Carol Ann Duffy, Myra Hindley and the Prize. Wednesday 13 May 2009.

This week we looked at Carol Ann Duffy’s World’s Wife. The Agreeable Doctor pointed out some other bits of knowledge that should have been bleeding obvious, even to me; titles matter and collections of poetry have a form. Duffy’s collection seems so proceed from her girlhood through to her feeling about her own daughter.

Duffy based a poem on Little Red Riding Hood and called it Little Red Cap – I’d thought, ‘that’s funny,’ and left it at that. I might have thought, ‘maybe that’s what Americans call the story.’ The girl character in the animation Hoodwinked! was called Red after all.

(I’ve just looked at Hoodwinked! on IMBd and found out about the Rashomon effect; boundless potential for me to waffle with that).

But of course Red Cap has been named for a purpose. One friend suggested it’s an updating; nobody wears riding hoods anymore but the hepcats do wear caps.

Little Red Cap acknowledges sexuality in adolescent girls (which just made me think of another thing the title might allude to). The line,

‘what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?’

reminded me of a recent episode of Coronation Street. A grown-up character speaks about being seduced by a friend’s father at 14. She admits that she liked him; looked forward to seeing him when she came to the house. I was impressed with the courage of the scriptwriters for including such candid dialogue.

As mentioned I entered two creative writing competitions. I was a sickly-mix crippled by self-doubt and plagued by what I’d do if I didn’t win. Worse still - how I’d cope if someone from my class won.

I was awarded joint first in the Andrea Pendlebury poetry award and joint second in the Helen Clark prose award. Book tokens and wine (artfully arranged above); very nice. The last time I receive a wrtiting prize was in 1968.

(THIS is being said in a surly, mean-spirited, little inner voice, not for consumption by the polite, generous spirited reader. Still reading? Right. I didn’t really want to be a joint winner. I know that makes me a peevish person – despite my claims to the contrary. And I didn’t want to be awarded joint second; as my so-called friends pointed out, ‘If the prose award had joint firsts too, then joint second is like fourth. And maybe there were only four entries.’) Well.

I know, I know, even just thinking that in my nasty little inner voice is bad karma – even if you don’t believe in crap. And this time next year I’ll be wishing I could get a mention never mind a half-second; I know that.

Oh, and it was someone from my class who was awarded joint first for the poetry award. Well done, I actually am pleased for you, because you are a proper poet who can write proper poetry. I still don’t really get it; sometime I catch myself - wondering if it isn’t actually all a hoax…

My poem is the one about the dead baby, the first poem I wrote, and is called Long line of times, if I can figure out a way of making a link to it I will. (I've done it but not sure if it's a good way.) I still feel hesitant about this poem, because it seems exploitative and calculating, but it is sad, and it was sad

The friend who presented on a genre this week focused particularly on Duffy’s The Devil’s Wife, a poem about Myra Hindley. She was brave because it’s an uncomfortable poem – but one that I keep being drawn back to as well. Duffy never mentions her subject but the reader immediately senses who is being written about. It feels as if the screenplay for the recent television drama about Hindley was taken straight from the poem.

A couple of photos of the bad squirrel who would eat all the bird nuts as a snack, and wreck the feeder, if I didn’t hang them on the pricky monkey puzzle tree. Here he is being shifty, first looking one way then the other way before he tries to scamper up the tree wearing some quilted mittens (just kidding about the mitts).

Premodified noun phrases and Martin Amis. Wednesday 11 February 2009.

Right. I’m starting to get the hang of premodified noun phrases. It was a bit like Ali once said in reference to never losing any weight: “When I though about it - it’s because I’ve never dieted.” (She went on to add that she didn’t wish she was anorexic exactly (obviously) but occasionally some anorexic leanings would be welcome; or at least the tendency to be a Little Bit Picky).

So, instead of continuing to say: “that’s rubbish - with all those messy sentences; it’s too hard”, I looked at the coursebook (Wright and Hope), did the exercises and read the answers (called solutions in the book but I’m allergic to the term solutions) and I got it, it’s not bad.

Now for postmodified noun phrases. I suspect it’ll be like learning to drive. You think you deserve a Mexican wave and a dedication on Steve Wright Sunday Love Songs for getting up to third gear, and then the Man tells you to check your mirror, signal right, brake, move down to second gear and change position on the carriageway. “What?! Can't you see I'm driving (reading)? I can’t do all that at the same time. Can’t we just go to where this road is leading?”

I wrote 25 things about myself for an egotistical Facebook exercise (a meme I believe; maybe I could say the greenstone leilira blades are meme conduits too). The only thing that excited any comment was my hint that, despite Martin Amis not having his own teeth, I still would. What an over reaction, Ali telephoned El to discuss what they might be best to do, both my friends were appalled. It’s not as if I’d said I’d do it with Gary Barlow.

Just discovered that a conference review I wrote in the Summer is published online. It was written before I started the creative writing MA and I'm a bit ashamed of it now, Allis Conference: Engaging your Community .

I nabbed the library's Guardian/ Observer dinosaur posters. Only one undignified scuffle with a mother of two small dinosaur-mad sons; soon cleared up, she was gracious when I explained I needed them.

I am practicing my non-belligerentthankyoufortheconstructivefeedback-face for this Wednesday's session because we might get our assessed portfolios back. I've got form and tend towards sullen in feedback situations. I'm mostly very anxious about the poetry. Al cried when she read the dead baby poem, but a day ago she was completely bewildered by my hominin pantoum (sounds a perfectly reasonable response when I say it like that). My hominin pantoum was my absolute favourite, I used to think it was great. Maybe I've been deluded in my pantoum and my hominin devotion. Oh God oh God.

Not as hard as I thought I was. Wednesday 22 November 2008

Feelings about the group have shifted again. I’d read and read out my poem about the baby until it was just words but when it came to doing the same with an audience I was way too affected by emotion to finish reading; couldn’t speak even. And of course all of us have been changed by terrible grief in one form or another. I was afraid that the subject matter would inhibit honest opinions; I don’t seem to have much written down but the notes I do have reinforce reservations I already had about particular lines or words. Or may be I only recorded the comments I agreed with; can’t remember I was a bit spaced out for a while.

Commenting on the poems is strange. We usually start out diffident, then a slightly more assertive observation from one person can open the floodgates and we all wade in until it seems that there isn’t a line that isn’t questionable. It’s good that the author can’t comment until the end; could get quite heated. Obviously no one is magic so they unaware that you might have spent ages selecting a particular word or term. I commented on a sequence of s-words that I thought sounded slurpy; but the writer responded that that is how 13-years olds eat soup; which is quite right.

I was glad with the Jimmy Woods opinion. I’d really struggled to recreate the weirdness of him inhabiting that place and time (strange enough in itself) but being of another time himself. There was (mild) criticism of me for using academic words, argot, extant, sinistral which of course, I felt defensive about. I wanted to respond that they’re all words I use, and I like seeing new words in writing, and that I didn’t see why I should cater for the lowest common denominator; which of course no one suggested I should do for a moment. On reflection, they were probably right. No one criticised my using hecatomb in the dead baby poem, and that certainly isn’t I word I bandy around much, but I’m guessing there were other motives for going easy on that. My last stanza in Jimmy Woods, where I invoke Pan came to me very quickly just before I sent the poem off:
Of another age even then
in speech and costume
Boots and vest, Father’s coat and watch chain
Like Father was Arcadian and he a son of Pan

I was smug because I’d got Jimmy’s dad, Arcadia and Pan in, but it did feel rather glib. And he a son of Pan particularly jarred. By Wednesday I’d changed it to:
Like Father was Arcadian, and Jim a son of Pan

Which sounded a bit more honest, but also Jim seemed a bit too familiar for the atmosphere I was trying to recapture. I think people did sometimes address him as Jim, but he was always referred to as Jimmy Woods, both names. Anyway, the pat-ness didn’t escape the group; which is good.

I drove past Jimmy Woods’ old house this week. In fact I went to a funeral at the church where he was the grave digger. His house is completely done-up and desirable now. The church is much the same. It was the funeral of the mother of the two best friends I had when I was growing up. Like us all she was a complex character but an exceptionally loyal and protective mother and always kind to me when I was young. I tried to base the way I looked after my children and their friends on her approach toward me. Such flattering things were said about her, I just can’t imagine anything so fine being said at my funeral; with the exception of, ‘she wasn’t a plaster saint’. The partner of one of her daughters spoke about her, but opened by saying that he’d known her for 20 years, ‘since I fell in love with one of her daughters’. I think that part moved me more than any other. To use that opportunity to assert his love; she’s a lucky girl to inspire such devotion; I was very jealous. It was my first wicker coffin, it was also probably the first time I’d attended an overtly religious funeral service since I lost my faith good and proper. This produced in my mind, moments of pure absurdity. What were we all doing in that building saying those things about someone, or two people, I really don’t believe existed? I read a little piece by Euan Ferguson in the Observer Review on 26/10/08. He wrote about how failure to wear a poppy on television after the first bloom marks you out as a toxic charlatan. He added that someone had tried to tell him that you had to wear your poppy with the little green leaf pointed exactly at 11 o’clock to mark the time of commemoration. Thus, he opines, ‘evolve the nonsensical tropes of religion’. Wish I’d written that. But still there’s a part of me that yearns for that ritual, manmade as I’m sure it is.

I drove my Dad to the funeral, he is a Jim too. He was a Royal Marine Commando in the last years of the Second World War; he is very brave and was very strong but he is the least violent or aggressive man I know. When I was younger I used to try to talk to him about CND and anti militaristic ideals, he quieted me one day by saying he hadn’t wanted to fight but that he did it to stop his children being slaves under Hitler.

My Dad, Jim, is a year older than my friends’ mother. In the 1950s she used to like him to sing September Song as sung by Walter Huston. The song seems very apt, both the season and the lyrics; which talk of days dwindling down to a precious few. I expected him to be terribly sad at the service and I wore a poppy to try to please him, wore it with the little green leaf pointed at 11 o’clock. But he didn’t seem unduly sad; and he didn’t seem to notice the poppy; a year ago he would’ve. He’s almost 85 and terribly diminished now, almost as if he’s leaking life.

I saw some policemen wearing bobble hats the other day; black knitted with POLICE written in yellow on the fold-over at the front. Well, they didn’t have bobbles, but they were knitted and I consider it worthy of recording.

Ellie’s take on the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross thing was; ‘what did they expect when they put two boys in a room with a live microphone?’