Bath bonus

I'm stoked to have a story included in the longlist of the Bath Flash Fiction Award, a bonus of which being that it will also be included in the anthology. My thanks to the judges.

Fun thing: part one

My sincere thanks to the New Zealand Book Council for awarding me an International Travel grant and funding my flights to and from the UK to attend the Dundee International Book Prize gala dinner and Dundee Literary Festival. Thanks, too, to Literary Dundee for funding my accommodation at the Apex City Quay Hotel & Spa. I am grateful for your generosity, my trip would not have been possible without your assistance. 

And what a trip!


The Courier headline on the morning of the Dundee International Book Prize gala dinner:

I promptly took my person to the Street of the alleged incident.

Perhaps the alleged flasher misread the To Let sign for ToiLet.

It was in this state of naivety and openness to learning that I experienced Dundee.

On one's first visit to Dundee, one must have a room with a view, and this was mine:

from the Apex City Quay Hotel and Spa. And look right, a lighthouse on a boat. It would be easier to see if its light were on. The sun hadn't quite got its act togeether by 9.30 am, jet lagged, obviously.

But by mid norning it was a glorious day in Dundee, and how better to see the city's sights than in the company of local writer and blogger Rachel Fox, affectionately known online by moi since 2009 as T'other Rachel.

 Fancy, travelling betwixt antipodes to discover the Discovery had done it first. 

The Discovery expedition to the Antarctic was led by Robert Falcon Scott, of course, whose name I filched for my nom de plume the year I was shortlisted for the Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire Prize.

The Discovery appeared to have brought back a few unregistered passengers:

I don't know how long the penguin's been staring at that compass, but I think someone ought to say it isn't working.

 

Are we nearly there yet?

Grate fuel

Stoked for Jamez Chang and I to have yet another of our collaborations published, this time at Metazen. With gratitude to Christopher Allen.

Four today only

Surely the world's scariest Santa? He beckons but his wink has ceased to work! Sit on his knee, anyone?

Poet at the Wheel








“I'll throw a poem”. The clay,

plastic

cut from the earth in elastic slabs,

submitted

beneath my feet incognito

before being

lifted

to tread a higher existence.



Polar attraction. We make do,

with sedimentary action until the earth yields

a finer particle to weigh and wedge.



I extrude the shape all nature aspires to and drive it down again,

slip fingered, thumb ridged parings, off centred

and the whole thing spins out of control like a mad dervish.

Broken back.



Cheese wire and flick

of the wrists clears the wheel

for the next attempt.



A second clod is kneaded.



Thump and lift,

slam

and wedge again.

Dropped

like a drunk

on the wheel to reel another

time.



Its form rises within the wings of my hand, twin encouraged

I press my will, imprint it. Drawn, compressed,

raised and razed and sponged and my foot lifts off the pedal.

I made this.



“I think it's perfect”, I say.

Teacher,

wire in hand, splits my poem piece,

cleavers

out its heart and says, “you're right,

it was, now throw another just the same”.
 
 
 
 
This is where I'm at - writing everyday in the must-be-nuts-to-keep-doing-this way that I do, all the time reminding myself to write better and find a more creative way to fall. It is humbling, and necessary.
 
My thanks to everyone who has offered guidance and advice - I appreciate it - even when it stings - and I do put it all into practice.
 
My son is two*; I'm struggling to find blogging time but I am still reading and visiting blogs and, most importantly for me, I am still protecting my writing time. Poetry for the last few months. Several per day some days (four today), always trying to find the perfect metaphor; the this-is-how-I-see-this-share-my-view-point way; did anyone else even notice that?; and other forms of autopsy with gentler tools.
 
Merry Christmas to those who believe and/or celebrate (including those hypocritical atheists such as myself who keep the tree and the pressies and say it's for the kids blah, blah but really we love the rituals!) Happy holidays to everyone else.
 
 
*For those of you who have experience of toddler boys - you know they should come with pads and crash helmets! I salute you! For those who have no experience of them, I laugh, I cry, I pity, I envy you.

PS apologies for my apostrophe sin - tis the season. It's the least abhorrent of my recent typing errors...tell you that one later....thanks, t'other Rachel.

Stylistics

I've had a week of some disappointment, tempered with some kind words, some harsh words, some honest words, and lots of great advice; for everything but the disappointment I have a writer named Andrea to thank. She has a terrific blog:

http://acatofimpossiblecolour.blogspot.com/

which is shrine to all things style, and literary, and obviously some of the style rubbed off on the literary because she is about to have a book published!

And I have had a week in which to think, what if?

What if I couldn't be a writer? What would I do? What could I do?

I'll start with the last question.

I could be a painter: I paint, I'm not too awful, I could do that...maybe...if I had to...but I like to keep that as my hobby, my pass time: it helps me unwind, helps me to think, helps me see the words to paint my stories - writing and painting are both art. I write in pictures anyway, writing is much more than words to me.

I would probably continue to look after my kids, be a stay at home mum until my youngest starts school and then go into teaching - the thing I was meant to do some years ago - the thing I took my highschool maths five times for (I have dyscalculia...numbers and I have a strange relationship: I'm like an accidental, A sexual patron in a strip club - numbers are the strippers who dance around me, I'm not allowed to touch and I don't get them). I would teach...if I had to...I would enthuse a generation with the love of words, I would infuse their senses with the love of language...I would amuse them with my love of books; 'this one smells like a good 'un' I'd say.
It would come back to writing somehow.

If I couldn't be a writer, I couldn't be a painter, a teacher, a mother; simply, I couldn't be me.

I will write because I have to. It's what I have done since I was as old as my daughter is now, and I took my story to show my teacher and she said, 'but they're not your words' - but they were. To get one of my stories published would be a huge buzz, an achievement, and a way - besides my children - to achieve immortality. I would jump up and down until I felt sick and dizzy, and shout 'weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!' I would run with barefooted jubilance down the street, and exclaim, 'they are my words!' And then I would go back to being me; and write - quietly, because my books would be shouting.

If I never get a book published I will write.