Books Read in 2014

• Last first...
• 
  
• 93 In the Bee Latitudes - ‘Annah Sobelman (poetry)
• 92) The Legend of Colton H. Bryant - Alexandra Fuller (non-fiction)
• 91) Maggie and Me - Damaien Barr (non-fiction)
• 90) The Gypsy and the Poet - David Morley (poetry)
• 89) Every Day is for the Thief - Teju Cole (fiction)
• 88) Notes From the Balcony - Lynn Woollacott (poetry)
• 87) Like Rabbits - Lynne Bryan (fiction)
• 86) Diary Of an Unsmug Married - Polly James (fiction)
• 85) Granta 113: The Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists (fiction - short stories)
• 84) My Sister's Keeper - Bill Benners (fiction)
• 83) The Mathematics of Friedrich Gauss: Family Snapshots - D.W. Wilson (fiction)
• 82) All One Breath - John Burnside (poetry)
• 81) Beneath Stars Long Extinct - Ron Egatz (poetry)
• 80) Small Grass - Jacqueline Gabbitas (poetry)
• 79) Place - Jorie Graham (poetry)
• 78) The Beginner's Goodbye - Anne Tyler (fiction)
• 77) The Waterproof Bible - Andrew Kaufman (fiction)
• 76) Picture Me Gone - Meg Rossoff (fiction)
• 75) And After All This I Saw: Selections from the Work of Julian of Norwich - Edwin Kelly (poetry)
• 74) The Book of Strange New Things - Michel Faber (fiction)
• 73) Irene - Piere Lemaitre (fiction)
• 72) At the Time of Partition - Moniza Alvi (poetry)
• 71) Black Country - Liz Berry (poetry)
• 70) Wreaking - James Scudamore (fiction)
• 69) Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee (fiction)
• 68) Thunderstruck and other Stories - Elizabeth McCracken (fiction - short stories)
• 67) Ballistics - D.W. Wilson (fiction)
• 66) The Dead Lake - Hamid Ismailov (fiction)
• 65) Strange Bodies - Marcel Theroux (fiction)
• 64) When I was Five I Killed Myself - Howard Buten (fiction)
• 63) Fauverie - Pascale Petit (poetry)
• 62) Zoo Father - Pascale Petit (poetry, re-read)
• 61) The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes (fiction)
• 60) Snapper - Brian Kimberling (fiction)
• 59) Imagined Sons - Carrie Etter (poetry)
• 58) Under the Skin - Michael Faber (fiction)
• 57) The Lake in the Woods - Tim O'Brien (fiction)
• 56) Moontide - Niall Campbell (poetry)
• 55) Comradely Greetings – Nadya Tolokonnikova (non-fiction)
• 54) This is Yarrow - Tara Bergin (poetry)
• 53) Parallax -Sinead Morrisey (poetry)
• 52) Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn (fiction)
• 51) Sins of the Leopard - James Brooks (poetry)
• 50) The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion - Kei Miller (poetry)
• 49) The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson (fiction)
• 48) Elizabeth is Missing - Emma Healey (fiction)
• 47) Ties that Bind - Catherine Deveney (fiction)
• 46) Hoad and other Stories - Sarah Passingham (fiction, short stories)
• 45) The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (fiction)
• 44) The Universe Versus Alex Woods - Gavin Extence (fiction)
• 43) Erosion - S.A. Hemmings (fiction)
• 42) Sic Transit Wagon and other stories - Barbara Jenkins (Fiction, short stories)
• 41) The White Lioness - henning Mankell (fiction)
• 40) The Impossible Dead - Ian Rankin (fiction)
• 39) Hot Damn - Cat Woodward (poetry)
• 38) Candide - Voltaire (fiction)
• 37) Black Beauty - Anna Sewell (fiction)
• 36) Sleeping Keys - Jean Sprackland (poetry)
• 35) Double Negative - Ivan Vladislavic (non fiction)
• 34) Planet-shaped Horse - Luke Kennard (poetry)
• 33) Bysuss - Jen Hadfield (poetry)
• 32) Division Street - Helen Mort (poetry)
• 31) Tenth of December - George Saunders (fiction - re-read)
• 30) Adventures in Form - edited by Tom Chivers (poetry)
• 29) Bevel - William Letford (poetry, re-read)
• 28) Barcelona - Philip Langeskov (fiction)
• 27) Love Me Do - Lydia Macpherson (poetry)
• 26) Gathering Evidence - Caoilinn Hughes (poetry)
• 25) Perfect -Rachel Joyce (fiction)
• 24) Strange Weather inTokyo - Hiromi Kawakami ( fiction)
• 23) Standard Twin Fantasy - Sam Riviere (poetry)
• 22) Forward Book of Poetry 2014 (poetry)
• 21) Yoga - Tom Warner (poetry)
• 20) Love, Nina, Despatches from Family Life - Nina Stibbe (non fiction)
• 19) Instant-Flex 718 - Heather Phillipson (poetry)
• 18) Enough About You - Notes Towards the New Autobiography - David Shields (non-fiction)
• 17) Ink's Wish - Sarah Law (poetry)
• 16) When the Killing's Done - T.C. Boyle (fiction)
• 15) Violet - Selima Hill (poetry - re-read)
• 14) The Marlowe Papers - Ros Barber (poetry)
• 13) Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro (fiction)
• 12) Truffle Beds - Katherine Pierpoint (poetry)
• 11) The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt (fiction)
• 10) Stag's Leap - Sharon Olds (poetry, re-read)
• 9) Splitfish - Kiran Millwood Hargrave (poetry)
• 8) The Shock of the Fall - Nathan Filer (fiction)
• 7) Conjure - Michael Donaghy (poetry)
• 6) The Paraffin Child - Stephen Blanchard (fiction)
• 5) Her Birth - Rebecca Goss (poetry)
• 4) The Museum of Disappearing Sounds - Zoe Skoulding (poetry)
• 3) Ice - Gillian Clarke (poetry)
• 2) Life: An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet (fiction)
• 1) Fallen Land - Patrick Flannery (fiction)

NoNoWriMo and Writing Coaches

Well I kept NanNoWriMo up for about half of November and I wrote a sizeable chunk of my novel in progress (which is shaping up to be a YA novel it seems), but then somehow I lost my momentum. There are lots of things that I can blame - general busyness, too much planning for work etc etc, but the truth is I found it too hard to sustain. It's not that I lost interest, but somehow I just screeched to a halt. I had other things that I wanted to write, I wanted to enter a poetry pamphlet competition and that took days of preparation. I suppose I just wasn't committed enough. I also think that if I am to try it again next year (and I might) I will try to write straight onto the computer. two thousand words is a lot to write by hand ( I generally managed just over a thousand a day) and it leaves you with a daunting pile of writing to be typed up. I haven't even begun to type up what I have written yet - every time I look at it it makes me groan.

On a more positive note I have been working with a writing coach. A writing coach is a bit like a life coach - but they just look at your writing life. They help you to look at any problems you may be having regarding writing, sending off your work etc. I have had two sessions and have found it invaluable. I had to come to the session with areas that I wanted to look at and the coach asked me a series of questions designed to make me think about what is holding me back. One of the things that I found really helpful was making a chart of how I used my time - I was then able to pencil time into my schedule for writing, editing and sending out work. The hard bit, of course, is sticking to it! The other thing that she really helped me with was thinking about pamphlet competitions. I had got rather stuck in my way of thinking about it. Because the pamphlet I had put together had been shortlisted for a major competition I am not able to enter it for any others, and for some reason I just couldn't see a way round this. My coach suggested pulling out a different thread from my collection - one that overlapped in terms of content so that I could still keep my strongest poems - she even suggested breaking up one of the poems and interspersing it throughout the pamphlet to make the theme stronger. It is funny how sometimes it takes a new pair of eyes to see the obvious in your work!

NaNoWriMo and all that

I have talked before about how a series of personal setbacks, coupled with a planning-heavy class that I took over at the last minute, have left me little head-space and inspiration for poetry writing. I think it is more than this though - I think I am lacking a theme to write around. Not having a theme never used to be a problem but putting together a collection has somehow made me feel like all my writing has to be cohesive. Realising this has been quite useful, and I am hoping that it will free me up creatively. What I need to do, I now realise, is simply write and out of writing eventually a theme will (hopefully) emerge.

However that said I am not writing much poetry, but instead have been participationg in National Novel Writing Month. The aim is to write part of a novel every day for a month - so that in theory at the end you will end up with a nearly completed novel. I have been averaging around 10000 words a day, which is not bad, although I have had a couple of days where I haven't written anything. I am writing parts of a novel that I started a while ago. I was not really sure where it was going or who it was aimed at - but at the moment it seems to be going in the direction of becoming a novel for young adults. Writing every day like this is a good discipline. I wonder though if I am being too ambitious thinking that I can write poetry and fiction alongside each other. It seems to me that poetry and prose use different parts of the brain. I may be making that last bit up of course...

Words that Leave you Cold and Words that Inspire

I have been a little out of sorts with poetry of late - I have read quite a lot of poetry books in the past couple of months, but none of them has really excited me. I thought it must be to do with my own state of mind - I have been going through some tough times in my personal life so I assumed that this had put me out of kilter, especially as some of the books were ones I had been looking forward to, and had high expectations of, like Kei Miller's The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion. The knock on effect for me of not reading poetry that inspires, is that my own creativity is effected and I start writing less. Not a great place to be in for a writer.

This has all changed in the last couple of weeks. I have been to two really awe inspiring poetry readings. The first was Carrie Etter (at Cafe Writers in Norwich) and the second was Pascale Petit at Wymondham Words Festival. This is writing that speaks to my soul - writing that walks the tightrope between the personal and the surreal. Etter's book Imagined Sons is a poignant exploration of an imagined relationship with a son that she gave up for adoption shortly after birth when she was seventeen. Etter imagines meeting her son in a variety of situations (where he is doing a variety of jobs), as well as exploring her own reasons and the judgements that others might make. The result is a powerful and emotive read, the poetry finely honed and exact. Petit's new book Fauverie centres on the author's father and Paris. Petit is drawn to animals and animal imagery and the big cats of the Paris Fauverie of the title are a strong and compelling presence in her work. This is highly emotive writing - but there is no stream of consciousness or sloppiness here. This is tightly edited and beautiful and each word is working hard to earn its keep. It is a difficult read though so be warned and some of the description is extremely unpleasant - for example at the reading Pascale read a poem where her father eats an ortolan (a small songbird) whole with his head under a napkin in the traditional manner. This image has stayed with me ever since.

It goes to show, I think, that poetry has to speak to you (me) as the reader. It doesn't matter if it is well written or whether the writer has won this, that or the other reward. If you can't make some kind of emotional connection with it it can leave you cold. This is something I tell my students in my reader workshops - you can't just pick up a poetry book at random and expect to love it or be inspired. It is like any other type of book (or music) - you have to find the writer that resonates with you at that particular moment in your life. I am very pleased to back on the poetry horse.

Putting things into Perspective

It has not been a great year so far - there I've said it. Things keep going wrong and costing money, old friends have died, jobs have fallen through - I could go on. What, you may ask, does all this have to do with writing? Well quite a bit actually. Happiness may often quell the desire to write, but so does stress, and this year I have had stress by the bucketload.  I have, though, managed to keep up a tentative writing practice and I have sent the occasional poetic missive out into the world. And that's where things start looking up. I got my first rejection from a major publisher - but he recommended somewhere else to try. I have been shortlisted for a national poetry pamphlet competition (shortlist of 10 from 600 entrants!), and today I had a poem accepted for a poetry anthology. Could still do with a major cash injection but things are definitely looking up!

The Writing Process Blog Tour

I was nominated to take part in the blog tour by Heidi-Jo Swain.

What am I working on?

I have recently finished putting together my first poetry collection with the help of my rather marvellous mentor Pascale Petit - I was lucky enough to get some funding for this from 

I was recently shortlisted for The Poetry School Pighog Pamphlet Competition so I have been making a smaller pamphlet sized collection from my larger one - which is not as easy as it sounds - I want the poems to work together as a whole with themes running through, not just be the best poems of the full collection. 

Right now I am working on a sequence of poems based around numbers. The poems were sparked off by a prompt on Jo Bell's 52 blog. Each week for year Jo, or a guest blogger, posts a writing prompt along with links to poems to read or listen to. It has been surprisingly inspiring and last week's prompt found me frantically writing almost an entire sequence. 

I am also in the process of co-editing issue 5 of Lighthouse along with prose writer Anna de Vaul - a process complicated by the fact that she is currently on the other side of the world with a patchy Internet connection! As well as that I am supposed to be writing a book review for Ink, Sweat and Tears.

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

That's a tough question to answer - and of course there are those who would argue that there is no such thing as an original idea. I like to think that I use language in an original way and that I look at familiar subjects (such as family, household objects etc) from a slightly different viewpoint to other people. I am very much taken with Viktor Shklovsky's ideas of ostranenie or making strange - making familiar objects appear unfamiliar. This is something that Getrude Staein also liked to explore and I found her prose poems in Tender Buttons particularly inspiring. 

I like to have an element of realism in my work too - combining real life experience with fiction and a hint of oddness to try an create something unique but believable - as in my series of prose poems about a dysfunctional religious family.

I am sure that there are some similarities between my work and other writers. And of course I think that when we are often, whether consciously or unconsciously, influenced by what we are reading especially if it is really inspiring. 

Why do I write what I do?

I love both poetry and fiction - I am a great advocate for the ability of literature to change peoples' lives for the better, and I have always written (and read) both poetry and prose. In fact in my early 20s I wrote a book of short stories that was rejected by several publishers. When I came to do my creative writing degree in 2006 I thought that I would be concentrating on prose,  however what actually happened was that the course (and the tutors) rekindled my love for all things poetry, and I subsequently went on to do The Poetry MA at The University of East Anglia (UEA). 

I write because I have to - I have a compelling urge to put pen to paper - and I would still write even if there was no chance of ever making it into print. I think it is my way of making sense of the world - and I hope that in some small way it can help other people make some sense of it too.

How does my writing process work?

I tend to write sporadically and manically. I may go for weeks where I don't write much at all, and then an idea will seize me - this is happening at the moment - and I will be scribbling away at every opportunity. I think one of the reasons I don't write all the time is because I am busy, and everyday life has a habit of interfering with the creative process. A couple of years ago I had some money and I took myself off to a house near the sea for a week. Removed from all my usual distractions (internet, phone, work, emails, Facebook, household chores, teaching...) I found that I became amazingly productive and I wrote a whole sequence of poems that has since become the final sequence in my collection.

I do try and do things that encourage my writing practice. I aim to write morning pages every day - although in reality I manage about three to four days a week. I read both poetry and fiction (although I have discovered that if I read too much prose I stop writing poetry), I belong to a critquing group and I also try and get along to readings and other literary events. All this feeds into my writing practice. I write long hand into lined notebooks, then edit on the computer. If I am feeling really blocked a train journey always seems to free me up - I start writing almost as soon as the train sets off!

I am not so good at editing though and I often put it off for weeks - sometimes even months. Sometimes I will take my lap-top to a cafe when I need to get some editing done - it is amazing how much work one can get done without having the Internet as a distraction! Deadlines too are good for making one work harder.

I hope you enjoyed this stop on the blog tour - please check out the blogs I have nominated next week.

Helen Ivory

Helen Ivory was born in Luton in 1969 and began to write poems at Norwich School of Art in 1997, under the tuition of George Szirtes. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 1999 and then disappeared into a field in the Norfolk countryside to look after two thousand free-range hens. When she emerged ten or so years later, she had two collections with Bloodaxe Books and had helped, with her own bare hands, to build several houses.

She is an experienced creative writing tutor and workshop leader and has taught both undergraduates and in adult education for around ten years. She has also run workshops in schools and is a freelance tutor and mentor. She is currently an Editor for The Poetry Archive,  Editor of the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears, and Course Director for Creative Writing for Continuing Education at UEA. Her fourth Bloodaxe Books collection is Waiting for Bluebeard. (2013)  She is Co-editor with George Szirtes of In their Own Words: Contemporary Poets on their Poetry (Salt 2012)

Meryl Pugh

Meryl Pugh was born in 1968, in Ely, East Anglia and grew up in Wales, New Zealand, Suffolk and the Forest of Dean, where her family settled. Educated at Queens’ College, Cambridge and the Institute of Education, London, she has a Distinction in the MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths College and is currently studying for a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at UEA.

Her first pamphlet collection, Relinquish, was published in 2007 by Arrowhead Press. Selections of her poetry have appeared in four anthologies: Goldfish 3 (eds Maura Dooley & Blake Morrison, Goldsmiths College, 2011), Reactions 5 (ed Clare Pollard, Pen & Ink Press, 2005), Promises to Keep(ed Dean Parkin, Jerwood/Arvon, 2004), Entering the Tapestry (eds Mimi Khalvati and Graham Fawcett, Enitharmon, 2003). Reviews and poems have appeared in many print and online journals, including Horizon Review, New Welsh Review, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales andThe Rialto.

Pugh divides her time between Norwich and Leytonstone, East London (her home for the last thirteen years).

Rosemarie Blackthorn

Details coming soon...

Submissions and Inspiration

I am making a concerted effort this month to make at least one poetry submission per week - it doesn't sound like much I know but it is far more than i have been doing. I realised that I had let things go woefully on the submissions front when a few weeks ago I decided that maybe it was time to submit to The Rialto again - after all a few months had passed since I last submitted. I was shocked to discover that the last time I submitted work to the journal was actually 2012! It was a real wake-up call. I knew I had been slacking on the submissions front - and even more so since I finished my collection last year. I think the lack of movement on that front has made me lose my enthusiasm somewhat - as well as for some months quashing my creativity altogether. I am pleased to say that I am now back in the writing saddle - in part due to Jo Bell's 52 Blog - every week she posts a writing prompt and links to poems around that week's themes. It has been surprisingly inspiring - and somehow once you start writing again more and more comes. Now I just need to man up and ask the publisher who has had some of my poems for eight months to make a decision.