Fiction Writer with the very writerly name. Wednesday 4 February 2009.

Started the fiction module led by a short story writer with a very writerly name. There was an almost instant ulrika moment. When I redrafted my life writing piece from first to third person I was annoyed at myself because of all the: 'she recalled's and 'she remembered's, I managed to splatter around the text. Well. Transpires I was needlessly filtering the images through the observing consciousness, as in: “she had imagined that he was ancient”, when “he seemed ancient” presents the thing seen and removes the filter between the character and reader; I’m glad I know that now.

We were cautioned to avoid abstraction and generalisation and to include specific detail to increase credibility – in yesterday’s Guardian Review John Mullan writes: “such details are there to win the reader’s confidence”. When I was thinking about my poetry portfolio commentary I remembered how much I liked the precise geological and medical references in Robert Browning’s poetry.

We wrote a bit of credible detail so that we could introduce an impossible thing, for example a talking dog, and make it seem plausible.

Then we chose a photograph each and started to construct a character for our photo-person. What was remarkable how proprietorial people became about their characters immediately. And how much detail they could instantly produce about someone that doesn't really exist; surgical procedures, dodgy spouses, all kinds of stuff. My photo is a lady who looks like what I’d look like if I wasn’t on a perma-diet and I still smoked and drank to incontinent excess. The photograph was taken in a 1950s-looking front parlour; she is staring straight at the camera and has a broad, fleshy face and a serious gaze. She has curlers in her hair above her forehead but not the hair at the sides. I think she’s clever but has never had the opportunity to develop her intelligence. She’s a hospital cleaner called Betty. I recounted how Betty refused to shake the hand of Princess Diana when she visited the hospital she cleans at because she was appalled that the mother to the heir to the throne had just been on her third skiing holiday of that year and children were sleeping rough on the streets. The story is true, my mother in law did and said just that when she was the Lady Provost of Dundee.

Now my photo-lady, Betty, is going to feature in a short story if I can make one up, I think she might have been a prostitute in her teens and twenties.

Over time my sentences have shrunk because I want to avoid ambiguity. I’ve noticed that when doing the artist’s sketchbook field work exercise - recording still life and movement I am going to have to come to terms with longer sentence structure again – like the long messy sentences in the Stylistics coursebook.

Most of the children were home over Christmas and I was reminded about remembering rememberings and Jenny Diski and the Australian greenstone leilira blades; (the blades are produced in a sequence of ceremonial steps and exchanged with distant groups but never used or curated. Robert Paton believes the blades aren’t utilitarian items at all but are the vehicle of information transmission. At each ritualised stage of their production and circulation the Aboriginals involved get stories straight). Over Christmas my daughters rehearsed childhood accounts: Convincing the youngest that the plug-end of the communal bath was the pole position and the competitions to see who could get a sodden flannel from the bath into the loo. The stories have their own energy now and the retelling and reordering of them is more animated if there is an audience.

When made the final redraft of the Funeral for my life writing portfolio I misremembered the chronology of some relatively recent events. It was only when I reread an earlier commentary that I realised that I had been dishonest. I though I was becoming much more cavalier about the permeable borders between fact and fiction; but it transpires I’ve always been that way.

Back with Stylistics and the Pantoum is Queen. Wednesday 28 February 2009

I’ve learnt about syllabic metre and iamb iamb iamb – but I’m still not sure how to hear the difference between iamb and trochee. I’ve become entirely addicted to pantoums I’ve gained weight, mostly because I’ve been so engaged writing piss-poor pantoums that I haven’t moved around at all. I like pantoums because I’m a rubbish rounder-offer and with the pantoum form once you’ve written your first line you’re sorted with your final line. And I enjoy the way that unexpected collocations of lines seem to make the poem say something profound that you’ve only just realised that you think.

I’ve delivered a ‘poetry’ workshop. I had to give a 30 minute presentation at the culmination of a library orientated Training and Learning course. I’d every intention of reviving my web evaluation set-piece but an evil shoulder-demon was whispering: “pantoum” in my ear when I was sleeping. Once the idea was planted there was no hope of shifting it; setting myself up for maximum humiliation and I was powerless to intervene. We’re British librarians; generally speaking we’d rather eat own nasty liver than participate in the most innocuous of ice-breaking exercises, let alone render our soul. I went into a session promising 12 librarians, well 11 librarians and a conservator, that in 30 minutes they’d leave with the first draft of a poem (a pantoum). I didn’t give any prior warning as I presumed I’d fail automatically if no one turned up; at least if everyone just fainted I’d get marks for trying.

We did it in three stages (and I gamely modelled each stage as we went along, wot a trooper):
First: a childhood remembering, a room, a teacher, a den, anything, and the senses and emotions associated with the memory – scary carpet, fingerless gloves, cheesy wotsits, muddy smell. Then they talked that memory to just one other person (essential that it was as discreet as possible) for one minute;
Second: they noted down 8, 4/5 syllable phrases used in their description. This was the bit I was most terrified of; I reasoned that if they’d spoken about a topic for a whole minute they’d easily have 8 phrases but I’d absolutely no proof of that or contingency plan if they didn’t; but they were a match for me and they’d plenty to say;
Third: they reordered the 8 phrases in pantoum form. Two people allowed me to read theirs out, bloody fantastic – two tightly coiled memory-bombs, really moving. So now the Pantoum Appreciation Club has 13 members – 14, if you count my tutor’s 10 year old daughter; my tutor took the notes home for her to use. She’s like me – ideas, but a weak finisher – not any more.
The irony of me, Tin-ear Tamara with a portfolio of piss-poor pantoums and a whiney piece about not being understood, isn’t wasted on me. But 11 British librarians and a conservator and the tutor’s little girl came out happy and I’m happy.

Stylistics is very hard; metalanguage encompassing language. It seems ok – identify the adjective, adverb and noun premodifiers in a noun phrase. For example in: “my new friend from Mars”, ‘new’ is the premodifier.
Then there’s a test. Identify the premodifiers in the noun phrases in a given text. And the text contains phrases like: “was furnished with voluptuous grandeur in approximations of various styles, predominantly those of several Louis, with late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century additions”. Well. I’m sorry, that's just messy, you can’t write that. You’ll just have to make do with one or two simple premodifiers – otherwise it’s just going to make me cry and probably faint.

We’re going to start fieldwork; keeping an artist’s sketchbook to record still-life and movement in language. I’m very taken with the idea of sitting outside Bruciani’s recording life with my gimlet eye and my Moleskine. I’m a bit concerned I’m going to look a just a tad shifty and risible and I suspect I’ll keep catching myself writing my birthday wish-list, but I’m off uptown as soon as I’ve posted this.