Writers and artists have a collective duty to mock Trump, the thin-skinned charlatan

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Sometimes, the only thing you can do is laugh.

Around the world, brutes have risen – and continue to rise – to power. Far from challenging these despotic tyrants, our supposedly liberal western democracies have cow-towed to them, flattering them, and inflating their egos. In the UK, the weak and decrepit conservative party hangs on to power with long vicious fingernails and asks the taxpayer to foot the bill of hosting one of these new brutish demagogues so that they can shower him in pageantry and golf. 100 years ago, America and Europe were united in trying to create and preserve a new world peace where liberty and human rights would flourish, and the horrors of imperial wargames would cease. Now these same powers squabble like school children, trading insults and threats, seemingly unaware that theirs in an order that requires radical change – not more of the same.

This is all such madness it would be funny, if it weren’t so easy to feel terrified by it all.

Donald Trump is clearly the most obvious fault-line in the current alignment of our stars. The charge list against him is impossible to tolerate: there is the racism of his immigration policies that bans people from Muslim countries entering the USA, and which separates young children forcibly from their parents; then there is the threats posed to the rights of women, people of colour, and LGBT people. He ignores the catastrophic effects of man-made climate change or the fact that our rampant over consumption is threatening our planet’s survival. He sucks up to tyrants, launches trade wars, insults allies, praises fools and dictators, and campaigns against the free press. He is also a coward and a fraud who has tiny hands and evidence suggests he regularly pays prostitutes to urinate on him.

Our response to Trump, as writers, artists, creatives and – ultimately – human beings, is crucial. It must be appropriate, balanced, and precisely reactionary. If only to support Newton’s third law, our reaction to Trump’s hatred, fear and bigotry, must be equal in its opposition to these traits. In other words, it must be one of love, bravery, and inclusivity.

To our minds, there is nothing that brings people together more so than laughter. There is nothing braver than laughing at those who would beat you (or worse) for doing so. And there is nothing that can invoke feelings of love more than the euphoria of hysterical humour.

It is for this reason that we call for all creatives to unite in mocking Trump as the thin-skinned charlatan he really is.

Join the resistance

To an extent, the mockery of Trump through satirical art has already begun in earnest. There has been a huge influx of resistance-themed art, whether it’s commentary on world leaders with the graffiti styling’s of Mr. Dheo or Bambi (pictured below), or more simply the crowd-funded Trump baby balloon, which has been flying above London during the President’s visit to the UK.

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Bambi

The proliferation of this kind of art perhaps recognises the fact that to continue making art as before is an insufficient response to the state of the world. The dark reality is that intensity, beauty, and devotion to making beautiful creative things are insufficient to halt violence. Indeed, one need only to look to history – to see and hear the march of Nazism accompanied by the tunes of Wagner – in order to realise how these aspects of art can become the accompanying soundtrack to evil.

We do not use terms such as evil lightly. To label everyone and everything one disagrees with as fascism is surely to dissolve the meaning of a term that threatens the fabric of democracy and liberal decency. And it is for this reason that aggressive art – art that seeks to create representations of darkness, evil, violence and hatred – are equally ill-equipped as positive, beautiful art, for confronting the realities of our times and challenging them. Holding a mirror to violence and anger reflects, but does not shatter, the illusion of power that they hold. Only by making fun of and satirising those who trumpet hate and division can we truly expose the intrinsic lack of power that they have.

Exposing Trump

Trump is in many ways the epitome of the weakness of hate and anger. His inflated ego and thin skin make the giant Trump baby currently floating in the skies above London a perfect symbol of a man who is nothing more than hot air: a thin-skinned charlatan who uses racism, homophobia and misogyny to stoke fear among people struggling to get by in a country riven by divisions caused by incessant neoliberal capitalism – that has left the vast majority poorer whilst an extreme minority of billionaires collect ever more wealth. The fragility of Trump’s ego is easily exposed; one need only witness how he rushes to defend the size of his hands, the size of his penis, or that he doesn’t need to use Viagra, to see how afraid the man is of being exposed.

Indeed, in every encounter with Trump he appears like all those bullies at school who tried to pull the chairs from beneath girls they liked, or boys they were not as smart as, or kids who were more athletic and better looking than them. He exhibits all the behaviours of someone trying desperately hard to scare people into not mentioning his countless failures; his ugliness; his stupidity. If he were your grumpy, rude co-worker who made uncomfortable comments in team meetings, you might think him a sad case of a person who has never known love.

But Trump is not your grumpy, rude co-worker. He is the President of the United States; a great country that has irrefutably shaped the world (not always for good; but certainly not always for ill); and he is a representative of how the USA is in a moment of deep political crisis – as is all Western Democracy.

Challenging him and his ethos would usually fall to journalism or traditional media. Yet his clever use of ‘fake news’ and the inability of his opponents to mount an effective alternative to his reign has proven that traditional approaches will not suffice in this instance. Into the breach in its stead must step art – specifically, satirical art, and writing, which can put political pressure on misinformation, folly, and the abuse of power.

The power of satire

Satire is so subversive – and often politically fatal for those who rule – because it exposes the absurdities of power. Authority attempts to assert itself partly through a veneer of respectability and seriousness. When that is stripped away, its legitimacy can be lost, along with our subservience.

Historically, one can trace the power of Satire through such notable pieces as Jonathan Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’, which brought public attention to the plight of the Irish people and attacked those British politicians who had ignored the famines ravaging the country. You can also look to the satirical art that accompanied the French Revolutions which, as Will Self notes “were each accompanied by a satiric outburst”. Prior to and during the American revolutionary war of independence, satirical cartoons mocking King George “the buffoon” flourished in towns across America. In all these instances, it was the power of artistic satire that united people together to challenge the status quo and demand change; more so than the anger or shock of individuals could ever hope to achieve.

This point is crucial: our own individual convictions are worthless if all we do with them is try to shout more loudly or aggressively than ever other angry voice.

Anger at our political elite seldom fuels action to do anything about it, engendering instead an enraged passivity: people WRITE POLITICAL RANTS ALL IN CAPS on Twitter and Facebook, but this serves no purpose. No one reading these ravings who does not already agree with them will find anything of value to them. At best, it will confirm their belief that the world around them is full of anger and best avoided if possible. They will not engage with anger and hate unless it is an anger and hatred they already feel.

Burst the balloon

Here is where quality satirical art plays such a crucial role; because it helps engage those who otherwise find politics tedious. Laughter, it is famously said, is the best medicine. It’s true. You only need to have ever told a joke and made others laugh to see how they immediately warm to you. If you make people laugh with you, you can more easily direct their attention to the failures that exist in society. You can help them, gently and warmly, recognise the faults of those in power. And from there, they are far more likely to choose to fight against people like Trump who seek to sow fear and anger rather than laughter and love. And even if they don’t fight, their laughter at the cowardly bully trying to look tough may just be enough to burst his ballooning ego.

A call to arts

There is of course an argument that we need art that lifts up other, dispossessed voices. That keeps their ideas and creativity alive at a time when their existence is threatened by the policies of Trump and his right-wing cronies.

This too, we need. Of course this too. There is too much hate and anger in the world and we need diversity of thought more than ever. We need to support emerging artists and voices; but we also need to fight back. But it is not the pen that is mightier than the sword; but rather the laughter of millions that is more powerful than the fearful rage and angry Twitter ramblings of an infantile, cowardly egoist.

So, join in the good fight, comrades – before we can defeat Trump, we must deflate him. All power to your satirical typewriters and easels!

 

Get involved and submit your satirical pieces of art or writing to us directly through our contact us page. To get the ball rolling, read our collection of ‘Donald Trump poetry‘ – lines and verses taken straight from the rambling mouth of the fat dotard himself. 

 

 

 

 

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Brexit is Brexit – Donald Trump poetry

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I think Britain is a very hot spot right now

Of course, it is a hell hole

With blood all over the floor

It’s a war zone

It’s going broke and not working

 

I just hope they get rid of the windfarms in Scotland

They’re destroying the golf there

 

I think they like me a lot in the UK

They think I’m really okay

I am inundated with fan mail from England

Because I do not have tiny hands

I have Boris Johnson, he’s a very special friend of mine

He’s always been very very nice to me

Theresa May gets very angry

Not like Lady Di

I could have, if I wanted, to, you know

Lady Di is my one regret in the woman department

 

Just remember the old Trump bullshit:

Brexit is Brexit.

~Anonymous 

A note on the above poem: 

All the lines of ‘My personal Vietnam’ are taken, verbatim, from Donald Trump speeches, Tweets, interviews or recorded comments. For a fully referenced version of the poem please send the NITRB team an email!

My personal Vietnam – Donald Trump poetry

/ professorwu / 2 Comments

Do you like me? That’s an important question

You should like me,

You can make me look nice, handsome and thin,

Like Lady Di, she had the whole thing,

She had that skin…

 

What do I think of Kim?

I think he liked me and I liked him,

He’s a fat dotard,

A crazy little rocket man,

I admire him very much,

I said, “do me a favour”:

We got to cure AIDS so we can stop wearing rubbers

Because, vaginas are like landmines,

That whole thing

Is my personal Vietnam.

~ Anonymous 

 

A note on the above poem: 

All the lines of ‘My personal Vietnam’ are taken, verbatim, from Donald Trump speeches, Tweets, interviews or recorded comments. For a fully referenced version of the poem please send the NITRB team an email!

Book review: Bopper’s Progress by John Manderino

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It is a remarkable feat to read a book that follows a day in the life of a would-be Zen Buddhist, in essentially real-time, and come away feeling refreshed, lighter, hopeful and – perhaps – more zen. Yet this is precisely what John Manderino’s latest book, Bopper’s Progess, does.

Written in a fragmentary form, with our first person narrator setting an informal tone, we follow the trials and tribulations of the titular protagonist, Bopper, in his quest for enlightenment (though it turns out enlightenment may just be a stand in for getting over an ex).

The humour is excellent, the writing succinct, full of flavour and character – and the overall effect is rather like spending an evening with a very close friend talking casually as the sun sets about life, love, people you hate, people you miss, the furtive feelings that keep you up at night and the existential crises we try to ignore.

The simple tactic Manderino employs of writing in the present tense of course reflects one of Zen’s main teachings: that the present moment is what matters more than anything else. In our western relationship with time, in which we compulsively pick over the past in order to learn lessons from it, and then project into a hypothetical future in which those lessons can be applied, the present moment has been compressed to a tiny sliver on the clock face between a vast past and an infinite future.

Bopper, we see, is entirely consumed by this western approach to time: of pouring over the past so that it consumes his present. Yet in reading the book in our own present, a strange thing happens – our consciousness drifts (as should be the case when reading good fiction), and suddenly we are unaware of ourselves in the relationship between book and reader. Our empathy with Bopper transcends time and space – as well as our own egos.

It’s a brilliant thing – until, of course, you realise you are thinking about how you have just transcended the self (perhaps moving to the edge of enlightenment) and now you are thinking about thinking about that, and the whole thing collapses into an overdose of self-awareness.

At its heart, this is a book about trying to make sense of the world and in that way it truly is a book for our times, since we find ourselves living as we do in an era of political polarisation; with tyrants and despots in the highest echelons of world power, where previously firmly-held ‘truths’ or assumptions have been challenged or proven to be false. In a world of fake news and both traditional and social or disruptive media bias, it is increasingly difficult to tell fact from fiction.

Of course, the search for meaning in life is not new. Human beings have likely been searching for it since the dawn of consciousness. Though it likely remains true that the only thing that anyone really can know for sure is that nobody can ever know everything. What’s more, the more you study life and the world around you, the more you realise that everything is contradiction and paradox, and no one really knows much for sure, however loudly they profess to the contrary.

In both these ways, Boppers Progress speaks to something inseparable from ourselves and connects directly to our human spirit. We are all of us striving, in one way or another, for answers, perhaps to questions we don’t yet know we are asking.

Buy Bopper’s Progress from publisher Wundor Editions here https://wundor-store.myshopify.com/products/boppers-progress-by-john-manderino 

 

 

 

 

 

Ernest Hemingway’s letter of advice to F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Even the greatest writers need a little help and advice from time to time.

In 1934, shortly before noting his famed list of books every aspiring writer should read, Ernest Hemingway received a request for feedback and writerly advice from his long-time friend and fellow literary great, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Following a nine-year period in the literary wilderness, after struggling with severe addiction problems, Fitzgerald had just written Tender is the night, and turned to his old friend for feedback. Upon reading the work, Hemingway responded with detail, vigour, and no shortage of tough love.

Just as new writers can often need a little bit of timely counselling from their peers and mentors, so too, as Hemingway’s letter shows, can some of the finest and most established authors.

Full of sage and sobering advice, Hemingway’s letter offers fine writing tips and advice to writers of all ages and stages of their literary careers. You can read it here below.*

Key West
28 May 1934

Dear Scott:

I liked it and I didn’t. It started off with that marvelous description of Sara and Gerald (goddamn it Dos took it with him so I can’t refer to it. So if I make any mistakes—). Then you started fooling with them, making them come from things they didn’t come from, changing them into other people and you can’t do that, Scott. If you take real people and write about them you cannot give them other parents than they have (they are made by their parents and what happens to them) you cannot make them do anything they would not do. You can take you or me or Zelda or Pauline or Hadley or Sara or Gerald but you have to keep them the same and you can only make them do what they would do. You can’t make one be another. Invention is the finest thing but you cannot invent anything that would not actually happen.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best—make it all up—but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

Goddamn it you took liberties with peoples’ pasts and futures that produced not people but damned marvellously faked case histories. You, who can write better than anybody can, who are so lousy with talent that you have to—the hell with it. Scott for gods sake write and write truly no matter who or what it hurts but do not make these silly compromises. You could write a fine book about Gerald and Sara for instance if you knew enough about them and they would not have any feeling, except passing, if it were true.

There were wonderful places and nobody else nor none of the boys can write a good one half as good reading as one that doesn’t come out by you, but you cheated too damned much in this one. And you don’t need to.

In the first place I’ve always claimed that you can’t think. All right, we’ll admit you can think. But say you couldn’t think; then you ought to write, invent, out of what you know and keep the people’s antecedants straight. Second place, a long time ago you stopped listening except to the answers to your own questions. You had good stuff in too that it didn’t need. That’s what dries a writer up (we all dry up. That’s no insult to you in person) not listening. That is where it all comes from. Seeing, listening. You see well enough. But you stop listening.

It’s a lot better than I say. But it’s not as good as you can do.

You can study Clausewitz in the field and economics and psychology and nothing else will do you any bloody good once you are writing. We are like lousy damned acrobats but we make some mighty fine jumps, bo, and they have all these other acrobats that won’t jump.

For Christ sake write and don’t worry about what the boys will say nor whether it will be a masterpiece nor what. I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket. You feel you have to publish crap to make money to live and let live. All write but if you write enough and as well as you can there will be the same amount of masterpiece material (as we say at Yale). You can’t think well enough to sit down and write a deliberate masterpiece and if you could get rid of Seldes and those guys that nearly ruined you and turn them out as well as you can and let the spectators yell when it is good and hoot when it is not you would be all right.

Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it—don’t cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist—but don’t think anything is of any importance because it happens to you or anyone belonging to you.

About this time I wouldn’t blame you if you gave me a burst. Jesus it’s marvellous to tell other people how to write, live, die etc.

I’d like to see you and talk about things with you sober. You were so damned stinking in N.Y. we didn’t get anywhere. You see, Bo, you’re not a tragic character. Neither am I. All we are is writers and what we should do is write. Of all people on earth you needed discipline in your work and instead you marry someone who is jealous of your work, wants to compete with you and ruins you. It’s not as simple as that and I thought Zelda was crazy the first time I met her and you complicated it even more by being in love with her and, of course you’re a rummy. But you’re no more of a rummy than Joyce is and most good writers are. But Scott, good writers always come back. Always. You are twice as good now as you were at the time you think you were so marvellous. You know I never thought so much of Gatsby at the time. You can write twice as well now as you ever could. All you need to do is write truly and not care about what the fate of it is.

Go on and write.

Anyway I’m damned fond of you and I’d like to have a chance to talk sometimes. We had good times talking. Remember that guy we went out to see dying in Neuilly? He was down here this winter. Damned nice guy Canby Chambers. Saw a lot of Dos. He’s in good shape now and he was plenty sick this time last year. How is Scotty and Zelda? Pauline sends her love. We’re all fine. She’s going up to Piggott for a couple of weeks with Patrick. Then bring Bumby back. We have a fine boat. Am going good on a very long story. Hard one to write.

Always your friend

Ernest

  • Please note: Hemingway’s spelling is shown accurately. For example, he twice wrote “write” where, presumably, he meant “right.”

Ever wanted to run your own bookstore by the sea? Now you can!

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Bookshelf catering: your chance to run your own bookstore by the sea. Photograph by Mike Dodson/Vagabond Images.

For many litterateurs and book lovers, the prospect of running your own book store may sound a little bit like a far-fetched fantasy. Yet, thanks to the disruptive influence of AirBnB and a clever marketing gimmick, those who long to while away days amongst the bookshelves of a small independent book store can now do just that.

Founded by American Jessica Fox in the small Scottish town of Wigtown, ‘the Open Book’ offers holiday makers the chance to run their own bookshop during stints of up to two weeks.

Described as Scotland’s ‘Book town’, Wigtown has a population of just 900; but is served by 16 different bookshops. The perfect location, then, for such those looking for a “bookshelf” catering retreat.

“The bookshop residency’s aim is to celebrate bookshops, encourage education in running independent bookshops and welcome people around the world to Scotland’s national book town,” says the AirBnB listing.

Guests staying at The Open Book will be expected to sell books for 40 hours a week while living in the flat above the shop. Given training in bookselling from Wigtown’s community of booksellers, they will also have the opportunity to put their “own stamp” on the store while they’re there – arranging new window displays, as well as organising book readings and events.

You can follow the adventures of The Open Book’s residents via the bookshop’s Tumblr page.

 

Creatives in profile: interview with Anna Saunders

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Are there any sights more cheering than crowds of readers tramping across a field carrying books, or sitting under canopies discussing the minutiae of a single line of poetry, or a page of fiction? Increasingly, we live in such a fast-paced world that leaves precious little room for these acts of literary activity (for ‘activity’, may we read instead, ‘rebellion’?). Instead of thinking about Tennyson, or Eliot or Woolf or Plath, we must spend our days flicking through the endless annals of social media; while corporations pipe endless Muzak into our ears and other orifices, and we slave away for 80 hours a week for stagnating wages, just so we can afford the shiny and colourful things advertising billboards and signs on every public surface insist we must purchase immediately.

In such a world, events that enable literary conversations and communion to flourish are, therefore, to be cherished. It is an honour, therefore, to bring you the following interview with Anna Saunders – founder of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival.

Anna is the author of Communion, (Wild Conversations Press), Struck, (Pindrop Press) Kissing the She Bear, (Wild Conversations Press), Burne Jones and the Fox ( Indigo Dreams) and the Ghosting for Beginners ( Indigo Dreams, Spring 2018 ) described as ‘ a beautifully evocative read’ by Fiona Sampson.

She  has had poems published in journals and anthologies, which include Ambit, The North, New Walk Magazine, Amaryllis, Iota, Caduceus, Envoi, The Wenlock Anthology, Eyeflash,  and The Museum of Light.

Described as ‘a poet who surely can do anything’ by The North, ‘a modern myth maker’ by Paul Stephenson and as  ‘a poet of quite remarkable gifts’ by Bernard O’Donoghue, Anna founded the Cheltenham Poetry Festival in 2010 as an all-singing, all-dancing festival – one that fuses poetry and music, film, drama and visual art. Most importantly of all – it helps brings creatives together (which is where they belong, if you ask us).

INTERVIEWER

Tell us about yourself, where you live and your background/lifestyle

SAUNDERS

I live in Cheltenham in Gloucestershire though originally come from Hoylake – a coastal town not far from Liverpool. I am lucky to be able to go ‘home’ often and enjoy the vibrant cultural life of Liverpool, and walks along the shore, as well as having a home in the heart of the Cotswolds.

I come from a family of journalists and writers – one boss said I had ‘ink in my blood’. Most of my life has revolved around the literary arts; consuming or producing them. I am a poet, author of 5 collections of poetry and the Founding Director of Cheltenham Poetry Festival, I also teach creative writing.

INTERVIEWER

Is writing your first love, or do you have another passion?

SAUNDERS

I love any immersive experience – walking by the sea, watching live music, reading, going to the theatre, spending time with people who inspire me.

Running a poetry festival is a great joy too – it’s exhilarating to have a creative vision and see it come to fruition. I really enjoy ‘poet shopping’ when I am building the programme. It’s always a thrill to bring your literary idols to town. Last year for example I booked Matthew Sweeney, whose work I’ve always greatly admired;I programmed Kathy Towers, Sasha Dugdale, Fiona Sampson and Wayne Holloway Smith, too. It was a thrill to meet them all and I felt a little star struck.

INTERVIEWER

When you write – be it poetry or fiction – how much of the finished manuscript is in your mind when you start out?

SAUNDERS

When I started writing my last two collections, I had some idea of the shape of the books, or at least their driving themes.

Burne Jones and the Fox (Indigo Dreams) was inspired by a love affair between Maria Zambaco and the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne Jones, I tell the story of their intensive and destructive love affair through a series of poems, the collection also explores what I see as the duality within us – between the feral and the civilized, the artist and the fox.  Ghosting for Beginners also has a consistent theme – i.e. what ‘haunts’ us for good or bad.  I guess both these books are like concept albums!

INTERVIEWER

Joyce Carol Oates once said that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they’re actually trying to find out “are they as crazy as I am?” Do you have any particularly crazy writing habits?

SAUNDERS

I usually have to write first drafts on rough scrappy paper – ideally without lines! I do a lot of walking around, muttering to myself – is that crazy enough?

INTERVIEWER

For all writing, the importance of finding the right ‘voice’ is of course crucial. What voice does Anna Saunders, poet, speak with?

SAUNDERS

I have been told I ‘write like an American’ –perhaps that’s because of my direct, ostensibly conversational voice. Rory Waterman said my work was ‘superbly imagistic’ which was a huge compliment – I aim to empower my work with the use of potent images, and of course I use legend, and classic narratives.Paul Stephenson called me a ‘modern myth maker’.

INTERVIEWER

Does your reading affect what you write?

SAUNDERS

Yes – absolutely. I read a lot of poetry and while I am writing I keep dipping into books. It’s impossible for me to write well without reading, it’s like needing to hear the music before you start to dance.

INTERVIEWER

Looking around at current trends in poetry, what are your thoughts and feelings on the ‘poetry industry’. If we can define it thus. And how would you advise aspiring poets to break out onto the ‘poetry scene’?

SAUNDERS

I think the poetry scene is thriving.  We’ve seen a huge increase in audiences at Cheltenham Poetry Festival and poetry book buying has surged too. There seem to be some incredibly talented spoken word artists and poets emerging daily and I am completely in awe of the work being published by Nine Arches, Indigo Dreams, Bloodaxe, V Press, Seren and other publishers. It is, however, a really competitive industry – and the route to publication can be a convoluted one! I’d advise aspiring poets to read copious amounts, study craft, write every day and keep their eye on journals and on line publications, keep submitting and build up that CV so they can meet the requirements of the publishing houses.

Though having said all that – it should be all about the creative act really, rather than public success. As Virginia Woolf said ‘writing is the most profound pleasure, being read the superficial!’

INTERVIEWER

Can you talk to us about the ethos behind the Cheltenham Poetry Festival – is it important, do you feel, to bring writers and creatives together?

SAUNDERS

I think the Guardian put it perfectly when they described the Festival as ‘a poetry party with a healthy dose of anarchy’ – we try to have a punk spirit; and be questioning, free thinking and speak out against the system from time to time.

We are serious about poetry, but like to have a good time too.  There is a great buzz when the festival runs – with audiences getting the chance to hang with some of our greatest living writers. Since the festival kicked off in 2011 we’ve been lucky enough to enjoy performances by some stellar names– they include John Cooper Clarke, Fiona Sampson, Owen Sheers, John Hegley, Hollie McNish, Don Patterson, Clare Pollard, Matthew Sweeney, Murray Lachlan Young, Jacob Polley– to name just a few. And yes, it’s incredibly inspiring for creatives to meet the writers they admire.

INTERVIEWER

James Joyce argued poetry was “always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.” In the modern world, ‘actuality’ is increasingly hard to define – with reality often seeming more fictitious than fiction and beyond the imagination of mainstream culture. How does poetry revolt against actuality in a reality increasingly ‘false’? And what role can poetry play in protest and activism – specifically protest and revolt against current dictats of ‘reality’?

SAUNDERS

My recent work has been inspired by events on the world stage, politics and the crisis of austerity – but I try use dark humour and some aesthetic beauty to address these subjects.

I have found it increasingly difficult to turn away from some of the horrors we are experiencing due to governmental decisions.

I am working on a new book which uses figures from Greek and Roman myth to explore contemporary issues – in one of the poems Persephone goes on Question Time to interrogate Hades, who has abducted her and taken her into the underworld to starve – a great metaphor for the punitive measures of austerity.

INTERVIEWER

Could you give us your top ten writing tips for writers?

SAUNDERS

  1. Read widely and copiously – not just the poets you admire but the ones you find challenging, even dislike. Study the craft. We can learn so much from the writers we love or even loathe.
  2. Ignore the Inner Critic – give yourself time to free write – set a timer and just let your ink flow for 10, 15 minutes – let your imagination have free reign, don’t stop to correct spelling or punctuation. Write wild.  Your most exciting ideas can emerge this way.
  3. Write regularly. Keep your appointment with the page and the muse will know when to show up.
  4. Keep a journal, or a writers notebook – open your eyes and ears to what is around you. Get in the habit of being a word magpie and steal conversations, quotes, scenes from around you and get them on the page.
  5. Use a mixture of Latinate and Anglo Saxon language. Too much of the first and your work may seem overwritten and too much of the latter, and it may not sing.
  6. Edit. As Hemingway said ‘first drafts are shit’. Revise, redraft again and again.
  7. Avoid clichés and tired expressions. Avoid abstract nouns and excessive use of adjectives.
  8. Listen to feedback and accept intelligent critiques of your work if they help your hone your craft.  Embrace any opportunities to learn ( I studied for a Masters in Creative Writing).
  9. Take risks, believe in your vision, keep going.
  10.  Ignore all advice. Except this advice.

 

Creatives in profile: interview with Michael Caines, co-editor of the Brixton Review of Books

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It increasingly appears as though we live in an era where the biggest publishing companies and media organisations are only concerned with stabilising profits for shareholders – and are prioritising making money over supporting originality and new creative ideas.

With the largest corporations influencing so much of the culture we consume, this has the potential to limit us to a devastating cycle of reboots, sequels, prequels and franchises; where the only novels we read are copies of novels that are themselves copies of commercially successful novels. This risk-averse and profit-focussed approach in turn risks homogenising our culture; and limiting our exposure to new ways of thinking.

Yet there are reasons to hope. Across the world, new creative ideas are being put to seed – supported by groups of energetic and enthusiastic individuals.

We caught up with the team behind one such creative endeavour: the Brixton Review of Books, a new literary quarterly magazine – published by a team of creative volunteers who help ensure the magazine remains completely free to readers (though you can also have four copies delivered straight to your door for a tenner).

It’s an honour to bring you this detailed interview with Michael Caines, co-editor of the Brixton Review of Books. Caines also works at the Times Literary Supplement, and is the author of Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century and a founder member of the Liars League.

INTERVIEWER

Tell us about yourself, your background and ethos.

CAINES

I’m an editor on the Times Literary Supplement by day and a layabout by night. I write the odd review, and the odder poem as a private distraction, and have made limited forays into academia, such as writing a book about Shakespeare and the eighteenth century, and editing some plays by female dramatists of the same period. Brigid Brophy and T. F. Powys are among my more recherché hobbyhorses, although I’d argue, of course, with the tedious fervor of the true acolyte, that both should be more widely known that they are at present.

INTERVIEWER

Who inspires you?

CAINES

Brigid Brophy and T. F. Powys. Jane Austen. William Makepeace Thackeray. Anne Thackeray Ritchie. Vernon Lee. Sylvia Townsend Warner. Ronald Firbank. Italo Calvino. Alberto Moravia. Christine Brooke-Rose. The Oulipians. Marguerite Youcenar. Penelope Fitzgerald. Michael Haslam. Lorrie Moore. Peter Reading. Weldon Kees. Elizabeth Bowen. Elizabeth Bishop. Henry Green. Nicholas Mosley. Stewart Home. It’s an incoherent set of influences, I grant you. Yes, they are, some of them, names off the top of my head. There are others who will come to me later. More seriously, there are others who are mainly TLS editors, of infernally greater mental powers than me – damn their eyes.

INTERVIEWER

Can you tell us a bit about Brixton Review of Books – how was it borne into existence?

CAINES

It’s an experiment, you might say:  people take all kinds of free newspapers and magazines at tube stations around London, but might some of them take a free literary paper made up of long reads rather than short ones? There are some obvious and quite brilliant models – such as the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books and the TLS itself – to which I suppose the BRB pays the impudent homage of imitation, while paradoxically trying to do its own thing at the same time. I hope for some readers the BRB will serve merely as a suggestion of what’s to come if they aren’t already readers of one of those other, infinitely more prestigious publications. This particular literary newspaper is free, though, and available to all who pass a tube station at the right time, or spots it in a café, bar, bookshop, library, gallery, waiting room etc (the kind of places to which we’re also distributing it).

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The Brixton Review of Books – look out for a copy at tube stations around London.

INTERVIEWER

It’s no easy feat to bring a new independent literary magazine into existence. What are some of the main challenges you faced in establishing Brixton Review of Books?

CAINES

Well, for the most part, I put together the first issue by myself, and I enjoyed that a great deal. But it’s a relief to have a small team working on the paper from here on.

Then there’s the money. This “experiment” wouldn’t be happening at all if it weren’t for the generosity of the Literature Matters awards established by the Royal Society of Literature. They gave the BRB the funds and the endorsement to get things going.

Thirdly, there’s usually some agony with the administrative side of these things, such as subscriber copies going astray in the post.

And I also worried for a time that the first issue would be universally despised and scorned and laughed out of existence. That hasn’t happened . . . yet . . . that I know of.

INTERVIEWER

What, do you think, are the biggest opportunities for independent writers and artists within the publishing sector?

CAINES

I suppose there’s a sense in which all writers and artists are (or ought to be) independent, assuming that all trade on some inalienable, intrinsic idiosyncratic approach to their work. Some are just more obviously amenable to the established trade publishers than others, perhaps, and therefore able to cut some kind of a deal. It depends on what a writer or artist truly wants. Publication can mean many things – this airport novel or that pentagonal limited edition with unique perfumes embedded in every leaf – but maybe there’s a mode of publication to suit all tastes. So I suppose the opportunity is out there, and the challenge is finding the right one.

INTERVIEWER

In an era of digital content and e-zines, as well as ‘fake news’ and social media; what role do printed publications like Brixton Review of Books have to play?

CAINES

I’m one of those people – it’s not just me, I hope – who stare at screens for a large portion of the working day but love print. I think I even mean that I can love the material book as a work of art, and reading online, necessary though it often is, forms an instructive contrast to that art. But, er, in less hilfalutin terms, I hope that reading the BRB, or any newspaper or printed work on paper, is simply a change from reading on a screen, and being continuously poked in the eye by electric light.

INTERVIEWER

As editors, do you feel any ethical responsibility for the content you publish?

CAINES

Absolutely – although I tend to mistake ethical responsibility, in this context, for aesthetic responsibility. The two are so easily confused, don’t you think?

INTERVIEWER

Julian Barnes has stated that the problem with the big publishing companies is that they are too risk averse: they are only willing to “publish novels that are copies of other successful novels”. Do you think that independent magazines have a duty to champion independent voices of authors and essayists whose writing may never be given a chance by the bigger companies in the sector?

CAINES

Perhaps, unfortunately, the indie economy as a whole doesn’t have much say in the matter. But either way, I guess that there are plenty of writers temperamentally too rich for the mainstream, and who flourish in indie magazines and in the literary communities to which those magazines belong. But it depends on the magazine’s character. There seem to be some indies that seem to embrace underground-ness, and others that nurture more commercially lofty ambitions. There’s room in the world for both, I hope.

Regarding an aversion to risk: beyond the world of books, some big companies run (what I think they call) “accelerators”, designed to promote and invest in innovation, because innovation is precisely what big companies, for the most part, don’t do well. It’s interesting that so many big publishers, for their part, now run nimble, pseudo-indie imprints, which are arguably meant to play a similar role. The real indies, meanwhile, don’t necessarily receive the recognition and remuneration they deserve – but that inability to er realize an investment may be a further mark of their indie-ness.

INTERVIEWER

The future of literature; of writing – and indeed the future of publishing – are all frequently discussed at great lengths. What are your thoughts on current industry trends – where are we heading?

CAINES

I’m no industry guru. So rather than second-guess the future, may I instead offer you a naïve wish-list?

1) That the books business gets over its daft dependency on the insipid drug that is literary prize culture.

2) That the indie scene flourishes in perpetuity.

4) (3 was unprintable, even online, and was basically a curse on reviewers who think their duty is to their pals in the business rather than their readers.) That somebody in television works out how to make a show about books again.

5) That Amazon mends its ways.

(Well, I did say “naïve” . . . .)

INTERVIEWER

How would you define creativity?

CAINES

A terrible problem we all have to deal with, but some of us are more successful at banishing it than others, poor souls, who have to slog out their guts over “novels” and “villanelles” and the like. Pity them in their enslavement to the myth of art!

Sorry, what was the question again?

INTERVIEWER

Can you tell us a little about your editorial and submissions process? How can aspiring writers get involved?

CAINES

For the most part, we’re commissioning reviews, and trying to come up with an eclectic mixture of voices: younger writers and worn-hoarse-by-time-but-very-much-still-worth-hearing, from different backgrounds, with varying interests. We have three months between issues, and it’s the middle month when things start to get serious – when deadlines becoming more deadly serious/merely deadening etc. I hope we’ll be trying out new writers (writers new to us at least) in every issue, albeit probably not as many as we’d like. The budget isn’t limitless, and dependent to an extent on advertising. Aspiring writers are welcome to get their moneybags mates to take out full-page ads in every issue.

INTERVIEWER

What advice would you give to authors thinking of submitting their work to BRoB – or other publications?

CAINES

We’re only publishing four issues a year, and most of those issues will be full of reviews. We’re planning to run poetry in every issue, and maybe some fiction from time to time. So with expectations suitably lowered, I hope, I suggest that anybody who’s still interested check out our website, then drop us a line and declare some area of especial expertise or even enthusiasm.

I’m not so interested in “pitches” for particular books, incidentally. I’m not ruling them out altogether, but pitches can sometimes seem a little intellectually suspect: it’s not that I sense outright cronyism in every e-mail; rather that I wonder if the would-be reviewer has already made up their mind about the book, whether they’ve read it yet or not. So the result may be fine, terrific even, but can also feel shop-bought and stale rather than nattily bespoke.

INTERVIEWER

What’s next for Brixton Review of Books? What should we look out for?

CAINES

In the not-too-distant future, we’ll do the decent thing and expand the website to look proper n all. We’re hoping to put on a few bookish events around town. (Go on, guess which part of town. Go on!) And there are going to be some good things in the paper itself later in the year. I’m very much hoping, for example, that a few writers with Brixton connections are going to give us little stories about their personal experiences here. That’d be an acceptably educational digression from reviewing books, I hope.

INTERVIEWER

Could you write us a story in six words?

CAINES

Joan arrived, kicked ass – and left.

INTERVIEWER

What are your 5 – 10 top tips for aspiring writers and artists?

CAINES

I’m still aspiring myself, and must stock up on gnomic tips for these occasions. Revise until it looks like you haven’t. Remember style is the ultimate expression of substance. Read New Grub Street. Um. Don’t automatically “um” in the presence of uncertainty? And I’ll get back to you when I’ve thought of a fifth. . . .

 

Dr Chuck Tingle’s writing tips for writers

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Good writing advice is hard to find. We’ve previously compiled various collections of writing tips from some of literature’s greatest minds; but we’re always looking to go one step further. As writers and creatives, our learning is built on the mentoring and advice of our peers and our mentors. The imparted knowledge they can share with us part of a long-standing tradition within the arts of helping one another to express ourselves.

Of course, the best type of writing advice is that which transcends the topic and becomes advice not just to inspire our best creative work; but also becomes advice by which we can live by, day-to-day.

Where can one find such advice, we hear you ask? Well, right here in this article, friendos!

In April 2018, we were honoured to interview Dr Chuck Tingle as part of our ‘Creatives in Profile’ series. The Hugo Award-shortlisted author of Space Raptor Butt Invasion and My Billionaire Triceratops Craves Gay Ass, and self-proclaimed as the “greatest author in the world” during one of the most incredible Reddit AMAs to date,  Dr Chuck Tingle provided some tip-top advice to keep in mind when writing a book (and it doesn’t have anything to do with word counts). He explained:

“most important thing to keep in mind when making all things as ARTISTIC BUCKAROO is to prove love that is only thing that matters really everything else is just decoration. there are so many ways to prove love so there are lots of options, but it is very important to REMEMBER that only rule for all layers of the tingleverse is that love is real this is consistant across all timelines.”

On the subject of creativity, and what it means to be creative, Tingle opines:

“being creative is just being yourself and trotting with YOUR OWN unique way. just waking up in the morning and stetching your bones is creative because every moment is making infinate timelines. you are so powerful in your way because for every decision there are so many new worlds spinning off and if that isnt dang creative i dont know what is thanks”

 

10 writing tips from Dr Chuck Tingle

Alongside his other timeless advice for writers, creatives, and just all-round human beings – Tingle also provided us with a short list of more prescriptive pieces of advice for writers. Read them below:

  1. drink chocolate milk buddy not that sick water throw that out
  2. you are important and so is your way. this is already a story that can be told
  3. the void is not worth your curiostiy
  4. listen to your buds
  5. there is something to learn from traditional horseplay and there is something to be learned from modern trots. respect both
  6. dont try to tell people what art is you will always be wrong
  7. there is not very much that separates you from a big timers sometimes it is hard work and sometimes it is luck but its almost never talent
  8. spend time with your family
  9. have gratitude if you dont youll look like a goofball and youll feel like one too
  10. prove love always

Book Review: ‘Scratch’ by Steve Himmer

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A forest can be a spooky place. It may seem lush and inviting to an urban dweller, but it’s not as welcoming as it seems. It’s easy to imagine that there might be things in the thickest part of the forest that are quite beyond our knowledge, watching and waiting.

This novella begins uncannily enough, with the narrator urging the reader to join him in the shape of a coyote. Afterwards the reader is present in the narrative as you press your coyote nose against the windows of the human characters.

The lead character is a big city property developer building a housing estate in rural New England. Martin dreams of building the suburban home that he never had during his rootless childhood, living in a trailer on site and planning to settle in one of the houses he builds. One morning, our hero wonders into the new England forest on a whim, straight into a revenant style bear attack. After staggering back to civilisation relatively unscathed, he hears the local legend of Scratch. Scratch is a local bogeyman and shapeshifter that the locals blame for various small misfortunes. A series of strange events occur around the town and it seems Scratch may be more than a myth.

Himmer’s writing is conversational and effortless, picking out the rhythms of small town life, Martin’s yearnings and the timeless patterns of the forest with equal ease.

It’s literary fiction with a supernatural edge. It starts slowly, but it comes to life gradually and by the end I was reading hungrily up until the chilling final sequence. The narrator’s strange presence in the story creates a feeling of being watched and of inevitable disaster. It become clear from the way they address the reader knowingly that they aren’t quite human.

This attractive volume from Wundor editions is Steve Himmer’s third book, all of which have links to nature and the outdoors. This is an intriguing and unsettling little novel, worth reading.

To purchase a copy of ‘Scratch’ visit Wundor Editions https://wundor-store.myshopify.com/products/scratch-by-steve-himmer

About the reviewer

tandrewsTom Andrews is a Genetics graduate and book lover based in Somerset. He has previously attempted music and game reviews. He tweets at @jerevendrai