The Post Hand-in Slump

The last couple of months have been quietish for me. One reason being I tripped over in August and have been suffering effects of concussion ever since, but secondly because I am in that kind of weird limbo space that comes after you finish writing a poetry collection. It's a similar feeling to what happens on courses when one finishes a project - at art school we used to call it the post-hand in slump. 

And slump is exactly what it feels like. It's a kind of no man's land for a writer. The big final push has been made and the  project has been finished. Most of the edits are done. It's a waiting game then, and there are months (years sometimes) before the book becomes real. And usually at this point there is no real writing to be done - in fact, if I hadn't been here before, I might think I might never write again! I've just looked it up and Google tells me it's post-project depression - and adds that it might be necessary for replenishing our batteries before we plunge ourselves into another project. It makes sense I guess. 

It does feel like a kind of limbo though - that space between finishing a book and it coming out - with some publisher's that gap can be years. I guess I am lucky that my wait is not quite that long! There has been some movement today though - the first endorsement (for the cover) came through, and it was more than I could have hoped for. Also this week artist and designer Natty Peterkin sent some potential cover images over to my publisher and my editor liked the same one I did. These are the little things that help it feel real - that there might really be a book at some point. 

Books that shaped me as a writer

 

It would be nigh on impossible or would take weeks and a lot of deep thinking and memory trawling to list all the books that have shaped me or had a direct or indirect influence on my writing. I have, however, been reflecting recently on books I read as a child and a young adult and I will try and cover at least some of them here. 

Let’s get this straight. I come from a working-class family. We lived in a two-up-two down council house on an estate in a rural Norfolk town which was known for being a ‘London Overspill’ town. We were London overspill. Neither of my parents had degrees. My mum left secondary modern at 15 with no qualifications. My dad fared a little better and went to technical college where he trained as an engineering draftsman. My parents were young when they had me – 21 and 20 respectively. One thing my parents did have though was a love for books and music. My mum was a member of various book clubs and throughout my early childhood we had a fortnightly family pilgrimage to the local library – a tradition I kept up through my teens and well into adulthood. I firmly believe that libraries are essential, a necessity. Without the library I would have been lost. I read everything I could get my hands on – well except romance, I was never a fan of Mills and Boon. 

Let’s start at the beginning. The first books I remember were Doctor Seuss and the other books in the American ‘I can read it myself’ series. I have no idea where those books came from – perhaps my mum got them from a book club. I learnt to read with them before I went to school and I can see now that the surrealness and sense of loneliness and unfairness of some of the characters in the stories experience has certainly pervaded my own writing, and, perhaps, my view of the world. The Cat in the Hat books are the obvious ones but the books I remember most were: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish; Green Eggs and Ham; Are You My Mother?; The King, the Mice and the Cheese; and The Diggingest Dog. I will never forget the thing in a giant bottle in the park in the dark or the little bird standing on top of a giant digger asking ‘Are you my mother?’. I am sure learning to read with these books instilled a love of reading that I would have never have got from Peter and Jane. 

There may have been other books from this time but if so, I have no memory of them. The next book I really remember with any clarity is The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton. I was a massive Blyton fan as a child often asking for her books for Christmas and birthday presents and also buying them in the second-hand bookshop on our rare visits to the nearest city. My love affair with her began with The Enchanted Wood. I must have been five or six and it is the first time I can remember a book making me want to write something myself. That book was a revelation to me as a child. I loved all the fantasy elements but also that it was rooted in the kind of everyday world I could relate to. I lived in a poor family. We had moved from the city and lived opposite a wood. I longed to find my own Faraway Tree and escape from my mundane existence to other exciting lands – I think it was my first sense that you could use imagination and reading/writing as an escape route from the everyday dysfunction of your family. Other Blyton books I loved were The Naughtiest Girl in the School series – what child from a noisy argumentative family doesn’t fantasise about escape to a boarding school; the Adventure series (Castle of Adventure, Sea of Adventure etc) – I wanted to be Barney, the boy who had no family and hitchhiked around the country with his pet monkey; and the Famous Five books. I did read the Secret Seven series but found them a bit tame and too Just Williamish. 

Fantasy and fairytale played a big part in my childhood reading habits. My mum had an old battered copy of Perrault’s Fairy Tales (illustrated by Edmond Du Lac) that I was obsessed with. I used to nag my mum to read me ‘Bluebeard’ over and over, thrilling at the point when it is unclear whether the brothers will be in time to save poor nosey Fatima. I used to regularly get massive books of fairy tales from the library – The Red Fairy Book, The Yellow Fairy Book, The Green Fairy book and so on. My mum read to me a lot – my sister and brother weren’t really interested. She read me The Hobbit, which I loved and she read me The Lord of the Rings – twice. It was enthralling and terrifying. She also read me some more adult books – The Thirty-Nine Steps, Jamaica Inn, the Boney books by Arthur Upfield, Day of the Triffids, Oliver Twist. I kept this tradition with my own son – though I have to confess I only read him Lord of the Rings once! 

We had the odd teacher at school who read to us too. One year I had a particularly literary teacher who read us Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Borrowers, as well as some books that TV series had been based on - Heartsease by Peter Dickinson (The Changes) and The Diddikoi by Rumer Godden (Kizzy). Some of my relatives bought me books as presents too – James and the Giant Peach, Edward Lear’s The Quangle Wangle Quee, Irish Fairytales and - quite randomly a book about Muhammad and one about Alfred the Great. My sister had a ton of Ladybird books too. The school also had a book club and occasionally I was allowed to buy a book from there – the most memorable of these was Stig of the Dump. 

As a teen I was still reading avidly. I read most of the adult books in the house – John Wyndham, Dennis Wheatley, H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I had also graduated to the adult library and was thrilled by the likes of Sax Rohmer and the Doctor Syn books by Russell Thorndike. The high school library was a little tamer in comparison but I borrowed religiously none the less – though the only book I remember borrowing from there is a book called Pennington’s Seventeenth Summer – about a troubled teen. I also bought books from the secondhand book stall on the market – typically I wanted to read books my parents wouldn’t approve of and I read most of a (terrible but thrilling) series of novels about Hell’s Angels published by New English Library. They published a series about skinheads too but I was anti-racist and left wing even as a teen so I avoided them. 

By my teen’s I had developed a love affair with poetry and was writing some terrible poetry in the back of my English book. I had three poetry collections as a child (and still have all of them): Hilda Boswell’s Treasury of Poetry, The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse and my favourite Louis Untermeyer’s Golden Treasury of Poetry, which I read over and over – my favourite poem being the haunting ‘Highwayman’ by Alfred Noyes. My mum also had The Oxford Book of Poetry which I dipped into regularly – my preference being for the narrative poems of Tennyson like ‘The Lady of Shallot’. She also had a book of Bob Dylan’s song lyrics and drawings and a collection of John Betjeman’s poems. School did me no favours where poetry was concerned – the only poems I remember studying were John Masefield’s ‘Cargoes’ and a poem about ducks that I was made to learn as a punishment. 

I left home at sixteen and went to live in a commune but I continued my love affair with the library, finally graduating onto modern short stories and American novels – Jane Anne Phillips, Louise Erdrich and Ellen Gilchrist were great favourites in my early 20s and it was at this time that I started seriously writing short stories. At the commune there was a massive library with a really eclectic collection of books. I read about Manson’s family, The Grateful Dead, and Drop City – a commune in America in the sixties. I also read Dickens, Hardy, Lawrence, Laurie Lee, Carlos Casteneda, Joan Collins, Colleen McCullough, William Burroughs, Angie Bowie, Angela Carter and Richard Brautigan. 

I am not sure that there is a point to this other than it being a loose collection of my reading up until my early twenties – and I am already aware that there are things I missed out. Peter Puffer’s Fun Book for instance (do look it up – it was definitely illustrated by someone who has done drugs) or a book that I took out repeatedly from the library as a child that I can’t remember the name of – about two children who find a disused station. I was also obsessed with Roald Dahl’s The Magic Finger – where a hunting family wake up to find they have duck wings and the ducks have arms and start shooting them. A novel called Princess Anne that I bought at the guide jumble sale and from which I learned what lumbago was. I also bought a copy of Gulliver’s Travels at the same jumble sale and I did try and read it umpteen times as a child and a teen but never got very far. 

I suppose my conclusion is that I was drawn to books where there was another world waiting beyond this one or where things were not as they seemed. Magical realism I suppose. I was also drawn to bleak stories and gritty realism. My favourite Hardy novels is Tess which has to be one of the most depressing novels ever written – and yet there is something utterly compelling about it. Perhaps that Hardy wrote non judgementally about the real lives of the working classes and his descriptions of a British countryside we will never see again are sublime. I think that all these passions and preoccupations are reflected in my own writing. I love the surreal. People transformed into animals or inanimate objects, metaphors, fairytale-ish scenarios, the lure and threat of the woods.

Books read in 2019

159) Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng (fiction)
158) Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream by Kim Hyesoon (poetry)
157) Body Thesaurus by Jennifer Militello (poetry)
156) The Emma Press Anthology of Contemporary Gothic Verse (poetry)
155) City of Departures by Helen Tookey (poetry)
154) The Black Place by Tamar Yoseloff (poetry)
153) This Tilting Earth by Jane Lovell (poetry)
152) Rock, Paper, Scissors by Richard Osmond (poetry)
151) A Map Towards Fluency by Lisa Kelly (poetry)150) Changing Room by Anna Woodford (poetry)
149) Baby by Patricia Debney (poetry)
148) Slattern by Kate Clanchy (poetry)
147) Shadow Dogs by Natalie Whittaker (poetry)
146) Naming Bones by Joanna Ingham (poetry)
145) Kismet by Jennifer Lee Tsai (poetry)
144) Dad, Remember You Are Dead by Jacqueline Saphra (poetry)
143) Coal Black Mornings by Brett Anderson (non fiction)
142) More Shadow Than Bird by Nuar Alsadir (poetry)
41) Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (fiction)
140) Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs (fiction)
139) Wedding Beasts by Jay G Ying (poetry)
138) Man's House Catches Fire by Tom Sastry (poetry)
137) Box Rooms by Laurie Bolger (poetry)
136) Firing Pins by Jo Young (poetry)
135) #AFTERHOURS by Inua Ellams (poetry)
134) After The Formalities by Anthony Anaxagorou (poetry)
133) Bowie: Loving The Alien by Christopher Sandford (non fiction)
132) The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (non fiction)
131) Surge by Jay Bernard (poetry)
130) fothermather by Gail McConnell (poetry)
129) Sodium 136 by Carole Bromley (poetry)
128) The Fantastic Book of Everybody's Secrets by Sophie Hannah (short stories)
127) Bridport Prize Anthology 2019 - Winning Poems, Short Stories and Flash Fiction (anthology)
126) Girl Falling by P B Hughes (poetry)
125) Eye Level: Poems by Jenny Xie (poetry)
124) The Tradition by Ben Jericho (poetry)
123) A Warm and Snouting Thing by Ramona Herdman (poetry)
122) Push: My Father, Polio and Me by Sarah Passingham (non fiction)
121) Diary of a Miu Miu Salesgirl by Jennifer Wong (poetry) Jennifer Wong
120) String and Circumstance by Melissa Fu (short stories)
119) Falling Outside Eden by Melissa Fu (poetry)
118) Urban Drift by Natalie Burdett (poetry)
117) All This is Implied by Will Harris (poetry)
116) Stitch by Samuel Tongue (poetry)
115) The Protection of Ghosts by Natalie Linh Bolderston (poetry)
114) THE DANCING BOY by Michelle Diaz (poetry)
113) Time Lived, Without Its Flow by Denise Riley (non fiction)
112) Dear Big Gods by Mona Arshi (poetry)
111) The Latest Winter by Maggie Nelson (poetry)
110) Playing House by Katherine Stansfield (poetry)
109) Search Party by Richard Meier (poetry)
108) Dancing on the Doorstep by Tom Corbett (poetry)
107) Overwintering by Pippa Little (poetry)
106) Zebra by Ian Humphreys (poetry)
105) Time is in Fields by Jean Atkin (poetry)
104) Fen by Daisy Johnson (short stories)
103) Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott (non fiction)
102) Quicksand Beach by Kate Bingham (poetry)
101) The Turning by Tim Winton (short stories)
100) Notes from the Fog: Stories by Ben Marcus (short stories)
99) Lepus by Barry Wilson (poetry)
98) To Sweeten Bitter - Raymond Antrobus -(poetry, re read)
97) Things Only Borderlines Know by Olivia Tuck (poetry)
96) Support, Support by Helen Charman (poetry)
95) In Praise of Truth: The Personal Account of Theodore Marklund, Picture-Framer by Torgny Lindgren (fiction)
94) The Book of Jobs: Poems by Kathryn Maris (poetry)
93) American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes (poetry)
92) Basic Nest Architecture by Polly Atkin (poetry)
91) Something Bright, Then Holes by Maggie Nelson (poetry)
90) England: Poems from a School by Kate Clanchy (poetry)
89) Dear, by Alice Willetts (poetry)
87) Safety Behaviour by Emma Jeremy (poetry)
86) Live Canon 2018 Anthology (poetry)
85) The Unquiet by L. Kiew (poetry)
84) Reckless Paper Birds by John McCullough (poetry)
83) Erato by Deryn Rees-Jones (poetry)
82) The Woman on the Other Side by Stephanie Conn (poetry)
81) Flèche by Mary Jean Chan (poetry)
80) Noctuary by Niall Campbell (poetry)
79) The Million-petalled Flower of Being Here by Vidyan Ravinthiran (poetry)
78) Whistle by Martin Figura (poetry, re read)
77) An Unremarkable Body by Elisa Odato (poetry)
76) The Forward Book of Poetry 2019 by Various Poets (poetry)
75) Island By Stephanie Conn (poetry)
74) The Somnambulist Cookbook by Andrew McDonnell (poetry)
73) Hand & Skull by Zoë Brigley (poetry)
72) The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets by Ted Kooser (non fiction)
71) My Dark Horses by Jodie Hollander (poetry)
70) In a House of Lies (Inspector Rebus #22) by Ian Rankin (fiction)
69) Lumière by Sue Burge (poetry)
68) I'm OK, I'm Pig! by Kim Hyesoon, Don Mee Choi (Translator) (poetry)
67) The Anatomical Venus by Helen Ivory (poetry)
66) Kingdomland by Rachael Allen (poetry)
65) The Babies by Sabrina Orah Mark (poetry)
64) The Not-Dead and The Saved and Other Stories by Kate Clanchy (short stories)
63) Maps of the Abandoned City by Helen Ivory (poetry)
62) At Hajj by Amaan Hyder (poetry)
61) Your Relationship to Motion Has Changed by Amish Trivedi (poetry)
60) Some Pink Star by Sophie Essex (poetry)
59) An Unremarkable Body by Elisa Lodato (fiction)
58) Near Future by Suzannah Evans (poetry)
57) Madness by Sam Sax (poetry)
56) Girl by Rebecca Goss (poetry)
55) Collected Stories by W. Somerset Maugham, Nicholas Shakespeare (Introduction) (short stories)
54) Threat by Julia Webb (poetry)
53) by Lewis Buxton, Amelia Loulli, Victoria Richards, Jane Commane (editor), Kim Moore (editor) (poetry)
52) Hare Soup by Dorothy Molloy (poetry)
51) Hand & Skull by Zoë Brigley (poetry)
50) Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky (poetry)
49) Darling, It's Me by Alison Winch (poetry)
48) Rabbit by Sophie Robinson (poetry, re read)
47) In Search of Equilibrium by Theresa Lola (poetry)
46) Shiner by Maggie Nelson (poetry)
45) The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald (non fiction)
44) Your Fault by Andrew Cowan (fiction)
43) Lantern by Sean Hewitt (poetry)
42) Bitter Berries by Marina Tsvetaeva, Moniza Alvi (Translator), Veronika Krasnova (Translator) (poetry)
41) Moon Milk by Rachel Bower (poetry)
40) Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry by Rebecca Tamás (ed.) (poetry)
39) Lanny by Max Porter (poetry/fiction)
38) Bluets by Maggie Nelson (poetry)
37) Discipline by Jane Yeh (poetry)
36) Goest by Cole Swensen (poetry)
35) Luxe by Amy Key (poetry)
34) How to Grow Matches by S.A. Leavesley (poetry)
33) At or Below Sea Level by Elisabeth Sennitt Clough (poetry)
32) Witch by Rebecca Tamás (poetry)
31) 50 American Plays by Michael Dickman (poetry)
30) Green Migraine - Michael Dickman (poetry)
29) The Triumph of Cancer by Chris McCabe (poetry)
28) The Healing Next Time by Roy McFarlane (poetry)
27) Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich (fiction)
26) The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy (non fiction)
25) The Built Moment by Lavinia Greenlaw (poetry)
24) Vertigo & Ghost by Fiona Benson (poetry)
23) How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships (non fiction)
22) The End of the West by Michael Dickman (poetry)
21) Isn't Forever by Amy Key (poetry)
20) Girl Golem by Rachael Clyne (poetry)
19) £5 for this love by Stephen Daniels (poetry)
18) The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos by Anne Carson (poetry)
17) The Escapologist by Jinny Fisher (poetry)
16) A Hostile Environment: A Poetry Conversation by Nigel Kent, Sarah Thomson (poetry)
15) Rosary of Ghosts - Grant Tabard (poetry)
14) OK, Mr Field - Katherine Kilalea (fiction)
13) The Red Parts - Maggie Nelson (non fiction)
12) The Perseverance - Raymond Antrobus (poetry)
11) Moving Into The Space Cleared By Our Mothers - Mary Dorcey (poetry)
10) In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, a Father, a Cult - Rebecca Stott (non fiction)
9) New Poetries vii - Michael Schmidt (ed.) (poetry)
8) The House with Only an Attic and a Basement - Kathryn Maris (poetry)
7) The Happy Bus - Louisa Campbell (poetry)
6) My Converted Father - Sarah Law (poetry)
5) The Art of Description - Mark Doty (non fiction)
4) Three Poems - Hannah Sullivan (poetry)
3) Faber New Poets: 10 - Will Burns (poetry)
2) My Name is Leon - Kit de Waal (fiction)
1) The Water Cure - Sophie Mackintosh (fiction)

Books Read in 2019 - a record

• 156) The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh (fiction)
• 155) Bright Dead Things by Ada Limon (poetry)
• 154) The Ward by Louisa Campbell (poetry)
• 153) The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas (fiction)
• 152) Mixed-Race Superman by Will Harris (non fiction)
• 151) Fortune Cookie by Jenna Clarke (poetry)
• 150) Meat Songs by Jack Nicholls, Mark Andrew Webber (Illustrator) (poetry)
• 149) I CAN’T WAIT FOR THE WENDING by Wayne Holloway-Smith (poetry)
• 148) The Weather in Normal by Carrie Etter (poetry)
• 147) Disko Bay by Nancy Campbell (poetry)
• 146) The End of Everything by Megan Abbott (fiction)
• 145) Translating Mountains by Yvonne Reddick (poetry)
• 144) The Distal Point by Fiona Moore (poetry)
• 143) All the Naked Daughters by Anna Kisby (poetry)
• 142) As Slow As Possible by Kit Fan (poetry)
• 141) The Illegal Age by Ellen Hinsey (poetry)
• 140) Solo for Mascha Voice/Tenuous Rooms by Jack Underwood (poetry)
• 139) Jinx by Abigail Parry (poetry)
• 138) The End of the West by Michael Dickman (poetry)
• 137) Holloway by Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood (Illustrations), Dan Richards (non fiction)
• 136) The Shepherd's Hut by Tim Winton (fiction)
• 135) Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting by Shivanee Ramlochan (poetry)
• 134) Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett (fiction)
• 133) Nowhere Nearer by Alice Miller (poetry)
• 132) Explosives Licence by Jonathan Totman (poetry)
• 131) Get the Guy by L.A. Rich (non fiction)
• 130) Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon (non fiction)
• 129) Drinking: Vintage Minis by John Cheever (fiction, short stories)
• 128) The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (fiction)
• 127) What Are You After? by Josephine Corcoran (poetry)
• 126) MFA in a Box: A Why to Write Book by John Rember (non fiction)
• 125) Demi-Gods by Eliza Robertson (fiction)
• 124) Familiars by Linda Rose Parkes (poetry)
• 123) The Becoming of Lady Flambe by Holly Magill (poetry)
• 122) Dark Places by Gillian Flynn (fiction)
• 121) My Converted Father by Sarah Law (poetry)
• 120) Faber New Poets 12 by Declan Ryan (poetry)
• 119) Death in Midsummer and Other Stories by Yukio Mishima (fiction, short stories)
• 118) Rapture (New Irish Voices #1) by Roisin Kelly (poetry)
• 117) Faber New Poets 15 by Sam Buchan-Watts (poetry)
• 116) playtime by Andrew McMillan (poetry)
• 115) The Republic of Motherhood by Liz Berry (poetry)
• 114) Kiss In The Hotel Joseph Conrad And Other Stories by Howard Norman (fiction, short stories)
• 113) Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real by Padraig Regan (poetry)
• 112) Human Wishes by Robert Hass (poetry)
• 111) Blackbird, Bye Bye by Moniza Alvi (poetry)
• 110) Depths by Henning Mankell (fiction)
• 109) The Theatre of Confection by pauline suett barbieri (poetry)
• 108) The White Road and Other Stories by Tania Hershman (fiction, short stories)
• 107) A Bag of Hands by Mather Schneider (poetry)
• 106) Noose and Hook by Lynn Emanuel (poetry)
• 105) In Her Shambles by Elizabeth Parker (poetry)
• 104) Black Bicycle by Lesley Quayle (poetry)
• 103) After Eden by Stella Wulf (poetry)
• 102) Good Stock Strange Blood by Dawn Lundy Martin (poetry)
• 101) When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Díaz (poetry)
• 100) Moon Over Melbourne and Other Poems by Yu Ouyang (poetry)
• 99) Dirty Laundry by Deborah Alma (poetry)
• 98) The Bitters by Susie Campbell (poetry)
• 97) he True Keeps Calm Biding Its Story by Rusty Morrison (poetry)
• 96) No Art: Poems by Ben Lerner (poetry)
• 95) A Bargain with the Light by Jacqueline Saphra (poetry)
• 94) A Hurry of English by Mary Jean Chan (poetry)
• 93) stack by James Davies (poetry)
• 92) Suffolk Bang by Adam Warne (poetry)
• 91) Wound by Richard Scott (poetry)
• 90) Soho by Richard Scott (poetry)
• 89) Alarum by Wayne Holloway-Smith (poetry)
• 88) small white monkeys by Sophie Collins (non fiction)
• 87) A Watchful Astronomy by Paul Deaton (poetry)
• 86) A Knowable World by Sarah Wardle (poetry)
• 85) Big Bones by Laura Dockrill (fiction)
• 84) Fox Unkennelled by Myfanwy Fox (poetry)
• 83) Mayakovsky's Revolver by Matthew Dickman (poetry)
• 82) Self-Portrait with the Happiness by David Tait (poetry)
• 81) Dying Notes by Reuben Woolley (poetry)
• 80) Fields Away by Sarah Wardle (poetry)
• 79) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (poetry)
• 78) The Wound Register by Esther Morgan (poetry)
• 77) Cumshot in D Minor by Melissa Lee-Houghton (poetry)
• 76) Primers Volume 3 edited by Jane Commane (poetry)
• 75) Three Poems by Hannah Sullivan (poetry)
• 74) Fourth Person Singular by Nuar Alsadir (poetry)
• 73) Inside the Wave by Helen Dunmore (poetry)
• 72) Weemoed by Tim Dooley (poetry)
• 71) We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (non fiction)
• 70) A Question of Blood by Ian Rankin (fiction)
• 69) Orpheus in the Park: Poems by Rose Solari (poetry)
• 68) A Communion Of Breath by Derek Harper (poetry)
• 67) Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay (poetry)
• 66) The Casual Perfect by Lavinia Greenlaw (poetry, re-read)
• 65) The days that Followed Paris by Paul Stephenson (poetry)
• 64) Somewhere Between Rose and Black by Claire Walker (poetry)
• 63) Asylum by Sean Borodale (poetry)
• 62) All My Mad Mothers by Jacqueline Saphra (poetry, re-read)
• 61) House by Myra Connell (poetry, re-read)
• 60) Shrines of Upper Austria by Phoebe Power (poetry)
• 59) I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast by Melissa Studdard (poetry)
• 58) Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar (poetry)
• 57) Seal Wife by Kitty Coles (poetry)
• 56) In These Days of Prohibition by Caroline Bird (poetry)
• 55) So Glad I'm Me by Roddy Lumsden (poetry)
• 54) British Museum by Daljit Nagra (poetry)
• 53) The Forward Book of Poetry 2018 by Various (poetry)
• 52) God Loves You by Kathryn Maris (poetry)
• 51) The Ice Factory by Philip Gross (poetry)
• 50) Enough of Green by Anne Stevenson (poetry)
• 49) Cry Baby by Gareth Writer-Davies (poetry)
• 48) The Devil's Tatoo by Brett Evans (poetry)
• 47) Uninvited Guests by Gill Lambert (poetry)
• 46) The Son by Carrie Etter (poetry)
• 45) Record and Play by Degna Stone (poetry)
• 44) Every Salt Advance by Andrew McMillan (poetry)
• 43) The Moon is a Supporting Player by Andrew McMillan (poetry)
• 42) The Knowledge Weapon by Annette C. Boehm (poetry)
• 41) You've never seen a doomsday like it by Kate Garrett (poetry)
• 40) White is a Color by Rosemarie Waldrop (poetry)
• 39) Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith (poetry)
• 38) The Hoopoe at the Execution, Villebois by Tom Kelly (poetry)
• 37) All We Saw by Anne Michaels (poetry)
• 36) ShallCross by C.D. Wright (poetry)
• 35) Who Is Mary Sue? by Sophie Collins (poetry)
• 34) fAt aRouNd tHe MiddLe by Jane Burn (poetry)
• 33) Eidolon by Sandeep Parmar (poetry)
• 32) Glass by Elisabeth Sennitt Clough (poetry)
• 31) How to be a Poet by Jo Bell (non fiction)
• 30) The Pocket Poetry Book of Anger by Sarah Miles (poetry)
• 29) Swims by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett (poetry)
• 28) Natural Phenomena by Meryl Pugh (poetry)
• 27) Then Suddenly-- by Lynn Emanuel (poetry)
• 26) Metropoetica by Ingmāra Balode (poetry)
• 25) Assembly Lines by Jane Commane (poetry)
• 24) A Slither of Air by Alison Lock (poetry)
• 23) Flies by Michael Dickman (poetry)
• 22) There Is an Anger that Moves by Kei Miller (poetry)
• 21) You are mistaken by Sean Wai Keung (poetry)
• 20) Incorrect Merciful Impulses by Camille Rankine (poetry)
• 19) Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli (non fiction)
• 18) Caldbeck by Jenny Pagdin (poetry)
• 17) Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (fiction)
• 16) Speaking in Bones by Kathy Reichs (fiction)
• 15) Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott (poetry, re-read)
• 14) Grace by Esther Morgan (poetry, re-read)
• 13) Standing Female Nude by Carol Ann Duffy (poetry, re-read)
• 12) BOOM! by Carolyn Jess-Cooke (poetry)
• 11) Ten: Poets of the New Generation by Karen McCarthy Woolf (poetry)
• 10) little armoured by Rebecca Perry (poetry)
• 9) A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (non fiction)
• 8) Ticker-Tape by Rishi Dastidar (poetry)
• 7) Bestiary: Poems by Donika Kelly (poetry)
• 6) lemon, egg, bread by Laura Elliott (poetry)
• 5) The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson (non fiction)
• 4) Joy by Sasha Dugdale
• 3) Hyem by Robyn Bolam (poetry)
• 2) LaRose by Louise Erdrich (fiction)
• 1) Sphinx by Cat Woodward (poetry)

Running with it - back to writing (again)

After a few weeks of barely writing (post hand in slump!) I have been on a writing binge. Partly fuelled by the workshops and readings I went to at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and partly fuelled by a shift in my poetry thinking - something too hard to quantify exactly, but nevertheless I know it has happened. It's true I have been reading a lot and that definitely helps, and not just poetry books, but books concerned with writing - I found Mark Doty's "The Art of Description" particularly inspiring and really readable. Through looking closely at some well known (and not so well known) poems Doty focusses in on the essence of what makes good poems good.

Which brings me to this week when I was lucky enough to attend not one but two really inspiring poetry events. the first was Jacob Polley performing his show "Lamanby" at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich. "Lamanby" is a show featuring poems from Polley's award winning collection Jackself with video, sounds and music and atmospheric lighting, the Medieval Dragon Hall was the perfect setting for it. Polley is a superb performer and I am still thinking about the show almost a week later and have started re-reading the book - which, has, in turn, fed into my writing. The second inspiring performance I attended this week was Jill Abram's Stablemates in London featuring Mark Doty, Andrew McMillan and Fiona Benson. I don't very often book up for events in London as it is such a pain to get there, but Mark Doty rarely comes to Britain so it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I was certainly not disappointed - what an evening. Benson read from her forthcoming collection - the poems were mostly concerned with rape - to be honest I found them quite harrowing and was glad that she went first, though I think the book will be really good. Andrew McMillan is always a joy to hear read and did not disappoint. He read from "Playtime". Mark Doty was amazing - he read a bunch of new poems of his laptop. He was erudite and engaging and I went home with my poetry well brimming over and very pleased I had gone.

I started my latest writing binge in Aldeburgh. I began writing almost the minute I got there - it was like I had been given permission to put on my writing head - and I haven't really stopped since. I have begun several things that might become sequences of sorts. One thing came out of an exercise that I set my Friday class. We had been talking about sequences and what kinds  of topics might be good to write sequences about. We had brainstormed a list and I suggested writing about the thing on your list that you were least attracted to writing about. My subject was writing. I never usually write poems about writing - it's just not my thing - so that was the topic I felt I had to choose. I had bought in some books of sequences - one of which was "Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil" by C.D. Wright. The book is an exploration of writing, part essay, part poetry, part memoir. I picked it up and started flicking through it for inspiration and some phrases in pages I had previously bookmarked leaped out at me. This is how my sequence started - it is part comment on writing process, part fictional narrative and is interspersed with quotes by C.D. Wright. I am interested in juxtaposing the different elements against each other - I am not sure if it works but I found it exciting to write and edit. here is a short extract:

"The bishop had stopped paying attention and was dipping his biscuit into his lukewarm tea.

The poems were roaring along the road outside the overlarge window, they had the shapes of busses and lorries, cars even – but I wasn’t fooled.

‘Some of us do not read or write particularly for pleasure or instruction, but to be changed, healed, changed.’ (C.D. Wright)

When I returned from the bathroom the bishop was scrutinizing my notebook.

Your trouble, he said, is the undercurrents, everything beneath your surface is oily dark."

The mercurial mind - ways in which to read poetry

When I first started reading poetry I approached it as I would a novel - thinking I had to read one collection at a time from cover to cover, then I began dipping in and out. Now I read cover to cover but I may well have several collections on the go at any given time. Take today for instance, I read a pamphlet sized collection cover to cover and made notes on it for an endorsement I am writing, but I have also dipped into several other collections I am reading, as well as reading bits of a journal and reading some poems online. This seems to me a very natural way of reading. It is rare that a poetry collection is so riveting that I can't put it down and have to compulsively read it straight through - although it does happen (and is a treat when it does) and some poetry collections take a great deal of concentration and mental processing - in these cases I can only read a few pages at a time before I need to take a break. Using my old mode of poetry reading I would have probably put the book down after those few pages and gone and found something else to do or read a novel. Now, if I choose to, I can move onto reading a different collection.

I seem to have developed this mercurial mind approach to reading in general. I still tend only to read one novel at a time (although I may have several I have started and stopped and might later come back to) but I will also have several poetry collections, a short story collection or two and several non fiction books on the go at any given time. In fact Goodreads tells me that I am currently reading 36 books. I think I developed this way of reading when I was studying - I like it it means I spend more time reading overall and that I read more books - something that feels more urgent as you get older. and feel you might be running out of time.

I don't do massively close readings of every poetry collection I read. I usually give more attention to the books I find more engaging. Collections where I want to come back to particular poems again and again. With these collections I sometimes make notes or post snippets on Twitter so that I can remember them later - and perhaps to entice other readers to seek out the book. If I am not finding a collection engaging or am finding it difficult I don't usually give up. Often I will try reading poems several times or reading them aloud to see if I can make more sense of them or get a feel for them. Sometimes I put the book away on a to read pile so that I can come back to it later - it might simply be that I am not in the right frame of mind for it - after all we bring all our emotional states and baggage to a reading of any book. There are, of course, books I don't love. These tend to be discarded after reading - these could be mediocre writing, but they can also be books that I am simply not ready for yet. I remember reading a few books when I did my degree and hating them - Ted Hughes Crow was one of them - I loathed it - I found the language ugly and heavy and too masculine. However a couple of years later I suddenly had a hankering to read it and this time I loved it - it was all those things of course but now I "got it." I think I simply wasn't ready for it yet the first time I was introduced to it. I think of it as a kind of reading evolution. It's like studying art - most people don't love abstract without first gaining an appreciation of more conventional forms - it's like you work your way up to abstract through studying the history of art so that when you get there you can fully appreciate it. Poetry is the same I think - one starts with the more conventional and works one's way towards an appreciation of the more surreal and experimental.

Books read in 2015

(in reverse order to which I read them)

1. 1 The Inflectionist Review Anthology of Poetry - John Sibley Williams & A. Molotkov (Editors) (poetry)
2.     Bunny - Selima Hill (poetry)
3.    What Every Body is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People - Joe Navarro (non fiction)
4.    The Notebook - Ágota Kristóf (fiction)
5.    Talking to Ourselves - Andrés Neuman (fiction)
6.     Jutland - Selima Hill (poetry)
7.     Mondeo Man - Luke Wright (poetry)
8.     Red Doc - Anne carson (poetry)
9.     Beauty/Beauty - Rebecca Perry (poetry)
10.     Crescendos - Jake Reynolds (poetry)
11.     Where is My Mask of an Honest Man? by Laura Del-Rivo (fiction, short stories)
12.     The Fire Station by Sarah Barnsley (poetry)
13.     That Smell and Notes from Prison - Sonallah Ibrahim (fiction)
14.     Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman and other poems - Grace Nichols (poetry)
15.     She Inserts the Key - Marianne Burton (poetry)
16.     Black Neon - Tony O'Neill (fiction)
17.     Actual Air - David Berman (poetry)
18.     Things to Make and Break - May-Lan Tan (fiction, short stories)
19.     Human Work: A Poet's Cookbook - Sean Borodale (poetry)
20.     The Age of Wire and String Fictions - Ben Marcus (fiction, short stories)
21.     Disinformation - Frances Leviston (poetry)
22.     At the Time of Partition - Moniza Alvi (poetry, re-read)
23.     Beautiful Girls - Melissa Lee Houghton (poetry, re-read)
24.     Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by U.K. Women Poets (poetry, re-read)
25.     House - Myra Connell (poetry)
26.     Poetry in Practice - Brian Keaney and Bill Lucas (non-fiction)
27.     The Merchant of Feathers - Tanya Shirley (poetry)
28.     The Taste of River Water - Cate Kennedy (poetry)
29.  UEA MA Creative Writing Anthologies 2015: Poetry (poetry)
30.     Native Guard - Natasha Trethewey (poetry)
31.     Loop of Jade - Sarah Howe (poetry)
32.     The Very Best of 52: a poem for every week of the year - Jonathan Davidson (editor) (poetry, re.read)
33.     Sooner or Later Frank - Jeremy Reed (poetry)
34.     Blue Movie - Bobby Parker (poetry - re read)
35.     Dolls - Tom Whelan (poetry)
36.     Things to Do Before you Leave Town - Ross Sutherland (poetry)
37.     Some Bright Elegance - Kayo Chingonyi (poetry)
38.     Circus Apprentice - Katherine Gallagher (poetry)
39.     Blood Work - Matthew Siegel (poetry)
40.     The Retrieval System - Maxine Kumin (poetry, re read)
41.     The Knowledge - Robert Peake (poetry, re-read)
42.     Sudden Collapses in Public Places - Julia Darling (poetry)
43.     Shibboleth - Michael Donaghy (poetry)
44.     Lifting the Piano With One Hand - Gaia Holmes (poetry)
45.     Making Nice - Matt Sumell (fiction, short stories)
46.     Wild Gratitude - Edward Hirsch (poetry)
47.     Trilobites & Other Stories - Breece D'J Pancake (fiction, short stories)
48.     Citizen: An American Lyric (poetry)
49.     Kith - Jo Bell (poetry, re read)
50.     See You in Paradise - J. Robert Lennon (fiction, short stories)
51.     Eliza and the Bear - Eleanor Rees (poetry)
52.     Physical - Andrew Macmillan (poetry)
53.     The Good Dark - Ryan Van Winkle (poetry)
54.     When God is a Traveller - Arundhathi Subramaniam (poetry)
55.     School of the Arts - Mark Doty (poetry)
56.     National Poetry Competition Winners' Anthology 2014 (poetry)
57.     Accurate Measurements - Adam White (poetry)
58.     The World Before Snow - Tim Liardet (poetry)
59.     Kim Kardashian's Marriage - Sam Riviere (poetry)
60.     The Organ Box - Matt Howard (poetry)
61.     The Knowledge - Robert Paeake (poetry)
62.     The Whole & Rain-domed Universe - Colette Bryce (poetry)
63.     The Very Best of 52: a poem for every week of the year - Jonathan Davidson (editor) (poetry)
64.     The Next Country - Idra Novey (poetry)
65.     Happiness - Jack Underwood (poetry)
66.     The Bluffer's Guide to Poetry - Nick Yapp (non fiction)
67.     Missing the Eclipse - Joan Hewitt (poetry)
68.     Beautiful Girls - Melissa Lee-Houghton (poetry)
69.     Tell Me the Truth About Love - W.H. Auden (poetry)
70.     My Family and other Superheroes - Jonathan Edwards (poetry)
71.     Moon Whales - Ted Hughes (poetry)
72.     Kumkum Malhotra - Preti Taneja (fiction)
73.     The Hitting Game - Graham Clifford (poetry)
74.     Corpus - Michael Symmons Roberts (poetry)
75.     Langoustine: Fragments of a Philosophical Marine Romance - George Szirtes (poetry)
76.     A Radiance - Bethany W. Pope (poetry)
77.     Bright Travellers - Fiona Benson (poetry)
78.     Small Hands - Mona Arshi (poetry)
79.     Those People - Paul Stephenson (poetry)
80.     Monkey Grip - Helen Garner (fiction)
81.     The Zoo Father - Pascale Petiit (poetry - re-read)
82.     Under the Pier - Selena Godden (poetry)
83.     The Gold Cell - Sharon Olds (poetry)
84.     The Summer Son: A Novel - Craig Lancaster (fiction)
85.     Prayers for the Stolen - Jennifer Clement (fiction)
86.     You Good Thing - Dara Wier (poetry)
87.     Indwelling - Gillian Allnutt (poetry)
88.     Navigation - Jo Bell (poetry)
89.     Grain - John Glenday (poetry)
90.     Permission to Breathe - Michael Laskey (poetry)
91.     The Albertine Workout - Anne Carson (poetry)
92.     The Collected Works of Billy the Kid - Michael Ondaatje (poetry)
93.     Skirrid Hill - Owen Sheers (poetry)
94.     Battleborn - Claire Vaye Watkins (fiction, short stories)
95.     Between Two Windows - Oli Hazzard (poetry)
96.     Blue Movie - Bobby Parker (poetry)
97.     Kith - Jo Bell (poetry)
98.     The Dead Lake - Hamid Ismailov (fiction, re-read)
99.     The Chicago Poems - Karl Sandburg (poetry)
100.     Prester John - John Buchan (fiction)
101.     The Korean Word For Butterfly - James Zerndt (fiction)
102.     Hallelujah for 50ft Women by Raving Beauties Hallelujah for 50ft Women: Poems About Women's Relationship to Their Bodies - edited by The Raving Beauties (poetry)
103.     Duetcetera - Ira Lightman (poetry)
104.     Gumbeaux - Kimberly Vargas (fiction)
105.     The Secret Life of Objects - Dawn Raffel (non fiction)
106.     The Awakening - Kate Chopin (fiction)
107.     Skelelittle - Ira Lightman (poetry)
108.     Party - Jackie Wills (poetry)
109.     One Dead Behind Us - Audre Lorde (poetry)
110.     The Answer to the Riddle Is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia - David Stuart MacLean (non-fiction)
111.     The Half-Finished Heaven - Tomas Tranströmer- translated by Robert Bly (poetry)
112.     Science and Steepleflower - Forrest Gander (poetry)
113.     Trains of Winnipeg - Clive Holden (poetry)
114.     Disclaimer - Renee Knight (fiction)
115.     Fauna - Jacueline Bishop (poetry)
116.     Ten: The New Wave - edited by Karen McCarthy Woolf (poetry)
117.     Soon Every House Will have One - Holly Hopkins (poetry)
118.     The Shared Surface - Jane Monson (poetry)
119.     What the Living Do - Marie Howe (poetry, re-read)
120.     Inventory - Linda Black (poetry)
121.     The Girl On the Train - Paula Hawkins (fiction)
122.     Touching Distances - Diary Poems - Anne Cluysenaar (poetry)
123.  Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence - Geoff Dyer (non fiction)
124.     After This Comes the Food - Sarah Perry (fiction)
125.     The Red Wardrobe - Sarah Corbett (poetry)
126.     The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald (fiction)
127.     Stop What You're Doing and Read This! - Various (non fiction)
128.     Woman's Head as a Jug - Jackie Wills (poetry)
129.     Odessa - Patricia Kirkpatrick (poetry)
130.     The Shining Girls - Lauren Beukes (fiction)
131.     The Lichtenberg Figures - Ben Lerner (poetry)
132.     How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2002 - Joy Harjo (poetry)
133.     Life in a Box is a Pretty Life - Dawn Lundy Martin (poetry)
134.     The White Road and Other Stories - Tania Hershman (short stories)
135.     On Purpose - Nick Laird (poetry)
136.     Livid among the Ghostings - Anna Percy (poetry)
137.     My Soul to Take - Yrsa Sigurðardóttir (fiction)
138.     Into the Darkest Corner - Elizabeth Haynes (fiction)
139.     Human Remains - Elizabeth Haynes (fiction)
140.     In the Miso Soup - Ryū Murakami (fiction)
141.     The Whole Story and Other Stories - Ali Smith (fiction - short stories)
142.     A Responsibility to Awe: Poems - Rebecca Elson (poetry)
143.    The Husband's Secret - Liane Moriarty (fiction)
144.     Snow Calling - Agnieszk Studzinska (poetry)
145.     Vauxhall - Gabriel Gbadamosi (fiction)
146.     In the Bee Latitudes - "Annah Sobelman (poetry)
147.     Slow man - J.M. Coetzee (fiction)
148.     The Indian Bride - Karin Fossum (fiction)
149.     The Woods - Harlen Coben (fiction)
150.     The Farm - Tom Rob Smith (fiction)
151.     The Three - Sarah Lotz (fiction)
152.     The Retrieval System - Maxine Kumin (poetry)
153.     The Barking Thing - Suzanne Batty (poetry)