ToooooooooooNiTe!! Reading at Vanguard

ToooooooNiTe I'll be reading at Vanguard Studios. Very excited! Come one, come all.

Here's what I'll be reading, an extract from a long(ish) story 'Bitch Piss,' inspired by a lad I once saw in the street ...

Bitch Piss

Leo lives at the low rent end of the street, near the Seabird Estate where a boy got stabbed to death halfway up the stairs last Saturday night.  Leo went over on a bike – the one with a picture of Peppa Pig screwed to the handlebars and silver and purple streamers on the pedals. Leo is small for his age, but too tall for the bike so his knees gun like pistons as he pedals up and down the road.  That night, he got as far as the line of Police tape between the bollards and leant over on his handlebars, but they wouldn’t let him through.

            In the morning, his mum’s boyfriend Paul came over with Libby.

‘I wanna see it,’ Libby whined when Paul said there’d been blood on the stairs at Seabird.

‘Libby – there’s no way you’re going over there, it’s not right for little girls’ said Leo’s mum and she looked at Paul and shook her head and said, ‘your Tracey’d kill me.’ 

Under the table, Leo turned over an old animal bone jawbone in his hands.  He’d had it on his windowsill for ages – it had two back teeth in it and the end was splintered like wood.  He whipped it out and shoved it in Libby’s face – and she jumped and nearly fell off her chair. 

‘Bet you could see the bones through his skin,’ said Leo.

 His mum clipped him round the ear. Paul chuckled and grabbed the bone off him. All Libby did was fold her arms up tight and look at the table.

By Sunday lunchtime there were bunches of flowers in their crackling packets against the wall. Leo and Paul went to look. 

‘Fallen soulja,’ said one card.

‘Love you bruvva,’ said another.

Leo and Paul popped over the main road to the garage to get their own bunch of flowers, even though they didn’t know the boy that was stabbed.  Paul said it didn’t matter, that it was right to pay your respects and he wrote out a few words on a card in biro.

‘RIP mate – undeserved.’

It wasn’t long before the whole pavement was totally covered in flowers.  Leo wanted to put a ramp up, with brick and plasterboard from the skip, and jump them on his bike; but he didn’t say anything to Paul cos he knew he shouldn’t.  But, if he did do a jump and he took off in the air on his bike, he could crash down on to the flowers in slow motion and bits of pollen and petals would explode like bombs all around him.

In class, someone said that when bees poke their proboscis into flowers it’s like they’re fucking them in the face.  Leo thought about this as he and Paul walked back from the stairwell.  All the bees were hovering around the bushes and shoving their little bee booties in the flowers, just like Leo’s mum does when she’s in a good mood before Strictly and she waves her backside in Paul’s dinner.

Baby Leona loves that and laughs for ages on the rug.

Bees don’t really fuck flowers in the face, Leo just likes to think about it.  It makes him feel the same as when he cycles all the way up to the other end of the street just to read the graffiti that’s sprayed on an old car parked by the dog bin. It says BITCH PISS in bright pink spray paint on the passenger door and every time he reads it now it makes him want to open his mouth up wide as it will go and roar – like when his mum does the lion on WiiFit Yoga. Leo’s mum said it was out of order them doing that to such an old car, but Paul made a snorting sound on the back of his hand when he heard about it.  Leo stood on the rug playing Xbox by the settee, muttering bitchpissss, bitchpisssss, bitchpisssssss, like a steam train.

‘Why d’you think they wrote that then Paul?’ Leo asked, not taking his eyes off the screen.

Paul just smiled at him and then wrestled him to the floor and they rolled around having a giggle and then they carried on as they were.

Paul lives on the same street as they do – he lives in the same house as his mum; his sister Tracey; and with Libby as well.  Paul’s mum is called Mrs Kidd and she wears false teeth that look like old keyboard keys, all smooth and sheeny.  Every Thursday morning she takes her tartan trolley to get her bits and pieces from the Lane. Paul’s at work then on the deliveries, Tracey’s on the desk at the surgery, Libby’s at school: the house is empty for at least an hour, guaranteed.  They haven’t got much – just a Widescreen and Tracey’s Blackberry.  But Leo knows that you don’t shit in your own back yard.

On Tuesday night they all piled over to the Kidd’s to watch the telly in their front room.

‘No way!’ shouted Paul as he leant forward on the edge of his chair and pointed at the TV. ‘Look Libby, it’s you! It’s you – you’re on the telly.’

Libby was sat on the settee leaning back into the cushions, with her knees pulled up. She gasped as soon as she saw herself on the screen. 

‘Oh my god!’ she started laughing. 

Tracey took up the other end of the settee and had her hand over her mouth, her eyes looking from Libby to the telly and back again.

‘No way,’ said Paul again, looking all happy and proud.  Leo’s mum sat behind him in the armchair, her legs dangling down on either side.

Leo leant over the back of the settee, pushing down on his elbows and swinging his legs up behind him. Ewww, nooo, my god! What was everyone acting so shocked about – they all knew that the programme was coming on and that Libby was in it.  She’s in Primary Five but easily the biggest in her year and when she walks down the street to the car, she breathes hard and her feet slap the pavement and her legs rub together swishswoosh.

Obese. Leo learnt about it in school.  Obese isn’t the same as fat. Obese is really fat, like when all your insides turn to sausage meat, like they said Libby’s would do if she didn’t get a healthy eating plan and go in the paddling pool. Obese. Leo said the word like he was blowing bubbles in his cheeks.

‘Looking good Libbs,’ Paul winked at his niece and she smiled back at him, letting her knees drop to one side.

Leo’s mum pulled Paul back towards her and gave him a cuddle.  Baby Leona liked that – she looked up at them from the play mat and hugged her doll. It had flippy eyes and no hair and looked like an alien, except it wasn’t green.

‘You’re a little star,’ Leo’s mum told Libby.

‘My little baby on the telly,’ said Tracey. ‘Awww, well done Libbs.’

Well done Libbs. Little star. Leo wiggled his head and said the words into the cushions.

The woman who had come to make the documentary about Libby had thin yellow hair and a camera and followed Tracey and Libby around for a whole month, filming everything she ate and making her go to the leisure centre.  The woman sat in a silver Golf and smoked three straights every afternoon before knocking on the door.

‘What you up to?’ she said to Leo the first time she pulled up and he rode by on his bike.

He did a circle on the tarmac and drew up on the driver’s side.

‘Is that an iPod socket on the dash?’ he asked.  ‘Have you got any cup holders?’

She pushed at a panel under the air con dials with her fingers and two plastic rings popped out.  Leo raised his eyebrows and looked down inside her handbag which was in the foot-well and wasn’t zipped up: she had a Gucci wallet and an H-T-C. He reversed back, pushing off with his feet, making it look like he was going away and then he hid behind a car. When the woman got out, he shouted at her in the deepest, gravelly Rasta voice he could do:

‘Nice vagina,’ he said.

Vagina is the real word for pussy but no one says it much. The woman didn’t even look around, but carried on walking right up to the Kidd’s front door and knocked on it. After that, Leo said it to her every single time she came over and it made his belly fizz.  The woman never said anything.

In front of the telly in the Kidd’s front, Mrs Kidd sat in a chair with her hands out flat on the arms and didn’t say anything about what was on.  She kept rolling her top lip down over her teeth and nodding at Libby on the TV now and again, just like Leo’s mum used to do when she came to see him in the school play.

There was a ping and the microwave popcorn was ready and the house started to smell of papery sugar.  Mrs Kidd got up to get it and came back with a little tub on a tray for everyone.  Leo’s mum didn’t want any, so Paul had hers.  Leo took a small handful of his and threw it up in the air to try and catch it in his mouth but he missed and it bounced off him and down into Libby’s neck.  She just whipped her head around to him, made a whiny noise and smacked her hand on the cushions.

‘You two.’ Tracey said without looking round.

‘I want my bike back,’ Libby said to Leo through her teeth. ‘You’ve stolen my Disney Princess.’

Leo pulled a face at Libby. No one else noticed. 

On the screen, there was a shot of Libby looking bright red - almost purple - in an aerobics class. Libby grabbed a cushion from the couch and hid her face in it and then there was another shot of her on a running machine with an oxygen mask on her face and some people in a hospital writing things down.  She’d had to go to Woking for that.

‘Do you remember that Libbs?’ asked Tracey. ‘Seems like ages ago. Gave you a heart reading of a twenty-five year old didn’t they?’

‘Yeah,’ said Libby into the cushion.

‘I didn’t agree with it,’ said Tracey, ‘but that Dr Donaldson was nice wasn’t he?’

‘Yeah.’

Libby took the cushion away from her face and started on her popcorn.  She never shut her mouth when she was eating.

‘Gave you a special pen with a ballet dancer on top to write up your scores didn’t he?’

‘I’ve still got it upstairs.’

‘Yeah,’ said Tracey and everyone was quiet for a minute while they ate and watched the TV.

Leo didn’t think that being in the film had made Libby lose weight. She was still massive – looking over her head he could see her fat bulge out in rings beneath her jumper.

‘We should dig out that chart again – start afresh,’ said Tracey to Libby. ‘Stick it up on the fridge.’

‘Brilliant idea,’ nodded Paul. ‘Nice one.’

Mrs Kidd nodded too and Leona let out one of her gurgles and threw her doll at the TV screen.

 

Moving...

Moving house at the mo - blogging impossible! Back soon...

Cherry Picked

Launched over a decade ago by Big Issue founder John Bird and Gordon Roddick, of Body Shop fame, ABC Tales is an online writer's forum where you can share your work, get feedback and advice and see what other people are up to. There are many thousands of stories, poems, plays and many thousand more writers of every genre and stage of writing.  I was just noodling about there last week and uploaded a story - I was chuffed when they 'cherry picked' it, but really really surprised when they made it their Story of the Week. Sweet.

Feminist Jumble

Feminist Jumble Sale is a creative ranting and writing space where you can rummage for poems, stories, essays and pictures on a new theme every couple of months.  The latest issue is all about 'Bloody London' and I've guest blogged for them here.

Taking it on the chin

Feedback is a tetchy beast.  It can be affirming or apocalyptic and anything in between.  A response I received this week to the very first draft of two early chapters of the big project I’m currently working on knocked me for six, at least initially.  

There was the dreaded roll call of every single one of my fears about it:  that parts of it was ‘writing by numbers,’ that the voice slipped here and there, that first person might not be the most effective point of view. And then there were the questions: Why are you writing this? What is it about this  story that should make the reader care?  And then the statements:  I’m not sure costume drama is really your style, you are a ‘white middle class guilty person.’ Aren’t you?

At first I was peeved – furious even.  Didn’t this person understand how hard I had worked just to get this far? Didn’t they appreciate the effort I had put in to making what I thought were some big decisions about structure, tone, style, perspective? I kicked against my interlocutor’s own writing – a set of poems that had been presented to me earlier in the year that were so bad I thought they were a joke, so what did they know anyway? Hmmn? But then, once I had put my toys back in the pram and boosted my blood sugar with a mansize portion of humble pie, I got to thinking that 1) they probably had a point about voice and the central narrative question, and 2) that I might just carry on regardless for now and see what happens – all writers get rejections, don’t they?  It’s all part of the job.

I was reminded of Ross Raisin’s advice to be ‘true to your process’ and his words finally started to really make sense – allow yourself to be tugged along by that rope that pulls you from your very gut and urges you to write the story you’ve chosen (or has chosen you). Follow that, and you’ll be right – keep mining through the grey gristle of rock that makes up your first draft until you reach that shaft of a voice, that chamber where the nugget of the story gleams.  I was heartened by the words of Lucy Caldwell who has spoken of the importance of ‘pushing on through’ your first draft, of allowing yourself to be messy and wrong, to keep your editorial facility switched off during that process so that you can explore and maintain a state of openness and wonder as you write.

Of course there are the cynics who will say – ‘quit while you’re ahead, love’ – but I don’t feel inclined to listen to them.  I shan’t be rushing to show off the narrative ore that I might find on future digs for a while to come – instead, I will hoard it until I’ve at least got a cast of something that resembles the ‘thing’ I am trying to create. So perhaps the feedback was affirming after all – it has forced me to question my process and in so doing, to defend and strengthen it for myself. Maybe, I confess, that person has done me a favour.

On Middle Class Guilt

A Goldsmiths creative writing graduate, Ross Raisin came to talk to us for the Critical Contexts component of our MA this week. Author of God's Own Country and Waterline, Raisin has a growing reputation as an astute observer of life at the margins of contemporary British society, be that through the eyes of a disturbed, obsessive adolescent ranging across the Yorkshire moors or a bereaved Glaswegian ex-shipbuilder down and out in London.

God's Own Country earned Raisin the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2009 after reputedly being scrummaged at auction by a gumshielded pack of publishers.  Penguin turned over the ball. He has since been nominated for a range of prizes, including the Guardian First Book and John Llewelyn, with the Scotsman hailing Waterline as 'the definitive novel for our times.'

Raisin rejects the implied superiority attributed to him by those who insist he gives 'a voice to the voiceless,' suggesting instead that fiction is the lens through which he chooses to explore social and political issues, that writing and language is at the core of how he articulates himself as an individual in the world. Kicking off with an appeal to consider the idea of the writer's 'responsibility' – to the reader, to sources, to society at large, to yourself as a writer – I found Raisin candid, compelling and provocative.

Raising many of the questions I have faced in my own day job in international development, he asks us how we might write about 'social issues' without getting hoodwinked by a voyeuristic publishing industry or simply aestheticising 'the needy,' and how we might communicate about poverty, deprivation and 'deviancy' in a way that might meaningfully challenge what we think we already know. He reminded us that, as Orwell once wrote, the belief that 'art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.' 

This was right on the money as far as I was concerned – it spoke to my own preoccupations as I attempt to cobble together an entertaining book that explores consciousness raising and the roots of early feminism; it spoke to my current concerns about my responsibility to historical 'truth' as well as to my ongoing queries about whether anyone out there even cares about all this stuff anyway.

I gathered my courage to stick my hand up and ask Raisin how he'd lived with the subject matter of Waterline – loss, grief, alcoholism, homelessness - over the two or three years of drafting; and he responded that it was 'all in the process': focusing on your craft, your journey through the subject matter, 'getting it right' for reader and character(s). In the discussions that followed, there came the suggestion that Raisin was hostage to a bad case of middle class guilt, that all this talk of 'process' was just a pretentious cover for a grammar school boy who sought reparation for his background in 'healing the world.' For myself, process is at least partly about craft and craft is what you need to be damn sure you master if you're going to ever make a serious go of being a professional writer. As for dismissing the choice of the socially conscious to address difficult issues in fiction as a misplaced salvo of class war – well, it just seemed pointlessly flippant. Overtly political or not, I do think that our subject matter is 'determined by the age' in which we find ourselves living. I suspect that my compulsion to write about the early women's movement and its links to colonisation and slavery might be something to do with what I, and others see as the failure of Feminism (yes, with a capital F) to appeal to a popular audience beyond its second wave. I'm not yet sure why that might be the case but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been writing this book in Greer's heyday.

That being the case, how am I supposed to deal with this question of responsibility? Am I just writing out of a very particular form of white middle class guilt about western feminism's rise and rise off the back of colonial oppression? If my book has a 'point' to it, if I am trying to work out – as Raisin puts it - 'where I stand on the subject,' then surely I have a responsibility to ensure that the details of my story are accurate and true? That my position is worked out on the basis of facts? But then what if those details aren't there, what if I have to make them up? What if the as-yet-unknown biographical truths that I do uncover in future research forays don't fit with the story I'm set on telling – what happens then? Do I change the character names – make them archetypal rather than historical/specific? Do I change the story? Or do I stick with my intention and trust the process to sort it all out in the end?

Peter Sellers and the Ugly Ducking: A Residency at Cove Park

You know that sketch – it goes something like this:

Peter Sellers walks into a party, gets a drink, begins to mingle, turns to another guest and introduces himself.

'And what do you do for a living?' he asks.

'I'm writing a novel,' says the guest.

'Neither am I,' replies Sellers.

Boom boom.

There are days when it feels like I am stuck in an endless repeat of that sketch, me being the guest, friends and family standing around, politely averting their eyes to peer in the bottom of their glasses. So I've taken myself off to Cove Park on the coast off Argyll in an attempt to wrench myself out of that loop. I have six clear weeks ahead of me before I need to pick up paid work again and I really want to make the best of them. This is meant to be my flying start – six days of hard graft that should quicken the sagging word count and set me on course til December.

Reached by boat from Gouroch to Kilcreggan, Cove Park is a residential arts centre beautifully situated overlooking Loch Long and near enough to Faslane to induce paranoid fantasies of horned sheep moonlighting as Iranian spies. Clefted by bucolic brooks, this enclave of artistic industry in the midst of MoD real estate is a creative writer's dream. My own little cube, a converted shipping container with its own private dew pond, is likely the most well appointed bedsit it will ever be my good fortune to inhabit. This week I have decided to look my Big Project squarely in the eye without the assistance of workshops or tutorials to cheer me on, but the wonderful poet Polly Clark is available on site to offer mentored retreats if desired. Here is a cosy kind of isolation, swaddled in fog and disconnected from the beguilements of mobile phones and internet connectivity, you give yourself over entirely to your muse – it's just you and your laptop and the Big Blank Page.

Day One goes well. Ish. I immerse myself in all the notes and sketches I had made in the margins of late summer's manic work schedule and bowl through the target word count without too much difficulty. All good. But then Day Two comes along and I spend the morning writing a pile of words resembling the hefty deposits made on the tracks hereabouts by the resident Highland Cows. Not so good. Sitting with the discomfort of that shitty first draft feels even worse than it sounds. If truth be told, I'm tearing my hair out but I still try my best to be stoic: said words are typed up through gritted teeth, hearty soup is had and I set out on reccy of the surrounding area - upon which I learn never to trust a pregnant ceramicist who tells you that a peninsula only has one road: it's impossible to get lost. The rain is pissing down and there is heavy fog.* There are times, I find, which call for drinking stolen red wine from the communal kitchen.

Last night's blowout appears to have had the desired effect and I begin Day Three with a writing session that edges me closer to the voice I'm looking for in my Big Project. By default I work on character too – my lead's description of her sleeping son helps me start to get into her idea of herself as mother, protector, woman. I am heartened some more on venturing up to the centre at the top of the hill to read Jill Dawson on the challenges of getting a novel going: 'A rough start is unavoidable,' she says. 'Weak beginnings are inevitable and essential.' Great! It isn't just me then. Later, I listen to a podcast on historical fiction and realise that my recent choice to write in first person present tense turns out to be a quirk of the genre – who knew? Perhaps after all, I'm doing something right. For today anyway... 

Day Four is a bit slow to get going, but coaxed on with gallons of tea, go it does. It seems there's a barrier that, like with running, once broken through, the writing finds its own comfortable pace. We're not talking sprinting or flying here – think more of a waddle, in circles, a few fledgling attempts to take off, ugly duckling style. Today is for fleshing out detail and working on the troublesome problem of period dialogue. I check out Wolf Hall on a forage through the shelves at the centre and try out my own version of straight-up contemporary narrative. I'm quite taken with the effect. I go back to my original sources and start to feel it might be time to leave them behind and launch entirely off into fiction. None of this is planned – it just seems to be happening.

And ... Action! Day Five is a gift – where the heck did that come from? I send the High Priestess Mantel my thanks – you are a fucking diamond, my dear. Something good has happened in the old brainbox overnight and to my total amazement I bash away at the keyboard all day and all night. One thousand, two thousand, three ... the words just keep coming. I schedule in some time for my Censor:

'It can't be this easy! This must be a total pile of crap!'

'Meh,' says my Subconscious.

'Historical fiction is so uncool,' says my Censor.

Subconscious just does the vees up and gets on with it.

In the piece I've written today, there's not a word of 'period dialogue' to be heard, very few contemporary references. It's just a woman arguing with her bloke, two girls having a chat by the fire. Character gold.

Day Six and it's time to head home. I miss home. It's good to go back to my life and my love and my cat. But dammit, who knows what might happen with another week on my hands!... I spend the morning planning out the next scene, working out what its endpoint will be, what details I need to research to get it right, without bogging myself down in historical mud. Sally Wainwright says writer's block just means not being mentally prepared and ready to hit the page. 'Think through what happens next before you write your next scene.' There's a lot more to that than you might think.

I realise that this has been a week of sorting and sifting, working out what I do have and what now needs to be done. Looking around the room before I pack everything away, I see there is a corner given over to engravings and pictures, another to a set of draft scenes, a chair piled with photocopied essays of writers on writing. I realise that reading all this stuff, gathering it together, taking stock, is an essential part of the work – it's about getting your ducklings lined up and giving yourself space and time for a few test flights. Bags zipped, laptop stashed, I jump in the Cove Park van to make for the boat and wonder what might happen tomorrow.

* with apologies to Dawn, the actually extraordinarily helpful and thoroughly-bloody-nice Cove Park staffer. If only I were more like her... oh, and sorry about the wine: I'll bring some back next time, I promise.

Art for Art's Sake?

The soporific effect of William Fiennes' presentation at Goldsmiths this afternoon may possibly have had more to do with the quantities of ibuprofen I had imbibed than with him being a less-than-scintillating speaker (which he is not). Yesterday I inflicted a large and brooding swelling upon my own shin after a slow-mo, high impact fall whilst jogging in the park. Still, whichever way you look at it I was 'lulled' in the truest sense of the word – I listened to Fiennes speak as if he were singing to the room, a lullaby to hold and soothe and comfort us as we drifted towards our dreams of writing.
It didn't matter that we had no clear destination in mind – as Fiennes himself said, 'I can't really do plot' – what mattered was the language, the poetry, the evocation of the universal and the mythic: beauty, return, home, suffering, nostalgia, memory, family, loss, resurrection. Those of us who choose to honour (some may say, indulge) the compulsion to write need no convincing of the inherent value of language for language's sake - we choose to see and to interpret the world through the filter of words, that most constitutional and essential of media. And here was a wonderful, enriching meditation on this theme exemplified in both the readings and the presentation.

Nevertheless, I would normally be the first among those to jeer and taunt at art-for-art's-sake for its inaccessible elitism, its implied narcissism, its self-satisfied superiority over the plebeians left at the academic gate. I'm interested in literature with balls, real literature, literature that teaches and provokes and has something to say about the world – literature that means something. So what's all this pining after language for language's sake?

Fiennes spoke of the writing impulse arising from 'necessity' and 'strong feeling' – no one is ever going to say there are not enough books in the world, he reminds us. It is critical to write what you really care about, not some dross you think will sell – but writing that you are compelled to do, stories that cannot not be told. This resonated deeply with my own sense of what I'd like to write (and hope that I am writing). I have lost count of the times I've read a manuscript shared in a writing group and wanted, were it not for a very English sense of politeness, to chuck it in the bin and run around the room, hands waving overhead, shouting 'what's the bloody point of this?!' - another gratuitous tale of scatalogical sexuality, another gap yaah jaunt around Asia, yet one more fucked-up marriage on a beach.

I.

Just.

Don't.

Care.

I understand that this is all relative – one girl's Proust is another's Jilly Cooper, after all. But doing my best to write well about things that matter is absolutely fundamental to my own developing practice, to my sense of myself as a writer in the world.

I hope to write the kind of fiction that has something to say and in so doing write with an energy that conveys that sense of the necessity of saying it – at the moment I have at least three books in my head that I feel I can't not write: they've been following me around for years – stories that want to be heard and understood. So where does the beauty bit come in? The attempt to create something beautiful – what might at first appear as the use of language for language's sake – is bound up with the impulse to say something and say it well. Books can teach us things about life, about people and history and power and love and war and any other Big Idea you can name – and the best ones do that without us even realising it, most often by beguiling – by lulling – us with their beauty. Language, style, tone, theme, motif, symbol, pattern, structure and so on are all elements of a book that contribute to the imperative and effect of aesthetic enjoyment: the stuff that makes us like books and words.

Listening to Fiennes today – talking about all of the above, along with form and genre, structuring techniques and principles, editing and economy of words – has somehow given me the permission again to reconnect with the more 'poetic' qualities of my own writing and not to feel self-indulgent doing so. And he has reminded me that having an opinion about something and wanting to put that in (creative) writing need not deliver bland finger wagging didacticism but, rather, can be done in a way that uses the 'stuff that makes us like books' to have a meaning and resonance that takes us beyond 'mere' words.

Writing The Real

My first purposeful blog post about the process of 'becoming' a writer starts here – I intend to use this blog now as a writing journal, tracking my own development as a fiction author and exploring in more depth some of the issues raised by my own writing and reading, as well as those emerging from discussions on my MA at Goldsmiths (I'm now entering my final year).

Blake Morrison led a discussion at Goldsmiths this week that was rooted in questions raised by his own work which has covered themes as diverse as misogyny, murder, family and memory (The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper, As If, And When Did You Last See Your Father), and been written in a variety of forms from creative non-fiction and novels to poetry and memoir. Blake raised questions around topics such as life writing and documentary, the choice of form as a means of story-telling, the use of language, voice and dialect. All super-relevant to where I'm at as a writer right now.

I've been pondering a lot recently about how to write about – and to fictionalise - the real, the past: what are the limits of fictionalising real life? What can and can't - should or shouldn't - you do? What are the challenges, advantages, risks, quandaries of writing about real life? Who might you expose, glorify, insult, humiliate, sentimentalise, offend - and does it matter? Doesn't 'writing well,' for instance, from the point of view of Peter Sutcliffe – as Blake has done - romanticise rape and murder? Don't the sensitivities of his victim's families deserve more respect? Are there thus subject matters and subjectivities that should be off-limits to the creative writer? … But saying that is just censorship.

Isn't it?

And then there's the whole question of the ethics of 'making things up.' Fictionalised 'real' events are surely just straight-up fiction to all intents and purposes, aren't they? If that's the case, then why bother alerting your reader to the historical fact(s) in the first place – why not just say it's all made up. Or is there value to be found in creating a near-as-dammit true story for the lessons it teaches us about life – say, in the case of James Bulger, about which Blake has also written? Is there such a thing as 'story truth' that matters more than what 'really' happened? Does anyone other than writers even care – shouldn't we just get on with the real business of writing and to hell with the consequences of misinforming readers with inaccurate historical details: a good story's a good story, right?

I've been turning over all of these questions like stones in my palms over recent weeks as I've embarked on writing a novel about an historical figure. The story has been nagging at me for years – one I uncovered in a previous, long-ago life as an English Lit academic - I just hadn't found the right way to tell it before now. Not least because I'd never given a moment's consideration to the idea of myself as an historical novelist – too many connotations of elaborate head gear and the nostalgia of empire-line muslin gowns. And yet, here I am...

Eliza Fenwick was a spirited early feminist and a radical writer, involved in the literary and political circles of 1790s London. She was good friends with the Lambs and with William Godwin; she attended the birth of Mary Shelley before comforting her dear friend Wollstonecraft in the final days of her life. Details of Eliza's own life are sketchy – she has never attracted the attention of eighteenth century scholars to the same degree as her more illustrious contemporaries: Fanny Burney, Anne Radcliffe, Laetitia Barbauld, Hannah More, and others. There are some letters, as well as some of her publications, that give clues to her life but the rest I intend to fictionalise. We do know that Eliza wrote popular children's primers and published an epistolary novel promoting women's rights and anti-slavery politics, and that she married John, a charming though impecunious Irish patriot who eventually drunk and gambled away what little funds they had. Although they seem to have married very much for love and John and Eliza had two children together, Eliza eventually requested a separation from John when she could no longer bear the haphazard life of drudgery imposed upon the family by John's carelessness. In 1814, Eliza left England and John behind and set off for Barbados, where she established a school in Bridgetown and, in spite of her radical politics, eventually became a slave owner. Her daughter was a leading actress in the local theatre and her son got a lucrative position as an agent with a Bridgetown merchant. The journey that led Eliza into slave-owning, for which she made such a shameful and 'unheroic' compromise of her principles is the focus of the novel. I want to know what that compromise 'cost' Eliza personally, what it felt like from the inside, and what her particular story might tell us about the rise of the Anglo-American women's movement.

Knowing what we know about Eliza, surely means that she cannot be upheld as a heroine of the feminist movement. She is, in many ways, an unheroic figure who gained the foothold that lifted her life into social success and economic security on the backs of the oppressed, enslaved peoples of the Caribbean. Do we then just dismiss her in the end as a run-of-the mill white colonial racist like all the rest? The Eliza I am writing will no doubt differ significantly from the 'real' Eliza – how then will I ensure that I stick to the emotional truth of her character? By writing about her life, do I risk romanticising her and becoming an apologist for slavery – “it was OK and understandable, really – she had to earn a living and, hey, wasn't she an amazing pioneer feminist that we should be proud of since she bravely felt the fear of going to the colonies alone and succeeded against the odds?” These, and many other questions, are those I find myself asking. I don't know yet if I will find the answers. What I do know is that I believe that there is value in documenting her life, however creatively – that it can tell us things we ought to know about power, about race, about gender, about all of our pasts and our presents.

Of course, one of the pleasures of working as a creative writer or artist is that there is no engraved granite mandate to find and set down The Answers. Creative writing has given me a freedom to explore rather than to expound, to investigate and ask questions, to try things out, to be in a perpetual state of discovery and wonder. But the expansiveness of the creative process is also one of its limitations – where do you draw the line? When do you have to reign in all that exploration and tell the difference between right and wrong, truth and lies? This brings me back to something Blake said at Goldsmiths this week. He spoke of the importance – the necessity – of getting your hands dirty as a writer, of asserting some kind of moral authority through the writing process, which to me is tantamount to taking some kind of line on the issues that you raise in your fiction.

I find in the many versions of white women portrayed in post-colonial literature that there are too many cartoonish figures, too many lazy caricatures of pompous memsahibs, too many bitter, prejudiced and sexless stereotypes. In seeking to write a more complex portrait of a white woman in the colonies, yes I am seeking to give credit to the courage Eliza showed in transgressing the boundaries of early nineteenth century gender roles but at the same time I am seeking to unapologetically expose the price of that achievement.

Wasn't it Socrates who said that the unexamined life was not worth living? For me, writing the real - however much that might mean fictionalising and filling in details here and there to bring the story alive - has a real and enduring value. In the case of Eliza, her story can help us to deepen our understanding of how love and motherhood, power and oppression, works and drives the course of history. Drawing on the particularity of her circumstances to create a narrative that has the potential for universal appeal and can speak to my own and others' preoccupations and concerns is a challenge that I, for one, don't want to miss - with all it's risks and caveats.

The Thing About This is That Everything is The Truth

*

From: tallulahlo@hotmail.co.uk
Sent: 13 November 2002 09:53
To: ruckus@madasafish.com
Subject: your letter

Hey Danny
Already eleven weeks since we said goodbye and I spent hours looking out to sea, not wanting to turn around and admit that you'd gone. I collected your letter from the box in town this morning – seeing your handwriting felt like a shock, the paper was so thick and soft between my fingers. I have read it six times from beginning to end. I haven't been able to sleep for thinking of you this week. I know we're not meant to say this out loud, let alone write it down, but all I've ever done is try to be honest.
Even if I could have slowed down time to spend more of it with you, I don't think I would have. I have felt the deepest of sadnesses in our goodbyes, but I just try now to think of all the good times: nights dancing in the Sadhu Lounge, cycling up Leith Hill, breakfast and newspapers at Jonnie's Café.
I remember about a month before I met you feeling like I'd woken up again, as if I'd been asleep for years, sifting and sorting through myself, then every day that I was with you I learnt more, loved more, lived again. It was a magic summer.
I hope you're loving the snow and getting plenty of those board meetings (!) I think you said Stig was flying out to meet you in Whistler next weekend – if he plays 'Devastate,' take to the floor for me will you?
I'll phone you as soon as I can – either next Wednesday or perhaps on the weekend if there's a boat going – the moment I can get to a line. I am not going to stop writing to you Danny, unless of course you want me to. This whole thing is so double edged – I miss you always, but we had our deal didn't we? Let's not lose the plot over this – whatever happens, happens, huh?
All the doors between us - not yet open, not yet closed.
Take care of yourself Danny, be good. With love, Lisa xxx
*

PO Box 65
Yenagoa
Bayelsa State, Nigeria

15th November 2002


Dear Grandpa and Grandma

I was so sorry to hear about your fall, Grandpa. How awful for you – I hope it wasn't painful – by the time you read this I am certain you will be well again and out of hospital.
Sorry not to have written to you sooner, but it's been so busy with settling in and learning the job, but thank you for all of yours. The humidity here is exhausting and some evenings I fall asleep before 9pm. Even then, the dwellings around mine are silent – depending on the tides, my neighbours go night fishing or take to their beds very early and rise before dawn the next day. The evenings are so dark in the rains, with only the glare of the gas flares above the tree tops to light the sky. I have been given a tiny generator but I don't like to use it – mine is the only house with electricity in the village and the gen makes such a racket. Far better and more peaceful are the kerosene lamps and it's by that light that I'm writing this.
There is so much work to be done here, we are never short of things to keep us occupied. On Saturday mornings the local kids come knocking at my door, bringing me bugs and giant millipedes from the bush – we paint red dots on their shells, set them free and wait to see if they'll come back. We have started a log book.
One of the girls who comes to me is older than the others – her name's Amida. She says she's not sure of her age but I'd say she's about fourteen. Her mother is unwell and in poor mental health – they call her Police on account of the noises she makes with her mouth. Amida dropped out of school to work and picks up any little jobs that she can find – petty trading, periwinkle harvesting, bottle collecting at the bar. I fear for her – she's a bright girl, but alone in the world since Police is not fit to take care of her. The last time I saw Police, she was balancing on a mango stump outside their hut and waving at the lightening sky. It was just before dawn and she turned to me and sang, 'my sweet star babies dey go sleep, Auntie, yes-oh.' Her eyes shone and she smiled. Amida says that she'd like to be a nurse, but what chance has she without schooling? Grandma, you have always said that you would like to help an African child, do it direct, know where your money's gone and who it's helped. Perhaps this is the one?
It's hard to imagine that Christmas is already just over a month away. Mum says that they're all coming down to you in Salisbury. I hope to travel over the holidays, perhaps crossing the border to Cameroon and climbing the mountain there.
Keep on writing to me, letters are wonderful things to receive.
With fond love, Lisa x
*
Dear Me Monday 11th November
Some days I think I will go mad from the lack of conversation, my only refuge has become this writing. We are doing a tour of the villages – there are thirteen of them on the island, plus some fishing camps in the remoter areas. Me and my colleague Inatimi are doing an education survey, seeing what services there are here for the children. Inatimi's got a degree in Electronics – said it was all theory.
Akassa is such a beautiful place of thatched huts and cocoa palms, broad tracts of mangrove swamp and dense bush where drill monkeys and forest elephants live. We arrive at the schools to find them empty in the heat of the day, chickens scratching around in the dirt, small children rolling Blue Band margarine tops along the ground with sticks. Lunch is dried fish torn off the bone with our fingers and oranges sliced in half with a penknife and eaten on the beach. This afternoon, we visited a nursery set up by local women. One hundred and eighty children crammed into three tiny classrooms made from corrugated zinc. The pupils clamber over the desks and fall backwards off their tiny chairs, spilling out of the doorways. But they are learning, singing their alphabets and playing with coloured shapes donated by a wealthy indigene named Aduke Alagoa. As Inatimi would say, 'these women, they are trying-oh,' they are working so hard for their children.

Hi Tuesday 12th November
I don't know if I've mentioned before that there are no roads on the island and no cars, so we move 'by leg,' by canoe and fast boat or riding pillion on motorbike taxis. Socrates is our new pirogue driver, replacing the last who was sacked for arriving at work so drunk that he ran the boat over the bank and into the Royal compound, taking the sea turtle hatchery out with the helm. Socrates refuses to smile for fear of not seeming sober, so I have made it a challenge to make him do so.
The river was busy today – vast rafts of timber, a hundred feet wide and twice as long again, floating down the Niger. The men who captain them shelter in raffia tents and steer the vessels away from the banks with long poles. They are making their way up the coast to the ports of Lagos where the rafts will be split and traded and shipped overseas. Later this afternoon, the components of a new oil rig bound for 'Block 217,' five miles out to sea, sailed by. These are colossal steel structures: great masts and joists, drilling pipes and platforms. Children skipped along the waterside and cheered, while their fathers looked on and drank kai kai, emptying their bowels like pigs on the shore.
Orlando lives in the other half of the house I've moved into. He's not from Akassa, but has come from Rivers State to work for the Company making cut lines through the bush. Sometimes there are other workers who stay a night, but mostly it's just him. Every morning Orlando puts on his hard hat and carefully laces his steel toe-capped boots before heading off to the jetty at Bekekiri. He keeps his curtains drawn at all times, but when the door's ajar I see that his rooms are empty save for a foam on the floor and a mosquito net hanging from the ceiling. Each day we are talking more and more. Tonight he pointed to a picture of Celine Dione in a ball gown as he flicked through a magazine – 'you see this woman here,' he asked, 'is she not thought to be a prostitute when she is wearing that dress?' I didn't really know what to say.

Hello Me Wednesday 13th November
Up at 5am this morning to catch the boat to Yenagoa. It rained heavily and we sheltered beneath a tarpaulin. The rain stopped and we lifted our heads like dogs to the wind. On the mainland I got the bus to the supermarket and bought canned vegetables and meat, surfed the internet for news. All the World Service has talked about for weeks is war. There have been riots over Miss World in Kano city to the north. On the way back the bus driver pulled into a queue of vehicles snaking all the way along the surfaced main road. A young boy and a man with only whites for his eyes held out their palms at the window and begged for coins. We sat out a long wait for the fuel tanker which might arrive today, tomorrow, next week. No one knows. A station attendant in a blue boiler suit walked the line of vehicles waving a short plank of wood studded with nails at no one in particular. In the end, I piled out of the bus with the rest of the passengers, knowing that the wait would be too long, and bought roasted plantain wrapped in newspaper from a woman who'd made a fire in an old car wheel casing.

Thursday
Dear Me, fuck me I'm bored ... Rach is coming next weekend, can't wait.

Me, Friday 15th November
The teachers are on strike – no pay for six months, no visits from Inspectors or officials, no books, no materials, no registers. It's as if they don't exist. The Nigeria Development Corporation dispatched a shipment of wooden desks and chairs to the Akassa waterside in an attempt to appease the teachers, but the furniture was dumped carelessly, splintered and cracked and already rotting in the mud of low tide. I paid a few Naira for some small boys to move it to the assembly hall of the nearest school. The roof has fallen in, but it will be drier than the river bed. At school I found a teacher playing cards in the shade. He told me that he'd given up and returned to fishing and trading for a living. Did I want to buy a bag of dried cassava, he asked, swinging a clear plastic bag of white coral-like matter from his hand. Hmm, I felt like saying, I'll put that in a sandwich and have it for lunch. I bought it anyway; gave it to Amida.
At sundown Orlando and I sat out on the porch and drank a cold beer. We popped ground nuts from their skins and raised our voices to hear one another over the frog song from the swamp.
'So how is this world of development today, my sista?'
'Well. It is there.' I am learning this national game of finding words when there is nothing much to say.
'You have worked.'
'Yes, I have worked.'
*
From: tallulahlo@hotmail.co.uk
Sent: 20 November 2002 11.08
To: ruckus@madasafish.com
Subject: you
Danny,
One of the many things I liked about you was that you were such a great musician. I remember you kept your iPod in a cradle on the shelf and on Saturday mornings you'd scroll through it, getting me to pick out tunes and then you'd play them on your guitar. You played so naturally, even though you broke your hand last year. The playing seemed to strengthen you and when you'd finished, you'd rub your thumb pad across the back of your hand, circling away the pain. There was a time when a melody seemed to snag at you and you stopped playing right there and then, putting the guitar down carefully in the corner by the window. You left the room without a word. I never asked you why.
It's raining heavily today and for the first time since I arrived, I am feeling chilled. That coldness is, I guess, at least something that we share even though we're far apart.
Courage - Lx
*
The End of the Earth
Imere Compound
Buoama Village
Ibuwai'gbene
Opu Akassa
Yenagoa, Bayelsa State
Nigeria, Africa, The World, The Universe.

1st December 2002


Dear Shaz
Thank you so very very much for the gorgeous shower gel – I had a wonderful, luxurious bucket with it the very evening I got it and didn't even notice the colour of the water, it smelt so good. The bath bomb's got to wait though, until I get me to a hotel over Christmas. It's been a long time since I've felt truly clean. Last week the water at my house was smelling so brackish that I took myself up to the tank at the side and found a rotting lizard floating in it. You heard it here first - Eau de Reptile: the new new. I am not sure if having the convenience of a tank at the house isn't more trouble than it's worth and I'd rather collect from the bore hole on the edge of the forest behind the house each morning. I'd pay someone to do it but it still doesn't feel right to have people running around for me.
Do you remember when we saw the sewage donkeys by the skyscrapers in Beijing? I'm telling you, this place is like that sometimes. It's about once a week now that I get to go out on the speedboat – two hours to the mainland. I can get email if there is fuel for the generators and toast if the hotel by the jetty is open. Had to attend a god-awful meeting last week on the Shell compound in Port Harcourt - a carbon copy of middle America with its neat bungalows and perfect sprinkler-fed lawns, tennis courts and wives in pearl earrings. I was served a breakfast of Brevilled egg sandwiches in a canteen staffed by waiters in red tartan and I ate alone and in silence. The Birdie Song was playing on the stereo. Afterwards, in the meeting, they talked about participatory development and stakeholder literacy – the Norwegians want to put money into it before they start drilling. The French are keen to broadcast distance learning by radio from their base in Lomé. And then I came home to Buoama to find that the tides have re-salinated the water supply and the Redeemed Church of Zion were staying up all night to have a sung vigil about it. Meanwhile the rest of us were harvesting what rainwater remained in the buckets and jugs and jerry cans that happened to have been left out in the open.
Looking out of my window there are two of the guys from next door sleeping on a mattress put out on a stack of mossy breeze blocks. Stripped to their waists with mouths open to the sky, there's a strong smell of weed in the air. Did I tell you that the local lads claim this as Bob Marley's ancestral home? Every year they have a memorial wake for him. They are very beautiful boys, Shaz, the musculature of their bodies so defined – every line and curve put there by a life lived without machines or cars or any mod cons. There's not another soul to be seen this afternoon. No noise except for the cicadas in the grass. Ambrose came by earlier with fresh palm wine and I had him fill up that Berghaus flask you gave me. I'm saving it for later – though it won't keep beyond a day.
I lie. There is someone else to be seen – in the shade of the wooden bridge that crosses over the creek by the juju flags, Ebi is crouched with his knees held in close to his chest. His head is bandaged. His eyes are fastened almost shut with the black bruises that have bloomed upon his skin. I know this because he has been coming to me each day so that I can dress his wounds. There is trouble here, Shaz, that I don't understand and I find myself right in the middle of it.
Last weekend a friend from Abuja, Rachel, came down to stay. She brought a tube of Pringles and a bottle of vodka and we sat on my porch at dusk to drink. As we chatted about work, a group of young men – about fifteen of them – entered the compound on the pathway leading from Daddy's shack. I recognised a couple of faces from the bar by the waterside at Kongho – they hang out with a youth leader they call Gadaffi. One of them, the tallest one, dressed in denim shorts, beret and a PVC waistcoat, dumped a large holdall on the ground and Itari, Ebi and the boys from next door came out to meet them. We couldn't understand what they said – they spoke in Akaha – but their voices were strong and they held their chins in the air as they spoke; then the tall one bent down and pulled out a glass bottle from the bag and smashed the end of it off, against the tree trunk. I pulled Rachel inside the house and we watched from behind the mosquito screens as the brawl moved off quickly down the path. Afterwards we smoked cigarettes and thought little more of it.
Sunday morning 5am and I was woken by the thud of running feet upon the earth outside the house. I jumped from my bed and pulled back a small corner of the curtain with my fingertips. In the pre-dawn I could see figures entering the compound with rocks and bottles and machetes, then came startled voices and a few shots from a gun. Then came the hack, hack, hacking of machetes cutting into what, I did not know. I ran to lock the doors which I'd left open in my carelessness the night before. Rachel woke up.
'What's happening? What's that noise?'
'I'm just closing the doors, making sure we're OK,' I made an effort to sound calm before returning to the window.
There was scuffling and torch lights frantically flashing in all directions. Someone was hacking the ground with a machete and looking towards the house. Felicia, a neighbour, was backed up to my window and the women's wailing had begun. I heard Itari's voice and so I moved to get his attention, but he couldn't hear me so I drew back the screen and leant out of the window.
'What's happening? Are we safe?'
He looked at me and raised a hand, the whites of his eyes astonishing in the darkness, and then he turned his back and ran away. Mary, the grandmother, appeared from the big zinc shack at the back of the compound – she was leading a line of tiny children, all holding hands. She wished me good morning, expressionless, then disappeared into the rattans and prayer plants at the edge of the bush. My neighbour, Orlando, was nowhere to be seen.
Rachel and I packed small bags with all of our cash and our passports, put on our trainers and waited for a lull in the fighting. Securing the door behind us, we hastened through the village, not stopping to talk to those who stood in doorways with their faces full of sleep. Mrs Duwei tried to stop us, since our leaving would bring shame to a village unable to take care of its guests, but we were frightened and confused. On the track to Kongho, we jumped into the mangroves as a group marched past with sticks, dragging Itari behind them at the wrists. He did not see us. We waited for the remaining followers, who ran with rocks in their hands, to pass before we moved again.
That afternoon Rachel left for Abuja, not waiting to collect her belongings from my house. I went along in the boat for the ride. We still don't know the cause of the conflict so I didn't go home until it seemed safe and I wedged a chair under the door handle.
Ebi came to me in the night, his scalp swollen and hot where it had been sliced with a long blade. Here there are no qualified doctors, no hospitals, not even a health centre. I had been given a large suitcase of medical supplies with bandages and resuscitators, blood stoppers and cold packs, needles and vinyl gloves. I cleaned and dressed Ebi's wound, enclosing it with sutures. What good it will do, we will see – infection has already set in. He has badly dislocated one of his thumbs, but he would not allow me to inspect it. He was entirely wordless and left without shaking my hand.
Well, it's getting late now Shaz so I'm going to sign off – it's a relief to get this off my chest - it's not everyone I can tell. I'll let you know when I find out more. But don't worry about anything – I am safe enough and we are expecting improvements in security - there is talk of buying a satellite phone. The elections are coming in two months and there's certain to be more trouble, but I shouldn't be here for that. I will travel.
I'm still in touch with Danny and we do exchange a few emails now and again. Who knows what's going to happen there – no regrets, though. I'm so glad I'm here. Martin Boyce is also still in touch – he's doing research now in Ghana.
'Go well,' as they say here, and take care of yourself, write soon.
Big love, Lisa xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
*

Dear Me Monday 2nd December

Today is the kind of day you just want to curl up in bed with a good book or, even better, a good man, and dream away the day. As I sit here at my desk there are crooked bolts of lightning streaming into the oil palms and exploding like stars. Overhead, thunder is crashing down with a might only nature could marshal and the rain pours down, down, down. In the next room, Friday is sprawled on a bed, sickly, sweating, struck with malaria that has fastened his mind into half-consciousness. And all around is the dense hush of truancy, interrupted only by the swift crackle of raindrops on concrete.
*

From: tallulalo@hotmail.co.uk
Sent: 04 December 2002 13:03
To: ruckus@madasafish.com
Subject: hey!

Danny – I find, by chance, I'm out on the mainland. Gutted not to have received a reply from you to my last email. I have been waiting so patiently for days and days but it feels like YEARS. I tried calling you, but no answer.
I had the strangest dream last night – you were lying half in the bath looking up and me and there was a dog on the floor. It wasn't mine but I knew I had to find a way to get rid of it. I kept chasing it around but in the end it turned into a talking drum and disappeared and then I could hear you playing it in the bathroom. What do you think it means?
Let me know if you're online – I'll be here for an hour or two. Mail me, Lx
*

From: tallulalo@hotmail.co.uk
Sent: 04 December 2002 14:38
To: ruckus@madasafish.com
Subject: re: hey!

I'm still here Danny – five more minutes and I've got to run for the boat...

*

Buoama, Akassa
9th December 2002


Professor Boyce I presume?

Congratulations on the book – I haven't read it yet, but I got word of a colleague setting out on the market boat who could carry a letter for me and wanted to take the chance to thank you for sending it – kind of you to think of me.
Things unsettled here. The Company is on the river again – they appear like rude Christs hovering in their flat boats on the surface of the estuary, their jackets and hard hats bright against the dull skies of this season. Andy Burgess has put an estimate of N64 – 86 million on the timber loss and is still working on a figure for the fish nests that were dynamited. He's yet to inform the Committee. Brass is still threatening to attack Koluama and the youth are restive. The Company have already upped the stay-at-home payments and the Council of Chiefs are furious. Alagoa says the youth are blind Company thugs. These grievances are turning fathers against sons, polo against polo, while the rest kick back and watch the show. The water's full of soot again and this week alone, three babies died in my village from the 'fever.' Plus ça change, I am sorry to say. Bob Knight says that every project here needs a white face to comfort the donors. The more I see, the more it seems this whole thing isn't about compassion, but vanity and greed - people like us holding up mirrors to see who's fairest.
My colleague has arrived at my door, so must sign off in haste – by the way, did I ever tell you that my boss is called Friday? I thought you might enjoy that.
With all good wishes, Lisa.

*
Dear Me Tuesday 10th December

On my way to work this morning I found Police cowering in the mangrove roots by the secondary school, blinking up at me from amongst the mud-skippers. She had been beaten blue-black and bloody - said it was the Mayor and her clerk. Orlando told me that everyone here thinks Police is possessed, she is 'a demon incarnate, a danger to the children.' So it seems they tried to kill her with a machete handle heel and make out 'she'd done fall and broke her devil head.' Police muttered that the Pastor's wife came by and begged mercy in return for a rack of dried fish and a baptism for the Mayor's next child, and so they let her go.
When I found her, Police's skin was so split about the face and arms that you could see the whites of her bones. Her nose was torn like cloth on a nail and left long threads of blood twisting over the mangroves. I told her to stay there while I went for help but when I got back she had disappeared. Tonight Amida came to me and cried, saying 'never can I find her more again. She done run, run away, Auntie. Very, very far.'

*
+8821646686092
hiya mum – just to say we've got satellite phone - this no. all is well here - sunshine today. speak soon, lx
18.35 131202

Mother's Vigil

She wills him to outlive the harsh geology
of war, surpass
the whispering condemned, his
fatigues soaked with their breath, his sights with their gore,
to soar beyond the faults and crags
of mountains with their terrible rocks; to leap
above that unreasonable, bluest sky, to arrive
at a place of quiet honour and tranquillity.


Daily, and alive like him, she carries
stones upon her palms. Finding
that her son is held
in these pre-Cambrian dreams. Here are the poised, sharp
contourings of combat:
the imprecision of a clock, the uncoloured
peaks of warm bright
pebbledash; this absence.