writing and writers – Page 112 – don't confuse the narrator

mixed messages

The issue of foreigners in the UK is one that is almost guaranteed to set Brits arguing.

If the subject crops up during a social gathering, perhaps the best that can be hoped for is that most British of compromises “we’ll agree to differ” – an unsatisfactory acknowledgment that there are no easy answers.

The photo, taken in the local housewares store, suggests that one reason answers are difficult is that we haven’t agreed on what the question is: do we want foreign visitors to adapt, or do we want to get rid of them all together?

no way back

I went to an open mike evening the other day. It was supposed to be in a fairly spartan room above a pub, but the bookings had got mixed up and the SWP were there before us, so at the very last minute the venue was changed.

Tempting though I thought it to opt for politics in the here-and-now, not poetics in some unknown and distant there, others were keen to stick to the original plan, so the readers and their audience relocated.

The new venue was a basement room, although the décor was altogether too decadent to make me feel like an underground poet. The Trotskyists might have liked the wall colour, but I’m sure the spit-and-sawdust pub setting suited them better.

I say “basement”, but I suppose in fact ground level was lower at the back, or there would have been no windows downstairs.

Not that we could access them.

It seems that the world of discovery that lies “through the arched window” is out of bounds. I wonder if the square and round windows are similarly barred.

Once more, then, I find “you can’t go home again.”

Even little ted looks rather worse for wear.

pussyfooting II

It’s been suggested – via email and phone calls rather than comments posted here – that the cat in the photo used for last week’s post could not possibly be mine.

It is true that although I have been on close terms with many cats – black cats and greys, tuxedo cats, tabbies and tortoiseshells – there has never been a white one.

Had I found it sooner, this is the photo I would have used to illustrate pussyfooting:

pussyfooting

Over the years, I’ve given a lot of feedback on a lot of manuscripts, both poetry and prose. I’ve also been grateful to receive commentary on my own writing.

It’s never very nice to be told that your work has failed, that your scansion is all to pot and that your grammar and spelling need major revisions. But how are we to improve if no one points out the weaknesses in our work that we are too blind to see for ourselves?
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persuasion

This morning, the sun is shining and the sun is clear. It’s a little windy, but most people would think it was a perfect day to wrap up warm and go for a walk. Here I am, though, sitting at my computer updating my blog with a picture taken earlier in the week.

It was a couple of days ago and it was the first real snow I’ve seen this season. Those wonderful, slow, downy flakes that fall when Mother Carey shakes up her feather mattress.
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