There Goes the Government

Just popping in quickly to let readers know that Emergency Verse, Alan Morrison's anthology of anti-coalition poetry, is now available to download for £2.99 from The Recusant poetry site. Among many other fantastic contributions from the likes of Andy Croft, Michaels Rosen & Horovitz, John O'Donoghue, Keith Armstrong, Tom Kelly and Anne Babson (who contributes my personal favourite piece in the book, 'Recitative: Then Shall the Eyes of the Blind'), Emergency Verse features my rabble-rousing little poem 'Class? War?', which I wrote in a massive fit of pique during the week Nick Clegg turned out to be a total Lando and the first pictures of the lily-white new cabinet began to appear in the press.

I do urge you to buy Emergency Verse, not just because I'm in it but because it's a damn fine anthology, and I wish it wasn't just an e-book but an actual paperback I could shove into peoples' hands with an injunction to read. There aren't many good things you can buy these days for just shy of three quid (even a pint of decent lager costs more): so why not shell out for 300+ pages of good, angry poetry?

The OTHER Announcement

Readers of this blog may recall me hinting in the last blog, announcing the imminent publication of By Grand Central Station We Sat Down and Wept in October, that I would be up to something else during October as well.

What that something is is taking a trip down to London for a little bit of sightseeing and to do a couple of spots at two open mike nights in the Great Wen: Raw Poetry at the Central Station pub, Wharfedale Road, on Monday 4th of October, and Poetry Unplugged at the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden on Tuesday the 5th. I will then be heading up to Hebden Bridge to take part in the monthly Write Out-Loud Read-around at the Hole in the Wall. The London gigs are about having a go at performing somewhere where people aren't familiar with my stuff; Hebden Bridge is about that too, but I've also been keen to do something under the WoL aegis since someone introduced me to their site a while ago. I really can't recommend it enough: it's a fantastic way to find out about gigs or places that are looking for submissions. I wouldn't be able to plan these gigs in London without it. So I figured if I was going to do a bunch of gigs outside the North East, I should try and fit in one of their own events. So I did.

Anyway, that's what I'm planning for October. If you're in the area for any of the gigs, do please come along. I'll probably post a reminder nearer the time. And I imagine there will be a veritable stream of tweeting from both locations for your shallow entertainment. In the meantime I have a rather needy cat to attend to so it's au revoir for now...

A Quickie

Just popping by swiftly to inform you all that I have heard from poet and publisher Kevin Cadwallender that his forthcoming anthology of poems inspired by Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept - which features my poem 'The Smiling Animal at his Appointed Hour' - is due to be published sometime in October. I'll have more news - including details of how and where to purchase the book which, aside from me, will feature work by loads more really fine versifiers - closer to the time.

I do have some other news regarding my poetry-related activities in October, but I'll say more about that later. Important to take a drip-feed approach to the publicity thing...

(the anthology is called By Grand Central Station We Sat Down and Wept, by the way, but you probably figured that out)

There's Always One...

First of all, check out the banner to the right of this entry. Thanks to Jamie Sport, who runs the mighty Daily Quail and who also works in social media for the British Red Cross, there is an even easier way to donate money to the relief effort in Haiti. So please do click the banner, and give what you can, if you haven't already (or even if you have already and are feeling extra generous).

Second of all - it was a dead cert that as soon as I'd sent off the manuscript I submitted to the Grievous Prize, a poem would show up that would have been perfect in that collection. At first I thought I'd only let her out on Twitter and Facebook, but it seemed unfair to let her languish unseen while all the other poems at least had some potential chance of being published, so here she is. So she's a straggler - not everyone's punctual.

Rainy Breaktime

Sat on the bench, sheared off from the others,
legs crossed, Tupperware lunchbox discarded
beside me, reading something they say
is too old for me; she is too old for me,

two years above, short hair, a nose that juts
out like a challenge, leaning her long body
all arms and reach, back
with a come-on-then cockiness,

asking me questions - what's that you're lookin' at?
Who wrote it? Funny name...What's it about?
and shy me is flattered to answer this girl
with her bad-boy looks, her eyes locked on mine,
drawing closer, hand sliding behind me

- and if the dinner lady hadn't came
I would have found out, painfully,
that hand was cocking a lighter.

* * *

It's a poem I've been trying to find a way into for a while, this one. At least since over a year ago, when I tried to write up an account of this incident (yes, it really happened, the me in the poem is me) in a dreadful attempt at memoir which, if it had ever existed on paper, would have been one of the pieces I'd asked my literary executor to burn but which, thankfully, now only exists as junk code in one or another of my memory sticks, if it hasn't been airlocked in a bulk delete already.

But it's an incident I was thinking of again, recently, after a conversation about bullying which I had on Facebook with Ira Lightman. It occurred to me in the course of the conversation that most of the bullying I had to deal with at school came from (cis) girls who, in my experience, can be a hell of a lot nastier than boys. Boys will punch you in the face, sure, but we tend to raise boys not to be particularly emotionally literate, so that's about all they can do (and the domestic violence statistics are an indicator that we ought to stop raising boys who can only express themselves with their fists, but that's another rant for another time, petit furets). Girls, however, are raised to be incredibly emotionally literate, which means they have a whole set of tools with which to hurt you far more deeply than the meatiest of knuckle sandwiches.

I don't think a boy would have formulated a strategy as subtle and twisted as the girl who did this. Find a mark who's obviously shy and socially-inept, talk to them, express an interest, make them feel flattered by all the attention, then, just when they're thinking hey, wow, she really likes me, set fire to their blazer. I'm pretty sure no major conflagration would have occurred, but I'd have jumped up shocked and made a fool of myself in front of everyone, which was probably what she was aiming for. And of course, what really hurt wasn't the fire and embarassment that didn't happen, but the sense of being used, of being toyed with and being so easily manipulated purely for someone else's sadistic amusement. Which meant the plan worked even when interrupted. Sick, undoubtedly. But you have to admire the technique.

Anyone wishing to admire my reading technique, scattershot as it often is, should be aware that I will be performing at a gig at Black Flame Books in Heaton on February 6th. Come along, if you're interested. But don't bring lighters.