Snippets from the substack world: Heaney, cliché, genre and Cusk -
- "Heaney didn’t have to resort to poetic metaphor nearly as often as the rest of us, because he always, somehow, found the word he needed" - Don Paterson
- "There’s a big difference between clichéd writing and clichéd wisdom. While certain sayings that feel clichéd to us may be worn thin, they are not lazy strings of overused words. They are idioms, metaphors, proverbs, or aphorisms, and, taken together, they form a kind of common wisdom worthy of defense. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”" - Catherine Shannon
- "the publishing ecosystems for literary and genre fiction differ wildly, particularly in terms of attitudes toward money. In the present, the separation of these two worlds is often justified in terms of aesthetics. ... why did the publishing world bifurcate in the first place? The answer can be found partly in the history of the novel in English. At the start of the 19th century, fiction wasn’t a prestige genre, and genre boundaries were porous. Dickens mixed social commentary with spontaneous human combustion and ghosts. George Eliot wrote a novella called The Lifted Veil about a man with psychic powers. As mass-printed material increased in availability, class divisions within fiction began, driven by ideas about who was reading what. The penny-dreadful (serialized stories) in the 19th century came to be associated with the working poor, the dirtiness of city slums, loose sexuality, and alcoholism. ... Another answer lies in the establishment of Creative Writing as an academic discipline." - Jennifer Pullen
- "I am anti-Cusk and I am grateful for this modest opportunity to push back on her pernicious influence in the literary culture. It’s like a combination of all the vices of fiction in our time: there’s the art house preening, the willful obfuscation, the use of triviality in a way that is somehow meant to come across as portentous. ... the absence of storytelling narrative creates an inexorable pull towards babble. And this is babble." - Sam Kahn
We started a walk along the Dorset coast in Christchurch. It's the first time I've seen a ducking stool. After the trip I read that nearby there's an Anglo-Saxon watermill "unique in that it takes water from one river (the Avon) and spills it into a second river (the Stour)".
The world's shortest funicular railway? Well maybe. Maybe more of them will be needed - in some places there were signs warning about landslides. The breakers began close to the shore, loud. Though it was deep into December and it was raining, groups of people were still surfing, and of course there were many dog-walkers.
I've always like piers, even in winter. I worked on one for a while. This time we walked to the end of 2 piers. Bournemouth had a zipwire in use from the end of the pier - "the world's first pier to shore zip wire".
Bournemouth was busy with lights and stalls - ice-cream; an Xmas tree maze; miniature golf with illuminated balls. I tried a gingerbread latte and a Festive Flake - my first eat-in at Greggs. So this is Christmas.
This is from a calendar bought in Prague when Russian things were easy to buy. I've published a piece set there - "Prague '86". I was inter-railing at the time and saw many cities, rarely staying a night in them, never returning to many of them.
The Bosphorus. I liked Istanbul, and we visited several other interesting places on the same tour. I published a piece called "Istanbul" about walking on the walls, looking down on people's gardens, then descending into a suburban side-street.
Gran Canaria. I think this will appear in a story sooner or later. By the leaning tower is a swingers bar - I saw a poster about it after and didn't understand it all. The activity on the nearby dunes was a surprise to me as well.
My shadow on a ski-lift in Italy. Though I've been to Italy extensively, I've only had one Italy-based story published - "First there is a mountain". "Out of the blue" was mostly set in a basement jazz club on a Milan canal, but it could have been anywhere.
The morning after we'd spent a night in the Sahara, Morocco. The camels are tied up off-screen. An experience, but not something to write about.
A backstreet in Essaouira, Morocco, taken from outside a fish restaurant. We bought fish from the market, delivered it to the restaurant and ate there later in the day. I think some of the city's workers are taking a break from the sun and wind here. That alley will appear in a story.
Marrakech. I'd wanted to visit it in my twenties, when I inter-railed as far as Fez. I finally arrived in my sixties. My wife had a cooking lesson there, buying live chicken in the market first - a culture-interaction detail I might use eventually.
Morocco in the mountains. This multi-generational family home has appeared in the final scene of an unpublished story.
The Nile. Cairo with its non-stop car-horns, or the quieter life along the river (we stayed in Aswan for 2 nights, long enough to get to know a few streets) might feature one day. I set a poem - "Escape" - in an Egyptian hotel before I visited the country.
The Taj Mahal from afar, decades ago. You might expect a train holiday in India (Varanasi, Amber, etc) to provoke stories but nothing has happened yet.
A bookshop that focuses on whodunnits, especially local ones. It's in Botolph Lane, just opposite the Pitt Building. See their 
Near Market Square. Despite the sign, it's not just "Antiquarian Books". There are many interesting odds and ends outside - Mr Men books, maps, etc. See their 
This specialises in children’s and illustrated books. It's only a few yards from G David. See their 
On 7th Dec I attended a CB1 poetry event at yet another new venue - the Brew House. About 40 people attended. I hadn't heard of either of the headline poets. Leo Boix read from his book of 100 sonnets. Stav Poleg lives in Cambridge and has been in The New Yorker among other places. Her work sounded more substantial - rather heavy going for a reading, but a name worth adding to my reading list. Her "Memory and Geography" poem was excellent.
The open-mic readers took up over half the evening and were more varied than ever. A few of them had never performed poetry before. One person read a piece that they hadn't looked at since they wrote it in 5 minutes. Another read his piece that has just won 2nd prize in the Bridport (£1000). I read an old piece that I think I've read before. It's about time I read something new.
My maternal grandparents came from at least 400 years of south Dorset stock. Here they seem to have just come out of hiding after years underground. Maybe they hadn't seen a camera before. I don't think she ever set foot outside Dorset. He was a hansom cab driver I think.
My paternal grandmother had over 400 years of Dorset heritage too - which doesn't mean that she knew how to have fun on the beach. My paternal grandfather's ancestors for centuries lived in the Coventry area. He came to Dorset (Bovington) as a soldier and never returned north. He was good at sport and drinking, getting banned from the odd pub (allegedly). He was a pipelayer - he dug holes. He smoked to the bitter end.
My story collection "By All Means" (ISBN 978-0-9570984-9-7), published by Nine Arches Press, is on sale from 
My poetry pamphlet "Moving Parts" (ISBN 978-1-905939-59-6) is out now, on sale at the 
