Soul Moon Ribcage

So I did it! I stood up and read my poems to people and managed to not die of embarrassment.  The showcase was great actually, it was so good to hear other people’s writing – a mixture of stories, poems and plays – some of them great and very funny.  Then a lot of wine was consumed (shock!) so I was more hungover than I’d have liked to be for the workshop with Buddy Wakefield in Portobello Library the following day.  I’ve never been there before, it’s really cute – a small but vibrant library with an upstairs meeting room.  On the back wall of the meeting room is a Town Mural, something I have only heard of existing before in Pawnee Indiana!  This one is much less offensive though.  I was a bit late so I missed Buddy Wakefield's introduction, and to be honest I’d not had a lot of experience of his work before.  I bought some books though, because I really liked him and what he said made a lot of sense.  I wasn’t disappointed, his stuff is really good – check him out!

I had a real lightbulb moment at the workshop (quite a feat considering my hungover state).  I’ve been in a class where I was expected to read out a bit of writing each week.  Despite my efforts in getting over myself, it was really hard to get rid of the sense that what you read out has to be ‘something’ – ‘something good’ even.  Hearing a successful writer say that even with writing every single day, he has one poem he considers good enough per month, was a bit of a reality check.  A lot of his focus was on performing, obviously not something I’ve done a lot of and I’m not overly drawn to.  His biggest piece of advice – I had my pen poised for this – was ‘don’t fake cry’.  I didn’t write that down.  Do people really do that?  Another bit that made me laugh, mostly because it’s what makes me cringe in writing, is use of clichés – and not all the ones you expect.  “Stop fucking with the moon” he said “and opening your ribcage” – I can think of a lot of these poetic sounding phrases that (for me) disconnect me with whatever the writer is trying to say.  Is that universal, or does that work for you?  Any that particularly rile you?

More has happened since the workshop – I have been appointed a fantastic Mentor through the WoMentoring Project, and some of my poems have gone through an editing process with her.  I am going to share some of the reworked stuff - some that my postal correspondents will be familiar with - in my next post.