I’ve just finished watching Emma McGordon’s unsettling video of ‘The First Voice’ (see above). Beyond some obviously exceptional individual lines such as ‘I was Billy Goat’s Gruff rough’ and ‘bone lonely’, it’s a great piece of writing and videomaking. It reminds me a bit of a short vid I made to accompany my pamphlet of ‘imagined emails’, The Terrors.

I think this notion of ‘voices’ is central to what you might term ‘place-making’ – that expression of space as social, true human geography or pyschogeography. The voices Emma conjures in her poem seem ghostly to me. The poet inhabits the place like a spectre, moving through the shadows (as she does, literally, towards the end of the video). It is a dissenter’s poem, a marginal force. The poem should tell an alternative narrative.

I’m sure we’ve all had those experiences of walking through a city at night and imagining voices whispering behind us, in dark corners, alleyways, the vacant spaces developers forgot. Are these voices pure fantasy or are they in any way real? Do we create reality when we create a poem. Or is this all just sub-Sinclairian bluff and waffle?

Well, I think there’s a fine line between poetry as archaeology and ghost-hunting. Geoffrey Hill or Yvette Fielding?

I was recently told a very spooky story by my uncle and aunt of something they’d experienced over thirty years ago. Spooky because they’re both straight-talking people who wouldn’t make stuff up (unlike me). It goes roughly like this…

One evening in 1975 or ‘76 the young couple, newly-wed, decided to take a drive into the Sussex countryside to find a good local pub. They reached a small village called Jevington and, spotting what looked like an excellent place for dinner and some drinks, parked up. It was a very old-fashioned pub with sawdust on the floor and cheap Sussex ale – the locals were very friendly if a bit strange and the couple ended up spending the whole night there, drinking and chatting. They drove back home really happy they’d found such a great pub (this is, I hasten to add, before drink driving became taboo!).

The following week they decided to return for another evening at the pub. They drove exactly the same way, passing exactly the same fields, roads, houses and farms, until they reached the village. Everything looked exactly the same, but when they got to the pub – it wasn’t there. Nothing. For a moment they thought they must be confused so drove around the village for half an hour to look for the pub. But they were not confused. The pub just wasn’t there.

They parked up, and walked to a small terrace of old, grey houses opposite where the pub should have been. They knocked on the first door they came to and after a long wait a small elderly woman appeared. Apologising for disturbing her, they explained their situation; how they had enjoyed a marvellous evening of drinking at the local pub, but that it had now disappeared…

Pausing for a long time and looking them up and down, the old woman finally revealed: yes, there had been a pub there, a great old pub she remembers from when she was a girl. But it had burned down forty years ago, killing the landlord and his family in their sleep.

Perplexed and unsettled, my aunt and uncle returned home to Eastbourne. Ever since, they have always looked for that vanished pub, but never found it again – left wondering about the fire, the dead family, the sawdust, and that mysterious evening of laughter and local beer in 1976.

How can you explain something like this? Could it be that a place can absorb the people, memories and happenings that it has experienced? Can space somehow remember time? I can’t think of any other explanation (assuming, as I do, absolutely, that my uncle and aunt are telling the truth). Or is this remembering merely a human act, a trick of the mind, like a poem?

Scratch the surface; every forest is a sea. Every street is a palimpsest. You just have to listen for the ‘bone longing’.

We all live in the universe – this we should not forget, but aside from that, we each have a simpler and more definite address: a country, a city, a street, a building, an apartment. The presence of so precise an address is the criterion by which original poetry is distinguished from the pretentious and the artificial.

A provocative place to start, perhaps; but a place to start nonetheless. That’s Russian Futurist poet Samuil Marshak, and it’s a quote that prefaced an anthology I recently edited, City State: New London Poetry. I find it hard to know what to say about place… it infects, and is the foundation for, so much of my work as a writer. There is one tradition of thinking – outdated, in my opinion – that discredits the importance of place in writing, privileging instead that which is ‘universal’… the writing of common, human experience that paradoxically transcends specific, grounded realities.

But I’m not convinced by this. Artists are limited beings, and that limit is where the interest lies. ‘The local is the only universal’, said the American Modernist William Carlos Williams (above, on the dog and bone), whose incredible long poem Paterson captures the character of his hometown in New Jersey, and is a must-read for anyone interested in place and poetry. The notion that a reader/listener would only be interested in experiences they can directly ‘relate to’ is an affront to their intelligence. I’m a pretty Londoncentric writer as this city is the place that infects me, but as a reader I’m interested in all sorts of different places and how artists configure them.

And this, I reckon, is a key point… how place is not a solid, knowable, thing – not a riddle to be solved – but a fluid construct that changes depending on your viewpoint. I know this is like 1960s literary theory 101, but I believe it. I liked seeing Jay Bernard’s Jay Town map on this site, because it seems to be quite consciously playing with those parameters of the real and the fictional place. Iain Sinclair is of course a great contemporary exponent of this, with his ‘documentary fiction’. There’s also a great blog I recommend to anyone with a spare half hour. It’s called Strange Maps and, well, does what it says on the tin.

For me, the concept of place has nothing to do with capturing objective ‘reality’ – it is to do with how we place ourselves. Place as a verb: an active force, an energy field.

Booktrust has their first poet in residence.  You can follow his journey at: http://www.booktrust.org.uk/show/feature/Home/Writer-in-residence

Poet Yemesi Blake wrote a piece on the creative art of blogging which is up on the Literature Training website:

http://www.literaturetraining.com/metadot/index.pl?id=40306&isa=DBRow&op=show&dbview_id=2323

Also, I just read this piece on the Guardian website about regional accents and I wondered if any of the writers had thought about poetry, place and dialect?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/mar/26/regional-dialect-british-english

Geraldine

I’ve just arrived back from Texas physically exhausted but utterly energised.  One of the reasons for this mental upbeatness is this photo  – it’s a scene from my notebook written in one of the many seminars I went to at the SXSW Interactive Festival.  It’s made me even more excited by the aims and potential of My Place Or Yours and creating online places to share to understand our work together.

It’s been a great week for digital innovation and literature at SXSWi.  The company Six to Start won best in show for their online project with Penguin – http://wetellstories.co.uk/ – Six writers commissioned to write digital fiction that could only be told online.

In the panel session Six to Start were hosting, I said how pleased I was that literature had been championed on this platform and that I would take this achievement back to the community I work with and celebrate.  So in writing this post I am keeping my promise.

It’s about connecting and collaboration.  During my time at SXSWi, I’ve learned more about the possibilities and potential of interactivity for performance poetry and also working with other interactive genres and specialisms who are asking themselves similar questions regarding audiences, infrastructure development and creative opportunities.

The delegation I was part of were asked to blog our experiences of the festival, and they certainly did.  The huge amount of blogging from the group was fantastic to read.  The posts included so many different approaches to style, opinion and analysis.  I won’t deny that blogging is a relatively new thing for me and it was great to be around people who were very comfortable with this way of working. It gave me more confidence to blog my thoughts and comment on others in a more immediate way – to think of the conversation and not the statement.

In light of this, I thought I’d share with you some of the conversations that have happened this week, here is a link -  http://www.ished.net/projects/sxsw/?page_id=2

I’d be interested to see what you think and how it might connect to you.

They say there was an old woman who lived in a shoe

she’d so many children she did not know what to do

so she kicked them all out

and bought each a tattoo

of a boot with no laces ………..

I’ve been to many empty rooms,

streets, towns, citie, countries

even other continents

and i’ve slept in many houses

noticed different patterns and fabric on curtains

sofas, carptets, floors made of wood or tile.

I’ve been a stanger in a number of beds and woken

to discover how light draws angles differently

like the room shed its nighttime clothes

and woke up all creased face and groggy.

I’ve come to discover how my pillow has its own smell

and I only realise when sleeping without it.

I am alone

desolate land

language lost

and bone lonely.

side cast glances at my fury

and the wind puts in my throat

a whisper.

The tide moves in me like a mystery;

sometimes it to-s me, sometimes it fro-s me,

i find myself here and there

in the spaces between waves and heartbeats.

The tide rolls in like a secret whispered.

I’m like the sea; i get moved from A to B,

but there ’s no tide in my sea

tied is word that don’t belong to me,

I’m here to flutter-by free to there or where

wake up whenever wherever

sometimes never and days go on forever

when i’ve not spoken to anyone

Thursday is Tuesday Monday is Friday

and sunday is anyones guess.

someone gave me a room once

I don’t remeber who or where

but i used to dream it was pianted blue

someone gave me a guitar

someone took me shopping for the first time

but it was all bands and brands and I’d not heard of dischord or discount.

Today Monday was Wednesday and the pub shut early

that’s how i knew so i ghost float

someone said homes not a place

it’s a part of who you are

someone else said it as to do with the laying down of a hat

I heard that in someone’s father’s house there were many mansions.

It’s stange to see work that’s so raw like this, as this is the stage I would normally never show anybody and i can’t help but feel embarrssed as it all seems so simplistic

Training Group 1

The Purpose of Writing blogs…

Blogs are a very useful tool to get feedback on work if you are in a development stage. They are also useful in getting more exposure for a particular event or project. They foster audience interaction and investment in particular projects, and are a good source of dialogue for people who are far away from each other.  In less interesting cases, people seem to use blogs to publicise their own neuroses.

Do you have any thoughts on the purpose of blogs? How have they been helpful to you in the past? Leave a comment…

Training Group 2

Blog It Write!!!!!!!!

Keep it short.

Be aware of self-indulgence. There is a difference between expressing yourself and witless drivel.

People will connect to you if they feel you are talking to them personally.

Be aware of your audience – it is a dialogue not a monologue.

Before you write, think: is this for the public domain?!

If you use keywords people will be able to search for posts they have a personal interest in.

Blogs that work best often have a clear personality, differentiating them from more corporate or traditional website.

Leaving questions open so people can respond and enter into conversation is a good way to get people interacting rather than just reading – surveys & voting, videos, photos/visuals to comment on are other ways of engaging.

Linking (to other people’s blogs) is a good way to create a community, and good blog etiquette.  if you refer to something your audience might not know about using hyperlinks makes it accessible and stops people feeling alienated.

Training Group 3

Well, this picture says it all, doesn’t it?  Or does it?…

Pictures and videos as visual aids are a way for viewers to burrow into your experiences, new items and countless other happenings all over the world.

Here’s Chikodi, Russell and George from the Apples & Snakes team at a training day pondering the possibilities of the visual.  We all agreed that if you’re gonna post pictures make it relevant!  (Like, ahem, this one)…

Training Group 4

How to choose a blog topic

Here are a few things for you to bear in mind when tackling your first obstacle for posting a blog…

1. It needs to be relevant to the blog you’re adding to

2. Ideally interesting to others and to you yourself [something you're passionate about]

3. Write about what you know or what you wish to know about

4. Enjoy it!