Incorporating Writing Issue Vol 1

incorporating writing
Issue 5 Vol 1 POPULAR CULTURE
Will Self
The need to walk
Success...And How to Avoid It WIN A FREE COPY
The Popular Contest Spurling on the demise of culture
Will Self - Douglas Coupland - The Death of Empathy
Incorporating Writing
(ISSN 1743-0380)
Contents
Editorial Pop Goes Culture
Page
Editorial Team
Managing Editor Andrew Oldham Deputy Editor SE/Interviews Sarah Hesketh Deputy Editor Midlands/Articles Fiona Ferguson Deputy Editor NW/Reviews G.P.Kennedy Sales & Marketing Manager Graeme Hind Columnists Dan McTiernan & Christine Brandel Contributors John Alder, Hermione Bressler, Ruben Dario Colorado, Andrea Church, Arturo Delfin, Andrea Fantoni, Jess Greenwood, Pagan Kennedy, Alex Laurence, Cath Nichols, Jane M. Sawyer, Tom Spurling, Mary R. Vogt Cover Art Jin 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
G.P. Kennedy looks at the growing popular front.
Interviews Douglas Coupland Will Self
The orginal voice of Generation X.
19 35
Pagan Kennedy catches up with Will on his US Book tour.
Articles Behind the Scenes at the Museum: Interpretation

Hermione Bressler in museums.
27 38
The Popular Contest

Tom Spurling looks at popular culture.
Writing on the Web and The Death of Empathy Po(p)etry
Jess look at the world of internet writing.
45 51
John Alder looks at the popular voice of poetry in the hidden mainstream.
Columns End Them All
Dan McTiernan takes a stance against popular culture.
Homer Simpson or Alan Partridge Artwork Perfect Eye Reviews
Christine Brandel tackles culture on both sides of the Atlantic.
42
Cover artist, Jin, exhibits some of her work.
30 9 5 49 4
G.P. Kennedy introduces the next round in criticism.
Letters and Feedback News and Opportunities Competition
Most of us have a vague notion of what is meant when the term popular culture is used
Pop Goes Culture

Editorial by G.P. Kennedy Image by Arturo Delfin
Welcome to the Popular Culture issue of the magazine. The notion of popular culture is a slippery eel, difficult to grasp and even more troublesome to keep a grip upon. Therefore the first order of business in an introduction to this issue ought to be a definition of popular culture. Most of us have a vague notion of what is meant when the term popular culture is used: we think of the popular music on the radio and in videos current hits and so-called classics; blockbuster films; soap operas; Harry Potter and Stephen King; the internet (and its latest pratfall hero) fashion; the current machinations in the twisted lives of celebrities; football, and the lives of its players and their WAGs; the latest gadgets; must have products; holiday hotspots; in-places to livethe list is potentially inexorable as is the scope for nausea. Further, the scope for academic analysis is dizzying in its
scope and depth. So for the purposes of this issue I will adhere to a definition of the term in question. From my reading, experience, and no little thought I have arrived at the firm notion that popular culture, for the purposes of both this issue and my sanity can be seen thus; That which lies between high culture (the traditional preserve of the upper class) and low culture (that which is the preserve of the underclass) is, by a process of elimination, the culture of the mass of the people; ergo popular culture. In terms of this publication the trick, for this issue, was to transfer or translate that notion into articles, interviews, columns and reviews. In so doing, we should consider the notion of popular literature. F. R. Leavis gave a withering account of popular fiction, mid-twentieth century; This form of compensation
[reading popular chapbooks in the place of real experience]is the very reverse of recreation, in that it tends, not to strengthen and refresh the addict for living, but to increase his unfitness by habituating him to weak evasions, to the refusal to face reality at all. Likewise, on the publishers of popular fiction, Leavis wrote that they were, the most powerful and pervasive deeducator[s] of the public mind. So, the task for the editorial team was to find popular literature that confounds notions of weak evasions and de-education while paying full dues to the title of the issue. We have sought to stay true to the traditions of storytelling; the means to tell us about ourselves, our values, and the world we inhabit. From ancient Greek epics, medieval romances, early modern chapbooks through penny dreadfuls, and the modern and postmodern novel, popular literature has reaffirmed what is important in the cultures and times in which they appear. This issue leads with two Pop Cult bug gun, Douglas Coupland and Will Self in interviews. They give forth in individually uncompromising and perfervid forms for our enlightenment and entertainment. Supporting our literary Howitzers are the rifles rapid rattle of articles on issues covering popular poetry, writing on the internet, the death of empathy, and the popular contest; flanked by the mighty columns of Dan McTiernan and Christine Brandel. To round off the Pop Cult assault we have the un-hasty orisons of this months reviewers led by Caroline Drennan revisiting Catcher in the Rye, the ultimate Pop Cult literature classic.
Competition Giveaway
Incorporating Writing is giving away one copy of Mat Cowards book Success...And How to Avoid It from TTA Press (http:// www.ttapress.com). Mat is the author of DI Don Packham and DC Frank Mitchell crime novels. To enter, contact Incorporating Writing by email with the logline SUCCESS GIVEAWAY by the 1st March 2008. All entries must include contact address, email and telephone number. Entries will be drawn on the 2nd March 2008 and the winners will be announced in the April 2008 issue of the magazine: Issue 5 Vol 2 SEX SELLS incorporatingmag@yahoo.co.uk
RANT WINNERS: Anna Walker (London), Christopher Churcher (London) & Pauline Fox (Edinburgh)
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.
Winning Letter
The Lack of Scope Dear Incorporating Writing, I am increasingly annoyed at the lack of sttention to detail in most literature magazines today, This is not just a question of grammar or even spelling but something far worse; a lack of scope. The same few well known names, the same few well known styles of poems or stories crop up in same old, same old publications. A funny thing happened some years ago in the USA. A respected poet had submitted the same poem to several well known and not so well known magazines. Naturally, all the magazines jumped at the chance to publish this poet and they published the poem. All at the same time. This poet defended his corner and stated that he had done this to make a point. The point being that this was a dreadful poem but that he had been published because of reputation. That he had taught and mentored several fine poets over the years and that they had had little or no luck with these magazines. It was, as he stated, A warning shot to avoid mediocrity. That editors should, Look for content rather than a pretty face or a granite reputation. It is a shame that new poets and writers are finding it more and more difficult to get published in the UK. Yet, one has to wonder whether anyone is reading their work or just googling them to discover whether they should be published. Maybe it is time that editors and readers across the UK widen their scope and embrace new voices and not pretty faces or granite. Yours John Atkins, Birmingham
Letters and Feedback

Dear Incorporating Writing, I loved Tonia Buxtons interview in the last issue. I am a fan of her TV show, My Greek Kitchen, and I was delighted to read that she is as down to earth as she is on TV. Surely, mainstream TV should dump Nigella in favour of Tonia? Isnt it about time? At least Tonias kitchen isnt a fake TV set being passed off as her home. More Tonia Buxton please. Thanks Claire Matheson, London EDITOR REPLY: Thanks for that, Claire. We cant comment on Nigella Lawson but I am sure that Tonia has a growing fan base for her cookery, her ideas and her love of Greek food. Dear Andrew Oldham, Thought the Food issue was the best edition so far. Sumptious. Gaia Holmes, Huddersfield Dear Editors, Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading more about Anthony Capella. I love his novels and was so surprised by the man behind the books. It shows that you should never judge a book by its cover. Best Wishes Pauline Holmes, Huddersfield Dear Incorporating Writing, It was good to see the work of Lisha Aquino Rooney featured in Perfect Eye. Is there any chance of learning more about her? Or even buying some of her work? Yours Paul Davies, London EDITOR REPLY: You can contact Lisha Aquino Rooney via email at:
lisha_rooney@yahoo.com or look at more of her work in one of our back issues at www,incwriters.co.uk in Issue 3 Vol 4: PLAYWRIGHTS & CRITICS or at the Saatchi Gallery at www.saatchigallery.co.uk/ Dear Andrew Oldham, I read your last editorial and I laughed so much about your posh sexy voiceover for cheese on toast. More please! Eleanor Lawson (no relation), Hull EDITOR REPLY: Thank you for your comments. Dear Incorporating Writing, Is there any chance that you can put more News & Opportunities in each edition or even on your website? Thanks, Paul Cutler, Crewe EDITOR REPLY: Thanks Paul, we do put some news & opportunities in each edition but they are compiled by Incwriters at www.incwriters.co.uk (our hosting and sister site). They put all they can in their forums and ask that members continue to post their info up there. They give us a selection for the magazine. So, there are no future plans to increase this section. Dear Editors, Regarding Roger Feudals letter in the latest edition of the magazine. Is this a real person? Does he exist and, if so, how? Carol Lever, London EDITOR REPLY: Carol, yes Roger is very much a real person and is one of many people who email us constantly. It is nice to have the attention. Roger does exist but with regards to the final part of your email, this is an existential question that has yes to be answered.
Dear Christine Brandel, Just wanted to say that like you, I too am an American married to an English man and your column made me laugh. I thought that I missed my home town or even my family but no, youre right, its those drive thrus that are calling and those tacos. Best Wishes Lorna Matthews, Bristol EDITOR REPLY: Thank you for your comments.Christine Brandel is new to the team and we hope she continues to write for us over the next year. Dear Editors, I did enjoy Bruce Barnes and his dip into puddings. Would Bruce be interested in taking a leisurely swim in a sticky toffee pudding with me? Or, even a quick pedalo ride over mounds of melting ice cream? Love Joyce Place, Wakefield EDITOR REPLY: I am sure that Bruce will be in contact with you if this sparks his interest. Incorporating Writing does advise that you take precautions before swimming in desserts, please make sure that you have adequate supervision and know where any emergency exits are.
Have something to tell us at Incorporating Writing? Do you want to tell readers about what has annoyed you or please you in the world of Literature and Arts? Then drop us a brief letter at incorporatingmag@yahoo.co.uk by the 1st March 2008 and the best letter receives a prize.
Column by Dan McTiernan Image by Jane M Sawyer
End Them All
I want you to acquiesce to a mass overnight drugging that will forever change the way you perceive the world around you
Readers, I ask you to allow me to suggest something to you. Something that may alter the course of your life. I want you to acquiesce to a mass overnight drugging that will forever change the way you perceive the world around you. Stay with me here... I suggest this, not because of my wish for world domination, nor for my curiosity as to the logistical considerations of a mass drugging, but because I fear for our collective marbles. You see its all to do with Popular Culture. Popular Culture, the phrase which can be almost anagrammed into Pure Occult or even Pet Rupture. Well, it has the word cult in it at least. Stay with me here... You see, I reached an epiphany the other night while watching How To Look Good Naked. It was about the time at which the host, Gok Wan - whose job it
is to convince daft women to get their kit off on national television in the pseudo-interests of self esteem started referring to himself as the Gokmeister and to breasts as Bangers. Check out those bountiful bangers on you girlfriend. The Gokmeister, 2007 I sat there, drooling somnolently into my glass of rioja, thinking about nothing and then suddenly; epiphany. Something sinister is going on. I bet you think the same. Something sinister is going on, isnt there? I took another slug of rioja, just to clarify my thoughts. Why am I - I considered - an educated, reasonably well-read man, sitting like a coma sufferer in front of three hours of tv per night? Why am I not working on my novel, reciting witty, self-penned poetry to my
amused friends, reading important books? Why am I not railing against the diarrhoea in front of me? Well - I reasoned Ive been at work. Ive got an eight-month-old baby who keeps us up at night. Basically, Im knackered. Permanently knackered. And thats the sinister part of it all. I started to wonder whether my tiredness was not simply the result of my vaguely busy life but was somehow induced, somehow inflicted upon me from without? My first port of call in these situations is to blame the Americans. The Americanization... Americanization... Americanisation Microsoft Word makes short work of making my point for me. You get the idea. For years now Ive been firmly on the yank-bashing committee of Great Britain. I even subscribed in a weaker moment to a radical environmental movement conjured up one drunken night amongst some friends. KAAPAT: Kill An American, Plant A Tree. We had a t-shirt print run planned and everything. Dont judge me please. But recently my mum told me off for yank-bashing. She has a Californian friend who lives in Brussels and is fed up with Europes default dinner conversation how America has ruined everything. Its not Americans she protests, its Bush. And as far as American Popular Culture goes, if its that bad, why are we all so desperate to buy into it? Fair point, I conceded. In fact as far as telly is concerned, America produces by far and away the finest stuff. Six Feet Under, need I say more? So if not them, then who? Another flagon of vino tinto and I decided I was onto something. I made a list. Programs that ruin lives: Deal or no
Deal, Fame Academy, Changing Rooms, Big Brother. There has to be a connection... mmmmm... Is it just that they all reduce the dictionary definition of the word Culture simply to the: growing of televisual Gonorrhoea on agar filled petri dishes?
Recently my mum told me off for yank-bashing

The more I drank the more I became convinced that I understood the true power struggle at play in modern civilization... civilization... civilisation. The most disturbing part of it all was that it seemingly had nothing whatsoever to do with the Land of The Brave and Home of The Free and everything to do with our side of the pond. And so I planned my insurgency. Readers, I give you: Unpopular Culture. Its brilliant and other than the simultaneous drugging and brainwashing of an entire country, is fiendishly simple. The plan is thus. In one fell swoop we reintroduce all the dull things we used to do before telly. Reading, playing games which dont require electricity, leaving our homes occasionally to do things and visit places other than work, talking to other human beings, that kind of thing. We do this all in one night by agreeing to the afore-mentioned mind-altering narcotics, arranging for the mass theft of all our TVs and follow it up with a well targeted poster and leaflet campaign extolling the virtues of cribbage, promenading and light operetta. And Bobs you uncle or in the current world of Jeremy Kyle Bobs your uncle and your dad. You see, the thing that Ive discovered.
The conspiracy Ive unearthed. The truth that even wine cannot fortify me against, is that there is one European entity responsible for all this social malaise. This celebritocracy we subsist in is part of the master plan of one organisation so Machiavellian that it doesnt even need to disguise its intent in a benign name because it knows were too weary to even notice. But not me. I see what theyre up to and Im sharing it with you now. As I turned off the TV before lurching upstairs to a fitful nights sleep I made a note to self: How much does Endemol, when you think about it carefully, sound like End em All...?
Reviews
For this issue of the magazine I considered the vast pantheon of Popular Culture and determined to be popular and populist, all in one neat section of the magazine. To lead we have the ultimate Pop Cult classic, and the very apotheosis of a one-hit wonder, in Salingers, Catcher in the Rye, most ably covered by Caroline Drennan as she muses upon the nature and extent of the classic novel during its 50 years of life. Admirable supporting acts are provided by Janet Aspey, as she covers Alice Sebolds latest, The Almost Moon; Katherine C. Blairs reluctant homage to the seminal poetry of, The Mersey Sound; and Cath Nichols tour de force mulling over notions of life and death and family in poetry old and new from Cinnamon Press. On a personal note I would like to bid farewell to you, the reader, in my role as Reviews Editor. I have had the enormous joy of nominating my successor and can report with happiness and no sense of disingenuousness that my replacement was my first choice. Therefore, welcome Ben Felsenburg, who brings his acuity and perspicuity from reviewer to Reviews Editor from the next issue, Sex Sells. Fill your boots Ben.
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.
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.
10
Featured Review The Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger 7.99 Published by Penguin ISBN 0-14-023750-X 192pp
First published in the United States in 1951, it quickly rose to fourth place on the New York Times best seller list, and distinguished itself by controversy. Never mind the profanities with which it is peppered, it is anti establishment, at times anti church and army, it touches on homosexuality, transvestism, prostitution and is riddled with a healthy adolescent interest in premarital sex. In the years that followed, several American states sought to ban or censor it; some were to be successful. In 1962 it was the book of choice to teach for California professors. In the early 1990s, the American Library Association listed it as the fifth most frequently challenged book; by 2005 it was still in the top ten list. This December, Amazon Online totals customer reviews of The Catcher in the Rye at 2,722, only about 150 less than the last Harry Potter novel; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night -Time, hugely popular after its publication in 2003, has only 414 reviews. One of the top 21 titles in the BBCs Big Read, in 2006 London University surveyed 500 men and The Catcher in the Rye emerged as one of the most important novels in their lives. John Lennons assassin was found to be carrying a copy, NASA named a lunar crater after its central character, and a current Salinger website is curiously entitled Dead Caulfields. What is it about aspirated names and
To many, the term popular culture suggests capturing the concerns of the moment, appealing to the imagination of the masses in a way that means it must be passed on and urgently too; in the case of a novel, Read it, read it now. It is hard for any generation to tell which hits will survive. Some have the quality to become classics in their own right but few will retain that exciting freshness that caught up their early readers. However, JD Salingers novel, Catcher in the Rye, has caught the imagination of new readers for more than 50 years. Its 1953 edition carried the blurb, This unusual book may shock you, will make you laugh, and may break your heart but you will never forget it.
11
disaffected, idealistic youths with popular appeal? Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield all tread an interesting line between hero and huckster. In the early 1950s, as the teenagers conflict with the adult world and culture became increasingly recognised, The Catcher in the Rye was very much of the moment. And its first sentence, casual, direct, tantalising and irreverent, still grasps attention: If you really want to hear about it, the first thing youll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I dont feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the paragraph that follows, goddam and crumby might seem tame expletives for today, but the sense of teenage response to adult overreaction rings very true, my parents would have about two haemorrhages apiece if I told anything personal about them as does the sense of a right to be angry with any aspect of the world, even a part of popular culture, If theres one thing I hate, its the movies. The first sentence of the novel establishes a trend, the books ability to appeal to those who dont like reading and to those who do. Despite appearances, The Catcher in the Rye is a celebration of literary creativity, conveyed through Holdens interest in his brothers writing, his own discussion of books that appeal to him and those that dont, and his refusal to be tied down in his writing, producing a tribute to his deceased brothers boxing glove when asked to crib a simple description of a house. It is ironic that the classic Holden dismisses so disparagingly in his opening words was once at the height of popular culture, and surely no accident that Holdens surname recalls that protective caul which Dickenss David
Copperfield sports upon birth. Finally there is Holdens ideal future career, that of catcher in the rye, an inventive misquotation of a poem of Robert Burns, and which of course gives its title to Salingers book. What delights most readers is the character of Holden himself He is funny, convincingly repetitive and increasingly self critical, a mixture of the careless and deeply, madly caring: Holden the streetwise, flunking school after school, defiantly smoking, shamelessly trying to pass himself off as an adult for drink or women; and Holden the quirkily vulnerable, preoccupied about where ducks go in winter when he is himself footloose in New York, embarrassed about eating bacon and eggs for breakfast when somebody else is only eating toast and coffee, rejecting suicide by defenestration because I didnt want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory. Holdens central angst is presented in terms of hatred of phonies, and there is something intensely moving about his desire to be the catcher in the rye, saving the innocent from falling off the cliff. His story may be rooted in mid twentieth century New York - it has even been proposed as a literary travel guide to the city - but the experiences, thoughts and memories we share on his free fall weekend, continue to have resonances for anyone who has ever been young and in any way at odds with the world.
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
12
Salt-Sweat & Tears Louisa Adjoa Parker Cinnamon Press, 2007 7.99 77pp Morocco Rococo Jane McKie Cinnamon Press, 2007 7.99, 60pp Relatively Unscathed Idris Caffrey Cinnamon Press, 2007 7.99, 60pp Available Light Estill Pollock Cinnamon Press, 2007 7.99 76pp
These books represent two collections by first time poets and two by old hands. Salt-sweat & Tears is an autobiographical first collection. Parkers father was African, and Parker is mixed race British. When her mother leaves her father the family move to Devon. Unfortunately, her mothers hatred for her father translates into racism: how could we grow up not thinking black equals bad when she would tell us we were just like him? Youre just like your black bastard of a Dad, shed say.
(Just like your father)
My criticism is that this collection can read so relentlessly that everything becomes over-stressed. For example, in the poem above I would have used italics only once in the second line. This is poetry of pain, rage and reflection. After hed married his English Rose/ and discovered it wasnt to be/ a bed of pink roses,/ sometimes hed blacken/ her eyes (English Rose). Now that Parkers story is out I wonder what she will write next. There is no evidence of an interest in telling other peoples stories.
13
Parkers final poem (Pink Roses in all shades) echoes her opening poem. She says, Just because/ there are roses growing doesnt mean I have to stay/ for the roses. Roses / can grow anywhere. Lets hope her writing can too. Jane McKie does write other peoples stories. I liked Medicine where she becomes a hag who, lacking iron in her diet, drinks from rain-filled hoof-tracks to gain the deficient mineral. McKie suggests that today the woman might take Prozac, concluding: I suppose you could say that I managed my serotonin with measured sips, or that lapping from hoof-prints slakes my appetite for pathos. Either way, it seems to do the
stall Which is more thrilling? And this is without remarking on the laziness of embers of the past. Caffrey also presents a fox poem, but it can only fare poorly in comparison to Ted Hughes and Ruth Padels foxes. One would expect a poet on his sixth collection to know the dangers of such comparisons. There is a clear sense of place in this collection (Wales), but it is flattened by Caffreys desire to be constantly profound. Many of these poems begin with an objectively-written stanza and conclude with a stanza in the first person; a heavy-handed haiku moment. Stillness, sudden warmth,/ a few small flakes falling I look into the sky,/ let the swirling snow take me. (Snow) Or Somewhere a child/ is blowing bubbles. I too had dreams. (Bubbles) This device also puts the poet centre stage, which becomes wearing. In addition there are six poems on being a poet surely self-indulgent? Sample: I went my own way,/ trod the poets path/ through the wanton years (Plateau). Then theres a poem called, without irony, Dream Sequence, another, Place that ends: And it is a dream, a recurring dream I have of a place that I once knew but the morning sun awakens me to all those things I hold true the dream lied as dreams often
trick.
A few poems tackle Greek mythology (Vulcan, Venus and Prometheus) but these are less successful than the poems set in Scotland. Although individually these poems work well I wasnt left with a sense of coherence, which may be first collection nerves: putting all the good stuff in regardless of fit. All horses in an Idris Caffrey poem are sad, all flowers have souls and all buzzards are circling. Compare the buzzards in Wales in Springtime Two buzzards circle overhead: mapping the future from the embers of the past. with those in Paul Muldoons Turkey Buzzards: Theyve been so long above it all those two petals so steeped in style they seem to
do. Not my dream book at all.
Estill Pollocks tenth collection is wide-
14
ranging. Some poems are sequences. Resurrection Suite, intersperses the science of Chernobyls disaster (roentgens per hour and shutdown procedures) with adaptations from an eye-witness journal by Lyubov Sirota. In the inventory of deaths, our names/ are missing, and the grief of mourners/ is saved for others. Despite the authenticity of the source material I was never gripped by the writing. A shorter sequence was more successful, Variations on a Theme of Romantic Character, four poems that were evocative in their descriptions and playful with notions of romantic writing: Speak no more to me of poetry/ and vanities of that kind./ Bees at clover are wiser than sonnet writers/ in their generation I charge you leave me out of any publication (3. Charles Lamb: a letter) If a poem must address poetry then here is a way to do it.
Anthills and Stars by Kevin Duffy (Bluemoose Books ISBN 0955336708ISBN 13: 9780 955336706) 7.99
Fiction. It's 1968, and in Paris the students are rioting but in Broughton, 20 miles East of Manchester the Permissive Society has just arrived, driving a multi coloured VW camper van...Mrs. Hebblethwaite thinks the devil himself has arrived, he has.
The Bridge Between By Nathan Vanek (Bluemoose Books ISBN 0955336716 ISBN13:9780955336713) 7.99.
Non Fiction. Born and raised in Toronto, Nathan Vanek, Yogi and Guru,spent much of his adult life in India.He communicates the essence of his knowledge and insights into the dramatic contrasts between the two countries, and the essential oneness of us all. fo
Cath Nichols publications include Tales of Boy Nancy (Driftwood, 2005) and the forth-coming My Glamorous Assistant (Headland, 2007). She has been the recipient of several Arts Council of England awards.
ALL TITLES AVAILABLE FROM THE SHOP AT WWW.INCWRITERS.CO.UK
15
The Almost Moon Alice Sebold Picador, 2007 16.99 ISBN 978-0-330-45132-1 291pp
Helen Knightley is an unlikely murderer. She is an average woman, divorced with two grown up daughters, has a job at the local art college as a life model after failing in her own artistic ambitions, and is the principal carer for her mother who is declining rapidly with dementia. She visits her regularly and appears to all as a loving and attentive daughter. However, behind the closed door of the family home has always lain a very different story, one that finally succeeds in breaking Helens decency in a moment of violent rage and exasperation. As the book opens Helen has already crossed the boundary of decent behaviour into the realm of the criminally indecent, and it is this macabre descent and its impact upon the killer that we witness throughout the novel. A night of action is interplayed with memories of Helens relationships, particularly with her mother, Clair, and we soon learn they have never had an average or easy relationship with each other. How can you apologise for the mother you love? The mother you, too, hate. What has been played out between the two in their past is a relationship befitting any Tenessee Williams play, particularly A Streetcar Named Desire. A seemingly ordinary night widens the cracks where madness and violence unfold as a reaction, as a breaking point
When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily. From the above opening line, Sebold succeeds in grabbing the readers attention and, for the most part, does not surrender it. We become a complicit confidante of the protagonist each page we turn in this gothic tale of murder and loss. As she did in the hugely successful The Lovely Bones Sebold returns to her favoured themes of the darker side of humanity, and offers up a malevolent side of suburbia to her audience. With The Observer citing it as one of the top ten books to read this autumn it is likely that this will be every bit as popular as the former was under Richard and Judy.
16
Interview by Helens breaking point of fragility. Alexander Laurence comes when her controlling and unreasonable mother, who, like the character of Blanche DuBois, is all faded glamour and jangled nerves, soils herself and Helen is too weak to physically get her body to the bathroom. Her dementia has lessened her to that of a dribbling and vicious animal, pawing and scratching at the character of Helen until she simply cannot take any more. The first section of the novel, where Helen is alone with the corpse of her mother is also the strongest section. It contains all the claustrophobic tension of secrets slowly revealed as in Eugene ONeills masterpiece A Long Days Journey Into Night. The presiding disappointment for me was that this carefully and well constructed atmosphere was not maintained throughout. Once Helen leaves her mothers house and re-enters the world outside the tension dissipates rather than increases. My interest was piqued more by the question will she get away with this than by the quality of what I was reading. I felt I was reading something less than it was, and this is the overriding flaw of what is generally a good, sometimes brilliant piece of fiction. What was starkly surprising to me as a reader was the way Sebold managed to maintain my status as the complicit confidante. This is mainly due to the tender, often poetical way in which she writes her prose. This was particularly used to great effect when describing the act of killing itself, hiding the violence under soft and gentle language. Constantly she pits us in a juxtaposition of love and hatred, of care and violence, so that we are always compelled, if not always comfortable, to read what she has to say. This made for an engrossing read if not always an enjoyable one.
Much in life is about almosts, not quitesWhat we see is an almost moon. All the characters are well realised, dialogue and memory are used to a skilful degree throughout, but the momentum is not always competently maintained, and this lets the book down. However, I would still recommend The Almost Moon as a book worth reading.
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.
17
The Mersey Sound Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten Penguin Modern Classics, 2007 9.99 143pp
vibe that no doubt benefited from the eruption of The Beatles onto the world stage. The poetry still feels contemporary today perhaps a little sad, a little without hope, a little dank and dirty like one imagines of the rainsodden streets of Liverpool. Adrian Henri led The Liverpool Scene and released four LPs of poetry and music. McGough is the author of over fifty books and many scripts, which feature regularly on BBC Radio 4s Poetry Please. Patten, who writes primarily about love and relationships, has achieved critical acclaim for his work. Together, they are credited with moving poetry away from its Oxbridge centre, and making it more accessible. The Mersey Sound, first published in 1967, was an all-time best-selling anthology, which its publisher claims changed the face of twentieth century poetry. To celebrate the books fortieth anniversary, Penguin Modern Classics have republished the collection. Forty years ago, Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten first began reading their work in front of audiences at college and theatres across Britain. The trio became famous for revolutionising poetry using a new form and style. The first time around, the collection sold half a million copies and was billed as an accessible alternative to traditional poetry that not only reflected the generation, but also inspired it. It was part of the sixties It is Henris poems that begin the collection, starting with Tonight at Noon, a quirky poem which turns that which is expected on its head; Tonight at non/Supermarkets will advertise 3p EXTRA on everything/Tonight at noon/ Children from happy families will be sent to live in a home/Elephants will tell each other human jokes/America will declare peace on Russia. It is a poem that emphasises the mood of the time, and is a sketch of life in Liverpool at the time. Roger McGough echoes the sensitivities so prevalent in the sixties with At Lunchtime, set in the age when the fear of a nuclear attack was a tangible fear. In this poem, McGough seizes on an idea of using the imminent end-of-the-world
18
as a means of persuading a younglady in the green hat sitting opposite him on the bus, to make love. The rest of the people on the bus join in, but [t]hat night, on the bus coming home/we were all a little embarrassed, especially me and the younglady in the green hat. It is also in this poem that McGough displays his characteristic joining of words such as in his description of the buspeople who were shockedandsurprised and amusedandannoyed. Again, with references to the nuclear age in Icarus Allsorts, McGough describes the start of World War Three as being sparked by a meteorite falling to earth and mistaken for a missile; A littlebit of heaven fell/From out the sky one day/It landed in Vermont/North-Eastern U.S.A./ The general at the radar screen/He should have got the sack/but that wouldnt bring/Three thousand million, seven hundred and sixty-eight people back. There is also an element of the antiestablishment, rebel which comes through in McGoughs Let Me Die a Youngmans Death; when Im 104/& banned from the Cavern/may my mistress/catching me in bed with her daughter/& fearing for her son/cut me up into little pieces/& throw away every piece but one. Another commonality is the theme of casual, empty sex, as in Brian Pattens Party Piece which describes a sexual encounter in the dying embers of an all-night party Right there among the woodbines and Guinness stains,/And later he caught a bus and she a train/And all there was between them then/was rain. McGough too focuses on the topic in Comeclose and Sleepnow and shows a mastery of the turn-of-phrase as shown in the lines; you will put on a dress of guilt/and shoes with broken high ideals.
Happily, there is a touch of the romantic to battle against the feelings of emptiness, and fill the reader with a little hope. Henris Without You is a modern take on the love poem; Without you theyd forget to put the salt in every packet of/crips,/without you it would be an offence punishable by a fine of/up to 200 or two months imprisonment to be found in/ possession of curry powder,/Without you all streets would be one-way the other way,/Without you thered be no one not to kiss goodnight when/we quarrel. Worth revisiting if you were influenced by it four decades ago, or for first-time visitors.
Katherine Blair, originally from Canada is a former CBC television reporter, ITV television producer, and now a university lecturer in York, UK. She is also an unpublished novelist.
19
Banging My Head on the Table: Douglas Coupland

Interview by Alexander Laurence
Its hard to think beyond our own lifetime because were so selfish
portraitsiberuttrek
20
I met Douglas in New York City recently. He was staying in a hotel in the upper 50s. I called him on the phone and he told that he was wearing a bozo suit and he would be easy to recognise. I had interviewed him before and was ready to be subverted by Coupland. When I interviewed him more than five years ago he didnt really answer any of my questions. So this time I just had a conversation with him, and hopefully we would talk about his book, Miss Wyoming, which I liked. I didnt really want to talk about Generation X or Bill Gates. So, I went in with an open mind. Hopefully we got to vent some hostility, or maybe just let out our frustrations. Maybe we were just wondering why we were talking to each other and would anyone read this? Thanks to Suzanne Williams for setting up this interview. How did you celebrate the Millennium? I was going to have this big bonfire where I live, down on the beach. Of course there were no Y2K disasters. So the municipalities and the police had nothing better to do than to crack down on anything that seemed seditious like a bonfire. The bonfire was cancelled. So we had to think of something else to do. We drove around in Vancouver on the blankest part of freeway possible. And 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. In Seattle they cancelled all the celebrations there. They over-reacted though. Youre not from Seattle, are you? No, but I went there once. In summer 1991, Douglas Coupland laughs at my comment and continues, Things were more interesting then. Theres so much going on there now. He looks at the movie reviews in paper, I only read reviews after the fact, to see if he agreed with me. I dont watch trailers. I am usually buying Raisinettes at that time. I just read where it is and what
time. When you go see a movie I dont want to know whats going to happen. Its been a great year for that. There have been so many great films, like Being John Malkovich, Run Lola Run, and Magnolia. Coupland turns to an advertisement and frowns, Whos Ani DiFranco? he asks. Shes a singer/songwriter. She has her own label. Not really my cup of tea. Do you listen to a lot of music? Shes one of the names. I probably would know her if I heard her music. You know what Im listening to now is Stereo Total. Also Guided By Voices. I saw them in November in Tokyo and I thought, This is great! and got the whole thing. You have been involved in a few think tanks. What do you do there? My real strength in that department is that I can predict how things are going to go wrong. I can look at any situation, like that bartender getting us some drinks to any political situation; I can see the weak links, where it failed, and who forgot to bring the backup disk. Thats a practical thing and short term. But in the long term I think that they should teach children in first grade reading, writing, social studies, and stochastic forecasting. It is something that we are all capable of doing. The ability atrophies. Its hard to think beyond our own lifetime because were so selfish. I always like to think that right now we were a thousand years in the future and what would be mind-blowing to us in the past. Are we male humanoids not wearing eye coverings? Is that asphalt? Oh my god, theres no plants here. There breathing air unassisted. Theres a woman alone not part of a harem. What about the human body? Could you imagine any improvements? If you have people who are 120 years
21
old but physically theyre 30? What are old people like? Theyre crabby, they know what they like, they know what they dont like, and theyre opinionated, nothing going to sway them. So you got these old young people walking around. I had a discussion with a friend and we were trying to think of pharmaceuticals in the future. Two of them came to mind. One was a pill you could take that has no immediate effect, but over a long period of time it would make you feel that you had a lot of time. You know how people always say, That year went by fast. This would be the opposite of that, the time slower down pill. Then if youre in jail, theres the time speeder up pill. You take it and then you out! That was easy. Theres a third one: theres these pills that are white and cheap, ten cents, and you take one and youre instantly cured of all addiction. You have a heroin habit or alcohol problem, and then its gone.
What would happen? The result would be that people would take more drugs and drink more than ever, because everyone would think, Hey, I can quit anytime I wanted. These pills would become illegal, while the drugs would become legalised. Your book, Miss Wyoming, is with a new publisher for you, Pantheon. Was it sad to leave Harper Collins? Generation X was with St. Martins Press. And two of them were with Simon & Schuster, but I stayed with the same editor. In publishing, you allegiance is to your editor, not to your publishing house. Jim Fitzgerald was my first editor. He became an agent in Los Angeles, and is the official representative for the Hells Angels. Hes a likeable guy. But St Martins would buy the second book. But I dont want to discuss my publishing. Boring! Boring!
22
You encounter this certain type of person in the film industry down there, who you wonder biologically, clinically, theologically, if they have a soul
23
Have you been doing any day trading or playing the stock market? I have yet to meet a day trader. Do they ever make any money? They are really contributing to society. Everyone Ive ever met with even a little trust fund is messed up. Having money at a young age is a guarantee of nothing happening in that persons life. This is a sample sentence you would get from a trust fund kid: Well, Im working on this novel and its really coming along okay but I need a bit more time to think about it, so I am going to Boca Raton for a week or so. And a year later: Im not writing anymore, now Im producing a film. Do you think I should get engaged? Years back I used to work in San Francisco in a building that housed a bunch of new magazines like Might Magazine, and Wired Magazine was on the second floor. Theyd have bottles of champagne every month celebrating each issue. Wed be there working on our little literary magazine or whatever scratching our heads and wondering what all this technology shit was. You used to write for Wired Magazine? Might Magazine was so funny. Have you seen Wired lately? Its different. I dont know anyone there anymore. I went through that. Everyone goes through that. The whole 1980s was like that for me, watching everyone having a party in the big ballroom, and banging my head on the table. Im hardly in the ballroom now. During the 1980s you were living in Japan and doing sculpture and art. What was that like? I went to school there and then worked there. I never just hung around in Japan. I took my second holiday in my life just last November. What do you parents think of what youre doing?
They dont have a clue. And blessed them. Ive given up trying to explain. Things got better when we agreed to stop talking. My Dad, who doesnt read anything, is reading the new book. Its weird. I never kept a diary but its like having someone read your diary. Hes more interested in my cars tyre pressure. My Dad asked me, Do you know that your tyre pressure is low? I read that you have sold over or nearly one million books. Thats a lot of trees. How do they figure that out? Oh, thats easy to find out. The publishers can track that stuff in five minutes. Why are you so interested in numbers? Numbers are out there, you cant change them. Did you spend a lot of time in Los Angeles and Hollywood in preparation of the writing of Miss Wyoming? Yeah. Met a lot of people down there, some are friends. You encounter this certain type of person in the film industry down there, who you wonder biologically, clinically, theologically, if they have a soul. They are these things. Maybe if they dont have a soul, how can they get one? Or they figured the only way to get one is to find one of their own. So you have John who is this movie mogul and then you have Susan, and in my head I see Kristy McNicol. But everyone sees different things. I like LA. Its not an LA bashing book. It reminded me of Paris, Texas. The guy freaks out and goes on this spiritual journey. Was that an influence? No, but I loved the movie. Its a recurring theme in the arts. Its one of the last noble gestures you can make: finding yourself before you implode. Which is what my main character did. I lived in the desert down there for a year. In Riverside, I dont like the heat but I like everything else about it. Since Im from Canada it will always be exotic to me. I didnt really like the
24
Parents turning up with McDonalds to feed their kids should be hung, drawn and quartered!
I dont think that the East Coast gets new media. You talk to people who are in a shockingly high up position and they dont know a thing about it
25
image of the desert as a symbol; I just liked the geography of it. The feeling of it, Coupland looks at some people walking outside on 50th Street, Where is the New York style that we know? Everyone looks so beleaguered. Are you involved with the Douglas Coupland website? Im involved in it. I know a lot of people in web design business. The publisher doesnt give you any money for the website. They ask you, Are you going to have a website? And you say, Why, are you going to help out? And they say, No, but we can link it up to our website, and their website is something the size of a nutrasweet packet, saying, Available January 2000. Thanks guys. I dont think that the East Coast gets new media. You talk to people who are in a shockingly high up position and they dont know a thing about it. A younger me would say, We must re-educate this person. Now, its Their problem. The thing you have to ask yourself is why do you need a website? I dont need a website. I do one because its interesting and my friends help me. Its so time-consuming. Im never going to sell a book because of a website. People are decided in advance. People have at least an email account. Things have changed in that way. They feel a need for that. Everything gets better in a year, doesnt it? I got this laptop. It was Powerbook 3400C. When it came out it was Wooo but now its just a wood burner. Its a joke and now I have to upgrade. Now, Im at the point of should I go PC or Mac? I cant find a compelling argument for either one so Im still on the fence. Are there any TV shows that you like? I watch The Simpsons. Im finally getting into Futurama. I always know
its going to be on at 8pm on Sunday. If they fuck with that, Ill never see it again. The other thing I like is Americas Best Car Chases. When Good Times Go Bad which is like wedding dresses catching on fire. Ho! Ho! These people are so surprised when the animal fights back. Oh please. A limousine pulls up outside and I tell Coupland that his car has arrived for his next engagement. That would be Courtney Loves car. Im just looking at that office up above there. It looks like the most joyless looking working environment. Whats that thing in the corner? That box? A surveillance totem? Its usually a heater or an air conditioner. The windows are sweating so maybe they have the heat turned up? Are there any covert messages youd like to say to your fans? No. Maybe Ill go over to the Moma bookstore before the reading tonight
Alexander Laurence lives in Los Angeles. He has recently published a book of short stories called Five Fingers Makie A Fist.
26
27 incorporating Behind the Scenes at the Museum: Interpretationwriting Article by Hermione Bressler Image by Kevin Rosseel
Try this for size: any reflection on the functions and tensions of the field of museum interpretation must take into account Pierre Bourdieus analysis of the influence of social class on cultural preferences, alongside the history of the public museum as a site of didactic social engineering. Too highfalutin for you? How about this: if we go to museums to learn, who is devising the syllabus? Or maybe just: what is museum interpretation? One possible answer is that interpretation aims to communicate potentially complex ideas while choosing a tone that solicits engagement rather than alienation. But as my three attempts to refine my opening sentence reveal, simplifying is a complicated business. Often the first assumed meaning of interpretation is that it has something
to do with translation between languages. The word conjures those rather glamorous people who undertake simultaneous translation for heads of state at international conferences. In museum work, however, interpretation refers to the task of producing materials to inform visitors about individual works of art (or artefacts, or scientific displays) and to put these objects into a relevant context. Here Ill be discussing what it means in a visual art context, partly through self-indulgence, because thats my area of interest, and partly because there are instances of living artists responding and resisting the context created for their works in museums whereas palaeontologists rarely rebel against the display conditions at the Natural History Museum. The idea of translation is still useful,
28
however, since interpretation professionals are regularly called upon to transform dense and rigorous curatorial prose into something easier on the eye. As with the model of the translator, ideally a core meaning is maintained throughout the translation process, but if we recognise that language is not the packaging for ideas but the place where they operate then the responsibility of the interpreter comes into focus. When its done well you probably shouldnt notice the apparatus of interpretation too much youll be too busy re-examining the painting in the light of this subtly transmitted knowledge to wonder who wrote it and how. Indeed the word interpretation can be thought of as a sort of hinge that refers both to the operations of the museum and what it solicits from its visitors. The information and resources which are provided alongside displays are rarely intended to fix a definitive meaning onto a particular work but are designed to be springboards for viewers to begin their own process of interpretation. In Tates mission statement to increase public awareness, understanding and appreciation of British art the didactic element is tempered with the idea of the pleasure of appreciation. I was recently involved in a museum captioning project in which all the informational labels next to paintings and sculptures were removed and replaced with poems. There is no template for interpretative resources. The nineteen eighties saw a rising interest, within museums, in visitor profiles and the demographics of museum-goers. In a bid to appeal to new sections of the community, to people with no previous knowledge or even interest in the museums subject matter and particularly families with young children, more money was
invested in producing displays which would engage visitors and allow them to participate in the museum collection. Display panels blossomed into colour, text grew larger and its tone friendlier and less distantly expert, interactive elements, where visitors could learn with their hands as well as their eyes, became commonplace. Some commentators saw these changes as essential to museums continuing relevance as public learning institutions; others were horrified by the perceived transformation of palaces of culture into playgrounds. The former group has won out over the last twenty years but voices of dissent can still be heard, especially when public funding is tight and access and interpretation resources are seen as taking away from the key functions of scholarly research and restoration. The literal meaning of curator as caretaker is invoked to stress the responsibility of museums and public galleries to maintain collections for future generations. This rhetoric can be inverted through the argument that engaging todays children and young people in museum-based activities will produce a generation of adults who are enthusiastic about cultural institutions and willing to support them through public funds. So while interpretation in its varied digital/ hands-on/ vox-pop manifestations grows as a field, it remains a site of contention in terms of the allocation of economic resources. But what isnt, these days? More intriguing, at least for me, are the theoretical difficulties of writing accessibly about art that isnt intended to be immediately comprehensible. The works of many contemporary artists can be seen as falling into this category, especially those concerned with conceptual art and/or those who draw widely from high cultural and literary
29
theory and from philosophy in their practice. The interpretation officers job of providing a concise and salient sense of context becomes infinitely more challenging when they are addressing an art work that mixes references to Kant and de Saussure with pop culture critiques. Further interesting difficulties arise when the art work is no longer necessarily an object that can be framed and approached through textual introductions, but instead may be textual itself. There is no interpretative prescription in these cases. Several museums are opening up their resources so that interested members of the public can be involved in the institutions interpretative process. When some wall labels are written by fellow visitors and you can download an irreverent podcast museum tour created by art students it become refreshingly clear that the institution may not hold all the answers and that interpretation is at best a symbiotic process. Living artists can of course respond directly to the way art is (figuratively) framed within art institutions. One notable example of an artist squaring up to the way in which museums represent themselves through their interpretative resources is Andrea Frasers video work, Little Frank and His Carp (2001). The artist is filmed inside the Bilbao Guggenheim as she listens to the museums audio tour. Satirising the way in which not only her footsteps but her emotions are guided by the smoothvoiced narrator, the work reaches its climax as Fraser responds to the recorded guides effusions on the powerfully sensual architecture of the museum by making enthusiastic contact with the walls with her whole body. By taking the guides directives to extremes, Fraser makes the idea of directing a visitors experience within a museum seem both ridiculous and
somewhat oppressive. The idea of preprogramming a museum-goers visit or of providing pre-digested and unchallenging commentary runs counter to the aims of almost all interpretation professionals, but it is crucial to recognise these dangers. The purpose of this short reflection is to remind museum visitors that what they read on the walls wasnt written there with any kind of omniscience. If these resources are successful, it is only because they prompt itchy questions from visitors, not the contentment of feeling you know all it is necessary to know and now its time for the gift shop.
Hermione Bressler has worked at the Lisha Aquino Rooney Whitney in New York and the ICA and Tate in London.
30
Perfect Eye: Jin
31
32
Lisha Aquino Rooney
33
34
Lai-Jin, Fong was born and brought up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She recently won the Creative Hair Award for an Emerging Artist under the Student Category with the Exeter Contemporary Open 2007 for her series of work Windows. In January-March 2008, she will be pioneering a Design in Residence Programme at University of Arts London n collaboration with DesignSingapore Council and other schools in Singapore. http://www.jinxxxy.co.uk
35
Will Self: How to walk from London to New York City in a day
Interview by Pagan Kennedy
36
One morning a year ago, author Will Self sucked the life out of a cigarette and - careful not to wake the children crept down the stairs in his house. Then he plunged out into the gloaming to begin his long walk from London to Manhattan. Officially, of course, such a feat is impossible, given the ocean that separates them. But Self had discovered the secret of concatenating one city onto another, at least in his own mind. He would hike for hours through the exurbs of London until he reached Heathrow; next he would scramble up an oily embankment and scoot around a chainlink fence to dash straight into the airport terminal; then he would sleep on the plane, for all purposes erasing the flight from memory; then, once he reached JFK Airport, he would sneak along a service road, hoping not to be apprehended as a terrorist, and begin the long trek to the Lower East Side. Will Self, the son of a Yank and a Brit, was about to sew two cities into one imaginary metropolis. The author has become one of the leading - and one of the few practitioners of a science called psychogeography. In the 1960s, the French Situationists coined the term to describe a radical method of mapping cities. Through aimless walks, they would recover what was unnoticed in the urban landscape, performing a phrenology of all its bumps and dollops. Self has revived the science and put his own stamp on it. He espouses walks from Point A to a ridiculously distant Point B as a method of reclaiming the in-between landscapes, and of hurtling himself into a preindustrial sense of time. This fall, on tour to promote his
collection of essays, Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place, the author travelled in characteristic style: he walked much of the way. During this tour, you often left airports on foot, is that right? Yes. I walked from Pearson Airport to downtown Toronto....I also walked from [the LA airport] to Watts on the night of Halloween. And I walked from OHare some of the way into Chicago. You cant get out of the Chicago airport directly, so I took the subway to the first stop, and then I walked five minutes and I was standing on a riverbank looking a deer in the face at twilight. That was the kind of moment of the modern sublime that Im aiming for. Plane after plane flying above me, a hundred feet over my head, while I was in this bucolic setting. And then I walked to the nearest Wal-Mart 7 miles away.
Thats an abuse of me and an abuse of the city, to reduce it to an assemblage of cab rides, bookstores, encounters with journalists, barrooms, and then back to the airport
What were you after in Wal-Mart? Some socks. Also, Id read about WalMart and its controversies, and its synonymous with a kind of aggressive capitalist retailing. In the language of Guy Debord and the Situationists, [WalMart is] the very epitome of the society of the spectacle. What were you hoping youd experience on your book-tour walkabout?
37
Im interested in orientation. Ive been traveling around the States on author tours for 15 tours now. A lot of these North American cities Ive been in and out of numerous times, but I never knew where I was. Thats an abuse of me and an abuse of the city, to reduce it to an assemblage of cab rides, bookstores, encounters with journalists, barrooms, and then back to the airport. These walks allowed me to reclaim these cities.
be your friend - it shows how empty the promise is. Just by walking to and from airports, could you really somehow stitch together London and New York? It really works. If you walk from your home to the airport and you fly somewhere else and you walk to your destination, your bodys memory is more vivid than your minds. The plane flight is nothing; the walk is everything. [At the end], when I walked into my hotel in Manhattan, it really felt as if the Long Island Sound had been rammed into the Thames Estuary. It was the most bizarre sensation. In the book, you recount how you once walked something like 10 hours to a business meeting. You appeared in the office and told people that you had just spent all that time traveling on foot to see them. This disturbed them. You really upset their notion of time. Yes, that was a sales conference for my publisher in Britain. [The salespeople] were shocked that I walked there. [When you do that], you dont just slow time down, you send it into reversal. People remember reading Jane Austen in which the young ladies go on a visit and they get a little sniffle and they have to stay for three weeks. People have a race memory of that. They think, Were back in the 18th century! Yes, theres an arrogance about time now. Especially jet travel, which is an astonishing thing. Its the strangest thing, apart from major surgery, thats likely to happen to us in our lifetime. And yet everything about our culture conspires to make it dull. And you have to ask yourself why. We will ourselves with the assistance of the airplane companies - into a stupor. The airlines want passengers to be soporific because
Especially jet travel, which is an astonishing thing. Its the strangest thing, apart from major surgery, thats likely to happen to us in our lifetime. And yet everything about our culture conspires to make it dull
So its a way of mapping territory in your head? Yes, just like a migratory bird does. I told a friend that Id walked out of OHare and he grimaced and he said, That must be awful. But he doesnt know whats outside of OHare. Theres an enormous swath of countryside. My [walking] practice wins back this bucolia. You mentioned in your book that, years ago, you ended up in Boston on Cheers Day. Yes, I was drinking heavily at the time and so I tottered into the bar at Logan Airport and had a beer with dummies of Cliff and Norm. The TV show Cheers was always about incorporating the viewer into a cozy vision of amity. What irony to plant a dummy in an airport to
38
it makes them easy to handle. Its amazing how deaf and blind people become to the experience of flying. In the book, you quoted from your mothers diary. She said she liked plane travel because it was one place where couples couldnt fight. Yes, although I remember the good-old, bad-old days of being drunk and smoking and having sex on aircraft. Presumably this doesnt happen anymore. Sex on airplanes? Are you speaking from experience? Yes. Well, yes. Is it necessary to elaborate? Sex is ubiquitous and stereotypic. I havent got any extra genitalia or anything. Still, I was hoping for a good anecdote. You know, its very interesting that this
new Airbus has come in, with a double bed on it. But people are not meant to have sex in it. So you provide a bed and then you say people cant have sex in it. That sums up the attitude toward flying: Put people in a metal fuselage, throw them up into the sky, haul them across thousands of miles of sea and desert, and then you expect them not to get excited. But it is exciting. It is.
Pagan Kennedy is author of nine books, most recently The First Man-Made Man.She can be reached through her website, http:// home.comcast.net/ ~pagankennedy/
39
The Popular Contest
Article by Tom Spurling Image by Andrea Fantoni
Popular culture aint all bad for us writers and creatives
Macro-historians describe the modernday obsession with popular culture as a symptom of this age of vice. But given half a chance, pop will always eat itself. Its up to us to resist the latest taste sensation, to masticate more slowly on what we choose to swallow. There are, as with most things, two sides to the Pop coin. Its worth holding on to the good: its uniting force, its motivation to radicalism and calls to change whilst being aware of the negatives: laziness and consumerism rule OK. Popular culture aint all bad for us writers and creatives, but thats easy to say when writing in its purest form is still safely underground. What goes on above sea level though, in the sickly sweet suburbs of bite-sized news and junk mail, is a threat to our own livelihoods. We must rewrite the map of creative enquiry, climb up from our self-
indulgent sewers and reclaim the page. Either that or we write self-help tomes and infomercials. The Great Dane of popular culture advertisingmight nip at the heels of good writing, but at least it keeps us honest. If an idea of note enters the mainstream press, then its the role of advertisers to package it for public consumption. Its up to writers to unpackage it for private consumption. Real writing runs parallel to wordplay. Real writers dont mince their words. We should hold on tightly to the truth then give the bastards something to lie about. In a recent Adbusters interview, advertising mogul Bob Garfield insists that advertising performs a necessary function. Advertising doesnt cause the problems of rampant consumerism and spiritual vacuousness, he insists, but rather these problems just happen to
40
suit the advertising culture. And that, folks, is unavoidably the culture were in. The life of a freelancer is filled with compromise, namely how and what we should write. Love it or just kind of like it, the pithy rant is now the easiest way to get read. This rampant and sexy form of aural expression is tearing up todays magazines, making writers of bloggers and hotheads alike. It gets its punchiness from copywriting copying culture, and its wisdom from mainstream TV. This cult of the Column Gone Wild, this angry/whimsical/offbeat hybrid of poetry and special interest, of Dear Diary and How-to-do-WhateverIve-Done-Before, can refresh and be dazzling to read. But it can also irritate like old sweat, promote cynicism and insularity. Perhaps for every bad blog one visits, one must buy (or write) a new novel? Writing isnt only the thing that struggles with an ambivalence in Pop culture; music too wrestles with this vanguard. Pop is its own genre, and again, in its purest form, is quite often not very popular at all. Hip-hop culture is similarly at odds with itself, worried that its call for positive social change is being lost to market forces. But the African-Americanisation of global culture is not such a bad thing. The Big West Festival in the Melbourne suburb of Maribyrnongfeted during the recent Australian federal election as the most ethnically diverse suburb in the world demonstrated that popular culture can cross borders to wonderful effect. In what better format can a seventeenyear-old Sudanese kid get his message across with such balance and grace? How can Eritreans and Ethiopians more powerfully unite than on stage with a microphone in their hands? All over Africa, hip-hop has dyed its
roots gold. From Mozambique to Namibia, the thronging beauty of bounced out hip-hop keeps young people dancing and young governments in check. As Dizzie Rascal maintains, guns, bitches and bling were never three of hip-hops four founding elements.
Writers play an enormous part in this change. No longer can we write in whining vitriol about renewable energy and climate change
Culture reflects consciousness. The green movement, in all its recycled glory, has barnstormed into popular psychology. The cutting edge of ecoliving and everyday consumption has turned Bright Green. The emergence of this market savvy movement is a response to an increased environmental awareness in popular culture. Money may drive it, but at least it gets us there faster than stoned idealists ever could. Conceived by science fiction writer and cyberpunk guru, Bruce Sterling, Bright Green calls for an appropriation of firstrate design principles in a previously corduroy and paisley dressed industry. For the eco-debate to reach the next level, Sterling stresses, we must use the sexy, sleek language of popular culture to promote a fresh, sustainable mainstream. Writers play an enormous part in this change. No longer can we write in whining vitriol about renewable energy and climate change. Everywhere you shop, everything you eat, everyway you go, your mind is forced to respond to a growing pile of at times unfriendly reminders that the world is dying because of you! You chose to drive to
41
the shop to buy milk that came from a cow that wanders through dead forestland, farting up a thermal dust storm. It was you! You! You! So what are we as writers going to do about? Return to the quill and catch the horse and cart to our dead-end jobs to tell our deadend stories that moralise about the man who stole the world? Hell no! We must plug into an alternative future, crank it up til it blows then reboot it from frontto-back! Either that, or risk falling behind popular culture.
created by thought, a holographic image of what the future will feel like. Furthermore, if art doesnt help the Andromedans to evolve, then to them it has no use. Perhaps this should be our response to popular culture. Like St Paul once said, look at it all, and take only the good. Scientists regularly discover new stars in old galaxies. As the Hindus say, The Age of Kali (vice) gives way to the Golden Age of Satya. The cycle of life continues and so too does popular culture. The faster it moves, the faster our anti-pop consortiums must move to say ahead, to write something new and vastly improved, to protect civilisation from its cultural demise. The choice is not easy, but its ours to make. Dabble if you must, but be warned: pop, pop, pop went the weasel.
The cycle of life continues and so too does popular culture

Head of the new wave of science fiction writers JG Ballard is the ultimate futurist because his future is recognisable. His characters rue their pasts in a tacky desert playground, much like expatriate humans in Dubai, but the writer himself demands the reader imagine this not-so brave new world. What other function does a futuristand indeed a writer play than to predict what will be popular in generations to come, and how culture will best reflect whats worth keeping. Likewise, ethicist and author Matt Ridley argues that perhaps humans really arent genetically capable of rejecting popular culture? In his Origins of Virtue, Ridley ponders why they would even want to. Surely the good of the group will always prevail? If Ridley is somewhere near right, then is popular culture really just a testing ground for how much we want the real thing? To the highly advanced Andromedan race in his bookpale-blue humanoids who visit a former accountant from America art is purely the act of creation, a thing
Thomas Spurling is a freelance writer from Melbourne, Australia. He is the co-editor of View From Station Peak: Writings on Geelong (November 2007) the first in a series of regional anthologies of Australian writing. His writing appears regularly in Pine Magazine ( www.pinemagazine.com) and in Lonely Planet. He is currently working on a book about Tantra...
42
Homer Simpson or Alan Partridge

Column by Christine Brandel Image by Andrea Church
Homer Simpson and Alan Partridge. Two of my favourite men. To me each is so symbolic of his countrys ethos while being absolutely hilarious (and, some might argue, oddly sexy). Homers frequent chants of USA! USA! whenever he is happy juxtapose nicely with Alans dismissive This country... after any number of embarrassing faux pas. They reflect something I think is crucial about the way the two places see themselves: in America, things are good, simply being American is something to celebrate; in Britain, we see mostly the bad, all the things we wish were different. Of course both men share the fact that they each are the focus of tremendously popular comedy shows and therefore show us something important about the way popular culture works in each country. They are ideal evidence of one of popular cultures ulterior motives: to reflect as well as create national identity. In many ways the concept of USA has become a brand and Americans buy it by the
bucketful. Slap an American flag or a bald eagle on an album, a tee shirt or a book, and itll sell like hotcakes. Americans like to think of themselves as winners, and as any football coach will tell you, youve got to think youre a winner to become a winner. And as any hypnotherapist will tell you, youve got to tell yourself youre a winner to think youre a winner. So we tell ourselves that. A lot. (I suppose theres no need to mention WWII here but in case youve forgotten, America won that for you guys.) Our history books and economics classes are full of examples of Americans being the big winners. But, of course if you want to convince young people of something, school isnt where youre going to influence them. You do it with popular culturemagazines, television, that crazy music the kids are listening to today. So you find Britney Spears reminding us we can trust our president with every decision he makes and Ben Affleck
43
reliving our historic victory in Pearl Harbor (a film one Amazon.com reviewer admitted wasnt the best movie but was worth seeing as it will leave you with that GO USA feeling). Generally American popular cultures purpose is not just to entertain but to confirm that things are pretty damn good in America, buddy, so you just keep your complaints to yourself. If you dont, just remember what happened to the Dixie Chicks. In Britain we are looking at a whole different (electric) kettle of fish. Were not so keen here to say things are great. In fact, wed prefer to remind ourselves that were in a rather dismal state. Our first problem: the government. From Spitting Image to Lily Allen to Page 3 girls, theyve all provided ample (nudge, nudge) reminders that our goverments gone down the toilet. And do you think a show like Yes Prime Minister would fly in America? Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park, tried it with Thats My Bush. The show ended up mainly spoofing sitcoms themselves, rather than politics, and was cancelled after 8 episodes. (Although I suppose you could argue Americans dont need a comedy show with a bumbling leader making international gaffes and relying on others to save his backside when they can see it live on CNN 24-7.) Fair enough, its easy to take pot shots at the government. But British popular culture does it with those we admire as well. David Beckham and Freddie Flintoff get as much press for their mistakes as they do for their successes. And, admit it, there was a little part of you that loved the fact that were out of Euro 2008. The British are losers, and we love to see evidence of it. We eat up the news of the demise of stars like Pete Doherty, Kate Moss, Amy Winehouse. Even those we admire are ultimately rather dire characters. But popular culture in Britain doesnt just show us
that the big guys are baduns. It reflects us, you and me, and you know what, were not so great either. Were Vicky Pollard, Lauren Cooper, the Lotto Lout, the Chav. We sit at home with our own Royle families, smoking, being miserable, getting fat and apathetic. Rarely a week goes by when a tabloid doesnt remind us that were a nation of addicts, drunkards, losers, gamblers, etc. Why are reality shows so popular? Because we get to watch how ugly and horrible we are. Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys says, Whod want to be men of the people when there are people like you. Quite right. Now of course you cant generalise either countrys pop culture across the board. Stephen Colbert exists and thrives in America. Bono has admitted that he thinks Great Britain is great (though it should be noted he said this shortly after receiving his honorary knighthood). So you can find celebration and criticism of the nations identity in the popular culture on both sides of the pond. But just look through your Radio Times and see the overwhelming differences and what they tell us about their nations: the winners on Friends or the losers on Only Fools and Horses. Glamorous Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte or the shall-we-say-less-than-glamorous Dot Cotton, Pat Butcher and Stacy Slater. Happy families on Everyone Loves Raymond or Bens misery on My Family. Homer Simpson or Alan Partridge...hmmmm, please dont make me choose. Christine Brandel is a British American now, really, so please dont make fun of her accent. She teaches in an inner city secondary school and wastes her time by playing Mah Jongg
online.
incorporating writing David Beckham
and Freddie Flintoff get as much press for their mistakes as they do for their successes
44
Steinbecks Travelogue of War
Article by Claire Boot Photographs by Andrew Oldham
45
Writing on the Web and The Death of Empathy

Article by Jess Greenwood Image by Ruben Dario Colorado
I, and no doubt thousands like me, have been closely following the case in which an Erasmus student was murdered in autumn this year, in Italy. Erasmus is an exchange programme in which European universities allow students to study for a year abroad. I did my own Erasmus year at Bologna University, not far from Perugia where Meredith Kercher was killed. Its obviously a high profile case given that the victim was young, beautiful and intelligent, and although precious few details are forthcoming, we know that Kerchers death was both physically and sexually brutal. Under suspicion are her American housemate, Amanda Knox, and Knoxs boyfriend, the Italian Raffaele Sollecito. Local bar owner Patrick Lumumba and associate Rudy Hermann Guede are the third and
fourth named suspects. Local judge Massimo Riccarelli has stated his belief that Meredith was killed for refusing to take part in an extreme sex game. No details on what this sex game might have involved have been made public. The tabloids are positively squirming. However, it is not the tabloid reaction that is concerning. Meredith Kerchers murder is also throwing up all sorts of interesting questions about the way in which web 2.0, and the use of social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, are having an effect on the way in which we appropriate news events. The minute tragedy strikes, the contents of personal web pages whether of the victim, or the perpetrator - become a source of endless discussion.
46
Facebook and MySpace pages are now seen as a fair and accurate way in to that persons character and personality, and the divide that still exists between the person that we actually are and the person we project ourselves as being in an online environment is never taken into account. At the centre of this lies an awkward symbiosis. On the one hand, there is what appears to be lazy journalism, eschewing serious investigation in favour of the facile sentimentality that social networks churn up daily The last thing she posted on her Facebook was a message to her friend saying shed see her later etc. And on the other? An insatiable voyeurism on behalf of a public too confused by the blurring of the lines between virtual and real, public and private to tell the difference. We are happy to watch and be watched. It defines us. I Facebook, therefore I am. This notion of a huge, self-monitoring organism is positively Orwellian in its implications. Foucault, the most prescient of the pop culture philosophers, described this as a panopticon, based on an 18th century model for the perfect prison in which cells were arranged around a giant central tower with slatted windows, or one-way glass. The idea was that you could monitor a gargantuan number of prisoners with one guard, simply by showing the prisoners that they were being watched once by sounding an alarm, or bellowing at the poor soul in cell 101 to stop banging his head on the wall. Jeremy Bentham, the philanthropist responsible for the design, concluded that the prisoners would subsequently begin to behave as though they were being watched ALL the time, simply because they could never tell one way or the other. Foucault, one suspects, would have some very interesting things to say about web 2.0.
Before the advent of Facebook, the normalization of online dating and the explosion of virtual worlds like Habbo Hotel, now populated by something in the region of 80m tweenage avatars, socializing on the web was seen as the preserve of lonely losers and porn freaks. It was assumed that there would have to be something missing in our real lives to force us into chasing connections with faceless entities online. Now, those without an online presence are seen as anomalies, as stick-in-the-muds. Now, we are all naturalised as both exhibitionists and voyeurs. We distrust those who dont want to tell, and judge those who do. Key to the public trial of those suspected in the Kercher case is an apparently sexually violent short story posted by Knox on her MySpace page, and for which I went looking after overhearing some gossip on the London Underground, as a group of concerned media twenty-somethings wondered why no-one had done anything about it. The actual story was a fictional short story that included a rape accusation which she wrote for a college assignment. But what did the Daily Mail say? Inside the twisted world of flatmate suspected of Merediths murder, and focused only on that part of Knoxs MySpace site. They blew up a single short story into a glib condemnation when in most other aspects the girl seems ludicrously conventional, for example, a recent trip to Amsterdam had involved no cannabis, simply a visit to elderly relatives. This wasnt just twisting something that was there - it was presenting a picture that was diametrically opposite to what most of the evidence suggested. Her MySpace friends were also hounded by the American press, simply by virtue of having clicked on a button that said add friend. And similarly, a picture of her boyfriend dressed as a bloody surgeon
47
for Halloween and pasted on his MySpace profile is now being paraded around the Internet as evidence of his complicity. Whether they were guilty or not, the way in which we now choose to splay selected elements of our lives out for all the world to see has ostensibly granted the public the right to judge our online personas without actually knowing anything at first hand; a process not muted but positively encouraged by traditional media sources. Patrick Lumumba and associate Rudy Hermann Guede do not have MySpace or Facebook pages. As a result, we know almost nothing about them, and what we do know is irritatingly practical for example, Lumumba owned a bar. This kind of information does not pique our interest. We cannot package them neatly and pass judgment on their characters according to their number of friends, their blog posts, their status updates, their photo albums. They are less interesting to us than the people with whom we share web space; the people who are just like us, but different. The people of whom we feel we know something. A little perceived knowledge is a dangerous thing. Sometimes people are exactly who they say they are online. Sometimes they are not. The point is, their virtual presence is only one side of this equation, and because we have no first hand experience we have no frame of reference with which to decide how closely related Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are in practice. Whilst I have no issue with the applications themselves, being a self-confessed Facebook obsessive since April, it is clear that through the normalization of this kind of communication, the way in which we perceive each other has changed. Now, a persons actual self is subordinated to the broad brushstrokes of a social
network homepage. Thats not a problem with Facebook, its a problem with us. Its not the band. Its the fans. Most worryingly, the idea that people should have done something has huge implications for freedom of expression, particularly on the web. Done what, exactly? Prior to the explosion of the create and share generation, the responsibility lay with friends, family, teachers and parents to flag up disturbing behaviour. These are people with real world connections, and first hand knowledge of the tendencies on display. Now, because every element of our lives is public, we are fair game not just to those who know us but to everyone who doesnt. Fiction with violent subject matter and Halloween costumes are now considered evidence of physically violent tendencies in a person. With an atmosphere this hysterical and a community of online curtain-twitchers this large, how long will it be before a photo of you drunk outside a club leads to you being flagged up as a dangerous element? Theres a great quote about this in an article that India Knight wrote in The Sunday Times about Kate McCann, and the publics disgraceful behaviour towards her: For once I dont mean the (British) press, which seems to me, despite its inevitable mawkish descents into sentimentality, to have acted pretty responsibly. No, by we, I mean the public. Forget that old chestnut I blame the media: now that everyone has an opinion and an embarrassment of outlets in which to express it, I blame the public is going to become the refrain of the coming decades. There is no shortage of online places where people may freely and anonymously air their opinions, even if their opinions are
48
vile or demented or both; and there are millions of these newly voluble people. They have made it all right to say unspeakable things, to air the most shameful thoughts, always to think the worst, and never to give anyone a chanceThe McCann story may end up being about the death of empathy. Whether you are victim, as in the case of Kate McCann, or accused, as in the case of Amanda Knox, the point at which the the public feels youve spent a little too long in front of the lens and they can start to question your motives is coming sooner and sooner, quickened in some cases by our access to intimate details posted online. Because its like a soap opera, isnt it? Everyone knows you cant let a single plot-thread run on and on indefinitely. Youve got to inject intrigue, betrayal, a twist. So it is we that are broken, or is it the media? Are we responsible for the trial, or are they? Is it impossible to experience real adult emotions in response to the faked-up impulses generated by a facile and inane press? And are we being berated for reacting predictably to ham-fisted and insensitive delivery of breaking news at its most tenuous, or are we truly as ghoulish as the fallout of those reactions would suggest? Amanda Knox is a suspect in an ugly murder trial, so the time span between her entry into our field of vision and our concrete, unshakable assumption of her guilt was obviously short. Kate McCann is a mother whose daughter was abducted and most likely killed, so we were prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt for longer but not much longer. The contents of Kate McCanns diary have provided much tabloid fodder, as the tired scribbles of a parent with three young children helped to confirm our suspicion that she was, at best, a terrible mother, and at worst, a
calculating murderess. We can only wonder how much faster the accusatory fingers would have been raised had Kate McCann chosen to share her thoughts online like the rest of us, rather than in the antiquated, outdated and entirely personal form of a journal. In online networks, we have created a means of connecting, or reuniting. Of organising our birthday parties and letting everyone know what kind of mood were in. Of assessing our relative popularity, and bolstering our confidence. However, as the Kercher case and hundreds like it are beginning to filter the banalities of social networking into our media diet, we have created our panopticon. By failing to appreciate that sharing details publicly is exactly what it sounds laying ourselves bare not only to our friends, but to the public so gleefully responsible for the trials of potentially innocent people we leave ourselves open to the kind of highspeed, ill-informed monitoring that has so dismissively condemned Knox and McCann. Should our lives ever take the same tragic and brutal routes that theirs have, a noose of our own construction will be ready and waiting. The death of empathy. Is anyone else terrified? After graduating from Birmingham University, Jess Greenwood spent a stint teaching music in France and Italy, then returned to London to work as a music producer, before becoming Editor of The Reel. She then moved on to the awardwinning Contagious Magazine; covering the entire spectrum of the most innovative exercises in branding, design, technology and pop culture. www.contagiousmagazine.com
49
A new Amazon shop opened for Incorporating Writing and Incwriters. The shop houses publications from the Incwriter patrons, Claire Pollard, Esther Morgan & Janice Galloway. It has a section devoted to the collections from the Incwriters client list and even has a section listing all past review publications from Incorporating Writing (ISSN 1743-0380) over the past three years. http://astore.amazon.co.uk/ incwriters-21/202-11070147027849?_encoding=UTF8&node=0 The Complete Works Reply to: nathalie@spreadtheword.org.uk A national two year development programme for advanced Black and Asian poets. Are you a Black or Asian poet at the stage where you are committed to producing your first fulllength collection? Would you benefit from a tailored programme of support and career development? For two years you will have an individually assigned poet-mentor offering you intensive critical feedback on your writing. You will also have access to a professional development programme including seven full days of seminars, critical reading sessions, meet-the-editor events and career support and advice. Peer support throughout the project will be encouraged and supported. Each year will feature a residential week of writing at Arvon for the group. The Complete Works will culminate in a final anthology and showcase event. To apply: Send two copies of fifteen poems along with a covering letter outlining why you would like to join the programme and how you might benefit from it at this particular stage in your writing career. Your poems should be typed (12 point)
Industry News and Opportunities

and double spaced. Please do NOT write your name on your sheets of poetry. Please mark your envelope The Complete Works and send it to: Spread the Word, 77 Lambeth Walk, London SE11 6DX. Closing date for applications: Friday 21 March Number of places: 10 There is a fee for the programme that will be payable over two years. If you would like more information or to discuss The Complete Works, please contact Nathalie Teitler at nathalie@spreadtheword.org.uk or see www.spreadthword.org.uk Bruiser Review http://www.bruiserreview.com/index.htm Bruiser Review is a tri-quarterly publication, printed in January, June and October of each year. We have an open submissions policy and welcome your unsolicited fiction, poems, articles and artwork year round. We seek to publish the finest writers in America and abroad. As a general rule, we prefer literary pieces with an emphasis on character development, written in a realistic language. However, we are willing to be surprised by just about anything. After all, good writing is good writing is good writing. There is a significant and captivating literary movement happening in Chicago, and Bruiser Review is the magazine for those on the outside who want in and those on the inside
50
who love it there. The idea for Bruiser Review came after our staff members began attending lively readings, performances and multi-media shows where large crowds gathered to focus on the writers involved. Chicago has always had a rich literary tradition. Now, with more writing workshops, university programs, organized author events, poetry readings, and theater troupes than ever before, the city is brimming with hungry artists. These artists are cruising the city for their next big fix, and the voices of Bruiser Review are poised to be their dealers. Our readers are part of an ever growing population of story enthusiasts. They are keen listeners and observers, information seekers, and active participants in the booming arts and literary scenes. Youll find them passing through dive bars, book stores, cafes, jazz festivals and bike lanes. And we would like you to know that we are all about bringing you along for the ride. P.S. If you are not from Chicago, we humbly welcome you into our world. The Drum Seeks Productions and Performances. Reply to: p.frith@the-drum.org.uk CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS - SUMMER / AUTUMN SEASON 2008 PROGRAMME February - April 2008 The Drum Arts Centre is seeking new productions and performances for its Summer (May / June / July) and Autumn (September / October / November / December) 2008 seasons, We would be interested in hearing from artists, promoters, production companies, musicians and performers, who have product or tours that they would like to submit for consideration for this period. Please note: The Drum is
dedicated to developing and promoting contemporary art and culture of British African, Asian and Caribbean communities. The Drums mission is to lead and facilitate the development, celebration, performance and exhibition of the diversity of Black arts and cultures for the benefit of all. All submissions/proposals need to be received by Friday 18th January 2008 to be considered for summer season. Proposals must include the following supporting information: * Name, contact details of company or artist(s) * Biographic details of artist(s) and company * Synopsis of the piece / gig * Running Time * High quality colour and, if available, black + white images (min 300 dpi at 10cm square, ideally a file size of 1MB or over. ) * Press clippings of previous shows/ events (if available) * Tour Schedule (if applicable) * Any product, CDs, books, tapes, web links etc * Any special information to be included This is not a formal application process, so please contact us with any concerns or queries. Please address all submissions / proposals to Pippa Frith, Programme Coordinator at p.frith@the-drum.org.uk or send them to The Drum, 144 Potters Lane , Aston, Birmingham , B6 4UU . Tel: 0121 333 2425
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
51
Yorkshire tack
Article by Bruce Barnes
I would smuggle a truckle of Wensleydale cheese onto my Desert Island, and declare Yorkshire curd tart as my one essential item
PO(P)ETRY
Article by John Adler Image by Mary R. Vogt
Since time immemorial words and music have gone together like peas and carrots. Or, indeed, like rama lama lama ke ding a de dinga a dong. But, as ably demonstrated by the Grease lyricists, it seems that putting the two together somehow gives the green light for songwriters to get a bit nonsensical. Is it just the case that musicians are, well, musicians; sticking to what theyre good at, with words as a secondary by-line? This seems fair enough. I wouldnt be concerned if a world-class photographer had not produced any brilliant charcoal sketches lately, so why should we expect our musicians to be poets? And yet it seems the highest praise that can be heaped on a songwriter from rhapsodising critics is to elevate them to the status of poet. And it is an unavoidable instinct, as a listener, to want to know what the song is about; which can surely only be grasped
through its lyrics? There is even now a popular website; songmeanings.net; where its visitors attempt to unscramble and contest the latest cryptic offering from Coldplay, or Radiohead, for example. Both these bands provide ample ground for debate; consider: All those signs, I knew what they meant. Some things you can invent. Some get made, and some get sent, Ooh? Birds go flying at the speed of sound, to show you how it all began. Birds came flying from the underground, if you could see it then youd understand, ah, when you see it then youll understand? (Coldplay Speed of Sound) I am glad that Chris Martin knew what they meant because personally, Im not
52
sure that I either see it or understand. Heres Radiohead to throw a little more light on the subject: Thats it, sir Youre leaving The crackle of pigskin The dust and the screaming The yuppies networking The panic, the vomit The panic, the vomit God loves his children, God loves his children, yeah! (Paranoid Android) Of course, it is unfair to take these lyrics out of context, and, more importantly, to sever them from their music. For lyrics, context is everything; and musical context most of all. To separate a lyric from its music is to remove its life-blood and, perhaps its sense. Lyrics do not exist in a linguistic vacuum in the way that poetry does; but their sense is communicated largely by the music rather than the language itself. So which bit really carries the message? The notes, or the words? Perhaps there is an argument for lyrics to be a bit more nonsensical; as music operates on a different level to language. It communicates the incommunicable. In simple terms; its head vs. heart: words are the realm of meaning and articulation, music is more emotional, insinuated territory. So perhaps lyrics that just set up a kind of atmosphere without a clear linear meaning are, actually, entirely appropriate. This is, in fact, often the case with lyrics. There is a kind of fractured eloquence in their ability to evoke emotional states, but without necessarily being involved in any detail. But the debate rages as to whether complex and cryptic is clever and beautiful, or if its just lazy and alienating. And often, the answer to this
simply comes down to the listeners subjective engagement with the song. A personal example of this was my first hearing of REMs Hairshirt: it was a hot summers day about 10 years ago and I had gone to visit a girlfriend, but turned up at her house and strangely no-one was there. I vividly remember stepping into the cool of the empty building and all I could hear was this ethereal blend of mandolins and Stipes voice coming from somewhere in the house her brother had left his CD player on. I remember just standing in his room being enveloped by dappled sunlight and this mysterious, beautiful song. Looking at the words to this song now they seem a little puzzling to say the least: I could walk into this room And the waves of conversation are enough To knock you down in the undertow So alone so alone in my life Feed me banks of light And hang your hairshirt on the lowest rung Its a beautiful life And I can hang my hairshirt Away up high in the attic of the wrong dogs life chest Or bury it at sea All my life Ive searched for this But to me, because they are encapsulated in this experience of the song, the words hold a sense of mystery and a searching obscurity that was really beautiful in that moment. And music is all about moments. Music is something that is experienced perhaps; more than understood. There is something intangible about moments rather than meanings that implies that they cant, or perhaps even shouldnt, be wrestled down into clearly delineated messages and stories. But then, you cant just sing about
53
nothing. And from a listeners point of view, lyrics that are either pathetically lazy or obscurely cabalistic are just alienating. The whole purpose of music, poetry, or art generally is that you are trying to connect; to put some kind of message across, as vague, subjective or open to interpretation as that might be. Songs are always about something, after all. TS Eliot said: Real poetry communicates before its understood. And I think that this is a great description of songs; there is that sense that something is communicated; and not necessarily linguistically, and understanding follows. But there does need to be both communication and understanding. My personal least favourite lyric is from Oasis Shes Electric: Shes got a sister And God only knows how Ive missed her And in the palm of her hand is a blister And I need more time Not only is it just frankly crap, it also doesnt mean anything. This is purely lazy rhyming: the blister is entirely irrelevant, and features only because it rhymes with sister. And what does he need more time for? For popping this pointless blister?! And he probably hasnt missed her at all again it just rhymes with sister. Personal rants aside, throwaway lyrics suggest to me a throwaway attitude to what youre writing about, which, in turn, makes it hard to care about the song as a listener. Its also nothing to do with the style of the song or the band either. For example; Alex Turners lyrics for the Arctic Monkeys, another Northern scallywag band, not only make coherent sense, but also tell great stories. Im not even a great fan of the Arctic Monkeys, but Ill always end up getting sucked into listening to their songs because theyre often about a specific
place, person or event that is firstly easily imaginable and secondly welltold. Its the kind of musical equivalent of a well-constructed page-turner. So, to conclude, should we expect our songwriters to be poets? Perhaps not, as words and music operate in different realms and make different kinds of sense. But, in my opinion, lyrics still need to have some kind of effort put into them, and mean something at least. A bit of mystery isnt always a bad thing, as long as you dont completely lose everyone; otherwise, well, youve lost everyone! Bloc Partys Kele Okereke - one of my favourite lyricists - perhaps articulates it the best: The thing about a good lyric to me, he says, is that it suggests something intangible, something that cant be explained. And yet, it makes complete sense. Youre reaching people in the most obvious, simple way without using obvious, simple language. Thats what a good lyric should do. A lyric should grasp at abstract ideas, but in a way that people should understand. 1 From an interview with journalist John Harris
1
John Adler studied English Literature at Sheffield University before moving to Coventry in the West Midlands to become a freelance journalist and session musician. He lives in what can only be described as an over-grown recording studio with some beds, with his wife Marie and children Eddie and Frances. John plays guitar, keys, sax and flute.

Incorporating Writing Issue Vol 1

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Incorporating Writing Issue Vol 1

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

incorporating writing

Issue 5 Vol 1 POPULAR CULTURE

The need to walk

Success...And How to Avoid It WIN A FREE COPY

The Popular Contest Spurling on the demise of culture

Will Self - Douglas Coupland - The Death of Empathy

G.P. Kennedy looks at the growing popular front.

Interviews Douglas Coupland Will Self

The orginal voice of Generation X.

Pagan Kennedy catches up with Will on his US Book tour.

Articles Behind the Scenes at the Museum: Interpretation

The Popular Contest

Writing on the Web and The Death of Empathy Po(p)etry

Jess look at the world of internet writing.

Columns End Them All

Dan McTiernan takes a stance against popular culture.

Homer Simpson or Alan Partridge Artwork Perfect Eye Reviews

Christine Brandel tackles culture on both sides of the Atlantic.

Cover artist, Jin, exhibits some of her work.

G.P. Kennedy introduces the next round in criticism.

Letters and Feedback News and Opportunities Competition

Pop Goes Culture

Letters and Feedback

Column by Dan McTiernan Image by Jane M Sawyer

End Them All

Recently my mum told me off for yank-bashing

(Just like your father)

do. Not my dream book at all.

Estill Pollocks tenth collection is wide-

ALL TITLES AVAILABLE FROM THE SHOP AT WWW.INCWRITERS.CO.UK

Banging My Head on the Table: Douglas Coupland

Perfect Eye: Jin

Lisha Aquino Rooney

The Popular Contest

Article by Tom Spurling Image by Andrea Fantoni

Popular culture aint all bad for us writers and creatives

The cycle of life continues and so too does popular culture

Homer Simpson or Alan Partridge

incorporating writing David Beckham

Steinbecks Travelogue of War

Article by Claire Boot Photographs by Andrew Oldham

Writing on the Web and The Death of Empathy

Industry News and Opportunities

Article by Bruce Barnes

Article by John Adler Image by Mary R. Vogt

You might also like