A few pictures off Amanda and myself at Celebrate Festival today, Whalley Range where Amanda read three poems, two about the Gym and one about Medusa on Tinder and I read three flash fiction pieces about Manniquens, Bus stop fights and Alien Invasions. A varied afternoon lol
Over the past 18 months if you have seen me read you may have noticed I have slowly being introducing flash fiction slowly more and more into my live sets.
Where this came from is down to my wife Amanda really as when we went into lockdown in April 2020 we decided to set up a online writing workshop to keep ourselves going over that crazy period.
Over the early days of this I wrote a quite bit of poetry and then started branching out into sonnets, tankas and haikus some it has to be said were more successful than others but it gave me chance to use them as a springboard into trying something else.
My first attempt happened in August 2020 by the look of things and it was aborted horror story called the room. It was okay I guess as I remember grasping the mood of the piece I wanted to explore but I got stuck on an ending so I left it open ended and put it away thinking it was fun doing it and that would be it.
Of course this wasn't the case as at another workshop around a month and a half I ended up writing another piece, this time a cheerful Christmas piece called unexpected Christmas present which shocked more than a few people with the use of the f word and one very crude sexual reference to father Christmas but also made a few people laugh.
Into 2021 I began to brush up my taste for short fiction and flash fiction with a few true life short stories / flash fiction and by the time we were able to return to the live arena with the night me and Amanda corun with our friend Steve 'speak easy' and not long after that won 3rd prize for a major horror story competition for a prose piece 'winter and only winter' , I had managed now to take my work full circle with my flash fiction adding a odd element to my work which is perfect fit for my often more serious technical image based poetry.
Unlike my poetry which are always mapped onto folders of possible books, if I ever do with my flash fiction it will be sometime off I can admit as it took years and years before I felt was the case with my poetry and has rebooted my love of performed spoken word.
In the meantime, it's proved a real surprise getting third prize in competitions I would never would have dreamed entering a few years ago, showed people I don't just liking in one style and as I proved in a recent writing workshop Amanda and me were at I can surprise myself with flash fiction completing a piece in 15 to 20 minutes in a style the writer off me 4 years ago wouldn't have dreamed attempting.
It's a important thing for all writers to bear in mind. I had really being a poet for many, many years ago and since meeting my wife, Amanda
* Audio version of this review will appear on the Book Review Podcast - Reading in Bed at the start of June (readinginbed.bandcamp.com)
Blurb:
A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow-impossible though it seems-they may still be alive. A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.
Strengths:
The story is told through a combination of narrative and a mix of vernacular and found photography from the personal archives of collectors listed by the author and also a film from Tim Burton (which did okay from what I understand but not well enough to warrant a sequal or sequals).
The book itself has a interesting idea behind where reading up on the book, it was originally intended to be a picture featuring photographs the Author Riggs had collected, but he was advised from a editor as a guide to put together a narrative. The result was a story about a boy who follows clues from his grandfather's old photographs, tales, and his grandfather's last words which lead him on an adventure that takes him to a large abandoned orphanage on Cairnholm, a fictional Welsh island.
The book does have great atomsphere and I felt like the Author knew Wales when Jacob went there and the setup was great when Jacob’s grandfather reveals certain aspects of his life to them before then meeting his own fate and the use of the other children, which could have easily span into young X Men territory easily did work.
Weaknesses:
Too slow moving if I am honest and the book fell flat around the 200 to 250 page mark for me and didn’t recover for me and was nowhere as creepy or weird as the hype I’ve read it was.
The use of the pictures frequently throughout the book don’t fully work for me and in places the pictures which in the first half kinda worked in the 2nd half, it started to feel like the author either ran out of ideas or got tangled up in the world he was creating and wrote himself into a corner.
The film version of this which I have seen I think was far from perfect, but felt a lot more clearer and cut out a lot of the fat and confusing sub plots that were littered throughout this book.
A shame as it got off to a good start, but I can’t recommend this because of what happened in the 2nd half of the book – a better editor would have helped the book not fall off the edge of a cliff which is what happened to me during the last 100 – 150 pages of this book.
I really wanted to like this book but alas it only gets 6/10
* Podcast version will appear on Reading in Bed for their June 2022 Episode due out at the start of week commencing 06 June 2022 *
Blurb:
'Blood
Sugar, Sex, Magic' is award-winning poet Sarah James’s exploration
of 40 years living with type one diabetes, a life-threatening
autoimmune condition that is now treatable, but remains
incurable.
The
collection tracks her personal journey from diagnosis, age six, to
adulthood, including the high and the low points, as well as the
further long-term health risks lurking in the background. These are
poems of pain, but also of love and beauty, taking in motherhood,
aging and establishing self-identity in a constantly updating world.
The route to some kind of acceptance and belonging may be troubled by
‘trying to escape’ but it also ‘holds | more light than your
eye | will ever know’
Strengths:
This is not a easy flowery poetry book to read that is sure not because it is a book about a very serious topic indeed people need to be aware off – Diabetes (Something I can relate to myself after getting registered with Diabetes when I was 39) and the courage writing this book is admirable and it is difficult for somebody in my situation to find fault with this.
Take Page 21 of the book this – the title of the piece ‘listen, the silence is in pain’ which is heavy hitting enough in itself but within this title are crossed out words ‘difficult, hidden, disability’ a clear point to show that Diabetes is a invisible condition which you can’t see – something you can’t see on somebody walking down the street.
When I contracted Diabetes at 39 in 2011, I remember being told it was invisible, be it rare for a adult to get this as it was usually more something older people got (My Dad got it when he was 63) or children got (A dear friend who lives around the back of me got it when it was 7), something Sarah got when he was with the haunting poem ‘Admitted, Nov, 30 1981’ aged 6: diabetes, mellitus’ when the image of glass syringe is terrifying as it shows how much society has moved on in just a generation ago to plastic needles and containers and the problems I had at 39 learning how to use a plastic needle , a glass one scares the shit out of me thinking about it.
One of my favourite pieces in the book is ‘Freshly Baked’ which is a piece that brings hope in the middle of the book which takes about a ordinary memory of baking with her mother which most children do with their parents at that age are given higher emotions considering what they would all be going through.
Weaknesses:
The book isn’t a easy read like I said and the book has loads of frankly quite upsetting pieces like in it which I suggest you just go and read for yourself. It is not a poetry book I feel that can be read in gulps and chunks, perhaps read a piece and come back to the book a few days later.
This is a book that looks at the reality of getting and living with Diabetes
and makes you look at it from a different angle altogether.
8/10
As a writer although I finish off a lot of writing on my laptop etc nowadays previously it nearly all was wrote on a little note pad enabled with a pen of course and then finished off on my laptop or PC.
In some ways it has to be said it was easy and could easily be set up in just a few minutes and then I could scribble to my hearts content.
However I started going to a new writing workshop near where I grew up in Stretford things and recently had a change in perspective there. In this workshop which was the first I had gone to which I hadn't ran in years or hadn't being online (where I do most of my writing on my laptop) and for the first time I found myself struggling to keep up with the excercises.
It wasn't because they were difficult they weren't but I simply couldn't write quickly to give them the attention they needed which of course caused a rethink.
I could have took my laptop but considering I was on public transport afterwards going home that simply wouldn't have being practical. I considered doing what my wife Amanda did at the workshop by writing on my mobile but that was simply too small for my eyesight to manage (perks of rotten eyesight).
I considered buying a netbook before then trying my kindle only to dismiss that when it became apparent that although it was great for reading much beside it was simply too slow.
The use of a tablet came by chance actually as I bought one last year as a top up to go with my mobile upgrade for next to nothing and I got it thinking it as a backup for both my laptop and kindle. I didn't think it would ever prove as important as my kindle and my ipod.
First of all the one I use isn't much more bigger than the A5 ring binder little books I had been scribbling away for years on and while the text is a little smaller than I was used to using on my laptop but was better than my mobile certainly but once I got used to the predicted text element off it, it wasn't perfect but it enabled to get ideas down quicker.
Second despite the constant issue with automatic text and the fact because of the size of the keyboard it has resulted in me typing one handed quite a bit instead of both handed it has helped me increase what I am actually writing .
Now of course this doesn't mean what I have wrote is always any good as it certainly hasn't being but it's stopped me worrying about it if it is any good as much bizarrely enough as doing it this way has helped me with the editing side of it a little. (Of course whether this means I will share them is another ball game of course).
Whatever next things has certainly changed.
Some new bits of music and writing have being released.
First of all, the amazing Alta Mabin has published three of my new haikus in her June 2022 'Haiku for the Soul'
This can be seen here
Two pieces of my Prose "Grief" and "Conversation with myself" have appeared in the June Magazine in Alta's other magazine 'Poets Unlimited' which can be found here
On the music side of the spectrum, a new unreleased Ocean in a Bottle track has appeared on the latest various artists album by camembert electrique 'Sitar on Sitar' called Out of tune Sitar by Ashton Market. This is a pay what you want download here
On my Andy N productions page on bandcamp - My archive page of unreleased and rare ambient / noise projects etc for June there is two new releases:
Grey Ear, White Noise - Instrumentals / Dub versions - 2007 - 2010 - out-takes and instrumentals from Grey Ear, White Noise. Pay what you want here
Distance - Steve Reich Remixes. Done for fun in 2008 I seem to recall. Pay what you want here
After a few months break. I have sorted out some new tracks for my Piano project 'Piano in a Bottle' too on the series of Fragments. Volume 1 is here on pay what you want.
Lastly, I am on All FM between 4pm and 5pm on Sunday 04 June 2022 on Ruth O'Reilly's radio programme. This can be streamed here
