On Saturday, while sitting Last Supper style at The Society Club in Soho, I talked to Tania Hershman about a book she had read on the power of the introvert. It was a fine night – in a pockety, vibe-laden corner of Soho. There were dogs – tiny little ones and a happy-gloomy bulldog, who were taken away before the literary performances by a tall boy-man in a black suit, with otter hair. One was left – Foxy – who barked only sometimes but was zen mostly.
But it’s a interesting thought – that we all fall into various levels of extrovert/introvert comfort zones. A writer, by their very nature – has to live in the mind for some considerable period of time. But then hermit land will not sell books – so the writer has to emerge, blinking – to pump hands, flash teeth and look interested when dull people ask ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ Is there any smart answer? Perhaps to elaborately mime pulling them down from trees, or something equally sarcastic.
Saturday was immense. Tania of course but also James Meek, Jane Rogers and Alex Preston. Alex read an unpublished story about a literate, angst-infested dog. James Meek – who had apparently only just finished writing his story but it sounded slick, cleverly-shaped. Tania read the title story from her collection, which she said ‘got more laughs than usual’ – plus treated us to three other stories. Tania is a natural performer and shines when reading her work. Jane Rogers really showed us an unreliable narrator – but unreliable because the narrator was losing her power to remember as she slipped into dementia.
Four writers and much to learn from all of them – as they stepped out into the world to be extroverts – or at least to share things created in a quiet place.
The Society Club is a marvel and there is more to come as they further champion the short story.
Paul McVeigh’s blog is here too, plus some pictures. I am in one of them…but it might be like ‘spot the ball’:
http://paulmcveigh.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/whats-story-becomes-word-factory.html?spref=tw
About Me
- Julia Bohanna
- Shortlisted Bath Short Story Award 2013 Runner-up Cinnamon Press Competition 2013 WNNER: Don Louth Writer of the Year (run by Reading Writers) WINNER: Bradt/Independent on Sunday Travel Writing Competition 2012. SHORTLISTED: Scott Prize (Salt Publishing) 2012 for a short story collection. Writer/ Journalist - assistant editor and writer for the art and books pages of Wolfprint. Most recently published in Independent on Sunday and short story anthologies: Sentinel Champions No 9, 100 Stories for Queensland, 50 Stories for Pakistan, 100 Stories for Haiti and From Hell to Eternity. In a recent writing competition, Joanne Harris described my writing as '...compelling (but quite creepy)'
Tuesday, 29 January 2013
Monday, 14 January 2013
PRIVATE LIVES
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/poet-sharon-olds-scoops-ts-eliot-prize-for-confessional-work-about-her-husbands-affair-8451387.html
The news that Sharon Olds has won the T S Eliot Prize for a work that mines her experiences of betrayal – a husband leaving her after three decades, raises an interesting element of the creative process. What chemistry occurs in the creative brain – not all brains but some – that percolates negative elements and like Rumpelstiltkin then makes straw tragedy into ingots of resonant prose?
Olds’ work intrigues and seeing just one quote from the book:
‘I did not know him,/ I did not work not to lose him, and I lost him’
makes me see how raw and powerful her feelings are still – but how powerfully she has translated her loss. It is controlled – reminding me of method acting, where emotions are used but they are never allowed to take over the professionalism of reading the script.
Of course – it is not logical or fair to say that writers and artists who enjoy fortuitous lives, in the arms of partners who adore them perhaps, are bland and barren. This is just not true. Many writer friends in particular seem to have beautiful and productive personal lives. Their partners or family give them space, the impetus to create. Some understandably wish to make a division between private and public lives – so we may never know what makes them tick. They need their enigma – they feel exposed without it.
So comfort and discomfort can produce good work in equal measure. It is work of the imagination, after all. But when we are thrown a bad hand, like a nasty card sharp chucking things at us from a speeding car – we either throw it away or shuffle it a little.
I have always felt that poets are different animals – pain and suffering does induce some peculiar type of reaction – like a twitch in the synapses that cannot rest. I once wrote – in a review of the wonderful Irish poet Nuala Ní Chonchúir’s book – that poets are more alive than ordinary folk. I truly believe that – it is their curse and their gift. They see things far below the surface of live as the rest of us hurry along – like veins beneath the smoothest of skins.
I have shared – perhaps cryptically at times – some negative things that have happened in my life. In fact, I have lymphoma – manageable at present – but I have been through experiences that have been horrifying, but have fascinated me at the same time. Losing hair, going through odd machines to see if a lump that appears might kill me, being naked with lead goggles in a room full of strangers – while a nurse inappropriately plays ‘Having the Time of My Life’ from Dirty Dancing.
And then, when it is finally under control at least – with a strong chemo drug – the man I spent twenty years of my life loving and supporting, decides that future with someone ill was too traumatic. He wanted freedom from the responsibility. Flippantly, I can say fair enough.
I wanted to die, frankly. I could see no future. But then a light ignited in that unnecessary damp bitterness and hate that kept rising in my throat and threatening to poison me. Write. Write. Fury. Reach out to people. Join things. Help people. Write. Write.
I still hurt and I will carry it always. It is a scar that opens to a cold wind all too often. But I am busy:
• Winning the 2013 Don Louth Writer of the Year Award, run by Reading Writers www.readingwriters.wordpress.com
• Writing blogs for a friend’s advertising company
• Writing articles for magazine The Simple Things
• Penning another travel article for The Independent on Sunday
• Planning a travel writing workshop and writer’s day for Reading Writers
• Writing the arts/books pages of Wolfprint, the magazine for www.ukwolf.org - which includes book reviews, poems and articles about fascinating conservation folk – such as an arctic explorer and cult writer Glen Duncan.
• Pitching ideas
• Writing plays for the Prospect Theatre Writers’ Group
• Attending as many literary events as possible, including Windsor’s Book Swap, Short Story Aloud (Oxford)…..anything where writers are…
• Mentoring a friend and encouraging her ambitions – then swelling with pride when she gains more confidence
• Proofreading
• Applying to work part-time with the Society for Storytelling
I am far from rich. I am far from happy. But it is a fair enough approximation of happiness to get me through. Writing sometimes feels like flames from the fingers. It soothes, it transports. You can see by its light.
So good luck to Sharon Olds. I shall raise a glass to her. It sounds like a work I would really want to read.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/poet-sharon-olds-scoops-ts-eliot-prize-for-confessional-work-about-her-husbands-affair-8451387.html
The news that Sharon Olds has won the T S Eliot Prize for a work that mines her experiences of betrayal – a husband leaving her after three decades, raises an interesting element of the creative process. What chemistry occurs in the creative brain – not all brains but some – that percolates negative elements and like Rumpelstiltkin then makes straw tragedy into ingots of resonant prose?
Olds’ work intrigues and seeing just one quote from the book:
‘I did not know him,/ I did not work not to lose him, and I lost him’
makes me see how raw and powerful her feelings are still – but how powerfully she has translated her loss. It is controlled – reminding me of method acting, where emotions are used but they are never allowed to take over the professionalism of reading the script.
Of course – it is not logical or fair to say that writers and artists who enjoy fortuitous lives, in the arms of partners who adore them perhaps, are bland and barren. This is just not true. Many writer friends in particular seem to have beautiful and productive personal lives. Their partners or family give them space, the impetus to create. Some understandably wish to make a division between private and public lives – so we may never know what makes them tick. They need their enigma – they feel exposed without it.
So comfort and discomfort can produce good work in equal measure. It is work of the imagination, after all. But when we are thrown a bad hand, like a nasty card sharp chucking things at us from a speeding car – we either throw it away or shuffle it a little.
I have always felt that poets are different animals – pain and suffering does induce some peculiar type of reaction – like a twitch in the synapses that cannot rest. I once wrote – in a review of the wonderful Irish poet Nuala Ní Chonchúir’s book – that poets are more alive than ordinary folk. I truly believe that – it is their curse and their gift. They see things far below the surface of live as the rest of us hurry along – like veins beneath the smoothest of skins.
I have shared – perhaps cryptically at times – some negative things that have happened in my life. In fact, I have lymphoma – manageable at present – but I have been through experiences that have been horrifying, but have fascinated me at the same time. Losing hair, going through odd machines to see if a lump that appears might kill me, being naked with lead goggles in a room full of strangers – while a nurse inappropriately plays ‘Having the Time of My Life’ from Dirty Dancing.
And then, when it is finally under control at least – with a strong chemo drug – the man I spent twenty years of my life loving and supporting, decides that future with someone ill was too traumatic. He wanted freedom from the responsibility. Flippantly, I can say fair enough.
I wanted to die, frankly. I could see no future. But then a light ignited in that unnecessary damp bitterness and hate that kept rising in my throat and threatening to poison me. Write. Write. Fury. Reach out to people. Join things. Help people. Write. Write.
I still hurt and I will carry it always. It is a scar that opens to a cold wind all too often. But I am busy:
• Winning the 2013 Don Louth Writer of the Year Award, run by Reading Writers www.readingwriters.wordpress.com
• Writing blogs for a friend’s advertising company
• Writing articles for magazine The Simple Things
• Penning another travel article for The Independent on Sunday
• Planning a travel writing workshop and writer’s day for Reading Writers
• Writing the arts/books pages of Wolfprint, the magazine for www.ukwolf.org - which includes book reviews, poems and articles about fascinating conservation folk – such as an arctic explorer and cult writer Glen Duncan.
• Pitching ideas
• Writing plays for the Prospect Theatre Writers’ Group
• Attending as many literary events as possible, including Windsor’s Book Swap, Short Story Aloud (Oxford)…..anything where writers are…
• Mentoring a friend and encouraging her ambitions – then swelling with pride when she gains more confidence
• Proofreading
• Applying to work part-time with the Society for Storytelling
I am far from rich. I am far from happy. But it is a fair enough approximation of happiness to get me through. Writing sometimes feels like flames from the fingers. It soothes, it transports. You can see by its light.
So good luck to Sharon Olds. I shall raise a glass to her. It sounds like a work I would really want to read.
Friday, 5 October 2012
Will Self at The Bloomsbury Institute 4th October 2012
Muttering ‘What’s all this bollocks?’ Will Self climbed up onto his elevated chair next to his editor and scanned the room like a velociraptor looking for flesh.
‘AND I SHALL BE QUEEN!!’ he shrieked more than once.
A theatrical start but what followed was an interesting exploration of a complex man, who is shot through with contradictions. I had spoken to him earlier, at the wine reception in the conservatory. He signed my book and he was calm, earnest. He can’t help that melancholic face but later, when he was excited, there was something highly daunting about his intellectual dismissal of anyone he considered inferior.
‘Someone earlier said my book was warm. I have never been so fucking insulted!’
He would repeat this during the evening – almost spitting out the word ‘empathy.’
On reading other people’s fiction
It was clear that he loves to talk facts, technique. Although denying that he is interested in anyone elses’s fiction, he spoke well of Kafka and Joyce. He had read them in the last few years. He also acknowledged reading Oliver Sachs’ Awakenings. Sachs had impressed him and you get a sense from Self that rarely does anyone impress him. He said he reads to look at the mechanics of things – or as Auden used to write in other people’s margins – if anything was GETS (good enough to steal).
On writing
I asked him (in the before as a ‘shy sharer’ – his phrase) if writing was a curse. He agreed that it was a compulsion. When talking to a very young writer who asked him ‘What advice would you give your 20 year old self?’ He replied ‘Get a job. You’ve got ten years to fanny around.’ He admitted that he was sitting in squats taking drugs – but a writer should be travelling, learning.
On the continuous present tense used in Umbrella
He feels that he cannot go back to ‘The Count took tea at 5 O’clock’ realist style of fiction. ‘There is no way back for me now. Finegan’s Wake is next.’ He admitted that he is excited about Umbrella as a trilogy and he had a productive summer blocking out the other two books. Despite the fact that he hated writing Umbrella, he seemed lighter and excited when he mentioned the next two. Self adopted the continuous tense for the emotional intimacy and although he may hate to hear it – it did indeed make the book a warmer one that the novels that have gone before.
Real people in Umbrella
Albert Death is based on his grandfather – a 6ft 7in man who was a mathematical savant and incredible autodidact. Self scanned the room with dinosaur intensity again. ‘We’re all pygmies compared to him.’ Audrey Death? Entirely fictional. ‘I like old women (a ‘hoorah’ sounded from the back of the room) and young women…I wanted to create a woman to love.’ It was probably the most enigmatic thing he said all night.
Sarcasm
‘Winning the Man Booker? I should have fucking won it years ago.’
(on white Australians) ‘There they are crouching on the verge of this incredible civilization..with the amazing tradition of storytelling…putting meat on BBQs. They are ridiculous!’
‘Oliver Sachs must have felt very demeaned by being played by Robin Williams.’
(on charm) ‘What is the use of charm. It’s the answer before you’ve asked the question. It’s close to fascism.'
(on them choosing the book for the Man Booker) ‘They chose it because there are no gags – so it is considered serious.’
Self has a strong interest in psychology and believes the ‘hard zombie’ theory – that although we technically have free will, we are in fact ruled by deterministic elements. He also believes in more ethereal concepts and ‘could never live in an old mental asylum.’ (Talking about the one he visited while researching the book.)
I did chat to him afterwards. He had told a story about a chimp – the alpha of her troop – he met when researching ‘Great Apes.’ The chimp had pointed at his tattoo on his arm to show her but the keeper had whispered ‘Don’t put your arm anywhere near the bars. She is trying to trick you and wants to break one of your fingers. I know all of them and if I stepped inside, I would be killed instantly.’
Self said 'Of course, these are highly intelligent animals held prisoner against their will and they are fucking furious!'
That was actually the point that I took up with him quietly afterwards – we both agreed it was bizarre that people are shocked that apes are developing, with weapons etc. The conversation extended to animals and I asked if any other animal had inspired or sparked his fiction. ‘I’m not an animal person,’ he said, but he was interested when I said that I worked with wolves – although his first response was a Benny Hillesque ‘What…professionally? Nar Nar.’ He was still up and performing - looking around to see who was listening when he said ‘They are just dogs. JUST DOGS!’ At which point, rather than tell him off like a naughty boy who had eaten too many cakes at a party, I shook his hand and as Shakespeare might say, took my leave.
I found him complex, exhausting, funny, scary, vulnerable, strange, witty, wordrich, awkward, insecure, fascinating, infuriating, egocentric, shy………
What a night.
‘AND I SHALL BE QUEEN!!’ he shrieked more than once.
A theatrical start but what followed was an interesting exploration of a complex man, who is shot through with contradictions. I had spoken to him earlier, at the wine reception in the conservatory. He signed my book and he was calm, earnest. He can’t help that melancholic face but later, when he was excited, there was something highly daunting about his intellectual dismissal of anyone he considered inferior.
‘Someone earlier said my book was warm. I have never been so fucking insulted!’
He would repeat this during the evening – almost spitting out the word ‘empathy.’
On reading other people’s fiction
It was clear that he loves to talk facts, technique. Although denying that he is interested in anyone elses’s fiction, he spoke well of Kafka and Joyce. He had read them in the last few years. He also acknowledged reading Oliver Sachs’ Awakenings. Sachs had impressed him and you get a sense from Self that rarely does anyone impress him. He said he reads to look at the mechanics of things – or as Auden used to write in other people’s margins – if anything was GETS (good enough to steal).
On writing
I asked him (in the before as a ‘shy sharer’ – his phrase) if writing was a curse. He agreed that it was a compulsion. When talking to a very young writer who asked him ‘What advice would you give your 20 year old self?’ He replied ‘Get a job. You’ve got ten years to fanny around.’ He admitted that he was sitting in squats taking drugs – but a writer should be travelling, learning.
On the continuous present tense used in Umbrella
He feels that he cannot go back to ‘The Count took tea at 5 O’clock’ realist style of fiction. ‘There is no way back for me now. Finegan’s Wake is next.’ He admitted that he is excited about Umbrella as a trilogy and he had a productive summer blocking out the other two books. Despite the fact that he hated writing Umbrella, he seemed lighter and excited when he mentioned the next two. Self adopted the continuous tense for the emotional intimacy and although he may hate to hear it – it did indeed make the book a warmer one that the novels that have gone before.
Real people in Umbrella
Albert Death is based on his grandfather – a 6ft 7in man who was a mathematical savant and incredible autodidact. Self scanned the room with dinosaur intensity again. ‘We’re all pygmies compared to him.’ Audrey Death? Entirely fictional. ‘I like old women (a ‘hoorah’ sounded from the back of the room) and young women…I wanted to create a woman to love.’ It was probably the most enigmatic thing he said all night.
Sarcasm
‘Winning the Man Booker? I should have fucking won it years ago.’
(on white Australians) ‘There they are crouching on the verge of this incredible civilization..with the amazing tradition of storytelling…putting meat on BBQs. They are ridiculous!’
‘Oliver Sachs must have felt very demeaned by being played by Robin Williams.’
(on charm) ‘What is the use of charm. It’s the answer before you’ve asked the question. It’s close to fascism.'
(on them choosing the book for the Man Booker) ‘They chose it because there are no gags – so it is considered serious.’
Self has a strong interest in psychology and believes the ‘hard zombie’ theory – that although we technically have free will, we are in fact ruled by deterministic elements. He also believes in more ethereal concepts and ‘could never live in an old mental asylum.’ (Talking about the one he visited while researching the book.)
I did chat to him afterwards. He had told a story about a chimp – the alpha of her troop – he met when researching ‘Great Apes.’ The chimp had pointed at his tattoo on his arm to show her but the keeper had whispered ‘Don’t put your arm anywhere near the bars. She is trying to trick you and wants to break one of your fingers. I know all of them and if I stepped inside, I would be killed instantly.’
Self said 'Of course, these are highly intelligent animals held prisoner against their will and they are fucking furious!'
That was actually the point that I took up with him quietly afterwards – we both agreed it was bizarre that people are shocked that apes are developing, with weapons etc. The conversation extended to animals and I asked if any other animal had inspired or sparked his fiction. ‘I’m not an animal person,’ he said, but he was interested when I said that I worked with wolves – although his first response was a Benny Hillesque ‘What…professionally? Nar Nar.’ He was still up and performing - looking around to see who was listening when he said ‘They are just dogs. JUST DOGS!’ At which point, rather than tell him off like a naughty boy who had eaten too many cakes at a party, I shook his hand and as Shakespeare might say, took my leave.
I found him complex, exhausting, funny, scary, vulnerable, strange, witty, wordrich, awkward, insecure, fascinating, infuriating, egocentric, shy………
What a night.
Thursday, 10 May 2012
Recently shortlisted for The Scott Prize, I was not surprised not to win. That is not pessimism talking – but it is another stage that all writers should face: realism and some objective (as far as possible) view on their writing. I rushed to submit to The Scott Prize. I know that some of the stories were good – they have had some literary pats on the back for being just that. But did the collection hang together? Was there a coherent unifying theme? No. There were some weaker stories too – less dark, less ‘me.’
So a learning curve and also a great thing that I even have a collection that loosely hangs together and now can/should be hammered into some kind of shape.
Writing has taken a back seat, while I have been working at Victim Support in London. Working as a journalist, seeking stories and realising that I have bad habits when it comes to my IT skills and the way I do things – opened my eyes. But it also made me realise that I will never be a 9 to 5 person, unless there is a job where specific time is given to dreaming. It’s hard for a non-writer to understand but freebasing of the mind is a must on a regular basis. Remember being told off for dreaming at school? It has always been considered a wasteful exercise but it is in fact deeply productive. No one should stop someone in full flow of reverie, although I appreciate how difficult it might be for a teacher of 30 to allow all their charges to stare out a crow while they need to know algebra.
I have some horrible and life-changing things happen to me but a writer is shaped by what they experience, whether they are moulded by kind hands or kicked in the stomach. The shape we emerge informs us, changes us, pours into our words. I am still hurting and my writing is a little raw now, rather than angry. But it gives me facets, shades, levels of experiences that others might never experience. So I am peculiarly lucky – to know what it is to be broken and then get myself back together.
The writing world is where I sit, I cannot get comfortable anywhere else. I love the people, that world of word magic. Mastery of words is something that no one ever really masters and so you are always reaching, stretching, laughing and crying in equal measure with each inch of progress and pint of failure.
I would like to thank Jen from Salt Publishing for even looking and appreciating my words in my collection. Congrats to the very talented Carys and Rob. Such is the Snakes and Ladders of writing and all the more exciting for it!
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
Some good news
All writers need encouragement and this is such a shot in the arm:
(Taken from Salt Publishing's website)
The 2012 Scott Prize Shortlist
Thank you to everyone who entered this year’s International Scott Prize for Short Stories — the only such prize for full-length collections of short fiction in the UK. We were overwhelmed by the standard of entries and selecting a shortlist has been a long and difficult process. We are thrilled with the final list; every entry has had to work hard to get there and fully deserves its place on it.
This is the Scott Prize’s third year and we are delighted with the success many of our previous winners have gone on to have. We pride ourselves in not only championing the short story, but also giving that crucial publishing break to up and coming authors, many of whom start with their first love, the short story, and go on to further success with full-length fiction.
The winners of this year’s prize will be announced in April; meanwhile, many congratulations to those of you who have made it on to the shortlist:
Julia Bohanna (England) – Ink Eyes
Carys Bray (England) – Sweet Home
Madeleine D’Arcy (Ireland) – Waiting for the Bullet and Other Stories
Rusty Dolleman (US) – Other People’s Kids
Sarah Faulkner (US) – American Heartbreaker
Maurice Gartshore (Scotland) – Mother Icarus
Otis Haschemeyer (US) – The Fantome of Fatma
Julie Mayhew (England) – End Of
Alison Moore (England) – A Small Window
Rob Roensch (US) – The Wild Flowers of Baltimore
Chris Smith (England) – Between the Toes of the Cloven Hoof
Notes to Editors:
1. The Scott Prize is the only international prize for debut full length collections of short stories written in English.
2. The prize is administered by Salt and judged by Publisher, Jen Hamilton-Emery.
3. Previous Winners of the Scott Prize are:
2011:
Andrea Ashworth (UK) – Somewhere Else of Even Here
Cassandra Parkin (UK) – New World Fairy Tales
Jonathan Pinnock (UK) – Dot Dash (to be published 2012)
2010:
Patrick Holland (Australia) – The Source of the Sound
David Mullins (US) – Greetings from Below (to be published 2012)
Susannah Rickards (UK) – Hot Kitchen Snow
Tom Vowler (UK) – The Method
(Taken from Salt Publishing's website)
The 2012 Scott Prize Shortlist
Thank you to everyone who entered this year’s International Scott Prize for Short Stories — the only such prize for full-length collections of short fiction in the UK. We were overwhelmed by the standard of entries and selecting a shortlist has been a long and difficult process. We are thrilled with the final list; every entry has had to work hard to get there and fully deserves its place on it.
This is the Scott Prize’s third year and we are delighted with the success many of our previous winners have gone on to have. We pride ourselves in not only championing the short story, but also giving that crucial publishing break to up and coming authors, many of whom start with their first love, the short story, and go on to further success with full-length fiction.
The winners of this year’s prize will be announced in April; meanwhile, many congratulations to those of you who have made it on to the shortlist:
Julia Bohanna (England) – Ink Eyes
Carys Bray (England) – Sweet Home
Madeleine D’Arcy (Ireland) – Waiting for the Bullet and Other Stories
Rusty Dolleman (US) – Other People’s Kids
Sarah Faulkner (US) – American Heartbreaker
Maurice Gartshore (Scotland) – Mother Icarus
Otis Haschemeyer (US) – The Fantome of Fatma
Julie Mayhew (England) – End Of
Alison Moore (England) – A Small Window
Rob Roensch (US) – The Wild Flowers of Baltimore
Chris Smith (England) – Between the Toes of the Cloven Hoof
Notes to Editors:
1. The Scott Prize is the only international prize for debut full length collections of short stories written in English.
2. The prize is administered by Salt and judged by Publisher, Jen Hamilton-Emery.
3. Previous Winners of the Scott Prize are:
2011:
Andrea Ashworth (UK) – Somewhere Else of Even Here
Cassandra Parkin (UK) – New World Fairy Tales
Jonathan Pinnock (UK) – Dot Dash (to be published 2012)
2010:
Patrick Holland (Australia) – The Source of the Sound
David Mullins (US) – Greetings from Below (to be published 2012)
Susannah Rickards (UK) – Hot Kitchen Snow
Tom Vowler (UK) – The Method
Saturday, 17 September 2011
All Things New
Now is the time not to be tiny but to bite, exactly like a flea. It is time to concentrate on getting ahead, truly settling into more success and greater confidence. But it will all be about writing, as other areas of my life are not so good.
As disaster struck - I learned that I had come 2nd in the Sentinel Literary Competition with CHILDREN OF THE RUBBLE
On the worst day imaginable, I had a call to say that I am a finalist in the Brit Writers' Award with A SMALL HISTORY OF JOHN.
Strange- whether it be fate or karma, I do not know.
I am writing with fury - both volume and mood.
Julia Bohanna will get there.
As disaster struck - I learned that I had come 2nd in the Sentinel Literary Competition with CHILDREN OF THE RUBBLE
On the worst day imaginable, I had a call to say that I am a finalist in the Brit Writers' Award with A SMALL HISTORY OF JOHN.
Strange- whether it be fate or karma, I do not know.
I am writing with fury - both volume and mood.
Julia Bohanna will get there.
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
Solitude
Ode on Solitude
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.
Whose heards with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
Blest! who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,
Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix'd; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me dye;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lye.
Alexander Pope
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.
Whose heards with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
Blest! who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,
Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix'd; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me dye;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lye.
Alexander Pope
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