In 2011, arts organisation and small publisher Crystal Clear Creators (www.crystalclearcreators.org.uk) received funding from the Arts Council to run a national competition to find talented, up-and-coming authors who had yet to achieve a major publication. From over 100 entrants, the judges chose six aspiring writers: Hannah Stevens, Aly Stoneman, Jessica Mayhew, Charles Lauder Jr, Andrew ‘Mulletproof’ Graves and Roy Marshall.

The winning writers were given the unique opportunity to receive mentoring from established and professional authors, to develop a pamphlet-length collection of stories or poems. The mentors included well-known poets Mark Goodwin (winner of the East Midlands Book Award, 2011), Deborah Tyler-Bennett, Maria Taylor, Wayne Burrows and novelist David Belbin.

Over the next few months, the six winning writers were given advice by the mentors, as they gradually put together their pamphlets. As one of the mentors, David Belbin, said: ‘This was a pleasure and a challenge. The project is all about bringing the best out of talented, emerging writers.’ Hannh Stevens, one of the winning writers, commented: ‘Taking part in the  mentoring scheme has been a brilliant opportunity for me, offering helpful guidance and a constructive focus on my creative work that I would otherwise not have had.’ Roy Marshall, one of the other winning writers, said: the mentoring ‘was invaluable, not only to the selection and editing of poems for this pamphlet, but also tor my long term development as a poet.’

The pamphlets have since been edited, professionally designed, printed, and, as of March 2012, are being published by Crystal Clear Creators (CCC) Publishing in Loughborough and Leicester. Events and readings will take place throughout the East Midlands, to mark the launch of this major new series of poetry and short story pamphlets in Leicestershire. Co-director of Crystal Clear Creators, Jonathan Taylor, said: ‘We’re hoping that these six pamphlets not only launch the successful writing careers of six wonderful, and very different, new writers, but will also be the first in a long-running and successful series of publications by our organisation.’

The project was funded by Arts Council England, with the support of Writing East Midlands (www.writingeastmidlands.co.uk). The pamphlets are available to buy at £4 each from www.crystalclearcreators.org.uk, or you can send a cheque payable to ‘Crystal Clear Creators’ to: Jonathan Taylor, Crystal Clear Creators, c/o Faculty of Art, Design & Humanities, De Montfort University, Leicester, LE1 9BH, U.K.

For further information on this unique project, please contact Jonathan Taylor at crystalclearjt@hotmail.co.uk or Robin Webber-Jones at rwebberjones@hotmail.co.uk. The six authors are all available for interviews, and the pamphlets are available for reviews. www.crystalclearcreators.org.uk Join our group at www.facebook.com

Totleigh Barton

Thanks to an Arvon 42 grant, I have just spent a week on an advanced poetry course at Totleigh Barton in Devon, tutored by Gwyneth Lewis and Tim Liardet. The focus was on ‘the evolving poem’, taking us through the process of writing a poem from first draft to final edit and addressing issues such as reinforcing meaning through punctuation, establishing the world (or geography) of the poem and how to tell when a poem is really  finished.

I especially liked the idea that ‘all great novels have a poem in them that is trying to get out’ – ie; they are a great source for found poems or simply inspiration. A good piece of advice from Gwyneth was that I need to ask ‘why’ all the time in relation to my use of form, lines and language in my poems. This made me realise that I am too kind to my poems sometimes, and I need to work harder.

Companions on the road to better poetry

A visit by guest poet Glyn Maxwell was a highlight of the week, while a group reading on the final evening allowed us all to fully appreciate the journey that we and our poems had taken.  I learnt so much from the other people on the course; the hosts at Arvon are also very congenial and the food was great. It was a shock to the system to have to deal with the outside world at the end of the week!

I really feel that my writing has moved on a step or two. The enforced absence of internet, phone signal, email and TV highlighted how much creative work I can accomplish away from the distractions of modern life. Get thee behind me, Facebook!!

While James tussled with the art of reviewing in his journalism workshop, I was happy to take part in the Best of Notts session, especially as Kev Fegan had kindly agreed to read on behalf of Shindig! which Leftlion co-hosts bi-monthly with 9 Arches Press. Kev will be one of our guest poets for the November Shindig! at Jam Cafe on November 20th (7pm) so this was a great little preview.

It was also  a real treat to see MulletProofPoet, Michelle Hubbard, Niki Monaghan and Robin Vaughan-Williams (among others) all pitch in 5 minutes of words.

There were plenty of exciting things going on all day, and well done to Deborah Stevenson who is a sort of poetry superhero, for organising it all. Looking forward to the next one!

The event was kicked off  by a blessing from the bishop, followed by a speech from a local councillor and then a librarian, Ralph, who introduced Simon Armitage. It was like a Russian Doll of introductions. Simon read from his translation of the medieval text, Gawain and The Green Knight, which fitted well with the surroundings; Southwell Minster would have been 200 years old when the text was first written. He also read from his latest collection, Seeing Stars. Readings were interspersed with amusing anecdotes, giving context to the poems; he had the audience laughing out-loud on several occasions. Towards the end of the readings he paused to invite some questions from the audience, which included a question from a girl who was studying his poetry for her GCSE’s and a request for a reading of his poem about Bob Dillon, (which was refused, but quite charmingly.) I’ve never heard anyone request a poem at a reading before! That is true literary stardom, I guess.

Then it was book signings (with Simon Armitage good-naturedly posing with a copy of LeftLion magazine for a photo) and off to the Saracen’s Head pub to sink a couple of pints of good ale. A perfect evening!

Praise should be directed to the Nottinghamshire Libraries team and in particular Sheelagh Gallagher, for booking some really great poets to read at Southwell Poetry Festival. There’s plenty to look forward to in the week, including readings by Andy Croft and Tom Warner on Tuesday 5th July 6.30pm and a Poetry Pub Crawl on Wednesday 6 July 7.30pm with MulletProofPoet. On Saturday, the event finale includes readings from Chrissie Gittins and Sarah Jackson 6.45pm – 7.45pm and Open Mic hosted by Wayne Burrows, Editor of Staple Magazine, all at (or starting at) Southwell Library. No car? Use the No 100 Bus from outside Boots (Victoria Centre) every 30 mins.

Check out the programme: http://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/southwell_poetryfest_july_2011.pdf

Anyway, Spoken Word All Stars (plug plug!) is a UK tour organized by Apples and Snakes and Poet In The City, and will be at the Lakeside Arts Centre on Tuesday 1st February (8pm). This is the only date in the Midlands and should be a brilliant evening of words, beats and jazz sounds, including two guest poets from the East Midlands, Mulletproofpoet and Lydia Towsey, along with Kat Francois (a World Poetry Slam Champion), El Crisis and Oneness.

Kat Francois

I wanted to get the word out at some like-minded events, so on Tuesday (18th Jan) evening, my sack of flyers and I took the train to Beeston for the monthly Shoestring Press evening at the cosy Flying Goose Cafe, one of my favourite venues in Nottingham (and impressively busy for a January night) with two poets reading, Sue Dymoke and Lawrence Sail. The following evening I headed to Speakeasy (The Alley Café), where the compere introduced the night with a long speculative ramble concerned with conspiracy theories, energetically and very amusingly heckled throughout by feisty young poet Deborah Stevenson. We eventually got to the open mic, and it was good to see a real mix of ages, ranging from some of Deborah’s young Mouthy Poets group to a fantastic gentleman in his 80’s.  What I love about Speakeasy is that, as the name suggests, people are welcome to do whatever they want – a speech, a poem, a song etc and it’s a really refreshing approach to have an event where anything goes.

Quite different, but equally enjoyable, are the juried readings run by the Nottingham Poetry Series, which I attended on Thursday 27^th (January) at the Lakeside. Eireann Lorsung (who runs the event) started by introducing the three poets reading that evening – Simon Turner,  Matt Welton and Carol Rowntree Jones – but her preamble was both charming and brief. I was sitting with Lydia Towsey, who wasn’t that impressed with the very small plastic cup of wine she had received on arrival (however, the cakes – which Eireann baked herself – were excellent!) but was very impressed with Matthew Welton’s use of a loop station to perform one of his poems by recording and then speaking over the top of the playback, inserting new words to subtly change the repeated lines and create new meanings. Matt did, however, struggle with the technology to start with, so once again some heckling ensued, but this was supportive heckling such as “Go on Matt, I’m sure it will be worth it”. In fact the initial uncertainty helped build the anticipation – Matt’s delivery seems to be fuelled by a kind of nervous energy anyway, which really works for him, and I found it impressive that he memorised his poems which made this a performance in my book, rather than a reading. I liked the way his work is humorous and experimental, but also has a lot going on in terms of the content and the kind of word games he plays. As it happens, Matt is a guest speaker at the Spoken Word All Stars Event – so looping back to that….

Lydia Towsey

Having spread flyers far and wide, emailed my mailing lists, uploaded the listing on websites, contacted schools and colleges, done the usual Facebook and Tweeting, my part is nearly finished, so I can just look forward to attending the event! All the performers seem quite different in their approaches, but the connection is the use of music in combination with their words. This will be particularly interesting for me, as I work with a musician for some of my performance work, so I’ll be really hoping to learn a lot from watching the show.

The poetry scene in Nottingham seems to be thriving and growing, with so many different approaches to spreading words and lyrics and stories and a lot of talented people working really hard to create opportunities for themselves and others, and loving what they do. Long may it continue!

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Judging a writing competition is potentially more stressful than actually competing. Last year I was on the panel for The Charnwood MiniWords Competition, and didn’t realise what I’d let myself in for until a bulging wad of 2000 50-word stories thudded onto my desk. ‘Who the hell am I to be judging anything anyway?’ I wailed. By the time I reached the 2000th story however, I felt qualified by experience, if nothing else, to evaluate which three stories worked better than the other 1,997. I also realised I’d gained valuable insight into tight editing skills – never underestimate the value of reading for improving your own writing.

The Nottingham Poetry Society Performance Competition (Saturday 22^nd May 2010), promised to be a briefer affair. Running since 2004, the event is an opportunity for performance poets to demonstrate their work and performance skills and to have the chance of winning a cash prize. Competitors sign up on the door and have a three-minute slot to perform. Those who are successful go through to Round 2 and have another three minutes in which to impress the judges – and the audience.

It was a scorching day, and with my co-judge James Walker from LeftLion Magazine delayed in Leeds, Eirreann Lorsung from Nottingham Poetry Series kindly stepped in at the last minute to join me on the panel. Eirreann, a PHD student at the University of Nottingham, undoubtedly has a more academic focus to her appraisal of poetry and literature than I do, but we agreed we were looking for confident performance skills (good delivery, the ability to connect with an audience) combined with excellent content, showing attention to style and subject with control of language and form. However, if there was ever an insight into the diversity of poetry out there, it was revealed in Round 1. Some poems were crafted using strict formal constraints such as Pantoums and Sonnets, others were free-form. Some used rhyming schemes, some didn’t, and subject matter and tone also varied considerably. The performances ranged from lively, rapid-fire poetry and memorised delivery, to a style I would equate with thespian performance (for want of a better description), and the calm academic reading style often employed by ‘page’ poets.

It was a challenge to judge the participants –  writing performed with flair and charisma is not necessarily a winner on the content front, and vice versa. I often disagree with selections in poetry competitions and I had no doubt that our decisions would provoke debate. The lesson I took away from the event is to be decisive but also instinctive: for the purpose of spoken word competitions (which are so immediate), it either succeeds on the day or it doesn’t. However, the difference between judging submissions of work sent by post and live performance is that with the latter, you are face to face with competitors. I had visions of angry poets chasing me down North Sherwood Street, (but comforted myself that I could blame it all on Eirreann if things turned ugly)!

In fact, Eirreann and I were relieved to find we were pretty much in agreement about who should continue to the next round. It was difficult as all the performances had been enjoyable and engaging, but we managed to narrow the competitors down to six – Alf Todd, Pippa Hennessey, Rowland Nelken, MulletProofPoet, Ann Hill and Neele Dellaschaft.

Round 2 was tense – six poets with six very different styles – and only three prizes! Still, a decision had to be reached. The key word for me was ‘engaging.’ This could be through good style or content, but to win, the poet needed to deliver both effectively. Also, the style of the poem, the content and the delivery needed to be in harmony with each other. All six competitors gave great readings, but we felt that three stood out from the rest.

Alf Todd impressed us by performing his poems from memory and we felt the content and performance style combined the main criteria we had defined. Neele Dellaschaft read in her second language (English) but the beautiful phrasing, language and imagery used in her writing shone through. MulletProofPoet – who has described himself as a hybrid of Paul Weller and Rodney from ‘Only Fools and Horses’ – brought humour and strong performance skills to the competition with his pop-poetry approach to Spoken Word, with more than a dash of John Cooper Clarke.

The results were:

1^st: Alf Todd

2^nd: Neele Dellaschaft

3^rd: MulletProofPoet

Commended: Pippa Hennessey; Thanks to: Ann Hill and Rowland Nelken

We will invite all three winners to perform a poem for the next WriteLion Podcast (WriteLion7) so hopefully everyone will be able to hear them in action.

For any poets out there who are interested in joining Nottingham Poetry Society, the group meets monthly – usually on the 4th Saturday of the month at 2.45pm at the Nottingham Mechanics, 3 North Sherwood Street, Nottingham. The Society also holds an Annual Competition – the Nottingham Open Poetry Competition – which is now taking submissions.

Full details of their programme can be seen by logging on to www.nottinghampoetrysociety.co.uk or contacting Jeremy Duffield (Nottingham Poetry Society Chair.) Visitors are always welcome.

Consider the notion of revenge blogging. According to the Oxford Dictionary (compact, 1996), revenge can be categorized as: an act of retaliation and a chance to win after an earlier defeat. Revenge blogging might also be a statement of existence and survival; I blog, therefore I am. Ignore me at your peril. But what slight and defeat via blog might instigate a revenge blog, and what form might it take?

Take for example My Revenge Blog which states ‘The purpose of this site is to get shit off your chest, have fun and avoid getting ripped off by bastards’. (Topically) this might be paraphrased as ‘don’t let the bastards grind you down.’ Titles on the forum include People – Assholes, Bitches & Backstabbers; Media – Crappy Television Shows, Garbage Movies, Shitty Music, etc; Places – Dumps & Shitholes;…you get the idea. It is a less sophisticated blog version of The Caravan Gallery the ultimate pictorial revenge on the notion of Englishness and nostalgia (their complete works should be sent to Nick Griffin and David Cameron).

The internet has become not just a place to share knowledge and opinions, but also a place to bite back.

Interesting though it is to note the power of blogging and tweeting on national and international events, more compelling is the question: what happens when writers start blogging about each other? Essentially we are writing about our lives – personal and professional aspects of our lives – and offering it up to everyone. What happens when couples, friends or family members start blogging about shared situations? Well obviously you get the same event from multiple points of view. But what if one person blogs and one doesn’t? What if one is private and doesn’t want to be written about, or if a situation is re-written with their part in it erased or highjacked altogether? What if that situation was emotional or personal to them? Is revenge-blogging a way to exact revenge on guerilla bloggers who edit and appropriate our personal lives and ideas without fear of blogging-retribution? And where might it end if we all start slugging it out online – albeit mostly under pseudonyms?

The notion of repercussions from writing about other people may dawn more slowly on writers of fiction, unlike journalists (for the most part) because in fiction while plots and incidents may or may not be inspired by real life, characters are often amalgamations of many people, not factually represented with consequential limitations. Events are often spliced together and their timelines disrupted.  The conflation of a nugget of truth into a magnum opus using poetic license is something that many writers admit to, and others refute. Inspiration has to come from somewhere after all – albeit a newspaper article or some detail of family life related by an unsuspecting friend. In the words of Alison Dunne (The Book Doctor) “don’t date a poet if you don’t want to be written about” (I hope she’ll forgive my paraphrasing of her excellent poem).

But what about if you are NOT being written about? What if every event and incident your writing partner relates in his (ok, I’m personalising this) blogs and articles excludes your presence in his life? What if ex-girlfriends feature, friends and family feature in his writing, but you – who share his house (ok so he shares yours too), make his sandwiches (ok so he makes your sandwiches too), edit his manuscripts (ok,ok), and read his blogs and articles – are never mentioned; in fact, the implication through his writing is that this lonely book lover has only the pages of his latest novel to cuddle up to at night.

Of course, you understand at once that this is a professional device to build and support a writing career, a creation of a brand and identity in blog, mag and broadsheet to explore certain ideas about literature and open the way for irony and humour…

By coincidence, in the book I am writing  (A Beginner’s Guide to Running Away), the heart of the conflict between a famous feminist writer/journalist and her daughter is due to a regular column written by the mother in a broadsheet. The column is ostensibly a narrative of the experience of the single mother but causes a rift when the mother reveals a family secret the daughter is not aware of….the issue of course is that the mother is writing from a certain bias, within the celebrity brand she has created, while her daughter feels that her life and her identity are being exploited as a commodity.

Surely this is the danger in ostensibly writing about our personal lives, especially when in fact we are bending the ‘truth’ or inferring/implying personal relationships in order to make our point, be humorous or create our own celebrity brand – ie Feminist Survivor Mum, Lonely Literary Lothario, etc. What happens when friends, colleagues and family take issue with how we portray or refer to them in our on-line writing or even take umbrage that we have edited them out of the accounts of our lives – when the professional turns personal?

The personal aspect to these questions relates to a recent blog post by my partner (he of the sandwiches, manuscripts and obsessive reading). He is an Obsessive Reader (oxford dictionary: obsess v.tr (often in passive) preoccupy, haunt, fill the mind continually…besieged, possessed) and according to him I am a Reading Assassin due to the fact that I foster unreasonable expectations of a conversation when our paths converge in that 3 storey house of his (in his blog) ours (in real life) … (you see the danger here, how writers focus on small words like ‘his’ and ‘ours’ and all their implications).

The problems with a writer dating a writer are obvious; among other things, the writer is always the protagonist of their own book. I don’t mean in the autobiographical sense, but the soul, the nugget of the main character is the soul/nugget of the writer in an alternative dimension, a might have been. We are all of the characters and all of the places in our books; our own heroes and villains, the creator-gods and narrators of our own world…the suns of our own galaxy. So what a slug to the ego and cuff to the romantic spirit to find that we are actually only the bit part player in someone elses story, the erroneous extra, the unnecessary (slightly boring or annoying) character who is edited out of the final draft to improve the flow of the text. And with a click of the key -  gone. No wonder if we stamp our feet like spoiled brats at such cold-blooded omissions.

Back to my partner’s blog entry (Unbound Books) An extract:….

‘Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

Each girlfriend that i’ve been serious about has been presented with a copy of this book and warned, if you don’t like it, we won’t get on…When I split up with my previous girlfriend – soon after she confessed to not liking Dirk Gently – I went to Kefalonia…’

Well I have never been offered the above novel to read, am I therefore to deduce he is not serious about me? And indeed this was not his previous girlfriend but his previous previous girlfriend…But worst still, note the (almost misogynistic) implication that his choice has absolute sway here, that the novel holds precedence over the relationship, and is ultimately preferable.

And on the subject of Cold Mountain: ‘Yet another historical, romantic novel. Maybe I should start giving this to girlfriend’s (sic) instead?’

Well guess what …he did. A year ago. I saw it as the defining romantic gesture that switched our relationship from friendship to love…I didn’t realise it was a kind of literary girlfriend-selecting mechanism. And girlfriend’s??? (note the misuse of the singular possessive for plural) My god, the utter cheek of it. Who can blame any red-blooded Devonshire-celt woman – and poet to boot – for rising up at this literary slight? I’m not sure if I am more upset by the bad puncuation or the relegation of my position (Romantic interest, Princess, happy-ever-after) to another authorial doxy to be filed for reference only when the next girlfriend’s (sic) come along (so long as they share his taste in books, presumably.)

The question remains, what happens when we start slugging it out by blog (blogging it out?) What verbal punches can we land, what blogging blood-feuds, what stanzas lay waste with, what internet vendettas of purple prose might drag on for decades? Surely this is the grave danger of writers dating writers. I have a mental image of two writers, in two separate rooms of a house, on separate floors, each tapping frenziedly into their laptops, updating blogs – their arguments vented into the internet, their personal blogs the burning tools of literary revenge.

But in fact, revenge implies a bitter aftertaste, a darkness I don’t really mean. Perhaps to blog therefore I am is just a way to say, don’t blog me out of your life, however annoying, unnecessary and erroneous I may be.

I’m not just a character in a story, I’m a real person with real feelings….aren’t I?