The First Voice by Emma McGordon

The first voice

Hello I’ve tried to put a video here of the first of my voices. This one is alone at the moment but I’m working on fusing it together with the other voices. Thanks to Shuan for the filming and editing.

Hello hello hello people. It’s about time I got my act together, as i see i’ve missed a number of blog entries. So where’ve i been? Well up and down the west coast main line to London a couple of times in search of the perfect job that would allow me to support myself while still having time to be creative. Does this exists? What do other poets and writers do to support themselves. I know Charlie does broadcasting, do you other guys manage  to make a living out of this full time? Byron seems pretty busy with festival festivities. I have some questions:  If you do get a job as a writer should it be involving helping other writers, or, something totally different to give you wider perspective on life, I’m soooo indecisive at the moment. The job I was going for sounded great, but as i didn’t get it i’ve now started re-evaluating everything. Does being a writer give you an identity that may conflcit with another assumed identitiy if say you joined the fire service?

I’ve been really interested in reading how other people go about creating work and especially enjoy the fact that some people, like Charlie, do similar stuff to me. Now I’m not a disciplined poet, i don’t have a day of the week where I sit down and scribble furoiusly in the hope that something marvellous arrives as the product of my labour. In fact I’m a lazy poet, I wait until the muse, or whatever this thing is, strikes me over the head, leads me by the hand and demands that I get this stuff on to paper, napkin, newspaper, dictophone or the inside cover of the book I’m reading.

So when for whatever reason something has made itself known to me I get it down and then leave it. When i first starting writing this was unheard of becasue i was always desperate to get the poem completed, not in a nagging way but in a way that was really satisfying. I don’t have that urgency now as i feel that the ideas seem to need a bit longer to permeate and really take shape on my mind. Quite often i have lines that i know that are the end of something, this has cropped up in a lot of people’s blogs when talking about the writing process, or i know they are opening lines but i just don’t know what to. Playing guitar always gives me ideas and i find more freedom in just spouting the words out of my mouth as i bash out some chords rather than sitting with the spectre of a blank notebook and pen.

On Saturday myself, Ann Wilson and Shaun made a short film featuring shots mainly of the sea on a wet and very windy day, using one of my works in progress as a voice over. I’ll post it here soon. I’m also contemplating quite a major change in my work after a friend suggested i try and merge some of my voices together. I’m happy with voice one but think i’ll have a go at the other three voices. More to follow on this soon.

In other news; I’ve got a job interview in London next week, my laptop has had its hard drive removed and replaced with a brand spanking new one, thank goodness i made back-ups, i thought the man on the phone was only covering himself when he said there was a possibility of loosing everything and, if anyone’s in Cumbria on June 26 I’m doing a reading in Cockermouth, check that out for a suggestive place name, would be interested if there’s any places near you with sexy names, how about a pub called Oily Johnnies! apparently it was once a mechanic garage, recently they shortened it to just Oily’s. I never even saw the funny side  of this until a friend came to stay and almost wet himself when we drove by.

Hey all, sorry i’m late with my opinion piece, my laptop has been taken away by he Techguys to have its motherboard fixed, this sounds very scary to me and i have conscientiously made copies of everything on there! Hopefully it will be getting fixed at this very moment. Of course the moment I’m writitng is  different to the moment you will be reading in, I hope it’s getting fixed during both moments. I’m a bit pre occupied with time since reading The Time Travellers Wife by Audery Niffinger. In this book one of the main characters, Henry, is able to timetravel and meets himself as an 8 year old boy 35 year old man etc.

It’s all very strange and you have to be careful not to think too much when you’re reading it otherwise you totally loose the plot. Time is something ifind myself thinking about at various inappropiate times; before interviews, while giving presentations, while making love ( yes really), so this book just sent me into time overdrive. Would i really want to go back and meet my eight year old self, do i really want to know what I’m like at 50? This got me thinking about time and place and especially how houses alter over time, be it through deoration or through the people who live there. How the feel of a house can change when many generations of the same family pass through it. My grandparens have lived in the same house since my mam was a little girl,  she grew up in that house, it was a massive part of my growing up,my granda died in the house and now the next geneation, a little boy named Ethan, is taking his first steps in that house. It’s all one big cycle. I’m not sure how all this relates to my resdiency but i think time is important in lots of writing and the more you think about it you realise that yu can’t really write without somehow placing it in time and the poem or novel through time as the reader reads and then its closed until the next reader starts theclock again. Life, writing, reading, it’s all a cycle.

Okay, I’m mad busy with Creative Partnership work this week, one school developing investgative skills through science and litearcy ( my job was to think how do we investiagte through literacy) and the another school doing a project called Interspace which looks at how the children perceive the space that their school occupies. The second one obviously has an MPLOY link and the kids were enthralled and delighted to know that i did “proper poetry work”.

As you know my work involves four voices, I think the story of the first voice is now nearing completion and i can begin a more through editing process. it’s the voice of somebody who has been street homeless and sofa surfing and get picked up by the police and shown to one of the hostels that i worked in.

the second voice is beginning to take shape as a fictional support worker and I’m trying to draw parallells (?) between what she considers home and the place she works whihc is the home of other people.

The third voice is mine and and talks about the people that i meets

and the fourth voice which is in the VERY early stages is going to be that of the house.

Hello,

how is everybody, i feel like i’ve been away for a while, so it’s time for an update on the North West MyPlace or yours Residency.