Incorporating Writing Issue Vol 4

incorporating writing
Issue 5 Vol 4 CHAPTER & VERSE @ the Bluecoat
A Secret Passion
John McAuliffe reveals his own
ATaTalk exclusively to us about their work
Jim Crace Erwin James
Chapter & Verse Literature Festival 08 - SPECIAL
Incorporating Writing
(ISSN 1743-0380)
Contents
Editorial Chapter & Verse Interviews Jim Crace
Page
Editorial Team
Guest Editor Maura Kennedy Managing Editor Andrew Oldham Deputy Editor/Interviews G.P. Kennedy Columns/Articles Editor G.P. Kennedy Reviews Editor Janet Aspey Sales & Marketing Team marketing@incorporatingwriting.co.uk Columnists Dan McTiernan & Christine Brandel Contributors Caroline Drennan, Ben Felsenburg, Darren Hester, Kees Huyser, Jeltovski, Valeria Kogan, Sarah Maclennan, John McAuliffe, Mary Mazzilli, Clara Natoli, Helen Shay, Jen Tomkins, Stephy Robinson, JPD Williams. Cover Art Leroy Skalstad Design Marsh Contact Details http://www.incorporatingwriting.co.uk incorporatingmag@yahoo.co.uk
Incorporating Writing is an imprint of The Incwriters Society (UK). The magazine is managed by an editorial team independent of The Societys Constitution. Nothing in this magazine may be reproduced in whole or part without permission of the publishers. We cannot accept responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, reproduction of articles, photographs or content. Incorporating Writing has endeavoured to ensure that all information inside the magazine is correct, however prices and details are subject to change. Individual contributors indemnify Incorporating Writing, The Incwriters Society (UK) against copyright claims, monetary claims, tax payments / NI contributions, or any other claims. This magazine is produced in the UK. The Incwriters Society (UK) 2005
Maura Kennedy reveals more about the Chapter & Verse Festival.
G.P. Kennedy is chewing the lean with the novelist in an exclusive interview.
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Erwin James
Stephy Robinson gets to grips with Erwin in this exclusive interview.
Articles A Writers Secret Passion

John McAuliffe tackles the world of research.
Getting into Reading
Jen Tomkins removes the fear from books and short stories.
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Perfect Poetry The Need
Sarah Maclennan tackles the world of performance.
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Valeria Kogan braces herself on the journey from fantasy to reality.
Columns Vulture
Dan McTiernan takes a look at culture vultures.
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Notes from America Artwork Perfect Eye Reviews
Christine Brandel returns stateside.
Tracey Moffatt shares images from her exhibition at the Bluecoat.
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Janet Aspey introduces Culture in all its forms.
News and Opportunities
3 Cha incorporating Chapter & Verse Literature Festival Oct 08 Editorial by Maura Kennedy Image by JPD Williams
writing
Have you ever thought about why we kiss, blush, cry, yawn and smile? What it would feel like to be imprisoned for something you didnt do? Or something you did? Does prison work anyway? What if Africans had enslaved Europeans? Why did the British Empire rise and fall? Is Venice the most beautiful place on earth? Or Trieste, or Istanbul? What it feels like to beg on the streets? Written a love poem for someone you know? Or dont know? Or your child? What does it feel like for your country to cease to exist? What if you were left with nothing but the clothes you are wearing? Can a book save your life? Can a poem change the way you think?
Have you ever heard funky poetry that made you want to dance? What if you lost your memory and found out an imaginary shark was eating it? What if your life depended on a game of chess? How do books get published anyway? What does it feel like for your first book to be a smash hit bestseller? Or completely ignored? What does it feel like to be a slave? Or a slave owner? What happens when hidden family secrets are revealed? Can you film a poem? Can you make Hamlet into a Japanese cartoon? Or bring to life the Wizard of Oz characters who were left out of the film, like the Quadlings and the Dainty China People? Who writes Dr Who? Unleash your imagination at the first
4 4 touring network beyond the normal environs of universities and libraries. The life stories of Erwin James and John Healy are ones that are rarely heard, and never before so stunningly. There is also a feature on Merseysides groundbreaking Reader Organisation, whose many activities includes the Get into Reading clubs, where classic literature is read aloud and shared in a huge variety of settings, including care homes, community centres and libraries. Compelling life stories, reimagined histories, contemplation, invigoration, fantasy, fact, all will be on offer over the ten days of the festival. Meet other readers, swap books, opinions, ideas. Enjoy the historic setting of the Bluecoat, the oldest building in Liverpool city centre, which has been beautifully renovated. Hear it all, chapter and verse. EDITORS NOTE: Incorporating Writing would like to thank the Bluecoat for their continued support during this issue and are happy to celebrate the Chapter & Verse Festival in this edition. We have pages brimming with Jim Crace, Erwin James, Lemn Sissay, Laura Fish and a host of names that you can find at the festival from October onwards. The editorial team will be attending the festival launch on the 25th September.
Chapter & Verse Literature Festival in the company of some of the most fascinating writers working today. From the urgently prescient, such as Tariq Alis new work on Pakistans role in current geopolitics, to the classic and timeless, like Jan Morris writing on her lifelong travels, the festival will offer a snapshot of contemporary writing. This edition of Incorporating Writing gives a flavour of the Chapter & Verse Literature Festival.
Compelling life stories, reimagined histories, contemplation, invigoration, fantasy, fact, all will be on offer over the ten days of the festival
Fiction is represented by one of the UKs most original and admired novelists, Jim Crace, and by Linda Grant, whose poignant yet robust work in fiction and non-fiction retrieves the history of the Jewish diaspora. Crace and Grant are in the company of three exciting new talents, Jennie Rooney from Liverpool; Sadie Jones, whose The Outcast became a summer bestseller; and Laura Fish, whose Caribbean heritage inspired her second book, Strange Music. Poetry is represented by the still beauty of Michael Symmons Roberts The HalfHealed, and the riveting energy of Lemn Sissays The Listener, both of which are new collections. There is a feature on the increasingly popular world of performance poetry with Liverpools finest collectives, Mercy and Heart Beats, both of which bring stomping poetry and music to the citys clubs, theatres and churches (!). Promoters Apples & Snakes and renaissance one both injected new life into poetry by encouraging younger and more diverse artists and by setting up a strong
Maura Kennedy is Literature Programmer at the Bluecoat, Liverpool. She was formerly Programme Director of the Cirt International Festival of Literature in Galway, Ireland.
A Writers Secret Passion: Not Reading, Research

Short Article by John McAuliffe Image by Darren Hester
In south Manchester, where Ive lived since 2004, Im unworried about the failure of the TLS or LRB to arrive in the post on time, but will check with neighbours if I dont see the South Manchester Reporter on a Thursday evening. Ill balance the Manchester fiction of Mrs Gaskell, Val McDermid, Howard Jacobson and Anthony Burgess on one arm of the sofa, and the Manchester poems of John Ash, Simon Armitage, Linda Chase and Laurie Duggan on the other. Ill put off a coffee and ignore the kids. I mean to hungrily flick through the crazy occasions for name-calling on the Letters Page, the conservation areas despair over planning permission, and the latest developments in drink-related assaults and, of course, the terrible local weather. Worse, this reality paper, and my topographical scanning of it, has seeped into my book-reading. A spare half hour sees me race through football or music autobiographies. I know too much about the Manchester haunts of Niall Quinn, Roy Keane, Mark E Smith, the Gallaghers, Morrissey, Terry Christian. This is not reading so much as a proper noun wordsearch: Withington, Didsbury, Rusholme, Fallowfield, Chorlton, Burnage. Then I pick up a book with such a wordsearch in mind but find myself gripped by, well, a secret passion: I have sat down with Tony Wilsons novelization of the film Twenty Four Hour Party People at 9 in the morning intending to be elsewhere by 10. Ive seen the movie, Ive read Tony Wilsons agony uncle column (in the local paper, of course). I know this wont take long. But it turns out that there is too much going on between all the familiar proper nouns. I will miss my 10 oclock and then write off the day.
I mean to hungrily flick through the crazy occasions for name-calling on the Letters Page, the conservation areas despair over planning permission, and the latest developments in drinkrelated assaults
Its the same story with WG Sebalds equally excellent The Emigrants, which starts off on Palatine Road (around the corner from where Im writing this) and then gets more interesting. Michel Butors obscure 1950s novel Passing Time is dull but weirdly irresistible with its long accounts of bus routes and reading the small ads in the Manchester Evening News (as he says, with some excitement, in one of the novels few one-line paragraphs: Six pages out of the eight were devoted to small ads). When he describes trying to tear himself away from Manchester and its local news, I know, as he knows, our situation is terminal: I have never again attempted to escape from it by walking straight ahead Like a lamp in the mist it forms the centre of a halo whose hazy fringes intermingle with those of other towns. Never yet have I taken the train to get away This is where my real research begins. John McAuliffes second book of poems, Next Door (Gallery), was published last year. He co-directs the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester and reads at the Chapter & Verse Literature Festival on 19th Oct.
Vulture
Column by Dan McTiernan Image by Kees Huyser
Culture. Well its obvious isnt itIts Elbow winning the Mercury
(4) The Vultures head is bald, making it difficult for bacteria to stick to him. What little does, he bakes off using sunlight. (Apart from the poor specimens that circle overhead in Bradford A.K.A. Mordor.) All very fascinating youll agree. Ok, I know its supposed to be vulture with a c but to be honest Im struggling with that topic too, which is why I thought Id string you along with the raptor comedy for a while. Of course I know what culture is. When I saw those famous people floundering on the BBC attempting to explain what culture is in a trailer for The Culture Show, I thought: Idiots, theyre obviously all idiots. I could summarise and comment upon the concept in the blink of an eye and a flash of my rapier wit. And then of course I tried.
So, Im wracking my brains for this one. What is it that I know about vultures that would be of interest to our readers? I have a feather from one that fell to the ground at my feet - the feather not the vulture whilst I was living in a Nepalese village. I see them circling me occasionally as I walk to work. I work in Bradford. Ok, resorting to Google: (1) The Vulture has few predators. His most common defensive tactic is to projectile vomit at his adversary and fly away. (2) Vultures can digest meat in any stage of decay, and withstand diseases that would kill any other creature. (3) Vultures urinate to cool off (they lack sweat glands) and to disinfect their legs. Vulture urine kills any germs picked up walking through a carcass.
Culture. Well its obvious isnt it Its Elbow winning the Mercury and giant spiders menacing Merseyside and longlists and shortlists and spaces and critique. Its what we fill Sunday papers with isnt it? Ok, resorting to Google: (1) The tastes in art and manners that are favoured by a social group. (2) All the knowledge and values shared by a society. (3) A highly developed state of perfection; having a flawless or impeccable quality. (4) The growing of microorganisms in a nutrient medium (such as gelatin or agar or the Big Brother house). Useful definitions no doubt, but Im still struggling with meaning. What is this thing that Im asked to write about? What is it possible to say about something so seemingly - at least to me - intangible? So I decide to ring my friend who once admonished my wife for claiming not to know that there was such a thing as gay culture. Hes well read, well galleried, well cinemad, pretty well theatred, and totally gigged up to the hilt. Hell know what I should write about. Of course Im sure his first response will be of course you dont know what culture is sweety, you live in the countryside. Theres no neon light there. Surprisingly he doesnt immediately jump on this well travelled bandwagon. Perhaps its because hes feeling poorly and isnt quite on top form. You should write about Elizabeth Wurtzels Prozac Nation and about how its still as relevant today as it was in 1994. You could tell your readers how youre taking antidepressants now
because of your reaction to modern culture. You love a bit of confessional. I tell him Im not really in the frame of mind for a big self-expos for this issue. I also tell him that it would only work if they took a photo of me standing in my garden at dusk with a stormy backdrop, with just me being flash-filled, highlighting the bags, wrinkles and paunch and making me seem culturally desiccated. Wurtzel did that for the first book but learnt her lesson for the second and looked fabulous and made-up for that one. She looked like shit on Prozac Nation. I Googled it after our conversation and decided she looked pretty good for someone depressed. He has very harsh standards. But maybe he has a point. Maybe postpost-modern culture is the culture of anxiety and depression. Surely culture is, if nothing else, a manifestation of a societal consciousness and what is it that grips us most societally: Climate change, house prices, knife crime, job security, the weather It seems to me that the job of culture is in some way to react to that by either luring us deeper into the darkness or distracting us into the light; or maybe by pulsing between the two in order to keep us moving, unsettled and craving more. And then I think a little more about the terminology that accompanies culture and in particular to the phrase; consumers of culture. Ive been on my lofty horse for a while about being categorised as a consumer fullstop. At what stage did people or the public stop being referred to as such and simply get
lumped together as consumers? And if we extrapolate a little further, if the cycle of consumption includes production, advertisement, consumption and disposal within the framework of designed obsolescence, what does that say about the culture we are also consumers of?
Reviews
For this special issue of the magazine our reviews section has been comprised by Maura Kennedy, the literature programmer for the Bluecoat. It is a rich and diverse list, a celebration of some of the best literary talent working in Britain today. All the work featured in this section will be taking part in the Bluecoats Chapter & Verse festival. The only exception is Al Haj Jama, who recently participated in The Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival. Taking the lead is Ben Felsenburgs insightful review of John Healys memoir The Grass Arena. Next up, Mary Mazzilli explores the performance poetry of Lemn Sissay, one of the North Wests most prolific poets, and his latest collection Listener. Hot on the heels of her Man Booker short listing, Linda Grants The Clothes On Their Backs is a timely and important inclusion in the list. Caroline Drennan discovers whether the Liverpool writers latest offering is worthy of all the praise it is currently receiving. I take time to explore Laura Fishs longawaited second novel Strange Music and Helen Shay ruminates upon Ismail Al Haj Jamas collection of essays, Somalia: A Forgotten Issue. On behalf of Maura and myself, I hope you enjoy this little taster of what promises to be an exciting festival.
Surely culture is, if nothing else, a manifestation of a societal consciousness and what is it that grips us most societally
I feel Im on shaky ground. Not wishing to denigrate something I obsess myself with as readily as the next person. I read from shortlists and listen to Mercury winners and love a giant mechanical spider more than most. I am indeed a culture vulture in the purest sense: I lag behind the initial predation for many reasons my friend would blame the countryside for this circling and waiting before cautiously descending to tear and claw at the scraps left by those in the cultural know, safe in the knowledge that if its something that doesnt agree, I can always urinate on my legs to sanitise myself.
Writer, magazine editor, film maker and film lecturer, Dan McTiernan schizophrenically wanders through his well travelled working life safe in the knowledge that underneath the media faade, hes really an eco-builder and smallholder.
Janet Aspey is a recent MA Creative Writing graduate with a drama background. She is particularly interested in feminist history and literature, and is currently working on her second novel.
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Featured Review The Grass Arena John Healy (afterword by Colin MacCabe) Penguin Modern Classics, 8.99 ISBN-10: 0141189592 ISBN-13: 978-0141189598
without the seedy but seductive glamour of, say, Charles Bukowski. It is of lasting worth: the sense of humanity that is steeped in the horror of the everyday has lost not an iota of relevance, for this netherworld of the homeless alcoholic does not go away. Reading The Grass Arena, there are few clues as to the period in which its events take place. Healy was in fact born in 1943, and the years of his descent and life in the abyss are during the late Fifties until the early Seventies. The initial chapters have a sense of the post-war Irish immigrant experience his Catholic upbringing in Kentish Town and long stays with relatives across the Irish Sea. Yet after that beginning the reeling catalogue of fights, run-ins with the law, assorted criminals, con-men and whores, and the constant search for survival, is little touched by any external events. Time itself is all but obliterated by Healys lurching life. Some moments are stretched into vivid reality. The fast, dense seconds of a fight that ends with a man dying, blood fountaining from a ruptured throat across Euston Road, achieve a hyper-consciousness over several pages. Yet the months and years of a prison stretch disappear into a quiet line or phrase.
Twenty years on from its first publication The Grass Arena is back in print (after an unfortunate interruption of some years due to publishing complications) in the hallowed company of Penguin Modern Classics. John Healys autobiographical account of his descent into the life of a London wino and eventual wondrous redemption through chess is a worthy addition to the PMC list, a classic in every sense. It is literature of the highest class: in the granite simplicity of its language and the unchallengeable integrity of its truth and freedom from artificial ethics. There are no morals appended to Healys many tales of blood and theft, and the alcoholism, that left him and his co-inhabitants of Londons parks and doss-houses in a constant state of inebriation or diseased need, is depicted
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There are points of comparison: as well as Bukowski, perhaps Down In Paris And London, but George Orwell wrote that with the detachment of an observer. You think of Jean Genet, but in English there may be nothing like Healys recollections. The nature of his past, unreformed self and that of the other winos he describes is an uncommunicative existence that is dedicated to securing the next bottle. These are not people who are wont to pick up a pen and set down their thoughts, and in any event memory, clarity and reason are elusive commodities in their world.
cinematic impact? How has he come to make the journey to be such a master of the word that he can produce this book? Healy reveals himself to us as much as any autobiographer can, splaying open moments of pathetic desperation, yet this omission hints at an innate privacy too, a nervousness about exposure and loss of power that may once have lain behind the drink. Soon after his fall into the parks Healy writes of his admiration for the seemingly doomed Roman prisoner who managed to win fight after fight in the gladiators arena. Healy has conquered chess and the word, and if he has slain his demons they still live on in the pages of The Grass Arena.
Yet the biggest mystery is a powerfully unstated narrative that runs through the book
Healy eventually escapes through chess. At the age of 30 he discovers a new addiction so powerful it replaces the old one. The game launches him not only into sobriety but success too, as he wins tournaments in an extraordinary display of defiance of the effect of 15 years drinking. Questions are left unanswered, but Healy doesnt do self-psycho-analysis. Its left to Professor Colin MacCabe to touch on Freud and alcoholism in the afterword, and the subject of sex and women is an enormous lacuna, curtained by vignettes of bottles shared with the street girls and an unrequited love for a Hungarian countess. Yet the biggest mystery is a powerfully unstated narrative that runs through the book: how is it that Healy has managed to set down all that he experienced? What made him battle with memory and wrestle it into such precision and
Pen for hire Ben Felsenburg is currently covering prime-time TV for a national newspaper and scribbling contemporary dance reviews while busily not writing a novel on death, golf and post-colonial cuisine.
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Listener Lemn Sissay Canongate Books, Oct 2008 8.99 ISBN-10: 1841958956 ISBN-13: 978-1841958958 92pp
this collection. In poems like Rain words, sentences need to be deciphered among the letters unconventionally scattered on the page; in another peculiar poem Patterns, one has to follow the order given by the numbers found next to each word. Expectations are defied as this kind of writing shows Sissays interest in poetry as a literary written medium and not merely as a performative tool. The optimistic tone of the poem Let there be peace, envisaging a world where storms can go out to sea to be/ Angry and return to calm; tricks the readers expectations even further. Most of the poems, with some few exceptions, resonate, instead, of darker, pessimistic moods, at times softened only by the musical playfulness of the verses. These are the poems that like a filmic sequence unfold horror-in-the-making situations. In The Letter a dressed in black top hat and tails postman delivers a poisonous letter gliding through the letter box like a knife in a poisonous day. The reader is caught by the eerie anticipation of a crime scene taking shape verse after verse, and by the equally creepy setting of the background procession scene, which presents neighbours throwing petals, a garden path full of weeping pretend relatives/ With dancing handkerchiefs, and a gate
It can be an awkward reading experience that of performance poetry found written on arid pages, a reading that lacks the poets theatrical interpretation on stage. However, its less awkward when performance poetry presents on page its very own visual and musical sparkle, those of the literary kind. This is definitely the case of Lemn Sissays new collection Listener, which presents a comprehensive body of work possibly spanning the last seven years. This is my first encounter with the poems by Lemn Sissay, a Lancashireborn artist of Ethiopian origin; a poet, playwright and broadcaster of international fame. This encounter has been a remarkable and appealing one. At first glance I was intrigued by the few graphic poems in
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crying, screaming rather than squeaking. In Catching Numbers, a proud sixteen year old boy Never had I felt more powerful than that/ at sixteen years old stopping a number thirty-two meets his own death, run over by a Gigantic concrete churning/ Kerbrippling road-gripping High Street halt of a double-decker bus. Adding to the eeriness are poems, like Riconochet, Magpie and Time Bomb, all speaking explicitly of revenge, violence and anger.
In terms of style, Sissay is the master of repetition

Nature itself, especially the sea, is part of his poetical menacing landscapes: winter is the Cliffs with their chests plucked out cry wet stone tears/ into panicking and frantic sea and spring is the back garden made of Pieces of plane. Gnarled metal, glinting with dew/ And sunrise painting the whole scene a metallic red Dark, but more passionately so, are Sissays poems where the political is personal, where strong is his attachment to both Ethiopia and Manchester I got Piccadilly mapped under my skin. Listener, which gives the title to this collection, powerfully portrays his personal attempt as a poet to tune in with the other, the nonwestern side of the world, ultimately his own other where the Sea can turn to dust before the eyes and where Men with guns on the horizon far behind you/ The past tense threatening your present. Sissays pride in his African inheritance resonates in the verses of Molasses and Long shadows and in the poem Battle of Adwa, 1896 where he condemns slavery and Western colonialism. However, Sissay also understands that there is a need to bring people together, especially back in
England. Seemingly returning to the optimistic tone of the first poem, the radio play script The Queens speech sees the Rabbi (one of three characters talking to the Queen) celebrating the diversity of British multiculturalism and urging the Queen to be even more open and tolerant towards immigrants, that like migrant birds embrace freedom of movement. In terms of style, Sissay is the master of repetition - phrases at the beginning of each verse are repeated throughout the poem, stanzas are repeated at the beginning and end, with random word repetitions etc. Musicality is given by a hammering rhythm created by rhyming and, above all, by the repetitions; an effective performance tool which becomes too predicable and redundant when used so often on the written page. Lemn Sissay is, in fact, at his best when the images are most ambiguous, in search for unusual metaphors, when unfolding filmic scenery and political meaning that is not immediately obvious. Ultimately it is this poetic language that surprises the reader and defies all the awkwardness in approaching a performance poetry text. It is this element of surprise that has made my encounter with Sissay a worthwhile one. Mary Mazzilli is a poet, playwright, academic essayist and a PhD student in Chinese literature at SOASLondon. Previously she has worked as Literature assessor for the Art Council (2003-2006). She has recently founded Stagevibes Productions dedicated to international and experimental; she is currently working on her third Play, The Wrong Sleep.
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The Clothes On Their Backs Linda Grant Virago Press, 2008 11.99 ISBN 978-1-84408-541-5 293pp
old but their relationship is prickly and uncertain. The reader is drawn in as this unexpected encounter takes Vivien back to a previous period of gloom, an earlier widowhood which washed her up in her parents cage of a home with its boiled cabbage smells and coughing pipes. Of herself at twenty-four, Vivien says I had nowhere to go but where I was already. And she does not fully know how she got there. Her parents are tight lipped about their Hungarian roots and are fiercely silent about her uncle Sndor, a disturbing figure inspired, according to the author, by the notorious west London landlord, Peter Rachman. Vivien has one childhood memory of her uncle in an electric-blue mohair suit as the door of her family home is slammed in his face. Viviens eagerness to find out about Sndor and his traits in herself drive the story forward. Linda Grants interest in clothes and the way we present ourselves pervades the novel. Characters clothing is carefully observed and significant, sometimes provoking events. In that sense the title, The Clothes on their Backs, is not unsurprising. However, it also conjures up images of refugees with literally nothing more to show for themselves than their clothes; returning to Budapest after enforced labour in the second world war, Sndors garments no longer resembled clothes, but a kind of fungus
At the start of this novel, the heroine, Vivien, reveals that she has lost both husband and father, in that order, in the space of a year. She has become a dreary, middle-aged person, contemplating a pearl-grey horizon. Entering a dress shop on impulse, she is talked into buying a striking red dress and remembers that surge of excitement, that fizz, that deep pleasure for a new dress changes everything. If life were really this simple, such an obvious clich might provoke a yawn, or an early abandoning of the book. But this book has been rightly shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize and its suggestion of Viviens less-than-simple past has already stirred our interest; she and the dress seller know one another of
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excreted by his skin. The novel deals with refugees of many sorts, from Hungarian Jews fleeing German oppression, to the boy Claude fleeing the responsibilities of approaching fatherhood, to Vivian fleeing the oppression of her parents brown and fearful lives. But what creates a refugee? Is it external events or environment or something deep within? To what extent can we forge the person we wish to be by what we do or say, what we are called, where we live or how we choose to dress?
like that, with my clothes off. I wasnt sure. The depiction of Uncle Sndor is central to this questioning of our view of others and ourselves. Vivien adopts the name Miranda when she enters Sndors world, and he is a figure like Prospero; both refugee and empire builder, the newspapers monster and his fiances wonderful man, he has suffered and made others suffer. In telling his story, in presenting his own truth, he demonstrates to his niece and to us how hard it is to judge and to classify an individual human being.
He demonstrates to his niece and to us how hard it is to judge and to classify an individual human being
Linda Grant explores these elements on a range of levels. On her current blog, The Thoughtful Dresser, she says you cant have depth without surfaces; Vivians journey to self discovery involves the length and colour of her hair and the green silk dress she is given to dance in just as it involves her exploration of Londons parks and liminal places, and the slow discovery of her Hungarian roots. Is her surname Kovacs as her uncle is known or Kovacks, as her parents spell it? How would things have turned out for her uncle if the National Front had not been gathering as a threat in London, and would the story have been told at all if Vivians routine journey had not been disrupted by a contemporary terrorist scare? The difficulty of understanding who we are at any one time is summed up in an incident with Vivians first lover, Gilbert. He shows her pictures he had drawn of her at 17: and he asked if I still looked
Caroline Drennan is a writer and a teacher. Runner up in the Orange Short Story competition in 2005, she has recently gained an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia portraitsiberuttrek
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Interview by Alexander Laurence
Strange Music Laura Fish Jonathan Cape, 2008 16.99 ISBN 9780224080859 215pp
poem The Runaway Slave at Pilgrims Point, Fish explores the events that led to its construction. Throughout Elizabeth Barretts narrative, Fish successfully creates the claustrophobic atmosphere of an opiumaddicted woman. To modern readers Barrett may, at first, appear as petulant and self-obsessed. This is largely due to the heightened poetical language that forms the majority of her first-person narrative. The reader is only ever offered tiny glimpses of how others perceive her and this can at times make for difficult reading. Ultimately this is precisely what makes Strange Music such a fulfilling experience. As we read on our perspective shifts, we gain a deeper, more sympathetic understanding of this complex and well-drawn character. Fish shows a woman starved of a proper outlet for her active, often fevered imagination, and one whose wellmeaning morality is not properly challenged until the re-appearance of her brother Sam, whos tyrannical and cruel reputation at the Barrett plantation in Jamaica puts her morals and principles to the test. Guilt pierces like lightning, like a truth, but unlike truth it fills me with shame. No consolations exist. How to be rid of whats past? How to escape a polluted family? A family of thieves who stole not only money, but lives. Interweaved with Barretts narrative are
If I can change this strange music called life, add light to dismal, sombre, unharmonious tones, I shall be pleased yet. It is 1837 and an ailing Elizabeth Barrett is confined to her bed, held in a virtual prison by the will of her tyrannical father, with only her beloved brother bro, her maidservant Crow and her sister Henriette to keep her company. She longs to leave Torquay and return to the rest of her family in London, where she can once again enjoy the society of her friends. Instead she is forced to spend long hours alone in her bedchamber; the only outlet for her vivid imagination her poetry, I shall either write against the tide, or drown. Inspired by Elizabeth Barrett Brownings
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the stories of Kaydia, a Creole servant at the Barretts plantation, who is struggling to serve a master she loathes whilst protecting her daughter from his abusive attentions, and the mourning Sheba, an indentured labourer who works in the Barrett cane fields, whose lover has been brutally murdered by cruel and sadistic masters. Their intimate first-person narratives are written in Jamaican patois. Again this requires a great deal of perseverance when reading. At first it felt like a wall of language I was trying to climb over, one I had to keep attempting to climb before I could make a sense of where it was I was trying to go, but I assure you it is worth persevering. Just as with Barrett, one becomes connected with these well-drawn, rich characters, their plights and sorrows and survival. It is the womens language, both the patois and poetical, that elaborates the Strange Music of the title. Under the shadows of patriarchy it is the womens language that gives them a voice, a voice that is powerfully beautiful and haunting; a voice that stays with the reader long after the pages are closed. Loneliness is a powerful presence throughout the novel, all three women are consumed by it in their different ways, Loneliness is walking into fire, or sinking to seas bed, swallowed; drowned. Alone. In Fishs writing loneliness becomes a cage for all the women, binding them metaphorically together, and even though she uses an image that has been employed by many female writers when describing the subjugation of women it never falls into tired clich. Instead Fish successfully uses it to elaborate the different ways each character is crushed and controlled by patriarchy and how each woman is striving for her own emancipation. I was a tethered bird, striving to fly beyond a
narrow perspective in order to see a greater picture, a more sympathetic view of the world.
Under the shadows of patriarchy it is the womens language that gives them a voice, a voice that is powerfully beautiful and haunting
Strange Music is a powerful and challenging novel. Language is celebrated, savoured and stretched. Fish never falls prey to didacticism, maintains a truth to each of her characters experiences that is without modern judgement. It is this that gives the novel its emotional heart, its lasting impression. Reading this novel will not be a waste of your time.
Janet Aspey is a recent MA Creative Writing graduate with a drama background. She is particularly interested in feminist history and literature, and is currently working on her second novel.
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Somalia: A Forgotten Issue Ismail Al Haj Jama Liverpool Somalia Cultural and Heritage Association, 2007 5.99 ISBN 0-946057-59-1 112pp
The historical summary charts the origins of the Somali people from camel husbandry through to colonial influence, and then from their independence won in 1960. The initial democratic model changed to a socialist state after Major General Mohammed Siad Barre came to power in 1969. This brought some stability, but this was eventually undermined with civil war in the 1980s. Barres regime collapsed in the early 1990s, leading to more instability and bloodshed, with warlords and their followers involved in power struggles. Later, a transitional Somali Federal Government came into being but later fled its base. It is this turbulent period that Ismail Al Haj Jama charts in his articles collected here and previously published in various newspapers and journals. The reader is above all struck by the authors deep attachment and concern throughout for the Somali people, particularly those most vulnerable members who have suffered most in the long-running conflicts. He tries throughout to find optimism and look for potential improvement through political developments, though cannot ignore the difficulties, especially those arising from the warlords various individual interests, which he sees as often contrary to the cause of peace. He follows the various twists and setbacks without flinching, but always with hope
This volume reproduces a series of articles published between 1987 and 2001, but importantly supplemented and prefaced by a very informed and informative Short History, together with probing authorial comments. Whether or not Somalia is a forgotten issue may be debatable. It still arises in the news in general. Certainly, however, it is a perplexing one, due to the background and reasons highlighted by Ismail Al Haj Jama. He himself can give no complete answers, but is able to illuminate the complexities involved. That said, it must be noted that this book only makes comment up to the Union of Islamic Courts gaining the upper hand in Mogadishu in 2006. The author explains that he prefers to wait before further updating, and when the time comes then go further after deep thought and careful consideration.
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for a better future for Somalia.
This is a book that will fascinate those interested in Somalia, its history and its problems, and help illuminate these for the general reader
The book provides an interesting insight into how political division can augment, and how the plight of ordinary people can be overlooked. The author is particularly scathing of the warlords and their conflicting personal interests, which are placed above achieving stability. His style is focussed, punctuated with pertinent questions to highlight the issues he presents. The illustrations and photographs add to the vivid picture he paints of the society involved. Some of the essays are especially thought-provoking, such as that of 21 September 1993 The Secrets behind what is going on. This is a book that will fascinate those interested in Somalia, its history and its problems, and help illuminate these for the general reader. It also presents salient lessons on how the lives of ordinary people can be blighted by political turbulence and the disintegration of the rule of law.
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.
20 Chewing the lean with Jim Crace

Interview by G.P. Kennedy
I really have little idea about the broad literary scene. I have no hopes or fears for it, beyond the suspicion that humankind will always value and benefit from stories of one kind or another
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You are appearing at Liverpools Chapter and Verse Literature Festival; please give us chapter and verse on Jim Crace, in your own words. Chapter and verse? Its a reasonable request but Im a bit too secretive and self-conscious to feel comfortable with it. If I wanted to describe myself to strangers, I would be an autobiographical novelist, rather than one than never plays Hitchcock in his own books. So lets just do the numbers: 62, 35, 23, 9, 2. (Age, years married, house number, novels, children.) What is your view of the literary scene in Liverpool right now? Youre shaming me. The literary scene in Liverpool right now is one of the many things I know nothing about and probably always will, given the other more glaring gaps in my education, the many more urgent demands on my butterfly attention, and the shortage of time. Looking at the literary scene more broadly, what are your prevailing impressions of and hopes and fears for it? Id like to have a helpful answer for this, but I really have little idea about the broad literary scene. I have no hopes or fears for it, beyond the suspicion that humankind will always value and benefit from stories of one kind or another. I do know a bit about the Birmingham literary scene, but only because I live here and like to play my small part. But generally, I am not especially concerned with bookish matters. I prefer to hang out at contemporary jazz events. And Im more interested in politics, sport and natural history than I am in literature. Is it fair to say that the leitmotif of your work is decay, erosion - from Quarantine, through Being Dead, to
Pesthouse? Its true but not fair. The question seems to suggest that my novels present only a dark and pessimistic view of the natural world. But thats the opposite of what I intend. My optimism stems, I hope, from staring the facts of the universe in the eye but still feeling celebratory, despite all the decay and erosion that is undeniably there. I could pretend that the natural world comprises only rainbows, daffodils and nightingales, but the optimism I might derive from that would be shallow and worthless. Id rather allow that the world is a testing and baffling place, that death is inevitable and final, that nature is pitiless and punishing, but that nevertheless humankind -given the breaks- can still reach for and achieve enormous joy. I sense your optimism in dealing with decay; that something positive, better, can result. Is this fair? I am an optimist, yes. An optimist for the planet, an optimist for our species, blah blah. What I am not certain is whether or not my optimism is a genuinely held conviction or merely a strategy to help me cope with the imponderable and the terrifying. Do you feel that you work escapes pigeon holing? Is this a good thing, in your view? Im not introspective in that way, so I can only guess how I am regarded by those who rule the pigeon holes. My novels just seem to suggest themselves to me and queue up to be written in an orderly line. (I suspect that I am reaching the end of that line.) Maybe the key is that I am neither a genre writer nor an autobiographical writer, so each of my novels can address a different subject despite all being stylistically similar in that I write mostly in the oral tradition using rhythmic prose. The
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advantage for me in not having a pigeon hole to fill is that I have few direct competitors if any and so its easy for me to occupy my own territory without much challenge. In other words, Ive been dead lucky.
My novels just seem to suggest themselves to me and queue up to be written in an orderly line
Youre asking the wrong person. I dont know what a Proustian is. I keep meaning to read Proust. Ive had an attractive edition of Swanns Way for forty years, but it has remained unopened. I have come to the conclusion that life is too short for Proust. Youd be shocked at how badly read I am and how little that bothers me. Whats next for you? You mean where writing is concerned? Im working on and struggling with a novel with the working title of Heroes. Its an enquiry about two kinds of courage physical versus moral courage. Thoughtful polite liberalism versus determined political combat, in other words. Yes, sounds boring. It needs to be rescued by plot and character. So far the book is not going very well. But its always like that. You just have to persevere and not make a fuss, reminding yourself on an hourly basis that youre a volunteer and that nobody other than you cares whether this book gets published or not. Where my non-writing life is concerned, I am currently wondering whether it is time to move on from Birmingham where I have lived for the last 34 years. Im trying to persuade myself that its never too late for a fresh adventure.
Would you say that there is a sense of personal desire to set various narrative records straight in your work? Yes, exactly, though I had to write a half dozen novels before I realised that myself. For example, Quarantine confronts and reworks Biblical stories; Being Dead offers my alternative to the many infantile religious narratives of eternity and paradise, Six (titled Genesis in America) attempts to tackle the harmful Hollywood version of love and sex (in which virtue and good luck are equated with good looks) - and all my books, in one way or another, celebrate Darwinism at the expense of Creationist fables. Which narratives need addressing by you? I have a novel called Archipelago waiting in line at the moment. It will have a stab at investigating personal consciousness, memory and imagination. Scientific explanations of the human brain tend -quite properly- to be reductive. Fiction need not pay much heed to such constraints and can invent a Paradise, for example, without believing in paradises. Could I saunter to the conclusion that you are a Proustian (at risk of pigeon holing and, as corollary, diminishing your dead luckiness)?
GP Kennedy is the Deputy Editor (NW)/Reviews. He is a writer, lover of language and would-be goliard. Further he is a passionate pedagogue and an alliteration amateur. be a professional goalkeeper.
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Get Into Reading: Removing the Fear Factor

Article by Jen Tomkins Image by Clara Natoli
Imagine that you havent picked up a book for years, that for one reason or another you lost (or had never found) the pleasure that reading a great novel, story or poem can bring. Its probably hard to envisage as a keen reader, yet for so many people it is a stark reality. Books, for non-readers, incite fear. The Reader Organisations Get Into Reading project sets out to remove the fear factor. I couldnt read, honestly. It was my children growing up and things like that. I was there for them, you know. I didnt have a chance to read. I was too tired anyway, and nervous. Since then, its amazing, member from the Get Into Reading group at The Ark, a hostel for homeless people. Picture the scene: a reading group of six adults huddled in a small room. They
have just finished a short story called The Lottery Ticket by Chekov. Silence fills the space before the last line is read aloud, and a brief pause, before one gentleman exclaims, That was brilliant! It was only a few minutes, but it changed their lives forever. It can never be the same again! A lively discussion follows, with all the group members talking about their thoughts on the story, what they would change if they were the writer and relating it to their own personal experiences. Most people, eager for the story to continue, wish it could have kept on going a bit longer to find out what happened next. Reading groups are on the rise but what has just been depicted presents a reading group with a difference. All the members in this reading group are recovering drug addicts taking part in a detox programme at the Kevin White
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Unit in Liverpool. It is one of the seventy-six Get Into Reading groups delivered across Merseyside and Wirral. The Reader Organisation is a charity dedicated to bringing about a reading revolution, aiming to put shared reading at the heart of life. 2,000 years of written literature human wisdom is being wasted because people dont have either the time, or the inclination, or in some cases the skills to access it, says founder and Director of The Reader Organisation, Jane Davis, Our job is to remind people of the great value of this resource and its real usefulness in everyday life. We all suffer the human condition and books can help us develop the imagination and inner resources to help with this universal problem. To paraphrase Doris Lessing in her Nobel acceptance speech, great books help us to be human. Literature shouldnt be locked-up in courses and syllabi, its got far more use than that. Almost everyone can relate to what great books have to offer, once the fear factor is removed. But fear is indeed a factor. Get Into Reading groups, although open to anyone, are primarily aimed at those who wouldnt, or couldnt normally pick up a book. There can be, understandably, a certain amount of trepidation experienced by those that enter into a group for the first time. Groups are delivered to those for whom social life may, for one reason or another, be difficult, or those with a variety of physical or mental health problems, full-time carers, those in drug rehab, older people in care homes, as well as homeless or vulnerably housed people. As one group members says, It is one of the best things I have done, joining Get Into Reading. Because I have Aspergers syndrome it can be difficult to fit in like having jelly with fish. But I feel I have found my jelly and
ice-cream here. This is a project that is dedicated to improving wellbeing: inspiring minds, recovering personal confidence and fostering community. So, how does it work?
There can be, understandably, a certain amount of trepidation experienced by those that enter into a group for the first time
As a creative reading initiative, what Get Into Reading does is unusual: books and poems are read aloud, weekly, in real time, by facilitators and group members. Each session can last up to two hours, theres a lot of tea, laughter and talk, and as well as sharing the reading, experiences and memories are exchanged. Encouraging the readers attention towards the words on the page, therefore not focusing on any problem or issue they may be facing in their lives, means a different sort of therapy develops: We share the texts right then and there in the group. We found that sharing that experience is actually one of the most exciting and potentially therapeutic parts of the group, so that everyone has heard the poem or gone into that world of the story together. Youve come out of it and you talk about it right then and there, with the emotions still up. Get Into Reading project worker. The words on the page engage personal experience but dont demand it. It is up to each individual what they want to discuss but it is often that case that
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these shared reading sessions unlock something that allows people to express feelings they may not, in other therapeutic methods, feel willing to talk about. Its something normal - you can join in without having to talk about mental health problems. And I love the stories, says one Get Into Reading group member. As the fear factor surrounding books begins to break down, so, often, does the fear of facing some personal issues does also. Its not just for non-readers; many keen readers benefit from shared reading experiences group facilitators find this for themselves on a weekly basis unlocking meanings and insights that, when reading alone, cannot be accessed. Add to this the powerful the sense of belonging and support that goes with a Get Into Reading group and you are on the path towards improved wellbeing. Case study: L When L first arrived at the library group she was visibly shaking, couldnt make eye contact with anyone and couldnt talk to the other people in the group but she continued to attend, rarely missing a session and it was clear that she valued the group highly. L eventually revealed that attending the Get Into Reading group was actually the first thing shed been able to come out to independently for 18 months, since the death of her mother to motor neurone disease. Previous to her mothers death, L had suffered with depression for several years and had eventually had major breakdown. After a great deal of suffering, Ls mother died, and L was full of self hatred, blaming herself and believing that the illness was brought on through the stress of worrying about Ls condition. She was
given medication and several courses of therapy, lasting 16 months in total, but feels that she only really began to improve when she joined her Get Into Reading group. This was a safe haven, where she was allowed to remain quiet for as long as she liked, but gradually, over the course of a year, she began to join in, improving to the point that she was eventually able to join in a 50-strong GIR coach trip to Manchester Royal Exchange to see Pete Postlethwaite in The Tempest. She was very anxious on the coach, surrounded by so many people, but she was delighted that shed been able to do it. Her rising confidence levels also allowed her to take on a few hours voluntary work at a local Oxfam shop. L says the fact that the group was local in her immediate community helped, and also that the group was small. She liked the quiet, gentle atmosphere and the fact that there was absolutely no pressure to join in it immediately felt therapeutic. As she puts it: the group gives you maximum pleasure in both the people and the book youre reading with minimum stress. The knowledge that you dont have to do anything is very important, but then trust begins to build and youre able to share personal feelings with the group, so that they end up knowing more about you than friends youve known for years. You can say what you want and you know theyll understand. She feels that the two things that have made her well are GIR and her voluntary work at Oxfam though she says she wouldnt have been able to do the latter without GIR. GIR helps because its holistic and nonjudgemental. It helps you to forget
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yourself and opens up your eyes to whats out there. L was shown the above case study for her approval and read it aloud to her husband: That was what you were like, he said, that sums you up. L agreed, but says that thanks to GIR her lifes changed so much its like reading about a different person. Reading can make a difference, a real difference. Many members of Get Into Reading, who have faced their fears and find themselves with improved confidence, new social frameworks developing and a greater sense of contentment in life, are testimony to that fact. Its just a matter of knowing how to get literature into the hands of people who really need it and sharing the joy of reading together. Get Into Reading does just that. About The Reader Organisation The Reader Organisation is a charity dedicated to bringing about a reading revolution. For us, literature is a powerful force for social good and personal change. Our mission is to bring books to life. This means great books reaching all kinds of people, in all kinds of ways. We started in 1997 as a magazine-based outreach project at the University of Liverpool. Since then, our lively organisation has created many new ways of bringing the pleasure and value of literature to a huge range of people. We work in four areas: 1 2 3 4 Reaching Out The Reader Magazine Reader Events Research and Development
develop its project nationally and internationally. Director Jane Davis says, We are already working with a number of local authorities and NHS Trusts, and weve had a lot of interest from Europe, Australia and the USA. Its an idea which seems to catch peoples imagination.
Reading can make a difference, a real difference

Ive had a lot of very moving correspondence from people who already understand from their own personal experience how shared reading might help. Many people want to know more, and so we have set up a national programme of training days -we come to you- as well as an accredited five day intensive residential course here on Merseyside. If youre interested in setting up the project within your library service, or would like more information on our training packages, The Reader Organisation would love to hear from you. Please call Jen Tomkins on 0151 794 3849 or email jentomkins@thereader.org.uk.
To find out more please visit our website at www.thereader.co.uk National Development The Reader Organisation is keen to
As Communications Officer for the Reader Organisation, in Liverpool, Jen Tomkins works to get word about their mission to achieve a Reading Revolution out there. She also runs her own Get Into Reading group at the Bluecoat, Liverpool.
27 Perfect Poetry
Article by Sarah Maclennan Image by Jeltovski
An admission, in the form of confession: I am passionate about performance poetry. I love the energy and variety of spoken word events. I attend at least four such events per month, often more. Does this make me a less than serious poet? Some sort of poetic light-weight? Isnt poetry meant to be confined to books, relegated to dusty bookshelves or literary academic study, a solitary artistic pursuit? Performance poetry brings poetry alive. It reminds us that poetry can be a social act, as it was for our ancestors: a room full of people pulled along by rhythm, being comforted, challenged or surprised by language. Poetry derives from an oral and aural tradition. It has evolved to the page, but thats not where it began. A successful piece of writing - any writing has to work aloud as well as in our heads. Then we not only experience the meaning of words, but their sound, rhythm, intonation, the poets emphasis,
volume, quietness. The poems have room to breathe. And to explode. Melanie Abrahams curates and produces spoken word and literature events, and is currently based at the Bluecoat in Liverpool. Performance poetry as an aspect of poetry can offer a special connection between the poem and the poet (who wrote it) - why they wrote it, why its important, for instance, can come through in presentation. I like performance poetry for the live experience, for instance hearing gasps and noises from a responsive audience. Performance poetry encompasses many varied styles from RAP - the original Rhythmically Applied Poetry, invented by the Last Poets, a New York collective to politically charged, barely controlled anger - Chloe Poems, Peter Crompton to poems that verge on stand up comedy - Clare Kirwan, David Bateman, Nat Clare - to poets who experiment with sounds
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that are impossible to transcribe to the page - Martin Daws, Trevor Gerard, Dinesh Allirajah. It is far too easy - and lazy - for people to say Performance Poetry isnt serious.
Some of the successful page poets do not read or perform well

Of course, not everyone is a fan of performance poetry. Nathan Jones of Mercy says I dont really like poetry in performance. It tends to attract minor poets, and people who want to air their grievances in public. It often lacks craft, and people usually mistake confidence for a style. The best poets are usually bad at reading their work, and the best performers dont read books. Melanie Abrahams agrees to a lesser extent. On occasion I may view it as poor writing passed off as performance poetry that gets a big response from the audience as the poet has charisma or what we in the game call poetry powers This is a good point; some of the successful page poets do not read or perform well. There are notable exceptions, of course, including John Agard, Patience Agbabi, Grevel Lindop and Paul Durcan of whom Catriona OReilly wrote in The Guardian, Anyone who has attended one of his electrifying poetry readings and been reduced to hysteria (a common enough occurrence) can testify to the unique flavour of his work, especially when read aloud by the poet himself. That voice, with its peculiar, precise sibilance, its mocksolemnity, its quavering rise and fall, is the voice that remains in your head when reading his poems afterwards. I wonder if a dislike of performance
poetry comes from its connection with open mic events? There is an impression that poetry open mics are of poor quality and cater mainly for cathartic selfexpression. The so-called toilet poems - something a poet needs to get out of their system, but not necessarily share with an audience. This is not my experience. There are as many styles of Open Mics as there are poets and, having attended numerous events, I find such prejudice bewildering and illinformed - as prejudices invariably are not to mention verging on elitist. For me, performance poetry is the most democratic of all the art forms in that it actively encourages participation. There is no anxiety about spelling or punctuation. Benjamin Zephaniah, severely dyslexic, is electrifying in performance, striding across the stage, expansive in gesture, words and voice. His aim is to popularise poetry by reaching people who did not read books and he feels at home anywhere the oral tradition is still strong. Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jean Binta Breeze, Daljit Nagra, Ian Macmillan and others use their voices to great effect - their accents, their manner of speech, add layers to their poetry, almost making music with their words. Recently, a man who has attended Dead Good Poets Society events as an audience member for over two years, performed his first poem. It was brilliant: well constructed in terms of language, rhythm and intent - and (Ha!) proof that poetry will get you in the end. Sure, I dont always like or enjoy all of the poetry I hear, but I respect the poets courage in standing at a microphone to share their creative work with an audience. And when poets attend events regularly, you see in changes in their performance and writing style, a growing awareness of what
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Polarbear Plus from Apples & Snakes 2008 works and what doesnt. So if open mic events are the way in to the poetry world, is there a sense that poets grow out of them, and move into serious poetry? Geraldine Collinge of Apples & Snakes, says, For me the amazing thing about performance poetry is the different sorts of performance poetry events share the same kind of values and dynamic - an immediacy and directness in their relationship with the audience and a edge that comes from the fact that anyone can pick up the mic and do it. I also dont think that theres a hierarchy in performance poetry. Artists dont necessarily travel along a route from open mic to one person show, in fact Id say the majority dont. Zena Edwards and Polarbear, for example, both have shows currently in development and both have come from the open mic, still perform on the open mic and take that community with them to their high profile shows at the Southbank and other venues. Poet Eleanor Rees says, Open mic and poetry performance nights are a way of developing a reputation and finding an audience, in the way that small magazines used to offer emerging poets a platform. They allow a poet to develop a voice strong enough to survive in a critical environment. They are the equivalent of the Beatles playing bars in Hamburg and finding their sound. And then there are the poetry slams where poets wrestle with words, facing up to each other in an Ive got the biggest metaphor sort of way. I am in awe of the poets who compete in Slams. The prospect of being scored on my Lisha Aquino Rooney poetry and performance, being left elated or bruised, absolutely terrifies
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me. Melanie Abrahams sees Slams as a good way to discover talent and are usually exciting spaces, lots of energy and jostling for position.
Spoken word has developed into collaborations using multi-media, music, working with artists and photographers in events that push the boundaries of poetry further still
The recent Bristol vs. Liverpool Slam, part of the Bristol Poetry Festival, played in The Arnolfini to a packed house of 200 people, with over thirty waiting in the foyer for return tickets. Audience members had travelled from Cardiff and Plymouth and were overwhelmingly enthusiastic in their response to the poets performances. A quick vox pop revealed that some had never attended a poetic event in their life, but knew they were going to be entertained. Poetry as entertainment? Who would have thought it? Spoken word has developed into collaborations using multi-media, music, working with artists and photographers in events that push the boundaries of poetry further still. Lisa Jones from Heartbeats, a poetry organisation that melds poetry and music, says We encourage the poets we book to collaborate with musicians and weve had some great improvised performances between artists. We have everything from dub-reggae MCs to rock bands and beat poetry. We had a poet singing a soul-acapella version of Velvet Undergounds Venus in Furs at the last event, which was pretty special.
Ade Jackson, of Poetry in the City, has commissioned three cine-poems to be broadcast on the Liverpool Big Screen in late October/early November. He sees this as a form of disembodied performance in which the poets voices will drift across the city centre harboured by a visual interpretation of their words from local, national and international film-makers. This first round of films features poems by Rebecca Goss, the late Edmund Cusick, and Janette Stowell. None of these collaborations, or movements across creative genres, would be possible if poetry had stayed safely on the page. Performance poetry, spoken word - whatever you like to call it from open mics, to slams, readings at poetry festivals, and multi-media events is rooted deeply into our cultural life. And poets, even if you never plan to read your work in front of an audience, please read it aloud in the privacy of your own garrets. Youll be amazed at the difference it makes.
Sarah Maclennan is the Co-ordinator of Liverpools Dead Good Poets Society. She lectures in creative writing for Liverpool John Moores University and The Open University. Her poetry has been published in several magazines and anthologies.
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Tracey Moffatt (Born in Brisbane in 1960, lives and works in New incorporating writing York and Australia.) First Jobs Self Portrait series, 2008 For the Liverpool Biennial International 08, Tracey Moffatt presents First Jobs Self Portrait Series comprising eight brightly coloured photographs. The images depict the artist role-playing odd jobs she had as a teenager and college student in Australia in the 1970s and 80s. Using found imagery and photoshop illusion, Moffatt creates re-imagined scenes from her past, where she appears happily at work in various settings ordinarily associated with abject drudgery or low paid boredom, such as a canning factory or an office. Here Moffatts past is candy-coloured referencing not only the nostalgia of hand-coloured postcards of the Wish you were here variety but also, and more personally, the delight she finds in looking back at the dreary, character-building jobs that gave her a work ethic. Read in this way, fact and fiction merge in the photographs to suggest that no matter how mundane the job, your mind can always travel or imagine a life beyond the factory floor. Sara-Jayne Parsons Exhibitions Curator at the Bluecoat Self Portrait Series,Canteen 1984, 2008 Self Portrait Series, Corner Store, 1977, 2008 Self Portrait Series, Fruit Market, 1975, 2008 Self Portrait Series, Pineapple Cannery, 1978, 2008 Self Portrait Series, Reception, 1977, 2008 Self Portrait Series, Selling Aluminium Siding, 1978, 2008 All works: colour archival pigments on rice paper with gel medium 66 cm x 88 cm Courtesy of the artist Tracey Moffatts First Jobs Self Portrait series is on view at the Bluecoat as part of the Liverpool Biennial International 08 exhibition, September 20 November 30, 2008. Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial International 08
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
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Lisha Aquino Rooney
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Notes from American: Culture

Column by Christine Brandel
Culture, a word which means so much that it often ends up meaning so little. Id like to narrow the definition down to two things. Firstly, culture can refer to the influences around you, the social environment in which you were raised, the shared experiences of a community of people. Secondly, culture can mean appreciation of the finer things: arts, music, food, literature, all that shit. Most of what Americans learn about British culture is based on its past. As an American kid growing up, here is what I knew about Britain: it produced Shakespeare and other canonical writers; it used to be the boss of everyone (including us until we threw their tea in the ocean); it gave us the Beatles; all its people both sounded and actually were clever; it had royalty, including a princess called Diana; its food and dentistry were bad and its weather was wet. I would have described these things as British culture (the second definition) but, of course, it was my own
culture (the first definition), which led me to do so. For the past six years I have been living in Britain, experiencing both definitions of the word culture. I was surprised to learn that much of Britain also defines its culture by the past only. Granted I did live in the Midlands which is not necessarily a hot bed of modern culture, but it wasnt just Midlanders producing and watching When Were We Funniest and a thousand other programmes about how great Britain was in the past. Perhaps it has something to do with a lost empire, an experience, I, as newly British, cannot relate to. Perhaps it has something to do with the problems of modern Britain, of which there are, of course, many. However, I do think it sad that many British people cannot see that the culture around them is vibrant and alive and worth mentioning. The most impressive aspect of British culture is its variety. This is partly due
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to the diversity of the British people. Although America sees itself as a melting pot (or salad bowl or whatever the current cuisine-related metaphor is), the multi-ethnicity of Britain seemed less of a novelty and instead just ordinary. This aspect of culture (the first definition) most probably is due to Britains place in Europe and the Commonwealth, but, regardless of the reason, I think its something to be celebrated. After all, Brits are just as likely to having a curry for tea as they are fish and chips, because Britain caters to many tastes in many different ways.
The culture of Britain is alive and well, informed by its past but changing with the future
My favourite bit of British culture is language and the ways the different communities create their own. In British literature, you can see the beauty and versatility of the language, but you also hear it in shops and pubs. As a foreigner my favourite game was guessing the region of the speaker, because, although we do have some accents and dialects in America, they are nothing compared to British ones. Whether its in crossword puzzles, or award-winning poetry, British English is pleasing to the ear as well as the brain. Even many British insults are imagistic masterpieces. Although I am not denying the fact that many British people are ignorant or just plain thick (my Union Jack-tinted glasses arent completely blinding me), overall there is something in the culture that shows a respect for learning and knowledge. The variety of news media shows that, whatever your level of education or political leanings, British
people do think its important to be informed. British national newspapers again provide a great range of international and international news and tits, lets never forget the tits. And, regardless of ones position on dumbing down, the existence of the BBC on television and particularly on radio is another brilliant aspect of British culture. At almost any time of the day or night, British telly and radio provides a variety of shows, some of which are rubbish, of course, but many of which are both entertaining and informative. In fact right now there are a number of British telly imports just starting up in America where British music and movies are also usually successful. While heritage is part of how a place is chosen the European Capital of Culture, the award does not go to places that were only great in the past. The culture of Britain is alive and well, informed by its past but changing with the future. Although complaining is indeed part of being British, we should also appreciate what we have. This is my love song to British culture, from someone who misses it all from John Humphries to Heat magazine, from kebabs to custard, from Panorama to Property Ladder, and, of course, the wet, wet weather.
Christine Brandel is a writer and teacher. After finally accepting that, while in England, she would never escape the question Are you American? she was surprised to find that on her recent return to the States, she is being asked Are you British? The answer to both is yes.
In British literature, you can see the beauty and versatility of the language, but you also hear it in shops and pubs
40 Writing about prison life in the column gave me a means of showing that the things that concern people in prison are usually the same things that concern people outside
Erwin James: Writing After Prison

Interview by Stephy Robinson
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Writer and Guardian Columnist Erwin James served twenty years of a life sentence in prison. He began to write a regular column, titled A Life Inside, in The Guardian in 2000. In 2003 a selection of these articles were published in A Life Inside: a Prisoners Notebook and a few years later in 2005, The Home Stretch: From Prison to Parole was published as a follow-up. Writer Erwin James work does not want sympathy from the reader, and therefore I thought it would be better to keep my questions direct, but it was a challenge to keep things original. Was writing in any way a coping mechanism for you whilst behind bars? If so, would you encourage other prisoners to use their time creatively/ constructively? Writing was a way of expressing myself authentically. Prison life is so precarious and odd that it is very difficult to just be yourself. Bearing in mind that many people in prison have to discover true self that was certainly the case for me. Prison life makes you feel vulnerable and defensive, it is hard to trust. Face to face interaction is fraught with unpredictability. All the time you are trying to keep yourself safe. Letting your defences down so you can express emotions is almost impossible. Writing allows you do that safely. And yes, if I was asked I would definitely encourage people to write more in prison poetry, stories, diaries all provide a great release from the pressure of being locked up unable to express who you are. But any creative activity can provide the same kind of release drama, music, art all allow us to express the deeper and more authentic elements of who we are. How did being so productive and recording your experiences, help you understand the reality of prison life?
Understanding the reality of prison life takes years. Writing about it, you mean in my Guardian column, reminded me what I always knew - that prisoners are just people in prison. Outside there is often a perception that prisoners are of some other species, a sub species of human. Its how it feels in there sometimes the way the media reports on prisons, and the way prisoners are treated by politicians. Writing about prison life in the column gave me a means of showing that the things that concern people in prison are usually the same things that concern people outside family, work, money, friendships its just all a bit more intense in there. Do you feel that prison life aided your mental growth and creativity, and if so how did this benefit your writing after you were released? Isolation affects people in different ways. Being separated from the rest of society creates a particular mental state a mental awareness. In prison, because self-expression is so curtailed, you learn to live inside your head for much of the time. That can create serious problems for some people, especially for those who may be mentally fragile before they go in and you have to remember that a large percentage of people in prison have serious mental health problems. But if you can master some mental discipline, it is possible to grow mentally and intellectually. Prison can be a great opportunity for reflection and self-analysis and for experimentation through reading and education. You can set yourself educational goals all prisons have books, all prisons have educational facilities. You have to remember though that most people who go to prison lack self-discipline and mental order. Developing those attributes is a serious challenge. I would say it is doable I managed it to some
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extent, though I was flagging a bit after around the fifteen year mark. There were times when I felt mentally exhausted trying to manage life on the landings and use my time constructively, it was a serious juggling exercise. When I began writing my Guardian column I came back to life with incredible energy. It gave me a real sense of purpose again that you can lose with just educating yourself for the sake of it. Suddenly I became, not just a prisoner who did a bit of writing I was a writer in prison. Since Ive been released it has been difficult to maintain that same sense of discipline out here there are so many distractions. Life real life is seductive in all manner of ways. But what I learned in prison is that I had ability and that if I could marshal that ability outside then there was a good chance I would succeed in whatever I chose to do. So far Im doing not too badly. What is it that drives you to write now that you have been released? Do you see anything about the world differently
now, and if so does this influence your writing? I am a writer. I sort of always knew that from a very early age. I just never got the chance to prove it to myself until I started writing for the Guardian. Lets face it, that paper has some of the best writers in the country writing for it so once I was in there, getting paid, alongside people I had admired for years it was a great feeling. Now Im out I have to find an avenue for my writing that works for me I started writing in a particular place, from a particular place. And that place still determines much of my thinking and writing. I still write about prison issues, there is so much misunderstanding and ignorance about it. I feel sort of obliged to keep trying to inform from my profound prison experience. I do see the world differently, I see it as a great place, a place of opportunity and hope whereas before I went to jail I had no view about it one way or the other. The world was just a place in which I I had to try and survive a bit like the early years of prison I guess.
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How did the atmosphere that you were in affect the mood/tone of your writing? Im not sure that the atmosphere did affect the mood or tone of how I wrote when I was in prison. If anything writing was a way of maintaining an even, balance mood and tone. It was just so liberating to write and gave me an incredible sense of privilege to know that thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people would be reading my thoughts, my ideas and in a way hearing my voice. I knew that the prisoners voice is rarely heard in society. So, my voice in a way became the voice of many. Though I have never considered myself a spokesman for prisoners not ever I did realise that that Guardian column was not just a platform for me, for my voice. It was a like a sterile place where the outside could meet the inside without prejudice. Do you find yourself writing differently now that you arent behind bars? I do write differently to some extent in relation to articles I write in response to prison policy or media reporting of prisons commenting is very different from reporting. It would not have occurred to me to write a lot of the stuff I do now when I was in prison. I suppose the purpose for it then was different. We still need a voice out here giving some reliable information about the dynamics of prison life. So much of what is written and said out here is incredibly misinformed. Of course Im now on the outside looking in which does affect my judgement Im never really sure that I have got it completely right of course. I just do the best I can. It takes decades to learn what I learned about prison and thats what I did two of them. You revisited the prison in which you were kept for twenty years, how did it make you feel to pass by your old cell?
Ive been in a couple of prisons where a was when I was serving my sentence. I was in about a dozen prisons altogether. One prison I was in for seven years I think thats the one you are talking about. It was an odd feeling looking through the spyhole of my old cell there was no one in it, the wing I was in was due to be demolished to make space for new blocks. I felt as if I had been rapidly transported into the future and there I was looking in imagining me looking out. I knew that cell so well I was in it for about five years. The whole place was full of ghosts. Actually it was a very satisfying feeling I was never sure Id really make it to the end.
I do write differently to some extent in relation to articles I write in response to prison policy or media reporting of prisons commenting is very different from reporting
Society tends to stereotype people with criminal identities, how do you feel about this? Did you find yourself a victim of such stereotyping and if so, how differently were you approached in every day life? For most of my life before prison I identified myself as someone with a criminal identity. Even before prison I felt I was only ever on the edge of society with very limited formal education and no real skills or abilities I was just drifting, existing with little purpose or sense of ever being able to achieve anything positive with my life. Society tends to condemn people who fail, especially those who fail badly to the extent that it can feel that there is
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no way back. I met someone in prison a teacher who persuaded me I was valuable guided me into education, into exploring a multitude of possibilities. It was then, ironically, buried deep in the high security prison system that I stopped thinking of myself as a criminal. Thats what I would tell anyone who wants to get out of a negative lifestyle begin by deciding on your own identity and not embracing an identity that others inflict on you.
I think Ive answered much of this above. Treating people in prison with some respect, some humanity that is the only way we are going to get some real rewards from our investment in prisons. In the latter years of my sentence I was in a cell that had a porcelain toilet and sink, hot and cold water and a portable television. Physically it was better than my early years my first eight years all I had was a bucket for a toilet, a bed a chair and a small table. But even with the more You have stated that prisons can be pleasant physical aspects the modern valuable community resources, apart toilet etc you wouldnt want to be from keeping criminals off the streets, there. If we want people how else to prisons benefit a to respect us when they get out of community? prison we Travelogue of War Steinbecks have to respect them while To my mind a prison is exactly that a they are in there. Article by Claire Boot valuable community resource. Prisons Photographs by Andrew Oldham can be places where noble things can What message do you wish to happen, great things can be achieved by communicate in your writing? society in a prison. Im not talking about No messages I just like to write and a place where people who cause harm hope that it means something to and distress to others can have a great somebody. time I mean with the right attitude from society, lives can What is the most significant thing that be changed for the better, so that fewer you would wish for people to remember victims my be created in the future and or learn from reading your work? we, the outside community can feel I suppose that we are all valuable some pride in how we use prisons. even those who end up in prison. Prisons belong to all of us I know it is difficult if you have been the victim of a crime to envisage your attacker being given the opportunity to have a better life in prison. But what we do at the moment creates so much bitterness and so many extra difficulties for those we send away we have less chance of us achieving anything positive from the terrible negatives that crime and all it does to us brings us. Stephy Robinson is a third year Literature and How do you feel about the accusations Writing student at Edge that prisoners are given luxury Hill University. She has facilities? Do you feel that society published poetry and has retains an ignorance about prison been editor for fiction in the university conditions? Do you strive to challenge writing magazine. these accusations?
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Prisons can be places where noble things can happen, great things can be achieved by society in a prison
incorporating writing turn The Need to Article by Valeria Kogan Image by Gabana
fantasy into reality
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Art is the only thing that can bridge the gap between fact and fiction; our need for analysis and escapism are so perfectly combined in art that they can rarely be separated and, in some cases, one is genuinely mistaken for the other. A writers debut into fiction is their foray into this confusing world where they offer another consciousness to their audience as their plaything and distraction, to find solace from their own and maybe reflect on their differences and similarities. Good fiction moves the reader, envelops the audience and lets them climb into the space between words where fantasy resides and, hopefully, call this home for a little while. While the characters and plots may be pure fabrication, everything else is real; the emotions and problems within fiction are universal. Descartes claimed that the human mind is not so fantastical that it can invent entirely
new colours or forms, and so we can not invent fiction and the experiences or emotions therein, from nothing its essence is gleaned from reality and moulded to find a new form. Since one persons reality is anothers fiction, memoirs and biographies are increasingly popular. Once a domain reserved for historical figures or celebrities, memoirs are now read for escapism to become somebody you do not independently understand, or to have experiences that scare you too much in real life; hence the recent success of books such as Diary of an unlikely call girl or Erwin James documentation of his 20 years behind bars. The writer whose childhood was once described as brutal and rootless by a prison psychiatrist, Erwin James now enjoys wide acclaim and is appearing at this months Bluecoat
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Chapter and Verse festival. His story is unique; sleeping rough, committing various crimes just to get by and eventually inarticulate and uneducated ending up in prison serving a life sentence. It is his desperation, the sadness of his story and its detachment from the mainstream lifestyle which spelled the success of his story we are afraid of the unfamiliar, but also curious. Writers such as Sadie Jones tapped into this same desire when writing her first novel The Outcast (yet another writer appearing at the Bluecoat Chapter and Verse festival and shortlisted for the Orange Prize for fiction). When asked what inspired her, she explained that the idea began with the concept of a damaged person, seen as disgusting by others and ostracised because of it. Like Erwin James, she explores the universal concepts of transgression, redemption and salvation to create a captivating story which challenges preconceptions through empathy. Lewis in Sadie Jones book is no less real to the reader than Erwin James in his; both challenge the audience and offer a world that is otherwise unavailable to the average reader. At this point, it does not matter whether the character is real or not.
Ludlums Jason Bourne? What woman hasnt longed for romance such as that depicted in Austen novels, or maybe the excitement of the more recent Anne Rice erotic series? Maybe it simply inspires the reader to try snowboarding, maybe it challenges them to move out of their comfort zone and migrate to another country, choose another life. The need to turn fantasy (in this case, taken from fiction and altered to suit the exact desires of the reader) into reality is one of the most powerful impetuses known to man it creates ambition, obsession; the fuel to create dreams, as well as pursue them lies in fiction. And this power lies in the hands of the author, who broadcasts their own life or the lives within their mind through books. Its difficult to overestimate the power of literature, but it is often forgotten. Maybe because it is such a central aspect of our lives that it is simply taken for granted; we forget that films began as screenplays, whittled from an authors thoughts, or magazines we read on a daily basis with other peoples life stories are form of literature for us to escape in, so we forget its power to affect every single aspect of our lives. Chuck Palanuik, arguably one of the greatest writers of our generation, most aptly explained it in his interview with the Independent review when he said The first step especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art. Literature has always provided the blueprint for life: cave paintings, the Ten Commandments, the Bible, stereo instructions, Cosmopolitanwe rely on other peoples experiences or fables to guide us through our decisions or to tell us what
Its difficult to overestimate the power of literature, but it is often forgotten

The conflation of fact and fiction can also produce the opposite effect; instead of the audience interacting with a particular reality and turning it into entertainment, fiction can also affect the reality of the reader and can alter perceptions in such a way that they seek out the reality within the fiction; what man hasnt been affected by Ian Flemings James Bond, or Robert
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to do next, or at least what the possibilities are. Something that we may see as simply a work of fiction is a reaction; a reaction to the world, which is the same world that we live in. It may be different from our natural reaction, so it teaches us another perspective; it may be the same, so you can be reassured by the idea that you are not alone and that somebody else, a stranger, thinks in the same way. So moving from pure audience to the status of audience and author (you never cease to be an audience) is, in some ways, a step up the causal ladder. Instead of reacting to reactions you cause them by explaining the way that you see the world or how you wish the world to be. And what a fantastic gift, both to take and to bestow, to be able to share your consciousness and your ideas with a world desperate for escape and validation, while also reminding yourself that you are not alone. This is, no doubt, why writers enjoy a certain amount of celebrity. Obviously, they deserve this due to their art, but maybe the public is also curious whether the writer is like the characters they create. Each [good] book leads to questions about elements within it - how did they come into being, what inspired the author, what does it mean? Cult reads such as The Da Vinci Code brought millions of people together to collectively hold their breath during the tenser moments, and tacitly agree when they read If you ask three people what it means to be Christian, you will get three different answers. The fame of Harry Potter surpasses the actor who played him or the author who created him. Every book you read and truly enjoy can become part of your identity; so much so that some people actually refuse to date people who have not read a certain book, or do not have the same emotional reaction to a favoured novel. An author does not seek to simply reply
a story fiction or otherwise an author tries to affect their audience, whether that is by amusing them, disgusting them, challenging their ideas or reassuring them. The books that succeed become timeless classics written hundreds or thousands of years ago still affect the reader in the same way and transcend their author, those that fail fade away to become simply an ISDN number and a collection of words. While writers may want money from sales, the greatest reward would be to create a book that surpasses them and everything else that binds the individual like time, culture, space. A writers debut into fiction isnt just the chance to tell a story and make money; it is the chance to create something beyond themselves. Like a great author once said, the goal is not to live forever; the goal is to create something that does.
Valeria Kogan is a Russian born poet, model, student, artist and journalist. Having grown up in North Wales, she now spends her time flitting between Wales, London and Oxford where she studies classics and spends her free time dancing and exploring the world, looking for inspiration. In 2009 she will become the new Articles Editor for Incorporating Writing.
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Envoi Open Poetry Competition Closing Date: 20-Oct-08 Details: For poems of up to 40 lines. First prize 150. Entry Fee: 3 or 12 for five entries Contact: Envoi Poetry Competition, Meirion House, Glan yr afon, Tanygrisiau, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd LL41 3SU Website: www.envoipoetry.com Petra Kenney Poetry Competition 2008 Closing Date: 01-Dec-08 Details: For poems of up to 80 lines. First prize: 1000. Three categories: General, Comic Verse and Young Poets (14-18)Judges: Michael Schmidt, John Whitworth, Alison Chisolm, Morgan Kenney. Entry Fee: 3 per poem Contact: Petra Kenney Poetry Competition,PO Box 32, Filey, North Yorkshire YO14 9YG Website: www.petrapoetrycompetition.co.uk Slipstream Poetry Competition Closing Date: 31-Jan-09 Details: For poems of up to 60 lines. Judge: Paul Matthews. Theme: A Sense of Place. Prizes: 150, 75, 50. Winning poems to be published on the Slipstream Poets website. Entry Fee: 3 per single entry, 4 poems for 10, 6 poems for 12 Contact: Ursula Kiernan, 16a Lower Street, Pulborough, West Sussex RH20 2BL Cheques, postal orders payable to Slipstream Poets POETCASTING SEEKS POETS FOR FEATURES Reply to: poetcasting@hotmail.co.uk Im currently looking for more poets to feature on PoetCasting in the future. As you know, the funding from the Arts Council England means
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the site will continue to grow, so this is definately an exciting time to get involved. Feel free to message me here on Facebook, or email me at: poetcasting@hotmail.co.uk www.poetcasting.co.uk THE LONDON MAGAZINE SEEKS CONTRIBUTIONS FOR ITS CHRISTMAS ISSUE... Reply to: admin@thelondonmagazine.net Deadline: November 1st (outlines); December 1st (finished pieces) We are planning to have a Christmas issue in which we celebrate the history of The London Magazine. I would like to invite writers and academics to submit ideas for articles relating to the great literary figures as published in TLM, as well as ideas relating to the development of early literary publications and their impact on the careers of people like Hazlitt, Boswell etc. Please see below for some of the features I would like to suggest, but bear in mind that I would be very happy to consider suggestions on related topics. There is a wealth of material in the form of an online archive available from Michigan University of our back issues from the very first issue in 1732 (http:// onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/ serial?id=londonmag), through to the 1800s. We also have an extensive archive of material from the time of its relaunch in the 1950s under John Lehmann and Alan Ross, which I can have scanned and sent to those who would like to work from the material.
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I have a few suggestions to get the ball rolling: -De Quincys Opium Eaters, (first published in The London Magazine) and its relevance to todays drug culture. -Many of the great romantic poets were published under John Scotts editorship in the 19th century. Therefore I would be interested in articles on the development of the Romantic Movement particularly focussing on the work of poets such as Wordsworth, Keats etc. that were published in early issues of The London Magazine. For online copies of the relevant issues go to:http:// onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/ serial?id=londonmag -There is a great deal of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plaths early work published in the 50s and 60s. It is deeply poignant to read the biographies in the back. Sylvia Plath...is the wife of Ted Hughes. We could make available a list of the poems published by each of these poets, and I would welcome articles, memoir pieces etc. discussing their early work and careers. -Art: From 1700 to the present: What were the major trends? How did magazine presentation and artwork develop? Or art from the 1950s to now (as discussed in TLMI can make a list available of the artists discussed plus scanned articles) - The development of early literary and arts magazines, (and the rivalry between them! As exhibited by The Gentlemans Magazine towards The London Magazine) their impact on the work of the great literary figures (particularly Hazlitt, Boswell, De Quincey) -The development of the Columnist (Boswell wrote a series of excellent columns as the Hypochondriak, it would be very interesting to do something on Boswells columns specifically or development of the column in general). -A look at the life and work of John Lehmann and/or Alan Ross, and
or a look at the work of all the editors from John Scott (who was killed in a duel) to Sebastian Barker, my predecessor. Please send all ideas to admin@thelondonmagazine.net. The deadline for completed copy is December 1, but I would like to have all outlines by November 1, 2008. Salt launches its second free online literary magazine CAMBRIDGE, UK (Salt Publishing) Salt has launched Horizon Review, its second online literary magazine and part of its planned expansion into free-to-view Web journals. Novelist and poet Jane Holland takes the helm of the magazine for the next three years. Holland is currently Warwicks Poet Laureate. Featuring a new regular column from Daily Telegraph blogger Peter Robins, as well as new fiction from Elizabeth Baines and poetry from T.S. Eliot awardwinning poet George Szirtes. The first issue is diverse, feature rich and contains an interview with awardwinning fantasy writer China Miville, alongside reviews of art and a translation of a newly discovered fifth branch of the Mabinogion, the Amaethon Uab Dr. Horizon Review is at: http:// www.saltpublishing.com/horizon/ index.htm For further information please contact: Jen Hamilton-Emery on +44 (0)1223 882220 or email jen@saltpublishing.com
All news for this section is compiled by Incwriters. Send your info to: info@incwriters.co.uk Further news can be found in their forum at: www.incwriters.co.uk

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incorporating writing

Issue 5 Vol 4 CHAPTER & VERSE @ the Bluecoat

John McAuliffe reveals his own

ATaTalk exclusively to us about their work

Jim Crace Erwin James

Chapter & Verse Literature Festival 08 - SPECIAL

Stephy Robinson gets to grips with Erwin in this exclusive interview.

Articles A Writers Secret Passion

Getting into Reading

Perfect Poetry The Need

Sarah Maclennan tackles the world of performance.

Valeria Kogan braces herself on the journey from fantasy to reality.

Dan McTiernan takes a look at culture vultures.

Notes from America Artwork Perfect Eye Reviews

Christine Brandel returns stateside.

Tracey Moffatt shares images from her exhibition at the Bluecoat.

Janet Aspey introduces Culture in all its forms.

News and Opportunities

A Writers Secret Passion: Not Reading, Research

Column by Dan McTiernan Image by Kees Huyser

In terms of style, Sissay is the master of repetition

Interview by Alexander Laurence

for a better future for Somalia.

20 Chewing the lean with Jim Crace

Get Into Reading: Removing the Fear Factor

Reading can make a difference, a real difference

Article by Sarah Maclennan Image by Jeltovski

Some of the successful page poets do not read or perform well

Lisha Aquino Rooney

Notes from American: Culture

Erwin James: Writing After Prison

fantasy into reality

Its difficult to overestimate the power of literature, but it is often forgotten

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