Flash Festival Festival, 2026

So another Flash Fiction Festival is over. On the way to Bristol I popped into Tewkesbury and Chelmsford, both for the first time. As ever, there was a mix of first-timers and old-hands, of barely published and heavily published authors, all happy to talk with each other. Many countries were represented. Jude Higgins and her many helpers deserve all the praise they get for organising, and for setting the tone.

It's my 5th festival. On average I've had a Flash piece published each 2 months since my 1st festival, many not in dedicated Flash magazines. Much in the Flash world has changed since I first attended, and my writing's changed too. Very roughly -

• 2022 - I'd been writing/submitting Flash/micro pieces for a while with some success. I found out about the festival at short notice - so other people write flash too! And they wrote better things for a 10 minute exercise than I can do in weeks. But overall I thought my stuff wasn't too different from what was in the books on sale. The week following the Festival was exciting for me.
• 2023 - I worked at trying to understand more types of Flash/Micro pieces, especially in the prose-poetry direction - how far can you go without losing the flash element? I realised that my writing poetry and short stories complicated my production of Flash.
• 2024 - Now that I could appreciate more types of Flash, I realised I was quite a long way behind many of the other attendees. I got the impression that it was becoming easier for writers to get into Flash - more support material and Flash collections were available
• 2025 - I found I was trying to add as many types of Flash tricks as I could to each piece I wrote. A mess. Looking at the stats I realised I hadn't made much progress over the years. I'd hoped for an increase in volume of output even if the quality was the same.
• 2026 - I went to novella-in-flash sessions though I've no intention of writing one. I noticed that I'm sending Flash to the same magazines that I always have, so I'll try to widen my range.

I came back with -

• "One for the river" by Tom O'Brien (Ad Hoc, 2021)
• "Things like this" by Dave Alcock (Arroyo Seco Press, 2026)
• "A box of stars beneath the box" (National Flash-Fiction Day 2016 Anthology) by Calum Kerr, Nuala Ni Chonbchuir, Santino Prinzi (Cumbo Press, 2016)
• "Ripening" (National Flash-Fiction Day 2018 Anthology) by Santino Prinzi and Alison Powell (Cumbo Press, 2018)
• "Flash Fiction Festival eight" by Jude Higgins & Diane Simmons (AdHoc, 2025)

Poetic prose

Here's the first sentence of "All the Colors of the Dark" by Chris Whitaker -

From the flat roof of the kitchen Patch looked out through serried pin oaks and white pine to the loom of St. Francois Mountains that pressed the small town of Monta Clare into its shade no matter the season.

In The Republic of Letters Tyson Duffy writes "Just read the sentence aloud to feel in your mouth how awkward the words are together. By the time you reach the end, you attain a kind of empty-headed, Nirvana-like state of senseless bafflement". He asks "What is “loom of St. Francois Mountains”?" and "How is a small town pressed into its shade?"

When I read "Small Worlds", a novel by Caleb Azumah Nelson, I wondered about the poetic language. Generously, I thought that the narrator (a thoughtful 18 year old much of the time) might think that way. He likes spatializing emotion - "the way desire might spill into the space", "somewhere between content and melancholy", etc. Other examples of imagery and poetical phrasing include -

• Del's lips hold a brief home on my cheeks and we pull each other close. We give no goodbyes, we know death in its multitudes
• It's funny what you remember, what palaces you make to store the fragments
• I am the beach disappeared by the tide, I am the breath between two notes
• the way thunder asks you to check the sky for rain
• June veers towards July
• light clasps onto her neck
• shyness visits upon us
• it was the time of day when the sun was leaving the sky

I don't mind some of this, but some is more than purple prose - it's off the end of the colour spectrum. I don't think it's the kind of prose that poets (Plath, John Burnside, etc) write.

CB1, 5th July 2026 - Ellen Renton

The headliner Ellen Renton comes from Edinburgh with an MA in Creative Writing: Poetry from the University of East Anglia. I liked many of her pieces, including phrases like "there's no chorus to this song, or if there is, the music never reaches it". Among the open-mic contributions there was an Italian poem translated, and some poems translated from an Ethiopian language for which 2 translations are needed: one a plain translation and another conveying the deeper meanings. There was a witty, rhyming poem about bees that I liked. Overall it was one of the most interesting CB1 evenings.

My art attempts

I recently went to an exhibition of work by first year art students. Some brave work, and several pieces I'd happily hang on my wall. I recalled that I've dabbled with art, getting nowhere. Here's just about everything that I didn't throw away. It's all well over 30 years old. I don't recall the titles, some of which may have been better than the pieces themselves ...

I recall trying to make the kink near the top of the male figure on the right look both like a mouth and a neck

Battersea power station

2 pictures (at least one of Venice) interleaved

Bristol, traced from a photo of course

Here's a painting of the same scene

A fired maquette in the style of Henry Moore - a reclining figure

Around Cambridge, UK

I used to borrow from Cambridge University library. I miss it.

Here's where old punts end up, submerged under a bridge on Coe Fen.

The Milton society had a yearly ritual of burning Eliot's works.

The seasonal wheel is caught being half-dismantled.

A sign telling people not to park their bikes.

Until recently the engineering department still used chalk-and-talk - lots of serious maths.

A sign from the engineering department.

Another engineering department sign.

From the Zoology department. Ants communicate using body fluids.

Continuous narrative

This is "Cupid and Psyche" (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) by Jacopo del Sellaio, from about 1473. Fifteen scenes from the same story are merged together, Psyche appearing 11 times. A tree in the foreground of one scene may form the background of another.

Time goes left-to-right along the lower part of the painting. Higher up, more liberties are taken. This style is called 'continuous narrative' - because, I suppose, there are no dividing lines between the different scenes/times.

I think it's an idea that's sometimes replicated in poetry, the same phrase representing a cause in one moment of time, and an effect in another. Recall and foreboding are intermixed with the present.

It's attempted in prose too. I've looked at this in more detail in an article about Molly McCloskey's "A Nuclear Adam and Eve" - a short story that jumps back and forth in time, as hinted by its title.

Face sculptures

I've seen many public artworks that are big heads. I've seen several that are faces (or masks, or even deathmasks I suppose). My favourites are like this one that I saw last weekend in Burghley gardens, with holes instead of eyes.

Here's what goes on behind the mask. Depending on the light conditions you can see another face.

This is in the middle of Krakow. It's called "Eros bound" - the face has bandages around it. Two people can put their faces in the eyeholes and be photographed.

CB1 Poetry, May 2026

The headline act was Lindsay Fursland, a local poet and regular CB1 attendee who won second place in the Bridport Poetry Prize 2025. Why hasn't he had a book/pamphlet published? I think his best pieces tend to be witty and longer than a page, which isn't popular. And maybe the variety of his work makes him difficult to brand/market.

Among the open-mics were first-timers, performance poets, and people like Anne Berkeley and Jane Monson who've had a few books published. I read an old piece which I heavily revised prior to reading it out (and revised again at the venue). I think the modifications have made it a better on-the-page piece.

Verse Festival Poetry Forum, Stamford - self-publishing

2nd May - Poet Ross Ayres, poet Philip Dunkerley, and novelist and short-story writer Helen Claire Gould, plus panel chair columnist and broadcaster Pete (Cardinal) Cox discussed some of the many self-publishing options available. The meeting was in the Art Room, which had an interesting set of drawers - I was tempted to look at the unclaimed pieces.

Philip Dunkerley said that nearly all the poems in his books had been published elsewhere, peer-reviewed. His 80-page books work out at £3.17 each from lulu, PoD. Economies of scale kick in with postage - 50 books cost £15.99 to deliver. Sometimes he sells the books to raise money for charities, getting over £1000/book.

All the writers said that it's difficult to proof-read one's own work. Ross Ayres said that he uses chatgpt to help with his proof-reading.

AI wasn't recommended for creating cover illustrations - the results are never quite right, and little changes require long dialogs.

There was some talk about marketing. The majority of the panel weren't too concerned about selling copies - they produced books so that they had something to give to friends, or take to their readings.

Cambridge Writing Centre: Short Story Micro-Festival

On 30 April I attended a workshop run by Chris Beckett ("The Turing Test") then listened to a panel discussion with Naomi Wood ("This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things"), Karen Stevens ("Brilliant Blue") and Nicholas Royle (BBSS editor, etc), chaired by Alison MacLeod.

• Naomi Wood said she'd spent 15 years writing novels and failing to write successful short stories before studying examples of the form, which she thought closer to the poem than the novel.
• Nicholas Royle thought that his pieces often began with an idea rather than a character. With the short story he could be experimental without taking too much of a risk.
• Karen Stevens' recent collection has linked stories. She thought intimacy was a characteristic of the form.

I wouldn't disagree with any of these comments. I think the statement about the poetry/story connection needs modernising though. Poetry has "moved on" since there was a UK poetry mainstream where the comparison made more sense. In the US, the situation's murkier still. In what sense is (say) Jorie Graham's poetry more like stories than (say) David Means' novels are?

I think CS Lewis in 1961 was onto something when he wrote "poetry is now more quintessentially poetical than ever before; 'purer' in the negative sense. It not only does (like all good poetry) what prose can't do: it deliberately refrains from doing anything that prose can do" ("An Experiment in Criticism").

Free verse, 2026

I liked the Poetry Society's Free Verse event on April 25th, where dozens of small press publishers had stalls. One of the talks was "AI in Poetry and Translation".

I bought "A Z-hearted guide to heartache" by Charley Barnes (V.press, 2018), "checkout" by Kathy Gee (V.press, 2019), "This Lexia & other languages" by Helen Kay (V.press, 2020), and was given "Patterns in the dust" (Foyles Young Poets of the year anthology, 2025), "Always another twist" by Sarah Leavesley (Mantle Lane Press, 2018), and "Kaleidoscope" by Sarah Leavesley (Mantle Lane Press, 2017).

I popped into the LRB bookshop too, buying "One sun only" by Camille Bordas - short stories (Serpent's tail, 2026).

Pizzas of the world

Spain. Somebody has tried to cross out the Hawaii pizza

South of Dublin

Cambridge

Bombay chicken pizza from a Cambridge shop

Swanage and history, 2026

Hardy called Swanage Knollsea. In this photo there's a concrete pillbox, crab and lobster pots, and a folly from London. The ships that took Portland stone to London were ballasted with odds and ends for the return journey - bollards, etc.

This "Great Globe", on the edge of Swanage dates from the 1870s. It's about 3m in diameter and was made in Greenwich.

Dancing Ledge is a terrace of rock that's covered at high tide. A cuboid hole was cut into it to make a swimming pool. My mother's school used it to teach the children how to swim. I never saw my mother swim.

When this shop was Woolworths there was a ballroom on the first floor. My parents met there. My cousin owns the shop now. Their storeroom is upstairs.

These Dinosaur prints are in a field far from anywhere.

Religious poetry, and a review of a prize winning poem

About Religious poetry, from Horace & friends (Victoria Moul) -

• Why is it that so many of the best contemporary poets in English are (broadly speaking) religious? In the US (but not in the UK), there’s a recognised tendency for “formalist” poets to be religious, especially Roman Catholic.
• the average highly-fêted poetry collection is now much more shallowly rooted in the literary culture than used to be the case, and that high-profile UK poets, in particular, now quite often sound like imitation-US poets, without the roots in the distinctive American tradition to be heard in the best American writers.
• Scripture and liturgy are, in literary terms, a shared canon.
• religious practice may also offer at least some sort of encounter with another linguistic world. ... The pronounced monolingualism of much Anglophone culture is also extremely unusual, historically and geographically, and it’s hard to imagine that it’s doing its poetry much good.

Victoria Moul and Hilary Menos discuss 'The Gathering' by Partridge Boswell, winner of the 2025 National Poetry Competition (from The friday poem) -

• Victoria: I’ll be blunt and say I think it’s a terrible poem. It seems to me to have almost all the vices of the typical ‘poetry magazine’ poem and no real redeeming features
• Hilary: feels like borrowed ballast ... it’s virtue signalling ... Lots of big league references, but so little feeling.
• Victoria: I have lost confidence at this point that the poet has really thought about his references.

Italy - Florence, Potter's Bar, Swanage and ice-creams

Back in the 1990s I managed to photograph a bird flying along il ponte vecchio (it's just above the people's heads).

Near Potter's Bar, this stone is on a piece of grass. It reads "Near this spot at 3.30 in the afternoon of September 15th 1784, Vicenzo Lunardi, the Italian balloonist, made his first landing whilst on his pioneer flight in the English atmosphere. Having handed out a cat and dog, the partners of his flight from London, he re-ascended and continued north-eastward."

This is the "great globe" in Swanage, Dorset. It was made in Greenwich in 1887.

It features an eroded Italy

In a Swanage restaurant I went to the toilet and saw this air freshener - showing where I was married.

This dates from 1993, before the euro. I brought it home as a souvenir.

Mill Road, Cambridge

This was my local laundrette long ago. My wife-to-be and I used to go there on our early dates. I'm amazed it's still open.

This cinema closed down before I arrived in Cambridge. I think it was opposite St Barnabas church, but I'm not sure

The Bath House opened in 1927. The area was poor, so the baths were an important amenity. In 1969 a sauna was added. In 1975 a bath cost 10p to the public, but the real cost was £1.09, so it became a centre for community groups. It's still running. I spent many happy Saturday mornings there in the Friends of the Earth office. See my Bath House notes for details.

Hughes Hall Literary Day 2026

20th March. I listened to novelists Megan Hunter, Burhan Sonmez, Sarvat Hasin, Rebecca Birrell, Yvonne Battle-Felton, Joe Mungo Reed and Sam Sussman, followed by poets Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Adam Crothers, Bhanu Kapil and Angela Leighton. Novelists often interviewed each other. Many interesting points were made. Here are a few -

• Burham Sonmez mentioned that Marquez turned down lucrative Hollywood contracts on aesthetic grounds. 10 years after his death his sons did a deal with NetFlix.
• Sarvat Hasin talked about long-term friendships - how Ferrante's written about them; how the codes of conduct aren't clear (how can you end them?)
• Joe Mungo Reed said that his advice to students is sometimes "Too much stuff! Just tell a story!" - advice which struck a chord with me.
• Adam Crothers (partly tongue in cheek?) said he'd discovered subject matter.
• There was quite a lot of discussion about auto-fiction and "truth".

Bedford

John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress while he was imprisoned in Bedford jail. I've not visited his museum yet.

The Panacea Society have a museum which I've not visited, though I've read about them - see their fascinating history.

Eagle bookshop has been open for years in Bedford without me realising. I shall visit it frequently in the future. It has many second hand books (including a useful poetry section), and a section about local - living! - writers, a shelf for each one. I think Ouse Muse poets meet there nowadays.

4 literary events in 4 days

Feb 28th - Matt Riches, Matthew Stewart et al at St. Albans.
Organised by Ver poets, which has included some famous members over the years. About 20 people watched the headliners (an experienced and excellent pairing) and 11 open-mic poets. It began at 11 a.m. which is a convenient time for some of us. It was free. The poets sold several books.

Mar 1st - Anne Berkeley et al at CB1, Cambridge.
I bought her latest book, "Object Permanence", there. About 40 people attended, paying £5, with a lively open-mic. At least 3 of the people were first-timers.

Mar 2nd - A.E. Stallings (The Oxford Professor of Poetry) at Trinity, Cambridge.
The first of a short series of free talks. This one was entitled: "The Spell of Rhyme". About 100 people attended. She looked at what rhyme does, at some types of rhyme, then at why some types (e.g. between different parts of speech, or between an abstract noun and a proper one) succeed better than others, using as examples works by Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and "The sunlight on the garden" by Louis MacNeice, etc. She doesn't think that English is short of rhyming words - compared to other languages there's more scope for rhyming verbs with nouns, etc.

Mar 3rd - Cambridge Writers short story prize results.
A hotly contested members-only annual event that I usually enter and rarely win. This year was no exception. 30 entries. Over 30 zoom and in-person attendees. Many excellent stories.

Street Poetry

This scene was outside King's College Cambridge yesterday. Typewriter at the ready, the poet offers the public a "Poem on the Spot". No AI.

Today I went to Huntingdon, about 30km from Cambridge. They have an alley of murals I didn't know about, featuring T.S. Eliot, William Cowper, Lucy Maria Boston, Henry of Huntingdon, George Herbert and Samuel Pepys.

Here's the Eliot wall. Little Gidding is about 15km from Huntingdon.