A Childhood In Fiction

by Jane


Books played a vital role in my childhood. Forty years ago, before the advent of computers and game stations my days were spent drawing, making mud pies and, most significantly, reading. My world was one of fairytales and fables, myths and legends, witches and wizards. With no Sonic or Mario to distract me the open pages of a book were the places where my imagination took flight. Like Dorothy, I was swept away to a land of make believe.

My first school memory was being the second child drawn to the front of the class to read aloud from a newspaper, the reward for becoming a competent reader. I recall too that Sarah, my best friend, was first and though pleased for her I jealously noted that she was 5 months older and so must have received an unfair advantage.

Those early days were filled with Ladybird editions and picture books where simple texts were enhanced by pictures of handsome princes, hideous ogres and rosebud princesses. I remember too sitting in my grandmother’s high bed listening to her read more advanced texts like The Little Princess. I was fascinated by the written word and, more often than not, in my mind I became the central character. Indeed some nights, before I understood religion, I prayed that I would be left a sparkling dress like Cinderella. Of course it never happened but nevertheless the disappointment never stopped me from fantasizing.

But it was in 1973, having just turned eight, when something happened that made me not just an imaginative reader but an avid and inspired one. My grandparents took my sister and I on holiday to Portugal and one day, whilst browsing the gift shops, my grandparents stopped to peruse a rotating bookstand on the sidewalk. Exclamations abounded as on the stand they found a copy of their son in law’s first novel, Run Down. They were amazed to find it in such an unexpected place and duly bought the book and a postcard to send him on which they wrote “Run Down to Faro.”









You'd never guess from this cover that my uncle's book was published in the 1970s would you? (Possibly, it might also have contained some violence.)






Of course, for a young girl interested in books, it was exciting enough to discover my uncle was an author but whilst my grandparents enthused something even more important was about to happen. As I too spun the bookstand I found a book that would set me on course for a lifetime of reading. For there, amongst the holiday reads, I discovered The Famous Five.

I can’t remember which adventure it was now, although my favourite has always been Five on a Hike Together, but Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy awoke in me a new love of fiction. Their wonderful adventures seemed almost real and tangible; I didn’t need golden tresses or magic tinder boxes, all that was required of me were potted shrimp sandwiches and lashings of ginger beer. Perhaps it’s not surprising then that on returning to England, I made fast tracks to our mobile library and within a very short time I’d read the entire collection.










I say, what a super, corking read! Hoorah!









The library was my salvation. My childhood was relatively frugal and books were purchased sparingly but in the library I found an endless supply. Having quickly devoured the likes of Enid Blyton, Ruth M Arthur, C S Lewis, and Tolkien I moved into the adult section. No one ever queried my reading choices and nothing was off limits. It was a less politically correct world back then and thank goodness for that.

At about nine I was moved into the notorious Miss Walsh’s class. Although past her prime, freckled and with slightly hunched shoulders Miss Walsh was still sharp in intelligence and tongue. Miss Jean Brodie was, alas, but a poor imitation. Miss Walsh frequently interspersed her teaching with tales of The Blitz, London’s theatres and other curious events but when it came to education she meant business and her Speed Reading Challenge was one of her favoured tools. It was glorious to win but then there was always the catch - recounting the story in minute detail to the entire class. No doubt Miss Walsh was an oddity but if ever I thought her tales were untrue my thoughts were banished when in the course of time I inherited from her a 1935 copy of Theatre World, autographed by Laurence Olivier.

It was with Miss Walsh’s expert training I sped through the shelves of the mobile library and by my early teens my first port of call was the returns section which I would scan for interesting unread novels before heading to look for my preferred authors. With a taste for adventures with the human touch I became particularly fond of wartime tales, both fictional and autobiographical. Nevil Shute, Douglas Reeman and Alistair Maclean were firm favourites. But by then, I’d also discovered Ian Fleming and it was with Bond that my destiny as a thrill seeking, adventure loving, gun toting groupie was finally set.

Today, now I’m past my prime too and heading for Sunset Avenue my reading has diversified. In recent years, as a member of a book club, I’ve read novels that previously I would never have even contemplated. It’s been, I guess, a “novel” experience. And now, with or without my Book Club Ladies, I’ll read just about any genre and attempt any book. It’s been rejuvenating. However, without a doubt, my first true fictional love will always be the wonderful world of adventures that began on a bookstand back in 1973.

You know, over the years there’s been as much criticism as there has been praise for Enid Blyton but I, for one, will always be grateful to her for setting me on the path to a lifetime of thrills, spills and spiffing good yarns.
















Some of my favourite books which did make it onto my book shelves. Not as gruesome as my uncle's book but that witch in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was pretty beastly I can tell you.

The Ghost Poetry Project: an interview with Nathan Curnow - Part Two

by Paul

Read Part One of this interview here.

The Ghost Poetry Project is something of a rarity among poetry anthologies: it's a page-turner.  Not only is its premise intriguing (ten nights spent in ten haunted locations to explore the nature of "fear, courage, and the power of mystery and myth"), but, with each section introduced by a brief description of that particular location's history and reputation, the reader feels compelled to follow the journey... alert, breath held, eyes peeled.  And the richness of the writing leads us on.  We track each phrase, each image, through a startling broadness of range - of voice, style and vision - and frequently discover an incisive sharpness of focus that is haunting in its own right and which brings each stage of the adventure vividly to life.

From the prosaic Preparation:

My wife buys three stones for their spiritual powers, says they need
to be touching my skin.  She wants me to practice holding them as
if it's easy to get that wrong.  And all the sachets in the hotel room
I am meant to swipe for her collection.  She just loves the trim of
their packaging.  It's not stealing if they expect to replace them.

to the deftly juxtaposed Slater Bug  and Colour of Asphyxiation ("he has got to understand for the good/of himself, how much love she has to give") - so evocative that I almost found myself curling up on the floor in a tight ball and gasping for breath.  From the picturesque Postcard from Richmond Bridge ("A boy with a net, his pants cuffed high, stirs/the silt of the riverbed.  With each careful step/bright scimitars clash, a crusade of light on stone.") to the humorous Portrait of a Headless Man Wearing a Straw Boater Hat.

What was the most interesting, intriguing or scary experience you had when staying at the ten haunted sites?

It was midnight and I was standing on the 
staircase of what many consider to be South Australia’s most haunted building, a cell-block inside Old Adelaide Gaol.  I had been taken on a one-on-one five hour tour and was dead-bored and tired when my guide said: Did you hear that?  It was faint at first but enough to interrupt his stories, a tapping noise at the top-left hand side of the stairs.

The sound grew louder until it was like a cane being struck on a ballroom floor, like a rack of billiard balls breaking open.  Access to the second level was blocked by an iron, padlocked gate, and based upon what I knew of the gaol, which is run by volunteers, the chances of a prankster hiding up there was so remote it was ridiculous.  But it kept on, over and over, echoing through the entire wing.

We returned twice more and within a minute of our arrival the sound started up again. 

There are frequent sightings, day and night, of a figure at the top left-hand side of the stairs but with numerous executions and suicides having occurred in the building, it’s impossible to know who it might be.

Oh and then there was the ghost train of Picton Tunnel.  But that’s another story… 

Can you describe how you approach writing – specifically the poems that comprise The Ghost Poetry Project?  Do you start with a phrase, an impression, an observation?

The project put me under intense creative pressure, which means I now have a much better understanding of how I work.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure I could pull the project off.  I had never written so hard before, and as a result I learnt how to find poems in a very short, intense amount of time.

Arriving at each site I would scavenge for information.  I talked to anyone/everyone, listening to what they were and weren’t saying.  I took photos and brochures and remained as alert as possible to the environment I occupied.  This meant that when I arrived back home I would have enough stories, along with my own experiences, to go to for inspiration.

So yes, a phrase, an impression, an observation… these were all catalysts.  And poems often spring from juxtapositions or symbolic moments, like the story of the ‘prisoner’ at Fremantle Lunatic Asylum who desperately threw a love letter weight by a stone over the wall to a woman he’d seen on the other side.  But always there is the hard slog of working a poem into what it’s trying to be.  You write a word, you cross it out, you try another.

It’s notoriously difficult to get poetry published – especially an anthology – so perhaps you could say something about this side of things.

Poetry in Australia has been largely abandoned by the major publishers because there is this entrenched belief that poetry doesn’t/won’t sell.  And I’m not naïve, but I do think that this ‘given’ should be challenged on a regular basis.  If there are low expectations for a book then it won’t be supported with publicity, which means it won’t sell and then we’re back again to low expectations.  It’s a wicked trap, but I think that some books of poetry can be circuit breakers if given half a chance.

That’s where small presses like Puncher and Wattmann come in.  Based in Sydney, and despite limited resources, it has been punching above it’s weight for years.  It has vision and takes the kind of risks that the major publishers (who can afford to) should be taking.

"This book must have the strangest ever provenance of any collection of poetry in Australia.  Only a vampire or a Nathan Curnow could have done this... These poems come drenched with the bloody and violent  deaths central to the history of European occupation in this country.  But they are not ghoulish or sensational.  They are the real thing, both 'transparent and completely solid'."

- Kevin Brophy

Now that The Ghost Poetry Project is published and available in booksellers, what next? 

Thanks again to the Australia Council I am currently working on a new play based upon the convict stories I collected during The Ghost Poetry Project.  In particular the dog chain at Eaglehawk Neck in Tasmania.
The dog chain was a line of savage dogs that stretched across a narrow strip of land between the brutal prison of Port Arthur and the settlement of Hobart.  Any convict that escaped had to confront the dogs sooner or later and figure out a way to cross without being mauled to death.  Only three convicts ever made it across.

 
What’s your vision for yourself as a poet, playwright and performer?  What would you like to accomplish in, say, the next ten years?

I guess the plan first and foremost is to keep writing somehow.  It’s a roller-coaster of a life, and not only do you have to ride it but you have to lay the track at the same time.  A little more security would be good, but that’s often in short supply for poets and playwrights.  As long as I keep learning how to balance it all so that in another ten years I can say:  I’m still here, writing hard, interpreting the world the only way I know how, through language.

Thank you, Nathan, and all the very best for you and The Ghost Poetry Project.

_____________________________
 

The Ghost Poetry Project by Nathan Curnow
(Puncher & Wattmann, 2009)
ISBN 978-1-92145018-1

Shanta Everington Joins The View From Here

Just in time for the Christmas party next month author, Shanta Everington, joins the crew here at The View From Here.

(Cue applause as she waves- she is friendly as well as being talented!)

Watch out for her monthly article from her view of  literary life starting in December ...  

Shanta is the author of one novel for adults, Marilyn and Me (Cinnamon Press, 2007), and one novel for teenagers, Give Me a Sign (Flame Books, 2008), Shanta has an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from Manchester Metropolitan University and teaches Creative Writing with The Open University. Recent successes include a story shortlisted for The Bridport Prize 2009 and a winning entry in the Tonto Even More Short Stories competition 2009. Shanta lives in London, UK, with her husband and young son. 

Visit Shanta's site shantaeverington.co.uk

The Ghost Poetry Project: an interview with Nathan Curnow - Part One

Nathan Curnow
interview by Paul

I'm something of a mailbox junkie.  There, I've confessed it.  There's nothing quite like opening the mailbox and discovering a wad of envelopes waiting to reveal their secrets.  Why, even half a dozen bills and bank statements bring an excitement akin to Christmas morning.  So imagine my delight when, out of the empty blue, a large padded envelope was delivered a few weeks back and, within the envelope, a book: The Ghost Poetry Project by Nathan Curnow.

The best gifts are surprise gifts - unbirthday presents - as this was.  Packed and posted by a good friend, who thought I might enjoy it.  And I did.  So much so, that I felt compelled to track down its author, Nathan Curnow, and interview him for The View from Here.

Ten nights.  Ten haunted locations. One terrifying adventure across Australia.  From a gaol cell to a lunatic asylum to a night in a haunted hearse, The Ghost Poetry Project is one poet's attempt to find a language of guts and daring.  A unique exploration of fear, courage, and the power of mystery and myth.

Perhaps we could start with you describing your journey as a writer.  How did you arrive at being a poet?

About ten years ago I decided that I wanted to become an international best-selling author.  It was at a particularly lonely point in my life and I thought that if I became a successful writer, and knew myself as one, then everything would be resolved and fall into place.

I began obsessively, as if trying to gain control of my life, hungry and tenacious and so wonderfully deluded.  But my skills didn’t develop until I enrolled in a creative writing course at university.  It was there I became exposed to a wider range of texts, and saw for the first time what contemporary poetry really was.
  
I suddenly realised that there were all sorts of writers, and found myself choosing the form of poetry whenever I had something to say.  I guess the demands of it attracted me.  For some reason it just seemed a natural fit.
  
As a poet, playwright and performer, how do these different roles influence the way you work and the way you see the world?
 
Poetry and plays are very similar.  There are common elements to both, such as musicality, rhythm, economy of language, layering of ideas and symbols etc.  So for me the working process is also very similar.  But performing is something else entirely.

Performance is putting yourself at-risk in a very public, immediate and sometimes unforgiving way.  There are so many risk-factors, and that’s the adrenalin rush of it.  If it all goes well you find yourself knitted to the audience, sharing an experience as the piece reveals itself to you in a new way as well.  Or else, sometimes no matter how prepared you are, the planets just don’t align and there’s a heckler to deal with or the microphone doesn’t work.
 
With performance I’m most interested in the process of presentation/representation.  Unlike the blank space of the page the performer is far from neutral.  The audience begins to make assumptions as soon as you take to the stage.  So the performer becomes the appearance, rhythm and voice of the piece while also having to step out of the way of it, letting it speak through them as if they aren’t necessary/essential to its delivery.  It’s the art of being present and unattached at the same time.  Visible and invisible.

I’m reminded of that wonderful poem by Australian poet Sarah Day titled Cat Bird where the cat through the slow act of stalking not only becomes invisible to the bird, but in some way the bird itself.

How did The Ghost Poetry Project germinate as an idea and how did you go about developing it?

The Ghost Poetry Project sprang from an interest in fear, courage and how language works to both terrify and embolden us.  One of my kids was particularly afraid of bunyips (a monster from indigenous stories/dreaming) and no matter how we tried to explain them to her or explain how fear operated, nothing could relieve it.  Until one day a school friend told her that: bunyips only eat avocados, and right then, with those four simple words, her fear totally disappeared.

So I wanted to explore this mystery, and immersing myself in an extreme situation such as at haunted sites around Australia seemed a good way to explore fear, courage and the power of story and suggestion.

When the Australia Council for the Arts decided to fund the project there was definitely no backing out.  I chose ten sites to stay at within twelve months, a real variety of places that might give each chapter (of about seven to eight poems) its own flavour.  So I ended up in a gaol cell, an old Lunatic Asylum, a museum, a spooky mansion and even in a haunted hearse.

at four am the street sweeper brushes

the room with unequivocal light

a swift exhibition like a beating of wings

the knuckled man inside me clenching

this remarkable darkness in secret places

the gutters of my aching flesh

stiff with the drawing heaving up

leaking from the purse of my mouth

(from Unequivocal Light, The Ghost Poetry Project)

What was the most interesting, intriguing or scary experience you had when staying at the ten haunted sites?

For the answer to this, see Part Two ... coming soon. 

(Editors note: Time travel into the future for part 2 here.) 

_____________________________

The Ghost Poetry Project by Nathan Curnow
(Puncher & Wattmann, 2009)
ISBN 978-1-92145018-1

Celebs in Writing Distress: Lily Cole

by The Lone Ranger




Hi Lone Ranger

Gosh I'm such a big fan of you and like all your heroic stuff.

So, I'm writing my first novel at the moment and I'm basing it on the Adam and Eve story. My question is, there is a lot of nudity in the book and I'm not sure how graphic I should make the sex scenes? And I'm really stuck with what to call "things".

Help me Lone Ranger!

love Lily X

P.S Can you send me a signed nude photo of you riding Silver? (Just put love to Lily.)

Dear Lily

Gosh my girl, I cannot send you a nude photo of myself, get a grip. As to your question, well it depends, writing sex scenes is very hard and if not done right just come over as laughable.  First forget your Mum and everybody else and enter the world you are creating without any inhibitions. Then write what feels right for your story - is it important to describe things? Does it add to the tone and story? Is it better to leave things to the readers' imagination? If you do describe the act of sex itself, then do be careful with your choice of words, having made the decision to describe it don't come over all shy in your word choice - the reader has to believe what is going on, not be jarred out of the story.  As to "what to call things?" - it is a problem and you have to use your skill as a writer to decide which words to use - for example "tits" or "boobs" can make you sound like you are a Sun newspaper writer, but may work depending on the style of the narrative.

I'm off to have a shower.

yours
The Lone Ranger

In Defence of Prizes

by Gavin Freeguard

One of the interweaving plotlines in Sebastian Faulks’ latest novel, the state-of-the-nation A Week in December, revolves around the state of the literary world, and specifically, the state of literary prizes.

And what a state it is.

The Pizza Palace Award, the focus of one of the characters’ attention, gets a deep panning. It serves only to increase pizza sales – a winning book about Hitler is tastefully honoured with a vegetarian layer – and to provide employment for a public relations company. (And, of course, drinks for the witless glittering literati). Such is the proliferation of prizes that one of the characters, clutching her copy of a novel, ‘could barely see the photo on the jacket – a barefoot waif in a bomb site – for the prize sponsors’ bright stickers’; as her husband remarks, the book has ‘more endorsements than your driving licence’. Books are not books – they are simply commercial products like any other, and like the pizzas whose sales the prize seeks to increase.

If any of those things ever becomes true of the Orwell Prize, which I administer, you have – to paraphrase Sir Steve Redgrave – my permission to shoot me with the looks of disdain normally reserved by broadsheet reviewers for Dan Brown.

Prizes are not perfect. Many are set up by enterprising PR companies to provide themselves with work; the equivalent of going on an Easter egg hunt when you’ve laid all the eggs yourself (as it were).

Others are focused on raising the profile – or the finances – of the company associated with the prize (consider the university spending tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pounds on a prize to raise its profile).

Prizes can be led into the temptation of rewarding that which is shocking and different, rather than that which is simply good; less the shock of the new, than a philistine flock to it.

And of course, as St George himself once wrote, ‘The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them.’ Prizes in any part of the arts world can overlook outstanding works: Richard Burton, Peter Sellers and Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar between them; Radiohead have been shortlisted four times for the Mercury Prize without ever winning; I find myself enthusiastically recommending books which weren’t even longlisted for the Orwell Prize (‘the ones that got away’ would make a great feature, should any literary editors be reading). Great works sometimes don’t satisfy the entry criteria, don’t jump out at judges in the inevitably limited time available, or simply don’t jump out at the judges at all. For all the rules and regulations you can implement to ensure their integrity, for all the work you put in to getting both quantity and quality of entries, for all the rigour rules and regulations can inject into a judging process, it remains a subjective choice by a selection of human beings. If you disagree with the judges’ choice, it doesn’t mean that the process is corrupt, the judges ignorant, the prize worthless; it simply means you disagree with the judges’ choice, and they with yours. We must accept prizes for what they are, and not imbue them with an unrealistic omniscience: a prize winner can only ever be the best of the entries received, within the criteria set, according to the taste of those judging the prize, in the time available.

If we accept those limitations – and that not all prizes would themselves win prizes for virtue or value – we can see the benefit prizes have for the author, for the publisher, and for the public. For the author, a prize is at the very least a pat on the back, a vocal ‘well done’, a recognition and affirmation of their talent. The importance of the financial boon should also not be underestimated. But it can also introduce a wider audience to their work and their message – literary editor of The Guardian, Claire Armitstead, admitted to ‘the faintest twinge of regret from those of us who have always regarded her as our secret’ upon Hilary Mantel’s Booker win. From an Orwell Prize perspective, Delia Jarrett-Macauley described winning as a ‘serendipitous gift’ which provided ‘the most elegant acknowledgement of the novel’s intentions, accessibility and merit’, while Raja Shehadeh’s win was swiftly followed by an honour from the Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority, ‘a testament to the creativity which still can flourish under the most difficult conditions faced by a people’.

Mantel’s recent win also demonstrates the benefit for the publisher: credit not only in terms of a job well done, but in the bank. Thomas Cromwell divorced Robert Langdon from the top of the bestseller charts as a result of Wolf Hall’s triumph – no mean feat – although such financial success can sometimes be offset by financial barriers to entry. Catheryn Kilgarriff, MD of Marion Boyars Publishers, recently blamed prizes in part for the closing of the company: ‘Even if I get a book on a shortlist I couldn't afford the fee, so I no longer wanted to win prizes.’

I would argue that the most significant benefit a prize can – and should – have is on the public. Prizes are useful as signposts in an increasingly ‘infobese’ world, where criticism is democratised and the demands on our time legion. But prizes should also spark debate – and debate far more significant than whether a particular work is a novel or merely a novella. Longlists, shortlists, winners can all get the public talking about writing and its worth – about the skill of individual authors, the thrill of different genres and the effect they can have on each of us. Reading is, after all, about the interface between what the author has written and how the reader interprets it.

But beyond simply literary merit, the books recommended by prizes can change the way we see the world: good writing should make us think. At the Orwell Prize, for instance, we seek to reward good political writing, but also to encourage political thinking and enthuse the public about politics and journalism. In addition to awarding our annual prizes, we run discussions and debates around the country, bringing key writers and thinkers to the public. I might be biased (okay, I am biased), but it’s the sort of thing more prizes should be doing, when they can be easily dismissed as PR opportunities, as expensive irrelevances in an austere era, and as gilded metropolitan elites far divorced from the real world reinforcing their bubble with baubles and gold.

The characters in Faulks’ novel are all trying to escape the real world. The tube driver escapes to her fiction and online role playing; the literary critic to the 19th century; the hedge fund manager to worship Mammon; the Islamic extremist to worship Allah in Paradise. The literary world escapes to the Pizza Palace awards ceremony and its plaudits and product placement. Literary prizes are at their worst when they become wrapped up in their own worlds. They are at their most important when they embrace, engage with and enthuse the real world, real life, and real people.




Gavin Freeguard is the Administrator of the Orwell Prize, www.orwellprize.co.uk

Picture credit: Wiennat Mongkulmann

Competitions, Opportunities and Awards for Writers

The View From Here is growing.

Bigger, better, bolder.

Coming soon, we'll be offering writers an online update of some of the best competitions, opportunities and  awards that are currently available.  Along with details of what publishers are looking for.

And we'll be offering publishers, magazines, arts organisations... the opportunity to advertise forthcoming competitions, opportunities and awards for free.

So, pass the word around.  If you know of a competition, opportunity or award that might interest our community of writers, please let us know and we'll do our best to let others know.  Email details to:

opportunities at viewfromheremagazine dot com