What I Loved: City of Bohane

I've just finished 'City of Bohane' and am full of expletives and remarkable wardrobing ideas. But I have no west coast future city of hoors and dream pipes near me, so the magic can't continue too long. And magic it is. Of the dark kind.

Last year I was lucky. I'd not read, or even heard of (why do I always feel like I'm confessing on here) Kevin Barry, but I went to a wordfactory 'Irish' event on a hot Saturday evening that happened to be during Pride in London, and Kevin Barry read. It was a brilliant short story and perhaps more importantly, his delivery is so animated and accented that once you've heard him, he's reading to you from the pages in your hands.

If you haven't read City of Bohane yet, let me pick a random page and sling you a sample…

"Mouth of teeth on him like a vandalised graveyard but we all have our crosses." (p. 4)

"See him back there:
A big unit with deep-set eyes and a squared-off chin. Dark-haired, and sallow, and wry. The kind of kid who whore his bruises nicely." (p. 53)

I want to go on, to get you a line that's setting, maybe about the Back Traces, de Valera Street or Big Nothin'. But instead I'll leave you with the thirst to read it yourself, and a little help from Kevin to get you started.

Kevin Barry reading from City of Bohane from Transmission Arts on Vimeo.

What I Loved - work I have read and must share

On being back

I flew back to Melbourne on a one-way ticket a week ago.

Last February I visited for a month after my job 'finished'. I loved it - spending time with my family, reading, swimming - but I remember looking out the window as I drove interstate or caught the train to the other side of town to visit a friend, thinking I just couldn't see myself in Melbourne. I couldn't see where I'd live or what I'd do.

I was ready to return home to London.

Thanks to some vigorous encouragement by my good (writer) friend Amanda Saint, while she established and built-up Retreat West, I moved writing out of hobby status and got involved in the writing world. It started with this blog and Twitter (using Books for Dummies and a healthy vocabulary of swear words), as well as reading more widely, studying as I read (it was a good excuse for the time I spent doing it), and producing more and more of my own work.

By the end of 2013 I'd been to Word Factory UK and Spread The Word events, retreats by different fabulous people in Sheepwash, Exmoor and Portugal, and almost met my 25k word short story collection target.

And I'd decided it was time to move back to Melbourne.

Lots of things went into that decision, and yesterday while my dad was driving me to another appointment, I said to a friend how strange it is to look out the window and feel the thrill of being here. A sense of belonging again.

Tomorrow I'm going to listen to Lisa Dempster, Director of the Melbourne Writers' Festival, query a panel of experts on 'Writing Now.' Next week I'll be at The Wheeler Centre to hear David Vann and then I'm meeting at Writers Victoria to talk about volunteering with them.

And on Saturday I'm going down to a beach house where there's no internet. I'm going to read, write, hopefully throw away the crutches (finally) and fall into the salt water, and feel like I'm home again.

Last year was a significant one for me, and it feels now like it doesn't necessarily matter where I am, so long as I'm writing and around people who love words as much as I do. I can't wait to get involved with, and share my experience of, the writing world down here.

Not quite Simon Hoggart's week (The Guardian)

If I run into someone today, or tomorrow, and they ask how my week's been, I'm going to have to warn them that they may not actually want me to respond. Because I won't be able to say, yeah not bad, or pretty good thanks. I won't even be able to stop at, you wouldn't believe how good my week's been. I'll have to give them this:

Tuesday:
Booked 3 night trip to meet my 18 year old nephew (and godson) in Belgium. He's part of an organised tour of battlefields with a group of his peers from Adelaide. It's the longest consecutive time I'll have spent with him since 2009, and I will try not to hold his hand and hug him any more than I can sneak in without him or his friends noticing.

Wednesday:
Went for a long lunchtime swim and came home to the best rejection letter I've ever had - Graham Connors (Number Eleven magazine) compared writing to a successful writer.
Watched the Swedish film, Play. It's 118 minutes of cinematography so beautiful you could cut and hang most shots as an exhibition. It's 118 minutes of creeping tension that reminded me of the 102 minutes of Martha Marcy May Marlene.

Don't remember dream details but they had an edge.

Thursday:
The text for this week's Reading To Write class was The Field Guide to Getting Lost, and the critique of my homework helped me to shape it into a story almost ready to submit.

Editing ideas meant I couldn't sleep properly.

Friday:
Walked through Wandsworth Common to the Earlsfield Cemetery for Hauntings: Ghost Stories at The Chapel and sat on heated pews for candlelit readings by Tania Hershman, Alex Preston, Adam Marek and Stella Duffy.

Creativity, and maybe a post-event drink, meant I didn't sleep well.

Saturday:
Joined 24 other writers for the Start Small: Think Big masterclass - Alexa Radcliffe-Hart has posted a great write-up of the weekend here - and (not in anyway detracting from the other sessions), I was introduced to and mesmerised by David Vann. When he began I feared it was going to be far too academic for my brain to absorb, but very quickly he worked incredible intelligence, knowledge and passion into a talk I could have sat listening to for another few hours. Whoever it was that suggested he do a TED talk, here here. Came home and ordered Legend of a Suicide.

Couldn't stop thinking, wrote "important ideas" down during the night, didn't sleep much.

Sunday:
7am coffee in bed, 8am coffee in local cafe writing and watching Clapham wake up with blue sky. Joined the group at Birkbeck College for more incredible hours with inspiring talents, and thanks to Carrie Kania and Deborah Levy, came home in the dark with an ambitious but do-able plan for the focus of my writing to finish up 2013, the year I 'came out'.

Couldn't sleep, excited about the plan.

Monday:
7am coffee with Evie Wyld. Well the last 70 pages of After The Fire, A Still Small Voice. Sat silent in my reading chair after finishing.

Wrote my list of targets for the week:
- 3 x short shorts to send to workshop partners for feedback
- 1 x short short to update following magazine editor's feedback
- 2 x longer short stories to do last couple of drafts and re-send to workshop partners for feedback
- Draft cover letter while I have the tips and notes from yesterday's session with Carrie Kania

Will I sleep? Don't really mind. Maybe I'll lie awake thinking about how lucky I am, thinking of how many people I've met and shared passion, laughs, coffee and beers with this week, and thanking the people who give their time to make all of these opportunities.

We all need a lighthouse of our own...

We already knew the setting was going to be stunning, but when you stop in a pub not more than a few miles from where you need to be to ask directions, and the barmaid and three regulars haven't heard of a lighthouse nearby, certainly not one that you can stay in, well it just becomes even more exciting.
When we found the entrance, drove around a couple of narrow hair pins and dropped down a steep steep hill, the silence in the car was utter awe.
Amanda welcomed us and showed us around the long building that has been respectfully restored to feel warm and lived in, but the bedrooms are quite stark. And why would you distract a room with too much decoration when you have an outlook across the Bristol Channel.

Many writers draw from it and have their own theories of its lure, but which ever way looking out over a body of water effects you, with moors and sheep and wild ponies on the hills behind you, well it's bound to spark something creative.
I find it unbearable to look at so much water and not slip in. Even knowing it's freezing beyond bearing, each white crest curls at me like a forefinger. I thank my childhood for making me a fish with legs, but last weekend I settled with the sunset from the rocky goat track, looking west towards Lynmouth.

Apparently I could ramble on and on about the weekend, so I'm restricting myself to two highlights:

Mealtimes
My vegan experiment stayed in London. In fact I treated myself to a Jamie Oliver bacon and egg sarnie before I caught my train. And over the weekend I enjoyed hearty homemade meals and puddings - chilli, chicken stew, vegetarian lasagne, apple pie, chocolate mousse with raspberry coulis...ok, you get the picture. Veganism is now reinstated, with many fond food memories. And a takeaway container in my freezer (thanks Amanda).
But apart from the food itself, the dining table was where we all came together, and really talked. Our group writes poetry, quirky flash fiction, short stories, humour, dark, women's lit, the (extra)ordinary...so it didn't take long to get into rich conversations, and establish links that spread from Wales, to London, to Cambridgeshire to...well Amanda's on her canal boat adventure now, last heard heading north.

Alison Moore masterclass
On Saturday afternoon, Alison Moore's smiling face appeared at the bottom of the stairs and we had wind-whipped introductions. Her taxi driver had asked if she was going to a hen's party - there's got to be a 'setting' story there.

The focus for our afternoon was setting and landscape in literature, which opened with reading and discussing extracts from a selection of books that all went on my to be re-read list, including Wuthering Heights, Waterland and The Woman in Black. And now elevated to the top of my must read list, 'If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things' (Jon McGregor) for his use of urban landscape as powerfully as the others use the wildness of moors and weather.

When Alison asked if we'd like her to read one of her short stories from 'The Pre-War House and other stories,' my enthusiasm nearly deafened my neighbours. Sorry about that guys. But I do love being read to.
Somehow the afternoon just ran seamlessly from listening to writing to discussing each other's writing to listening, afternoon tea, writing, discussing, and then Alison had to return to civilisation.

It's no wonder her events schedule is so extensive - I'm looking forward to the incredible line up at the 'Start Small Think Big' weekend workshop in November.


This was the first residential retreat for Amanda's Retreat West, and I have no doubt that it's the beginning of a very successful programme. Her plans for future stays in remarkable settings, with authors lined up to hold workshops around themes, it's a recipe for rewarding experiences all round. If you can get away from families and work for a few days, you can know that you'll be well looked after and there'll be lots of time and space for writing. And, if you're lucky, you'll make some great new writing friends.

Before I went to Exmoor last week I'd been struggling with a bit of a word rut. Now I'm back, writing, editing, smiling. And vegan. And now I really must head to the gym.

Soundtrack for the weekend? Of course I'm listening to The Waifs

Friday night at Foyles

The inaugural Spread the Word short story prize was celebrated with a panel, Prosecco and of course readings.

Bidisha and Tania Hershman (two of the three judges) were on the panel, chaired by Paul Sherreard, and they created a really friendly and informative space for the event.

It was interesting that one of the replies to the (impossible) question - what makes a great short story - was that the reader feels an effortlessness by the author. That the story has been told in exactly the right sequence and words - everything that's said is what needs to be said, no more no less - and there is no obvious over-working authorliness.
(That's not a direct quote of course - usually I do take some notes during these sessions, but I was so happy listening, like you are at a good dinner party, that I didn't want to disturb the vibe with my notebook).

So to me the judges' discussion was a similar success, as an honest and informal conversation between articulate champions of the short story form.

I particularly liked the Tania Hershman test of a good story: it has to have an impact; you need to feel like you've ben hit. Maybe not quite left black and blue, but you want to feel like you've gone through something and it stays with you. Again, for me the evening had the same outcome.

Bidisha read an extract of her short story, 'Dust', published in the anthology Too Asian, Not Asian Enough and Tania read 'Her Dirt' from her collection, my mother was an upright piano.

Not sure if there was a deliberate theme there ladies?  But the theme for the short story competition was 'RITUAL'.

Sue Lawther, Director of Spread the Word, arrived late to the event, with a very fine excuse. She'd been at the decision-making discussion selecting the winner of the inaugural Young Poet Laureate, to be announced by Carol Ann Duffy in the Houses of Parliament on National Poetry Day next week. And no, she didn't give anything away. But she arrived to present the winning prize to the very talented and exciting Clare Fisher.

Clare is working on a collection, 'The City in my Head' and the extract of her winning story that we heard was a powerful example of the judges' earlier comments about when it works: the voice is strong and confident from the opening word, and though we didn't get to hear all of it I'm sure that it has the Tania Hershman seal of success.

AND

We'll all be able to buy the anthology of the shortlisted stories when Spread The Word launches their publishing venture. ON SHELVES FOR CHRISTMAS - beautiful print and online editions. (nb. I have no investment in this venture, I just feel strongly about this organisation that does so much for new and emerging writers).

So I met a poet, a playwright, a short story award winner who it turns out I'd seen at several Word Factory events, and thought the sign of a great night was having to be ushered out so that the bookshop could actually close!

Thanks Spread the Word and Foyles for a great night, and congratulations to those who entered and were shortlisted in the competition. It's one for others to look out for next year - dates and details apparently to be released soon.