“The Dog Ate It” August 19, 2008

On Backing Up Your Work

Surely we have all been guilty of the dreaded folly: not backing up our writing. Dum dum dum. In today’s technological age, of course, we have little excuse, whether we have two hard-drives (thank goodness my husband is a tech geek!) or simply email our manuscript to ourselves.

Still, somehow, in uni, I had a professor who somehow lost an entire book manuscript. We theorized that for the remainder of the semester, our gaunt-looking prof. had more than coffee in her opaque thermos.

thermos

However, I’ve just come across an anecdote that should put all of you non-savers to shame. I don’t want to hear you whining if your computer crashes and your latest poem disappears into internet-ether. Why?

I’m currently reading Melville: His World & Work by Andrew Delbanco, and in Chapter 3 he describes a man Melville knew who lost his one and only poetry manuscript in what must be the most unfortunate manner I’ve yet heard of:

“And there was a fellow New Yorker named Ephraim Curtiss Hine” (already unlucky, then,) “– probably the model for another recluse whom Melville, in White-Jacket, called Lemsford–who snatched every moment he could to write poetry.”

(In 1848, Hine’s The Haunted Barque was privately printed in Auburn, NY…is the title a reference to what happened to his original m.s.?)

“Fearful that his poems would be disposed of in one of the bouts of sweeping and scrubbing at which the crew was periodically set to work, Hine stuffed his manuscript for safekeeping into a ships’s cannon by ramming it in with the “tompion,” a sort of plunger kept in place in the barrel to keep out the sea spray. When the ship fired a volley in return to a salute from a shore battery somewhere off South America, he arrived too late at the sheltering gun to save his work-in-progress, which had been blown out to sea in shreds.

ship cannon

“Jack Chase, whose name Melville retained in White-Jacket, consoled him with words that were later to register on Melville, whose own publishing career was to have its share of misfortunes:

‘Never mind, my boy, no printer could do the business for you better. That’s the way to publish…fire it right into ‘em; every canto a twenty-four-pound shot; hull the blockheads, whether they will or no. And mind you,…when your shot does the most execution, you hear the least from the foe. A killed man cannot even lisp.’”

Jack Chase has a good, although cynical, attitude about the whole thing!

Moral: Don’t whine about losing your writing because at least it wasn’t blown out of a cannon.

This makes me laugh August 17, 2008

Impostor

14 Hour @ The Poetry Cafe August 17, 2008

I recently wrote about my first experience at The Poetry Cafe, where I read and networked with some nice writerly-minded chaps, including Jody, who runs an event called 14 Hour. It’s a freestyle arty event, mostly ‘performance poetry’ with some music mixed in…from the looks of it, 14 Hour gets together various artists at various venues and just kind of lets it happen- like a chemistry experiment.

I’ve been invited to read at the next 14 Hour- at The Poetry Cafe. The Poetry Cafe is at 22 Betterton St, Covent Garden. The event will be at 7pm on the 27th Aug, and it’s free to get in. You can get food and/or drink at the Cafe upstairs and then come down for some poetry, music, etc!

I think it’s going to be really fun & interesting; I’m really pleased to be part of this. I’m going to poach Jody’s description from the Facebook link in case you can’t get to it (only people who are on Facebook can get to it…)

14 Hour @ The Poetry Cafe:

Featuring: Inua Ellams + Anne Brechin + Kelley Swain + Nick Potamitis + Claudia Grant + Vintage Poison

Guest host for the evening, Inua Ellams recently took his one-person production The 14th Tale to Battersea Arts Centre: “a scratch performance of a long narrative. In his typical, free flowing, beautiful, lyrical style, it tells the hilarious exploits of a natural born mischief-maker, growing from the clay streets of Nigeria to rooftops in Dublin, finally to London.”

Described by one admirer as “the fizzing starlet” of the poetry scene, Anne Brechin returns to the 14 Hour fold with her expertly delivered poems on love and city alienation.

In her many-splendored career, Claudia Grant has worked in theatre, film and TV. Teacher by day, actress by night, she is now trying her hand at showcasing new writers’ work encompassing poetry, drama and prose.

atmosphere

Nick Potamitis has taught Film Studies at various institutions and writes on the history of Greek cinema. He is a printmaker and one of the co-editors of Perdika Press. His work was recently included in the Openned Anthology.

New to London readings, Kelley Swain recently moved to London from the States. Her book, Darwin’s Microscope, will come out in 2009 with Flambard Press. Her young adult fiction novel, Martin Baudelaire and the Great Spoon Adventure, requires a publisher still.

Representing cult underground publishers Vintage Poison, Kevin Reindhardt, Ray Diamond and Toby Davies will be causing general unrest.

I have to admit I’m quite curious about this “Vintage Poison” character and the “general unrest” he (she?) will be causing.

I have to take a moment to say I’m not a performance poet, at least according to a loose definition claiming that performance poetry is somehow different from your “average(?)” or “classical(?)” poetry reading. There’s no good way to distinguish because it seems that it will just wind people up…I think of performance poetry as people who are doing more acting/singing/rapping sort of stuff than reading words from a page.

It is definitely a situation of ‘one is not better than the other, they are just different.’ You can have good and bad performance poetry just as you can have good and bad “regular” poetry.

I think there’s a very good opportunity here to learn some tricks of the trade in terms of delivering words to an audience. I was initially a bit anxious about not being a performance poet in this crowd, however, Jody did invite me after hearing me read at Open Mic Night, so I’ll do my thing, and I think all of us together will be quite a mix- and I think that’s the point of 14 Hour!

Cambridge Science & Literature Reading Group August 5, 2008

I just heard from my friend Melanie Keene at the Cambridge Sci-Lit Reading Group- they have invited me to do a reading once Darwin’s Microscope is out! Of course I’m very happy to do a reading and I love that I’ll be involved in more than one event at Cambridge, where Darwin himself was a student.

I consider myself a member of the group, though due to life events (such as getting married!) I haven’t been able to attend since last autumn.

Darwin College, Cambridge

That said, this is a fantastic little group of very intellectual people who have a wonderful mixture of knowledge and who love to share.

I enjoyed every meeting we had (and the pub discussions after!) and was very sorry to miss their poetry-and-science themed term this spring, which, I think it is safe to say, was sparked by my own poet-mindedness.

I was sorry to miss Katy Price’s workshop, as I’d had the pleasure of meeting the professor at the Popular Science Day event at Imperial College, London.

Suffice to say I want to get involved again with the Cambridge Sci-Lit Reading Group, and not just because it is held at the aptly named Darwin College.

Here’s a taste of our Christmas Party (2007)…ok, we were being a little Darwin-tastic here…

Here I meet Darwin

Discovering “Smoke: A London Peculiar” August 4, 2008

Hooray for Smoke: A London Peculiar! For only £2.90 I spent a sublimely entertained hour or two reaffirming my love for London. I also wished, just a little bit, that my writing contained the humour gene, but sigh, I must be satisfied with the other components at which I tend to have more success.

Smoke, Issue 12

I found Nicky Kemp’s contributions particularly amusing, smattered throughout the mag, tucked here and there…we’ve all been that evesdropper. Example:

0816, Thursday, Clapham Junction:

Girl (searching in her bag): Shit, I think I’ve left my mobile phone at home. (pause) Oh, yeah, no, you’re right, I am on it to you. Blimey, I’m losing it. Did I tell you I walked into a lamp post yesterday?

(Woman hiding behind her Metro on the 0816: Nicky Kemp)

Cara McVean’s short story, “Sleeping With the Man on the Train” was a humorous and light-hearted story about the daily grind and odd intimacy.

I totally fell asleep on the train to Edinburgh and, much as I tried to lean against the window (I’d requested a table seat, pretty much because they are more roomy and comfortable and easier to write at, but you sacrifice some personal space- meaning I shared with a few others-) anyway, my head kept lolling towards the guy sitting next to me. Fortunately it wasn’t as dramatic as McVean’s story, where the innocent commuter girl, intent on reading her novels, repeatedly cozies up to a fellow commuter in her daily snooze- however, I snapped awake before cuddling to the stranger and I don’t think I was guilty of drooling. Who knows?

I won’t cover all the little delicacies in Issue 12 of “Smoke,” but I will point out that I love every little thing included, from the pigeon pictures to “London’s Campest Statues,” which, this time, hails the Statue of James II in Trafalgar Square. It is camp, isn’t it? Fabulous.

I’m creeped out and completely entranced by the elaborate and mystical description of the N50 bus- Dubbed “Bus of the Month”. It seems to share the qualities of Harry Potter’s “Night Bus,” and come on, we all want to ride that, don’t we?

Photo from Smoke, Issue 12

A quote:

“Smoke isn’t a political magazine. And not just because a magazine that appears only every four months- and sometimes achieves that only by not writing the months in the correct order- really shouldn’t be attempting an Election Special. Smoke is, we like to say, a love letter to London. Ah, London: with all your moods, your inconsistencies, your complete failure to ever do what you promised- as long as you can still set our hearts racing with an unexpected glance on the escalator, we’ll forgive you anything. Won’t we?

-Matt Haynes, Intro to Smoke #12

A love letter to London? This is one I plan to keep reading!

And Matt, for the record, I totally agree with your sentiments regarding Tess of the d’Urbervilles- I wrote an essay on Paganism in Tess, and I am a “bookish intellectual type” (I hope,) so don’t despair, we aren’t all stuffy old buggers! Hardy is not a “misanthropic old gloombucket” to all of us. Meanwhile I enjoyed the rest of “The Piper at the New Cross Gate of Dawn,” not just the Hardy bits.

One final question- perhaps covered in the first issues of Smoke, the lot of which (available individually or as a group) I plan to ask for as a Christmas gift- Why does Smoke begin with Issue 3? Where are Issues 1 & 2? Am I being too literal here? (Answers found in above link.)

The Festival- Darwin, Cambridge, 2009 August 1, 2008

I’m thrilled to say that I’ve been invited to be part of “The Festival,” more specifically the huge Darwin 2009 celebratory festival happening at Cambridge next summer. As I’ve mentioned, I’m trying to get involved with the “Darwin” events coming up in order to promote Darwin’s Microscope and also simply because it’s my cup of tea. I got in touch with Rebecca Stott, who kindly read my poetry and consulted her co-organizers, and I’ve been invited to be on a “poetry panel” with Ruth Padel. I’m a wee bit anxious! Padel is a famous poet and the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin himself. But I’m also honoured.

Cambridge, bikes

Funnily enough, at the moment I’ve honestly been reading Voodo Shop and Rembrandt Would Have Loved You, both books of poetry by Padel, and Darwin and the Barnacle, by Rebecca Stott. I got them out of the library when I first emailed Rebecca Stott- I swear I’ve read her book before, when I read so many Darwin-related books my senior year at uni- but I’d prefer to brush up. Padel’s poems are seriously good, though her fame probably vouches for that already!

Dr. John Holmes, my friend and a Lecturer at the University of Reading, had recommended I read some of Padel’s work. Little did I know that she’d be on the panel -and John himself will be the orchestrator! Things are coming together…

Interesting to mention, one of the older and perhaps wackier gentlemen I met at the ‘Poetry Unplugged’ evening said that my timing with the Darwin book was ‘opportunistic.’ As if that is a bad thing. I just think it is a combination of luck and smarts- luck that I wrote the manuscript before I realized the big Darwin events were happening (believe it or not) and luck that a publisher was smart enough to recognize the good timing and wants to publish me in time to take advantage of it.

Suffice to say, I would have written the poems anyway. It was one of the most intellectually fulfilling years of my life thus far, though I do hope to carry on in that vein!

‘In that vein’ being poetry, though from what I hear, Ruth Padel’s got a new poetry book coming out called Darwin: A Biography in Poems, and Dorothy Sutton’s got a new poetry book coming out called Darwin’s Scope! I do wonder how poor ol’ Charles would feel about all of this. Also, I hope I’m not grouped in the lump of ‘opportunistic’ writers taking advantage of the great man and using his name…but ah, so be it, if it be so. I know where I’m coming from.

Poetry Unplugged July 30, 2008

Last night I went to The Poetry Place for the second time- my first journey there, about a year ago, was simply to scout it out, and I had a bit of the yummy veggie food they serve (a quiche, I think,) and kind of scurried away again. No events were happening at the time.

The Poetry Cafe

This trip was to attend Poetry Unplugged, the regular Open Mic night of The Poetry Cafe, an outlet of The Poetry Society.

I have read in the Lipscomb Library and the Martin Science building of my Alma mater, and I have just written about reading in the gorgeous Playfair Library at Old College. Yet I admit to feeling somewhat nervous, just before we got going!

Lipscomb Library

It was the jangle of the unexpected, the not knowing.

There were about thirty people there, and about twenty had signed up to read.

The first guy who read was a bit odd; he singled me out (by chance, I suppose, and/or because I was new,) and wrapped my name into a ‘poem’ about Long Island.

It was fairly convenient, in my opinion, because by the time I was called to read (fairly early on), everyone already knew my name! With only five minutes in which to introduce myself and mention Darwin’s Microscope, I read about three poems, but they were very well-received.

I do think it is good when the poets you think are good also like your work. I think poetry is something one can become better at, but only if one is talented to begin with. It is an elitist attitude and I do not waver- I think the same with ‘talent’ holds true for any art form- music, dance, visual arts. There must be inherent talent to hone. Or what? Or it is a waste of time? No, the arts may be hobbies, enjoyable and relaxing, or emotional outlets. I cannot claim to paint or sing, at least not well!

Speaking of talent, upon first impression, about half of the poets I heard at Poetry Unplugged were very good. I think that’s an impressive percentage! I’ll mention a few whose names I caught and who have information online: Ernesto Sarezale was talented and entertaining; he’ll be at the Camden Fringe festival and obviously is very involved in the London performing arts scene. Guy Jackson was more of a storyteller than a poet, with quirky but funny stuff, and a fantatic storytelling voice. It reminded me of Monty Python.

Two young women, Toni and Grace, were wonderful, each coming from totally different backgrounds but each with rhythm, power, and emotion in their words, ebbing almost into song at some points. One young man hands-down made me think of Shakespeare, or at least how Joseph Fiennes plays him in Shakespeare in Love.

Joseph Fiennes as Will Shakespeare

I realise that ‘writing like Shakespeare’ is probably one of the Cardinal Sins of modern poetry, but this kid was good. I mean, really good. Beautiful. And though the style was Shakespearian, the words were made modern and they worked. Another young and tender lad read a fantastic poem about giving a narcissist a broken mirror. Again, very well done.

There were a few crazies, a short bout of yelling, and a minor mouse incident, but otherwise a good evening- and hey, it’s poetry, you’ve got to have some oddities…

Playfair Library Poetry Reading July 25, 2008

I’d like to thank Tom Bristow, from The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment - UK (ASLE-UK), and Lilias Fraser, from The Scottish Poetry Library, who coordinated the poetry reading.

Playfair Library, Old College, Edinburgh

On Thursday 10 July, I took a train from London, King’s Cross, to Edinburgh Waverly.

It was a gorgeous ride, much along the sparkling coast, and a good deal of which was taken up by listening to the kindly chatterings of a 75-year-old lady on her way to Inverness to see her daughter and grandchildren (twins).

I hope I can remember more of what she told me- showing slight symptoms of dementia, she repeated herself more than once, so you’d think I would remember…This is one story:

Mother used to feed us goat’s milk, straight into our cups. …When the war came, Mother decided she had to sell the goats: Nancy, a brown goat, and Betsy, a black goat. The next day, Mother heard about the bombing of the particular town where the goats had been taken, and was overcome with worry and grief for the fate of her poor goats.

(Again, I wish I remembered, for example, where the lady herself was from - somewhere in southern Scotland- and where the town was that the goats had likely met their fate…)

Anyway, that evening I arrived at the ASLE-UK conference to attend as a delegate, present a paper on Melville’s Cetology (the study of whales) in Moby-Dick, and, most immediately, read poems from my forthcoming book, Darwin’s Microscope.

Old College, Edinburgh

I was privileged to be one of three poets to read that evening in the magnificent Playfair Library of Old College, Edinburgh.

My first and only poetry reading before this was for the presentation of my final year honours poetry project at University in 2007 (Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in VA). I read in the Martin Science building, adamant to physically represent the combination of poetry and science that I feel my poems embody, by reading the poetry in the Science building.

The two other poets who also presented their work included the enthusiastic Helen Moore and Jerry Loose, who made it in the nick of time! I think the reading was a great way to kick off the conference, which comprised an intensely academic few days- having that bit of creativity mixed with the academics, as well as a great series of short films called ‘Eco-Eye,’ was refreshing and as a ‘Study of Literature (and the Environment!)’ should be. Oh, and the University is actually paying me for the poetry reading- my first gig where I make money as a poet, hooray!

On a final note, this conference made my second trip to Edinburgh and I must go back to spend more time there…it is a gorgeous and accessible city, practically empty once you’ve lived in London for almost a year, and I hope to return, perhaps to give more poetry readings!

Darwin’s Microscope to be Published June 30, 2008

Darwin's actual microscope

Darwin’s Microscope, my poetry manuscript, has been picked up by Flambard Press for publication in 2009. I’m very pleased with this!

I will be reading from the manuscript at the ASLE-UK conference in Edinburgh on the 10th of July, as well as presenting my research paper on Melville’s cetology in Moby-Dick.

I will also be seeking opportunities to get involved with “Darwin Day” happenings for Feb 2009 and beyond (before or after!) I live in London so I hope to make some good contacts regarding these upcoming events.

Please feel free to contact me via this blog if you are involved with poetry and/or science events that you feel I could contribute to.

Let’s talk Darwin June 14, 2008

As a writer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, I want people to read my work, and I want my work to provoke thought. I don’t need my readers to agree with me (though that’s fun,) or love my work, (though that’s quite fun,) I want them to think. (See Emerson, Self-Reliance)

My literary interests, currently, run in a few veins, but I’ll start with the big one. I have a poetry manuscript (formerly titled “Shadows in Chalk,”) entitled “Darwin’s Microscope.”

I’m very excited about this, especially for its timeliness. The year is now 2008, and 2009 is the year of Darwin: it is the 200th anniversary of the birth of good ‘ol Charles, well worth celebrating, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On The Origin of Species. February 14th, his actual birthday, will be especially big (Charles was born that day in 1809.) And of course, the UK is probably having the biggest celebrations, and I live in London.

Charles Darwin

I consider myself a “Darwinian Poet;” if there is not yet a definition for it, maybe I can clarify. After the British Society for Literature and Science conference last fall, I realize there are myriad ways to define “Darwinian,” so I’d better clarify where I’m coming from. I spent my final year of undergrad (formerly Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, if you are a student, take Evolution asap,) studying The Voyage of the Beagle and On The Origin of Species, both, of course, by Charles Darwin. I read E.O. Wilson, and I read and then met Richard Dawkins. I read Bruce Chatwin, Dorothy Sutton, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Davids Attenborough and Quammen, Loren Eiseley…the list goes on. (We mustn’t forget Thoreau & Emerson, who appreciated Nature but, I’d argue, as a means to their own ends.)

I spent that year immersed in the gorgeous study of biology, followed by a summer course in Maritime History, where I brought in Melville, whaling, and began to see all the threads interconnecting these above interests. (Herman Melville lived from 1819-1891 and Charles Darwin lived from 1809-1882) I became a grad student at the Munson Institute for Maritime Studies at the Mystic Seaport in Mystic, CT.

Mystic Seaport

The resulting research paper from the Grad program as well as my Honours project (the poetry manuscript) were accepted to the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment 2008 conference in Edinburgh, so I’ll be presenting my paper on Moby-Dick, “Literary Tryworks,” as well as reading some poems from “Shadows in Chalk,” at the conference this July.

So what makes me a “Darwinian Poet?” Perhaps it is that I find the study of biology answers “the big” questions for me. Perhaps it is that I find beauty in the science of Darwin’s writing, and science in its beauty. Perhaps it is that I am a happy atheist, and find Richard Dawkins hilarious and basically correct, though over the top at times (I say this as one who appreciates being over the top at times).

Perhaps it is the beauty in deducing a single moment in time by taking a biological fact and capturing it in a poem. I say “capturing” because I do not make it a poem; it already is one. One just needs a certain lens of a microscope to see it that way. Above all, I am a Darwinian Poet because the more I study science and poetry, the less of a divide I see between the two. Check out my book (in 2009) and see if you agree.