This time tomorrow night I'll be at a Poetry Cafe gig. Five hours after that ends I'll be on the plinth.
If you aren't already doing it, watch my twitter feed. At some point tomorrow I'll reveal the anonymous twitter id and password that will allow people to tweet me the things they're afraid to say without fear of being found out. Look for the hashtags #imafraidtosayitbut and #account/password .
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Sunday, 27 September 2009
How you can help
A campaign is afoot on twitter to get people to sponsor me for my plinth gig. We've already raised quite a bit of cash collecting in Borders Gateshead, but if you're further afield there are ways you can help too.
The best way is to donate to International PEN directly, and tell them I sent you. You can contact them via email at executivedirector@internationalpen.org.uk , or phone on 0207 405 0338 to make a donation. You can also get their postal address from the link in the post below.
Thanks for reading, and go give them lots of money!
Edit at 19:04, Sunday 27/09 - English PEN, the founding chapter of International PEN, have a link to an online donation form at their website. If you want to donate online, this is another way in which you can do so. Please tell them I sent you at the top of the form, though - I'm not making any money out of this, but getting some props would give me a happy. Thanks.
The best way is to donate to International PEN directly, and tell them I sent you. You can contact them via email at executivedirector@internationalpen.org.uk , or phone on 0207 405 0338 to make a donation. You can also get their postal address from the link in the post below.
Thanks for reading, and go give them lots of money!
Edit at 19:04, Sunday 27/09 - English PEN, the founding chapter of International PEN, have a link to an online donation form at their website. If you want to donate online, this is another way in which you can do so. Please tell them I sent you at the top of the form, though - I'm not making any money out of this, but getting some props would give me a happy. Thanks.
Saturday, 26 September 2009
New Readers Start Here
If you're here because I gave you a slip at the store today, then the first thing I have to say is thank you. Because if I gave you one of those slips, it's because you donated money to International PEN, to whom I am dedicating my hour on the Fourth Plinth as part of Antony Gormley's One and Other project. Not only that, it means you bothered to follow the link on the slip, which probably makes you quite a rare person indeed. I'm under no illusions that most of those slips won't end up in peoples' wastepaper baskets but, at least in your case, they didn't. You're generous, you listen to people when they talk to you, and you're curious enough to follow up information when it's given to you. You're exactly the sort of person I want reading this blog, in fact. Welcome aboard.
And now, orientation. First a little about me, then a little - probably a lot - about my plans for One and Other, and how I want you to take part.
*** Important Brevityfail Warning - Extremely Long Post ***
Due to my own crippling verbosity and the sheer amount of information I'm trying to get across to you here, this post has turned out to be, in specialised posting terminology, VFL or Very Flippin' Long. If you're busy, but still want to know what my plans are for the plinth, I recommend you skip to the section helpfully formatted in bold towards the bottom of this entry. Thank you.
*** We now return you to the rest of the post ***
What do you need to know about me? I've been writing and performing poetry for ten years. I've been published by a variety of magazines and I've performed in Liverpool, Hastings, Edinburgh, Baltimore and just about every place you can mention in the North East. I've had a long hiatus from writing on a serious basis while I've been working on my psychology degree, but I've returned to it now that I'm done with that. During the summer, I applied, almost on a whim, to take part in One and Other, never expecting that I'd be one of the people selected. Having made an application, I promptly forgot all about it. I still watched the plinth, but the thought of being on it had clean left my mind.
Until the message arrived in my inbox, telling me I had been chosen. As you can imagine, my first thought was 'oh f**k.' My second thought was that I should immediately hit the reject button. I wasn't confident. I wasn't prepared, and I didn't have a great deal of time in which to prepare. I wasn't ready. Wasn't good enough. Not worthy.
My third thought, fortunately, was that I should stop being so bloody stupid. And that instead of repeating all the reasons why I couldn't do it, I should click accept and start thinking instead about what I could do.
As a poet I knew that I could perform some work on the plinth. But I wanted to do something more. I hit on the idea of writing something with the audience: with that thought in place, it was a question of what to write and how to go about writing it. Having joined Twitter recently, I was interested in the potential for using it as a creative space. Plus, I realised, by asking people to help on Twitter, I could expand my potential temporary writing collective beyond whoever happened to be in Trafalgar Square at the time.
But what to write? That was the question. And it was one I decided to back-burner for a while, while I looked into finding a charity to represent.
I chose International PEN because, as a writer and a bookseller, as someone who trafficks with the written word almost every hour of the day, their role as defenders of free expression was something that resonated with me. I also knew they were a less well-known charity, and so I felt that by dedicating my plinth time to them, I could have a more positive effect in raising awareness of them, their work, and the threats which are faced by writers, journalists and librarians around the world today who dare to criticise repressive regimes. Money-wise, I couldn't match the donations they receive from their corporate sponsors; but if I could at least say that, because of me, people who wouldn't otherwise have heard of PEN now had, that would be an achievement. And I've managed that. And raised quite a bit of money too, though how much I don't know, yet - in my stupidity I purchased a receptacle for the money which I can only open by destroying it. It's pretty damn heavy now, and I know there's a lot of £1 and £2 coins in there, so we'll just have to see. Wednesday night's when it gets opened and counted. Stay tuned for the big reveal!
So - what do I do with the hour? I toyed with various ideas, but finally, at about two in the morning one night, I hit on the idea that had been staring me in the face all along.
Freedom of expression is what PEN are all about. It's also something important to me as a poet. In my poetry, I get to express, in a lyrical manner, truths about myself and my world which would fall flat if I had to describe them prosaically in my halting, stumbling everyday voice, but which gain a higher truth and meaning from being said in the controlled form of poetry. Furthermore, I've always seen part of my role as giving voice to people who are denied a voice in the culture, or people whose voice doesn't get heard because of the endless thumping drone of bigotry, ignorance and lies to which we are daily subjected by the media. This, I realised, had to play a part in the collective writing part of the hour. So here are the details of the exercise:
The Fourth Plinth Piece - all you need to know
1. It will be titled 'I'm afraid to say this, but...'
2. It will have a rough sonnet form - 14 lines in all.
3. Every line will be a contribution from a member of the public, whether shouted out or tweeted.
4. Every line will be a continuation of the first sentence, e.g. 'I'm afraid to say this but...I don't believe in God/I'm in love with my best friend/I have disturbing thoughts about Anne Robinson etc etc'
5. I will work on it with the audience as I perform my other work. When we have a fallow period, I'll get on with performing, and check in with people periodically to see how we're doing.
6.At the end of the hour, I will perform the poem as the closing number of my set.
What I want people to contribute are things they fear to say. What I'm exploring here is the idea that, in this culture, we curtail freedom of expression, but in more subtle ways than imprisonment or assassination. By the end of the hour we'll have a poem which represents a record of the kind of things people felt they couldn't say in Britain and around the world in the year 2009. More information on what I'm trying to say with this here.
This has been a long post, and you're busy, but if you've read this far it's time for me to say thank you again for taking the time. I hope you'll help me out by contributing your thoughts to this piece of work, and I hope you stick around. Stay tuned.
And now, orientation. First a little about me, then a little - probably a lot - about my plans for One and Other, and how I want you to take part.
*** Important Brevityfail Warning - Extremely Long Post ***
Due to my own crippling verbosity and the sheer amount of information I'm trying to get across to you here, this post has turned out to be, in specialised posting terminology, VFL or Very Flippin' Long. If you're busy, but still want to know what my plans are for the plinth, I recommend you skip to the section helpfully formatted in bold towards the bottom of this entry. Thank you.
*** We now return you to the rest of the post ***
What do you need to know about me? I've been writing and performing poetry for ten years. I've been published by a variety of magazines and I've performed in Liverpool, Hastings, Edinburgh, Baltimore and just about every place you can mention in the North East. I've had a long hiatus from writing on a serious basis while I've been working on my psychology degree, but I've returned to it now that I'm done with that. During the summer, I applied, almost on a whim, to take part in One and Other, never expecting that I'd be one of the people selected. Having made an application, I promptly forgot all about it. I still watched the plinth, but the thought of being on it had clean left my mind.
Until the message arrived in my inbox, telling me I had been chosen. As you can imagine, my first thought was 'oh f**k.' My second thought was that I should immediately hit the reject button. I wasn't confident. I wasn't prepared, and I didn't have a great deal of time in which to prepare. I wasn't ready. Wasn't good enough. Not worthy.
My third thought, fortunately, was that I should stop being so bloody stupid. And that instead of repeating all the reasons why I couldn't do it, I should click accept and start thinking instead about what I could do.
As a poet I knew that I could perform some work on the plinth. But I wanted to do something more. I hit on the idea of writing something with the audience: with that thought in place, it was a question of what to write and how to go about writing it. Having joined Twitter recently, I was interested in the potential for using it as a creative space. Plus, I realised, by asking people to help on Twitter, I could expand my potential temporary writing collective beyond whoever happened to be in Trafalgar Square at the time.
But what to write? That was the question. And it was one I decided to back-burner for a while, while I looked into finding a charity to represent.
I chose International PEN because, as a writer and a bookseller, as someone who trafficks with the written word almost every hour of the day, their role as defenders of free expression was something that resonated with me. I also knew they were a less well-known charity, and so I felt that by dedicating my plinth time to them, I could have a more positive effect in raising awareness of them, their work, and the threats which are faced by writers, journalists and librarians around the world today who dare to criticise repressive regimes. Money-wise, I couldn't match the donations they receive from their corporate sponsors; but if I could at least say that, because of me, people who wouldn't otherwise have heard of PEN now had, that would be an achievement. And I've managed that. And raised quite a bit of money too, though how much I don't know, yet - in my stupidity I purchased a receptacle for the money which I can only open by destroying it. It's pretty damn heavy now, and I know there's a lot of £1 and £2 coins in there, so we'll just have to see. Wednesday night's when it gets opened and counted. Stay tuned for the big reveal!
So - what do I do with the hour? I toyed with various ideas, but finally, at about two in the morning one night, I hit on the idea that had been staring me in the face all along.
Freedom of expression is what PEN are all about. It's also something important to me as a poet. In my poetry, I get to express, in a lyrical manner, truths about myself and my world which would fall flat if I had to describe them prosaically in my halting, stumbling everyday voice, but which gain a higher truth and meaning from being said in the controlled form of poetry. Furthermore, I've always seen part of my role as giving voice to people who are denied a voice in the culture, or people whose voice doesn't get heard because of the endless thumping drone of bigotry, ignorance and lies to which we are daily subjected by the media. This, I realised, had to play a part in the collective writing part of the hour. So here are the details of the exercise:
The Fourth Plinth Piece - all you need to know
1. It will be titled 'I'm afraid to say this, but...'
2. It will have a rough sonnet form - 14 lines in all.
3. Every line will be a contribution from a member of the public, whether shouted out or tweeted.
4. Every line will be a continuation of the first sentence, e.g. 'I'm afraid to say this but...I don't believe in God/I'm in love with my best friend/I have disturbing thoughts about Anne Robinson etc etc'
5. I will work on it with the audience as I perform my other work. When we have a fallow period, I'll get on with performing, and check in with people periodically to see how we're doing.
6.At the end of the hour, I will perform the poem as the closing number of my set.
What I want people to contribute are things they fear to say. What I'm exploring here is the idea that, in this culture, we curtail freedom of expression, but in more subtle ways than imprisonment or assassination. By the end of the hour we'll have a poem which represents a record of the kind of things people felt they couldn't say in Britain and around the world in the year 2009. More information on what I'm trying to say with this here.
This has been a long post, and you're busy, but if you've read this far it's time for me to say thank you again for taking the time. I hope you'll help me out by contributing your thoughts to this piece of work, and I hope you stick around. Stay tuned.
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Bless my cotton socks I'm in the news...
I really must stop over-using that Teardrop Explodes quotation, but it's damn hard not to today. My plinth appearance has been reported in an actually rather wonderful piece in the local newspaper, the Sunderland Echo. I'm on page ten of the print edition - can't find any reference on the website, though, but I'm not too worried about that. They'll probably get it on there eventually, and if they don't at least the thing I feared happening - getting bumped to the website but not making it into print - didn't occur. It feels good seeing myself in the paper. Print gives things some kind of validation.
Despite my Sontag-esque musings yesterday, the accompanying photo came out rather well too, I think. I mean I've only glanced at it out of the corner of my eye, but it seems to make me look like a normal and respectable human being, so the photographer, Corrina, has done an extremely good job there.
News also arrives from the excellent Streetcake magazine, who have accepted a poem of mine for publication in their next issue. I was turned on to Streetcake - which sounds vaguely like a line you might hear in a Chris Morris spoof - by the blindingly fabulous Angela Readman, who suggested I send them some material when I was casting about for places to submit to as part of my clumsy, faltering attempts to get back on the poetry horse. And I'd be glad that she put me on to them even if they hadn't accepted my work, because theirs is a genuinely interesting publication, a poetry online mag that shows a commendable interest in using the fact that they publish to screen rather than page to take a more adventurous approach to the visual appearance of the work they publish. My poem, 'The Mechanics of the Scissorhold', will be published in issue 7, due soon, but there's a lot of interesting stuff to peruse at their site while you wait for it. Go read.
In other news, a Blackberry owner is now me. I finally took the decision to get me one of those new-fangled smartypants-phones after concluding that lugging a laptop down to London to receive peoples' tweets for my collaborative plinth poem would be just too much hassle - especially given that I have a Roland Microcube to lug down there too - and that, while I needed something small and portable which could quickly process tweets, my dislike of touchscreens precluded me buying an iPhone. Yes, I know, I'm a keyboard-loving dinosaur doomed to never fit in with the coolest kids when we all live in some Minority Report world where we write everything by grabbing floaty letters out of the air. So what? A Blackberry is tremendously ahead of the curve for me. Remember, I still genuinely feel aggreived at the demise of the 3 1/4" floppy (it was the noise; that satisfying thump-click as you slid the bad boy in and got ready for business. You don't get that action from one of yer weeny little USB sticks.).
And so, with the amp here and working, the comms taken care of, and the media informed, it's all just down on me now to rehearse this thing and try to make it the best that I can. Having completed my first full rehearsal I can say that initial impressions are good. Maybe it's just that Fish Manor has better acoustics for practicing in, but I really feel now that I'm finding my voice again, and looking forward to running my dirty little mouth off in public again for all you beautiful little monsters. More updates as and when...
Despite my Sontag-esque musings yesterday, the accompanying photo came out rather well too, I think. I mean I've only glanced at it out of the corner of my eye, but it seems to make me look like a normal and respectable human being, so the photographer, Corrina, has done an extremely good job there.
News also arrives from the excellent Streetcake magazine, who have accepted a poem of mine for publication in their next issue. I was turned on to Streetcake - which sounds vaguely like a line you might hear in a Chris Morris spoof - by the blindingly fabulous Angela Readman, who suggested I send them some material when I was casting about for places to submit to as part of my clumsy, faltering attempts to get back on the poetry horse. And I'd be glad that she put me on to them even if they hadn't accepted my work, because theirs is a genuinely interesting publication, a poetry online mag that shows a commendable interest in using the fact that they publish to screen rather than page to take a more adventurous approach to the visual appearance of the work they publish. My poem, 'The Mechanics of the Scissorhold', will be published in issue 7, due soon, but there's a lot of interesting stuff to peruse at their site while you wait for it. Go read.
In other news, a Blackberry owner is now me. I finally took the decision to get me one of those new-fangled smartypants-phones after concluding that lugging a laptop down to London to receive peoples' tweets for my collaborative plinth poem would be just too much hassle - especially given that I have a Roland Microcube to lug down there too - and that, while I needed something small and portable which could quickly process tweets, my dislike of touchscreens precluded me buying an iPhone. Yes, I know, I'm a keyboard-loving dinosaur doomed to never fit in with the coolest kids when we all live in some Minority Report world where we write everything by grabbing floaty letters out of the air. So what? A Blackberry is tremendously ahead of the curve for me. Remember, I still genuinely feel aggreived at the demise of the 3 1/4" floppy (it was the noise; that satisfying thump-click as you slid the bad boy in and got ready for business. You don't get that action from one of yer weeny little USB sticks.).
And so, with the amp here and working, the comms taken care of, and the media informed, it's all just down on me now to rehearse this thing and try to make it the best that I can. Having completed my first full rehearsal I can say that initial impressions are good. Maybe it's just that Fish Manor has better acoustics for practicing in, but I really feel now that I'm finding my voice again, and looking forward to running my dirty little mouth off in public again for all you beautiful little monsters. More updates as and when...
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Ready for my Close-up
In her preface to Robert Mapplethorpe's Certain People, Susan Sontag wrote:
'When I am photographed, this normally outgoing, fervent relation of consciousness to the world is jammed. I yield to another command station of consciousness, which "faces" me...Stowed away, berthed, brought to heel, my consciousness has abdicated its normal function...I don't feel threatened. But I do feel disarmed, my consciousness reduced to an embarrassed knot of self-consciousness striving for composure...I experience myself as behind my face, looking out through the windows of my eyes, like the prisoner in the iron mask in Dumas's novel.'
Yesterday, I had to have myself photographed for an article about my plinth appearance. And while I'm not sure it was exactly as nerve-wracking an experience for me as it was for Sontag, it was, I'll admit, a little embarrassing. I can be pretty good in a performance context, I like to think, but sitting down, looking at a camera and, well, posing...I found that a lot harder than I'd imagined. It's probably safe to say I have a new-found respect for models.
'When I am photographed, this normally outgoing, fervent relation of consciousness to the world is jammed. I yield to another command station of consciousness, which "faces" me...Stowed away, berthed, brought to heel, my consciousness has abdicated its normal function...I don't feel threatened. But I do feel disarmed, my consciousness reduced to an embarrassed knot of self-consciousness striving for composure...I experience myself as behind my face, looking out through the windows of my eyes, like the prisoner in the iron mask in Dumas's novel.'
Yesterday, I had to have myself photographed for an article about my plinth appearance. And while I'm not sure it was exactly as nerve-wracking an experience for me as it was for Sontag, it was, I'll admit, a little embarrassing. I can be pretty good in a performance context, I like to think, but sitting down, looking at a camera and, well, posing...I found that a lot harder than I'd imagined. It's probably safe to say I have a new-found respect for models.
Tuesday, 22 September 2009
I Know What I'm (t)Here For
Well now. There are ten days left before I'm on the plinth. It's about time I decided what I'm doing.
And I have.
I'm doing this to raise money for International PEN. They defend peoples' right to freedom of expression. It follows, then, that that should be the theme of my performance. And it will be.
In countries like Cuba and Mexico, people are kept quiet by fear of imprisonment or disappearance. We're cleverer, here. In the UK, in the US, in the quote-unquote 'civilised' world, we keep quiet because we don't want to look weird. We don't want to offend the 'Values Voters', and their UK avatars. We want to keep our jobs.
The punishment we face is less extreme: the end result is still the same. We keep schtum, afraid of punishment. But we don't have to.
As part of my time on the plinth, I want to write a sonnet. 14 lines. Doesn't have to be Petrarchan, or Spenserian. Doesn't even have to rhyme. But I want each line to be a genuine expression from someone - maybe in the crowd, maybe on the net, wherever. And I want each line to be something you're afraid to say. Something you'd like to say, but which you keep quiet for fear of the consequences. Those consequences might be ostracision, or prison, or a beating, or being called names on the schoolyard, or unemployment, or just an indefinable fear that folk will think less of you - but as part of my hour on the plinth, I want you to shout what you're afraid to say, and I will shout it with you. Call out, or tweet, your line, and I will read it for you.
If you want anonymity, then fine. Before I go down to London, I'll set up a collective twitter ID, give out the password, and if you really don't want to admit to what you fear to express, then you can tweet using that. A caveat though. Log out when you're finished, and let others have a go.
However you do it - whether you want to shout at me in public or send me a message over the ether - I hope you take part. For an hour, in a way I never imagined, I get the chance to express myself - to put my psyche on the line and let the world know who I am. And, for good or ill, I want to bring you with me.
October 2nd. 0400-0500 AM. 'I'm afraid to say it, but...' let's do this thing.
And I have.
I'm doing this to raise money for International PEN. They defend peoples' right to freedom of expression. It follows, then, that that should be the theme of my performance. And it will be.
In countries like Cuba and Mexico, people are kept quiet by fear of imprisonment or disappearance. We're cleverer, here. In the UK, in the US, in the quote-unquote 'civilised' world, we keep quiet because we don't want to look weird. We don't want to offend the 'Values Voters', and their UK avatars. We want to keep our jobs.
The punishment we face is less extreme: the end result is still the same. We keep schtum, afraid of punishment. But we don't have to.
As part of my time on the plinth, I want to write a sonnet. 14 lines. Doesn't have to be Petrarchan, or Spenserian. Doesn't even have to rhyme. But I want each line to be a genuine expression from someone - maybe in the crowd, maybe on the net, wherever. And I want each line to be something you're afraid to say. Something you'd like to say, but which you keep quiet for fear of the consequences. Those consequences might be ostracision, or prison, or a beating, or being called names on the schoolyard, or unemployment, or just an indefinable fear that folk will think less of you - but as part of my hour on the plinth, I want you to shout what you're afraid to say, and I will shout it with you. Call out, or tweet, your line, and I will read it for you.
If you want anonymity, then fine. Before I go down to London, I'll set up a collective twitter ID, give out the password, and if you really don't want to admit to what you fear to express, then you can tweet using that. A caveat though. Log out when you're finished, and let others have a go.
However you do it - whether you want to shout at me in public or send me a message over the ether - I hope you take part. For an hour, in a way I never imagined, I get the chance to express myself - to put my psyche on the line and let the world know who I am. And, for good or ill, I want to bring you with me.
October 2nd. 0400-0500 AM. 'I'm afraid to say it, but...' let's do this thing.
Saturday, 19 September 2009
Take it away, Mr Moore...
'I'm thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple of years. It's cold and it's mean-spirited and I don't like it here anymore.' - Alan Moore, intro to DC Comics TPB of V for Vendetta, 1988.
It's twenty-one years later, but seeing this kind of thing, who could blame him?
'Goodnight England. Goodnight Home Service and V for Victory. Hello the Voice of Fate and V FOR VENDETTA.' - Alan Moore, op.cit.
It's twenty-one years later, but seeing this kind of thing, who could blame him?
'Goodnight England. Goodnight Home Service and V for Victory. Hello the Voice of Fate and V FOR VENDETTA.' - Alan Moore, op.cit.
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