I have waited 22 years to talk about this….there are many reasons for that. I hope this page explains all of them and offends no-one but truth will always be stranger than fiction. I dedicate the page to Daisy and Ivo Belcher. https://shaunbelcher.com/coppard/
Edwin Smith Poem – now online at RIBA website
RIBA have finally put up the poem…so you can read it now I provided a ‘referenced’ version and a ‘clean’ none annotated version they went with referenced…strangely but there you go ‘Catching Light’….I have also provided a recording of myself reading (no footnotes;-) which will be uploaded later I presume.
How to stop being a poet.
For my creative writing course I have to produce an ‘Influence’ essay by next Monday and it proving to be a really hard call for me. Not because the essay in itself difficult (see previous post) but because it like a blood-letting leach to a sick patient in terms of the whys and wherefores of…
First Assignment – Influence?
My poetry bookshelves..about half the collection built up over 25 years…. I am really struggling with the simplest thing. The first assignment for Creative Writing M.A. is straightforward enough : Identify one writer whose work has been in some way influential to the development of your own creative writing practice. Discuss one or…
Barns and Stars…..aiming at the stars?
Finally got five minutes to sit down and catch up with myself and all the threads I have started off… I have not had a chance this week to read and critique a short story as I have been doing because of so much else going on. Busy is good but not when it gets this…
Farm-Hand’s Radio – Complete available as pdf
I found that the auto-print facility in google chrome means I can create a full pfd of the collection to share. Not formatted to avoid page breaks but all of it is there . It is also available online at this URL: https://shaunbelcher.com/writing/?page_id=117 Farm-Hand’s Radio Complete PDF also available at Scribd:
Pound V Frost: Left V Right?
Pound mugshot 1945 whilst under arrest for Treason in Italy An interesting session last night with Sarah Jackson again focusing on imagery which had an unexpected relevance to me and not in the direct way I might have imagined. There was a good selection of examples and the background reading was interesting if only because…
First fiction for work-shopping: ‘Flying Fish’
The first chapter involves all of the above 🙂 I have finally after 30 years of thinking about it produced 2000 words of prose fiction which a relief as I had built up a mental block of ever actually doing it because I have been so immersed in art and poetry. The document has…
Daily Short: Margaret Atwood – ‘Wilderness Tips’ (S/T)
My first Atwood short story. Fairly long approximately 6000 words long. This length allows a fair amount of third person P.O.V. switching as the ‘hidden’ narrator which feels a lot like Ms Atwood such is the strength of her voice to ‘inhabit’ each of the different actors on the stage. The stage in this instance…
Daily Short: Raymond Carver – ‘Nobody said anything’ from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please.
First published in 1973 as ‘The Summer Steelhead’ (Seneca review, Vol. 4, no. 1 (May, 1973) and later as ‘Nobody said anything’. Smudging was widespread practice amongst Yakima fruit-farmers. Pollution stopped crops being frost-damaged. (Source: Carol Sklenicka: Raymond Carver – A writer’s Life 2009.) In the original story the final lines are different referring to…