Last Words and New Beginnings

Not exactly an elephant in the room but let's be honest... I haven't posted for a while.

I've been away in wonderful Yorkshire, back and finishing an assignment, taking part in NaNoWriMo, and then taking on the launching of a new web-based poetry magazine. This latter is taking up a lot of time, as you'd expect, but is a fantastic project to be involved in as it is a subject dear to my heart - obviously.

I have been writing too, and taking copious photos to inspire and fill up my computers dwindling memory. I've also realised that I have a bit of a thing for two particular programmes on radio 4 and that they inspire quite a number of my poems so from this week onwards I'll be posting my responses to the wonderful radio programme called Last Words. This isn't a programme in celebration of Words as such but an obituary on the air waves. Call me morbid - and I'm sure you will - but hearing about the inspirational, comical, intriguing lives of others is captivating and inspires a weekly flurry of research or poetry or both.

This is one that I scribbled into my note book as I was listening to the programme on iPlayer whilst out power walking and it was the one that finally got me to admit I was hooked:

A Pattern for Life

Professor Lisa Jardine 

ascending and transcending she grabbed

at history and made it

with wisdom unconfined by convention,

the small voice or fitting a mould

she wore her defiance gladly, like a rebel teen

transforming her outer shell

shared her anarchic wisdom, inner armour worn

beneath clothing, beneath skulls

knitted her philosophy into endless endeavours

like a jumper that could be read

tales of a woman’s ascent, projecting her fearless voice 

or leaving the room when she’s done with it

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06kh66d#play

This week I've been mostly.... driving around the country and writing poetry from various hotel rooms, in the car or at a salon as they try to rectify a disastrous home dye jobby.

This was my first experience of being a students rep for the South West UK region - yes, a pretty large region to cover - at the senate and I wanted to ensure all went smoothly so I did a dry run last Sunday and tested a free to  download sat nav for my iPad. The latter was a disaster as it told me to take the fifth exit from roundabouts with only two exits and so on. However, my fantastic partner wrote out all instructions, I supplemented them with a different download and all went well - even though I ignored some written instructions preferring to keep my eyes on the road instead.

So here are two of the many haikus created on my journeys to Milton Keynes and Gloucestershire. The first was inspired by my breakfast scene from the somewhat grubby window at the Premier Inn (yes, really!) and the other was dreamt up while walking to the hair salon in Cheltenham. Did I tell you that a flood in the house had caused me to leave a hair dye on my head for too long resulting in a strip of black roots and a Cruella De Ville hairstyle? No? Surely an oversight on my part. Anyway, it now looks less Cruella or Bride of Frankenstein so I shan't be walking around scaring young children.

Mists rise with the sun.
Swans converge, above, below.
Ripples fill the lake.

Colours explode on

Pine scented walks, muffle steps

With fallen beauty.

and because there has been a lot of talk about copyright issues I now have the heeby-jeebies about not putting a copyright message on everything despite questioning who would want to nick my stuff anyway. So this morning I have found out that holding down the Option / Alt key and pressing 'G' creates a © for me. I shall share this knowledge on the A215 forum as it seems like a sensible thing to share amongst fellow writers.

© Karen Downs-Barton

Should We Stretch Our Boundaries?

Yesterday, Sunday, a wonderful person who shall remain nameless used the whole of his Sunday to be supportive in stretching my boundaries.

I mention this because I think that it is worthy of mention due to the fact that (1) it was a human kindness I want to acknowledge and (2) it was done in an effort to help me stretch my boundaries and I want to quickly question how much I'm stretching them and if this is a good thing.

The 'selfless Sunday' action was driving all the way from the depths of Wiltshire to Milton Keynes and back. Not a huge deal perhaps but this selfless act was performed to give me an idea of the route that I will be driving tomorrow to take part in a Senate meeting with the Open University and without this kindness I may well have headed off full of nerves and trusting a satnav app on my iPad. The latter proved itself to be wholly wrong on every prompt it gave on the trial run ('take the 5th exit' on roundabouts containing 2 or 'bear left then take the next left' on a dual carriageway without a single exit visible except through trees or over a bridge taking me over the motorway - really!) and had I not known this beforehand I would have trusted its madness and ended up God only knows where. In trouble no doubt.

The boundaries I'm stretching are those of not only driving to Milton Keynes on my own - something I would have done years ago but somehow got out of the habit of doing - but that of taking part in a large and time-consuming two-year role as a student representative whilst studying for my degree. I have taken part in two other consultative committees, a regional one that has informed some of the decision-making behind the present Senate subject matter, another concerning disabled students within the university; but this is a larger and far more demanding role. The paperwork involved was something of a shocker and how anyone reads it through whilst studying I have no idea but I'm going to try.... overnight and in the morning after I arrive and try to unwind.

So, what I'm going to ask is this: Why, are roles on the student representative body still unfilled and not being flagged up to others stretching boundaries for the sake of their university and their own experience?

Personally I think its a shame that other students aren't aware that the roles exist, or that they still need filling.

Okay, those are my musings for the day and now I'm going to stretch my boundaries in the direction of a glass noodle soup that is a glorified cup-a-soup and what with the thought that I have a chair that has fallen to pieces and needs me to stretch myself to mending it.

Before I forget to mention it I'd better add that I'm still writing lots of haiku and am now seriously thinking that this has become an addiction. Once I've posted a few on my student forum I'll post others here as there are self-plagiarism issues apparently if I post in both places using the same haiku.

It's Officially a Real Monday!

Getty Images

I'm not saying that I hate Mondays, actually I don't usually, but today has just proved that there is either a very angry God out there or everyone else was right to hate this particular day of the week!

The day-from-hell actually started out quite well. Okay, I have the whole of a spare bedroom crammed into my own bedroom due to a carpenter arriving tomorrow morning to fit a new floor and yes, I bumped my shins quite badly when trying to navigate my way around the various pieces of furniture, piles of 'stuff' etc. in an attempt to find foot space that would allow me to exit the room to have a pee but... that's all part of life isn't it? To get sniffy about real life impacting is just daft and shows a lack of understanding that real life is apt to happen so one had better gird one's loins or other 'bits' and just get on with it. No, none of that was a problem for me and I even managed to get through all my days OU stuff before I forget to add that, no it was the other stuff, the unadulteratedly disastrous stuff that I object to.

Let me explain the few threads that came together to tie up and make life less than peachy today. Firstly, I have to hold my hand up to trying to penny pinch and perhaps that has added to my own downfall. I thought that as I have a very important set of meetings next week and a few grey hairs had started to show themselves I would buy a home dye kit and remedy this without losing a day to the hairdressers or a sizeable whack from my monthly budget. I did the usual thing of guessing the colour that my hair was, opted for a decent make in the local Boots store and started applying it this morning. That was thread 1.

Thread 2 in this set of unmitigated disasters that made my day was the weather. The torrential rain that has been plaguing Wiltshire off and on all day really hit my little patch of the county after I'd applied the hair dye and I was somewhat alarmed to find it not only soaking the garden but, due to thread 3 - a dam-like structure built inadvertently by my other half as he shifted gravel in the garden - all the rain was channeled into the house and I ended with a flood. As luck would have it I had a stack of newspapers from Waitrose, freebie items too, that were stacked not too far away and that could be used to mop the muddy floodwater up.

This should really have been the end of it and I could have walked away from what will from now on be known as 'Black Monday' but no, it didn't end there. Just when I was getting myself together I noticed that there was a strange beeping noise from the living room. It turned out to be the alarm on my iPad and it was trying to alert me to the fact the hair dye needed removing. I have no idea when it had gone off because I was at the other end of the house moping and sloping and quietly going from a perfectly acceptable hair colour to a more than hideous black and white stripe that is permanent. I have almost jet black root area and sort of normal pale brown / dark blond rest of hair. I look like a sort of startled skunk!

As if that wasn't enough - yes, did you really think I'd finished? Really? - the rain came down again with gusto and the stream that was previously coming through the back door changed to a river and there was nothing I could do but head outside, grab a shovel and start to demolish the dam. This task was carried out on the spur of the moment as the last of the newspaper had been used, so I had no shoes on and was still in the towel that I'd wrapped around me after getting out of the after-dye-fiasco. Towels in a rain storm are obviously not the best thing to wear as firstly they soak up the rain water and secondly they fall down.

So, picture if you can this sight - a woman of a certain age, in a rainstorm, in a garden overlooked by a school, shovelling gravel whilst trying to hold up a towel and topping it all a skunk-like hairstyle.

Mondays! I rest my case for why I'm joining the haters of Mondays.

Ambition vs Ability

This morning I decided to take a foray into the world of technology to see what was possible in the world of animation with just an iPhone and a little jiggery-pokery. This rather wobbly effort was my first and I think if I were to write a report on myself it would be 'should try harder'. However, my ambition to master new items may be outstripping my ability but it kept me out of trouble whilst waiting for my computer to update and start behaving itself.

Strange Haiku Phenomenon

I've had a break from blogs for about a week I've had a little holiday and been welcoming lots of new members to the Open University course Facebook page.... time consuming stuff! I'd better reveal now that I'm a most dire geek as far as bridges and steam engines are concerned so a bit of time was taken up in indulging in sitting on a steam train in Devon with a hideously geek-fueled smile on my face. Sigh! There's just no hope for me is there?

While I was away - Devon again and staying at Strete Barton again as it was such restful place last time. This didn't mean that I wasn't keeping an interested eye on what was happening with the newbies on the Facebook page - far from it. I was watching with interest the various postings of the new students regarding poetry and how daunted they felt having to contemplate creating their own poetic submissions for various assignments.

Very quickly this gave way to a number of tentative postings of.... Haikus! Yes, my favourite waste of time has got its dread hold on a growing band of happy students who are creating them, posting them, and getting positive feedback from their peers. How cool is that? Pretty damn cool in my humble opinion! What do you think I was being inspired by while all this artistic endeavour was going on? Well you probably won't be able to guess so I'll just tell you shall I? Pants - in a tree, in the middle of nowhere, a massive mushroom in a field, standing on cliffs, bridges and steam trains (of course) how literature enriches life. On the latter theme I was pleased to walk past a house called Bunbury on four occasions and although it was just a name it made me smile each time as little snippets of The Importance of Being Earnest came floating back to me from the literary recesses of my mind.

This image just puts all sorts of questions in my mind..... 

Who do they belong to?

 What were the original colours?

Why are they in a tree - obviously!

Why are they in tatters? 

What did the owner go home in? 

I think in deference to the wonders of these pants that obviously have a great history if only they could divulge it them I should be writing a Haiku about them. Well, it might be a novel idea.... no pun intended as I don't think the pants and haiku would necessarily morph into a novel but never say 'never'. 

And what of my haiku-a-day self imposed challenge? It has ebbed and flowed in response to the various limitations of my week but mainly due to taking on places on not one but three Open University committee roles and gearing up for these. One is a disabled students steering committee, another is debating the future role of the student support services and the last but probably the most demanding (well, debatably) is a seat on the OU Senate - ooer Mrs! All good stuff but along with my own writing and being away with my better half and taking on an extra course external to the OU yes... I've not been as creative as I'd like and work in general has taken a back seat. Bah humbug!

So, here is my little haiku about a rather pretty little plant that was growing simply everywhere in Devon's wooded areas. I think this is a winter flowering heliotrope and it smells of vanilla all winter and is originally an African import that has gone a little wayward. However, it is frost delicate and therefore not often seen in Wiltshire so I love it on many levels - its rare in Wiltshire, has nectar in the winter when most plants are hibernating of dead if they're annuals, it has lovely heart shaped leaves which appeals to the romantic in me, it is colourful and scented in the winter so you feel like you're walking through a perfumery.

     
Winter Flowering Heliotrope

From spring to autumn 

you’re all heart. Winter yields your

scented floral grace.

What is my solution to all this work? To buy a suitably bizarre purple note pad - it matches the iPad protector designed for children and my favourite bra - start to write a short story that is growing beyond the title of 'short' and make piecrust promises to diarise (hideous word!) and prioritise - but not necessarily in that order.
I hope to be able to share some of the literary responses to my various images at some point as I feel the blog needs to be a little window into my mind for those who aren't put off by the steam train obsession and various purple that may not find its way in to my prose ;-)

Writing Prompts - the good, the bad and the ugly

The writing prompt posted on the OU fb page this morning.

Good morning folks. I've had a number of non-blogging days due to being out of action and in hospital. Bet you didn't expect that did you? Bet you thought it was something glitzy like a holiday but no, hospital and not only hospital but when you're having some rather grotty procedures done the last thing you might want to see is someone you know walking onto the ward and obviously one of the staff about to prod at you.
Yes, that's right, there is no dignity in my life even when I'm trussed up in a hospital! On the up side she did say that my dressing gown was very glamorous, so thats a small bonus, and I was wearing full-on makeup so woo-hoo me.

However, that isn't what I'm posting about today. No, today is another literary effort of my own and posing of questions - I'm always curious as you might have noticed.

The image above was posted as the weeks creative writing prompt on the fb page and it was a controversial choice because:

• It is an image presented in a comic form - not one that is given much credit amongst the sniffier members of the literary brigade.
• It brings up the delicate but essential issue of pictorial ownership, accrediting the owner, and royalty issues around having images on your blog (or wherever) as so many images on the web now are in fact the property of others. 
• Here's another question - are constant prompts good for writers? Surely there's a case for suggestion that less is more? Can prompts be, in fact, bad? Considering the personal preferences of the broad range of creative writers out there I'm pretty sure there will be those who will consider certain types of prompt just plain ugly! And that, my friends, leads me neatly to the following paragraphs. 

So first things first. Why don't we as a nation rate the comic or graphic novel as highly from a literary point of view? Why do we not see that this is a perfectly acceptable literary genre? As someone who, as a child, indulged in a few comics I can honestly say that this image - that it is the domain of the child - that could be part of the problem. Whereas other cultures, such as the Japanese and US literary markets - have a history of adult readership the graphic novel and comic still retain the image of geek domain or worse. In fact, those who saw the film 'Paul' staring an alien alongside Simon Pegg and Nick Frost will know how much this image pervades and, dare I say, is pretty near the mark. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1092026/
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-

Yet, beyond that there is another market, possibly as geeky or totally non-geeky, that has a potentially huge market for those who have no time or aren't necessarily into books but who may well find a love of the written word through such 'novels'. The Plain Janes is a great example of one of these books. It is aimed at the female teen market and deals with the isolation that many teenagers feel in these years due to not fitting in with the 'right' or 'popular' sets in school. Its most definitely a quick read but it manages to have humour, poignancy and offer a nice little glimpse of a powerful response to not being part of a group. I think that for a teen and even early 20's market it has a very positive message about finding others like you and indulging in a love of art and civic pride and your own individuality and although it may be sniffed at by the sniffers of literature it has merit.
Recently even such luminaries as Publishers Weekly published a report into the growing market represented by the graphic novel so perhaps shaking things up with a weekly prompt that has a decidedly comic book feel isn't so mad after all?
news/libraries/article/57093-how-graphic-novels-became-the-hottest-section-in-the-library.html
and if you want to check out The Plain Janes take a look at the Amazon page: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Plain-Janes-Cecil-Castellucci/dp/1845765516/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441016065&sr=8-1&keywords=the+plain+janes

On to the second issue nicely links into the image based theme of the first in that I am quite openly a very visual person but I am aware that on the internet there are many tempting images that aren't my own and that it would be great to use as prompts but sadly I can't. Not an issue you think? Well no, I suppose not for the majority of the time but as I want to maintain the visual impact of not only my own blog but the that of the creative writing groups pages I have to ensure that not only my own but the postings of other moderators are done with sensitivity to this minefield of legality.

Here my only options appear to be to either create my own images - which of itself will be limiting to the subject matter - or to source royalty free images. It all seems like such a faff.

However, needs must when the litigation, or devil drives. Much the same driver you might suggest.

So for those reading this and loving the fact that it has imagery just be aware that it is in fact imagery from my own books or photos and that comes with much trepidation lest even that has some hidden issue.


So to sum it all up, be cautious out there fellow bloggers and image coveters. If you see an image on this blog it'll be mine so just mail me to ask permission and the chances are I'll say 'go for it' and you can use that image alongside the usual accreditation. As for the image posted to the fb page I'm going to get on with living and then come back to finding something suitable to write, after all, I can let the side down now can I?

And in case this is missed by anyone here is a link to a commentary about just this sort of subject. Here the blogger is discussing an exhibition that links poetry to comic book form so I had to add this. https://srboydwrites.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/the-poetry-society-over-the-line-exhibition/