Dr Neil Oliver is another of these hair-in-mouth windswept clifftop presenters. I always wonder what’s in his bag. A ton of hairclips no doubt. Speaking of hair in mouth, with the house move I’ve not been able to have my hair cut since the end of June and no one likes a hairy northerner, cf [...]
Filed under: Creative Writing | Leave a Comment »
Robert McCrum in the Guardian Book Blog writes: “Don’t get depressed: A writer’s guide to surviving the recession” He provides six useful points: 1.Write in English, British, or American 2.Know Thy Genre 3.Tell a story 4.Write for yourself 5.Respect the reading public 6.Write every day; shun vanity To which some wit (David Absalom) has added [...]
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Don’t Get In Its Way is a page of fiction I wrote in response to Ben Platts-Mills sad story All I Wanted To Do Was in Attack!!! 6. Attack!!! 7 has just arrived, and it’s another a great little issue created by Wes White. My writing is alongside Damaged Goods by Erica Viola, and I’m [...]
Filed under: Automatic Writing, Conceptual Writing, Creative Writing, Fiction, life writing, Literature, Writing | Leave a Comment »
The latest episode of my poetry and music podcast has some great anti-war poetry, and some brilliant music by unsigned people who I forgot to tell. Never mind. I’m sure they’ll like being here. Music by CDK, Squid Ink (Plastic Dave), a great collaboration between Squid Ink and The Hexyl Circle (that’s me), Tom MacNiven, [...]
Filed under: Anti-war, Creative Writing, Emerging Talent, Friction Fiction, Glastonbury, Literature, poetry, Unsigned | Leave a Comment »
This is a true story about walking a dog. I used a bit of fictional licence regarding the owners of the dog. They weren’t like that at all. It was a friend’s dog. However, the rest is accurate. It’s a story about anxiety. One reading is that the horse is a metaphor for a panic [...]
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Occasionally feeling odd is something I’ve grown used to since university. It’s part of the curriculum to look and feel odd. Have you ever seen a happy student? No. An overwhelming sense of displacement is the first thing that drives a student to drink, and it’s all downhill from there. It’s a sudden feeling that [...]
Filed under: Anxiety, Creative Writing, Delia Smith, Fear, Fiction, life writing, Literature, Sadness | Leave a Comment »
I was setting out To write a poem From a simple idea That came from bombardment With images each day- Shoelaces. Were the victims thinking When they tied them that morning- Just another day? But then I realised I had a moral purpose. Should a poet have a moral purpose? Or should it [...]
Filed under: Atrocity, Bloodbath, Carnage, Creative Writing, Imagery, Iraq, Literature, Poem, poetry, War, Writing | Leave a Comment »
