic
cities, English castles and Italian bars. He
reflects on the souvenir-hunting instinct
of his fellow countrymen abroad; he
makes wry observations about getting on
with the locals.
45 incorporating writing

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

among camels and horse-drawn cars” and

“[r]arely is one whole conversation
carried out in just one language.”

Steinbeck completes his collection with

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

Paradoxically, there’s something

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

writing inversion
continues, for
Steinbeck finds
himself at
locations that
should be envied
holiday
destinations yet”
incorporating writing
SAY IT LOUD: POEMS ABOUT JAMES BROWN
Reply to: mweems45@sbcglobal.net , and
tse@case.edu
Deadline: December 31, 2007
Edited by: Mary E. Weems, and Thomas Sayers
Ellis. We grew up on James Brown’s hit me! When
he danced every young Black man wanted to
move, groove and look like him. Mr. Brown wasn’t
called the hardest workingman in show business
because he wasn’t. Experiencing a James Brown
show was like getting your favorite soul food
twice, plus desert. His songs, like black power
fists you could be proud of and move to at the
same time. When Mr. Brown sang make it funky
we sweated even in the wintertime. Losing him
was like losing somebody in our family.
This is a shout out for poems about the impact
James Brown had on our lives. Poems that will
help people remember, honor, and celebrate
his legacy. Don’t be left in a cold sweat, send us
your old and new James Brown poems today.
Submission Guidelines:
3-5 Unpublished and/or published poems with
acknowledgement
included.
No longer than 73 lines
Deadline: December 31, 2007 (Receipt not
postmark)
Send hard copies along with a Word Document
and short bio on a CD to:
Dr. Mary E. Weems
English Department
John Carroll University
20700 North Park Blvd.
University Hts., Ohio 44118
Send via e-mail attachment (Word Documents
Only) to: mweems45@sbcglobal.net , and
tse@case.edu
WHEREVER WE BURY OUR BONES: AN
ANTHOLOGY OF DEATH AND DIASPORA
Deadline: June 1, 2007
Reply to: keimiller@gmail.com
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
As the migrant travels from one home to another,
and then maybe another, she realizes home is
complicated, tentative, fragile, multiple. Yet, from
birth she has been searching for rootedness, a
portion of earth to belong to completely. She
thinks about where she was born; she thinks
about where she now lives. While the buried navel
48
Industry News and
Opportunities
string has arguably been the strongest symbol
for ‘rootedness’, I would like to suggest, however
morbidly, that our buried bones is another one to
consider. The question of death, and the where of
it, often brings into focus that other old traumatic
question: where de hell is home? So Grace
Nichols’ Fat Black Woman ”wants a brilliant
tropical death/ not a cold sojourn/ in some North
Europe far/forlorn”. And Evan Jones’ Banana Man
laments, “Gyal, I’m tellin’ you, I’m tired for true/
Tired of Englan’, tired o’ you/ I can’t go back to
Jamaica now/ But I want to die there anyhow.”
This new anthology, ‘Wherever We Bury Our
Bones’, is seeking work by writers working at the
very top of their craft. We are interested in fiction,
personal essays, and poems that navigate close to
or fully inhabit the broad question of: how does
the migrant face death? Writers and stories
included in the final anthology will hopefully
represent the widest range of peoples and
diasporas.
Prose submissions should be no more than 6000
words. Poetry can be of any length.
Submissions should be emailed before the
deadline of June 1, 2007 to the editor Kei Miller at
keimiller@gmail.com . Emails should have
‘Anthology Submission’ in the subject and include
a brief bio. Kei Miller is editor of the anthology,
New Caribbean Poetry. He is also the author of
the Fear of Stones, shortlisted for the 2007
Commonwealth First Book Prize, and the poetry
collection Kingdom of Empty Bellies.
Cartwright Hall Art Gallery , Lister Park ,
Bradford BD9 4NS
The Agony and the Ecstasy 3 February – 6 May
2007
This is our fabulous Spring exhibition devoted to
the history of shoes; from ancient sandals to the
latest Manolo Blahnik’s and Jimmy Choos, via
amazing artist designed pieces and impossible
heels. Short Shoe Story; a writing competition on
the theme of shoes will encourage writers to
explore in the most creative way their thoughts,
feelings and fantasies about shoes – the prize is
the ultimate treat; an exquisitely fashioned, life-
size shoe made entirely of chocolate by the artist
Prudence Emma Staite; the partner to the shoe in
the exhibition.
49
Stories must be no more than 200 words and
must have shoes either particular or general as
their starting point. We hope to post a selection of
entries on the website for the Agony and the
Ecstasy exhibition which is a link to Cartwright
Hall’s own website at www.bradfordmuseums.org.
Visit the show for inspiration
Competition rules:
Entries must be original and not previously
published, self published, published on any
website or broadcast.
Entries must not show the name and address of
the entrant – these must be included on a
separate piece of paper, or email attachment.
Worldwide copyright remains with the author, but
Cartwright Hall Art Gallery will have the
unrestricted right to publish a selection of entries
on the Bradford Museums website.
Entries should be submitted by 9am. Monday 23
April.
Entrants must be over the age of 18.
Judge: Joolz Denby. Joolz has been a professional
writer, spoken word artist, photographer and
illustrative artist for over twenty-six years.
Submissions by email or hard copy to: Suzanne
Rennie at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery or
Suzanne.rennie@bradford.gov.uk
NEW BBC SITE CELEBRATES LITERATURE,
CINEMA AND OTHER ARTS IN AFRICA
AND THE DIASPORA
http://www.bbc.co.uk/africabeyond
London, UK, 6 March 2007 - the BBC launches
the new website Africa Beyond www.bbc.co.uk/
africabeyond celebrating African arts in the UK.
Africa Beyond casts its net right across the
African continent to illustrate the diverse and
complex cultures of the 54 African nations and the
Diaspora - in cinema, television, photography,
literature, music, architecture, visual art, history,
craft, design, performing arts, workshops and
debate.
The website will be a hub for information,
discussion and exploration of African arts, beyond
the geographical borders of the continent, and
beyond any preconceptions about Africa and its
culture. The new site brings under its wing the
BBC’s existing music website Africa on your
Street, with its interviews, features and CD
reviews covering everything from Afrobeat to
Hiplife to Mbalax, plus gig listings from
across the UK. Coinciding with Ghana’s 50th year
of independence there will be a special focus on
Ghana’s impact on the UK arts scene over the
incorporating writing
past 50 years. DJ and music promoter Rita Ray
kicks off the new website with her preview of
Ghana-related events this year. There’s an
interview with playwright Ama Ata Aidoo whose
classic play Dilemma of a Ghost will be revived in
London later in the year. You can browse a
photo gallery of Max Milligan’s extraordinary
images of Ghana and read about innovative
Ghanaian company Theatre for Change. Coming
soon will be features on Ghana’s up-and-coming
new writers, and more Ghanaian music from old-
style highlife to reggae to hiplife.
Tessa Watt, programme director, Africa Beyond
says: “Our aim is to keep a high profile for African
arts through the website and other media, and
through lively public events. We are working with
as many partners as possible to maintain the links
between mainstream and grassroots
organisations, to build a network of support for
African arts in the UK and to keep African culture
in a central position within the modern cultural
landscape in the UK.”
Africa Beyond carries on the BBC’s African web
coverage where the Africa 05 festival left off.
Africa 05 left its mark with many high profile
events such as Africa Remix at the South Bank,
Back to Black at the Whitechapel Gallery and
Africa Live at the British Museum, and even
incorporating commercial partners such as Time
Out, Starbucks and Borders and Books Etc. David
Lammy, minister for Art and Culture says: “As a
legacy, the Africa Beyond programme could, and
should, form a strong platform for maintaining
and supporting these art forms in the UK, and
encouraging a broad range of audiences to
recognise the global impact of African cultural
expression.”
The Africa Beyond programme will also include
live events, including the Word from Africa
festival, a week long celebration of African
languages which launches on 2 June with an
event at the British Museum featuring musicians,
poets and storytellers in the galleries and theatre
halls. Further events will be happening in African
restaurants around London. Africa Beyond is
supported by the BBC and Arts Council with other
core partners including inIVA (Institute for
International Visual Arts), the British Museum and
South Bank Centre. http://www.bbc.co.uk/
africabeyond. For more information please contact
Ilka Schlockermann on 079 3206
6624 or email ilka@ilkamedia.com.
incorporating writing
Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize
2007/8
Submissions are invited from publishers or
individual poets for The Jerwood Aldeburgh First
Collection prize, 2007/8. This annual prize is
awarded to the author of what in the opinion of
the judges is the best first full collection of poetry
published in Great Britain and Eire in the
preceding year. This year the judges will be Gillian
Allnutt, Vicki Feaver and Michael Laskey (Chair).
The winner will be announced at the 19th
Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, which takes place 2 – 4
November 2007. S/he will receive a cheque for
£3,000, a week of paid ‘protected’ writing time
and a fee-paying invitation to read at the
Aldeburgh Poetry Festival 2008. Any first
collection of at least 40 pages published in Great
Britain , Northern Ireland or the Republic of
Ireland between 1st August 2006 and 31st July
2007 is eligible. To enter send three bound or
proof copies with a note of the date of publication
by 31st July 2007 to: Jerwood Aldeburgh First
Collection Prize, The Cut, 9 New Cut, Halesworth,
Suffolk IP19 8BY.
The Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize is
organised by The Poetry Trust with funding from
the Jerwood Charitable Foundation. The prize was
established in 1989. Recent previous winners
include Collette Bryce, Nick Laird and Henry
Shukman.
Helen Mitchell
Development and Communication
The Poetry Trust
t. 01886 835950 / 01603 454016
e. hmitchell@thepoetrytrust.org
www.thepoetrytrust.org
GOING DOWN SWINGING #25: CALL FOR
POETS
Reply to: submissions@goingdownswinging.org.au
Going Down Swinging #25: a spoken word
extravaganza. Going Down Swinging (GDS) is an
Australian literary magazine featuring fiction,
poetry, comics and spoken word. It’s been
publishing since 1980 to widespread acclaim and
is seeking previously unreleased material for it’s
25th issue—a double CD of spoken word
from Australia and around the world.
WE WANT YOUR SUBMISSIONS! … We love all
sorts of spoken word, be it live recordings, home
recordings, with music, without, sound poetry … www.britishcouncil.org/seminars-arts-0702.htm
whatever it is you do. Ideally we are seeking to
publish previously unreleased material, but if your
50
recording has had a very limited release we will
consider it.
For more info visit: http://
www.goingdownswinging.org.au
submissions.htm.
You may email MP3s or questions to
submissions@goingdownswinging.org.au.
Submissions close on April 1
2007. We can pay international performers a
small fee for every work published (AUS$50–
$100), in addition to two free copies of the
magazine. Contributors must fill in a submission
cover sheet, which you can download from the
website.
New free content has just been added to
www.route-online.com
Skin - Editor Crista Ermiya
A mixture of fiction and non-fiction stories are to
be found in this new byteback book edited by
Crista Ermiya on the theme of skin. In her
introduction Crista describes skin as ‘a border
frontier, the porous barrier between what’s on the
outside and the inside; appearance and reality.’
New Gallery To complement the skin collection,
we have also posted a photo gallery generated by
Melanie Ashby; twenty-seven startling portraits
that intimately captures the body’s surface.
CAMBRIDGE SEMINAR ON CONTEMPORARY
LITERATURE
Reply to:
britishcouncil.seminars@britishcouncil.org
7 - 13 July 2007
The British Council’s Cambridge Seminar on
contemporary literature has influenced discussion,
performance and debate of literature for 30 years.
The Seminar brings together an impressive group
of contemporary British writers and critics –
including well-known names and the new
generation - and offers delegates an unrivalled
and unforgettable literary experience consisting of
a lively mix of talks, panel discussions. The event
is fully residential and is organised by British
Council Seminars and the Literature Department.
The 2007 programme is at present under
development and will feature
many well known, as well as innovatory new
names among prose writers,
poets and critics. For further details, including fee
information please go to
Or e-mail
britishcouncil.seminars@britishcouncil.org