On the writing process. (2008)

Sit on the hard wooden chair, stare at the cluttered desk and the blank page. Pick up a pencil. Hold it, hovering, above the paper, considering the right word. The perfect word to begin the story. Realise that the pencil is not perfectly sharp. It is adequate, but not optimum. Root through stacks of paper and drawers full of junk for a sharpener. Find it hidden in a jar of odds and ends. Get up, go to the bin, sharpen the pencil to a deadly point.

Return slowly to the chair. Sit down. The paper is still blank. Create something brilliant. You are not good enough. Nothing you write will ever be perfect. Your words are clichés; nothing original or insightful could come from a mind as weak as yours.

Snap the pencil in half and throw the splintered parts across the room. They bounce off the walls leaving graphite grey impact marks. Stand slowly again and stumble to the bed. Lay down your ungainly body, curl up and stare at nothing and think of nothing. Blank and empty. You are nothing.

 

This is part one of a possibly endless endeavour to spam you all with my old writing efforts. I found my old hard drive, you see, and it’s endlessly fascinating in a narcissistic kind of way.

For Pippa (A poem by the wonderful Kyle Norbury)

Fiery like a dragon firing shots and drinking doubles till Last Orders,

Then onto Hairy Dog sipping cider without a hint of a worry,

Laid back stage performer slaying old selves and pig-faced bigotry with cold chilled tones of melancholy,

Laughing in the face of the dark gloomy reality,

Wit with the might to conquer the high and mighty,

Hair fully blue like a full moon shining through clouds of misery,

Magical bowler hat black like the starry night sky when it’s time to party,

We’re all confused as to how someone so talented can still be stuck in Derby,

Friends, poets and public bar owners hope you stay here forever,

You carelessly sinful nun,

Intensely real and non-pretentious like a female Bukowski,

Poking fun at life’s pathetic fallacy with a burning blue flame of integrity,

A gothic black comedy butterfly fluttering high above through the rain,

Drink up the pain of past days and live for the present,

For you’re proper fucking ace at poetry!

 

– Kyle Norbury wrote me this poem. It makes me sound pretty badass doesn’t it? I’m so incredibly flattered, my ego might well float off into the stratosphere. I’m lucky to know such talented people.

To read more from Kyle, check out his blog. It’s the least you could do.

NaPoWriMo 15

There is no shelter from the earth
Each wand will cast spells to burn you
Every sword will cut
And you should drink your fill from every cup
Gulp it down fucking slut devour it all
You can be air you can dream fire
But even if you drown
There is no shelter from the earth.

5. It slithers in at 4am.

Spine serpentine snakes coils flicks rigid
crawls through skin this
sweated penance crawls
into the heart

Remember the difference between arteries and veins:
veins go ve(IN) towards the centre of you
trying in vain to send a message of warmth to the core

Skin is permeable paper membrane
pierced by the faint glimmer of stars
the sharp ends of the moon’s whetted sickle
hundreds of hypodermics
Pierced by need
Need
Need
coiling kundlini rising from its fetid nest at base of spine
Rising
Rising
Writhing
Writhing
mouth agape fangs snagged on raw nerves
constricting crushing stomach ribs lungs liver to
grey pulp
from which it has sucked the stagnant blood

Serpent tongue flicks forked into thoughts
adrenal glands spasm faced with
horror. hardwired. primal.
A predator is close,
you are hunted
Wide-eyed prey
twitch like a rabbit. Break-
Dart free of your body, if you can –

O serpent of starvation, you will never be fulfilled

 

This is part 2 (Day 5) of the NaPoWriMo Poetry Dump. Read the first part here. It continues here.

NaPoWriMo

I’m doing it. Kind of. 30 poems in 30 days.

Here’s some.

 

Day 1: [content indecipherable]

 

Day 2: Hangover Haiku

Fuck my life and oh

my days. May God have mercy

on my foolish ways.

 

Day 3: A Shadorma

We lay out

in the thorn striped grass

morning sun

dazzled eyes

after a nightful of dark

drink the leaves’ cool green

 

Day 4: Mirror

Something stares out from my eyes

not me

some strange wet thing, a toad

glimpsed at the bottom of a pond

A child, dirty face pressed to a window

contorted and mournful

cries muted by glass.

 

Continued Here

 

NaNoNoWriMo

I think I said something about doing National Novel Writing Month. Every year I say I’ll do it, but then… I don’t. You see, every other month of the year, I feel no burning desire to write a novel. Especially not under time pressure. I know, as a writer, novels are supposed to be The Thing. When people ask, “Have you written a book yet?” They generally mean a novel rather than say, a poetry collection or a natural history field guide.

Well, because I don’t currently want to write a novel, (or have the mental capacity to do so), I’m not going to. But I still want to get into the spirit of things, ride the wave of writerly energy that fills the ether at this time. Cheekily glom on to the hard work and motivation of others, like a vampire feeding on creativity.

So I’ve invented my own thing: NaNoNoWriMo: National Not-Novel Writing Month. Each day this month (including yesterday, because linear time is illusory), I will write Something. I will keep meticulous records. Whatever is written must 1. Exist 2. Either start or complete a thing 3. Not be a novel 4. Not be one Tweet. Because I do have some standards of conscientiousness. Those are the rules. They’re admittedly, and deliberately, vague. Because fuck the police, I do what I want, etc.

I’ll tell you at the end what happened. Did I become super-productive? Did I decide that Reddit shitposts are the new literary artform? Did I write a novel because I’m deeply contrary? Did I give up halfway through because I’m wildly inconsistent? Find out here on November 30th. I bet you can’t wait.

Goal Report: 27 years

Tomorrow I turn 27. A dangerous age. But what have I achieved in this past year of my life? I had plenty of goals last birthday, and of course I had plenty of ideas at New Year. So, how did I do?

Get Fit

• I still need to bike more. Still need to learn how to ride on the road without being a traffic hazard.
• GOAL ACHIEVED: Tenby Half Marathon!
• However, my physio now says, no more running until my wonky knee is fixed 😦
• I was doing a Youtube yoga course, and it was good.  But, I drifted away after a couple of months. I should get back on this.
• I still eat a lot of cheese. But also I cook some delicious healthy vegetable and fish based meals. Goal still in progress, I guess.
• Goal achieved-ish: Quit smoking, again. I vape a bit. And am still known to steal cigs when drunk. But generally, I don’t smoke any tobacco.
• GOAL WAS RIDICULOUS, NEVER GONNA HAPPEN MATE: Drink once or twice a week, at most.

Writing

• My poetry pamphlet, Thou Shalt Not Suffer, is about to be published
• I didn’t manage to do much else though. Polish and submit poems and short stories I already have? NOPE
• Write more stuff. Kinda?
• Keep blogging. Patchy. Very patchy.
• Get some work experience/do some journalism/something something professional writer. Something something not gonna happen, something something too vague.
• I did not do NaPoWriMo in April, because I only realised it was April a week into the month.
• Still a goal: Daily freewriting
• Journalling I do, sometimes. Something else to step up with.

Social/Activism

• I started helping out with Derbyshire Refugee Solidarity. Sorting donations in the warehouse, lifting heavy things, and raising sponsorship with running.

Mental Health

• Do the therapy and homework (without constant sarcasm). As if I thought I could live without sarcasm? What a fool I can be.
• I do manage to go to therapy and do my homework (usually). It’s pretty good. I like group.

Other Stuff

• Everything constantly needs tidying. This does not qualify as a life goal.
• I still want to do some art.
• And learn to knit. My bro gave me this. Reckon I can do it? 
• NEW GOAL: Learn to drive. Watch out!
• Other new goal: Learn violin. I got my old violin back. I’m sure the neighbours will be overjoyed
• Other other goal: Get better at poi.
• Adventures will always be a goal

 

OK, I’ve been semi-successful in some areas. I haven’t achieved absolutely nothing. I was deeply unimpressed with the whole birthday thing, because it underlines how my life is passing by while I waste time. But maybe I’ve done a few things, positive things which are better than nothing.

 

Out soon: Phillippa Nayer – Thou Shalt Not Suffer

Thou Shalt Not Suffer is the debut poetry pamphlet by Phillipa Nayer, coming out very soon.

Source: Out soon: Phillippa Nayer – Thou Shalt Not Suffer

Pretentious Proposal (for a book now finished)

Would you read this shit?

Words are symbols/signs/sounds which transmit meaning. But my meaning is not your meaning: free association from any given word will gain an infinity of different connections, interpretations like a verbal Rorschach test. The subconscious holds codes expressed in dreams, the verbal visual unique experiential, a spiralling fractal of selves and knowledges which make up the Self. Poetry like a shared hallucination, a shared dream to transmit an idea from I to Thou and see what happens to it in the void between us.

I draw from my own life, lives and experiences of those around me. Leading upwards to the shifting shipwreck sensation of living in a world where humanity is destroyed by money, powers conspire; the lexicon is manipulated for propaganda, and WWIII looms. How does an individual survive in a society like this?

In terms of form I wish to experiment with different ways of presenting poetry, both written and performed, playing with visual and audio elements, moving beyond the expectation of poetry as black words typed on white page. I wish to explore the performative aspect of poetry and the chance and uncertainty created by it.

Influences include Rimbaud, Bukowski (confessional poetry which has reached a wide popular audience), R.D. Laing (human relations), Dorianne Laux, A. Gibson, Antonin Artaud, Jung (collective subconscious), Lacan (psychoanalysis and language), Camus, Tchicaya U Tam’si (for his sequence ‘Le Ventre’ in which the poems are closely interrelated and are brought together in synthesis in the final poem), Selima Hill (surreal yet vividly evocative and relatable imagery), Katie Paterson’s work Earth-Moon-Earth (lost signal in transmission and the meaning of silences).

I wrote this fucking book, you see. For uni. And now I’m revisiting. The past will eat us all, if we only let it.

Poem: 26

“Where you are is exactly where you’re supposed to be.”  Keep telling yourself that.

26 and I still don’t know where Dorset is

or how I got these bruises

Still can’t tell herpes from acne or remember

which scars came from which disease

I’ve destroyed more than I’ve created but at least  I’ve kept it cyclical

Pleasing symmetry, circling the drain

Charybdis is awful shabby these days  (it’s the drink that done her)

but on the other hands        and other heads

Scylla isn’t bad, for a hard place.

I’m 26 and still kicking at mythical monsters

from the childrens’ room of a smalltown library

26 and still hoping to score something

to shoot that fucking arrow straight into staring eyes

be phoenix fire ashes all at once                           dashed away on the breeze

Hell I Just want to hit something

After more than a quarter of a century I should have learned:

This is how you get bruises