Learning to write prose

 As a poet, I write very concisely. Every word means something. Over recent years I've started to write longer pieces. Short plays. Longer poems and spoken word pieces. The idea of writing a novel, or even a shorter novella, has eluded me. How do you keep writing for that long?

I've always been a reader. I read my grandmother's Jean Plaidy and Victoria Holt novels at the age of seven. Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre at ten. I'd always had a pile of books by my bed. I suppose this is why the past 25 years of my working life has revolved around books. But for the past few years I've found it harder to read. Life is hard, and circumstances take over. It's easier to go to work and then switch off. As I work as a school librarian, this is obviously not ideal.

Over this weird time we've found ourselves in, I've learned to read again. Writing has never been a problem. Writing a novel, or a short novella, has always been an ambition. To have characters who do what you want them to do. Instead of reading someone else's words. 

I wanted to learn to play piano music to accompany my singing. I can't do that and it hurts. I can write words that I love. I can write people that I love. Life is short, and brutal. We need to do things that we love, and love deeply. My novella is underway, and I love the people in it already. I'm excited to see how they progress.

Freesia

More songs as poems. This is one to be listened to loud, through headphones, full of red wine and walking towards the sunset over the sea.

Freesia /Throwing Muses(The song here}

Old home night
You bent like the jackals outside
"I wish" you lisp

What's the matter?
Don't you like the way
It all went down?

Up all night
That city hates you
Won't let you walk right
You list
You kissed your last victim

Don't you like the way
It all went down?

Creep past God
Worth a shot
You deserve it
Times are hard
"I'll drink" you think
What's the matter?
How's your heart?
All night
Eyes bright
Like the jackals outside
"I wish" you lisp

What's the matter?
Don't you like the way
It all went down?

Sunset on the floor
A red and orange doorway
Freesia from the walk home bends down low and you don't know

Rainy Night House

On a rainy day, thinking about a song I used to listen to a lot in my teens, and songwriters as poets, and painters as poets. Which is where Joni Mitchell came in, as she is all of those things. Some of her rhymes can be a bit off the mark, but the whole thing just works.

There is always a song for every day, and every situation I find myself in. It's how I cope. During this whole weird time I've had a growing song list that I listen to when walking. I listen at night with headphones on and music too loud, or drive alone with the music too loud, always remembering it's deafening whenever I have a passenger. I feel deeply, and often cry a lot, which is the effect I would want to have if I'd written those songs. Not to make people sad, but to make them feel too much. I know it's something I could never do, so I give all the credit, all the emotion, to those who can, and do.

This song came to me today when heavy, warm rain started to fall. I used to listen this, taped illegally from a vinyl album I got out of the the Oldham Library record section, loud through headphones after a night out in the rain-soaked streets of Manchester. Like most songs I go back to over and over, the words mean as much as the music. They always do...

Link to the song....  Rainy Night House

It was a rainy night
We took a taxi to your mother's home
She went to Florida and left you
With your father's gun, alone
Upon her small white bed
I fell into a dream
You sat up all the night and watched me
To see, who in the world I might be

I am from the Sunday school
I sing soprano in the upstairs choir
You are a holy man
On the F.M. radio
I sat up all the night and watched thee
To see, who in the world you might be

You called me beautiful
You called your mother, she was very tanned
So you packed your tent and you went
To live out in the Arizona sand
You are a refugee
From a wealthy family
You gave up all the golden factories
To see, who in the world you might be

Creating Through Chaos

I usually document big skies and sunsets and sea states. But in this weird few months I've done it almost obsessively. Turning social media into an online journal. Logging almost every day's sunsets. Talking to myself. Trying to make sense.

In this 'new normal', one of the many buzzwords I loathe, how and why do we keep creating? When we are being steered towards an existence that is purely work, school and home, with few other human interactions, pleasure, or creative outlets.

When everything you know suddenly stops, some parts you don't like are gone from your life, along with other parts you love.

I've felt moments of elation. I've cried myself to sleep often. I've felt happiness and soul-crushing boredom. 

Overall, I've tried to channel it. Into poems, and plays, and making, and slow learning of lovely contemplative piano pieces and making and raising plants from the stone and glass-riddled patch of dull back garden. It helps.

I've created several long pieces meant to be spoken aloud, and from the perspective of isolated women. A new way of working, that gives my often-used fairy tale women a new voice.

from Bluebeard’s Wife

It would cost him nothing

To give me up; to cast me

Aside like an odd shoe.

The old wound he carries

Masks his view of me.

Deep as it is, and scarring.

He will make no wound

Of me: I feel it too,

And share it. He

Has married an equal.

He has taught me well.

Each day he turns

The key and leaves

Me here, in his first

Bride’s dress that we

All must wear, patched

Over, altered for the

Shape of our bodies, the

Length of our hair.

But it fits me well,

Though the mice and

The moths have

Made their meals

Of it. I mean mine

To be the best fit.

from Briar Rose

Consider this: the tantalising sound of the sea;

Heard, but never seen.

And the blackbirds’ violent shouts from the turret walls

Taunting the cat and me.

The gorse is yellowly fat and sweating,

With the honeysuckle ready to burst.

Those fairies gave me many blessings:

Beauty; wisdom; kindness.

So what?

Could one of them not

Have given me the blessing of breathing

In this sweet-scented air without sneezing?

Oh, they turn up at the birth: guaranteed.

Take the gold plate, give out a platitude and vamoose.

No quality control. Of course, a princess will be

Fair and wise and kind. It’s in the job description.

No need for them to bust a gut.

All neatly tied-up and clean cut

And away, after a supper of

Goose and swan. A dainty pigeon

On the side. But there’s always one.

The Johnny-come-lately, the

Ghost at the feast. Turning up

When the bar’s drunk dry and

The party’s at the fag end.

Draft to Publication 3

Came across a draft of a 'found' poem. It always interests me to look back and see how decisions I make along the process of making the poem affect the final piece. When I first started to write poems, I used a manual typewriter (this was about 1986!) and so I could see every draft stage of a poem. Now, mostly I just type over them on screen and all my workings are lost.

I'm not sure why I made the decision to turn 'lightning' into 'lightening' in the published poem, but changing the meaning completely just seemed to work.

My favourite Pablo Neruda poem is included, because it influenced everything I wrote at the time I first made this poem. And the line 'Days, all one kind, go chasing each other' is particularly apt at the moment.

Draft

I love with the punctuality of a rainstorm,
watching your eye’s dismay. Oh, but the song
on the sunny beach, made up as you walk by the rims of anguish –
thinking I'd go into an endless ecstasy for your boozing stride,

waiting to explain to his face in a photograph; a head and I.
The others stand still around. I’d hold all the sea;
a snake coiled in the history of forever.
Love – the lungs stretch their intricate wings.

Memories of the evening; the weft of my lifelong ailment,
the length of our lightning.
A wind still hauls on them –
was held in by the blackbirds.

Published poem

I love with the punctuality of a rainstorm,

Watching your eye's dismay. Oh but the song

On the sunny beach, made up as you walked

By the rims of anguish. Thinking

I'd go into and endless ecstasy for your boozing stride.

I wait to explain to his face in a photograph.

The others stand still around. I'd hold all the sea;

Love -- the lungs stretch their intricate wings.

Memories of the evening;

The weft of my lifelong ailment,

The length of our lightening.

A wind still hauls on them

Held in by the blackbirds.

Here I Love You

Pablo Neruda

Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.

Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.

Here I love you.
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.

The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.