The Sealey Challenge: Days 9, 10, 12 and 14

I spent the weekend with my writing group at a Writers Retreat. We booked a big events cottage in Eastern Finland and drove up on Friday after school. It was amazing that we managed to get 11 people together after such a difficult 18 months. We spent time sharing our work, talking about various writing issues and some time writing, but most of all we spent time laughing and sharing. It was very much needed. 

I didn't do any reading over the trip, but I'm back on the horse with #The Sealey Challenge: Day 9: Glimt av opphav - Glims o Origin by Christine De Luca, , a Shetland poet. Christine's poems are in the Shetland dialect of Scots and then translated to Norwegian by Odd Goksøyr. Christine gave me this collection when she visited Helsinki a few years back promoting a project because I speak some Norwegian and have studied the Scots language in university. I really enjoyed reading these poems out loud, in Norwegian and Shetlandic, seeing how the languages are so closely connected. Her poems examine the overlapping of the two cultures as in 'Thule Revisted'/'Tilbake to Thule' where Norwegian sailors arrive in Shetland to the delight of the locals as well as various characters, places and cultural highlights of the islands. The poems range from their geological beginnings to modern day, even beyond Shetland. 

I love that Christine doesn't shy away from mixing science and it's language with that of history and old myths, bringing Shetland into the modern age with a generous nod to its origins, hence the title. The poems are rich, linguistically, images and sounds evoking the place, the people and their stories. Beautifully crafted.

Day 10: Richard Hugo, The Right Madness on Skye. I read this book decades ago and brought it out of my loft a few years back, but hadn't gotten around until now to reread it. Not quite fitting the idea of buying new books, but I can't afford that many books just now.

Richard Hugo has an amazing sense of place, I loved his book on writing The Triggering Town which focuses more on his method and connection to location in his poems. This collection wraps his poems around the spirit of the Isle of Skye, connecting with the living and dead inhabitants, so spending time on the island in Scotland allowed him to do just that on many different levels. 

He explores Skye's history, mythology, geography, the despair still felt after the Clearances, the love of Gaelic and mysterious Celts. The image of a strange woman often pops up on the periphery of his stories, looking on in warning like Cassandra, knowing too much, but never listened to.

His poems often feel rambling, like he's chasing their ideas through the landscape until he can get to grip with them. But then he's sharing their truths with you over a whiskey. Hugo was one of my favourite poets when I was in university out in the Pacific Northwest where he was originally based and I now remember why. His honesty over his struggles and fears with his writing, his life and life in general feel so sincere and at times heartbreaking. This was a lovely reread.

Since school has started back with a rough bang, I'm turning to my collection of chapbooks I've received as part of Hedgehog Poetry Press's Cult of the Spiny Hog I joined a couple of years back. For a yearly fee you receive copies of all the books the Press publishes, and also free entry to any competition. 

Day 12: Before it's too late by Sarah P Thomson. I'm tired with my first week back at work, so I'm going for a shorter chapbook published by @hedgehogpoetry. 

I've always said I'm not a great fan of poems that work with strict forms, but I found the way the poems in this chapbook use repeated lines in villanelles and pantoums and other forms really mesmerising. How the same line repeated two or three times changes the meaning of that particular line,but also the lines around it, giving them more weight or reversing their intention entirely. Thomson's poems tempt me to want to try more of these styles, to create such elaborate layers. She touches on many subjects, but the title links them all together beautifully.

Day 14: Taxus Baccata by Patricia M Osborne. Another Hedgehog chapbook that I received as part of their Cult subscription. It's worth joining. Taxus Baccata is a collection of nature poems focusing especially on birds and trees. Osbourne examines disparate beauty and savagery of birds, magpies cannibalising a flock-mate, a swan mother and the decline of ancient trees. She mixes mythology with slow, detailed descriptions of yews, oaks, swans and seagulls. Her rich language drips with colours, textures and movement. This book is a delightful read.

In other news, I have had a poem published in Stand Magazine. I recently came across an old notebook where I kept track of my early submissions and according to that I first submitted in Stand in 1996. It's taken me all this time to have some work accepted, but I'm overjoyed it's happened and with my poem 'The Perfume of Rain' which I particularly love. So a proper dream publication. 

Layering a Poem

I've been working on my crab poem all week, in the morning while the kids are waking up to screens (bad mum, I know). Tinker with a line here, reorder a stanza there. It's amazing how something that happened 30 years ago can inspire some scribbles fifteen years later and can eventually end up as a poem. 

Of course, the poem isn't about crabs. Buying crabs in Norway is just the jumping off point, the 'triggering town' of Richard Hugo's poetry philosphy. Returning to that moment on the beach takes me to another thought about the people I was spending my time with, how we were thrown together as a family, but really weren't one. Because so many years have passed I can look at the moment differently, break it down to see what else was going on.

The imagry I am using takes me to another thought, the artwork of Carolyn Saxby: found images, bits and pieces from beaches, brought together as collages, but also her use of décollage, removing parts of an image or artwork to reveal something new which also lends something to the poem. 

The poem's layers of words, imagry and story are added and taken away to build a remembered moment and the echoes of it across the years. 

If you ignore the 15 years between the first writing practices that gave me the foundation words and images and this week of actually writing it, this was a pretty quick poem for me.

And this will have to be a short blog post from me. My four year old keeps popping her head in to ask if I've finished my writing yet. Spiderman has been off for less than 10 minutes. I've even broken out the chocolate raisins to finish this. 

Reading to Write

You have to read to be a good writer, read constantly. Authors you love, envy, even those who you dislike but have got a certain style or knack of doing something right (Hemingway falls into this category for me). I find that I can't read a lot of fiction when I am writing first drafts, but I read as much as I can before and after. 

You can also read to learn to improve your writing. There are lots of books for writers out there that can all be helpful in their own ways, you just need to decide what style you need. 

Warning: don't spend all your time reading how-to-write books instead of writing. These books are meant to supplement your writing, inspire it and help improve it. Reading all the books in the world won't help you write if you don't pick up a pen or sit at the laptop (and not surf FB).

I fall between liking books that giving me lots of writing prompts and those that are about specific craft problems. I struggle with plots, so often seek out books specifically on that topic. But some days I just need a kick up the bum and then I will dip into some old favourites to get me going again.

One book that really inspired and helped me early on was Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. Published in 1986 it has become a creative writing bible. It promotes the idea of writing exercises and writing everyday which really clicked with me. Mixed with references to meditation and Zen Buddhism it is a bit new ageish, but they are not overwhelming. Natalie's main focus is to get you writing. I've read some of her follow-up but they didn't really push me in a way that Bones did. 

Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, 1994, was a good follow-up to Goldberg's book, dealing with some of the troubles that pop up when you make writing a daily habit. Her religious undertones were a bit much for me, but on a practical side the book is very helpful. 

A book focusing on poetry that really struck a chord with me was The Triggering Town, 1979 by Richard Hugo. I was living in the Pacific Northwest at the time, Hugo's stomping ground, and I could see so much of my surroundings in Hugo's work, but also I loved his idea of a triggering town, using a subject or word as a trigger to start off the reader's journey into the world of the poem, real or imagined, focusing on the language and its music once they are drawn in. Hugo's gentle self-effacing tone was a lovely introduction of workshopping and owning your poems for me. 

I think I have previously mentioned A Writer's Book of Days, 1999, by Judy Reeves which has hundreds of writing prompts to help you find inspiration for your daily writing exercises or for when writer's block hits.

On the fiction side I have turned back many times to The Art of Fiction by John Gardner, 1991, based on his lecturers to beginning creative writing students over the years. It contains some analysis, some practical exercises and lots of things to look out for. 

There are also practical books like Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr and E B White published first in 1918 which discusses grammar and usage rules for writing in English. Dry, but it's a good reference for editing. 

There are very technical books like Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook, 1994 which breaks down the elements of poetry with lots of examples of styles. It's great for getting started but if you've studied literature or been writing poetry for a while it may feel very basic. 

There are lots of good books I haven't read. I keep meaning to pick up Stephen King's 2000 memoir On Writing. I've heard it mentioned many places as inspiring and helpful, but I've never had the chance to pick it up. Here's a hint of his rules for writing to get us all started. 

It's best to dip in and out of these books rather than spend lots of time reading them. I often try the writing exercises or editing ideas out as I read, so that they just don't become filler.

Any suggestions for new books or old favourites always welcomed here. 

Happy autumn.