I'm back (again)

Yes, yes, I know. My promises to resume posting regularly here have been about as reliable as the Tory government's...no, I'm not going to go there. I have the urge to blog, and to write more generally, and I suspect one of the main reasons is the utter chaos out there at the moment. So, I'm going to restrict myself to talking about poetry, and literature more generally, and birds, and history, and maybe some cricket (although, there's not much about England that inspires me at the moment). I can't guarantee it will be upbeat, exactly, but it will definitely be more fun than the news.

Backlisted, again

I know I've mentioned it on here before, but I'm just going to give another plug to the Backlisted podcast. Over what now runs to more than 120 episodes, they've discussed a huge variety of books (mainly novels, although they've also touched on poetry and biography). Generally they try to shine a light on lesser-known if not downright obscure books, but they've also covered more mainstream works, too. Although, one of the pleasures of the podcast is that you usually end up realising the the book being discussed is not exactly what you thought it was, anyway. 

The UK's favourite nature book

I came across this earlier today – Land Lines are looking to find the UK's favourite nature book. They're all excellent, as you'd expect, but there's three in there that I'd find very very hard to separate – The Peregrine, John Clare's Selected Poems, and of course The Natural History of Selborne. But I'd have to go for JA Baker's masterpiece, in the end.

The best of 2016

I was asked to pick a few books of the year for Big Issue North, and here they are – needless to say, it was a pretty hard decision picking my favourites, but I tried to include a bit of variety.

Payment for writers

Very interesting blog piece from Charles Boyle here, on the current debate about literary festivals paying (and not paying) writers. It is, of course, a very complicated subject. I'd guess many writers find it difficult to say no to unpaid readings and appearances even if they do feel strongly that they should be paid, but equally I'm not sure if any of the festivals are making a great deal of money out of the whole thing. One to discuss at length.

There's another interesting take on the issue here.

Top 10 books of rural Wales

The Guardian had this interesting list yesterday. It includes three personal favourites - The Owl Service, Bruce Chatwin's On The Black Hill (and the writer here neatly encapsulates what makes it such a fine book), and of course RS Thomas's Collected Poems.

As with any list, though, there are bound to be controversial omissions and inclusions. Nothing by Raymond Williams, for example. Anyone got any other suggestions for what might have been included?

Cthulhu Cymraeg launch day

There's a launch event for the horror anthology Cthulhu Cymraeg taking place at Swansea Library, from 10am on Saturday, April 26th.  Here's the timetable - I'm looking forward to it, plus the chance to catch up with old friends.

10.05 - The Shadow from Wild Wales : HP Lovecraft, Arthur Machen and Wales

H P Lovecraft is one of the key figures in modern horror. After a short introduction to his life in New England and New York and his work, this talk will look in particular at the Welsh author of decadent 

and mystical horror Arthur Machen, often cited as one of the main influences on HPL. How did Lovecraft find out about Machen, “a Titan” as he called him, and how did it influence his own stories, 

including The Call of Cthulhu itself? How has Wales featured in later mythos works? Is Wales, as some have claimed, the location of the dread Necronomicon? Illustrated talk by Machen expert Gwilym Games.

10.50 - The Spawning of Cthulhu Cymraeg

This panel, featuring the editor Mark Howard Jones, publisher Steve Upham and many authors from the anthology, will discuss how the book was born and the twisted gestation of the stories within it. There will also be a chance to buy copies!

11.25 – Author Readings

12.00 - Lunch

12.30 – Author Readings

1.10 - The Call of Lovecraft – Lovecraft in the 21st century

What is the strange and growing attraction Lovecraft exerts on readers and writers? Countless writers have written Lovecraftian books and stories and his impact extends to inspiring films, comics, games, 

television and even religious and occult movements. After years of neglect and dismissal of Lovecraft as a pulp writer he is now regarded by publishers as a classic author, and academic work on Lovecraft is becoming common. Why is this and where is modern mythos fiction going? How are we to judge the quality of Lovecraft’s own work and his followers? What are we to make of Lovecraft’s racism in a more tolerant age? Why do the works of the atheist Lovecraft inspire religious ideas? Discussing these and other questions the audience might throw at them is a panel featuring Rhys Hughes, Mark Howard Jones, Gwilym Games and others.

2.00 - The Technicolor out of the Screen

There have been rather a lot of Lovecraft-inspired films and adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories. Many of them are hideous abominations which test the sanity of any who might see them. In this mind-blasting survey Gwilym Games and author John Llewellyn Probert, will be reanimating some highlights of Lovecraftian cinema before your very EYES in a devastating montage of film clips and commentary. Watch if you dare!

2.50 Break

3.00 The Call of Cthulhu (Film)

Amongst other elements of tentacular terror there will be a rare chance to watch this silent classic! Trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKb0_rfZEsU

3.50 The END

Adjourn to The No Sign Wine Bar for drinks after the event, where there will be a further chance to talk to authors.

Sarehole Mill walking and wildlife workshop

I'm leading this Urban Walking and Wildlife workshop at Sarehole Mill Gardens, Birmingham, on the afternoon of October 8th, as part of the Birmingham Literature Festival.

We'll be looking for the birds (and other wildlife) of this green corner of the second city, and writing about them and anything else we turn up along the way. It's not restricted to poetry, either - prose writers

It's a spot with a literary history, after all - Sarehole was the childhood home of JRR Tolkien, and Sarehole Mill and its terrifying (to small boys) owner turns up in his work as the Mill at Hobbiton.

One thing I should add to the information on the BLF page is that I'll have a few pairs of binoculars available to borrow on the day, if anyone needs some.

Words & Wickets

This looks very interesting indeed - unfortunately I can't make it as I've got a prior engagement, but it would be great if it became a regular event. It's high time that the literary side of cricket was given a bit higher profile.

States of Independence 2013

Just a quick reminder that this year's States of Independence event takes place this Saturday, in the Clephan Building, De Montfort University, Leicester.

As always there's a range of small presses exhibiting, and there's a full programme of readings and talks throughout the day.

Curiouser and curiouser

At first sight, I thought this story about an author attacking taxpayer-funding for Welsh writers was a possible case of very sour grapes. His claims are so ludicrously overblown ("not a single Welsh writer of national or international note since the 50s") that it's hard to take it seriously. You can come up with your own list of writers of note to refute that, I'm sure, and several bloggers and commentators have already done so* - as you've probably come to expect, I'll just say one name. Repeatedly.**

RS THOMAS RS THOMAS RS THOMAS RS THOMAS RS THOMAS RS THOMAS !!!!!!!!

It's even harder to take Mr Ruck at face value when you realise that the festival at which he was supposed to have given his speech was cancelled. Presumably he'd already sent the press release out, and the journalist ran with it. Oh dear.

* Dannie Abse featured on several, I was glad to see.
** I know Thomas had already published plenty of work (and plenty of his best work) before the end of the Fifties. But he also published a lot of well-received work after that date, and certainly his acclaim by the wider literary world came much later.

Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012

Writers probably get thoroughly fed up with responding to that old question about who their main influences are, but I have to admit, I rarely get fed up of reading their answers. The better interviewees make a point of explaining exactly how those influences worked. Otherwise, I think there’s a default assumption (or maybe it’s just me) that Writer A reads Writers B, C, D and E and becomes something that’s an amalgam of all four.

The death of Ray Bradbury this week, at the age of 91, set me thinking about this, and other things. When I was a kid, I think around 9 or 10, I read a story of Bradbury’s in the Reader's Digest. I was a pretty voracious reader anyway, but it was the first time I’d come across Bradbury, so had no preconceptions about his status as a science-fiction writer (he considered himself a fantasy writer, incidentally, but both terms tend to get used rather sniffily by literary critics*).

All I can remember of the story now is that it was set in an American small town, and centred on a boy’s longing for a new pair of sneakers that he sees in a shop window. Perhaps that was all there was to the plot. That’s not really important. What is significant is that I distinctly remember realising that it was the first time I’d read something and enjoyed it for no other reason than the way it was written. The writing was what made it pleasurable, not the narrative or anything else, and to prove that to myself I read it again and again over a few weeks.

I didn’t go away and read libraries full of Bradbury. I came back to him much later, after university, I think, and read The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles, and what I’d consider his masterpiece, October Country, and I loved them, but I don’t think I’ve ever had the urge to write anything along remotely similar lines. Where Bradbury did influence me, probably more than any other writer, was in making me want to write. Anything. Everything. Every day, if at all possible. So, thanks Ray. Every time I re-read those books I mentioned, I still get that same feeling.

* It'll be interesting to see how Bradbury is re-evaluated in the next few years, because despite the fantasy/sci-fi settings of much of his work, his real subjects, of course, were the USA, and the 20th Century. It's a constant source of irritation to me that so-called 'genre' fiction is so often sidelined, or treated as somehow less serious than 'literary fiction. If ever a writer shattered that myth, it was Bradbury.

Reading in Leicester

Last night, I was at the University of Leicester, reading to a forum of post-graduate creative writing students. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening - the reading went well, and the three papers presented by students were extremely thought-provoking.

The first, by Michelle Fossey, was an extract from a novel in progress which is centred on one subject I'm fascinated by (religious cults) while analysing another (the clarity and transparency, or lack of it, of language). She also mentioned something that intrigues me - the tension that arises when conducting a solitary, private activity - writing - in an academic, supervised environment. Of course, that says something about my own writing methods and/or expectations, as there's no reason why writing should be solitary or private, but it set me thinking.

Gail Knight (I think I've got the name right) read an extract from her children's novella - as one of the other guests pointed out, even though it wasn't the sort of thing I'd expected to appeal to me, I found myself wanting to know what happened next, which I'd guess is what any writer of fiction wants more than anything.

Finally, Gwynne Harries read a number of his own poems as part of a look at the poetry of identity, and specfically dual identity (he's an English-speaking Welshman). My own mother's Welsh, so it's something I'm very interested in, and Gwynne also set me off looking into some of the traditional Welsh verse forms he touched on (I've tried the odd englyn in the past, but there's a lot more to discover), plus Rolfe Humphries, a relatively neglected literary figure these days.

Heartfelt thanks go to Rory Waterman (a very fine poet, and the man behind the excellent New Walk magazine) for his kindness in inviting me, and for the splendid curry at Kayal.

Inspiration

I was thinking, over the weekend, about the way reading poetry works upon the unconscious mind, and then feeds into your own writing. If you're trying to write poetry, than reading as much of it as possible can only be a good thing, as far as I'm concerned - the wider the range of influences you get exposed to the better.

Having said that, I've long been wary of trying to write too soon after reading poetry that I like a lot, because bitter experience tells me that the result is often a series of third-rate imitations of the writer in question. Far better to digest the other poet's work slowly, very slowly, and fully absorb the literary nutrients therein.

Sometimes, though, reading something that's just shout-out-loud brilliant does have an immediately inspirational effect, and the only thing to do is to get the notebook/beermat/laptop out and write. It happened to me last week. I'd been rather stuck on several (largely unconnected) poems for weeks, months even, and couldn't find a way to move forward with them at all.

Then, after reading a particular poet's latest book, I had a blinding-flash revelation of where I wanted to go. I was very dubious at first, but went with it, and have been checking and rechecking ever since that what I came up with wasn't a pathetic retread of their work. I'm pretty sure it's not (although that's not to say it's any good) - in fact, I think it's stylistically a very long way from what I was reading.

So how does this happen? I tend to think that it's simply that reading a great poem reminds you that such things are possible - spend to long looking at your own failures, or even just your own almost-poems, and you start to forget what a real poem is. All of which is a way of saying again that the more poetry you read, the better, because the more likely you are to come across something astonishing, or inspirational.

Some current reading

I've been reading a lot over the past couple of weeks. Here's most of it:

Selected Poems - Cesar Vallejo (Shearsman)
Collected Shorter Poems Vol.2 - John Matthias (Shearsman)
Days and Nights In W12 - Jack Robinson (who, it turns out, is actually Charles Boyle, the man behind CB Editions, who publish this)
Early Train - Jonathan Davidson (Smith Doorstop)
God's Machynlleth - Michael W Thomas (Flarestack)
Port Winston Mulberry - Michael W Thomas (Littlejohn and Bray)

Aly Stoneman - Lost Lands (Crystal Clear Creators)
Jessica Mayhew - Someone Else's Photograph (Crystal Clear Creators)
Charles Lauder Jr - Bleeds (Crystal Clear Creators)
Roy Marshall - Gopagilla (Crystal Clear Creators)
Silent Spring Revisited - Conor Jameson (pre-publication proof)

A conversation with Mark Howard Jones

 

It’s a fortunate day when you find out your boss shares your regard for the weird fiction of HP Lovecraft. Back in the late 1990s, that’s what happened to me when I was working at the Western Mail and Echo in Cardiff.

Mark Howard Jones, who was my chief sub-editor, has since become a full-time writer, with his most recent book, Songs From Spider Street coming highly recommended by no less an authority than Ray Bradbury. I talked to him about his work…

I wanted to start by asking how you go about getting short stories, and especially ‘genre’ short stories (we'll get on to my problems with that label later) published? From the outside, I get the impression that there are even fewer outlets for short stories than for poems.

Getting short stories into print is inevitably an uphill struggle because Britain is such a small place with so few magazines that publish fiction. The outlets that do exist often seem to favour their friends so, if you haven't fallen down in a drunken heap with the editor at some stage, it's highly unlikely you'll be published by them.

But persistence and the discovery of the odd discerning editor are the keys to publication, I think. I'm getting more and more work published in America, where there are a greater number of outlets of course.

Incidentally, I don't see myself as writing ‘genre’ stories. I think genres are useful only to publishers, booksellers and librarians, to be honest. But if you steer clear of using different genre ideas in your writing (for whatever reason) it’s like only ever cooking with one or two ingredients; you won’t starve...you’ll just wish you had.

I agree about that term ‘genre’, or at least the way it’s used to try to separate so-called literary fiction from everything else. I can remember the first time I ever read a piece of writing and enjoyed it for the quality of the writing itself – it was a short story by Ray Bradbury, in the Readers’ Digest, when I was about 11. It was only years later that I realised he tended to get sidelined by critics as a sci-fi writer. Does that sort of separation in fiction still go on as much as it appears from the outside?

I think it does but the edges are finally beginning to blur, thankfully. I’ve been published in ‘genre’ magazines and anthologies simply because they were willing to publish my work. But there are other facets of my work that they wouldn’t have touched with a bargepole.

While I admit I admire writers such as Machen, Lovecraft, Dino Buzzati, Ballard, and Bradbury, I've also absorbed a lot of influences from surrealism, magic realism, expression and other literary movements.

And 'literary fiction' (an absurd label!) has now fallen into its own trap and become a genre itself, of course.

So can you recommend some good eclectic, open-minded mags and webzines for writers and readers? Short stories seem to be skimming even lower under the radar than poems, these days.

Haha. That's asking me to cut my throat really, isn't it? Rather than play favourites I'll tell you which magazines I enjoy personally at the moment.

In this country I always try and read Dream Catcher, Midnight Street, Estronomicon, Sein und Werden, Triquorum (though I think that might sadly be dead now), 3 AM, Black Static, Theaker's Fiction Quarterly, Polluto and Wordland. My favorites across the Atlantic are Weird Tales (still going after all these years!), Medulla Review, Weird Fiction Review, Bare Bone, The Dream People, and Night Train.

There are probably a lot more I should be reading but until they add another two hours to each day, I’ll stick with the ones I’ve listed.

Following on from that answer of yours, I’d like to ask more about writing processes. How do you work, typically? I’m very conscious of the fact that, although I try not to have any little rituals or anything that I follow, I nearly always end up writing in the same place, at the same time, etc.

I don’t have any method or rituals. Other than scribbling things down on pieces of paper that are too small.

I can’t sit in front of a blank page and I’m a little suspicious of those writers who claim to write every single day; if they really did write as much as they say they do, then they’d have around 9 novels by the end of the year!

No, I just write where and when I need to. I generally let things ferment in the back of my brain until they’re ready to be written. Having said that, I’ve noticed that I do respond well to deadlines. Maybe that’s my journalistic background coming out.

And what about revision? I find that I leave poems longer and longer before going back to them these days, but is that easy to do with short stories? I’d be terrified that the longer I left it the harder I’d find it to pick up the threads...

Generally, I try to do any revision within a few days. But the longest period I’ve left between writing (most of) a story and revising it is five years. The story ended up being very different to the one I began writing and has proved to be one of the most popular in my collection Songs From Spider Street. So maybe that should tell me something.

It wouldn’t be practical to leave all my revision that long, of course. I’m slow enough finishing stories as it is and, unless I discover the secret of immortality, one collection every 50 years just isn't practical.

What about that moment of inspiration? Do you scribble ideas down on the backs of beer mats, or do you trust them to stay with you?

I owe everything to small bits of paper torn off the edges of forms, letters, magazines and so on, which I place on my chair so that I won’t miss them the next time I sit at my computer to write.

But I do carry ideas and the shapes of stories in my head for a long time – sometimes a year or two – before I get around to actually writing them down. I seem to have a good memory for that sort of thing but often forget to put on my shoes before leaving the house.

And if it doesn’t sound too obvious, where do you get your ideas from? Obviously influences come into that a bit, but there’s a lot in your stories that has no obvious point of origin.

That's difficult to say. And I'll take your second comment as a compliment, by the way!

I seem to have lost a lot of people in my life, so I write about that, one way or another. I just write what I feel needs to be written. It’s not about stories (although there’s always a story there because people need to be engaged and entertained) but it is about things that can’t always be spoken of directly – things that are only seen out of the corner of the mind’s eye. If I can capture some of those things on the page, I’m happy.

What about those influences? Have you been compared to any writers in particular? (I don’t think I’ve ever met a writer who doesn’t like being compared to others at least sometimes).

Yes, I’ve been compared to quite a few other writers, though I take that all with a pinch of salt, to be honest.

One story of mine that people mention a lot is The Ice Horse. Most of that was written in the same room in Portmeirion where Noel Coward wrote Blithe Spirit, so maybe I was channelling him when I wrote it. Though nobody’s ever compared me to him – yet!

I wondered too about how you first started writing? I think I started writing poetry by writing lyrics for bands that didn’t exist, but writing prose fiction seems to me to demand a more deliberate and definite starting point.

Well I was often ill as a child so I spent a lot of time on my own, reading. I loved science fiction in particular. You could say my ABC was Aldiss, Ballard and Clarke.

At the age of 9 I decided I wanted to be a writer. So I tried and tried until finally, at about the age of 39, I succeeded in putting something on paper that had a beginning, middle and end that made some sort of sense. Learning the actual mechanics of writing was simply trial and error, you could say.

Incidentally, I agree with Jim Thompson who said there are many ways to write a story but only one plot – things are not as they seem.

I thought that one of the strengths of Songs From Spider Street was that you have some great opening sentences, opening paragraphs, often – “I’ve been blackmailing myself for years”, “There he is again; the twin that I’m not one half of”, for example. Are lines like that ever the kindling point of the whole story? I’ve had poems grow out of opening lines like that, but I’m also always very conscious that you can get a bit too enamoured of a particular line, as a writer. Is it the same with short story writing?

Sometimes it works that way. But I often add the first line of a story when I’m halfway through writing it, or even once I’ve finished the rest of it. I don’t think either of those examples were the starting point of the stories, in fact.

And, yes, I’ve come up with a ‘good line’ that I simply had to change later because it no longer fitted the story. To be honest, it’s often more to do with mental images with me – only later do I ‘translate’ those images into words. I went to art college straight after school, so I’ve always found the visual arts quite inspiring.

The second of those openers you quoted makes no sense at all, of course. But that was in fitting with the narrator’s mental state.

Another great strength, I thought, was that there’s a very European feel to a lot of the book – the likes of Kafka seem as much an influence on it as the American influences that seem to dominate a lot of fiction of this sort. Would that be fair?

It’s really good to hear someone pick up on that. A lot of editors I’ve dealt with seem to have only read literature by British or American authors. And then, only relatively recent ones.

I’ve read a lot of European authors, thanks initially to the wonderful library in the town where I grew up (the librarian was the poet Harri Webb). I suppose that’s bound to leak out in my writing. Two particular favorites of mine are De Maupassant and Dino Buzatti, though there are many, many more inspiring authors from Europe.

Farther afield, I’ve found Borges, Bioy Casares and Mishima to be among my favourites.

A couple of questions about particular favourite stories, firstly Heart Is Where The Home Is. I think this was probably the standout story for me – could you tell me a bit about its genesis?

That was written to some guidelines issued by a magazine. They gave you a title – A Steampunk Orange – and wanted your take on that.

In 1923 the Swiss architect Le Corbusier came up with the slogan ‘A house is a machine for living in’. I decided to take him literally. The mechanical girl has appeared in lots of places, of course, but most memorably for me in ETA Hoffmann’s 1816 tale The Sandman. In fact, that may have been where she cropped up first.

So, the idea for the story simply came out of the collision of those two ideas.

And then The Condition. I love the little prose poem-like passages that bookend it, and I like how much is compressed into that story. That economic, taut style is there in a lot of your writing – do you hone it back to that, or is it how it’s written in the first place?

That’s just how it comes out. In fact, I’ve sometimes had complaints from editors that my stuff is too short.

I’ve always admired and read writers who can say a lot with very little. Angela Carter’s stories were an early influence and later I discovered Alice Munro, who can say more in one story than most other authors do in five novels.

I also love the work of VS Pritchett. And I think I learned something from Richard Brautigan’s brilliant Revenge Of The Lawn - his one paragraph story The Scarlatti Tilt is a masterclass in storytelling brevity!

Finally, the structure of the whole book is great. Again I like the way the Spider Street stories bookend it, but I also like the fact that there are lots of threads running from story to story without the themes becoming too overpowering. Was the book conceived that way, or was it more a case of it coalescing around some of the key stories.

No it didn’t spring to life fully formed, I’m afraid, though I did think carefully about the sequence of the stories (which are drawn from a period of about five or six years). It can be read as a portmanteau novel by starting at Page One and working straight through it, or you can ignore the ‘bookend’ stories and just dip into it as a short story collection.

I’ve been told by several people that if you adopt the former approach it has a lot more power. Stupidly, I’ve not learned that lesson and my next book will be a collection of stories with just the covers to hold them together.

The Condition, by Steve Upham

States of Independence 2012

This Saturday (March 17th) will see the annual States of Independence publishing fair at De Montfort University in Leicester.

There's a full programme of readings, seminars, lectures and other events, and most importantly of all a long list of small presses will be present - there's no better chance to sample and buy their books, or to put faces to names you've previously only known in print.

I'll leave you to make up your own minds about the highlights of the schedule, but there's enough there to keep me busy all day, and I'll be reporting on it all next week.

Entry is free, and the fair runs from 10.30am to 4.30pm. Hope to see you there.

Promises, promises

I've been pretty tardy about posting on here just lately, for one reason and another, but I plan to spring back into life next week - the holiday's going to consist of little other than reading and writing, if I have anything to do with it.

There'll be an interview with Salt poet Simon Barraclough, talking about his splendid collection Neptune Blue, among other things. There'll be my usual rather slapdash end of year lists. There'll be a a piece on colour in poetry that I've been meaning to finish for ages. Likewise, I plan to add the finishing touches to two or three reviews that have been gathering dust for a while. There'll be a look at a couple of pieces of nature writing I've been enjoying recently (and one of them is a truly extraordinary book). Oh, and there'll also be an interview and poetry from another Salt poet, Isobel Dixon.

There - that's what the Radio Times would have called a bumper Christmas and New Year package.

Transtromer enNobeled

I was just starting to pull together a few thoughts on last night's announcement of the Forward Prize winners when Twitter started, er... twittering with speculation about who would win the Nobel Prize for Literature. I'd completely forgotten that the announcement was due.

There seemed to be a strong rumour that Bob Dylan might be in line for it. Now, I'm a big fan (I spent the drive to work this morning listening to Blood On The Tracks, funnily enough), but I can't help feeling this would have been a bad thing. It's not so much that I'd see it as a slap in the face to novelists and poets, as a bit of a half-hearted recognition of his Royal Bobness. After all, if he'd intended his songs to be read purely as poems, he wouldn't have bothered writing the music for them, then playing and arranging it, in the first place, would he?

Anyhow, turns out that Twitter was barking up the wrong tree entirely, as it's Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer who has scooped the prize (how appropriate, on National Poetry Day). I'm highly delighted about this, although what the evil Decepticons think about it is anyone's guess (oh come on! Everyone is making at least one Transformers joke about this).

My copy of his New and Collected Poems (the New Directions edition from 2006, translated by Robin Fulton), is extremely well-thumbed, being one of those books I find myself going back to on a very regular basis. So, hats off to the judges for recognising a consistently fine body of work.

Going back to the Forward Prizes, John Burnside took Best Collection for Black Cat Bone, Rachael Boast took Best First Collection for Sidereal, and RF Langley, who sadly died earlier this year, took Best Poem for To A Nightingale.

I was a bit underwhelmed by the shortlists at the time they came out, although without having read much of what was nominated. I have rectified that partly now, and I'm pretty glad that Burnside won. I do wonder if there's an element of 'lifetime achievement' in it, because I don't think this is anything like his best work, but still, I can't grumble.

I can't really comment on Rachael Boast's book, because I haven't read it yet - Ahren Warner's the only one on that list I have read thoroughly (and enjoyed, incidentally). In the Best Poem category, I like Langley's poems a lot, so it's good to see him win. I hope it doesn't sound too bitter to say that it would have been nice to see him get more recognition while he was alive.

States of Independence (West)

This Saturday, October 8th, sees the States of Independence (West) book fair, celebrating independent publishing, at Eastside Projects (Gallery), 86 Heath Mill Lane, Digbeth, Birmingham B9 4AR.

It's been born out of the success of the original States of Independence fairs, which take place at Leicester's De Montfort University each March, and runs from 10am to 4pm, with admission free.

You can browse the latest in independent publications, meet publishers, writers and other readers. There will be a programme of events and readings throughout the day, including panel discussions and a wide range of readings, as well as a quiet area to relax with a coffee and your just-bought book.

Publishers who will be present include:

Shoestring Press, Bloodaxe Books, Leafe Press, Cinnamon Press, Penned in the Margins, Five Leaves Publications, Templar, Nine Arches Press, Flarestack Poets, Sidekick Books, Tindal Street Press, Offa’s Press, Ikon, Longbarrow, Flipped Eye, Candlestick Press, HappenStance, Shearsman, Queer Ink, Linux Publishing and more...

Flash Space: Short Readings

11am - Charlie Hill

11.20am - Michael W Thomas

11.40am - Gail Ashton (Cinnamon)

12.00 noon - Simon Thirsk (Bloodaxe)

12.20pm - Tom Chivers (Penned in the Margins)

12.40pm - Kirsten Irving & Jon Stone (Sidekick Books)

1pm - Robin Vaughan-Williams (Happenstance)

1.20 - pm Nick Pearson (Offa’s Press)

1.40 - pm Geraldine Monk (Leafe Press)

2pm - James Caruth (Longbarrow Press)

2.40pm - Jane Weir (Templar)

3pm - Martin De Mello (Flipped-Eye)

Think Space: Short Seminars

10.30am  – Life Writing? Creative Writing? Jan Fortune-Wood discusses 'Stale Bread & Miracles'.

11am  – Brian Gambles talks about how the new Library of Birmingham, opening in 2013, will engage with the region’s writers.

12pm  – Poetry & Dementia: Jacqui Rowe and David Calcutt introduce us to an innovative project.

1pm – Show Me The Money: Jane Commane, Paul McDonald and Roz Goddard talk frankly about making a living out of writing.

2pm - Best Of The West: West Midlands writers read from new work - Caleb Klaces (Flarestack Poets), Joel Lane (Nine Arches Press), Gaynor Arnold (Tindal Street Press) and Dave Reeves (Offa’s Press).

3pm - The Future of Independent Publishing: Bloodaxe editor Simon Thirsk, Linus Press editor Kate Cooper and writer David Belbin discuss.

States of Independence (West) has been produced by the West Midlands Independent Publishers Network, and has been managed by Writing West Midlands and Nine Arches Press. The Network includes Nine Arches Press, Flarestack Poets, Cinnamon Press, Offa’s Press, Five Seasons Press, Rubery Press and Tindal Street Press. States of Independence was first created in the East Midlands by Five Leaves Press, who have supported the Network in bringing this event to the West Midlands.

You can follow the twitter hashtag #SoIWestBookFair for any further updates or details.