Incorporating Writing Issue Vol 1

incorporating writing
Issue 6 Vol 1 ITS ALIVE
A Secret Passion:
Cathi Unsworth Rumbles in the Jumble
Talks exclusively to us about SF and Live Literature in the UK
You feel like an outsider whos come into someones house China Miville
Gary Goodman - Bring out your dead - Visions
Incorporating Writing
(ISSN 1743-0380)
Contents
Editorial Let it Bleed
Page
Editorial Team
Guest Editor Tight Lip, Brighton Managing Editor Andrew Oldham Deputy Editor/Interviews G.P. Kennedy Columns/Articles Editor Valeria Kogan Reviews Editor Janet Aspey Sales & Marketing Team marketing@incorporatingwriting.co.uk Columnists Dan McTiernan & Christine Brandel Contributors Edric Brown, James Burt, Jay Clifton, Sam Collins, Caroline Drennan, Theodore Koulouris, Rhodri Mogford, Ben Murray, Meredith Okell, Clare Reddaway, Cathi Unsworth, Rebecca Wombwell Cover Art Sam Collins Design Marsh Contact Details http://www.incorporatingwriting.co.uk incorporatingmag@yahoo.co.uk
Incorporating Writing is an imprint of The Incwriters Society (UK). The magazine is managed by an editorial team independent of The Societys Constitution. Nothing in this magazine may be reproduced in whole or part without permission of the publishers. We cannot accept responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, reproduction of articles, photographs or content. Incorporating Writing has endeavoured to ensure that all information inside the magazine is correct, however prices and details are subject to change. Individual contributors indemnify Incorporating Writing, The Incwriters Society (UK) against copyright claims, monetary claims, tax payments / NI contributions, or any other claims. This magazine is produced in the UK. The Incwriters Society (UK) 2005
Ben Murray considers the Alistair Cooke Memorial Lecture.
Interviews China Miville
Jay Clifton catches up with China.
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Gary Goodman
Up and coming poet.
Articles A Writers Secret Passion

Cathi Unsworth shares her secret.
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The (Live) Literary Secret

Theodore Koulouris shares the secret.
Bring Out Your Dead Versions of Reality Columns Bread no butter
Meredith Okell responds to the hasty claims that poetry is dead.
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Edric Brown ponders reality.
Dan McTiernan shows how bread has changed his view on Live Lit.
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Notes from America Artwork Perfect Eye Reviews
Christine Brandel from stateside.
Sam Collins shares some of his haunting work.
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Janet Aspey introduces new books from publishers.
News and Opportunities
3 Let Cha Bleed It
Editorial by Ben Murray Image by Sam Collins
In this years Alistair Cooke Memorial Lecture, David Mamet points to the fact that we talk not to communicate but to get what we want. Our use of language is so often conditioned by self-reflexivity that it can make for uncomfortable listening. It is this difficult truth that sometimes taints the phenomenon known as live literature. If the phrase is used to describe the kind of events at which people speak out loud, in the presence of others, words theyve written on prior occasions, then theres something decidedly oxymoronic about the notion. If literature is that which forms the written output of a culture, the point at which it lives can never really be fixed; live literature might even more properly be considered the actual moment of writing as opposed to the vocalising of
it at some later date. But watching someone type away on a computer or scribbling in a notebook might not make for a particularly fun night out. This emphasis on the literary, on somethings right to be called literature, and the gravity the concept lends to collections of words, can sometimes result in a somewhat stifling atmosphere. And its this emphasis that might demand reconsideration. What should be attended to is not the potential literariness but instead the language itself that is the shared interaction, the playfulness, the inventiveness, the airing of what it is we do with language in public spaces. In attempting this we must be alive to error, to failure, to omissions and slips of
4 4 might just bleed through, and the selfreflexive impulse may be breached. This is just what Alistair Cooke himself achieved; his readings were characterised by an urbane humility and constitute a fine example of literary vocalisation for those who feel the need to present their words in front of others.
the tongue and embrace them, just as we must celebrate precision, erudition and virtuosity.
This is just what Alistair Cooke himself achieved; his readings were characterised by an urbane humility
As far as spoken word nights go, Brightons Tight Lip generally manages to avoid that most pernicious of occurrences on the live literature merrygo-round: the rarefied stillness; just as it also usually sidesteps the banal, commonplace or the just plain bad. This is certainly the result of considered and creative programming, but it also relies upon the open, attentive and grounded audiences who have played such an important part in its modest successes. And I shouldnt be as puritanical to deny that alcohol hasnt sometimes contributed to the nights particular irreverence. The nod to Americana Tight Lip often makes is significant, as it is in the United States that the English language has to some extent had most at stake in the twentieth century, and this version of the language that has informed the dominant culture in the West. Mamet makes this point and rightly defends the need to prevent at all costs any proscriptions on our linguistic freedoms and if it seems slightly bathetic to suggest we might also apply this ethos to the hermetic world of live literature, it is no less essential in terms of creating something of worth. In this way some form of communication
Ben Murray is a writer based in London
A Writers Secret Passion: Rumble in the Jumble

Short Article by Cathi Unsworth Image by Sam Collins
I was sixteen when I first laid eyes on it as the tube rolled out of Paddington, there it was adorned in graffiti: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. It was 1984, the year of the Miners Strike and anarcho-punk. I could imagine the dreadlocked Class Warrior who had sprayed Orwells prophecy above my head. My hair was a crown of spikes, carefully crimped, backcombed and sprayed into place. I was wearing a long 1950s mans overcoat, festooned with badges announcing my opposition to Thatchers civil war and the soundtrack that went with it: COAL NOT DOLE, NEW MODEL ARMY, REDSKINS. Round my neck, a yellow scarf with a red paisley pattern I was fond of that scarf. Like the Teddy Boys who walked the streets in the bombsite aftermath of World War II, I was subverting a bit of toffs gear into my own prole clobber. Igot off the tube at Ladbroke Grove, a cold winters day bathed in pale sunshine. Followed the rest of the punks, the Goths, the psychobillies, skinheads, rastas, mods and rockers over the road and along the side of the Westway. An entire continent of stolen music treasures stretched out, stall after stall of bootleg tapes that no serious record collection was complete without in those days. We searched for the perfect Eldritch scream, the best Birthday Party swagger, the ultimate act from the Theatre of Hate. Then beyond, into the covered market, full of leather jackets and band T-shirts, PVC and dayglo fishnets, new designers selling their hand-made clothes straight from the stall. Beside them, second-hand clothes from the faces of the 50s and 60s, one-button mod suits from Burtons, circle skirts with poodles dancing across them and net petticoats beneath, the sharpest, highest pair of winklepicker shoes. Then my feet trod for the first
time on the sacred leyline of Portobello Road.Marc Almond lives around here somewhere, said my knowledgeable companion. The air seemed to hum with a vibrancy. All around me was colour and music, fresh fruit and creativity, a history ripe with subversion. I breathed it in, that feeling of freedom and possibility, of cultures overlapping and outsiders converging, making their own fun. And I never let it go. Twenty-four years later, having lived on the same roads as Joe Meek, Marc Bolan, Colin Wilson and Michael X, much has changed on the Portobello Road. Gone are the bootlegs and dodgy pubs, no more Goth shops selling hair colour that once turned my barnet into a rainbow. Still, every weekend, the pull is as strong as ever. I seek out fresh treasures from the pink shop and the covered market, home-manufactured Ska CDs and fruit and veg from the Price family. Swap coins for stories, always digging deeper into the past, ignoring the American accent of the present in favour of the Brazilian jazz being played live on the corner outside Rough Trade, for Portobello Road will always stay true to its rebel spirit. Thats why I love to write about it, thats why I can never leave. And though I lost the original somewhere along the way, just lately, I have noticed, there are a lot of stalls selling yellow scarves with a red paisley pattern.
Cathi Unsworth has written three books starring Portobello Road: The Not Knowing, The Singer and Bad Penny Blues, the latter of which will be published by Serpents Tail later this year. For more information visit www.cathiunsworth.co.uk and www.serpentstail.com
7 Live Literature: Bread no butter
Column by Dan McTiernan Image by Agatha Brown
Writers are solitary creatures. They lurk in spare bedrooms and garden sheds slurping at the stained rims of well used tea mugs, clacking away at l aptops and muttering dialogue to themselves like mental institution inmates
Im going to have to start by saying this: by and large, I hate live literature. There you go, said it. Like musicals, the very notion of writers standing and shuffling to the front of an auditorium, fills me with a sense of impending doom. Writers are solitary creatures. They lurk in spare bedrooms and garden sheds slurping at the stained rims of well used tea mugs, clacking away at laptops and muttering dialogue to themselves like mental institution inmates. Sprucing them up and wheeling them out in front of drooling fans seems more like a Victorian freak show than a genuine oral transmission. When I wrote my novel - dont all run out and hail a cab to your nearest Waterstones at once (4 years on its still nestling safely in the bosom of my hard drive) I became a shadow of my former gregarious self. I stopped washing. I went to the shops in my slippers. I watched Countdown. Its not the kind of profession that prepares one for public speaking occasions. So, by and large, I avoid live literature as and when I can. Writing this column however, has coincided with a rather interesting chapter of my life which has shed new light on the oral tradition. Not content with a job title incorporating, in no particular order, the words: filmmaker, journalist, graphic designer, permaculture teacher, photographer and workshop leader, Ive now added baker. My wife and I are starting an ethical bakery. We live in a small Pennine village with no bakery. It has a shop called The Village Bakery but they should be called The Village Bacon
Sarnie Shop. You cant buy additive free bread made anywhere near us and there is a clamour for something better. So weve decided to take on the challenge.
We muttered and digressed and diluted the strength of the message. But saying it out loud somehow gives the whole crazy idea credence
Heres where the live literature comes in. We have been speaking to people and will be speaking to many more over the next couple of months. Asking them what they want, what their aspirations for a bakery would be, what they wished could happen. And in return we tell them a story. We tell them about ourselves and about bread. That modern bread makes you ill, that our bread takes 20 hours from first mix to the loaves coming out of the oven and how sliced white takes 90 minutes. That time is what makes the difference, enhances the flavour, breaks down the harmful proteins that cause coeliacs disease, turns pap into proper bread. And then we tell them about the space; that theyll be able to come in and see us baking, that they can watch as risen dough surges into life in a hot oven and becomes golden and crusty, about how we will even teach them how to make their own bread at home. We started this tale, this oral transmission, quite humbly at first. We muttered and digressed and diluted the strength of the message. But saying it
out loud somehow gives the whole crazy idea credence. And repetition gives it polish. And before we knew it we were delivering an elegant and even gripping account of the history and possible future of baking where we live. And people respond. They get excited about bread, and lets face it, who would have thought that was possible when staring at a plastic bag more reminiscent of a folk instrument than a food stuff. Wed taken off our slippers, had a wash, turned off Countdown and become the deliverers of live literature and suddenly it made sense to me why people love to hear writers read. We are a species of story tellers and millennia of tradition are hard wired into us. We want to tell and listen to stories that remind us of the past, illuminate the future and give meaning to our present. Last weekend there was an evening of live storytelling and music in the village hall and I didnt go. I went to the pub and out for a pizza instead. My wife and some friends went and came back raving about the experience and the rapt expression on their faces said it all.
Reviews
So the nights are drawing in, and winter seems to have well and truly arrived in all its cold-snapping, snow-dropping glory. What better then, but to curl up inside with a good book. Forget the holiday beach read, its the wintersnuggle read were celebrating. The sort of books one can tuck into and savour, like a homemade sponge pudding and custard. Hot off the mark is our recommended read for this issue, Ali Smiths latest short story collection the first person and other stories. Caroline Drennan whets our appetites with her thoughtful and insightful review of a writer at the top of her game. I take a look at Jo Bakers modern ghost story The Telling, Clare Reddaway discovers the delights of Shena Mackays collection of short stories The Atmospheric Railway, and Rebecca Wombwell casts her eyes over Milton Hatoums The Ashes of the Amazon. Finally, in our recommended re-read section, we welcome Rhodri Mogford onboard and take another look at one of the all-time classic ghost stories, Henry James The Turn of the Screw. Put your feet up, and enjoy.
Writer, magazine editor, film maker and film lecturer, Dan McTiernan schizophrenically wanders through his well travelled working life safe in the knowledge that underneath the media faade, hes really an ecobuilder and smallholder.
Janet Aspey is a recent MA Creative Writing graduate with a drama background. She is particularly interested in feminist history and literature, and is currently working on her second novel.
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Featured Review Recommended Read the first person and other stories Ali Smith Hamish Hamilton, 2008 16.99 ISBN 9780241144268 207pp
will know, what follows is absolutely bound to be true. Such switches and dodges and jokes happen again and again, sometimes briefly, sometimes at length, sometimes they are what a whole story is doing. Ali Smiths main title the first person and other stories and the titles of several of the stories themselves, the second person, the third person, writ, present prepare us for this, of course, but they dont quite prepare us for the range and richness of this relatively short collection. They dont quite prepare us for the audacity of the enterprise, which is clearly, at least in retrospect, set out in the very first piece, provoked, Ali Smith says, by an editors attempt to define short stories on the inauguration of the National Short Story Prize. The inadequacy of definitions is clear in Smiths plain account of the relative availability of Herceptin for cancer sufferers. Her simple listing and unusual isolation of four key words: Primary. Care. Trust. Nice. is strikingly eloquent. A few pages later, she lists thirteen statements by well known writers, their words making the point most powerfully that short stories have infinite possibilities. She does not need to comment on this. Has anyone included such a list of quotations in a
If you are a storyteller, you tell stories. Whenever you can. Even if that means that one story side-steps into another before it fully becomes itself. In true short story, the first in this collection, two men in a caf have something to say about short stories, but we dont know that yet. Before they open their mouths, at least in this story, the narrator juggles with other possible stories: Maybe they were a result of a parental divorce, the father keen to be a father, the son keen to be a man, now that his father was opposite him for at least the length of time of a cup of coffee. No. More likely And then she says playfully I stopped making them up. It felt a bit wrong to. So naturally, as every reader of stories
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short story before? What boundaries will be crossed by the stories that are to follow?
These stories encompass myth, magic, music and song, history, fiction and fact.
But wait, you say. Surely this is a bit indulgent, rather too self-conscious and academic for a genuine teller of stories. Yes, there is an element of this, but when combined with real talent and experience, wit, humanity and an instinctive grasp of the weight and elasticity of words, what is created is a world that is a delight to explore. These stories encompass myth, magic, music and song, history, fiction and fact. Narratives adopt different voices, shapes, directions and tones. They are teasing, surprising and essentially engaging because Smith balances her cleverness with a poignant sense of human vulnerability, of love and loss and stories that remain untold. In present, after the vivid account of a disastrous expedition, the narrator realises that she has no knowledge of the wider story: Where were those people, the hopeful man and his sad helpful love; where were the Fennimores tonight, nearly thirty years later? In this same piece, there is the humorous and moving contradiction in the woman who shuns the attention of strangers, abandoning a warm pub and a meal to sit in a cold car where she then invents in detail the dialogue she did not wish to have. In writ feelings of excitement, awkwardness and uncertainty which an unexpected kiss can inspire are conveyed through a totally unreal event: When I got home that night my fourteen-year-old self was roaming
about in my house knocking into things, wild-eyed and unpredictable as a bluntnosed foal in a house would be. In the final story, the intimacy and deception of the first person narrative are echoed in the defences we create when exposed to new love: Youre not the first person Ive ever felt new with, I say. Wont be the last, you say. At the end of true short story Ali Smith jokes: So when is the short story like a nymph? When the echo of it answers back I am feeling, as I write this review, the complete impossibility of my task. There are echoes upon echoes in this collection, and I know that when I read it again I will find resounding caverns I have missed. The stories in this collection are. Read them and youll begin to understand.
Caroline Drennan is a writer and a teacher. Runner up in the Orange Short Story competition in 2005, she has recently gained an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia portraitsiberuttrek
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The Telling Jo Baker Portobello Books, 2008 11.99 ISBN 9781846271397 358pp
travelling alone, vulnerable; strange, inexplicable humming noises; shrieks that jolt the sleeper awake in a cold sweat, but her jagged and punchy prose prevents the descent into clich. Instead, Baker succeeds in engaging our empathy for her protagonist Rachel, and suspends our disbelief by drawing Rachels grief for the loss of her mother so intelligently. When I flicked on the light, a latticework of shadows scattered across the room. The lampshade was one that Mum had made in craft class, out of string and glue and a now long-burst balloon. It was way off-centre. It gave the room an uneasy feeling, as if everything were slipping sideways, as if it were sinking. As Rachel becomes overwhelmed by the task of packing up her mothers belongings, giving her stuff away to charity, making all the necessary arrangements for her dad to put the cottage up for sale so she can return to her husband and her baby girl, she senses that there is something else with her, a presence trying to make itself felt. Bakers writing constantly makes the reader flit from two perspectives: is there a ghost in the house trying to communicate with her, or is this a construct of Rachels imagination, an indication that she is losing her sanity through her inability to confront her grief with honesty?
And I knew there was just this. Just the moment, the fragile, vulnerable moment.
Touted as a ghost story for adults, Jo Bakers third novel is a poignant portrayal of one womans grief. It is also a perceptive study of the fragility of life itself, how loss throws our perceptions off kilter, how easily grief shatters the constructs we place around ourselves; how death, our fear of it, our contact with it, haunts us all, and it is this quality that makes The Telling truly haunting. Baker plays with all the constructs of the classic ghost story: the journey to the unknown cottage at night; a woman
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It is at this point that Baker shifts the narrative to one of the cottages previous occupants, Lizzy Williams. Here we follow Lizzy as her life is turned upside down by the arrival of a lodger at her family home. Mr Moore, a carpenter and a chartist, inspires the men of the village to come to the cottage, read literature and theology, and discuss their political rights. More importantly he opens up this world for Lizzy, I might have thought them unfit for a girl like me to read, if I had paused to consider the matter, and not rushed headlong into them. And if my thoughts had not begun to shift and alter, and become other than they had been. In shifting the narratives between the two women, Baker ensures our attention stays with her characters, that they become intertwined in our minds. It is a successful conceit, and one that places the seed that Rachel is sensing the ghost of Lizzy and not going mad, and that Lizzy is always something more than an historical character or a fleshedout ghost. Baker is very successful at not allowing her prose to become twee or mawkish, instead she threads each of the womens narratives with intelligent philosophies about the power of the written word, the depth and intricacies that make up our own lives within our own, personal stories, and of the often forgotten power in those belonging to previous generations; they are central to our humanity and at the core of this novel. A marriage, a birth, a death. This wasnt a life. It was nothing like it. Lifes what happens in betweenThese perishable moments, that are gone completely, if we didnt take the trouble of their telling. The most unsettling aspect of the novel and, thereby, its most powerful is that
of the ghost. This is not the obvious ghost of Lizzy that Rachel can sense If I just turned my head a fraction, shed be there, but that of the ghost of grief unspent. It haunts both of the women in their turn and haunted me long after reading the book. On these cold wintry nights, there is nothing better than snuggling up inside an armchair with a warm hot chocolate and a good book to read. This is certainly a book one can easily savour on many a winters night.
Janet Aspey is a recent MA Creative Writing graduate with a drama background. She is particularly interested in feminist history and literature, and is currently working on her second novel.
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The Atmospheric Railway New and Selected stories Shena Mackay Jonathan Cape, 2008 17.99 ISBN 9780224072984 423 pp
that they are not novels. I often feel they are too short to allow any character or relationship to be properly fleshed out and therefore they are unsatisfying and leave the reader wanting to know more, but not in a good way. With these stories, however, Mackay manages to convey characters of depth and complexity. She deftly creates histories, backstories and worlds so intricate and believable that they would be the envy of many a novelist. Although many of these stories are only a few pages long, the characters and situations have been as thoroughly envisaged as if each had been given 500 pages to work through their problems. The latest stories tend to be set in the safety of the Home Counties, but are given a quirky, subversive and sometimes sinister undertone. In Radio Garnet, Dolly, a cheery fat hippy living in a caravan starts a radio station, horrifying her sister, who aspires to be Lady Mayoress. In the Lower Loxley Effect Maurice has created an entire family of cardboard cut-outs to baffle his intrusive cleaning lady. In Nanny a promiscuous author encounters a slighted lover. In Jumbo Takes a Bath a dreaded blind date takes an unexpected turn with a squirrel. These stories are often very funny, sometimes a little too cosy. However, I was jerked out of a slightly somnolent haze when I reached Bananas. This is the story of Imogen
I know Shena Mackay as an accomplished novelist - shortlisted for the Booker, the Orange and the Whitbread prizes in her time. I had not realised that she has also published a number of collections of short stories. If you havent managed to catch them either, buy The Atmospheric Railway as it has some of her latest stories, and a selection from her earlier volumes. You will then be lucky enough to read an author on the top of her game, a craftsman skilled at manipulating a notoriously tricky form. You will laugh, be charmed and surprised, and if not cry at least allow a small mist to pass over your eyes - unless, obviously, you are totally lacking in sensitivity. One of my problems with short stories is
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Lemon, a middle aged woman, who feels humiliated by a local shopkeeper. The self-consciousness and obsession felt entirely real. Evening Surgery, the story of a single mother in love with her doctor, is heartbreaking in its repressed pain. Pink Cigarettes, in which a teenager visits a forgotten poet, is piercingly painful in its evocation of loneliness. When gay couple Guido and Arthur move to a small village and befriend a child, in All the Pubs in Soho, they are unprepared for the bigotry they encounter. These stories will linger in the memory.
her early volume, Babies in Rhinestones, but there are gems throughout the book. These are dense stories, that repay concentration and thought, but which are often funny and unexpected. This is definitely one to wrap up under the Christmas tree for a lucky someone.
This volume demonstrates the skills of a masterful storyteller.

Mackay manages to create some glorious and hilarious villains; Mavis, the doctors receptionist in Evening Surgery, Susan Vigo, the authoress in Dreams of Dead Womens Handbags, Ian Donaldson, the adulterous husband in Barbarians. With a few lines and incidents she seems to evoke pure evil in the most unlikely places. Indeed, Mackays sheer skill with words and images is something to revel in. Enjoy such opening lines as Villagers passing the Old Post Office were stopped in their tracks by a naked woman dancing in the window, (A Pair of Spoons), or There are houses which exhale unhappiness, (The Most Beautiful Dress in the World). I particularly liked the image of Miss Agnew in Where the Carpet Ends whose red mackintosh [is] flapping like the wings of a scarlet ibis startled into flight. This volume demonstrates the skills of a masterful storyteller. For me, the stories with the most impact came from
Clare Reddaway writes scripts for theatre and radio, and stories for children. Her latest audio play, Laying Ghosts, can be downloaded at: www.wirelesstheatre company.co.uk. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University.
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Interview by Alexander Laurence
Ashes of the Amazon Milton Hatoum Bloomsbury, 2008 17.99 ISBN 978 0 7475 8802 3 278pp
interconnecting main characters with a simplified differentiation of good and bad. This gushing narrative quickly relaxes into an anecdotal tone that permeates the novel. As we become more aware of the characters, the long epic scale of the book is unveiled, and with it the impact of its narrator, Lavo, on the speed and tone of the novel itself. As Lavo grows up through the course of Ashes of the Amazon, he becomes increasingly prominent within the narrative; gaining in consequence within the plot as he learns more about the characters and becomes more worldly. Although, in one sense, this could be considered a coming of age novel for its narrator, Lavos friend Mundo is the real protagonist. This is the story of his artistic rebellion, and of the mysteries surrounding his family. Set in the city of Manaus, we watch as the city shifts with a new generation, moving away from the traditions prized by their parents, to become a changing, urban landscape. Manaus residents are from old families, constant in the area, making up a very tight-knit community that is almost incestuous. Mundos father, Jano, has established himself and his Jute plantation (Vila Amazonia) in the community, and is betrayed by his sons wish not to join the family business. Hatoum portrays a time of societal and cultural shifts, with the
At times, Ashes of the Amazon soars in scope, style and storytelling, but on occasion Milton Hatoums new work also leaves you feeling a little short-changed. The novel has the elegant lyricism found in novels skilfully translated from their Brazilian roots, and with this is a robust humour and a light-filled, honeyed hue. The authors occasional uses of clichd literary devices are a stark contrast to this background; puncturing the wellpaced and engrossing plot. Ashes of the Amazon establishes itself quickly with a rapid merging between characters. Dreamlike and fleeting, the reader is introduced to the
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forest giving way to the city and the old families being dispersed.
the starry-eyed eloquence in some sections of the narrative descended into a cheap thrill.
Despite the novel being set in a city, the tight and inherited community is intimate, somewhat claustrophobic and increasingly irrelevant to the new generation. This intimacy often exaggerates an isolation of the characters, exaggerating relationships. Ashes of the Amazon maps the scope of emotion; violence saturates Mundos adolescence and each character exhibits different forms of love that are original and unique, yet the novel carefully sketches the universality of basic emotional needs. The scope of the novel opens up with Mundos travels to Europe, which shifts Ashes of the Amazon to a very different, contextually defined landscape, much more relevant to a western readership. As Vila Amazonia and Janos mansion are lost, and with them their history and culture, Manaus becomes much more consistent with a contemporary idea of a city, commenting comprehensively upon Globalisation and the loss of habitat often associated with it. The developing landscape provides a parallel timescale to the characters, adding depth to the understanding of pace within the novel and to the characters relevance to their surroundings and their family history. Commercialism, synonymous with globalisation, affects Mundo deeply; the tension between business and making art, in parallel to Aranas (Mundos mentor) move from art to selling furniture, fuels his rebellion and
underpins his splurging of his inheritance from the estate. As destruction breeds creation, it is necessary for Mundo to leave the old family traditions behind, and for Janos richly decorated, art laden mansion to be cleared to make way for the new. Ashes of the Amazon is a novel of smoke and mirrors; it is layered with faade, and with symbolic burning (with the burning of art and burning passions). As the characters passions and preoccupations cool towards the end of the novel, so too does the readers empathy for the narrator. This novel could have wisely and tenderly imparted a contemporary and neatly contextualised moral debate if more finely structured. Instead, the starry-eyed eloquence in some sections of the narrative descended into a cheap thrill. Hatoum seemed to lose confidence in his own narrative, opting for a more immature resolution to the novel than one had hoped. A disappointing end to what was overall a promising and intriguing novel.
Rebecca Wombell is a country girl at heart, from the wilds of Lincolnshire. She devours writing with adecadently poeticstyle and dreams of a llama sanctuary and studio on the coast.
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Recommended Re-read The Turn of the Screw (1898) Henry James Penguin Classics Edition, June 2003 5.99 ISBN: 978-0141439907 272 pp
fortunes of an unnamed governess who has recently been charmed into a new post by a young, rich gentleman who has no time for the nephew and niece under his supervision. When our young governess meets the angelic Flora and the adorable Miles, along with the chatty and helpful housekeeper Mrs Grose, everything appears to have worked out wonderfully. However supernatural visitations from former house employees, the increasingly bizarre behaviour of Miles, and the governesss own progressively hysterical manner sees us edge closer and closer to a devastating finale that will destroy the governesss situation and that will leave the reader crippled with fright. The horror to be found at the heart of The Turn of the Screw is one that is inextricably bound up with the ambiguities and the mystery that clouds the narrative. By making understated changes to the register of characters and deploying language that possesses an artful multiplicity, James moulds The Turn of the Screw into a masterpiece of allusion and innuendo; all of the characters, including our narrator the governess, seem half-bathed in a kind of noir shadow because of the authors cunning duplicity: this imposes a tension upon the reader that propels the
James moulds The Turn of the Screw into a masterpiece of allusion and innuendo
The Turn of the Screw subtly hints at complex psychological issues, strange sexual abnormality and freakish supernaturalism in equal measure to create a truly wicked Victorian tale. When Douglas offers a mysterious yarn to amuse his group of storytelling friends at the outset of the book, we are as intrigued as his parlour companions. Yet as the story unfolds we are left instead to feel frightened, confused and utterly enthralled. Douglass tale sees us follow the
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narrative forward.
that innately scare us the most.
Cleverly constructed, masterfully paced and surprisingly relevant then, The Turn of the Screw will puzzle you just as much as it troubles you.
Indeed propulsion and, more generally, the idea of motion in relation to the narrative is central to what makes The Turn of the Screw so compelling. Each of the latter chapters crescendos to an exciting climax bigger than last, resulting in a dramatic overall structure that can perhaps best be described as a tide of terror gradually washing up along the shore of the readers sensibility. What makes The Turn of the Screw even more remarkable is that its themes of social paranoia obsession, madness, and sexual otherness are still just as prevalent today, albeit it in more contemporary manifestations. In many ways the book can be seen as a distillation of the suffocating anxieties and suspicions that we have for one another and even ourselves in modern society. The nature of this paranoia may be slightly different because of the Victorian setting, but the essence of these concerns is, nonetheless, still with us today: the book seems to say something timeless about the human mind and also about human fears. Cleverly constructed, masterfully paced and surprisingly relevant then, The Turn of the Screw will puzzle you just as much as it troubles you. Suggesting, without ever fully declaring, those things
Rhodri Mogford is an Oxford graduate, passionate and dedicated to literature, the arts, and all things cultural. He currently resides in London, and works in the editorial department at Continuum Books.
What We Know incorporating writing
Is Impossible Is In Fact True: China Miville

Interview by Jay Clifton Images by Sam Collins
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China Miville is the British author of the award-winning and highly-successful SF novels Perdido Street Station and Iron Council, amongst others. He is also a self-declared Marxist with a PhD thesis in Marxism and International Law, and a member of the Socialist Workers Party. On Friday 21 November 2008, China read a short story from his collection Looking for Jake (2006) in front of a live audience at the Three and Ten theatre in the city of Brighton, as part of the independent live literature organisation Tight Lips season of monthly events featuring a published writer with a cult reputation, plus support readings from local writers and poets. China graciously agreed to meet me the day after the night of the event at the bar of the suitably quirky Hotel Pelirocco in Regency Square, for an interview in which we spoke of artistic principle versus commercial demands, realistic fiction versus fantastic fiction, and small independent literary events versus grand-scale literary festivals. As an active, contemporary writer, do you detect a change in the way in which work in your genre of SF is created, promoted and received by its readership since the traditional forays into what may be called science fiction by writers such as Samuel Butler, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Margaret Atwood? Yeah, I think these things are cyclical. Youve put together several writers there who I think are from very different epochs, and I think one of the things that happens with Science Fiction in its reception and critique and the kind of relation it has with what you can call mainstream fiction shifts very cyclically. In this country we have had for quite a long time a reasonably strong tradition of generic spite and snobbery against genre fiction in general, but particularly against Science Fiction and Horror. Theres always been a slight let-out
clause for Crime theres been an understanding amongst literary editors that Crime can be serious literature whereas theres much more scepticism about that in regards to the more fantastic genres.
Writers like Toby Litt and David Mitchell. These writers are regarded to be in serious literature but they are also very respectful to SF in a way that an earlier generation of writers generally werent even those who wrote cackhanded SF books themselves
Theres two things I would say about that one is that genre people amongst whom I count myself, so this in an insider position piss and moan about that incessantly. And on the one hand I think its legitimate to piss and moan about that, because it is really annoying and because its true, and on the other hand I also think were terrible bores about it No one takes us seriously etcetera. Its true and Im not denying the fact that its annoying, and that certain absolutely great writers get ignored because of the genre theyre writing in, but I also think we do say this an awful lot and it does get a bit old. Also as I say, these things are cyclical, so there are moments when reception towards the genre shifts you saw it for example in the early Seventies around Mike Moorcocks New Worlds magazine crew: Brian Aldiss, M. John Harrison, Pamela Zoline Ballard, obviously and that was a point at which the literary
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establishment became interested. And New Worlds published writers like D.M. Thomas, who had a more mainstream reputation. That was a point at which people who were outside the genre began paying it a bit of attention. You saw it again with Cyberpunk, when all of a sudden articles started being written about that, and then youve seen it again quite recently. So I think theres a generation of writers who are what I would think of as mainstream writers literary, serious writers but who, because of their generation and a certain open-mindedness, are much more open to that genre writers like Toby Litt and David Mitchell. These writers are regarded to be in serious literature but they are also very respectful to SF in a way that an earlier generation of writers generally werent even those who wrote cack-handed SF books themselves. Paul Theroux is an example of the latter: he writes O-Zone (1986) and then bangs on about how its not Science Fiction because Science Fiction is meaningless flapdoodle was his term. Toby Litt and David Mitchell arent like that at all theyre very serious about the genre. And I think there has been a shift of attention recently towards SF and an awareness of it as a type of real literature but its cyclical and it will probably fall out of favour again. In Britain its particularly difficult to be taken seriously as a writer within the SF and Horror genres, with France being comparatively quite good in this regard, and America falling somewhere in-between. While I dont spend a lot of time complaining about that because Im bored with us repeating ourselves, where it does frustrate me is where certain very great writers like Gene Wolfe or M. John Harrision, whom I think are serious literary figures in any genre, often dont get the respect they deserve. I also like an awful lot of pulp writers, but I dont
expect non-genre readers to respond to them in the same way I do. But there are some great writers in the genre who are unfairly ignored, I feel. But generally, I think its a pretty good time for my genre. Theorists of the novel such as Bakhtin and Lukacs tend to read the great realist novel as the most legitimate heir to the Greco-Roman epic, and suggest that the novel should be committed to a kind of social realism which, it could be argued, should disallow or discourage the intervention of extraneous material: excessive psychologism or unrealistic settings and so on. Could you see a way in which SF could offer reconciliation between the need to serve and promote the genre, i.e. science fiction, with the need to be what could be called socially and perhaps culturally responsible? Its an interesting way of formulating the question, because the question of the political ramifications of realism is something that comes up a lot and Im trying to think about it in those terms Im not sure about reconciliation to be honest I think the notion of reconciling a particular notion of literature as a kind of that obsession with realism as a kind of mediator of the social world Im not sure one can reconcile it because it seems to me be predicated on a completely wrongheaded notion of what fiction is. Now thats not to say that nothing that Lukacs said was interesting he was a very brilliant theorist although Im not sure that Id agree that Bakhtin takes the same position, I wouldve thought Bakhtin is much more open to a kind of grotesquery and carnivalesque and so on but certainly with Lukacs, theres a lot of really amazing insights in his work but his approach to the novel seems to me to be fundamentally wrong-headed, because the relationship between fiction
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We dont just incorporatingworld live in a writing of random, contingent bits that bump up against each other. There are these connections, and everything is related to everything else
and the real world is not one of representation, its not one of mirroring, or expressing thats not what its about. Fiction is not a kind of holding up of a frame to reality. Now this is a very crude way of relating to what youre saying but theres an element of that, I think, in that model. And I think that focus on realism that you see in Lukacs is what gets warmed-over and degraded as it is handed-down from critic to critic and inherited now by people who will in a fairly unthinking way talk about genre fiction as escapist as opposed to realist fiction which is realistic and therefore about the real world. I just dont think thats how fiction works. Theres two problems with that model, which even though its very seriously put forward by its partisans is riddled with exceptions, and these exceptions are not theorised about enough. So, for example, plenty of critics who would
argue that realist fiction has the most to say about the real world and so on, might also have an exception-clause for, say, Kafka. Now Im not saying Lukacs himself would have made this exception, but this model that says that social realism is the way that you make fiction relevant needs to be interrogated. In what way does a book which pretends to be a more-or-less faithful depiction of a more-or-less realistic set of social circumstances have in any way more fidelity to the real world than something which is a kind of fever-dream extrapolation and a going beyond and even an alienation from the everyday? It seems to me that because fiction is precisely not about simply framing what is around us, how can it possibly be that? How can a realist novel be in any way realistic? Because its always going to leave out incomparably more than it encompasses. The things it focuses on
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as important are always going to be partisan and propagandist and so on. Now this is not a criticism of realist fiction theres plenty of absolutely terrific realist fiction out there but what Im saying is the idea that that is the model for how fiction somehow becomes relevant, or in some way faithful to the real world seems to me to be extraordinarily purblind. So I sometimes think that Science Fiction and Fantasy and Horror the fantastic genres in general are the pulp wing of Surrealism, and it seems to me that that Surrealist strategy, which is precisely a de-familiarisation, an alienation, a nottaking the nostrums of the everyday for granted, starting from a position that what we know is impossible is in fact true that that can shed just as much light on the real world as its supposed and always partial representation. I think that what defines whether or not fiction and indeed any art - is relevant is whether it has a kind of serious relationship to the real world lets say, whether it has a critical relationship to the real world - what Trotsky calls the sense of the social lie. That doesnt necessarily mean an oppositional Leftist position - although it can - but means the work shows a sense of the fractures of the everyday. Your work demonstrates both explicitly and implicitly a deep preoccupation with issues of social concern globalisation, rampant consumer culture, super-power unilateralism, social decay and at least in the stories collected in Looking for Jake (2006), there is little sense that the protagonists of those stories can escape a dire fate because of these conditions. If, for arguments sake, your publisher thought it was not commercially viable to publish fiction of this kind, to what extent would you be prepared to modify your work to meet such commercial demands?
Well, theres at least two questions there! First of all, I dont necessarily recognise a sense of pessimism in my work thats not the word you use but some people describe my work as very pessimistic. I understand why people say that, but a lot of the time I dont necessarily take the same position and things that I write that are described as pessimistic dont feel that way to me although thats obviously not the end of the story. I think the reason my stories sometimes feel to some people very bleak is because I do have a strong sense of totality, and to me thats a very important way of thinking about the world. Thats not a radical pessimistic view of totality in the sense that there is no escape, but it is a sense that everything is connected. We dont just live in a world of random, contingent bits that bump up against each other. There are these connections, and everything is related to everything else. And so if you have a position in which you see the world at the moment as fundamentally exploitative and oppressive and damaging and damaged - which I do, and which right-wingers can also have, of course, but for me it comes from a Leftist position there is inevitably going to be a sense of totality, and a rather oppressive totality, to that. You can still have a sense of fracture, to go back to an earlier question, but its a fracture within a totality. Now that doesnt mean you cant have a sense of hope, or of rubbing history against the grain or anything like that, but it does mean there will be an overall sense of totality and thats a strong tendency of mine. For example, a lot of people think of the ending of my novel Iron Council (2004) as very nihilistic but I dont think of it that way at all Im not saying that as a completely straightforward statement to the contrary, and the writer is not the repository of the whole truth about their own text, but I would say
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that I dont think of myself as a pessimistic writer at all. I think of myself as a somewhat bleak writer, maybe, but I think Im actually very optimistic. In terms of the question of commercial obligations there have been questions from my publishers about whether certain of my books are commercially viable, but not generally on that axis its not generally on the line of, This is too pessimistic or This is too bleak, you need to have a happy ending in fact Ive never been told to cheer it up. What are they looking for then, in those cases, when they want a book of yours to be more commercially viable? Well, the axis on which they think about commercial potential are variable, but they include kinds of writing certain kinds of writing ask quite a lot of the reader not all books are equally accessible to a reader theres a concern for a strong narrative arc, and characters with whom the reader can engage something thats going to keep the reader turning pages and there is nothing wrong with any of that. I think that if youre a working writer, particularly if its your main or only job, then you have to pay the bills and if the way of doing that is writing Science Fiction, Im not I dont think theres anything wrong with that youre not being a mercenary, youre not an assassin, there are a lot of worse ways of making a living. I also think, though, it depends on the writer. I mean sometimes you might have written a book that is very important to you the way it is and the publisher will say, This is not commercial, and the question of whether its good may not be the issue they may think its rubbish or they may think its great but they will say, this is not going to sell a lot of copies. And they may be wrong, and I think there is much more scope these days for
experimental fiction to do well. But I think we also have to be quite candid about the fact that they may be right, and I think every writer should be able to feel relaxed about sometimes writing something thats much more off-thewall, and say to their publisher, I understand that its not going to sell as well as previous books, but this is really important to me, and maybe afterward Ill write something much more accessible. Do you think writers still have that licence? No I dont! This is the problem. I think the problem is I mean, what Im trying to do here is Im trying not to say in a reductive way that the publishers are completely responsible for that situation, its a complicated thing, and I also think if you change direction as a writer, if you write one thing one way and then another thing another way everyone says they dont want writers to keep writing the same thing, but actually a lot of readers do want the same thing again and again and again and we have no right to give them shit about that. If a reader likes what you like because its a certain way, and then you change direction of course they may not like the other stuff as much, and it may not do as well. But if writers go down different paths especially if they try something thats more off-thewall you dont have the right to expect your readers are going to go with you what youre doing is asking an indulgence of the reader. And I think we need a certain amount of humility. We need to say to readers, Im going to try something new here and if you dont like it, fair enough, but Id really like you to give it a go and maybe you wont like it immediately but in a few years youll think this book has really stayed with you, or it may be youll just never get on with it in which case, sorry for your
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time and maybe youll like the next one more. The problem we have at the moment is the problem with distribution. Publishers get very nervous about sales and declining sales in bookshops, so in a sense if youve written a book that got very well received but didnt sell in huge numbers, and then you write another one thats a bit off-the-wall and doesnt sell that many copies, no ones worried. But if you write a book that does really well, and then you want to write something thats less commercial, thats when problems begin, because that sense of declining sales get people very nervous. That is frustrating, because it often ties writers in to a model of their most commercial book, and I think that it is a problem, and it would be really good if we could shift the model somewhat to it being more open to variations in the overall arc of a writers career. But I dont think its going to last forever, I suspect were in the last decade of that hegemony, because of the shifts in publishing going on. Will these shifts in publishing be in favour of the writer, do you think, or not? I dont think its that straightforward an axis. I think the spread of electronic publishing, and the frankly mass dissemination of texts is such that judging a writers success in relation to his or her sales figures is not going to work as a paradigm in a few years, at least not in any straightforward way. So I suspect that it may very well be the case that a lot of writers find it harder to make money, but I also think that that strong drive to publish a certain kind of book if one or two have been successful will break because it will be looked at much more case by case. So I think writers will have more freedom, but less money. And my personal position on that is that one is allowed a personal melancholia about it because
obviously writers want to make a good living but I think that its really inappropriate and tawdry to complain about that on a broader scale, because this is about the dissemination of texts and the democratisation not only of writing but also of editing and relating to texts. Im not saying there are no cons but I think the pros outweigh the cons quite a lot. So, sure, its going to be a shame if we writers make less money, but I couldnt go from there to saying this shift is a bad thing. As this is an issue of Incorporating Writing dedicated to Live Literature, I would like to get your perspective on live literary events and the part they play in the dissemination of literature. Firstly, do you enjoy reading at live literary events? I do. I like reading my stories aloud very much, I also like public speaking and debate, and discussions about literature very much in some ways even more than reading my own work because its more free-flowing but I do very much enjoy giving performances. That said, though, and as I was saying to you last night, I do worry because I think theres a danger of over-hyping the centrality of live literature. I think that live literature is great for those that like doing it, but I dont think we should forget that plenty of writers may not want to do live literature. They may write stuff that they dont think works well to be read out loud, and theres nothing wrong with that. I worry sometimes that theres a danger of privileging writers that are good performers as kind of the vanguards of interesting fiction, which doesnt follow at all. So on a personal level I do, I enjoy doing them, and theyre good for those who like them, but I dont think theyre necessarily the saviours of literature.
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Do you feel differently about reading your work live depending on whether that situation is obligatory and part of a generalised marketing strategy such as a book promotional tour or whether it is some kind of independent literary event? Could you talk about the differences you may find in those two experiences? Well, first of all I should say no reading is ever obligatory. Certainly its true that Marketing do like you to do these things, and they may very well beg you to do it and they may have a case, it may really help sales but they cant force you to, if a writer really doesnt want to do it they wont, and theres nothing anybody can do about it. Its a very interesting question actually, I hadnt thought about it before, but thinking about it now I think there is a sense that if you do a book tour, for one thing those events tend to be free, so the audience has not paid to get in, and for the other thing, with a book tour the audience tend to be readers who are interested specifically in your work, rather than in live literature in general. So the audiences are quite different, in my experience Audiences for Live Lit, who are into that scene, may turn up even if they dont particularly know who that author is; they probably dont mind paying a little bit of money for it, and they probably have more patience for slightly longer readings. I would never read a twenty-minute short story [as China did at Tight Lip the day before this interview] as part of a book tour. I would maybe go to ten minutes at most, because people may be there to talk to you, they may be there just to get a book signed you have to learn how to listen for an extended period of time, its not everyones cup of tea. So there is a different kind of audience its also less of a collegial audience, the live literature audience tends to be an audience that knows each other, a kind
of younger, hipster scene of people who like these things. Whereas if its a reading as part of a book tour its much more varied, because youll have people coming along who have no interest in live literature but are interested either in my work or just one book of mine in particular. So now that you point it out, yes, there is quite a strong difference. It would be meaningless to get into which is better? because theyre two different things there is a freedom in not worrying about doing a twenty minute reading, and there is also a freedom to reading to people in a book shop who may just have happened to wander in. Id like to pick up on your point that when you read at a Live Literature event, as opposed to a book tour, they may not be there exactly for you some may, some may not Is that perhaps an exciting thing, in a way? That unlike a book tour where they say Chinas going to be here at the bookshop at six oclock and your fans will turn up, you do a Live Lit event like ours, and maybe there are some people there in the audience who are waiting to be won over, and other readers on the bill who may have a desire to be the next you. Is that worrying perhaps, or exhilarating? Absolutely, youre right If there is a regular series of live events and theyre well done, people will come to them because of that series, they may not even know who the author is, and that is exciting. Being a guest of a selfsustaining scene, you have more of a sense of being a guest in someones home. You also have more of a sense of reading as a performance when you have longer to read, you dont have a Q and A, when its much more focused just on the reading. It feels more like a seduction to a degree, a fight you want the audience to enjoy the story, you want them to enjoy the way you perform it, you want all those things. So
incorporating writing I do worry because
I think theres of over-hyping the centrality of live literature. I think that live literature is great for those that like doing it, but I dont think we should forget that plenty of writers may not want to do live literature
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there is an element of uncertainty you dont how your story is going to go down and that is exciting. You feel like an outsider whos come into someones house Thank you very much for having me I think thats what I said last night because thats how I felt, Let me see if I can justify it. Youre on much safer ground with a book tour, because everybodys there for you. Do you think independent live literary events such as Tight Lip may be in a position to offer a service to literature that may not be provided by the current means of live literary promotion and dissemination publisher-arranged book tours, university guest speaking or readings, festivals such as Hay-on-Wye, and so on? If so, in what way? No question, with my caveats about the state of literature not being co-terminus with live literature, but absolutely, because an independent literary event is going to be driven by the people who are organising it and indeed reacting to the response of the audience, so its going to be much more open-minded and with a variety about who gets put on, and you have more leeway as to who you decide to put on. When it comes to official book tours they tend to be arranged for the more successful, established writers; when it comes to the established literary festivals they are on the whole appallingly conservative in their scheduling and I include the Hay festival in this. I had an argument about this with a friend of mine I think the Hay-on-Wye festivals scheduling is shockingly unadventurous. They have the same people every year, and they never have any acknowledgement of underground publishing or genre publishing or minority publishing nothing like that. Its also the case that Hay is an enormously successful literary festival with a self-sustaining audience, and
maybe their audience dont want that. It depends on what they say its for, if you say that your festival is there to give your audience what they already know they like, then sure, thats what its doing. But if you say, as I think some Hay partisans do, that this festival is there to reflect the state of modern literature in Britain or suchlike, then its shockingly inadequate. And there is a problem that these festivals develop a reputation as the arbiters of literature in Britain, and that is absolutely completely wrong and misrepresentative and narrow, and things like Tight Lip are a great reaction against that, so in that way they have a strong part to play.
-Special thanks to Theodore Koulouris for his suggestions in relation to formulating questions for the author dealing with Marxist literary theory.
Jay Clifton is cofounder, director and creative programmer of Tight Lip live literary events (Brighton, East Sussex, England). He has written articles for the magazines Nude, Vertigo, Little White Lies and Seconds and was editor-atlarge for the burgeoning literary journal Succour (Issues 2 -6). As The Hammett Story Agency he is a freelance deviser and curator of Screentalk events for Barbican Cinema, London, and when time permits reads his short stories live under this title with live guitar soundtracks composed and played by Tight Lip cofounder, photographer and musician Sam Collins. His next Barbican Screentalk event is on 27 January 2009, with novelist Cathi Unsworth in conversation with author HarrietLisha Aquino subject Vyner on the Rooney of Robert Fraser and his role in the Pop Art scene of Sixties London.
incorporating writing The (Live) Literary
Article byTheodore Koulouris Image by Sam Collins
Secret
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Dear Reader, You may be surprised by the form of this address, but I think that the letter form is one which serves our concerns quite well. Writing a letter is both a private and a public engagement; it is addressed to you, but it is also hosted by this magazine which is a public forum; whats more, a forum which has the ability to accommodate an infinite amount of readers, all prying unperturbed into our private conversation; because it is a conversation. I will take it upon myself to assume a few things; firstly, that we are friends; secondly, that we were at the pub last night, engrossed in a lively chat about literature; thirdly, that we became increasingly inebriated and agreed to postpone our talk for another time as it could no longer be carried out with the appropriate attention which befitted the topic. And lastly, I will assume that, just before you set off for home last night, you asked me to put a few words in a letter about the state of
literature and the role of the spoken word of what is generally referred to as the live literary event. I feel youve asked me to write about something which veers towards impossibility; about something which constitutes a promise; one which hangs over our heads, beguilingly, as a secret; an impossible, and an impossible-to-do-without, secret. In order to provide you with a rigorous answer, I think I ought to first address all of the above: literature, role, culture; then, I will comment on the spoken word, the live literary event, and then, on something which is very close to my heart: Tight Lip. I will resist the temptation and will not offer a grand formulation on the question what is literature?. It would be silly and rather redundant on my part to even attempt to enter such a topic. Reams of text have been devoted to this question by many thinkers, writers, artists, readers and so on, from the classical Greeks to the latest textbooks on literary criticism.
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From classical antiquity, Aristotles Poetics is widely considered to be the first text concerned with defining two of the most important genres of classical Greek literature: tragedy and comedy. From more recent times, I readily recall Tolstoys What is Art? (1897) or, more pertinently, Sartres What is Literature? (1948); also, Terry Eagletons What is Literature? (Literary Theory, 1983) and Jacques Derridas This Strange Institution Called Literature (Acts of Literature, 1992). My own opinion on the subject is closer to that of the two latter thinkers, it seems to me that every attempt to define literature tends to generate an impossible amount of debate, both in relation to the historical and the intellectual background of its creator, and in relation to the socio-cultural and political consciousness of the literary writer. Here, I shall just say what I think literature should (aspire to) be. Here it goes. I feel that literature should aspire to be a secret. Because a secret, for as long as it remains a secret, has immense power: it may issue forth a threat; it may contain a promise; it may recall, recast, reshape, re-invigorate, re-issue, reinvent; it may tease, it may betray, it may tantalise; ultimately, it may reveal the power of possibility. There are two comments to be made in relation to this. First, the question of the secret and its ability to remain just that; a secret. Implicit in the above is the nature of literature as something different from real life. Literature is, most definitely, not life. It may invoke life, it may problematise life, it may suspend or challenge life, it may even celebrate life. But life is most definitely what it is not. For the essence of literature lies in its ability to be created; made up; the beauty of literature rests with the beauty of a beautiful lie; a lie which, nevertheless, has the most potent ability of
challenging our understanding of truth, thereby becoming truth itself. The second comment must be, and is related to, the function of literature. Literature, I believe, cannot be sated. Literature should find itself teetering between the need to say something, the need to reveal, to illuminate, and the absolutely crucial need not to. I have always felt uncomfortable when hearing comments such as, I love this book because it tells me so much about my own life, or this book reveals so much about life, it tells things the way they are you understand, I hope, the kind of comments I refer to. Literature, does not say; it does not explain; it does not give away the secret. For if it does, it gives away its soul. And, I think we both agree here, literature should not be soulless. And now, to the question of the role of literature. I will try to sketch the ways in which literature has been appropriated by a large number of causes, be it of political, social or cultural nature. Lets reference some names here: Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Racine, Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Cervantes, Stendhal, Wordsworth, Baudelaire, Austen, the Bronts, Mallarm, Dickens, Melville, Whitman, Woolf, Joyce, Proust, Marquez, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Blanchot, Elytis, Sebald, Jelinek, Lessing and so on. Do you detect anything in the above list? I expect you do. Firstly, all of the above names and countless others belong, for one reason or another, to what is ostensibly called high literature. What may be called high literature and who determines the fate of a newly-born work of literature? In other words, how does a normal work of literature ascend to the heights of high literature? The answer is I dont know. What I do know, however, is that all of the above names,
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at the moment of their being uttered, evoke a umbilical relationship not only to the historical moment of their existence, but also to the larger sociopolitical regime, the larger sociohistorical milieu in which they existed; the milieu they served, addressed, challenged, attempted to modify and so on. In that way, and whether we like it or not, the above names lay themselves bare to appropriation by a large number of causes, ends, motives, goals and suchlike; and more often than not, all of the above the causes, the ends, the motives serve the State; they become, my dear friend, empowering instruments in the hands of a ruling class. Let us not forget here Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althousser and their conceptualisations on hegemony and ideology respectively. Works of literature, the name of literature, the literary name, all constitute priceless tools with which the ideological apparatuses of the State the family, the school, the Church, the university and so on surreptitiously subject individual consciousness to the governing laws, to the ruling ideology . The ruling class and its governing ideology are thirsty for appropriation; they need to appropriate the literary name with a view to promoting consensus, to creating a general common sense. The role of literature, in my view, should be devoid of common sense; simply, it should challenge common sense. Of course, I do not suggest that the above names and their texts do not offer a way out; this way out, however although implicit in the texts themselves - only becomes awakened by the way in which, we, the readers, the critics, approach these texts; these names. Ultimately, this, the way in which we approach literature, is closely linked with the concept of culture. What is
culture? Another vexed question. Again, I dont know. Terry Eagleton in his book The Idea of Culture (2000), echoes the philosopher Francis Bacon in the latters linking of culture with manure: the culture and manurance of minds. Eagleton suggests that we derive, our word for the finest of human activities from labour and agriculture, crops and cultivation in suggestive hesitancy between dung and mental distinction. I find this designation very useful, to tell you the truth, for a number of reasons. How many times have we caught ourselves calling a work of literature crap? What do we mean by crap and why are we led to say crap? It seems that Bacon, one of the most renowned of English philosophers, albeit rather problematic a Statesman, draws, howsoever hesitantly, a link between the concept of culture and dung. Despite the ambivalence of the word itself, culture is undeniably a vital part of our everyday lives. Indeed, there are millions of people for whom, and to whom, the concept of culture is both a way of life and a personal aspiration. I think we both belong to the aforementioned demographic. That said, and avoiding the impossible need to define culture, I will merely say that culture is inextricably linked with the material present of society. This may seem obvious to you, but I would venture that this is not the case for the majority of people who constitute, after all, the reading public. I would also venture that this reading public, the people who receive culture in other words, the material present of a given society chooses to dispense with this very thing, the concept of the present time when referring to culture, opting instead for a vague justification of cultural choice: I read this or that not because I have an opinion about it Lisha Aquino Rooney or a desire to read it desire, in my view, should be irremediably linked with
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reading literature but because I have been led to read this or that by the unrelenting cultural machine whose job it is to promote this this or that. I do not entertain any misconceptions in respect of the production and promotion of literature in the last two hundred or so years; I do not suggest that what is retrospectively called the era of high modernism or the great nineteenthcentury novel consisted of writers and artists who were devoid of any conception of market demand and promotion; quite the contrary. With the gradual effacement of patronage, somewhere at the turn of the sixteenth century, and the emergence of what is called the literary market, somewhere during the opening decades of the eighteenth, the literary creator had to take into quite serious consideration his public for it was his more often that it was her public. That said, what is happening at the moment is unprecedented: never before has literature been so dependent on the demands of the market; more often than not, it is being subjected to the laws of the market and the laws of the market only. If, in the nineteenth and in the larger part of the twentieth century, literature was being written with the creators idea of the markets needs in mind and even this is a contentious assertion now the market has become so sophisticated and relentless that it, by and large, imposes its will on the creator of literature. This, of course, does not paint a happy picture for the state of contemporary literature. It seems to me that Theodor Adorno in The Culture Industry (1972) was perhaps quite right. This industry, the culture industry, has commodified and standardised literature in ways that seem to deny the literary work its own literarity; its dependence on form and experimentation; its iterability; its metapoetic right; its ability to shock and
disturb; its ability to interrupt the consciousness of the reading consumer and make him or her think; cogitate; ultimately fantasise; regain what Jacques Lacan calls jouissance the orgasmic effect of the written word. And yet, heres an undeniable paradox, never before has there been more literature published; never before have there been more titles, more publishing houses, imprints, book-clubs, reading tours, and yes, live literary events; there are, in other words, people for whom literature is not just a quiet evening in with a good book, but also an evening out. And, I catch myself wondering, why the hell not? As I am writing this, on a wet Friday evening in the south of England, I know that there are hundreds of book-club meetings taking place up and down the country; that there are dozens of live literature events across the south of England. In fact, I am in no doubt that the same thing takes place in every country. A simple Google-search would immediately confirm this. The question is why? If the state of literature is as bad as I suggested earlier, how is it that literature is more popular than ever? How is it that in the age of interactive television, facebook, myspace, youtube, msn-messaging, ipods, blackberries (blackberries ??), iReaders, electronic/ virtual interactivity, SKYtv and so on, literature still has the ability to captivate peoples imagination? I will resist the obvious answer; it would be simplistic on my part to suggest that most of what is being published these days is crap (you see? I was unconsciously led to use this word again). Nevertheless, although contemporary literature is being assailed by all of the above cultural preoccupations, and what we call high literature or whatever aspires to be high literature is, by and large, treated
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with suspicion, I detect an increasing desire on the reading publics part to commune in the act of literature itself; and by that I mean in the act of literature being performed; read out in front of a public. Let us see a few examples of public literature here: John Mullans book How Novels Work (2006) grew out of a very successful column in the Review section of The Guardian called Elements of Fiction, which specifically targeted reading groups; the reading tours of the average writer of contemporary fiction are more punishing than ever before; there are literally festivals in Britain for every calendar month: the London Word Festival, The Word Market and Readers Festival, the Cambridgewordfest, the Essex Book festival, The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival, The Guardian Hay Festival, and so on; not to mention that every city which respects itself, from Brighton, Bath and Exeter to Sheffield, Harrogate and Hull, has a literary festival, in one form or another, sponsored and heavily promoted in every year of its cultural life. This implies two things: firstly, that the cultural machine of a given public body still considers literature to be of vital social importance, but more importantly, that the reading public wants to take part in the literary event; it wants to see its writers read, viva voce, their work; it wants to see the creators; it, more often than not, wants to have a drink with them; in fact, I think, that everybody wants to be a writer. I will now be personal. It must have been sometime in 2005 when I first heard of Tight Lip through a friend, who was actually running the event. Occasionally bumping into him in the streets of Brighton, I was always reminded of the event and that I ought to attend to hear live literature and, why not, perhaps participate; read
something of my own. The decision to attend took me a whole year; it took me an additional six months to drum up the courage to actually read something of my own. Perhaps it was academic vanity; having been disappointed by dozens of poetry slams or open-mic events, I thought that Tight Lip was just another similar event. After my first visit, however, I was captivated. Tight Lip arrested my imagination. I cannot give you specific reasons; I will not speak of the quality of its guest writers; I will not speak of its successful sponsorship bids, both from public (the Arts Council) and private institutions and organisations; I will not speak of its impressive organisation; I will not even speak of the public service it offers to those individuals who want to hear an accomplished writer read his/her work and/or witness the moment a budding writer takes the first steps towards making their art public. From the moment of its inception, literature has had the ability to bring people together. Of course, by bringing people together it has excluded others. What is certain, however, is that from the moment literature formed an opinion of itself, it has appeared as the child of reference and intertextuality. As we both know, both reference and intertextuality occur unconsciously as no literary product can escape its tradition, whether it marks itself for or against that tradition. But what literature does is to inspire connection(s); alliances; and, of course, ruptures. Whether it was the Bloomsbury Set with its resigned, aristocratic approach to literature and aesthetics, or the Beats with their unrelenting, committed support of one another, literature has always, especially in the eyes of what Virginia Woolf calls the common reader, created scenes. This, in my eyes, is what Tight Lip both is and has the ability to become. In three short years, it has attracted an impressive
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array of contemporary writers, all of whom partook of an evening of relaxed and inspired literary revelry; it has accommodated the talent and literary aspirations of a large number of local published and unpublished writers; it has promoted the work of students from local universities and has organised workshops on writing and publishing; it has been hosted by venues in Brighton, Lewes and London. In short, it has made itself indispensable. And, it is worth noting, the event is still in its infancy. That said, what is more important in my eyes is that Tight Lip has promoted literature in ways in which the might and demographic penetration of the cultural outlets mentioned earlier are simply unable to do: it has promoted the theatricality of the literary product, its performativity, its iterability, its immediacy; its has, despite its limited resources, revealed the ritual dramaticality which takes place when a writer reads his or her work in front of his or her public; in my eyes, it has revived, in its own limited demographic capability, the tragical element of literature. Despite its strict economy hence the birth of its name, Tight Lip and the fact that its takes place secretively, almost conspiratorially, it contains the very same promise that can be found in literature itself: its messianic power, its liberatory possibility. It is a beautiful, and a beautifully kept, secret. In a sense, it does what all good literature should do. For all good literature should not be based on solid conceptualisations of presence: the vast cultural conglomerates with their unrelenting socio-political influence promising unprecedented literary sensations (the quotation is taken from the praise on the back of a recent paperback). All good literature, in my view, should be a beautiful assailant; it should tread
lightly, surreptitiously, like a condemned soul; like a ghost; literature should not verify, it should challenge; it should not serve, it should rebel against; it should not be curtailed by the norm, it should change/replace/efface the norm; it should not confirm our prejudices, it should challenge them. And, of course, all of the above, all of which constitute the liberatory possibility of literature, should not be left to exist quietly within the literary text itself; they should be our - the readers - primary concern. For literature should not be a hobby or a pastime; even when it is, it had better be a serious one. I think you would agree with me on that. I will see you, I hope, at the next Tight Lip event. Yours sincerely, Theodore Koulouris
Theodore Koulouris received his DPhil from the University of Sussex where he is now an Associate Tutor in the English Department. He has published widely on Virginia Woolf and British Hellenism, from a textual and literary-historical point of view. Apart from preparing a monograph on Woolf for Ashgate, he is now also co-editing a collection of essays on the novel, The Novel: Modernitys Form?. He is interested in the dialectic between solidarity and detachment as a constitutive force of the European literary modernity via an exploration of the concepts of love, loss and what he calls pastness in contemporary writers such as W.G. Sebald, John Banville, Michel Houellebecq and others, and in Jacques Derridas thought . He is the academic liaison of the Tight Lip Group.
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Notes from America: Live Literature

Column by Christine Brandel
Having spent the last six years as the singular representation of America to many Britons, Ive been brutally reminded upon my return to the Land of the Free that it is very hard to characterize what is American. In literary terms, poetry of the Deep South differs from New England poetry; American academic fiction may be nothing like the fiction of an inner city. But I am never above making sweeping generalisations, so away we go. Live literature here (the phrase itself is British) tends to be divided into three separate categories: readings, performances and slams. For all three, the most important characteristic is audience. Of course, one could argue that audience is the key to any literature. The purpose of writing is to share with others; therefore the best literaturelive or otherwise (is the opposite of live literature dead
literature?)appeals to its audience in some way. The words themselves written on the page, before the writer even begins to form them on the tonguemust touch something in the audience. Without that, any performance of the piece will fall flat. The reading, of course, involves a writer reading work aloud to an audience. For some, readings invoke either an air of superioritya well established poet shows up at a university, reads a few pages from his most recent book, collects a fee, and takes off as soon as the applause beginsor complete boredomwhere audience members find themselves wondering why they arent at home, where they can comfortably smoke and cough, reading the book to themselves. However, a good reading is authentic as it allows us simply to hear the work in the writers voice. When we read a poem in our heads, we are
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hearing it in our voice; when we listen to the writer read it, we listen to the original voice. A reading though is not an exchange; the audience is there to receive rather than interact.
A good performer also interacts with the audience, whether it be by simply acknowledging the needs of the venue and clientele or by inviting responses from listeners
A literature performance, however, is more than words on a page being spoken aloud. The very act of performing a work adds something to the meaning of the work, which of course can work for or against a writer, depending on their performance skills. A performer can use anything from the inflection of their voice, to bodily movements, to props, to lighting to enhance their work. A good performer also interacts with the audience, whether it be by simply acknowledging the needs of the venue and clientele or by inviting responses from listeners. The diversity of performance is as vast as the diversity of the country. A writer like Maya Angelou performs on a national stage, moving audience members who have never read a line of poetry. Locally, an unpublished writer can earn a following based solely on their ability to communicate with drunken punters in a bar. Regardless of the style of the performance, though, the writing itself must be strong. Slams are when writers compete against each other and are judged by audience members. Slams became popular in the 1980s and many see them as a revival
of the oral tradition of poetry. Others, though, due to the competitive nature, see them as demeaning to the definition of literature. Poetry slams often have political or stylistic themes, though they can also be similar to hip-hop competitions where each writer is essentially big-upping themselves and downgrading their rivals. Regardless, slams are still popular and attract a range of writers and audience members. Because the goal is winning the competition, writers must appeal to audience members, as they are literally there to judge and have the final say on success or failure. Live literature in America is alive and well and as varied as our weather. A writer who wants to read or perform can find a home, but will need to think about their goals before grabbing a mic. Live literature has the potential to add something to a written piece, but it also has the potential to be very silly. The writer and their audience will need to be on the same page for both to benefit.
Christine Brandel is a writer and teacher. After finally accepting that, while in England, she would never escape the question Are you American? she was surprised to find that on her recent return to the States, she is being asked Are you British? The answer to both is yes.
Drawing Poetry: Gary Goodman

Interview by James Burt Image by Sam Collins
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Gary Goodman lives in Worthing, UK and works as a fine art tutor. He is well known as a painter and has exhibited his work around the world since the mid1980s, including a joint show with Billy Childish in 2007. For nearly a decade Gary has been writing poetry and often performs at live events. He has regularly appeared at Tight Lip and his most recent appearance was the Desperate for Love night at Brightons Komedia theatre. This event was a conceptual collaboration with poet Jacq Aris and Tight Lip-associated poets Alan Hay and Wolfy Jones. How did you start writing poetry? About 10 years ago I thought I would give it a try. I was heavily immersed in painting and there were artists I liked that wrote poetry so I thought maybe there is some connection. I started trying a few things out.
Who are your inspirations as a poet? I actually dont read a lot of poetry - I am resistant to it in a stubborn way. I do read some, I am not being deliberately stupid, but not very much. I am inspired by the Beats and I really like Charles Bukowski and Billy Childish because of their complete honesty and lack of fancy footwork: writing down this is how I feel. I am as much inspired by people like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and songwriters like Roy Harper and Mark E. Smith, that freedom of language. I am not a huge reader of poetry. Do you set time aside to write poetry or do you work when youre inspired? I teach full time, sometimes six days, sometimes four, so my time for painting and writing is quite limited. I am disciplined with the painting and I get to
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my studio after I have been to work or at weekends. The poetry is different and I tend to do it when I am on my own and I have had a few drinks. Billy Childish said Gary Goodman is not trying to impress anyone... [he] is merely trying to say hello with some drawings. Do you see your art as more about communication or the works themselves? Someone did ask me recently why do you paint? and I said, to stop myself being bored. A glib answer and it is not actually true. I have very strong feelings about lots of things. I have a daughter who has an incurable disease, but there are lovely things in my life as well. I like to communicate that to someone else, but thats not the main impetus. I have an integrity of intention in that I want to be authentic and honest in what I do. Both my writing and my painting are just snapshots of my memories and fantasies. Sometimes hopes for the future. I havent got a message as such. Maybe I am lazy intellectually but I cant really feel that I do it for any other reason than I like to do it, and as a human being I have an ego as well and it is great for people to say I really like that, Gary. How did you get into giving readings? I never felt hugely confident about the quality of my work because I dont actually read a lot of poetry so I wasnt sure whether it was good or bad. About eight or nine years ago, when I first moved to Worthing, I saw this poetry club and thought I would give it a try. I was new in the town and I didnt really know anyone so I thought it was quite safe to go there. I enjoyed getting up in front of people. Since then I have been lucky enough to read in Norway and America as well as places over here.
Would you describe yourself as a live poet? I probably do. I write two different kinds of poems. I write simple, short observational poems which are not conversational, but anecdotal. Then I write long, rambling stuff which I really do like reading on and on with lots of adjectives; quite Ginsberg-y really. I am not a performance poet as such, I really think I am more a live poet. What sort of live poetry do you enjoy? I really dont like this sort of stand up poetry where people are jumping around and putting on stupid voices or that kind of sham slam poetry where it is showing-off and competitive, I was invited to read at the Arundel Festival a couple of months ago. I got there and saw the poster saying Four famous performance poets. There were two guys there and they were fantastic at what they did but they were jumping all over the place it was very good for what it was but I just thought why dont you just shut up and read your bloody poems? What they were reading was masked by their performance because I wanted to hear it and not see them prancing around. Why should people go out on a cold, windy evening to watch live poetry? Please dont think I am being glib, but I dont know. I dont understand I would rather go to the cinema or the pub! It doesnt seem to be an obvious part of my life, to go out to a poetry reading. When I started reading I never used to go to attend other readings myself, although I do go more often now because I know people. Do you ever worry that people are going to miss the meaning or mood of a subtle poem in a live environment where they have been drinking? No, I think thats better, I really think
thats better. On a very personal level it is better for me. I dont think my poems are particularly subtle and I dont think there is much nuance within them. When you release something to the public, whatever anyone else thinks about it is absolutely fine. If I have a very strong feeling about where it came from and then somebody gets it wrong, it doesnt matter because they are not actually getting it wrong. About a painting when my daughter was quite young, she was very, very ill at one point. She was in Great Ormond Street Hospital. I was teaching in Brighton and I had to go up in the evenings to see her on the train, then come back and go to work. It was depressing, it was tiring, and it costing me lots of money. I went to see her one evening and she was in the Treatment Room having to have a canulla fitted, a drip, and it wouldnt go in. So I held her, she was a baby at the time, and the doctor was trying to put the drip in and my daughter was screaming. I have never heard such a scream from a human, it was like an animal. I blanked out and lost some seconds because it was so horrible to bear. After this I did a painting of that incident. It was looking down at Tilda in bed and there was a black shape where her liver is and she had her hand over her liver. I entered this painting for a competition and it won first prize. Somebody did a review of this exhibition which said Gary Goodmans painting won first prize and it looks like a picture of a young girl lying on a bed masturbating. It was so different my first reaction was How dare you!. But if that is what they saw, that is what they saw. It didnt actually bother me too much afterwards but thats a real extreme. What was it like performing in America? I was invited to read at the Java Monkey Coffee House, a very famous place for poetry - they have a poetry reading every month. Because I was a visitor I was in the guest spot. Before I came on there were quite a lot of black hip-hop writers and this is going against what I said about performance
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poets who were almost making it up on the spot and I was quite stunned and almost taken aback it was beautiful. Something a bit more authentic and logical about what they were doing as opposed to performance poets. Then there was me coming on at the end we are very lucky to have Gary Goodman from England I got up there, this white kid reading from bits of paper, where almost everyone else before just spouted it out. I got an amazing reception but I do think that Americans, particularly in the south, have such hospitality people are generous and lovely and whooping and clapping and saying go Gary, go. It really lifts you. They handed a hat round at the end and I got $100 which was great. What was the reaction to your performing of your poetry in Norway? The thing in Norway was right in the Arctic Circle, on an island. I was there to do some workshops. They were having a festival in the evening. It was January and it was thick, thick snow romantic Christmas-card land. They had this white church and because I was there they asked if I would like to read it was quite a privilege. I remember walking there in the evening and thinking my God, theres a beautiful which church and the snow and the pine trees. I read in English. Virtually the whole village was there I got a really, really good response. I think it is generally understood that a lot of Europeans are fantastic at speaking English and they did seem to understand some nuances by their response not that there are a huge amount of nuances in my work. What were your aims with the Desperate for Love night? We tried to make it an event and promote it as an event and have a DJ
and stuff so the whole evening was quite interesting. Sometimes I have been to events when the poets read and then they dont read and there is a break and it just seems to lose momentum. Although I am not saying it should be all singing, all dancing but I think sometimes it is a bit earnest and a bit serious, dour, academic and dry, really. Maybe it is just me, I need constant stimulation. What are your plans for the future in terms of poetry? Do you have any particular aims? It might just be an ego thing but I would like to have a collection published, but I havent done anything about that. I would like to do more things like the Desperate for Love thing we did. We are planning to have different evenings with musicians, making it an event instead of four old people getting up and reading their stuff. A recent work of yours, a diagram about the divide between emotion and intellect, blamed intellect for predictability, pretension and crap clothes. How important are clothes to live poetry? Really important. Really important. I hate seeing somebody up there who hasnt made an effort! That is all right for certain genres but to me I dont want people to dress over the top but I like cool clothes.
James Burt is a prose writer and performer. He has appeared at Tight Lip, and various Brighton spoken word events. His weblog can be found at www.orbific.com
incorporating writing Pefect Eye: Sam
Collins
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Steinbecks Travelogue of War
Article by Claire Boot Photographs by Andrew Oldham
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Sam Collins was born in Victoria, Australia in 1977. Sam writes lists of things that he wants to photograph: cars; street signs; the backs of street signs; people approaching the end of their lives; teenagers with it all still to come. Sam currently works and resides on the south east coast of England. Sams photographs can be viewed at: www.flickr.com/mercurymountain/ EMAIL: midwestblues@googlemail.com
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Out Your Dead: Poetry, Performance, Publishing and Resurrecting the Dead?
Article by Meredith Okell Image by Sam Collins
If the rumours are true, then any endeavour to write about poetry, poets or the publishing thereof, might be seen to be hewing out a new field of necrocriticism. Over a year ago, at the 2007 Hay Literary Festival, Martin Amis took on the heavy burden of coroner, pronouncing poetry dead. Something to do with the lack of time or inclination felt by readers to indulge in the selfexamination it requires. Although possibly a point of contention for the sake of it, and plenty of time has passed with many voices piping up to the contrary, perhaps the notion still lends itself to consideration. Its commonly noted that the presence of poetry in the commercial realm is miniscule, making up less than 1% of book sales. We could take this to suggest that it is outdated, outmoded and quietly crawling into a corner for its final throes. Or perhaps there is something to the oft-cited notion that
poetry is just too difficult and too time consuming for people to bother with when there is so much else that they can experience requiring far less perceived effort. The prognosis may even worsen if you place the voice of the market alongside the multiple and calamitous voices of post-modern and post-structuralist theories. From the linguistic perspective of language as an ultimately empty system of reference with meaning only in relation to itself, to the problematising of where, who or what creates meaning, it could be little wonder if the form that has historically (even if simplistically) been assigned the role of deepest personal expression, was forced or even felt inclined to curl up and desist in a ditch of undoing. Indeed, Amis is not the only one to have claimed decomposition in the field of literature (and here Ill wilfully include
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poetry in the category). Thirty years earlier, Roland Barthes did his bit to try and convince us that death was at work. In his 1977 essay, Death of the Author, he suggested that the long-standing tendency to construe the meaning of a work as something residing with the author or the text itself was no longer applicable, and that rather the reader was the site where meaning was produced. In terms of the written text, there is no doubt something alluring (and perhaps even romantic) about the idea of the solitary reader who alone makes sense of the text that the writer has arbitrarily gushed forth. A reader without history, biography, psychology but simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted. Although Barthes is obviously working in reference to the written text, it is unavoidably tempting to test this idea out against texts that have been written, yet are intended for reading/ performance. This is not to suggest that poetry is a medium only relevant, or revealed, in performance - indeed, it is almost too easy to ascribe to poetry a separate role in which its rich history of oration supersedes and reduces the text and the intricacies of its form to a byproduct - rather it is to suggest that the additional dimension of performance (or even intended performance) could create a different picture. Here it is also worth noting that performed poetry would seem to occupy a strange position. It might be problematic to confound the notions of the writer/poet/reader/performer, but in the case of live literature (here referring to poetry, but similarly true of prose), when addressing the phenomenon, its impossible for these categories to remain distinct. The performer/reader is not improvising (at least not often, and
even if so, perhaps unintentionally), so she/he cannot be wholly detached from the written text. Conversely, even if theatrical, the performance is not scripted in the traditional sense of the word. The point remains to give voice to the text that has been forged. As such it seems to occupy a space that hovers somewhere between improvisation and scriptedness and it is precisely in this space, with good poetry, well delivered, that the real and existing appeal of poetry-as-live-literature resides.
Anyone in doubt of the life force possessed by contemporary poetry may be reassured
By placing poetry in a tangible physical context that of the publicly read/ performed it doesnt seem too farfetched to suggest that it creates a space where literature is truly alive, capable of holding meaning insofar as the reader/writer/performer and the reader/listener/audience member can enter into negotiations as to what meanings the text might hold. Each reading/performance will possess its own fine nuances rhythm, tone, intonation, gesture which are not wholly under the control of the reader/ performer or the text upon which it is based. Likewise, the individual receptions of the reading/performance will be subject to each readers/listeners nuances concentration, association or even inclination to listen. And so the potential limitations that theory may impose on the experience of literature are significantly undercut. This does not mean that theory floats insignificantly outside of poetry-as-live-literature, but rather that when faced with such a physical reality, theoretical notions are
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forced to exist in conjunction with the reality of the ways in which language continues to work as a means for communication or expression. In fact, with much contemporary work, it would seem that it is precisely this interplay that allows poetry to continue as such a dynamic and alive form. The material, social context works to recognise the fact that individuals must exist with history, biography, psychology all of which inform the ways in which they write/perform, read/hear and negotiate the text. This slightly theoretical take is only part of the reason why the idea of poetry being dead (or merely gangrenous) is a long way from actuality. Although official poetry sales may seem abysmally low, the picture changes if we cease looking at formal economic traces in an attempt to know how and what people are experiencing (a tendency that will undoubtedly die hard). Despite apparently being a commercially unviable form, there continue to exist thriving communities of poets, small presses, events and people more than willing to demand of themselves the necessary time and effort. However, it would seem that the driving force behind many of these communities and their forms of discourse are not traditional in the sense of being primed for industry, but rather with the aim of maintaining spaces in which new, experimental and exciting work can exist. I use the word maintaining as this is not a new phenomenon theres a strong tradition of chapbooks, live readings, small presses and associated communities emerging in literatures history (a history which must be plotted some other time). If we add to these aspects the newer possibilities opened up by the use of online journals, resources and forums, the heartbeat of contemporary poetry begins to sound increasingly louder.
Anyone in doubt of the life force possessed by contemporary poetry may be reassured, for example, with a visit to the website Archive of the Now (www.archiveofthenow.com). This not for profit online and print archive includes a vast collection of poetry recordings and texts, with a focus on the innovative. Navigating through, a visit not only makes available a multitude of varied and engaging recorded performances of new poetry (which may be freely downloaded), but also usefully directs you to other resources such as publishers (of which there are many), blogs, magazines, event listings and associated sites of interest. One particularly interesting resource is Meshworks, the Miami University Archive of Writing in Performance, a site dedicated to documenting and preserving video and sound recordings of writing in performance. Both of which will confirm that poetry is far from deaths door.
To the suggestion that poetry is dead then, it seems safe to issue an incredulous: pah!
In terms of chapbooks and magazines there are numerous publishers and publications that could jolt even Martin Amis into rethinking the supposed corpse-like state of poetry. Among these is Barque Press (www.barquepress.com), who have been publishing contemporary and experimental work by poets from Britain and beyond for over ten years, and play host to a great variety of titles. In addition to publishing collections of single authors works, Barque is also responsible for the regular journal QUID (back issues of which are available to download on their site), a publication that provides a showcase for new and
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established contemporary poets, wherein poetry, prose and criticism combine to create a lively reading experience. Similarly, journals such as Succour (www.succour.org) consistently succeed in collecting some of the finest new poetry and fiction on offer (likewise juxtaposing established and new writers) and contribute to sustaining poetry as a fresh and alive form. These resources and publications are an intrinsic part of ensuring the life of contemporary poetry, however, part of their success undoubtedly lies in the events and performances that exist alongside them. Such events open up layers of meaning in the works that readers may simply not see/hear on the page and with their social dimension create communities that keep poetry alive by consistently and openly debating, criticising and evaluating the works themselves and all of the possibilities they open up (pursuits which actively disprove Barthes notion of the dead author versus the birthed reader by giving both an active role). It is these communities with their small presses, their desire to share the experience of poetry and thirst for live performances, that will allow poetry to continue to evolve creatively and experimentally without being subordinated to the dictates of commercial publishing. To the suggestion that poetry is dead then, it seems safe to issue an incredulous: pah! But this is not because it has been miraculously resurrected. Experimental forms have historically found themselves outside of the frameworks by which success or life are measured and it would seem that poetry has for a long time been happily living and sourcing materials to construct its own. It is hopeful then that with the continued dedication of poets/performers
and readers/listeners alike, and the continued support from funding bodies (such as the Arts Council) which allow literature a certain freedom from commercial pressure, that we will never need to take the defibrillators to the heart of poetry.
Meredith Okell is a prose poet who has previously performed at various live literature events. She has been involved in the management of literature festivals in the South East for the past 8 years and currently works with Tight Lip as a development and finance officer.
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Versions of Reality: Finance or Fairies?

Article by Edric Brown Image by Sam Collins
I keep noticing that the pictures of people who appear in newspapers have changed somewhat over the last few years. Increasingly photos of hitherto unknown members of the public who have suddenly been made newsworthy usually as the result of some terrible event seem to point at a public persona in waiting. The subjects of these photos are often posed as if they were a popular musician or television personality. Do they have a portfolio of such photographs at home, waiting for the event? I think the answer to this probably is: yes they do, but not in preparation for their immortalisation in print the most likely explanation for the origin of the photo is that it has been lifted by the media straight from the persons Facebook, Myspace or Bebo. Obviously It would seem such a page couldnt possibly contain a photograph or any other information implying that we were anything less than quite possibly the most exciting person in cyberspace, so we take multiple photos of ourselves
that imply the interest, excitement and gravitas of who we would like to think we are, or who we would like others to think we are. In this way, our fantasies have moved out of our dreams and daydreams and into the half-reality of cyberspace. Most things in this realm tend to carry the prefix virtual, and this is exactly what we deal in more and more these days: a world where everything is one step away from its own actuality. That we all now present our fantasy version of ourselves as the truth of our personalities is the most basic indicator of this trend, indeed, it is the foundation of the modern semi-fictional existence; the existence as lie itself. We are a society in denial: we deny our debts, the mundanity of our day to day existence, our (in)humanity and our insignificance; we even deny that we are lying to ourselves in order to perpetuate the myth of our newly constructed personalities.
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We build up a profile of ourselves by accumulating a mass of data rather than through any sort of narrative and the key to keeping our faux-existence going is an accumulation of data in support of it. We must record, and virtually re-live every aspect of our free time; we must display it proudly to others; and we must participate in every conciliatory semi-interactive part that we can. The logic being that if we are taking part and can document the fact of our taking part then we must be enjoying ourselves is all pervasive, and in many instances works to great effect. All of these things are symptoms of a condition of reality blindness, in which we exist within reality and are aware of it, but have a very tenuous relationship to it. We spend a vast amount of our time plugged in; distracted by one electronic device or another that puts us at one step removed from our immediate environment. Through these distractions we create a buffer within which we cushion ourselves from the often boring actuality of our lives, but at the same time we disconnect ourselves from humanity, accessing our fellow man only by the shallow clichs that we imbibe from the various electronic media that we consume as part of our distraction. We wonder how the youth of today can commit such heinous and brutal crimes; we blame the violence of their computer games, but it is not the violence of the games themselves, it is the dislocation from reality that these games create that is the problem. They create an impression that the world exists simply to deliver sensation, and included in that are other people. In this way, we have distorted the postmodern understanding: we are only interested in the surface, not because have done away with the subject, but because we have created an ber-subject that encompasses all our emotional
understanding. There is no other anymore, because everything anterior is beyond the ber-self interest and therefore beyond our ken. In the West, we are obsessed with the ideas of authenticity, and nowhere was this better illustrated than in the UKs recent falling out with Iceland during the credit crisis. As always happens when we have a falling out with any other country, the media quickly search out the most outlandish statistic that they can about the nation or people and then use it as a justification for blaming or ridiculing them. In October, the blogosphere abounded with the old favourite: the fact that 50% of Icelanders still believe in fairies a fact that even made it onto Radio 4s Today programme. This is a lot for a supposedly modern society so the argument goes; Look at these people, we are supposed to say, they believe in fairies and we trusted them with our money, OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE WE DONE? All of which tends to miss the point. The Icelanders are a nation of storytellers, a nation with one of the most comprehensive oral traditions in the world; they have passed information from person to person for generations. Their Sagas are histories and genealogies; the fact that they make no distinction between what we would call supernatural and what we would call real is of no significance: they are histories of people. We in the UK can try to laugh at the Icelanders because they are allegedly nave and believe in childish things, but this perceived naivety is not the source of their current problems. The idea that has been imposed on countries such as Iceland through the mechanism of global capital is that bulk data is key, indeed paramount. This imperialism of facticity has helped to perpetuate the
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comforting illusion of truth that has led us all to the present sorry state of financial affairs, with Iceland coming off worst (according to the Daily Mail their banks owe 116,000 for every man woman and child in Iceland). Of course those who use the statistics about believing in fairies to prove their point would say that this belief is proof of a lack of rigorous assessment; that these people are unable to distinguish fact from fiction, and so it is no surprise that they put so much faith in the chimera of cheap credit. I would argue otherwise. I would argue that perhaps the Icelanders have a more rigorous approach to reality, due to their unwillingness to rule out anything of the world around them unconditionally. Obsessed with the actuality of things, for facts meaningless to us and doled out from a very limited number of sources (or news), we have allowed ourselves a much more proscribed world view, one that requires us to trust wholeheartedly in a perception of verity when presented to us in bulk or by anyone who claims to be in a position of authority. This, the Icelanders were persuaded, is the way that modern and progressive societies operate, and that it was time for them to put away childish things like believing in fairies and start believing in financial instruments instead. A world based on international capital and its movements requires a centralisation of facts, a small number of vast pools of impersonal and essentially meaningless data. Such data allows the machine to carry on working, but it tells us no real stories. Storytelling is a decentralised form of knowledge dispersal, which has the added advantage of telling us something of the story teller; making us know them, making us understand more than
the facts. Obviously storytelling is useless as a form of data transfer in the world of international capital, but that doesnt make it useless in the totality of our lives. We have to move away from the idea that verified broadcast fact is the only form of truth available; an approach that has led us to the belief that the truth of ourselves is not about the quality of the story we tell, but the quantity of the information we generate, the photos we upload and the friends we make.
So the situation that we see around us is a vision of an infinitely dull future

It is only partially technology that has brought about this change in our approach, after all technology can only do what we tell it. We had been approaching data in this way for a long time before we had computers; the Victorians managed vast bureaucratic systems of filing with card files and suchlike. However, technology could be argued to perpetuate this view, affordable, widespread and desirable as it has become a conduit for lazy proselytising. And we are lazy converts: as the programmers have worked over the years to teach computers to allow for our fallibility, so we have gradually decided to mould our lives around the model of the computers neatly defined understanding. We conform to the expectations of our gadgets, not because we need to, but because we want to, because it is the done thing, and we have become so unimaginative that we now consider filing (on our i-pods, laptops and so on) to be a suitable activity for our leisure time. We see great merit in conformity, so it is small wonder that we no longer have imagination enough for fairies.
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If it has not been imposed on us by the machine then what is the origin of this desire to file, to record and index? Can we look to the dictionary or the printing press as the beginning of the standardisation of words and thoughts? Can we look to the invention of language? In many ways we can. Language and the written word, like almost all other activities that we use to define ourselves as human, are tools of normalisation; they allow us to organise groups of people and objects into the structures that facilitate mass production. This enables us to satiate our desire to consume more. It is perhaps, then, easy to say that it is greed that has driven us to this, that makes us human, but I am not convinced that greed is limited to humans. It is specifically our ability to standardise in order to facilitate the greed that drives us that sets us apart from the other animals: we were the boring ape. So the situation that we see around us is a vision of an infinitely dull future, then a future where everything we can tell each other about ourselves is filed and documented in the same manner? Obviously not, not least because this boring gene is only what sets us apart from the other animals, not our sole attribute; we carry all sorts of drives and desires, and one of them is obviously to fight against this self imposed standardisation; to be messianic. It can be a dangerous impulse, it has been the ruin of many artists, writers and musicians, but it is essential to who we are. If language is the force of standardisation that we have imposed upon our communication, then storytelling and poetry are our attempts to free it from these constraints. For over a thousand years, the Icelanders tended to be the free spirits of Europe, wandering the globe, making free and
easy with their poetry and stories. Perhaps, now that the mass truth of high finance has failed us and we can see the limits of a uniform personal truth, we may again return to the personal truths of the oral tradition. Maybe we can tell our stories to people rather than filing them neatly on a server somewhere. Maybe we should start believing in fairies.
Edric Brown occasionally writes fiction, which he occasionally reads at Tight Lip. He also co-runs The Dead Seagull Press, which one day will have a website. He lives in Brighton.
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USA: American studios and networks are not complying with new media provisions of contract they agreed to nine months ago, according to a writers union. The Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) which represents many of the writers involved has filed for arbitration against AMPTP companies. It said media conglomerates of the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers the AMPTP have failed to comply with the contract negotiated to end the Guilds 100-day strike and are not paying residuals for writers work that is re-used on new media. Payment of residuals for new media reuse was a core issue of the WGA strike. The Guild said it is embarking on an aggressive contract enforcement programme, including legal action, to ensure AMPTP companies fulfil their obligations. John F. Bowman, WGAW Board member and chair of the 2007 WGA Negotiating Committee said: The companies have reneged on this agreement and are taking the position that only programmes produced after February 13, 2008 are covered by the new provision. The Guild is also preparing to file for arbitration against the AMPTP companies for failing to pay residuals due for the streaming of television shows on the Internet. For detail, see the http://www.wga.org/ CUMBRIA, UK: The new season of Lakeland Writers Group commences on Wednesday 7 January, 7.30pm, at Papcastle Village Hall. Everyone is welcome to come along to meetings new members please come at around 7.45pm. The theme for the first session
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is The Journey and may take any form: reportage, poetry or short story, with a maximum length of 1,000 words. Lakeland Writers meetings are usually on the last Wednesday of each month, so the next meeting will be 28 January. The group has had several names over the years it has been in existence, but hopes to keep its current name as it reflects the region in which the group operates. Further details from Martin A Chambers on 01900 823882 or by email Sara Barnes at enquiries@nicheworks.biz UK: Crime entries are invited for the 2008/2009 CWA Dagger awards. Any UK publisher may enter books for judging provided the book is relevant to the appropriate award and was published between June 1, 2008 and May 31, 2009. There is no fee for submitting entries. However, it is a condition of entry that all publishers whose books appear on any of the Dagger shortlists agree to pay a contribution towards the CWAs costs of running the awards - the judging process, publicity and promotion, and in particular: organising the awards ceremony. This step brings its awards into line with similar rules for other literary awards, according to the Crime Writers Association. Closing date is April 17 2009. For detail, see the website http://www.thecwa.co.uk/daggers/2009/ index.html N. IRELAND: The 12th Annual Brian Moore Short Story Award is accepting
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submissions in Belfast. Prizes: 750, 300, 200. Entry fee is 5, and in sterling only. Maximum word count is 2,000 words. Entrants must be of Irish descent, or resident in Northern Ireland and aged 18 years or more. No entry form is required. Online entry and PayPal payment is encouraged, though posted entries are accepted. The winning story will be published in Verbal, which is distributed to 100,000 homes across Northern Ireland, with second and third prize winners to be published in the quarterly magazine Ullas Nib. Verbal is a monthly magazine produced by Derrys Verbal Arts Centre and distributed free with newspapers from the Johnston Press group in Northern Ireland. Closing date for entries is March 1, 2009. For details see the website 2009.http:// www.creativewritersnetwork.org/ competition%20page.html UK: The Orwell Prize has announced a Special Prize for Blogs in 2009. Running alongside the Book Prize and Journalism Prize, submissions will be accepted for all work published for the first time in the calendar year 2008. Political writing is defined in the widest possible sense, and encompasses subjects including party politics, social issues, public policy, the media, conflict, public services, history, economics, the environment, local government, and international relations. Entries should be per blogger, rather than per blog. Bloggers should submit permalinks for 10 posts of their choice. Bloggers should have a clear relationship with the United Kingdom or Ireland; the intended audience of the blog should be
British or Irish. Posts which are simply online versions of articles printed in other publications, or are links to such articles, are not eligible. Any bloggers falling into this category are advised to enter the Journalism Prize. Closing date for entries is January 14, 2009. For details see the website: http:// www.theorwellprize.co.uk/ blogprize2009.aspx WALES: The judges for the 2009 Cardiff International Poetry Competition are Ian McMillan and Kurt Heinzelman, and prizes are 5000, 500, 250 and five runners-up prizes of 50. Entry forms (send SAE) from: Academi, CIPC09, Mount Stuart House, Mount Stuart Square, Cardiff CF10 5FQ or download from website www.academi.org/cipc/i/ 132712. Entry fee is 6 per poem. Closing date: 30 January. UK: MSLEXIA WOMENS SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2009. Judge is Helen Simpson, with 1st Prize 2,000 plus a one-week writing retreat (accommodation only) at Chawton House Library as well as a day with a Virago editor, 2nd prize 500, 3rd prize 250 and three other finalists each winning 100. All winning stories will be published in Mslexia magazine and they will also be read by Carole Blake from Blake Friedmann Literary Agency. or full details go to: http://www.mslexia.co.uk/ whatson/msbusiness/scomp_rules Closing date: 23 January 2009
All news for this section is compiled by Incwriters. Send your info to: info@incwriters.co.uk Further news can be found in their forum at: www.incwriters.co.uk

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Issue 6 Vol 1 ITS ALIVE

Talks exclusively to us about SF and Live Literature in the UK

Gary Goodman - Bring out your dead - Visions

Ben Murray considers the Alistair Cooke Memorial Lecture.

Interviews China Miville

Jay Clifton catches up with China.

Articles A Writers Secret Passion

The (Live) Literary Secret

Bring Out Your Dead Versions of Reality Columns Bread no butter

Meredith Okell responds to the hasty claims that poetry is dead.

Edric Brown ponders reality.

Notes from America Artwork Perfect Eye Reviews

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Sam Collins shares some of his haunting work.

Janet Aspey introduces new books from publishers.

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3 Let Cha Bleed It

Editorial by Ben Murray Image by Sam Collins

Ben Murray is a writer based in London

A Writers Secret Passion: Rumble in the Jumble

7 Live Literature: Bread no butter

Column by Dan McTiernan Image by Agatha Brown

This volume demonstrates the skills of a masterful storyteller.

Interview by Alexander Laurence

that innately scare us the most.

What We Know incorporating writing

Is Impossible Is In Fact True: China Miville

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Article byTheodore Koulouris Image by Sam Collins

Notes from America: Live Literature

Drawing Poetry: Gary Goodman

incorporating writing Pefect Eye: Sam

Steinbecks Travelogue of War

Article by Claire Boot Photographs by Andrew Oldham

Versions of Reality: Finance or Fairies?

So the situation that we see around us is a vision of an infinitely dull future

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