Claims to Fame

Me and Kenny (with Superlambanana ears)

I stumbled across the end of some sort of football match on Sunday, and who should I see but my old chum 'King' Kenny Dalgleish?

I may have shown this pic here before, but can't resist bringing it out again. It's the big yellow ears.

But this time I thought I'd add in a few other pics of me hobnobbing with more celebs.

Me wanting to be a millionaire, with
Chris Tarrant....

... and with another ex-member of the TISWAS team

Boo

Me and John Hegley sporting the giant
glasses I made for his visit... bit blurry

TV's Nick Knowles judged a poetry slam I did.
He gave me 70.  One less and it would have
been a whole different story!

So, spill the beans!  
Have you rubbed shoulders (or other body parts) with anyone notable?

One Today!

Roses are red


Violets much less


Poetry24 is one today


Happy Birthday to us!

Just over a year ago, fellow blogger Martin Hodges from Square Sunshine made me a proposition: how did I fancy co-editing a new news-related poetry blog?

If I'd stopped to consider the hours involved in setting the project up, promoting it and updating it with submissions from poets around the world on a daily basis, I may have hesitated. But it seemed like a really good idea - and a year ago today we posted our first few poems.

We've kept it going through thick and thin, and you know what? It still seems like a really good idea. I know from all the poetry open mic nights I've been to that poets are often inspired by current events. But so many poetry mags take forever to respond - six months or more, some of them. We reckon Poetry24 is unique in that it only publishes poems on subjects linked to recent news - and does so really quickly - a quarter of the poems we use are published in less than 24hours.


111 poets, 312 poems

subjects covered: Arab Spring to Zanesville Zoo

How NOT to write a novel

(one of the) broken biro 'techniques'

There's plenty of useful advice about writing a novel 'out there'. I have at least half a dozen books telling me the BEST way to construct a plot and write a best-seller - all of which are wildly different from each other. I'll do a separate post on them.

But meanwhile, here are my Top Ten ways NOT to write a novel. I think most of the books I've got will probably agree on much of this:

1. Make your opening the least interesting part of the book
2. Fiddle about editing what you’ve already done instead of finishing it – at which point you realize whole beautifully-edited chunks are no longer required
3. Stop working on it for a couple of weeks so you can’t remember where you’re up to

4. Change genres half way through like Tarantino did it in Dusk til Dawn, leaving you sitting there with your mouth open
5. Do a wholesale ‘find and replace’ for a name change when a name could be part of a ordinary word. e.g. change the name Wish to Noon and end up with ‘Noonful thinking’ and ‘a yellowNoon hue’
6. Write sections so dull you fall asleep over them and end up with a keyboard pattern on your head and 25 pages full of the letter ‘Y’
7. Stressed about the parts that aren’t working, put it all away in a box for 9months to see if it sorts itself out
8. Wait until you’ve written 50k words before deciding it would work better in third person.
9. Send the first three chapters out to readers – or even better, agents – when you haven’t finished the rest of the book
10. Write a blog post that implies you’re disorganized and the novel isn’t any good, when actually you’re pretty pleased with it.

Related posts:
On writing - what started me back into my novel
A novel request - appeal for volunteers to read by first three chapters
Bringing back the dead - changing genres mid-novel

The Library Phantom

A mysterious figure lurks...

It's National Libraries Day! Who would have guessed? (A: You, if you read this blog last month when I got the date wrong!)

In celebration, I'm going to tell you about the Edinburgh Library 'Phantom'.

Books are just my cup of tea!

Last March the first of a series of 'book sculptures' was found in Scotland's Poetry Library.

Three months later a mini cinema was exposed in the Edinburgh Filmhouse, then a tiny paper gramophone turned up at the National Library and a dragon’s egg was discovered hatching on the window sill at Edinburgh's Storytelling Centre.

Lost in a good book

 During the city's summer book festival, two more intricate artworks appeared and then the Central Library received one of their own.  There's been a pair of fluffy gloves, a cap, a cakestand and a 'poet tree.'

These intricately-crafted pieces are left anonymously but sometimes have notes supporting libraries and the arts. All they reveal is that the perpetrator is a woman (and a woman fond of ellipses, which narrows it down a bit) who loves words, books, libraries, ideas.......

The perpetrator has never been identified... but if I catch you in my library with a pair of scissors you'll 'feel the back of my hand'! (and not in a genteel, strokey way

READ MORE:
- The Library Phantom Returns!
- More pictures by Chris Scott

A curate's egg

This is not about eggs, or, indeed curates.*  It's about my first 'proper' review, which was, sadly, 'mixed'.

My feelings about it are mixed too.  A proper paid gig at a reputable poetry night at Liverpool's The Bluecoat arts centre is not to be sniffed at, and a review of any sort is a novelty in the easy-come, easy-go world of open mic nights.

I have my share of rejections and am generally not hurt or angered by them despite their implied criticism of or distaste for my work. But a review is much more personal.

The reviewer started by saying he's seen me at open floors:  "I have to say that her work is, generally, not to my taste and I normally wrote her off as being the “Beryl Cook of poetry”, rather in the same mould as Pam Ayres."

He liked some of my poems ("It was a pleasure, then, to hear her reading some of her more serious works") and believes me able, when pushed to "knuckle down and compose really good poetry" but I'm afraid 'tedious' 'tiresome' and 'not very original' are all in there too.

Oh, alright, read it for yourselves - I'm in the middle.

I don't mind being compared to Pam, but I'm not keen on tedious and tiresome, and I think I'm quite original. It's tricky putting together a 20min set of poetry when your style veers wildly from serious lyrical poems to romping rhymes and dreadful puns.  I like to mix it up, with something for everyone. Maybe I've got it wrong and for a proper poetry reading I should stick to serious poems?

The same reviewer raved (quite rightly) about Pauline Rowe who headlined the evening. Her poems are stunning, her delivery calm. But poetry nights where everyone does beautiful, serious poetry can be too much - too beautiful, too serious. Am I a philistine?

I like to make people think, yes, but I see myself as primarily an entertainer, an ambassador for poetry in all its guises. Also, I'd been billed by the organiser thus: "Clare Kirwan will challenge and amuse with her lively, socially engaged poetry" so I planned around that.

So although the review is a wee bit hurtful in places, I will treat it like any rejection - as a matter of personal taste. What pleases me more is that various strangers came up to me later to say how much they enjoyed my poems - each naming a different favourite. Even the girl on the door said she thought I was brilliant "...an' I wouldn't say tha' if it wasn't true, 'cos I'm a right cow."

* Ah, you don't know the saying?  The curate's egg is 'good in parts'