I enjoy it when people ask me for interviews – I like ’em long range, by which I mean they email me a list of questions and I sit down and write considered answers. I recently had the pleasure of fielding some questions from my fellow-writer C B Wentworth, about my novel Lupa. You can find the interview here.
I have reorganised things on this site ever so slightly, and now all the short stories I have posted here can be accessed from a single tag. You can find them here – the first ten are displayed, and you’ll find a link to others at the bottom of the page. Enjoy!
M
© Describe Adonis Press
At the suggestion of the Editor-in-Chief, Richard Vallance, and with the agreement of the others on the editorial team, I will be credited as ‘Deputy Editor’ when the anthology is eventually published. I am honoured.
(c) Lesley Haycock
Just a reminder for all writers of poetry that this competition is still very much live, and that there is room for your entry. Click the painting above to go to the competition web site.
M
A ‘powm’ – with or without exclamation mark – is a poem that punches above its weight. Not every day you get to read a new word.
M.
Helen Logan reading ‘On The Platform’, 1st Feb 2013. Image © Bookseeker Agency
As previously reported, my short story On The Platform was one of the winners of this year’s ‘Fearie Tales’ competition at Pitlochry’s Winter Words Literary Festival. Winter Words kickstarts the literary year for Scotland, and features a list of writers and other people in the public eye. ‘Fearie Tales’ is its annual competition for stories of a ghostly, macabre, or supernatural nature, and this year actress Helen Logan gave my story a highly atmospheric reading…
… a young woman is waiting on a lonely station platform late at night… she meets a strange, dark man who starts to talk to her about supernatural matters… is one of them a ghost, and if so, which one?
The audience, which included broadcaster James Naughtie, was rapt throughout the reading and appreciative afterwards. Already I have ideas buzzing for my entry to the competition next year!
I have a number of sonnets in the anthology, and have been working as part of the editorial team since this project was started by Describe Adonis Press, Canada. You may be curious as to how someone could with fairness both edit and contribute; the answer is that poems by members of the editorial team were subject to the same anonymous selection process as poems by other contributors. The result will be a fine anthology, I believe, containing poetry by some of the new century’s most interesting practitioners in the form. The web page for the anthology is here, and will be up-dated with publication news as and when it is available.
Readers who know my recent work will know that I seldom write formal poetry these days. However, I generally ignore the ‘Chinese walls’ between the various modes, school, whatevers of poetry. That’s just my way…
© Bookseeker Agency
Deep winter in the Highlands of Scotland, with a foot of snow gradually starting to thaw as our changeable weather takes another swing. In the town of Pitlochry, at their famous Festival Theatre, the annual Winter Words literary festival is under way. I have just heard that my poem ‘Beatrice the rat tells Mr. Coelacanth about the Wisecrack city elves’ (from my soon-to-be-published collection I am not a fish) was premiered at their ‘Poetry Please’ event. Also I am once again amongst the winners of their ‘Fearie Tales’ competition for tales of the supernatural, and my ghost story ‘On the Platform’ will be read out during the final weekend of the festival. There are plenty of other interesting events at the festival too. Can you make it?
(c) Lesley Haycock.
A new venture for me (to add to author/poet/editor) is competition judge. Aval-Ballan is a Scottish-based arts and design studio, and they have agreed to sponsor a poetry competition, which you can read about here. I am one of the competition judges, along with artists Lesley Haycock and Victoria Devaney, and poet/editor Lisa Marianne Stewart. Entrants have a chance to win an original piece of artwork.
Don’t forget to keep an eye on my poetry page. The contents there change roughly once a month. (I am now waiting for the first smart aleck to ask me how come they change roughly.)
Marie Marshall 