Tag: University

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Going Off-Script

From 2002 to 2005, I studied for a BSc Music Technology degree at what is now called the University of the West of Scotland. The course taught us how commercial music is recorded, along with related skills such as composition, Web design, and making promotional videos.

Last week, I had cause to rake out a short film I’d made as part of the degree. It dates from around 2003 or 2004, but nobody had thought to write the date on the box.

Although DVD was fast becoming the dominant format, we had to submit the piece on VHS. I wish I’d at least kept a disc-based copy. I can’t say for sure whether the tape has been partially wiped or whether my video recorder is at fault, but the picture is almost unwatchable.

The sound, by contrast, is more or less intact. Hearing this for the first time in years unexpectedly reminded me of the scriptwriting process. I distinctly remember sitting in the student union discussing ideas before someone flippantly said, ‘Why don’t we make it about four students who fall out making a film?’ That flippant suggestion became the backbone of our script.

At this point, I wasn’t routinely writing any fiction, but I recall enjoying the process. This should have been a foreshadowing of where my interest would ultimately lie in the future.

Some of the lines were a little clunky, aside from gems like He’s about as much use as a mic stand, yet the structure was spot-on. Each character blamed one or more of the others for the failure of the film, whether it was the director having a go at the others for not understanding his vision, the technician who kept forgetting to charge up the camera batteries, or an unseen ex-girlfriend who split up with one character to date another.

It really does leave the viewer guessing, and I’d be pleased if I managed to pull off that complexity in a current piece. What’s more, the action takes place in a span of well under five minutes. I vaguely recall our brevity cost us some marks, but it was a self-contained story.

I haven’t yet returned the tape to the cupboard, so my plan is to find someone with another video recorder to test whether my equipment or the tape is at fault. At a minimum, it would be prudent to make a safety copy of at least the audio portion and figure out whether the drama could be adapted into a longer piece.

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A Personal Path to Paisley

Back in July, I mentioned I had my poem January & You published by Speculative Books. The launch was scheduled for Tuesday of last week in Glasgow.

I knew I wouldn’t have much time to catch the bus after the end of my shift. As such, I’d kept my phone off to avoid any distractions, only turning it back on once I was on the bus. Shortly after it pulled away, however, I received an email. It explained the launch had to be cancelled because of illness, with apologies for the short notice. There is a hope to reschedule it for later in the year.

My time on a Tuesday evening is typically ring-fenced to run a writing group, but I’d arranged with the other leader to make an exception. Had I seen this before we started moving, I might just have cut my losses on the cost of the tickets and stayed in Dundee to help out with the group. Now I was stuck on the bus for around 45 more minutes until we reached the park-and-ride in Perth, so I considered my options.

I could have stopped there and found my way back to Dundee. But some of the buses are painfully slow and infrequent, while the railway station is at the other end of Perth, so I might not have made it back before the group was over. Besides, booking at the last minute is never cheap.

Instead, since I knew the writing group was in good hands, I elected to continue to Glasgow and then on to Paisley.

I was at university there between 2002 and 2005 taking a BSc Music Technology course, long before I was interested in prose and poetry. While I’d been back several times, my most memorable visit took place in 2017 when I thought I might find some inspiration for poetry.

I did find inspiration, but not in the way I’d expected. In short, I barely recognised the place beyond the town centre and I wrote an entry about this when it happened.

Today, I would have taken the time to find the layout of the area, see where the side streets were leading and work out the most convenient way to visit other places. For example, I used to volunteer at a community radio station in the Glasgow district of Govan. I can’t understand why I always paid extra for buses when I can now look at a map and see two more direct routes covered by my travel card.

I didn’t intend for this entry to be so personal, but I also didn’t intend to visit my alma mater. If there was a silver lining, it’s that the resulting poem from 2017 was published in a collection about the town. The more I think about it, the more I’m inspired to write a sequel, so I’ll see where that takes me over the coming days.

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Next Story, Please

In yesterweek’s entry, I talked about reaching the end of a series I’m currently writing. I’m pleased to report I’m making good progress with this, and my thoughts now turn to the next long-form project.

Of all the options, the current frontrunner is a piece of memoir. Part of me wants to announce the subject right now to create some accountability for the project. The downside is that I might start to write it and find there isn’t much mileage in the idea. As such, I’m keeping it under wraps for the moment.

As I write, I’m reminded of a time – maybe ten years ago – when I attended a series of university evening classes all about life writing. This encompassed types of writing such as memoir and biography, and discussed the subtle but important differences between them, plus the ethics of naming people in such writing.

While it’s unlikely I would personally attend another series of life writing classes, aside from a one-off refresher, I recommend the genre to anyone interested in learning to express yourself. It was a good grounding for moving into the poetry scene, where there is more of a convention to figuratively bleed onto the page or stage.

Indeed, it happens that the life writing class in question no longer exists in its current form because of restructuring at the university. After that change was made, a few of the members did form our own poetry group, which survives to this day.

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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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How I Don’t Remember It

I’ve recently joined a new poetry group. It’s so new that we don’t even have a name yet, but I’m enjoying the work of the other members.

One of them wrote about his time at Stirling University and included a photo of the place in the springtime. For the following month’s meeting, I visited Paisley, where I studied at what’s now the University of the West of Scotland. I’d paid a brief visit to the town centre in 2016, but it had been some years since I’d explored its other areas.

I’d expected some change, and I saw it particularly in the accommodation. There were new blocks of flats in a couple of spots, while one place I used to rent from the University had clearly been sold to a slum landlord – and the other might well have been going the same way.

I then walked up Neilston Road, which is one of the backbones of the town. From the moment I turned onto it, I began to wonder where I was. There were new tearooms with seats outside – even though it rained all day – but even taking them out of the equation, I didn’t even remember other landmarks.

Deutsch: Logo University of the West of Scotland
Logo of the University of the West of Scotland (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There were bends in the road I didn’t recall, buildings that must have been there a century I didn’t register, and a field with cows as you head out of town that I must have seen at some point.

At least now I had a focus for my poem. One of the prompts had been ‘A letter to…’ so my piece became A Letter to Paisley, with the first lines reading:

I saw you the other day,
I’m sorry I didn’t recognise you.

But I found the opening words to be the easy part. Sometimes I can have something I really want to say, or I theme I particularly want to explore, and I find it difficult to work out how to present it.

In the rest of the piece, I muse upon the changes that have taken place and the parts I didn’t recognise, and I ponder whether it was the excitement of moving there at age 18 that caused me not to take in the details I saw on that day. I presented the piece to the group on Thursday of last week, and they helped me to make a few changes that will probably find their way into the next draft.

Strangely enough, I gained a BSc Music Technology while I was there. I didn’t do much with the qualification as it was, but I was able to use it to gain a place on the Masters degree I completed last year.

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A Walk in the Gardens

A couple of Saturdays ago, I visited the Botanic Gardens in Dundee, owned by the city’s university. Within its 21 acres, there are plants and trees from around the world and educational areas where you can learn more about them.

That day, the Gardens had been opened up specifically for writers, artists and photographers to respond in their chosen media for an upcoming anthology by the organisation who maintains them. A botanist even led us to many of the noteworthy spots, from tropical plants that change gender overnight to hardy shrubs that live on a limited water supply.

I’ve long believed that going for a walk helps to sort out any thoughts a writer has. In this case, there was a lot of input from the botanist’s talk, from discussions with other participants and indeed from my own observations.

English: Bean germination
English: Bean germination (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yet there was so much input to process that it took several days to form any meaningful output. During these days, I was taken by the idea that some trees can survive forest fires while other trees actually rely on fire for their seeds to germinate. I made drafts in free verse with internal rhymes, but the narrative was ultimately going nowhere.

Some friends, also poets, were on the same tour. One of them writes poems around the length of a haiku, although he doesn’t use the haiku form itself. Looking at my own work, I realised I liked the opening line and the conclusion, and I felt that to include other details would simply be filler and distract from the message I wanted to impart. So, borrowing his style, I kept only those parts: two sentences enjambed over four lines.

After leaving it aside for another few days, I came back to my verse yesterday morning and decided to enter it for the anthology. For that reason, I’m unable to publish the finished product online, but you’ll be the first to know if it’s included.

Which brings me to an event happening this coming Thursday. I’m having a poem published in Dundee Writes, a pamphlet distributed by the University of Dundee. I’ll report back on the launch event next week.

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The Stories of Secession

In 2014, there was a referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country, in which 55% of the voters wanted to remain part of the UK. Over the last week, the issue has again raised its head.

Image of Scotland in the UK
Image of Scotland in the UK (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At almost every literary event I attended ahead of the poll, I found the issue raised again and again in prose and poetry. Some of what I heard was heavy-handed polemic, while others crafted nuanced satires of the situation.

Regardless of quality, though, it encouraged all sorts of people to express their views through the spoken word and to believe that others might be influenced by their writings.

In my experience, much of the creative work was pro-independence. Such was the mood in the country that the National Collective sprung up, bringing together different types of artist to campaign for a Yes vote under one umbrella.

So the prose and poetry that stems from a potential second referendum will likely be even more passionate: from Yes voters who’ve been granted a second chance and from No supporters who believe the question was settled in 2014.

And further to my last entry, the 18-to-22 age group was considered to be the most apathetic generation when I first attended university in 2002. Maybe it was because we had a Labour government back then; maybe it was because George W Bush hadn’t yet invaded Iraq.

Whatever the reason, the situation today couldn’t be more different. Some of the most active campaigners are those of college age, and I barely go a week without seeing a university literary event responding to current affairs.

Let’s see what happens next.

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Review of the week.

Recently, I’ve been trying my hand at book reviews. It’s markedly different from ordinary reading and from fiction writing, as you’ve to make notes as you go along. From these notes, you then have to identify themes and techniques, and explain why the author has or hasn’t delivered a successful product.

The first volume I reviewed was In the Catacombs by Chris McCabe, which appears on the website of Dundee University Review of the Arts (DURA). I had some difficulty writing it, not only because this was one of my first pieces, but because I found the author’s research to be less focused than I would have expected. That point is reflected in the final piece.

One of the DURA editors then handed me Play with Me by Michael Pedersen, which I duly opined about. I found this one so much easier as I enjoyed his writing and the themes that emerged from it. It turned out after I’d submitted the review that the editor had given it to me purely for personal interest, but it was accepted anyway. I’ve heard the book publishers liked it as well.

Scrymgeour Building, University of Dundee
Scrymgeour Building, University of Dundee (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There will also be a third review published in a few weeks, as each one goes through a rigorous edit. By that time, I’ll have returned to the MLitt Writing Study & Practice course at the University of Dundee. Part of your final mark depends upon carrying out a review of a live event, so this is prime practice. It also gives me an insight into how editors think and how to resolve any disputes that might arise.

A secondary benefit of writing reviews is exposure. The more publications in which you can place your name, the higher the chance that someone will have heard of you; like Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, I’m always pleased when this happens to me. Last week, I was recognised by an art student who had heard me at an event in May and enjoyed the two poems I read. I was especially pleased because I also enjoyed her Masters art installation so much.

That said, I forgot to ask DURA whether these reviews could be published under my pen name, as my real one is harder to spell, but I’m not bothered by it. It never hurt Peter Serafinowicz’s career.