Cancellations, Accusations, Observations...

Tuesday 19th June 2012

Still don’t know if the college are letting the writing course run. They are now letting me know by lunchtime. Maybe I could take the Ian Mackaye approach of booking my own sessions. It’s getting to the point where I need to make a move or I’m back into regular nine to five. After nearly a decade of facilitation that doesn’t bear thinking about really.

LATER: College course cancelled. Maybe I need to take on more publishing work. Do pamphlets on Talking Pen. When I hear of DIY punk poets and musicians talking about low-key low price cottage industry creativity, I wonder what constitutes an acceptably low standard of living. Do they live in tool sheds like Rollins used to? Or have a family to keep? - that’s not playing for peanuts.

Going down to Newcastle for Jake Campbell’s poetry book launch. Jenni is going. I can get a direct bus to Waddy from her place in the morning. 4.47pm.

Wednesday 20th June 2012

In my dream I look up out the window and catch the first snowflakes falling; just a few, and then a flurry. I’m on the couch watching a documentary. Ira Lightman is writing in a huge tan leather-bound book in two-inch high letters. Next I’m back in Bridgehill getting a bus to Consett. It comes along Pemberton Road from the church – a direction buses haven’t taken for years – and lets me board outside a classmate’s house. It takes a left on the new estate. The bus is full of school kids and now there’s no snow at all. It’s sunny. A few stops into the ride I’m standing high up at the front of this double-decker, one foot on the ledge of the driver’s cab door and the other on a horizontal pole. It’s not easy to keep my balance. Soon a few more kids pack themselves in and I’m able to freeride all the way to the Rose and Crown. There’s a bit of a mash-up at a junction and before long the bus is doing a five-point turn . And then I’m riding just the bus chassis, no side body, no roof. I’ve got shorts and a t-shirt on. It pulls up outside Doran’s bakery and a police woman taps me on the shoulder. “Can you step this way please, sir.” But I’m going to be late for work, I protest. But she wants a word in private. A few seconds later I tell her my movements since breakfast and a visit to a friend’s house where Ira is resident poet.  Her uniform transforms into a pair of painters jeans and the most hideous olive green cardigan. A brown mousy bob sits ill against her small face. I wake to the sound of traffic speeding up and down Bensham Road.

Today I’m on the penultimate week of a ten week Intermediate Writing Course at Waddington Street. We will be looking at how to stay motivated. People tell me I’m good at staying and keeping others motivated. It’s called sheer bloody mindedness. Even when I’m tired, pissed off, lacking inspiration, I can pick up a pen and make marks on a page. Been doing it for over twenty years now. I have no idea who will turn up on such a bright and blue-skied morning after a week of rain, but that is not my concern. My objective is to be in the seminar room at ten o’clock, armed with instructions, ideas, inspiration and a game plan for those who wish to work with me for two hours.

   Last night I was at Jake Campbell’s official Newcastle launch for Definitions of Distance. He read for nearly half an hour. A great gig, some lovely anecdotes and a good choice of poems.

Just totally preoccupied with the work thing. Been answering emails and chasing up leads most of the evening. Just learned of a writing in healthcare organisation called Lapidus who are having a writers’ retreat day in Durham next month. I’m tempted to go. Also just found out that Buddy Wakefield is playing Edinburgh in August and Sophia Walker is supporting him so that will be a cool gig. Supposing I have to sleep on the street afterwards, I’m going.

   The writing workshops will continue at Waddy in the autumn. And there’s a good chance I’ll be able to pull off workshops of an evening if I can get any takers. Jenni and I have a gig in Middlesbrough library on Saturday and an Apples and Snakes workshop at Mima on Sunday. Ok, done. 9.03pm.

Thursday 21st June 2012

I need to read more. A day away from the computer would be great. Just sitting on the couch with a memoir or a collected poems or some other long work. But not a novel. I start novels and rarely finish them; rarely care about the characters. If I know none of it is real the outcome is often irrelevant to me. It’s just a flaw in me. I started reading books when I discovered Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski in my late teens off the back of Henry Rollins interviews. I don’t know how but line up ten books at random and include a couple of Americans and somehow I’ll unwittingly pick those from the selection. I used to read a lot of American poets. Mark Strand, Stephen Berg, Stephen Dobyns, Charles Wright, Sharon Olds, Wanda Coleman, etc.

   I have books in practically every room of the house. If I took a year off I’d never get through even a quarter of them. It would be wise to not buy any more. There isn’t enough time to do everything we want to do. Earning a living seems to get in the way. What are you willing to sacrifice in order to get to the things that matter most? Today, I will do abdominal exercises then read. I know it will only last a couple of hours at most because something in the text will prompt me to get up and investigate on the internet or have me reaching for pen and pad.

   

You can hear the aeroplane but can’t see so much as a vapour trail due to the dense expanse of grey; and craning your neck, the birds might shit in your eye, or on your glasses at least. Mam said it’s good luck to be shat upon. A white glob of fortune on the back of your brand new blazer on the way to school. Or a new waistcoat on your way to the pub. Or your grubby black overcoat on the way to the shop on a crumbling council estate mid morning in the wettest June since last time we shit-out on summer. You want a loaf and a bottle of Ribena.

   The walls are crumbling redbrick. There’s dogshit on the pavement and you wish you’d ridden the bike yesterday or cut the grass. You try to look interested, to use your senses but the dullness has beaten you senseless. You think of food more than anything else: cakes, cereal bars, apples pastries, peanut butter and ginger rhubarb jam on toast – anything to quell the nausea of rotting away in No-Man’s Land. You prefer to stay solipsistic, others call it misanthropic. Speak as you find. But sometimes being blind to it all is the best way to survive. Edit this line out today? Sometimes poetry is lost on you. And then you get a piece accepted for publication. You sit for hours reading poems by an expat Northumbrian. You lack the homeliness, the solidarity to write positively about community. You read an article that says all writers are outsiders. Well, a lot of them come across as pretty well connected and integrated. Some of them though, just get down with the sickness and use it coz that’s all they’ve got. Never trust a man with a permanent smile on his face. Or one who plays with flick knives in the bus queue. 9.33pm.