A Poem a Day

Starting four years ago, in September 2021, I took up a suggestion I'd seen on Twitter: read a poem a month. Not a poem per day — which is catered for by many books and feeds — but per month.

Read the same poem. Every day. For a month.

I can't remember if the suggestion included reading it aloud or whether I picked that up from somewhere else, but read it aloud rather than in silence. That will slow you down. Sit with it rather than skim it. Hear the words. Feel the words. Over the month your understanding of and relationship with the poem will change, the imagery and feelings inspired by it will evolve.

Although I've read and enjoyed humorous verse from an early age, I'd never taken such reading either seriously or into more serious poetry. I even went so far as to say I didn't get along with or even 'get' poetry. This was not only not entirely true — I had attended and been moved by poetry readings, I had written (but never published) a few poems and, as part of my interest in flash fiction, I had written and read out prose poems — but it betrayed an inflexible approach.

This daily–monthly suggestion made me aware of my fixed mindset and offered some kind of redress: I had never really spent time with poetry. I had never really devoted much effort to it — more glancing at it than looking at it properly. It needed more time and space than I'd been prepared to give it.

Compared to prose, poems are typically much (much) briefer, simultaneously sparser but more compressed. Just reading through a short poem at the same speed as you would read prose will likely miss the depths and imagery on offer. Read it too fast and it bounces off you... you bounce off it. Instead of being drawn in, you drive past. And just reading it once won't let you see all that's on offer, all that's embedded and entangled in their deliberate structures and careful word choices. You need to make space and spend time with it.

But when someone suggests creating a daily routine, don't punish yourself with unnecessary perfectionism: dailyish is just fine. And that's what I've done for the last four years. This has changed how I perceive and receive poetry.

If you're interested in the poems I've read, here's a spreadsheet with them. There's no grand plan or specific criteria —  except brevity — in their selection. The choices are a mix of chance and recommendation. There is a not insignificant amount of autobiography in many of the choices, which in many ways reflect personal struggles, experiences and beliefs. There may be more of therapy in this poem-a-month practice than there is of literary. What I have learned is that appreciation of poetry, like that of music, can be very personal. Which is no bad thing.

Tales of Lost Time: 2016

It's been a while.

A long while.

October 2016 was the last time I posted. A lot has happened since then, some of which gradually caused me to let go of my blog (even more so than before).

Part of the reason I have this blog is as a record and a reminder to myself. My work in software development is filled with constant reminders, such as videos of my conference talks and tweets and retweets on Twitter. But when it comes to some of my other interests, such as creative writing and photography, it's easy for me to lose track of what happened and when.

One role this blog served (serves...) is to track what stories I've read at spoken word events — partly so I can avoid rereading the same story at a venue, or reading the same story too many times to perhaps much of the same crowd. So, this is mostly for my own reference, but perhaps you can find something of interest here.

Right, where did I leave it? Ah yes, right here:

Yesterday the Bristol Festival of Literature kicked off. Sadly I missed being able to join the rest of North Bristol Writers for their sell-out readings at Arnos Vale Cemetery, but I'll be joining them tonight at the Flash Slam. I'm reading something apocalyptic at Writers Unchained's Sunday Story. At BristolCon I'm on a panel about AI and robots and will also be running a flash fiction workshop.

All that happened, and more:

• I read "Plans for Tonight" at the Bristol Festival of Literature flash slam. We didn't even come close to winning, but it was great fun.
• I read at Writers Unchained Story Sunday. I read my own story, "Ashes to Ashes, Mañana, Mañana", and then, in his absence, John Holland's "You're Very Beautiful".

• At the BristolCon Fringe open mic the night before the main con I read an unpublished flash fiction, "Sweet Nothings".
• At BristolCon itself, I enjoyed being on the Uncanny Valleys of the Mind panel. Drawing from both science fiction and what's actually going on in the field of machine learning, I made the point that most people's perception of AI and robotics is that of artificial general intelligences (AGIs) in SF, that of something sentient and pseudo-human. Which is almost exactly what isn't going on. Unlike a baby, an AI system really does start out as a tabula rasa. There is no predisposition towards any particular behaviours or world views, no baseline concept of the world or morality, etc. The valley — or chasm — to cross is that anthropomorphising will not equip us to reason about what the strengths and weakness of such systems are. It was a really good panel, vouched for by co-panelist Rosie Oliver.
• I also ran a flash fiction workshop at BristolCon, which was very well attended  — nine people... so, inevitably, I had prepared print-outs (such as this) for eight. There is a great write-up of the workshop by Rexx Deane, which outlines some of the process and the exercises I went through, and another one by Dolly Garland. We used prompts (this and this), we described character, we looked at examples of flash, we played with sentence length (write something using a single long sentence, then again using only short sentences) and we worked with index cards to help constrain the writing.
• My last story-related event of the year was a paid gig (my first!) at Southampton's Festival of Words. It was well attended and I got read a few of my favourites: "Lost Love's Labours", "First Date, Last Date", "Plans for Tonight", "Ashes to Ashes, Mañana, Mañana" and "Possession".

And that was a writerly wrap for 2016.

Summer Break

Right. Where were we? Ah, yes. Summer. A fading northern-hemisphere memory. Having negotiated an equal day–night settlement that has already slipped, it is preparing to concede an hour before heading into further darkness. Summer's shocks and follies have hardened to fallen leaves and windblown promises.

And this is my first blog in a while. There's a few things to recap, so I'll be brief... ish.

Let's kick off with stories and comps and things:

• "When the Clocks Go Forward", a flash tale of Sunday mornings, autumn and a decoupled reality, appeared at 365tomorrows.
• "Milk Teeth and Chocolate Eggs", an urban fantasy of diminished gods and Easter promise, made it to the Remastered Words shortlist (but alas no further).
• "Three Billion Heartbeats, Give or Take", a short thriller, made it to the shortlist of the Essex Book Festival’s Crime Writing Short Story Competition (but also no further).
• I also contributed two more Flash Fiction Sunday Editions for 101 Words: in the first I selected four flash fictions that related to this year's National Flash Fiction Day events in Bristol (more on this in a moment); in the second I selected four flash fictions that played with reality in some way.

There was also spoken word!

• The Talking Tales squad left the street-art comfort of Stokes Croft to stage an event at the Bath Fringe Festival under the heading of More Banksy than Bonnets (Bristol favouring insurgency over Regency). I read "Three Moments of Defeat", which received mention in a review of the event.
• Under the theme of Midsummer Madness, I read #KrakenEvent at Writers Unchained's Story Sunday, which ended the evening on an apocalyptic note (more on that later).
• In the spirit of doing something I've never done before, I read at a festival. After last year's Sanctum, the North Bristol Writers were invited to do a set at FarmFest. It would be fair to say that the tent, timing and competition with the main stage were not ideal, but it was a good day out and I got to read "Three Moments of Defeat" again. (I wrote the story years ago, but didn't initially see it as a spoken-word candidate... turns out it's a late bloomer.)

And almost last, but most definitely not least, National Flash Fiction Day 2016! This had a bit of everything — spoken word, publication, walking, talking, drinking...

• As well as the workshop and readings, we had a new event this year: the Flash Walk. The concept, format and everything about it just worked out. Jo Butler and Tom Parker read — indeed, performed! — stories that were related to or inspired by areas area around the Bristol's harbourside. Sidz Photography took some great photos.
• Judy Darley blogged about the day, particularly the Flash Walk, which she also gets the credit for pulling together.
• The afternoon workshop with Alison Powell and K M Elkes at the Central Library was well attended and inspiring.
• I've always aimed to have twelve readers at the evening event. I've always ended up adding one or two more speakers late in the day. This year I thought I'd managed the dozen. Until someone dropped out at the last minute. Fortunately, Grace Palmer and Jane Roberts were able to step in at the last minute to read, joining me, Calum Kerr, Diane Simmons, Freya Morris, Jude Higgins, Judy Darley, K M Elkes, Pete Sutton, Tim Stevenson, Tino Prinzi and Tom Parker to make a baker's — if not dirty — dozen of readers.
• I read out "First Date, Last Date" and — once more with feeling — "Three Moments of Defeat" (and three mentions in this blog).
• My drabble, "Lost Love's Labours", was republished in the day's FlashFlood.
• My story, "The Door Closes", was published in A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed, the NFFD 2016 anthology.
• In the build-up to NFFD, I was one of the competition judges, a competition that gave some great little stories to the world.
• See the BristolFlash page to see more photos of the walk and the readings.

So is that everything? Almost. Yesterday the Bristol Festival of Literature kicked off. Sadly I missed being able to join the rest of North Bristol Writers for their sell-out readings at Arnos Vale Cemetery, but I'll be joining them tonight at the Flash Slam. I'm reading something apocalyptic at Writers Unchained's Sunday Story. At BristolCon I'm on a panel about AI and robots and will also be running a flash fiction workshop. During the week I plan to pop in on a couple of other things.

I'll try to report back before the hour springs forward again...

May the Fourth BristolFlash Be with You

Saturday 25th June is almost upon us! The fourth year of BristolFlash's National Flash Fiction Day events, and the fifth year of National Flash Fiction Day.

I was on Ujima earlier this week with Freya Morris on Cheryl Morgan's show promoting the day. Freya and I both read out a couple of flashes — mine was a drabble, "First Date, Last Date" — talked about flash fiction and plugged the Bristol events.

We've got a great line-up of events, kicking off with a flash walk in the morning. If you fancy a leisurely stroll with some stories, this will be walk around the centre of Bristol accompanied by a couple of actors who will be reading a number of flash tales inspired by the sites and sounds of Bristol.

In the afternoon we've got a workshop at Bristol Central Library led by Alison Powell and Ken Elkes:

And then in the evening we've got the launch of the NFFD anthology, A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed, and readings at At the Well on Cheltenham Road:

All events are free. All events are fun! Hope to see you there. And if Bristol is not convenient for you, there are a few other events that may be of interest, depending where you are.

The Sound of Deadlines

People have a complex (and frequent) enough relationship with deadlines that it's not hard to find (mostly correctly attributed) quotes about them. When it comes to writing, Douglas Adams is possibly one of the most quoted authors:

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

Preach.

Sometimes I'm with the late great Douglas Adams on this, but sometimes I'll cross the aisle to the late great Duke Ellington's side:

I don't need time, I need a deadline.

I recently confessed to a couple of people that I seemed to enjoy competition writing. And not just submitting a story to a competition — which naturally enough has a deadline — but actually a competition where the time for writing is itself bounded. It kicks off when you are given some kind of brief (a prompt, a genre, a title, etc.) and there is a deadline of days or hours to write to a word count and submit.

One such competition is NYC Midnight, which I have entered in both flash and short form in previous years. This year I made some progress, making it through the first round (8 days, 2500 words, 2100+ entrants), coming top of my heat in the second round (3 days, 2000 words) and then placing in the top 20 in the final round (1 day, 1500 words, 40 finalists).

(If this appeals to you, by the way, the next NYC Midnight flash fiction challenge is coming up soon.)

But it's not just a one-off for one comp. I did this again recently for the Sci-Fi-London 48-Hour Flash Fiction Challenge. Except I didn't have 48 hours: we were going to Istanbul for a (very) long weekend, so I certainly wasn't going to sit in the hotel room cranking out words. I received the brief just before we were told to turn off our mobiles on the outbound flight. That gave me around three hours of writing time. It was enough.

Looking back, I seem to have repeated this deadline-hugging behaviour again and again. And I love workshops where you have to write to a deadline of only a few minutes. And sites like Visual Verse, where you set yourself the time constraint.

Is this a general recommendation for writing? Absolutely not. It depends in part on personality and in part on the nature of what you are writing. Writing this way is not particularly sustainable, which is fine for one-off flashes and shorts, but terrible for, well, the need for sustained writing, such as a novel. For that, even flow is likely to give you an easier ride, e.g., applying the Pomodoro technique, which I know from the world of agile software development, but recently learnt Lucy Robinson uses in writing novels.

It is a question of motive. On the one hand, there is a buzz to it, and rush when you've done it. On the other, what now exists is a story that would not otherwise have existed. It may not yet be the best story it could be, but it is now in the world and not simply in your head, unrealised. If you ever find yourself stuck, blocked, procrastinating or perendinating, something like this may help you unblock.

As Chris Baty observes:

A deadline is, simply put, optimism in its most kick-ass form. It's a potent force that, when wielded with respect, will level any obstacle in its path. This is especially true when it comes to creative pursuits.

It seems the trick is to learn to wield it with enough respect.

Now, if you'll just excuse me, the Bridport Prize is closing in a few hours...

Readings and Republications

In the last few months I've had a couple of my stories republished and snuck in a couple of readings.

Apparently "The Kylling" has one of the highest page hits of any story on the Cafe Aphra site. They got in touch asking if I had any more flash fiction I'd like to share. As "The Kylling" is one of three (unrelated) drabble-and-a-halfs of Scandicrime, I suggested the other two parts of the 'trilogy': "A Bridge Too Far", which was my 2014 Flashbang winning entry, and "Plans for Tonight", which helped me win the 2012 Oxford flash slam.

Alas, the Sorcerous Signals site, one place where my story "Milk Teeth and Chocolate Eggs" has appeared, is no more. The good news is that "Milk Teeth and Chocolate Eggs" has reappeared at The Spec Fiction Hub, and did so just in time for Easter.

It has become an annual tradition to have an open mic night at the BristolCon Fringe, with readings timeboxed to five minutes. This year the open mic night fell in the same week that I was timeslicing between a conference in Bristol and one in London, while also sneaking in a (non-novel) reading at Novel Nights. At BristolCon Fringe I read "Immune" and "AutoKnowMe"; at Novel Nights, following the theme of love and romance, I read "Starsigns". And on Saturday that week I did remarkably little.

A Conventional Recollection

At the end of last summer, Ian Milsted contacted me to ask if I'd be interested in contributing to an issue of an old-style fanzine, Griff, that he was putting together in time for BristolCon. We were both at Loncon 3, the 2014 Worldcon in London; he remembered me comparing it to a previous Worldcon in the UK. That sounded like the perfect ingredients for a fanzine article. And it was out just in time for BristolCon.

It's late and dark when we arrive in Brighton, so no seaside sunshine or early start on the beach. Tom and I have driven down from London in a car that's seen a lot of time but is no DeLorean. Even so, this is time travel. It's summer 1987 and we're here for Conspiracy, the World Science Fiction Convention in Brighton.

I was here three years earlier for SeaCon, the 1984 Eastercon and Eurocon. In 1984 I only went to Brighton for the day, but some of the highlights of that day are chiselled into memory — Harry Harrison, Bob Shaw, Joe Haldeman, Brian Aldiss, writers whose names graced the fronts of books I'd lost myself in, but who had more depths than even those pages could reveal. I was there because of a pen friend — yup, back when you actually had to use pens and post to communicate — was over from the US. Josh was into SF and had figured out he'd be visiting London around the time of Eastercon, so he'd done his research (without Google...) and had made the suggestion.

Two years later, again with Josh, I visited Worldcon '86 in Atlanta. For a teenager from North London, even cocooned within the convention hotels, this visit to the American South was an eye-opener. I wrapped up my gap year with a couple of months travelling around the US, but my travels had been in Yankee territory. Me and a friend of Josh's headed south by van from New Jersey. When I wasn't lying in the back of the van listening to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy — "What do you mean you've never listened to it? But you're British!" "I've met Douglas Adams." "But how have you never listened to Hitchhiker's?!" — in van-wall to van-wall stereo, the view from the front seat revealed a shifting cultural landscape you didn't see on TV. Sidewalks were invisibly colour coded, black one side, white the other. Worldcon's name that year, ConFederation, also shows how far we've come — you'd have to be a sad puppy to think that name was appropriate now.

I was there for the full five days. There were five of us saving money and shift-sleeping in a room for two, but I used that room for little more than storage and showering. I did the first three days on three hours sleep, giving myself the luxury of seven hours over the final two — a sleeping pattern I could get away with only as an adolescent (or, a few years later, as a new parent). Worldcon was big even back then. It was non-stop sessions, parties, caffeine, bumping into American gods like Frederick Pohl, faux phaser fights in hallways between Klingons and Starfleet (pick a side, go on pick a side...), talking to people you didn't know, making friends that you did actually keep in touch with for a couple of years, even without cyberspace assistance of email and social media.

And some of whom I would meet again at Conspiracy in Brighton at the same Metropole hotel I'd visited in 1984. Tom and I were there for the weekend. My sleepless theme from the year before continued, but this time we actually had no room, which meant improvising. The first night ended up back in Tom's car, discovering in the morning that we'd parked on a main street, shoppers going about their Saturday passing by two long-haired con-goers crashed out in the front seats of an old car. The second night I crashed in the all-night movie room.

This Worldcon was smaller and less grand than the one in Atlanta, with a 1980s British seaside-town twist. But it still dwarfed 1984 Eastercon. There were writers I'd seen at SeaCon and in Atlanta, there were guests of honour (including Jim Burns), there were up-and-coming writers (a certain Iain Banks, with and without the M, comes to mind), there was Hawkwind (Tom's kind of thing, but thanks I'll pass), there were parties (in the hotel and on the beach) and more.

And then I took a break from cons and fandom. Quite a long break. A fairy-tale sleep whose spell was broken in part by Josh (yup, same one, after all these years) and BristolCon. And in good time for Loncon, Worldcon 2014.

I went to Loncon for the weekend, but this time sleeping arrangements and the need for sleep and creature comforts had moved on — and accumulated hotel loyalty points helped out. This time my companion was my tweenage son, so I had to do some serious roleplaying — instead of pursuing parties and teenage kicks, I got to play the part of responsible parent.

Loncon was in the ExCeL, which we'd last visited for the 2012 Olympics. Although not quite Olympian, the convention was large. We are living in some of the future that people imagined back in the 1980s, with location transparency applying almost as equally to our events as our communications. Panels were packed to the gills, with fire-and-safety regulations trimming back the standing overflow in each room, which meant that I missed a few sessions I wanted to attend, but enjoyed some I might otherwise not have attended. My agenda took in art, politics, conlangs and worldbuilding, as well as doing an open mic reading and some life drawing.

I bumped into people I knew both from Bristol and from software development conferences, and struck up the usual random conversations with people I didn't know, including a really great conversation in the queue for Chris Foss's autograph. Chris Foss's imagery is all over my school memories of reading — it would be fair to say that he was the reason I tried an airbrush in art class — so it was great to finally meet him.

2014 and 1987 in many ways could not be more different, balanced on either side of the millennium boundary, one with a foot in adolescence and the other in middle age, one when I had no cares and the other with a clear and personal duty of care. This makes it difficult to compare the two British Worldcons I've attended with any reasonable objectivity. But why bother? In this case there's nothing wrong with unreasonable subjectivity. I enjoyed them both and for quite different reasons. Perhaps the real question is... where might the conventional time machine go next?

Talking and Choosing Tales

The last few weeks have seen a gentle easing into the events of the (now-not-so) new year. There's one or two technical writing projects in the pipeline — or at least waiting at its entrance — plus a couple of fiction projects (and there's at least one fictional project — it looks like it's going to remain in the imagination and not make into the real world).

My story, "Ragdolls", made the quarter-final of the ScreenCraft Short Story Contest, although sadly it didn't make it to the next stage.

Speaking of making the stage, my first spoken word of the year was Talking Tales, which had a killer line-up and a new slot on a Saturday night. With Easter just beyond the calendar fold, I chose to read "Milk Teeth and Chocolate Eggs". From what I can tell and from what I felt (quite pink, with shades of blue and black, from the looks of it), I think I may have finally cracked how best to read that story.

One thing I forgot to blog from last year was making a second selection of four stories for 101 Words Flash Fiction Sunday Edition. This time I chose "Our Shrinking Giants" by Freya Morris (who also read this particular tale at Talking Tales), "Down to the Sunless Sea" by Neil Gaiman, "The Factory Explosion" by Adam Marek and "A Song, Against the Metronome" by D T Friedman. If you're interested in the reasons behind these choices, read here. If you're interested in my previous selection of four, read here.

Spoken For

January was a blog-dry month, which makes this the first blog post of the year. We are so far into February that there is clearly no pretence this post is any kind of review of 2015...

So how was 2015? 365 days long and stuffed to the gills with minutes and moments. As well as work, and the travel that goes with that, and family, and the richness and memories that go with that, it was filled with stories and happenings and more.

I rekindled an interest in photography, but via Instagram and my phone rather than competitions and my DSLR. I wrote a bit less than I would have liked, but enough that I had stories published (e.g., "A Prolonged and Postponed Preparation of Procrastination" and "Ragdolls") and republished (e.g., "A Bridge Too Far" and "Hilary Is the Winters of Keith's Discontent").

On the fiction front, then, 2015 appears not to have been that busy. But then again, perhaps that's not the whole story: I helped put on the third BristolFlash event on National Flash Fiction Day and was on the organising committee for the Bristol Festival of Literature. I appeared on Ujima Radio to promote each event, as well as a flash-writing workshop I ran at BristolCon Fringe. I went to CrimeFest, EdgeLit and BristolCon, where I was on a panel. And I did readings of my stories. Many readings.

I hadn't really thought about it until the last Sanctum appearance when, if I recall correctly, Grace Palmer noted that I'd done a lot of spoken word events in recent months. And she was right. We had both read together at five events. And I'd read at others as well.

March saw me reading at Let Me Tell You a Story, Jack. April saw me reading at Talking Tales, as did June. In June I also read on Ujima in promotion of National Flash Fiction Day and then again on the day. In July I read a lab-lit story at Science Showoff. August? I had a break.

In September I read at Novel Nights. OK, given it's my stated ambition to not write a novel — and that's going very well, thank you very much — what was I doing at Novel Nights? It was a short story special edition headlined by Tania Hershman, with me, Grace Palmer, Harriet Kline, Helen McClory (whose flight was delayed, but turned up right at the end of the evening, just in time to read!) and Pete Sutton also reading. As planned, I read out my North by Southwest story, "Like Giants". Its tale of sea, displacement and loss, written in 2014 from a more abstracted and fantastical point of view, had an unexpected and particular resonance with events in the news. And then I read at BristolCon.

October brought the Bristol Festival of Literature, where I ended up reading four stories — including two new ones — at three events: Written from Art, The Flash Slam and the Talking Tales' Speakeasy.

In search of inspiration for a new story, I visited Carol Peace's studio, where Written from Art was due to take place, a few days before the reading. What I came away with — as well as a downed coffee and a good chat with Carol — was an inevitably deeper appreciation for her sculpture than I had got from her website — an appreciation that was already deep and inspiring — plus a slight surprise. Instead of a new story, I found the missing pieces to a story that had been sitting on the shelf for a couple of years — complete in one sense, but lacking a certain something. That said, I didn't finish rewriting it with that certain something until minutes before we were due to leave the house for the event! This is as close in spoken word that I've come to my (notorious) habit of not finishing my slides for conference talks until — sometimes (only sometimes...) — minutes before I'm due to present. No, I'm not claiming it's a good habit, but it's certainly a habit and there's nothing quite like a performance deadline to bring focus to the task in hand!

The Flash Slam was hosted brilliantly by Nikesh Shukla, with readings from six local writing groups (two of them combining forces as a single team). Two main rounds spanned four readers from each team, the first round marked by Nikesh and general audience feedback and the second by volunteers in the audience. I was on the North Bristol Writers' team and read out "Authenticity".

Reading at The Flash Slam (photo by Mel Ciavucco)

The final round came as a surprise. Doubly so: North Bristol Writers were in it, going head to head with Bristol Novelists, and instead of using stories we had brought along just-in-case, we were handed the challenge of writing a story in the few minutes that spanned the break from the second to the final round, based on suggestions from the crowd. Nothing quite like a performance deadline to bring focus to the task in hand. Our team threw ideas around for a few minutes, then we each wrote a flash based on that, after which we regrouped, read through and selected. My story was chosen. So it was all down to me. Ulp. Except that, in truth, it wasn't: Bristol Novelists were represented by Alison Bown.

I'm going to say that the standard of readings that night was very high... but Alison's story in the main rounds was, quite frankly, the best thing I heard all night. So yeah, that's a prelude to saying: the Bristol Novelists won. A flash fiction competition. Writing is writing, good writing is good writing, great reading is great reading. But irony makes it even more fun!

The festival closed with the Speakeasy, hosted by Talking Tales, where I read "Possession". The rest of October and November was filled with Sanctum, which incidentally marks the first time I've been paid to perform a reading.

Looking to the immediate future, I'll be at Novel Nights tomorrow night: Tobias Jones is talking words and language. And I'm in Bristol. How can I resist? I'll also be reading at Talking Tales this Saturday. Somewhat further ahead, the Bristol Festival of Literature committee has whirred into life and is gathering proposals and ideas for the festival this year. Please get in touch if there's something you'd like to see or organise.

#SanctumBristol

I was there in the first twenty-four hours. I was there on the last day. I was there like an irregular heartbeat, sounding out different times of day, from morning to night, in the civilised hours and the times I wasn't entirely sure had either names or numbers.

I was there.

And that is something I am glad to be able to say and that I will be able to look back on.

I performed at Sanctum five times in all, each time was a different experience in terms of ambience and audience and, as promised, the stories I chose. It was an unexpected and wonderful experience, whether it was five people in the rain or five times that many in clear darkness or crisp autumnshine, whether it was attended by friends, family or just complete strangers, all there to sample the unique place and experience of Sanctum.

Twenty-four days, twenty-four hours a day, there was always a performance — whether music, poetry or storytelling — but never a published schedule.

Looking back, here's some photos and my set list...

A photo posted by Kevlin Henney (@kevlinhenney) on Oct 30, 2015 at 3:51am PDT

Late morning, on Friday 30th October, I read out "Lost Love's Labours", "A Higher Calling", "Ashes to Ashes" and "Authenticity".

First thing in the morning, on Saturday 7th November, I read out "Wrecked", "Two Weeks in Spain" and "Hilary Is the Winters of Keith's Discontent".

A photo posted by Kevlin Henney (@kevlinhenney) on Nov 6, 2015 at 11:28pm PST

For the slot just before midnight, on Sunday 8th November, I went for a ghost story and a fairy tale, reading out "Promises You Can Keep" and "The Woodcutter's Stepdaughter".

A photo posted by Kevlin Henney (@kevlinhenney) on Nov 8, 2015 at 3:16pm PST

In the evening of Saturday 14th November, I opted for a near-future SF theme, reading out "AutoKnowMe", "Ragdolls" and "S3xD0ll". And that was the end of my solo reading slots.

A photo posted by Kevlin Henney (@kevlinhenney) on Nov 14, 2015 at 10:26am PST

But I was back on the morning of Saturday 21st November as the last reader of North Bristol Writers, reading "The Same Team".

@NBCWG last performance at #sanctumbristol on a cold and windy morning pic.twitter.com/9wmW4l7MsR

— Peter Sutton (@Suttope) November 21, 2015

And that was it. I was there.

The First Rule of Sanctum Club

The first rule of Sanctum Club is not that you don't talk about Sanctum Club — you're encouraged to promote and publicise as much as possible — but that you don't talk about the schedule.

Sanctum is an arts project that has landed in the heart of Bristol, in the grounds and structure of the bombed-out Temple Church. It kicked off on Thursday 29th October and continues for 24 days, 24 hours a day. At any time of day or night you can walk in and see someone performing — poetry, music and more. And, if you're (un)lucky, that someone might be me. Performers are asked not to reveal when they are on via social media, but can do so privately (so if you want to know when I'm on next, get in touch).

I was aware of Sanctum months ago, but so focused on other things, including the Bristol Festival of Literature (which is overdue a blog post...), that I didn't do anything about it. So, my thanks to Cheryl Morgan for suggesting me to the organisers.

What a great challenge! When I normally do readings, it is to people who have specifically come to an event to hear readings — and who may even specifically be interested in what I have to read. But to read to an audience of people (or an empty room) who have no idea who you are or that they're going to hear a fiction reading... if that doesn't give you a new perspective, what will?

My first slot was late morning on Friday 30th. The performances take place in a structure assembled from found materials, constructed especially for the event. The space is superb, atmospheric and, reflecting the shell it is nestled within, church-like. When we arrived (yup, whole family in tow), Marie France, a harpist, was playing — initially accompanying a cellist and then on her own — and most of the few seats available were taken.

A photo posted by Kevlin Henney (@kevlinhenney) on Oct 30, 2015 at 4:01am PDT

For my slot, 15 minutes long, I chose to read four flash fictions, starting with a drabble ("Lost Love's Labours") and working up to ("A Higher Calling") something around the 1000-word mark ("Ashes to Ashes") before ending with something short ("Authenticity").

Kevlin reading at Sanctum

A photo posted by @stella277 on Oct 30, 2015 at 4:26am PDT

Appearing in the first 24 hours of the event meant my readings received a mention in a write-up in Bristol 24/7:

Our cellist returns before making way for our first storyteller at 11.20am. I am very pleased Kevlin Henney popped in and introduced me to the genre of flash fiction. His stories, told in just 250 words, are short and sweet and very well delivered. By the time our cellist returns for the third time Sanctum is nearly full again.

Not only a favourable write-up, but a great tweet from the reporter as well:

Flash fiction is my new favourite thing. Kelvin Henney smashing it at #sanctumbristol. pic.twitter.com/duaPl1RJUU

— Louis Emanuel (@louisjemanuel) October 30, 2015

I loved the experience and am looking forward to appearing at more unusual times of day. I'm scheduled to appear three more times on my own and once with the North Bristol Writers. My goal is to read something different at each reading, including a couple of my longer stories. See you there.

Bristol Festival of Literature

And so it begins.

Last night the Bristol Festival of Literature kicked off at Smoke and Mirrors with An Evening at the Fear Institute, radio play adaptations of some of Jonathan L Howard's Johannes Cabal short stories. I wasn't able to make it, but I've heard that it was (at least) as brilliant and enjoyable as I was hoping it would be.

The next week and a half will take in a number of venues and a variety of events across the city. I could give a blow by blow account of what you can expect, but you're better of looking at the events listing on the site, or stalking the festival on Twitter or Facebook, or listening to Cheryl Morgan's show on Ujima from Wednesday, on which I appeared with Amy Morse and Pete Sutton to talk about the festival.

I've been involved in the organisation of the festival, with a particular focus on the Flash Slam on Friday 23rd October, hosted by Nikesh Shukla. Unfortunately, at the last minute, we had to change venue for the slam. Printed material still lists the slam happening at PRSC Space, but it has moved to Crofters Rights round the corner on Stokes Croft — although in making the change we also managed to reduce the costs so that it's now a donation-based event (free if you want, tip if you want).

I'm also involved in the front line as well as behind the scenes: I'll be in the North Bristol Writers team fielded at the slam and I'm reading at Written from Art at Carol Peace's studio. I'll also be turning up at the Book Bazaar and launch party on Saturday, BristolCon Fringe on Monday and the Speakeasy on the final Saturday. I may make it to one or two other events, but travel means I can't make any guarantees.

If you can make it, I hope to see you at an event or two over the coming week!

Conned

It was a con. Books, art and identity theftsharing. Yup, that — and more — was the BristolCon that was. So here are a couple of personal highlights...

The first session I went to was the Guest of Honour interview of Chris Moore by Jim Burns. Along with Peter Elson and Chris Foss, both interviewer and interviewee were among the SF artists whose imagery and style I most connected with — and was inspired by — in the late 1970s and 1980s. The interview was filled with anecdotes, history and backstory, as well as a slideshow of Chris Moore's better and lesser known work. I later cornered him to sign an old book of mine that featured both his and Peter Elson's art.

BristolCon was the launch site of Joanne Hall's much anticipated Spark and Carousel, a launch complete with rockstar entrance, lighting and cake. Much cake. And wine. It provided a second centre of social gravity away from the usual location of the bar. A more first-person report of the experience (and more behind the scenes of BristolCon) can be found here.

As for first person, this is me — and not Stark Holborn — on the "How Green Is Your Future?" panel:

I'm @starkholborn claims @KevlinHenney @BristolCon pic.twitter.com/xyFgwuxb8K

— Peter Sutton (@Suttope) September 26, 2015

To better understand this case of apparent identity theft, you have to go back to a sampling of Twitter the night before:

@garethlpowell @BristolCon No! I'M @starkholborn.

— Jonathan L. Howard (@JonathanLHoward) September 25, 2015

@JonathanLHoward @garethlpowell @BristolCon It is a comment on our times that, in so many senses, we are all @starkholborn.

— Kevlin Henney (@KevlinHenney) September 25, 2015

When I went to pick up my name printout I noticed Stark Holborn's — whose panels were done — was unclaimed. I claimed it.

In honour of the speculative fiction theme, I also scheduled some tweets for the day, covering the range from ghost stories and urban fantasy to augmentation and time travel: "#KrakenEvent", "Remembrance of Things Past", "The Woodcutter's Stepdaughter", "S3xD0ll", "Milk Teeth and Chocolate Eggs", "Promises You Can Keep", "Ashes to Ashes", "AutoKnowMe", "In the Garden of Uncertainty, and What Alice Found There" and "Starfall". These picked up some favourites and retweets as the day wore on.

One story that's not online but did get well received was the one I read for my reading. The reading followed the panel I was on and I presume people either forgot to leave or arrived early for the next panel. There is always the outside chance some people came to hear me read. For whatever reason, there was a very good turnout. Given the time constraint, I gave the audience a choice of either half a story ("Ragdolls", which appeared in the We Can Improve You anthology) or a whole one ("The Jar over the Edge", which was shortlisted in a comp a couple of years back). Perhaps unsurprisingly, people prefer wholes to halves, so I read out "The Jar over the Edge" for the first time. It works surprisingly well read aloud and seemed to be well received, so it's one I hope to read again in future.

Of course, more happened in the day than I've listed here, but it was mostly matters of conversation — AI, linguistics, time travel, fanzines, colds, Doctor Who, flash fiction — and if you want to know more about that, well, there's always next year, right?

Literally Beyond the Edge

With BristolCon just around the corner — the corner being Friday — it might be a good idea to catch up with the one-day con I attended in July...

Back when summer was actually a thing that was happening, I headed over to Derby for Edge-Lit, a one-day SF/Fantasy/Horror con. My main reason for going was the launch of the We Can Improve You anthology, featuring my story "Ragdolls", and introduce myself to Alex Davis, who runs Boo Books, the publisher of both We Can Improve You and Haunted (which features my story "Promises You Can Keep").

Like BristolCon, it's a moderate-sized single-day event, but with quite a different emphasis and style. There were two tracks of workshop sessions with a strong writer focus. I attended one led by Alex Davis on the teaching of writing where I picked up a couple of ideas I might use in future workshops. As well as attending panels, launches, etc., I bumped into a couple of authors I knew from BristolCon, another who I saw this year at CrimeFest and I also got the chance to meet Joanne Harris. Although my original motivation was the anthology launch, there's enough there that I plan to return next year.

As for BristolCon, there's lots to look forward. I'm going with Stefan, so I'll be interested to see if and what he blogs, especially as I went with him to the somewhat larger Loncon last year. There's panels and interviews and more that I want to see, but I'll be missing Ian Stewart's "Time Travel and Real Physics" (if you asked me the one panel I wanted to go to...) because I'm on the "How Green Is Your Future?" panel. For my reading straight after I think I've figured out what I'm going to read... I think.

Readings Past, Present and Future

Way back in June I read "Star Signs" at Talking Tales. The podcast of the event is now available to fill the commutes, walks and other states of in-betweenness we might find in our lives. In July I read the same story out at Science Showoff, a year on from when I first performed there.

Tonight I'm off to Novel Nights, which is having a short story special with Tania Hershman. Tania is on in the second half, while the first half features a number of local short story authors, including me, Harriet Kline, Helen McClory, Grace Palmer and Pete Sutton. I plan to read "Like Giants", my story from North by Southwest.

I've been very much looking forward to Novel Nights since I discovered that the dice of my September schedule — which rarely brooks any midweek opportunities — had fallen to allow me to both attend and — with the coincidence of it being short story rather than novel focused — read.

In two weekends it's BristolCon, where I'm on the "How green is your future?" panel in the afternoon with a reading straight after. I haven't yet decided what to read, but I know that time is always of the essence because readings are interstitial between one main session and the next.

In October it's the Bristol Festival of Literature — more on that in another post — and I'll be reading at Written from Art on Wednesday 21st October.

There's a couple of other things in the pipeline, which I hope to write about before they happen rather than when they're receding in the rear-view mirror.

Good Things Come in Threes (and Get Blogged Late)

In the wake of tragic events "Too soon?" is often used to punctuate (and emphasise) humour that may be considered somewhere dark and distasteful. But in the slipstream of successful and uplifting events there is no such thing as too soon.

Rambling. What am I going on about? Flash Fiction Day, 27th June, for which I helped organise events in Bristol, that's what. And have — until now — completely failed to blog about. That's what.

And what a day it was! It started with some seemingly dodgy exchanges in a car park in the centre of Bristol, two blokes moving boxes from the back of one car to another in a deserted and slightly overgrown concrete space. In truth, it was nothing more sinister than me taking delivery of books from Calum Kerr to drop off at the library and Foyles. Not particularly dodgy, but perhaps a bit geeky: I was going to accuse Calum of nerdiness for wearing a Doctor Who T-shirt, when I realised I was wearing a Nostromo T-shirt and thought better of it. Yes, these are the people who helped bring you a high-quality, high-brow lit event!

In some of the boxes were to be found Landmarks, the rather fetching and freshly minted NFFD anthology featuring some of the readers on the day, as well as other well-known flash authors, and opening with "Hilary Is the Winters of Keith's Discontent", a story of mine that helps get into the geography theme of the anthology — as well as being a perfect opportunity to put some of the airport codes I tweet when I travel to some good use.

The afternoon kicked off at the Central Library with Ken Elkes's workshop on openings. No matter how short a work fiction is, it still has an opening, something that marks the reader's transition from being outside the story to being in its heart. The opening is engagement, introduction, scene setting, mood setting and, hopefully, hook.

There were some great insights and good discussion during the workshop, concluding with a prompt-based exercise that lead to a more complete story than I'd imagined. Using a prompt or two — images, words, quotes, the room around you, etc. — is common for flash fiction, but Ken encouraged all the workshop participants to find multiple prompts from around the library. I ended up with nine and a story I hope to do something with.

Calum followed up with a discussion of the pros and cons of clichés in writing, whether clichéd phrases, clichéd characters or recurring plot structures. You normally want to identify clichés in order to avoid them, but they can be used constructively. Certain cultural clichés, especially in speech or a first-person point of view, allow you to convey things about you characters without having to say them explicitly. In flash fiction, clichés can offer you a shorthand that lets you communicate buckets without kicking the word limit. Clichés also set expectation, which can be subverted to surprise the reader.

Much as I like readings in bars and conventional stage settings, there is something quite special about readings in a bookshop. Stories coming to life in a place of stories, words written and words spoken. But that might just be me.

The readers on the day were Calum Kerr, Judy Darley, Diane Simmons, Grace Palmer, Ken Elkes, Freya Morris, Susan Howe, Jonathan Pinnock, Sarah Hilary, John Holland, Adam Marek, Jane Roberts, Zoe Gilbert and me.

And I know I'm (not) supposed to say this, but I'm going to anyway: of the three BristolFlash NFFD reading events to date, I probably enjoyed the this year the most. Was it the readers, the stories, the location...?

That said, we were pushed for time and ran right up against Foyles' closing time. But that was not the end! Oh no, like a modern Hollywood studio, we had planned for a trilogy. The third and final (and drawn out) event was at Horts. Early indications were that a few people — maybe fifteen — would turn up. In the end it was twice that — so much for polls and estimates, eh? Horts is fortunately not your usual Saturday-night-in-the-centre pub, so there was space and food and drink for all.

Photographic evidence of all (well, some of) this can be found here.

Next year? Again!

From Talking on the Radio to Talking Tales

I was on Ujima Radio a couple of weeks back, being interviewed by Cheryl Morgan about flash fiction, Flash Fiction Day and various events in Bristol on the day and leading up to it. I read out a couple of stories — "In Love and Debt" and "AutoKnowMe" — and we talked about the flash edition of BristolCon Fringe (Monday 22nd June) and the workshop, readings and drinks on Flash Fiction Day (Saturday 27th June). You can find a recording of the programme via Cheryl's blog. You can also read more about the forthcoming Flash at the Fringe on Joanne Hall's blog.

Speaking of workshops, I had the good fortune to attend Clare Reddaway's Writing for Performance workshop last Saturday. I hope to blog about this in more detail at some point.

And, to wrap things up, on Monday this week I read "Star Signs" at the second Talking Tales. That was great fun, with some other excellent readings.

The next post? Either very soon and I'll be writing about a workshop I gave or attended, or not so soon and I'll be looking back on Flash Fiction Day.