PIYE and Novel Extract

My writing is now available in America. Issue's #1 and #2 of PIYE (Party in you Eyesocket) are available in Sherwood Forest Zine Library in Austin, Texas.

http://sherwoodzinelibrary.tumblr.com/post/33370752941/101112

My friend, Ionie Ince, is the creator and editor of PIYE and she let me edit some of the short stories of issue #2. It's available for £4 from http://partyinyoureyesocket.tumblr.com/ where we are currently accepting submissions for issue #3. It's a new anthology for short prose mainly in black comedy, science fiction, fantasy, thriller genres.

It's available from News From Nowhere on Bold Street, Liverpool as well.

An extract from my newest novel:

"'I've got older, you haven't aged a bit,' Sally said.

'I'm ageing. Just slower, I guess.'

'But you look exactly the same. Have you found the fountain of eternal youth?'

'No.'

'How's life.'

'Boring. How's yours?'

'Okay. I'm so happy I'm an actress. Are you proud of me?'

'Yes.'

'I've just turned thirty.'

'I know. I remember your birthday. Would have sent you a card but to be honest I didn't think we'd see each other again.'

'Would you like some more coffee?'

'Please.'

Sally ordered more coffee. There was a silence for a moment. Then she said, 'I've been thinking about you, Catherine. That's why I called. And now I see you, I'm glad I did.' She sipped her coffee. She tore a paper sachet of sugar and slowly tipped it in. She stirred it with a wooden stirrer. She did this very methodically as if so practised in the art of coffee drinking. She sipped it again and gave a vague, sub-conscious smile. 'How old are you now?' she said.

'I'm forty-four,' Catherine said, somewhat embarrassed.

'But you look twenty-four. Why is that?'

'I don't know.'

'I wanted to ask you if you had a secret to your looks. Your skin. Your eyes. What is it you do?'

'I don't do anything.'

'Oh.' Sally sipped the coffee again and left a red lip-print on the cup.

'Sometimes,' Catherine said, 'I think I'm not going to die. Why is that?'

'I don't know.'

'I was almost killed in a car accident coming down here.'

'Oh my God.'

'But I didn't die. Would think I was crazy if I said I don't think I would have died.'

'I don't know.'

'For years I've never gone a day without thinking of David Milton. Ever since he died I've always wondered why that had to happen to him. And I know why. He was fixing the TV. The TV I'd told him to fix. Why didn't I fix it.'

'He was an engineer. He knew that kind of stuff.'

'I think I'm being punished.'

'Don't be stupid. There's no reason you would be punished.'

'I think I'm being punished for David's death and now I'm going to live forever.'

'Are you serious?'

Catherine sipped her coffee. It tasted good. They ordered some more. The rain stopped and the sun shone and reflected off the raindrops on the window. The light lit them both up.

'Where are you staying?' Sally asked.

'Some hotel.'

'Stay with me. I have a spare room. You should see my house anyway.'

'Okay.'

They got up to leave. Some people took a photograph of Sally as they walked out."

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Cold Coffee

Cold coffee while I write. I wear my glasses but they don't really help me focus. I wonder if I really need them or I need something else. I was reading Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I'd been told to read it ages ago. I bought it in News From Nowhere while I was looking for PIYE #2 which I'm in and I help edit. http://partyinyoureyesocket.tumblr.com/ I had to walk back to work in the rain. It was the first time in work I showed some people my writing. I guess they liked it. It was the short story called Man Smoking on a Wall, it's about a man who is sat on a wall, smoking a cigarette and talks to this other guy who seems curious about him. The smoking man then goes on about loneliness and feeling worthless. I was having these ideas of weird self-immolation fascinations and I read about the Buddhist monk who burned himself alive. The smoking man describes a man smoking on a wall who burns himself alive with a cigarette. Then the story ends. I like my short story style which I think I've adapted since I first read Hemingway in 2007. I've been told nothing happens in what I write, but I write scenes and they're like those real-life scenes, like talking to someone, where nothing happens but you and someone else talking. You can get so much out of those words than the actual actions.

Unfortunately I've become too good at ending suddenly, so it makes it difficult to write my novels. The chapters seem cut-up into vague scenes.

Here is an extract from my new novel, which is untitled:

"Two people sitting on wooden chairs holding hands. Outside fireworks, silent behind the window. Red, green. Flash-bangs without the bang, light up the room for one second every few seconds, revealing their hands drooped in a concave arch between the chairs, glowing, one part hairy and thick the other thin and girlish. The two sit fixedly in front of the television which lights them up just as the flashing of the fireworks outside. It flashes, blasting away the blueish dark now and again, and on the TV are the familiar viewing of the outside world. Red, green. The flash-bangs. War-like world on TV. The fireworks above Big Ben the new dome everyone talks about, in the papers, like some alien craft. Must be some alien things going on, the second millennium ends and what happens? War, death. They think something alien is afoot. They struggle to believe the world won't end now. But the world will end now. It will end for many people in many different ways and that strange, alien assumption they press on and on about is something like a bad dream. But some don't believe the bad dream has happened; some don't believe the bad dream will happen.

The TV, a fat Panasonic which had never been serviced once due to its flawlessness, showing the last of the fireworks, a red and green dissipating into the black of TV space, suddenly gives out and dies, revealing the black of TV space to them once again, now without the fireworks, only like ghosts, the reds and greens reflected from the outside and look almost sickeningly sweet as they bang in some false one-second sunlight.

'The television has gone off,' she said. 'What do we do now?' They parted hands. Their hands flopping to either side of the chairs, dangle like tree vines. Their fingers hooked in the same position as if remembering the previous embrace.

'What do we do now? We can watch from the window, I suppose,' he said. He went to the window to watch the fireworks light up the sky, the dark clouds lit up looked like scars. 'Catherine,' he said. 'Come to the window. It's just as good as the TV.'

'No, I don't want to look out the window. It doesn't interest me like the TV does. Can't you fix it? Can't you do something about it?'

'I'm not fixing the television on new years eve,' he said.

'But David,' she said, 'it's a minute after midnight. So it's not new year's eve any more, it's new year's day.'

'Oh, it's January now, isn't it. It's 2000.'

'That's right.'

'Has the world ended?'

'It has for me if you won't fix the television.'

Catherine sat and watched the blank screen, stubbornly glancing at the reflections on the black glass, wondering if this meant the end of her life or someone else’s. She was 35 years old and was losing the ability to stay happy at times, as if the world had sucked the life out of her before ending, and she hated being 35, not that she was older, the oldest she had ever been in her life, but that it was so confusing. She hadn't been this confused since she turned 15, an adolescent with the smells and looks of the earth that both disgusted and delighted her, but at thirty-five she had been through that and was a woman and the confusion just made her mind want to shut down and not work out any of the world any more, to just sit and watch the television. Only if it was on, mind. And it wasn't.

'Fix it,' she said. 'Fix it now.'

David, a tall man with thin hair and who always wore this tweed jacket indoors and outdoors, stood facing the window, ignoring her. Outside he saw three people stood at their gate across the road with what looked like small glasses of brandy in their hands, casually falling into mere movements of jest. One of them was Kate “L.A.” Wallace – the L.A. Meaning Los Angeles because she was an American, though she wasn't a Californian, she was from Chicago, David supposed Kate had been Hollywoodised in the eyes of the British, that all Americans were movie stars, and the fact that he thought of the word “movie” instead of “film” made him that slightly more Hollywoodised than he would have liked to think. The reason he looked at LA, stood in the dark, lit orange by a lamppost and an orange dot of a cigarette in the mouth of the man next to her, in a small dress, exposing each long bare leg, each curve of her, was that he was in love with her. He was unfortunately in love with an American. He was surely to be even more Hollywoodised if he did anything about it. So he didn't. Besides, he had Catherine. A 35 year old with the constant look of someone without a hope in the world.

'Why don't you listen to me?' she sulked. She had her hand pressed to her face, leaning into it and stuck out her lip.

David turned around. 'Sorry,' he said. 'What is it you want?'

'I want you to fix the television.'

'Why do you want me to fix it right now?'

'Because I don't have anything else. Now please fix the damn TV!'

David got on his hands and knees and in the early hours of the new millennium he fixed the broken television. It took him three hours, crossing over wires and checking the slight connections inside the box and opening up the screen to the television organs the colour of red and green spilled over the floor, the same colour as the fireworks, and the brown wires, the live wires, he separated with thumb and finger as if they were delicate worms filled with some humming danger of death, despite the neutral and earth wires being just as dangerous. He cut a wire with a pair of pliers and tried to cross thread the copper wire inside to a chock-block which he hooked up to a tester machine he had with his tools. The machine beeped and said the connection was good. If he was in work he would write a serial number and the date (1^st January) and stick it to the appliance to say it had passed an electrical safety test. It seemed the TV's electrical connection was fine so he hooked it back up to the mains, precisely like a puzzle, and made sure each wire was colour coordinated correctly, and it seemed they were, so when he had hold of one wire with one hand and another wire with the other, he didn't expect that when he plugged it back into the mains that he would have over 250 volts shoot through his body at the speed of light, throwing him back half as fast, allowing him, for the present time, to visualise his 34 years on this planet, 34 years of the 20^th century which had come to an end just like that, a fitting end, on his knees, fixing a TV."

Now and again I invoke David Foster Wallace but I try not to. Most writers will mimic what they read. It's almost impossible not to. I'm curious how I am as a writer and I suppose I'll only find that out once people read my writing, though I should neglect my laziness in place of some proactive publications and at least try to find an agent (I was turned down by Curtis Brown which seems to have put me off).

I have three complete novels written. One is a final draft. Though I've come to hate it, which I won't explain since it annoys me when I try to explain my hatred of the things I write and people don't get it, though I think it's something to do with having to read the same sentences over and over, reading what's not good so as to fix it, and now, in my head, it's a terrible piece of work. I suppose that's why I've been writing more and more, trying to finish another new book after another.

I recently read this poem out at The Pilgrim pub:

A Night at 2am

Your presence reminds me

How thin the air can be.

When I get drunk

Leaves grow out of me,

Branch at my arms,

My legs rooted to a chair.

Old Buddhas of temporary streets

Are looking at the time: 2:15am

This place is snoring.

Silent as ladybirds.

My eyes are moving,

I can feel them. 2:20am.

You change the taste of the air,

How dare you choose who you care about.

It was for In The Red Magazine which had been published in that magazine last year. It wasn't the best of reading I've done. I suppose I was put off by having not read out for six months and was just beginning to come down with the shingles virus which put me out of actions for two weeks. It was the most painful illness I've ever had. My whole body hurt. Terrible nerve pain. I was told I could have written something about it, but I never really use material like that straight away. I'll probably use it for some other piece of writing later on. I made a new collection of poems. I have 18 good, edited poems. Not much since they were taken from piles of about 100. I'd publish a collection of poetry but to be honest I'd rather publish fiction first.

I read that the poet Gillian Clarke wrote a poem for display in John Lewis Cardiff. http://www.literaturewales.org/news/i/142017/ It was penned in honour of the department store. It made me think, really, since I work in a John Lewis, why a poet would bother to write about such a place. I don't mind my job, but I wouldn't write a poem about the place. John Lewis run this weekly magazine for internal news and things and I was asked why I don't go in it, apparently I'd make an interesting story. I told them no. I just wouldn't want to compromise my image by aligning it with the store, or with any store, and I don't know why. I was told I'm too modest and I'm making it harder on myself to make it as a writer if I don't promote myself. I guess I'm more camera-shy than anything. I'd rather go unnoticed than celebrated.

The Art of Struggling

The art of struggling to achieve some success comes at a price of over exhaustion, lying down seemingly forever and unable to keep your eyes open until the day is gone, and all you had was some hours very early in the morning spent stacking shelves in a department store. Of course, this price may or may not be worth the outcome. Depending on what outcome you're after.

I, for one, am after at least some success with my writing. I'm struggling now because it makes me so tired and frustrated. That I don't know what I'm doing and that self-doubt, no matter how how much the rule insists that you avoid such a fear, is always present like a shadow.

I suppose it's with knowing every word and every sentence I've written of my novel so far. Like when you repeat a word over and over until it loses meaning. There is nothing else but what it is. I have nothing else but the words. And it's annoying when it gets to the point that I only have the words and other people who read it can see more into it. People who can tell me if it's good or if it's not good enough and in retrospect I then see it. It's like I'm staring at a brick wall and my friends look through a window.

I've written 27 chapters so far. That's about 40,000 words. It is in first person present tense. It was originally in present, I changed it to past, and I changed it back to present. I was going to change it back because I've read some people don't like first person present tense and that it's too intimate and almost suffocating. Terry Pratchett said this and I'm not a fan anyway. My friend said the present tense is much better.

The only books I know of in this tense are Fight Club and One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest. Also, Black House by King and Straub, which is a long novel and I read that ages ago, I'd totally forgotten it was written this way. So if I was to write in this tense I would be in a small group of novels that do have a kind of style to them. And another friend of mine, who is further into his novel, said that mine did have a style to it. The immediate voice, introspective and funny, all come from the immediacy.

It's kind of poetic to say things happening right now, though it is close to second person like most poems are written in. Most short stories are present tense. I do write like this naturally though. I like to write 'he says' or 'she says' and be so immediate and intimate as if the narrative is my actual thoughts. And I suppose some writers can get away with it only if they pull it off really well. And I think I'm able to. People can be deterred when told they're not good enough. Though, I wish I wouldn't tell myself I'm not good enough. Maybe I should stop re-reading my work so much.

Helix Piercing

This is what I did to my ear. I don't know why I decided to do it, all I know is that I did just decide and went and got it pierced. I had my lip pierced 3 years ago (not anymore) and this hurt a lot more. It wasn't so bad with the actual piercing bit, but it still hurt and a couple of hour after, it hurt a lot more. It's been a week now and it's healing quite well.

The guy who did my piercing was talking to me about writing because I told him I was a writer and he told me that he did a tattoo on Frank Cottrell Boyce, the writer of 24 Hour Party People and Millions. I told him that I'd met Frank at uni when he did a talk and that my tutor knows him personally. When I told my tutor this she laughed and said she'd love to know what tattoo it is. It's funny because I knew Frank was from Liverpool but that tattoo parlour was right near where I live. I didn't know he was from like round the corner from me.

Reading Out and World Book Night 2011

I read at the "Next Up Showcase" at the Bluecoat last Thursday. I was chosen as one of three from my University. There were others from Manchester, Chester, and Edge Hill Universities reading. There were 12 in total and I was seventh. I knew the man who was before me and that was when I got nervous because I knew I was up next. I'm usually very nervous (and this was only my second reading) but I was unusually calm. I drank half a pint of beer and tried to stay focused (I met the third guy from my uni and he was up first).

It came my turn and the woman who was hosting gave me quite a good introduction, although (and we joked about this afterwards) when she quoted a line from my work, which she's meant to do, she read out my opening line. My tutor said it was one of my best lines, and she almost ruined it by quoting it like that. The line was: "A black hole opened up in my living room."

I read it well. Though I didn't look away from the page on the lecturn, I didn't want to lose my place. I got some laughs at the funny parts and held their attention at the evocative parts. Later on in the pub someone thought I was reading from an actual novel, and I had to say No it was mine. I was surprised at how many liked it, and some said I was one of the best. A man stopped me and I thought he was giving me his card, like an agent or something. He was a photographer, and showed me a picture on his camera of me reading. I wrote my email address down for him to send me the photo. (Haven't got it yet).

I was a volunteer for the first World Book Night. I was given 48 copies of Seamus Heaney's poetry to give away for free. I left copies on the train, in the train station, in a bus stop, in a phone box, on benches, with a message inside saying things like "You've found me!" and "Have you thought about reading poetry?" The rest I gave to my friends and family.

It was a good thing to do, though I should have chosen a novel to give out. It was out of 25 titles.

Long Poem Ideas

I'm thinking of writing a long poem of the size of The Waste Land and Howl, by merging some poems I've already written, including my poems Transition and Modern Life, which would in effect kill those poems, but for the sake of one greater one. I don't know, it might work, it's pointless having those poems that I do nothing with, and I could always keep them separate anyway. One of the best things I learnt was not to cling onto the things I write. You should treat your writing as useless until artful. If they're are useless, it won't matter if you attempt to destroy them to form something different out of them.

Anyway I just wrote this:

Holy me and holy you,
The great Don, Donnie, Donald,
Rob, Robbo, Roberto, Oh Oh Oh!
And Oh, great, too, the Ja, Jimmy, Jay,
Beginning here and there where me,
Your only God, hysterical, of fucks –
Fuck fuck fuck!
And ask them, great minds in the sky:
'Why don't you fuck?'
And see them dead living singing
Songs thru beards and teeth of white suns
Burning burning inside outside glorious words
Where always always lonely alone
Running screaming crying, tears burning down
Soft fat cheeks let steam in the ocean
Of great mystical calm and soothe
The only mind on Earth saying fuck!

Just Something I'm Thinking About

I've just found myself writing the end of my novel. I'm not near-finished, I just realised that I wanted that put in the end, so I've been decided what to do with certain characters and where to place them, quite surreal that I'm writing the end of it though. But this novel is more trouble than it's probably worth. It's already had the longest workshop discussion in class, going onto the next day by email, with one person threatening to quit, and then me discussing my 'future' on the course with my tutor because not only can I no longer afford to pay for it, but I just don't want to anymore. I'm only staying for my friends there, whom my tutor told me are my sense of security and protection, which made me feel quiet good, because they are, and I'd been in a pretty bad way recently, and being in that class with someone was hard for me, though I was still able to bite my lip and carry on and then pitch my novel idea to an editor as part of my assessment.

Certain things have made the class fall apart. People turning against each other in a mad wave of hysterical depressions that overwhelm us all, and three of us laughing our heads off at the mere thought of letting those things break us down, because we can write well and if either of us leave then there's less hope.

I stopped being sad but then returned to it when I think back. It was a tough week. Quite pathetic really, but that's why I don't talk about it, and got on at work, and stopped lying around. I know I have friends I can trust as well as people I no longer trust, which hurts, and there's nothing I can do about that.

My Website: http://www.student.ljmu.ac.uk/mcamholl/

Website

Been a while without posting. I'd been making a "Writer's Website" for my Masters, which took up so much time, and I then decided to edit out 6,000 words from my novel and re-write that number back in, so I'm still up to 40,000 words. I'd submitted an extract to a workshop last week and got 'mixed' reviews, but mostly positive, which was good, because at least I know this style I'm writing in is working. A weird kind of formal/informal mixture of dark comedy. The Absurdist was coming out in me, but at least people understood the scenario, unlike in the past when it was just nonsense.

Here is my website: http://www.student.ljmu.ac.uk/mcamholl/ It only works well in Internet Explorer, otherwise it drops below the screen.

Poetry Reading

I did the reading on Wednesday and it went very well. Although, having kept myself free from nerves for the entire day, I fell nervous to the point of being sick as we walked to the building. I sat near the front of the Everyman Bistro drinking water, and I'd been unwell for a couple of days (this being the day before I went on antibiotics) I thought I might either vomit on stage or collapse. I didn't, I stumbled over one word and hate the sound of my voice in microphone, but it went down well. And because they thought I'd still be in class (I'd left early) they put me last. But I'm glad I did it, it's like breaking down a barrier for myself, and I'll feel a little more comfortable doing it again.

I read out Explosion #1 and #2 but I made crossings out on it while in class.

Explosion #1


If we rummaged here in the bedroom,
We from earthquakes –
Would feel the explosion,
As black smoke blacks out the black sky,
A red to the left of the window
Embers like fireflies dance in the moonlight,
And you'd say: 'my heart is beating really fast in my chest.'



Explosion #2


Black night had wrapped its fingers round your neck,
Almost beside me, the fire burns outside,
Stockings now boil in a teapot
Beside an old, frail towel-hook,
In the shape of a clawed hand –
We are rustling like leaves in the dark,
Only as eyes and the occasional tooth-shine,
Or a golden onlay, broken on one side –
I imagine you: “Don't be so pregnant,”
Which then swells and bursts, or explodes,
And your other-side saying: “I'm getting married,”
As your heart beats in your chest
That is the same sound, or throbbing feeling,
In my neck or throat –
A woman who has dirty blonde hair,
Is taken away for the embers of the exploded
Car outside, that rumbles us in shifting earthquakes –
Crossed in the air, Hail Mary full of Grace,
Written all over your face,
A red to the left of the window,
Your heart was beating really fast.

Poetry Reading and Starting a Magazine

I've been asked to read out a poem next Wednesday following a prize giving for a poetry prize I didn't win, so it was good of them to let me read out, though I'm terrified at the thought of reading in front of people, I get stage fright easily, but I think I've gained some confidence in my writing recently. The main problem, other than panic (which I haven't been doing) is deciding what to read. Most of my poems aren't really good enough to be read aloud, though some of my new ones are, yet I don't really trust those news ones as much as I trust the older ones, which I grow tired of. I got it down to Three Men With Suitcases, Explosion #1 and #2, and Modern Life, the latter a much older one. Though today I've decided I could do Streets in Liverpool (title to be changed) and I'm in the middle of editing it so it's much more audible. I shall post the final edit.

What I find annoying going through my poems like this is that I'm looking through the ones I thought were my best and I'm thinking "Hmm, no, that's not good enough," and so I know I need to write a lot of new poetry and stop relying on a bunch of old ones I wrote one or two years ago.

I was told by my tutor, after having trouble defining myself to a genre, to start a magazine. I'm going to get my friends involved and first have an online magazine and gain content without really any set issue, then I'll do a print version and publish content received. The problem is, I don't really know how to go about doing it.

Writing Poems - Meeting Carol Ann Duffy and Billy Collins

I don't think it's quite worth saying how relevant it is to write poetry from one point of view of the world, where the single purpose for said writing is that single and actual functions; though every time I write poetry - it will come about like some kind of celestial or biological function - I'll write about five or so "good" poems, and what I mean by good is that I choose not to throw them away and believe that with the one good line in them they'll be forever remembered as that poem he wrote, and thus I cannot throw them away anyway.

But I've always been one to read Sylvia Plath, I love her use of language and I've seen it in no other poetry so I subsequently mimic that causing me to have written something totally cryptic that even I don't know what I have written (this happened in 2007 after reading Virginia Woolf for the first time, I didn't know what I'd written, I've not read her since). So the polar opposite to Plath I believe is Charles Bukowski, whom I also adore, and they are actually similar in that they both write confessionalist poetry (which I've written in an essay before). Bukowski made me write gritty and often vulgar language, but together I see my influence from the two. But I don't think it's quite worth saying that I read only these two poets, since I do try to read others, and one recent influence is now Billy Collins.

I saw him give a reading with Carol Ann Duffy. I met Duffy and spoke to her, told her I was doing a Masters and she signed her book Rapture for me, which I still have, but I went and got Collins' Sailing Alone Around the Room because I like his use of language, very slow and meditated like his voice, and the message/story that I neglect to put into my writing.

I wrote a poem I've posted called Three Men With Suitcases. I wrote it after I came home one night and three men with suitcases where in my way, but I was thinking to myself about a short story I wanted to write which I never got around to (it was going to be called Conversations with the Vicar, and was to be quite violent). My thoughts then moved onto these men in front of me, they were very strange, like tourists at night. In my tired state of mind I began describing smells as colours. The poem I wrote switches from outside and inside; with three men in suitcases in the way and getting past them, and inside with a man seeming to be freezing to death somehow.

I wrote this:

The best thing I ever knew
Was not yourself or what you do –
It was that time you got the flu,
Sat and said achoo achoo,
Covered in a dangerous heat
A swelling down to your feet
Skin white as a sheet,
Tongue a lump of meat –
The best thing I ever knew about you –
Not your eyes (that were blue)
Or your left foot (with it's tiny shoe)
Or your presence (which sticks like glue) –
It was your sickness inside of you
That made you want to sneeze
To explode or pop
And fall at your knees –
It was you and the time you had the flu –
It was always you and the things inside of you.

This was just something that came to me after reading some Collins and the idea that, with being sick at the time and most other people too, we're more sick than alive. And the result being, I more likely fell for the sickness than the person.

Another one:

The heat of me burns,
I glow a shade of red,
Maybe crimson or rose,
I swell and fill with dread;
Then numb to the knee
(and numb to the arm);

My skin is dried fruit
Or rotten apple skin –
Eyes are heavy,

A shadow is slit along
White wall like yin yang –

I then burst into confetti
As I drift into sleep.

This was a small thing I did to get me to write when I couldn't think of anything. When this happens I just describe my physical feelings. The confetti bit was an interesting image that came to me, the reason I haven't included it in my "good" pieces is because the first part is too weak and the end is paradoxical since 'burst' is the opposite to 'drift into sleep.' It's one of those poems that can't really be edited since a change in the metaphor will be a change in the entire thing, which isn't really worth it in the end.

Novel Extract p.28

It's hard keeping up, I now write a novel and work 8 hours a day in work, I'm getting exhausted and I'm still doing the MA Writing. Not written any poems in a while but still on my novel. I've written over 22,000 words so far. Here is another extract:


I woke up on a hospital bed, my left arm wrapped up in a bandage with dots of red like a polka dot dress. There was a dark red/crimson colour in a triangular pointing-down arrow of the cubital fossa on my arm where the needle had intravenous access and burst through the tissue, and had kept on bleeding down to my hand. It was very warm, I remember. I'd woken up very tired and cold, my lips felt swollen and raw; the abscess under my tooth had taken ground after the lack of blood, and I wondered how much infection I'd succumb to after this escapade. It was dark in the room only because there was a heavy sky about to rain (it was afternoon). Melissa was sitting on a chair. She had a slightly miserable face, which I'd done, this having me feel the muddy effects of guilt. I thought of apologising to her, but thought against it. I didn't say anything, though I did look at her for as long as she looked at me without talking, her eyes on mine very cold like icy water – I began to shiver, breathing heavily through my nose, hoping that this headache was only from the vacuous space left in the superficial vein that was now a long dead worm that stretched up to my armpit where it ached – the skin all bruisy and tender, skin paraffin-white, skin very porous, cold and dry. Melissa looked away, glancing out of the window, now becoming the only light available, shining on my sister's face, a poor pathetic thing less pathetic than me – I looked at her for minutes longer, knowing she knew I was looking at her, could not find words with which to express whatever it was I wanted to express to my little sister, who, by now, had crossed a leg and her arms, sighed once and clenched her jaw. I looked away.

Hop Farm Festival 2nd - 4th July 2010

About 3 weeks ago I went down to Kent to the Hop Farm Music Festival. Me and my friend headed down to London, but we didn't know the way, with being Northerners, and we ended up walking around Waterloo Station with heavy bags in over 20 degree heat and when we finally found the coach station, we'd missed our coach by 20 minutes. It drove us mad because we walked past that road in the first place, and if we'd walked that way to begin with we'd have made it. So we were stranded in London. A massive city, never been there before, and with thoughts of sleeping rough.

Luckily, my fiend had a stroke of genius. He said we could jump a train to Paddock Wood, Kent (£14 each), and then get a bus straight to Hop Farm. And we did! It was a long journey, I tore a muscle in my left shoulder, and we were both exhausted. We were 3 hours late, but that didn't matter. We set up our tents after I'd collapsed into the grass. I couldn't believe we'd walked so far, and for so long, through London, and I was sweating and in pain and we thought we wouldn't even get there.

After we set up our tents, we walked down to the main field - still knackered - and saw Blondie. Had some drinks and then saw Van Morrison in the evening. It was good, considering how tired we were. In the night we sat in the grass at the small acoustic stage on the campsite. I lied down and was talking nonsense as I looked up at the stars, I think I was talking about reincarnation. I suppose it was interesting to hear me talk like that, though as people said sorry as they stepped over me, they must have thought I was on something.

Next day my shoulder was so painful. But we had to do what we came to do, which was get as close to the stage as possible to see Bob Dylan. We got to the main field around 12 or 1, and watched a guy called Johnny Flynn, then The Magic Numbers, and as each act finished, and people scattered to the toilet or bar, we moved forward, and held our place. Pete Docherty did an acoustic set. Laura Marling (who has sang in Noah and the Whale with Johhny Flynn). Mumford & Sons were very good, as was Seasick Steve.

By now were were quite close, and couldn't risk moving from our spot (not that we could without squeezing through). It was kind of claustrophobic, I sat down when I could. The heat was immense. There was warnings about covering up and drinking water. I had my hat and the t-shirt I'd bought was round my neck. Unfortunately, I'd left my bottle of water on the ground and someone had kicked it.

Ray Davies from The Kinks came on and was amazing and everyone wanted him to sing Lola, which he did last. Then we moved forward one last time as he finished and we must have been about 10 feet away from the stage. I was feeling too good and there was no room at all to sit down. It was ridiculous. I stretched my legs (and I think I kicked someone behind me) so the blood would flow properly - I didn't want to faint. Bob Dylan took ages to come on, there was a weird voice over talking instead of music as his roadies set up.

Then he came on. He was amazing. I'd seen him twice before, but this was the closest I'd ever been to him. And, as my friend said, the closest we will ever get to him. I think he is the best musician in the world, and always has been the greatest lyricist. He is a living legend and I couldn't keep my eyes off him - until camera began to block my view. A bunch of girls behind me were short and could't see and tried to look over my shoulder - which I didn't mind- until I felt a hand on my torn, left shoulder.

He began with Rainy Day Women (Everybody Must Get Stoned). It was hard to know what he was singing, because he changes the sound all the time, I still liked it, though. We all sang along to Just Like A Woman. At the end, he finished the set with Like A Rolling Stone, which sent everyone crazy, including myself, screaming the lyrics into the Kentish sky. His encore was Forever Young, which means a lot to me, not that it's my favourite Dylan song, but that it was the first Dylan song I heard, and I love that song. We all sang it the way he did on Planet Waves, and he sang it his way nonetheless.

Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again

Just Like A Woman

Honest With Me

Simple Twist Of Fate

High Water (for Charlie Patton)

Blind Willie McTell

Highway 61 Revisited

Workingman's Blues #2

Thunder On The Mountain

Ballad Of A Thin Man

Like A Rolling Stone

Forever Young

No Sleep - Myth of Sisyphus

I'm listening to Blonde on Blonde on a warm rainy morning, after I cleaned the room and found about 7 socks under my bed. I love the rain, it makes a morning. I could do without it being so warm. I think I'm so warm because I've been moving about, and the hoover heated up the small room, but the window – as always – is wide open, and I think it's 17 degrees today.

I'm tired a little bit; I woke up around noon. I couldn't sleep again last night, it's probably the same thing I had about 2 years ago in Preston when I had a big manic episode that lasted about a month and I hardly slept or ate and I just got drunk and wrote. I wrote a lot of poems back then, most aren't that good, but I still have some in my collection now, which I'm still working on.

Anyway, I was crowded with thoughts and trying to write my first novel, which I couldn't do and it drove me mad. I kept looking into Naked Lunch and then into Catcher in the Rye, seeing how two very different writers can write so differently in the first person. I was stuck with this terrible terrible piece of writing I just couldn't have in the novel, so got rid of it, leaving me with nothing again, because I keep starting again. And back again 2 years ago, with my dissertation, which drove me crazy, and I re-wrote the whole thing at least 3 times. I thought, forget it, I'm not writing it simply because I'm actually not writing it. I was sat there staring forward, and then the bad thing happened.

There's a poem I've written called 12:24 am, in which I travel 35 miles to see a girl. I began to think about her. (Because it was written about a real person). I then found on my laptop old MSN conversations that had been saved somehow. I read over them and it was a terrible feeling. We were quite close. And now we're not. Thing is, at the end of the poem I write something about her going to Falmouth, this was our plan, to go together and do our Masters Degree down south, but we didn't. Now I've found out, not only is she getting married, but she has the same plan with that new guy. To move down south with him.

I wonder what would have happened if we had gone. I mean, the Masters I'm doing now has improved my writing so much, I'm much more well read, and I have some new friends. I probably wouldn't have any of that had I moved away because I would have been drooling over her all day, whining about her all the time like a lonely puppy. Such an idiot. Still, I was thinking about the other people I knew in Preston, and it depressed me to think it's been 2 years since I've seen them, and they're all split up anyway, since Uni finished and everyone went home. All scattered over England like seeds in the soil. One girl has gone to Australia. One guy is now in Canada.

I felt like doing a Rimbaud and quitting writing altogether. 60% of the time I don't get much enjoyment out of writing, it's just something I'm compulsed to do. However, people do say writing is a method of relieving stresses and things like that, maybe it's the writing that driving me crazy. I know I'm not going to quit, I'll always have the compulsion to write something, because I'll always think of it. I suppose I should get my poetry published and then my novel, and then I'll think about it.



I read over some of Albert Camus, who wrote The Stranger (L'tranger). This is one of his novels, in which he talks in relation about The Myth of Sisyphus. It is about the Absurd life of man, and the acceptance of the Absurd as something to support the idea of life or living a meaningless life. So, to accept your life is meaningless, you in effect, accept the absurdity of your situation, and thus you are free to be contented.

Sisyphus was a Greek myth who put Death in chains so no human had to experience death, which defied the Gods, and therefore, angered them. Death escaped from Sisyphus, and so he had to die. However, Sisyphus escaped the Underworld, but as the Gods were still angry with him, they punished him to push a large rock up a mountain, once at the top, the rock rolls down, and he has to start over again.

Camus uses this Greek myth as an example of the Absurd notion that life is, indeed, meaningless, but if you only accept that meaninglessness then you are freed to experience contented acceptence. Just as if Sisyphus would have acknowledged the absurd situation he was in, he would be have been fine. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

I think Camus also made three examples of absurd people, or “The Absurd Man.” The Lover, one who is a serial seducer like Don Juan. He does this because he lived a passionate life to the fullest, as he recognises life to be short-lived.

The Warrior is the man who sees life and death as one thing, and chooses action over contemplation; he wants to engage in human history and become something after life by laying down his life for what he believes in.

The Actor, one who becomes a number of different personalities to achieve fame. “Appearing creates being.”

Object of Dreams Mag - Haikus

I updated the blog because it was old and worthless. It still is, but it's much better to look at, like me in 50 years time.

I've been writing freelance for a small magazine called Object of Dreams Magazine, which is an arts, music, fashion and culture mag aimed at people around Liverpool. So I took it upon myself to call myself a Freelance Music Journalist, even tho I've written 2 small reviews for some bands and the magazine is only up to issue 2. Still, It's about getting yr name out there, regardless of money, and while I'm working my name into the arts scene, I'll be getting my actual writing out there.

Here's my review of the band Misery Guts: http://objectofdreams.wordpress.com/ and further down is the review of Dirty Tricks, which appeared in the actual print version of the mag.

Also, click here to see the actual print version of the magazine, and my small, edited review of Dirty Tricks on page 34.

To listen to Dirty Tricks click here
To listen to Misery Guts click here



Haikus I wrote last night:

The sound of yr voice
Is like heavy rain on me
It feels very wet.

and

Seagull on chimney
Sun burns thru clouds like fire
It stays 'til it goes.

My June - My Poems - In The Casa

I went outside 20 or 15 minutes before I had to read it and paced up and down in my suit, I liked how odd I must have looked. I talked to my brothers friend (who was also my friend when we were kids, I'd seen him once in 10 years). I got a cigarette off him and we talked a bit. Then he went in. Soon my sister came out, looking for me, thinking I'd done a runner. I told her to go back in. I got ready, mentally, and I went in and did it. Never been so scared.
Too bad I promised my friend I'd read out some poetry at an open mic night in the Autumn.

So I'e got back into my writing, and it helps that I've taken a month off work, and now I'm reading about 7 books at once. (Not including the 5 or 6 books of poetry).

The last poem I posted was "What I Remember of Sunday 16th May 2010." I took this, as well as fie other poems, to the workshop last week. We sat in the back room of The Casa and we talked about them (as well as my friend's extract of his novel). We both got good feedback, and I was glad about this, having put off submitting poetry for the past 9 months, which is silly, being more of a poet than a writer of fiction.

This poem, though, was interesting because it was the most prose-like piece of poetry out of the other convoluted, absurd pieces. It was like a diary extract. That was the intended effect, to just show the memories in such a mundane and simple form - a form I don't usually use.

However, I've been reading a lot of poetry, and putting some poems together for publiscation soon, and having come across T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, I realise what I want to do. I read The Waste Land when I was at University in Preston, but I didn't study it, so didn't know much about it. But I want to re-write my poem and try to adapt the simple diary-format into something not as weird and Beckettian as I do, but also not a pastiche of Eliot either, but to write a long (4 or 5 page) poem regarding one day in a strong poetic language, relevant to today.

Fur Elise - Les Tourtre

I'm sitting on my bed with my laptop on my lap, not feeling the radiated warmth because the window is open and I'm bare-footed. My stomach feels heavy from the pill I took a while ago, I think I'm anemic and de-hydrated. I should cut down on the caffine. I'm listening to Vanilla Fudge, I love the psychadelic rock music - as well as loving most types of music. I feel a bit sick. I'll be out tonight to see a band called Dirty Tricks, the guitarist is my friends' brother, and I suppose I'll end up really drunk again. Fur Elise has come on. Vanilla Fudge's take on Beethoven. I went last week and I was so out of it, I used the girls toilets and got lost and got my friends drink order wrong twice. It was funny though.

Sunshine of your Love comes on, I think it's Cream but my laptop says it's still Vanilla Fudge. Doesn't sound like a cover. I'm writing a story called The pigeons (Les Tourtre), which I'm going to submit to uni next week to be workshopped. Don't know how they'll take it. It has a French character. I might post it on here soon.

I think it is VF doing a cover of Cream. I put my glasses on, I'm supposed to wear them for reading but I never do. I've started wearing my glasses to read Ulysses. It's killing me. I love it, though. I'm still feelin a bit sick, but I'm hungry too. I don't eat very well, must be why I get like this. I wrote a poem in about a minute. It'sm rubbish, but it's something. Inspired by what I can remember from Ted Berrigan.


Waited 3 days
Took a pill
Caffine ran thru me
Spirit of things
Ran thru me;

Next day

Feelin' sick,
Eats sugar and
Drinks coffee,
Takes no more pills -

Nighttime,

I see into future,
I am either drunk
Or writing poems.

Tourtre and Fright

The Old French for Passenger Pidgeon was Tourtre. I find this interesting because the bird is now extinct. North America also had a word sounding similar, Tourte. Weird the the English word torture sounds similar, given to this exstinct bird.

The last Passenger Pigeon was called 'Martha.' Poor girl.


I did my talk on Beckett and it went well, I think, although I came very close to stage-fright. I get stage fright, and this was talking to a small group of people, my friends, and I was so nervous I felt like running out. But I did it, and my mouth was so dry you could hear it. I think everyone is fed up with me talking about Beckett now.

Skull on a Skeleton, Van Gogh

I won't do Between the Buttons, I will talk about Beckett. It's easier to present literature than music if it all comes down to literature anyway.

I've done no work on it. Except find some short films. I need a new job, I'm so tired, been up since 5am. I've spent ages on that small Hemingway book. I keep forgetting to write by hand.

I will slowly die and I'll look like him:

Between the Buttons - between Bob Dylan - and Beckett

How do I show this album is better than Bob Dylan? I can't. But out of all the music I listen to, and I listen to a lot of music, it's the only album I like above Dylan. I'm a huge Dylan fan, I like Bringing it all Back Home, blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, The Times They are A Changin', and Bob Dylan LP. But I have to talk about something for a presentation in uni next wed, and I want to talk about music and it's effect upon my writing, but I can't stick to one thing with Dylan. So I thought I'd choose the only album that I'd consider calling my favourite album. And that's Between the Buttons by the Rolling Stones.

I can't talk in front of people. I hate it. I'm just not a speaker. I have to do it, tho, as compulsary for my course. I'm not looking forward to it.

My short story, Death of a Clown, was destroyed. Criticised to death. I hated it. I actually had high hopes for it, more than the last one I submitted. Seems that whenever I write something that I like, it's not good enough. I'm not going to write shit just so that it's accepted.

But I know how to fix it. I've been reading Beckett and Pinter like I was supposed to. I don't think I'll re-write it as a play, but there'll be more focus to it. I remember my tutor in my last University told me my main problem was lack of focus, and I think I let myself down by reverting back into that lack of focus again. Don't know why I did that.

If you read Beckett:
Eh Joe
play