Nine More From Me

Saturday 10th October 2015

Journal type-ups. Keep getting pins and needles in my fingers when using the keyboard. Brief ride to the post office on the black Giant STP bike this morning. Don’t like the suspension. Sent a copy of DARK MATTER to France. Up to Tesco this afternoon for stationary and food. More typing this evening. Then the Ted Hughes documentary. Never paid his work much attention but the programme held me. Then Beckett. 11.10 pm.

Sunday 11th October 2015

Woke early but tired so not at the desk till about half ten. Took a day and a half to get all the journal stuff typed. Only other work today was some tweaks on the Consett anthology text and added Derwentside Mind logos to the cover. Listened to some Lou Reed songs. Played a few minutes of Metal Machine Music out of curiosity. Then some Sonic Youth. Knocked off and over to Jen’s by six. We watched the poetry programmes. I quite enjoyed Tony Harrison’s interview. Jenni laughed out loud at Philip Larkin. We both sat glued to Black Roses – The Killing of Sophie Lancaster. Powerful piece. Should have been on BBC1 or two not BBC4. Full day of words, words, words. 11.27 pm.

Monday 12th October 2015

Watching the poetry on BBC4 this evening, thinking for a second, Whoarrgghh! It would be great to be involved in something so exciting – something like rock and punk lyricism without the need of a guitar or an English degree – then remembering, Oh aye, it’s what I’ve been doing for donkey’s years. Mint! Enjoyed seeing the old footage of the Albert Hall gig and Patti Smith, Roger McGough and one of my favourite Brian Patten poems, The Projectionist’s Nightmare. Good to get 95% of the prep done for the printing of Consett Writers’ ‘Steel Town Blues’ anthology. Changed the running order a bit to maximize use of space. Looks pretty fantastic to me. Should be printed and bound by this time next week. 

11.36 pm.

Tuesday 13th October 2015

Session on dialogue layout this afternoon. And a look at rhythm in Simon Armitage’s Killing Time #2. Then a load of reading prep for tomorrow morning’s flash nonfiction session. This evening’s class on characterisation went well. Read some more flash on the bus then faffing around with anthology cover. Prints fine on mine, but toner doesn’t fix to the card; looks like a black smudge on the Waddy printer – from the same PDF! Have made a few more versions to try out tomorrow. Feel a bit of a cold coming on. Gonna have to look after myself a bit more. Spoke to the builder this morning. Hopefully he will be here to do the brickwork next week. Or maybe week after – which is half-term. Anyway, better day than I expected. Will get cheese on toast then off to bed. Really putting the hours in. Hardly stopped all day. 10.52 pm.

Wednesday 14th October 2015

Raced down from Consett so I could be in before midnight. Those three kids at the back of the bus, kicking and punching and farting about, tearing up newspaper – I wanted to tell the little cunts to shut the fuck up. Sometimes people just really piss me off to the point I wonder what I’m doing on the same fucking planet. Had a really enjoyable workshop analyzing creative flash nonfiction this morning and added another stanza to the group villanelle. Think I’ve cracked it with the contrast on the Consett booklet cover image. Had a JibbaJabba meeting with Jenni and Kirsten this afternoon at Settle Down Café over a lovely goats’ cheese sandwich and Thai vegetable soup. Then off to the library to tweak Consett manuscript again. Good public Address Soapbox show at Alphabetti Theatre tonight. Good to be home before midnight.

11.45 pm.

Thursday 15th October 2015

Session went well at Mind. We got the first set sequenced for the AGM gig next Friday and we’ll wing some of the second (afternoon) set. Looking forward to it. At lunchtime an awesome hot steak half-stotty, the meat scraped out of one of those big silver school dinner tray containers I’ve not seen since I was sixteen. Standing on Middle Street feeling my stomach swell with felled beast and white bread. Then a look in the library. Got the new Clive Barker novel The Scarlet Gospels but you can bet your house I’ll never get round to reading it. I loved Hellraiser, but have not read any of his novels for ages. Another afternoon tweaking the Consett anthology cover margins and Mind logos. Get the ruler out again, Steve – load up another toner cartridge! Buses have been slow today, thought I’d never get to Newcastle. Sitting in eat4less scoffing a chicken and bacon baguette with fries and apple Tango when a grieving trio of mother, father and son come in and ask, Are these seats taken? I ate up and stretched my legs. In HMV I tore the cellophane from another Kurt Cobain book but it wasn’t much of a look. Eldon Square near Monument is a boarded-up maze. The Stanza has been great tonight. Lots of variety in the open mic. Blistering song by James Wilkinson and Alix Alixandra. Some newbies and some regulars. Two people asked me to film them tonight. I’m looking forward to PA Morbid, Chris Stewart and Asa Maddison. I’ve signed a Dark Matter and bought four more for my feature set here next month. Anyway, I might write more later. 

8.38 pm.

Friday 16th October 2015

This month’s The STANZA was one of the best I’ve been to. Enjoyed Renata and Trev. Good to hear new people on the open mic, as well as aforementioned James and Alix, were Vinny McHugh, Mark Smith, Olya Bowers, Aaron Wright, Renata, Mark Potts and more. Asa J Maddison performed brand new material from his upcoming hour-long show. He opened with a blues number about a slow-buffering computer and went on to explore online dating, club culture and sexual predators, ending with some humour about corn-based snacks. Chris Stewart played himself, a heckler from the audience and a racist club comic all in the same routine. Edgy as ever with bits of audience baiting throughout. Well done and one of his best experimental performance pieces I’ve seen in a while. Headlining the night was Teesside’s very own dark angel Mr P.A. Morbid – who isn’t actually as dark as people paint him. His poems are short, some little more than haiku-length – mini epiphanies gleaned from solitary exploration of inner and outer landscapes. He captures the sort of magical and fleeting observations you wish you weren’t too distracted by modern life to notice for yourself. The poems are interspersed with off-the cuff commentary and intros, self deprecating, witty and bleak in equal measure – in fact no, it’s the poems actually interspersing the bittersweet repartee and the juxtaposition is quite extraordinary to see. What some may view as underprepared irreverence for the reading/performance as a staged event with a bunch of close-read pieces of A4 sheeted free verse and adlibs is actually a brave and tricky line to walk – and on this occasion, with anecdotes about people, place and married life, Morbid does it very well. His somewhat longer poem about a love/hate relationship with Middlesbrough is a strong tribute to the town and a great finale. Excellent stuff. And well done Mandy Maxwell, Harry Gallagher and friends for organising such a grand evening. 9.17 am.

Later: Stayed at Jen’s place last night. Good to chat and laugh at life for a while. Email and files I sent to Waddy last night didn’t get there. Good job I had the anthology on my memory stick. Thankfully Peter in the office had time to help me with the printing. Sat and folded 300 sheets of paper and card this afternoon for a small batch of Steel Town Blues. Covers were a bugger coz the bi-pass feed tray shifted the margins a couple of millimetres so I couldn’t just fold them edge to edge or they’d look off-centre when trimmed. Also torn cuticles forced me to slow down on the collating to avoid cuts and blood on the stock. Finished too late to drop job off at the printers for trimming so I’ll be making a specific journey out for that tomorrow. Besides uploading some anthology pix to Facebook, have basically just been taking it easy this evening. It’s been a busy week. I’ll be pleased when all this year’s publishing projects are completed. I really want to do a handwritten perzine. Just ate pizza. 10.45 pm.

Saturday 17th October 2015

Up early to take booklets to be trimmed at Griffin Print in Leadgate Post Office. Griff won’t see them till Monday. Having woken at half-four this morning I was asleep by mid-afternoon after an all-day breakfast. Read some of Alison Gangel’s The Sun Hasn’t Fallen From the Sky. She appeared in an early issue of “Moodswing”. Ate lots of food at Jen’s tonight. As well as an all-day breakfast earlier. Watched Lewis and Would I Lie to You? 10.25 pm.

Sunday 18th October 2015

Up early pondering how to make ends meet in the coming months. Need to clear all current publishing obligations – which will take to the end of the year – before I can try for new courses. A conventional part-time job would be hard to fit in around workshops that are scattered across a week requiring travel and lots of prep. Good day with Jenni to take my mind off it though. Enjoyed Columbo and Breaking Bad. 10.55 pm.