I have just read these two linked memoirs. In discussing his memoir of his parents Ford specifically mentions the influence of his friend’s earlier book. Both are very strong works although maybe because of its particularly English subject and atmosphere the Morrison just shades it for me especially as my own parents both died…
books
Back on TRACK? : Oxford and Nottingham
Back in 2010 I started off with the title Track for a multimedia M.A. that finally did not happen. However the seeds of some kind of project centred around the impact of the railway on the movement of people and ideas started then. This is now bearing fruit as a double project centred on my…
Burning Books – hiding in plain view?
Last year I did a reading for Nottingham Poetry Festival in which I produced a small ‘polemical’ pamphlet called ‘Burning Books’. The pamphlet was a one off and most of the poems after ‘outing’ in paper form were then hidden away as ‘too political’ for my readers by myself! I censored myself which crazy but…
Saturday Night Blues – Sunday Morning Shifts – Working Class Writing?
A seasonal Amazon worker USA The following was written as a comment on facebook about the Tim Lott article on the Guardian published this week. This sparked some interesting comments on the notion and as Lott specifically flags up Sillitoe and this now a City of Literature I thought it might be worth expanding on….
The Drifting Village: Collected poems 2000-2015 released as pdf
The Drifting Village Released into the wild today as a downloadable pdf. The first of an irregular series of pdf pamphlets released as and when I feel like it.Basically a resume and calling card showing the fairly small output of the last 15 years and hopefully leading to more poems in the future. I have…
The strange case of POSH Mark Haddon…
Part of my new found ‘freedom’ is the ability to find bargains ( both cost me 50p which at 25p each makes it the cheapest pair of books I bought all week) and secondly having the time to actually read the damn things… So not only are they like buses but I have read both…
The Broken Brush: Writing and Painting?
I have not posted in this writing blog for a while due to a full-time commitment to painting in preparation for the Lady Bay Arts show in West Bridgford on the weekend of 16th and 17th May. The actual physical act of painting has made me look at my writing ‘block’ in a different way and…
The Armitage Stomp
I have delved a little into the Armitage biography and it quite worrying. He has received just about every award and opportunity it possible to get including four Phds (Honourary of course no laborious referencing required). So when Martin Stannard in his review of Paper Aeroplane: Selected Poems 1989-2014 raised the possibility that this was…
Simon Armitage: Who’s he kidding?
‘The Martian Owl’ Photo Credit: Paul Wolfgang Webster This post brings together some thoughts I posted online today in response to the attention being given a negative review posted on the Stride website by poet and critic Martin Stannard of the newly published ‘Paper Aeroplane: Selected Poems 1989-2014. Review available here: Martin Stannard Review Me…
Guitar Man – Will Hodgkinson
As I have taken a break from ‘analysing’ myself in the modern educational manner I have turned to reading for some pleasure and first up this slight yet fairly amusing tome from a journo who hung around the sort of people I knew in London in early 2000s… From living under Liam Watson (Toe-rag) to…