Tag: poetry

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Local Stories in the Global Room

Let me address first of all why you’re seeing this post on a Sunday when I’m accustomed to making them on a Tuesday.

I forgot to update on Tuesday, so my self-imposed punishment was to make two further entries this week: one on Friday just gone and one today. From Tuesday, we’ll go back to weekly posting.

In this entry, let me take you back to last Sunday.

Every year, the University of Dundee runs the Being Human festival, in celebration of the humanities. I’d signed up to join their Talking Bus tour, driving a round trip of approximately 75 miles to places in Angus. During the trip, we were told folk tales by Dr Erin Farley. She’s someone I’ve known for a long time, and last year she launched a collection of these stories.

This book has proved to be rather influential in my poetry group, the Wyverns. The group is not normally open to the general public, but we do have a history of tie-ins with the Being Human festival, so this is the one time of year we can showcase our work. Tuesday saw the launch of our seventh pamphlet at the university with accompanying readings.

In common with our previous publications, this took place in the Global Room on campus, used for social and cultural events rather than lectures. Each of the Wyvern poets stood up in turn to perform our poems, and the words were also displayed on a TV behind us for the audience to read along. The best perk, in my opinion, was the bowl of posh chocolates that was passed around the crowd to accompany the tea and coffee. Erin and a few others were in attendance, and it seemed to go down well.

In all that excitement, I simply forgot to update this blog. I only remembered early on Wednesday morning, when the moment had long passed.

After the event, the group exchanged a few emails on our discussion list. One member reported feeling exceptionally nervous about performing, which reminded me that not everyone is comfortable standing on a stage to read. I sometimes forget this because I read to an audience at least once a month, and I rarely think anything of it. While this is a subject I’ve addressed before on the blog, a casual search suggests I haven’t updated my advice since 2018.

I reckon that’s a topic to revisit next week, but in lieu of a more comprehensive entry, the best general piece of advice I can give is to treat it like learning any new skill.

Let’s say you know nothing about snooker, but you read up on the rules, buy a table on a whim and find a regular willing opponent. If you play three frames a day for twelve months, that’s well over a thousand matches. Within a year, you’ll know which moves work and don’t work, the optimum spin to place on the ball, how to block the other player effectively, and so forth.

In short, you’ll be pretty good at playing snooker by this time next year, just in time for our potential eighth pamphlet.

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Where Did Tuesday Go?

A full 25 hours on from Tuesday at 8pm, and an entry finally appears. Here’s what went down, and what’ll happen now.

Every Tuesday, I run the Dundee & Angus region of National Novel Writing Month. We meet weekly all year round in person and online, which becomes twice a week in November. That’s when the main novel-writing challenge is held. Yesterday, I knew I wasn’t going to be available to host because of a poetry event. I turned to my co-lead, who is normally able to fill in, but she was unwell.

As such, the meet-up had to be cancelled entirely, which rarely happens. I spent my lunchtime sending messages to make sure none of the members turned up.

These meet-ups are such a fixture of my week that it doesn’t feel like a Tuesday without one. I regularly use the time to write or finish my blog entry, which is why it’s always posted that evening. No meet-up meant it went completely out of my head. In fact, I only remembered this morning.

So where do we go from here? The last time this happened, the self-imposed sanction was to post an extra entry, but I feel this deserves something more severe because there was no reasonable excuse for forgetting. It’s normally enough of an effort to write one blog entry a week, so let’s have another two this week.

As such, the extra ones will be posted on Friday 18 November and Sunday 20 November, both at 8pm. Each one must be at least 500 words long, and they can’t cover the same topic. This punishment can be increased, but not decreased.

I’ll catch you again on Friday.

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Presenting to Creative Folks

Although these entries are posted in a regular fashion, they’re sometimes written days in advance, giving me time to iron out any flaws. This is not one of these entries. This is about an event from this morning.

I’m part of a local group called Amps, self-described as a community of people who make and cultivate creativity in Dundee. Every Tuesday morning, the members gather for a lighthearted online event that includes discussion questions for everyone, and one of the members typically gives a talk about their work.

It was my turn today, and I talked about the challenges of running both a poetry open-mic and a novel-writing group. I first considered the many differences between the two groups, then ended by discussing three key rules I follow when running both of them.

I’ve been working on this topic for a long time. In 2020, I was supposed to make a Pecha Kucha presentation that never went ahead, but I’d planned what I wanted to talk about. All I really needed to do was bring it up to date.

Regarding Amps as an organisation, I’d heard about them a few years back, but I didn’t join until about this time last year. I didn’t initially imagine I’d be welcome as I don’t rely on the arts to make a living, but the organisers keep a broad church.

After the presentation, there is always a short question-and-answer session, in which I was able to expand upon some of the points I made and put some preconceptions to bed. The weirdest question was whether I would consider using artificial intelligence in my writing.

I’m not always at these meetings because of work commitments, but I’ll endeavour to go whenever I’m available.

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The Ghosts of Blogs Long Gone

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned how this blog is now nine years old, and I’ve updated it without any significant gaps. Regular readers will probably be able to identify my style of writing. This is no accident. Before moving to WordPress, I cut my teeth on LiveJournal for many years, and some of what I learnt has carried over to this very day.

Affectionately known as LJ to its users, the site was big news around the millennium. I was relatively late to the party, making my first entry there in 2003. Nonetheless, I kept it updated with day-to-day events until around 2013. My experimentation there was crucial to how I approach blogging today. I found out what topics would engage and disengage an audience, how to structure the text, and the optimum length for a given entry.

Looking back, I’m surprised that some of my least engaging updates were made between 2011 and 2013. I knew LJ was losing its audience by then. In a misguided attempt to keep it alive, I’d largely dispensed with the diary style in favour of a dull series of weekly posts titled #MusicMonday, featuring a different rock or pop track.

By that point, I was starting to take my writing more seriously, so I chose to start afresh on WordPress. This would have a focus on fiction and poetry, and would go on to be updated on a strict weekly schedule. From the moment I set up my account here, I could see why users were moving away: WordPress offered basic features such as scheduled posts and picture uploads as part of their free account, but LJ still charged for them. Most of these features are now free, but LJ still charges $15 just to change your username.

That’s not to say LJ is dead. I still have one pal who updates to this day, and it was a comment underneath her most recent entry that led me back to another blog I kept at Dreamwidth, based on LJ code with modifications.

In 2009, I set up what would now be termed an alt-account to share thoughts that I didn’t want a wider audience to see. I stopped regularly updating there at the same time as I opened WordPress. Then the rabbit-hole deepened when I remembered I’d set up a secondary account to record fragments of dreams. The intention of using them for writing prompts never came to fruition and that blog has remained untouched since 2011.

I have one other LJ page that’s now inaccessible. This was set up for a juggling society at what is now the University of the West of Scotland. Members were kept updated on that page because this was an era before MySpace went mainstream. The student email address no longer exists, my password guesses have been incorrect, and I never set up a recovery question. As such, it’s remained fossilised since 8 Feb 2005.

Reading the LJ Help pages, there is no hope of recovery, so I’ve written to the helpdesk to ask when it’ll be purged. This is often done with accounts that have been idle for too long.

That’s the story of how this WordPress blog came about, and why it’s written the way it is. I can still look back at entries from its earlier days and see what I would have done differently, but I am generally happy with how the past nine years have gone.

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Acting as Gallery Assistant and Finding the Time to Read

I’m a regular visitor to the Dundee Contemporary Arts building, which holds around three major exhibitions per year. No matter what’s on display, I’m forever fascinated by the job of the gallery assistants. Aside from opening nights and special events, the pace is normally relaxed enough that some of them read novels while on shift.

Last week, I had the chance to experience this for myself on a smaller scale. First, a little background.

On Thursday, I visited an art exhibition called Funeral For My Deadname at Saltspace in Glasgow. This was run by an artist pal, and the highlight of the opening night was him completing and signing a document to legally change his name to Luke ‘Luca’ Cockayne in front of a crowd of visitors.

Luca also displayed a selection of his artworks in the gallery, some dating back more than a decade. These were available for viewing until Sunday, and some are featured below.

Close-up wall of paintings and drawings, laid out in a salon style.
Wide view of paintings and drawings, plus two freestanding pieces.
Exhibition viewed over the top of The Thursday Murder Club book.

As I hadn’t originally planned to be there on the opening night, I’d already booked my travel for Saturday. I didn’t intend to waste it, so I visited again and spent the day at Saltspace. In contrast with the busy opening night, there was a mere trickle of visitors during the day.

I’d brought with me the Richard Osman bestseller The Thursday Murder Club. It had been sitting in my bag for a long time, and by last week, I’d reached the halfway stage. With a combination of a long bus journey and quiet conditions at Saltspace, I was down to the last few pages by Saturday evening, then I finished it on Sunday.

I also promised my pal I’d dash off a quick clerihew in honour of the event:

Funeral for My Deadname.
I hereby proclaim,
announce and swear
that a change is in the air.
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A Regular Writing Routine

I’m part of the Wyvern Poets group in Dundee, having been a founder member in or around 2015.

Unlike my other groups, this one does not actively recruit members but it does publish its work. Most notably, Dundee University has invited us to put together a pamphlet for the Being Human festival every November, and to perform our work on campus.

For the rest of the year, the members each write a poem ahead of our monthly meetings. There is always an optional prompt; normally a single word like ‘environment’, ‘pace’ or ‘journey’. The poems are then discussed on a peer-review basis and suggestions are made between members.

I find if I undertake no other writing in a given month, I always submit something for the group, even if it’s at the last minute or if I’m not entirely happy with it. As there’s only around a week until the next meeting, I’m going to crack on with this month’s prompt – villanelle – right after I finish this.

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Making an Event Flexible Without Losing the Audience

On Saturday just gone, my open-mic event Hotchpotch collaborated with I Am Loud Productions from Edinburgh.

After an open-mike segment, the three headline acts would give us their best work. With close co-operation from the venue, it was a marvellous night, and showcased the best of both organisations.

However, I did admit to I Am Loud that I was initially in two minds about whether to allow them to take over our event.

To understand my thinking, let me take you back to February this year. I received a message from a reasonably high-profile poet from the other coast of Scotland. She was putting together a book tour and wanted to include our event as place to promote it.

I was flattered she’d heard about us and thought about us, as I’d been to see her show in 2019. I realised immediately, however, this tour would not be a good fit for us. Our open-mic shows are about audience participation, with no one person featured more highly than another.

We exchanged a few e-mails and I proposed a solution of starting the book launch at 6pm, then beginning the open-mic at 7pm as usual. I would also have been prepared to host a special event separately from the open-mic. Our talks ultimately came to a halt, but I did recommend she approach another group I know, and I hear she’s going to be a headliner there soon.

So when I Am Loud wanted to collaborate, I was convinced to give the green light when I heard the open-mic element would be part of the show. This would be in a much-reduced form, with just eight slots of three minutes apiece, compared to unlimited slots of seven minutes.

In practice, though, there was a smaller audience than usual, perhaps because the regular crowd are accustomed to Wednesday events rather than those on Saturday. As such, only five of the eight slots were taken, so nobody was left disappointed.

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What’s Occurring in September

Eschewing my usual ‘columnist’ format, this week’s entry takes the format of a bulleted list all about this month’s upcoming projects.

  • The following week, on Wednesday 21 September, I’m leading a gameshow called The Literal Flow Test. This is part of the Dundee Fringe, and takes place at Dock Street Studios. You can book tickets now, but there is no direct URL, so go to the official website and look down the page.
  • The following day, Hotchpotch has been granted a stall at Dundee University Freshers’ Fair. That’s on Thursday 22 September from 11am to 4pm where we’ll be introducing ourselves to the new crop of students.
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Back on the Festival Circuit

On Saturday, I was invited to perform at the inaugural New Pitsligo International Spoken Word Festival. It’s not the obvious location for an international festival. It’s easy enough to reach Aberdeen by train, but to reach New Pitsligo involves at least two connecting buses, many of them via Fraserburgh.

I was given a 4pm slot to perform in the Public Hall. In practice, it was closer to 5pm because the small delays by previous acts had built up to a much longer delay during the afternoon.

I presented new material, namely found poetry, constructed from sources including a calculus textbook and e-mail subjects. It took a few of my 15 minutes to warm up the audience and win them over, but they seemed to enjoy it by the end.

I have a few other festival-type events coming up soon, including a collaboration with an Edinburgh-based poetry group and a Dundee Fringe in September, and I look forward to seeing what comes of those.

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Remembering Where You Read It

More than ten years ago, I read the Herman Melville novel Moby-Dick, which is a hefty 500 pages. At the time, I volunteered every week at a hospital radio station and I used the bus journey to tackle much of my reading. Over time, I began to associate the route with the narrative of the story, even though the two were very different.

I recalled this recently as I read the Richard Osman novel The Thursday Murder Club on a bus, and I realised I have a few of these associations.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a book I’ll always associate with a bar where I currently hold a writing group, while A Room With a View reminds me of another bar not far away. Catch-22 is a particularly memorable case, as the association covers both the physical place, namely the school library, and the backdrop of the emerging War on Terror.

This phenomenon isn’t restricted to novels either. On a poetry front, I reviewed a Michael Pederson book in a park, and finished a Lorraine Mariner collection by candlelight one Christmas Eve.

In some cases, it must be stated that the reading locations were more memorable than the books, but I won’t single out any of them – at least not today.