Tag: blogging

Uncategorized

Notes of Note

Jack Kerouac wrote his novel On the Road in the era of the typewriter. The trouble was that had a story to tell and didn’t want to be interrupted every five minutes to replace the sheet of paper.

His solution was to buy a roll of teletype paper, giving 120 feet of paper in a continuous scroll. That’s the equivalent length of approximately 123 sheets of A4. The novel was reportedly written in three weeks while his wife supplied him with coffee and Benzedrine.

The entire scroll was displayed at the British Museum in 2012. Had it been written today, he likely would have used a computer, robbing popular culture of this artefact.

I’m reminded of this stream-of-consciousness approach as I look at a Simplenote entry I’ve had for the past two weeks or so. Coming home from a poetry gig, I thought of a few lines of verse, adding a few more lines shortly afterwards. Then yesternight, I added a lot more lines, with only minimal editing.

In terms of plot structure, it’s very disjointed and I don’t intend to resolve this. I’m also satisfied with the opening lines and the closing lines, yet I feel it needs something more in the middle to bulk it up from the 23 lines it currently contains and I can’t tell yet what its final form is likely to be.

While it’s unlikely this short note will end up like On the Road, I do have one precedent for a project that grew out of all recognition. I started off writing a one-line gag about how we fictionally used to order YouTube videos by post. By the time I’d finished editing, it had ended up as a short story with more than 1,700 words.

Uncategorized

Being a Judge

On Saturday, my open-mic night Hotchpotch jointly hosted a poetry slam with the Edinburgh-based I Am Loud.

A slam is a form of performance poetry that heavily emphasises performance and audience reaction as well as the actual writing. It’s also competitive, with a panel of judges awarding points based on pre-agreed criteria.

In all my years of attending slams, I’d never been asked to act as a judge before. By all accounts, it was the least-envied job in the room. We would be marking each of the performers on a scale of 1 to 10.

I didn’t see the other judges’ papers, but I found the standard of performance was so high that it generally came down to how much I enjoyed the poem. There were some tough calls, but I don’t think I’d make any amendments in hindsight.

It really did help to have been to so many slams and other poetry events, so as to build up a frame of reference about what I enjoy and dislike. It was also useful to pay attention to the reactions from the audience. I’d be happy to do this again in the future.

It’s safe to say it now, but I was privately rather worried about whether our members would attend a ticketed slam in place of their usual free-of-charce open-mic. However, I’d failed to take into account that the I Am Loud name has some clout with local poets, and they sold out all 12 performer slots – even if two of them withdrew.

The winner in the end was Tom Bird, who goes on to compete in the final competition later this year.

Uncategorized

Second Chance Sales

Over the years, I’ve amassed a lot of novels and poetry collections. Some of them have been finished and enjoyed, while I’m never reasonably likely to read the others, so it was time to clear out most of my shelves.

After letting my pals have the first pick of the collection, I then sent ten of the remainder to Music Magpie for instant cash. I could have sent fifty, but I was only offered pennies for some of them, giving me much more hassle for a relatively low payout. Additionally, some of the books were signed and/or personalised, so I’ve divided the rest between charity shops and eBay.

During this process, I wondered how published authors feel about seeing their books in second-hand shops, so I decided to throw out a question to them. Of my dozen or so sample size, it seems the overwhelming majority wouldn’t mind this at all. Typical reasons included:

  • Their words were accessible to people who might not have bought them otherwise.
  • They liked the idea of their books being spread more widely than the first recipient.
  • Charities receive the benefit from the sale of donated books.
  • It is simply part of the ‘circle of books’.

Honourable mentions go to two parties. The first is the author who sometimes leaves a secret note for the next person who picks up the book. The second is to Gutter Magazine. It has become a running joke in their office that at any given moment, a certain Oxfam bookshop has at least five copies for sale. They added that many of their issues sell out, so it was lovely to see them ‘in the wild’ once again.

I also had a book written by the grandfather of a former colleague about travelling to Hong Kong. She’d originally lent it to me for taking on a railway journey, but I didn’t manage to read it After a four-year gap, it has now been returned.

Uncategorized

Converting Formats

Of all the factors plaguing Dungeons & Dragons players, arranging a convenient time for everyone to gather is probably the most difficult. This meant my group ended up seeing the film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves at different times in different cinemas.

Making this film was a real gamble. Not only is it taking a largely open-world game and telling a linear story, but it also sits in the shadow of the last Dungeons & Dragons film made 23 years ago. That one has a score of just 3.6 on IMDB compared to 7.9 for the current one, and Ginny D from Critical Role has analysed what makes it so terrible.

Computer games in particular have a track record of being made into badly-received films, and there are plenty of top-ten lists online purporting to show the worst. Conversely, there is also a history of movies being made into great games. More than 25 years after its release, for example, GoldenEye 007 for the N64 is still highly regarded.

For me and two of my group, though, the gamble seems to have paid off, with all of us enjoying what Chris Pine and the cast brought to the table. It’s also no secret that a solid structure plays a large part in the success of any motion picture. In a blog post, the writer Michael Hague explains the key turning points of most major scripts, and the writers nailed this one near-perfectly.

With all this in mind, it remains to be seen how The Super Mario Bros. Movie fares at the box office this weekend.

T

Uncategorized

Exploring the Collaborative World of Renga

About three years ago, I had the privilege of becoming one of the first people to sign up for a collaborative poetry project spearheaded by W N Herbert.

Each month, he sends regular emails to a group of fellow poets, inviting us to contribute new verses to a renga poem. One suggestion is chosen every day and added to the email chain, so it builds up as the weeks go on.

A renga is a form of Japanese linked verse alternating haikus with pairs of seven-syllable lines. Each stanza has its own distinct direction, not necessarily responding directly to the previous one, but the end result is a collaborative work that showcases the individual voices and perspectives that make up a cohesive whole.

As W N Herbert receives quite enough suggestions from our small group, the mailing list is not open to the public. However, you can read the finished rengas and other pieces on the Gude and Godlie website.

Uncategorized

‘Those expressions are omitted…’

The major literary news story of the week was an announcement that Puffin Books would revise selected passages in new editions of books by Roald Dahl. The Telegraph provides a decent background of the reaction this has provoked.

One word that keeps cropping up is bowdlerising, a reference to Thomas Bowdler. Beginning in 1807, he produced a series of books titled The Family Shakspeare [sic] that removed what he considered to be improper language. The title page claimed: ‘Nothing is added to the original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.’

It is also known that his sister Henrietta started the project and contributed to the subsequent volumes, although it’s not clear how evenly the work was split.

While the public largely agreed with the changes during its first hundred years, attitudes had changed by the early 20th century. This is when the verb to bowdlerise gained its modern meaning of making overzealous edits.

In the case of Dahl, I think the situation could have been approached differently. Perhaps a newly-written foreword to explain the historical context would have been more appropriate to help young readers understand the language choices.

However, it’s clear that Puffin is banking on solid sales, as hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds must have been spent on the changes. It remains to be seen in the long run whether the readers of the future agree that the text has been bowdlerised.

At the time

Uncategorized

Cataloguing the Uncatalogued

For the last eight years or so, I’ve run my monthly open-mic singlehandedly. However, our collaborations during 2022 showed me the group was becoming unwieldy to manage alone.

So at the next event tomorrow, we’ll introduce our first co-host. Having already briefed her about the help we need, such as welcoming readers while I set up the equipment, I started to compose a short document to explain the role in more detail.

This short document quickly expanded to a long one, becoming a chronological checklist of the entire evening from start to finish. Much of the content is based upon years of personal experience and best practice. But almost none of it had been formally recorded before because there was never a pressing need.

I’ll give the document to my co-host tonight or tomorrow, although it’s still the first version and could do with some refining. Once it’s more robust, it’ll serve as a template in case she or anyone else needs to cover for me in the future.

Uncategorized

Public Poetry

Regular readers of this blog will know I normally write about writing rather than posting the writing itself. This is because publishers won’t normally accept writing that’s available online, especially free of charge.

But on my tour of the Millennium bridges, discussed last week, I took a little time to write clerihews at each stop. They were so situation-specific that there wasn’t any point in keeping them for a publisher, so here they are in full.

Gateshead,
I visited you instead
of fussing
over your green-arched cousin.
Stockton-on-Tees:
your pointed geometry
pointed the way
to a new century.
York
had the longest walk,
and some robust
gusts.
London,
there are none
who match the sheer span
that you can.
Salford
you rise like a bird,
free
from the quay.
Lancaster
there’s no faster,
way to cross the Lune
on a January afternoon.
Glasgow:
I’m sure the traffic will still flow
over and under, come
the next millennium.

Separately, here’s one I wrote at a popular chain restaurant yesternight.

Monday at the Beefeater
Half-past five, half-past January,
in a half-full restaurant,
kids eat half-portions
as dads drink half-pints.
I half-think I see someone
half-inching a glass.
Uncategorized

A Rare Cross-Promotion

Somewhere, I’m sure, there’s a massive hardback volume with The Rules of Blogging etched in gold on the front. In that book, I expect, there is a section with the title Never Give Your Readers a Reason to Leave Your Site. Just this once, I’m going to break that rule as I’m doing something special this week.

Tomorrow and on Thursday, I’ll be visiting all seven Millennium bridges in mainland Great Britain over a period of two days. I’m willing to be proved wrong, but as far as I can tell, nobody else has done this.

I will be keeping a Tumblr blog of the entire journey as I visit Gateshead, Stockton-on-Tees, York, London, Salford, Lancaster and Glasgow in that order.

More than 700 miles of the trip will be completed on diesel trains. This trip was always at risk of industrial action by rail workers, and there will be a strike on Thursday affecting the Elizabeth Line and buses in London. However, it seems the parts of the network I’ll be using will run as normal on my chosen days.

Rail is among the lowest-polluting methods of transport, but these journeys will still emit an estimated 50.73 kilograms of carbon dioxide. To help offset this, I’m raising money for the Woodland Trust.

So for this one week, you have permission to step away from my blog. Next Tuesday, by contrast, I will be doing my utmost to keep you glued to this page only.

Uncategorized

The Best Bad Poetry

A few days ago, I received an email from a blog I didn’t know I was following.

The author had just updated with a poem about the Ship Canal Bridge in Seattle that was heavily influenced by the William McGonagall verse The Tay Bridge Disaster. For the avoidance of doubt, only the style is lampooned; the Seattle bridge is in no danger of collapse.

I’m from Dundee, right next to the Tay, and McGonagall is closely associated with the city. As I read the Ship Canal Bridge poem, I found I had more and more I wanted to say about the poet and his output.

A major hallmark of his distinctive verse came from forcing clumsy descriptions into rhyming lines. It amused me to see the critically-panned film director Tommy Wiseau under the See Also section in his Wikipedia entry.

However, I’ve also heard McGonagall’s technique described as ‘journalistic’, as his words often give a factual insight into the subject. This is showcased neatly in The Tay Bridge Disaster.

To our eyes, such a poem might seem insensitive to its victims and their relatives. However, there appeared to be no public outcry 143 years ago; even in modern times, performances are often played for laughs.

I must credit Dundee Rep Theatre with making an exception in 2019. As part of a local history show called The A to Z of Dundee, one of the actors read an excerpt from the piece. Despite the overall show being comedic in nature, he gave it a poignant tone that I think was better suited to the subject matter.

One of my university tutors believed McGonagall was the only poet whose entire body of work had been published. Better still, his output has been in the public domain for decades, so it’s easy to find countless other examples of his style.