Ode To W N H

I'm feeling mischievous, in a post TMA submission kind of way. I penned this at the height of the 'we hate Bill' phase that happened sometime during the 'mid poetry phase'. I never subscribed to the campaign myself as I really rather like his chapter and found his style refreshing, but couldn't resist putting something down. I don't think it would be too taxing to continue beyond the final stanza by running through examples from the whole chapter, but I'm not going to - as I say, I feel affection not anger towards him.

Ode to Bill Herbert

I don't know why I'm tempted to talk about this now,
it’s something about you Bill, I feel I must avow.
I've completely read the chapter, about poetic things,
but you just can't seem to help me Bill, to write good stuff that swings.

But let me start with praise Bill, no-one escapes that
I loved that foxy limper, you thought was just a cat
staring at that ship Bill, slipping through the Tyne
your thoughts create so much Bill, a lot more so than mine

Your choice of fancy photos though seem really rather bland,
a picture of a lady with a tin pan in her hand,
how on Earth do you think, we can wax all lyrical,
a photo of a mother's pram? oh really, come on Bill!

And so on...

Creative Writing

To celebrate TMA03 cut off date: 23rd February 2012, I managed to finish reading through the Life writing chapter when I came home from work this evening. This sounds rather more impressive than it actually is. I did say 'read through' - I did none of the exercises, though I did do the readings. Now I have to decide what this means to me. There's some good stuff in this chapter and I feel I know more about what is required and have a much better idea of what sort of thing I'm going to try. It might be that I don't re-read the chapter but just start listing some TMA ideas. This would be wholly consistent with my attitude with the course so far. I don't know. I need to think a bit about this one.

I was impressed with the Dervla Murphy reading which taps into my first love of travel writing. Of course to do travel writing it helps to have traveled. She has. Extensively. There is a part of me that thinks if she couldn't write entertainingly and well given the experiences she appears to have had, there'd be something amiss. But this actually misses the point because if I have picked up one thing and one thing only from this rapid read through of this chapter it is this: you don't have to tell the truth. Like with fiction writing there is always a kernel of truth, but that's it. How you dress it up for your audience is up to you. So, it's not that she lived an interesting life - though she undoubtedly did (does - she's still with us) it's that she has a novelists's imagination - see Chapter 1, we're there again. Don't forget - it's ridiculously easy to do so, this course is called 'creative writing.'

Week-ending thoughts

Because I submitted 03 so early, as I did with 01 and 2, again I feel I am living through an undetermined piece of no man's land as I wait for the cut off date for the current TMA to pass which will bring my marks through. As with the previous submissions, it's only once I've had time to assess the submission mark and ingest the feedback I'm able to focus properly on the next chapter of the course, in this case Life Writing. Only then will I be able to properly study the new material and the target TMA and, with greater knowledge, formulate a plan for the EMA.

So today after I have blogged, I simply must get the chapter open and start making sense of some of it; the cut off day for 03 isn't until Thursday and I submitted back on the 14th of this month (Valentine's day, don't you know?) These are useful times to be used usefully and should not be wasted.

That said, I was in the city yesterday, and as is my way when I'm feeling a little hard up (all the time) and if I have the time (I try to make time!) I visit the charity shops at the unfashionable part of town and see what books are begging me to buy them. Often this appears a fruitless experience - so many people read those wretched pot-boilers and airport thrillers the likes of which I simply won't give house room. But occasionally, and this is why I don't give up, I have a fiesta of a time - you simply cannot guess how it's going to go.

The day was not going well generally. Our lunch was unsettled as we struggled to get a table in Nandos - then once seated found ourselves within bad-breath proximity of four loud teenager types whose raucous voices and weird over sized kid-like enthusiasms proceeded to drown out our conversation completely, which forced us into a resentful silence as we ate our chicken livers and spicy peas. Not quite what we had in mind. Every so often we found ourselves gurning at each other as if to say: how did this happen? Week-ends are our out catch up time; Saturday lunch always considered something of a treat, and it's never good when that part doesn't go well.

But things improved, and once we'd completed shopping proper, I treated myself to a trundle through the charity shops, leaving the management trawling the likes of Coast and Oasis - which on the face of it sounds like she's interested in geology, rather than a having a life long obsession to buy enough pairs of shoes, boots and skirts to populate the wardrobes of half the women of a small African nation. And scored a good result with some really good life writing books to help me kick start this phase of the course. A travel memoir by Jenny Diski - remember her from the CD. A travel memoir from Laurie Lee - not on the CD as he died back in the mid 1990s and a memoir by P J Kavanagh - who happens to be a poet as well as a journalist and writer of prose. So all boxes nicely ticked, and I'm sort of ready to start.

One half mine, one half Stephen's

I have felt completely unsportsman-like by not blogging any poetry during the poetry section of A215. I avoided all urges real or imagined to show any to the Student Cafe and even refused to be a part of the tutorial which required some of my efforts to be shown. The reason, is that I simply don't have enough poems to run the risk of letting too many cats out of the bag. Once you've showed the world - even your most feeble efforts, you've blown it should you wish to use it or part of it when the TMAs come around. So in the spirit of this new openness, I will share my Stephen Fry exercise, even I couldn't imagine using this, who started off with the first two stanzas before I finished it off with my two. Well it's a start isn't it?

Now gather round and let me tell

The tale of Danny Wise

And how his sweet wife Annabelle

Did suck out both his eyes

And if I tell the story true

And if I tell it clear

There's not a mortal one of your

Won't shriek in mortal fear

This fear is one that's based on dread

Because of Annabelle

And guard your eyes well brother Fred

She wants your eyes as well

So if you want to keep your sight

You'd better tell some lies

About the fact that you can fight

Unlike poor Danny Wise

Dispatches From Abroad Part 1 2005

I have shamelessly culled this from an email I sent out back in 2005. I have others and I'm going to stick them on here once I've made a few changes as we lead up to the Life Writing chapter. I Hope to God I don't get desperate and start digging into them if I become bereft of ideas come TMA time and run the risk of falling foul of the OU plagiarism police.

'By now you should know that I am in Thailand (land of the smiles apparently) and a little research will inform you that I have chosen to visit during the rainy season (duh!) But then again that (the rainy season) hardly matters when having travelled so far that the culture, language and way of life is so different. What does it matter that whilst back in the UK you're all basking in 90 degree heat, and I'm clad in a 'Pack-a-Mac' waiting for Charlie Sheen's voice over to tell me that: 'someone has turned the taps off?' The taps haven't been turned off yet.

That said it is stiflingly hot. A confirmed sweat-boy like me will always suffer in this kind of humidity. And I am suffering terribly. The hotel we booked into in Bangkok was luxury. Unlike Bangkok, which is crazy, smog-ridden, and noisy. That said, everywhere is air conditioned to a world class extent; every taxi, every shop; even the trains force you to rummage through bags looking for the fleeces and jumpers nobody ever brings.

Once finished with Bangkok it was off to the train station. Still not quite ready to face another DVT risk-laden flight we had pre-booked a couchette overnighter to Chaing Mai to the north of the Kingdom - all jungle, canals and rivers beginning with P. Apparently tigers and black bears hangout in these parts. As we travelled through the jungle, through rice paddy fields and shanty towns, close to the Burmese border we hoped they - together with the alleged bandits we heard about, remained as elusive as the sun shining and the blue sky.

The food's good - all fired up and worked in front of you - and a diet of rice, chicken and snake beans seems to be doing wonders for my fast diminishing waistline. I haven't yet succumbed to the lure of Kentucky Fried Chicken or MacDonald's (both are here, though it's satisfying to note that the giant figure of Ron Mac at the entrances at least has the decency to adopt the Buddha prayer stance).

Looking forward to tonight as I'm led to believe there's a night market here in Chaing Mai - which I'm hoping will at last provide me with the ray bans, Rolexes and rave-ups I've heard about before coming out here. I'll first have to drag myself away from the hotel terrace where I have already been known to spend hours watching strange black cockroaches the size of gerbils, tottering awkwardly around the lily pond as if wearing badly fitting high-heels and on a constant look out for European cockroaches with fat stomachs and even fatter wallets. Hmm, must be something in the water.

High points so far include seeing a boat the length and width of a barge given a hand-break turn at about 90 MPH which nearly tipped over and sinking with all hands and enough fruit and veg to supply a small nation; a taxi driver who insisted on driving bare foot and partly cross-legged in between traffic jams; stumbling into a prosthetics for sale road show and noticing that no-one else there was equipped with a full complement of limbs; taking the sublime and futuristic Bangkok sky train; and having my first ever massage and pedicure, (no, not one of those, though they are on offer).

As I sit here writing this and looking out of the window of this Internet cafe the starving dogs are emerging from their shelters, the mopeds are put-putting into life and sounding like demented sewing machines and the taxis are in full tootle. So I'll sign off for now. '

Blogger

I've just checked the page views on the blog stats page and the result makes pretty grisly reading. My best ever day was 4 views apparently, and that probably counts a couple of mine! Not to worry. My intention at the moment is to write a blog entry most days, and I'm just about managing that. What I should be doing more of I think, is sticking some creative things down to test them out on myself and to formulate something of a record of my progression. I have put a couple of TMAs up together with their commentaries, and one or two tutorial efforts, but other than that it's been more of the musing variety lately.

I have been prompted to start thinking about the EMA. Something I haven't done since the start of this course. At the moment I have no idea what I will be doing. Theoretically I need to get my poetry TMA score in first as I will then have a reference point as to what my strengths - other than loafing, eating and watching telly - are. Hysterically, I announced on Facebook immediately after I'd submitted 03 that it was either a brilliant piece of beginners luck or a work of absolute drivel, something like that. A few people 'liked' the comment, but they were probably liking the fact that I'd submitted early and as such was going to kick back, neck a few beers and go whoring around the sleazy side of town, rather than 'liking' due to its innate wit - but it's good when people hear you. Even if they don't really 'hear' you.

Funny thing about Facebook group status updates. I go weeks without bothering to post anything on there, then as soon as I submit a TMA I feel I have to tell someone, I mean someone who gives a damn and is not of the 'very nice dear' variety (wife, you know who you are). Then when I get my scores, providing they're decent - and they have been so far, I'm at it again: 'look look Mum, look what I can do!!' I'm either totally lacking in confidence, or I've never grown up. Don't know which. Probably a bit of both.

CD3

The life writing section of this course is already shaping to be quite interesting. After a sticky start with CD3 where neither Blake Morrison, Michael Holroyd or Jackie Kay really nailed it in my view, the recordings became a whole lot more interesting with the introduction of Jenny Diski and in particular Richard Holmes. The first part, which I think is better on closer analysis, just didn't have the same pull as the second part does, but does include a few nuggets worth commenting on: 'biographers try to form an imaginative link with their subject.' (Holroyd,M. 2010) and on the morality of biography: 'Who's to say that the dead don't want messengers to tell their story;' and 'verifiable facts can contradict one another. Consider the person who writes that they feel terrible in a diary entry (therefore establishes a fact) then goes out that same night and is the life and soul of the party' (another verifiable fact). 'I have read 'Suits Me' by Diane Middlebrook (the biography) but didn't read it before my imaginative work on Billy Tripton - I like to think there is a border country between the two kinds of work' (Kay, J. 2010) 'A metaphor for immortality - things without an end' (MH, 2010) (re a question about leaving threads left untied in narrative works) You understand but not necessarily the whole story (BM, 2010) (all part of the intrigue.) I will listen again as I believe these CDs are quite helpful. Since CD1 writing fiction - or certainly parts of which were excruciating to listen to, I was quite impressed with CD2 and even more so with CD3