the zen space is ‘my’ on-line-facility/e-zine/whatever for presenting haiku and related writing. I publish it once every three months, marking the four, Northern-hemisphere seasons. On this occasion I gave over the editorial seat to Angie Werren, a haijin of no little repute. To visit, click here or on the picture above. Enjoy.
What I’m currently doing:
Judging the Aval-Ballan Poetry Competition, promoting my poetry collection I am not a fish, tweeting, listening to one Led Zeppelin track per day because I committed to that task, organising a handful of fellow-poets and one artist to make a small chapbook anthology, looking through someone else’s poetry collection with a view to giving editorial advice, working, doing household chores, eating, sleeping…
What I’m currently not doing:
My own writing…
Something needs fixed.
Can’t figure out what, though…
I seem to recall, from James A Michener’s Centennial, that twentieth century ranchers with sizeable flocks of sheep deliberately kept a few head of cattle, so that they could legitimately call themselves ‘cattlemen’, in order to benefit from the cachet of that name. Well, I’m an author. The fact that I also cook, clean, and have a paid job – all of which takes up most of my waking day – is neither here nor there. This means that in order to keep the content of this web site fresh, however, I have to manufacture news on a slow news day.
So, what is actually happening in my non-quotidian world? Am I currently authoring? ‘Yes and no’ is the answer to that. My second novel, The Everywhen Angels, is currently with three publishers, two of which actively expressed interest in having the manuscript; I have recently tweaked the content slightly, to reflect how the world has moved on in the handful of years since I completed it. I have plot outlines and chapters-in-progress of two other novels, neither of which has progressed for some time, I have to admit. There are many genuine reasons. However, the more these reasons accumulate the more they seem like a list of excuses – the household chores, the paid work, the fact that for much of 2012 I was working on a new collection of poetry (I am not a fish) for a publisher, the promotion of that published collection and of my first novel Lupa, the editorial work on The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes, the quarterly editorial work on the zen space…
Something had to give, and it has been work on my next novel(s). So what else of note is there? Well, since 2011 I have not been submitting much in the way of poetry to magazines. The exception being that recently I dropped a handful of haiku to Bones Journal and to Blithe Spirit (the poetry magazine of the British Haiku Society) and had one accepted at each, bringing my total of poems published since 2005 to two hundred and thirty-two. I need hardly add that this does not include poems blogged etc., which would take the number into the thousands. Nor does it include an extempore poem recently tweeted to the Scottish Poetry Library, which they instantly re-tweeted to all their followers. Nor, for that matter, does it include the poems that were published but which I’ve forgotten.*
Work on The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes has reached galley proof stage. I shall be engaged in that over this weekend. Publication is late, but the anthology should be out in July. I am looking forward to that greatly, as is the whole of the editorial team. With all the work mentioned above going on, I rather foolishly proposed to five fellow-poets a small chapbook anthology – I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I promise! Thankfully the next issue of the zen space has a guest editor…
All this makes me realise that what I do not have, and should have, is a schedule detailing what I have to do. It should list tasks as ‘urgent’, ‘important’, and ‘routine’; attention to serious writing should never drop into the ‘routine’ category, even if it is to be tackled routinely, if you see what I mean.
It is 8:15 on Saturday morning. I have been up since 4:15 and have spent most of that time here at the keyboard. Have I written much? No, I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t, but I will admit that it’s a wonderful time of day for it. I really must put ‘making a schedule’ on the list of urgent tasks for today.
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*A lot of my records went missing in 2007.
©Bookseeker Agency
©Bookseeker Agency / Balbirnie Collective
Popped my head in briefly to see that everything was in full swing. Gratified for the exposure, the poetry-reading, and the interest shown in my books.
©Bookseeker Agency
Members of the Balbirnie Collective, ©Bookseeker Agency
I was told that my books – my novel Lupa and my poetry collection I am not a fish – would occupy ‘a corner of a table somewhere’ at Balbirnie Craft Centre. In fact I was delighted to be informed by my agent that I had a whole bookshelf to myself when he arrived there today – see below. A pity I can’t fill it, but there will be more books there shortly…
‘Reading Corner’, ©Bookseeker Agency
Coming soon to Central Scotland – the opening weekend of Aval-Ballan’s new studio premises in Fife. Aval-Ballan is a creative arts partnership, based in Markinch, Fife. Their new premises will be at the Balbirnie Craft Centre, and they will be unveiled on the 1st and 2nd of June. If you’re in Scotland, do drop in. Their artwork, painting, new-old furniture, sea-glass and sea-pottery jewellery, etc. are wonderful; they run workshops for people who simply want to paint. Vist their web site for details and directions.
I am glad to say that they will be giving space to my books – Lupa and I am not a fish – probably on a permanent basis, so you will be able to get a signed copy at retail price!
On the glass frontage of the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh are the following lines, translated from Gaelic by poet Derick Thomson:
It is not gold or other treasure
that you will get from me in special;
it is not tribute, or gift of cattle,
but the choicest of our hard-wrought poems.
Amongst the ‘hard-wrought poems’ now deposited there is a signed copy of my new collection, I am not a fish, which I have gifted to the Library. It was delivered there today by my literary agent. On the same trip he also deposited a copy of my novel, Lupa, at the National Library of Scotland. Each is a drop in Scotland’s literary ocean, but it feels like a big deal to me.
My second collection of poetry, I am not a fish, is now officially published by Oversteps Books. You can buy direct from them or order the book from your local bookshop. ISBN 678-1-906856-37-3. There are still a limited number of signed copies left for sale here too.
The poems in this collection have never been published in print or on line anywhere before – it was an entirely new work written for Oversteps. So the only way you will get to read them is by buying the book.
Oversteps Books publishes some of the best in contemporary poetry, covering a wide range of established and new poets. There is a rigorous editorial policy, and the books are produced to the highest standards both in terms of editorial accuracy and the beauty of the finished books. The publishing house was founded in 1992 by the poet and translator, Anne Born (1924 – 2011). The poet and lecturer, Alwyn Marriage, became Managing Editor in 2008.
M
I love America. This is a pretty startling statement for an infrequent visitor (to say the least), and an anti-capitalist at that, to make. The USA is an amazing, diverse, vibrant, colourful country. It gave us the 1957 Chevy Belair, the Fender Stratocaster, Jazz, the Harley Davidson 883, the USAF A2 leather jacket, and so much more – all products of the capitalism that I dislike so much. But I didn’t drag you here today to discuss my contradictory values, or my politics.
I have been reading some interesting pieces recently, following the bombing at the Boston Marathon and the commemorative vigil, the dignified public silence, which followed it. The thrust of these pieces has been to highlight or to question the public perception of and news coverage of violent death. Why – these pieces seem to have said – does a handful of deaths in a ‘terrorist’ incident bring out crowds of respectful mourners, yet the larger number of regular deaths by privately-owned guns warrant no equivalent coverage in the media and no equivalent demonstration of dignified public mourning. Here’s one such recent piece in The New Yorker, entitled ‘What if the Tsarnaevs had been “The Boston Shooters”?’
Now, this isn’t a political blog. I wrote elsewhere about gun ownership and the difference in the perceptions of freedom in countries that have grown up with and without private ownership of guns in their respective cultures. However, it is true that the ‘consumable information’ (a term I prefer to use for ‘news’) offered in the USA does prioritize in this way, and that the public’s perception is swayed by the mention of ‘terrorism’. To introduce the issue of death by guns, to give those deaths equality in the daily ration of ‘consumable information’ and in the public’s perception of what one should mourn would, however, touch a raw nerve in some people to whom the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is a matter of supreme importance in their personal philosophy. Thus people who raise the question of mourning gun deaths must tread on eggshells, no matter how often they might say that the issue is not about gun ownership, much less about gun control. Thus the question is, in effect, not put.
Let’s look at it another way. Let’s take guns out of the picture. You live in a country – let’s call it ‘Freedonia’, not the USA – where everyone is free to own an automobile. Nobody disputes that right, but equally you are free to not own one – you can travel by bus, by bicycle, by horse-and-buggy, and some people do just that. There has just been a dreadful incident at a public event; some people have been killed, others maimed, all shocked, by a bomb blast. A couple of days later people all come out into the public gaze and stand silently to mourn those who died, and to think about and pray for those who are injured or bereaved. Maybe you join the vigil too. But whether you do or not, the thought occurs to you that people die in greater numbers in accidents on the streets and roads, that the news broadcasts and newspapers hardly mention them, that no one comes out and publicly mourns them, and you want to do something about it. Most likely you wouldn’t dream of saying that people ought not to own cars, or that the Government ought to restrict that ownership by drastic legislation; but still you believe that you have found an anomaly, an imbalance, in the perception that you yourself had hitherto, and that the majority of other people still have. You want to make a difference. You want to change that perception.
So you find some like-minded individuals, and you decide to meet in a public place, for five minutes each week, and hold a silent vigil to mourn those affected by road accidents. You give as much public notice as you can about these vigils – you get permission to use the public place, you let the police know (and presumably they tell you what you can and can’t do, vis-à-vis causing an obstruction etc.), you inform local and national media, you blog it, put it on Facebook, tweet it – and you go and do it. Over an over you will, of course, have to keep assuring people that this isn’t about banning cars, restricting their ownership, or anything like that; you yourself might be the proud owner of a vintage Ford Cobra. You might have to endure some noisy protests from the local car club, who don’t understand or don’t believe you. You might feel pressure from the Automotive and Oil industries’ lobbyists. But you keep on doing it, keep up the silent mourning, keep on telling the media what you are doing, keep on telling everyone “It’s not about car ownership…”
Eventually more and more people may join you, the vigils may spread to other cities around Freedonia, and you might change public perception on the matter. You might change the way news agendas are prioritized. You might not. One thing is sure, however, and that is unless you try you’ll never know.
My respect to the people affected by the Boston bombing. My respect also to the people who wish to address the imbalance in public perception.
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Follow me on Twitter @MairibheagM
Marie Marshall 