UEA CREATIVE WRITING ANTHOLOGY, 2009

You are cordially invited to the launch of the UEA CREATIVE WRITING ANTHOLOGY, 2009. Attend and get your copy at a reduced price ahead of the official release on OCT 31st.

NORWICH Launch:
Tuesday October 13th, 7:00pm
UEA Drama Studio
UEA Campus
Norwich
NR4 7TJ

MAP

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LONDON Launch:
Thursday October 15th, 7:30pm
Basement Bar
Slug & Lettuce
North Block (1-63)
5 Chicheley Street
Lambeth SE1 7PJ

MAP

UEA is proud to announce two new anthologies of work from their world-renowned creative writing MA. The UEA CREATIVE WRITING ANTHOLOGY: PROSE features a foreword by alumna Tracy Chevalier and introductions from Kathryn Hughes, Andrew Cowan and Val Taylor. It showcases thirty talented new writers from the Prose, Scriptwriting and Lifewriting strands as they lead us through the musings of a hairstylist, the birth of a snow child, and the fjords of Norway telling fine tales of refugees, lovers and Republican bloggers along the way.

The UEA CREATIVE WRITNG ANTHOLOGY: EIGHT NEW POETS is introduced by prize-wining poets Lavinia Greenlaw and George Szirtes and brings together eight fresh and fine new voices from all around the world (Australia, Bermuda, Greece, Hong Kong, New Mexico, and the UK) – some already being heard and heralded.

“UEA has a knack of discovering writers with a distinctive voice – in this case 40 distinctive voices – and these latest anthologies prove that standards remain high. Thoughtful prose, considered poetry, provocative stories that stay in the mind, extracts from novels that make one long for the finished book. Read them and sample the future.” – John Boyne, 2009

The MA has produced numerous impressive and prize-winning alumni, including Ian McEwan, Anne Enright, Tracy Chevalier, Kazuo Ishiguro, Adam Foulds, John Boyne, Kathryn Simmonds, Diana Evans, Trezza Azzopardi, Owen Sheers, Toby Litt and Deirdre Madden.

THERE ARE TWO LAUNCH EVENTS, ONE IN NORWICH AND ONE IN LONDON, FOR BOTH ANTHOLOGIES

Copies are available online now.
Facebook event info here.

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PS I will be back blogging properly soon...

Crasher Squirrel War: Victory!

I bring joyful news from the frontline. Yesterday I received notification from Warren Kinsella that he has accepted our demands and as a result peace has been declared. At heart a decent, noble individual, Kinsella posted on his blog on the bright morning of August 19th a note ceding all claims of ownership of the disputed squirrel to me. I am therefore announcing an end to all hostilities and have called off our forces. All military operations will now cease.

I would like to distance myself from a hurricane that ravaged Toronto recently. I claim no responsibility, but wonder whether or not I have powerful friends.

We may now allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing. Yet we must remember that Mashable, in all its might, remains unsubdued and unswayed in its wrong-headedness. My number two squirrel champion of all the internets is still mistakenly attributed. Remain vigilant. [NB: since writing, they have updated their website and it is now *correctly* attributed -- friends, we continue to triumph in peacetime!]

However, as I survey the battlefield; the fallen, the wounded, I wonder: was it worth it? Was this victory worth the struggle; worth the pain and the great losses on both sides? In all this destructive madness, in all this focus on a squirrel, what have we missed? I forgot, in the fury of conflict, for example, that, among other things, three posts ago was my 100th post on this blog. A milestone that seemed trivial at the time.

Regardless, today I am happy. Usain Bolt was inspirational last night. Today the cricket has been joyful. Spurs are winning football matches and the Launch of Stop Sharpening Your Knives 3 went very well on Wednesday (more about this soon).

And you know it wasn't even a real squirrel. It was a bloody Marmot.

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PS. Some people have been asking for t-shirts of the protest crasher squirrel my brother created as well as my Last Supper Crasher Squirrel and Yalta Crasher Squirrel efforts. I am thinking about this. In the meantime, some bright spark has devised a way for you to make your own pic. Why not do so now, to celebrate this fine day?

PPS. I now find my Last Supper Crasher Squirrel on the Daily Mirror Website, under 'Surprise Squirrel' ... hurrah!

Crasher Squirrel on CNN

I bring you an update from the frontline. My demands are slight: a link from his website to return my little squirrel to its rightful owner. Then perhaps a supportive effort to have the Mashable link so changed, but this is secondary.

Already, I bring happy news in our continuing struggle. CNN have featured the Crasher Squirrel Craze and in their footage is a little clip of my 'Last Supper, Crashed' -- properly mentioned as originating on Buzz Feed. This a small victory, but it brings us joy nonetheless. The fact that it is news is perhaps a greater tragedy than any, but let that not distract us from our prize for the moment...

Here is the footage so that you might all share in the glory...

Declaration of War Against Warren Kinsella

I am speaking to you from my living room in Norwich. Last week I, in email form, handed WARREN KINSELLA a final note stating that, unless I heard from him by the end of Monday this week that he was prepared, at once, to correctly attribute my picture of a squirrel, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that, consequently, this blog is at war with WARREN KINSELLA.

You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe there was anything more, or anything different that I could have done and that would have been more successful. Up to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honourable settlement between Kinsella and myself. But Kinsella would not have it ...

A situation in which no photoshopped squirrel could feel itself safe had become intolerable. And now that I have resolved to finish it, I know that you will all play your part with calmness and courage.

When Warren Kinsella Stole My Crasher Squirrel

on the dangers of social media -- a sorry tale of shifty interwebbery...

You'll possibly be aware of the spread of the brief Crasher Squirrel craze: a Canadian squirrel interrupted a holiday snap, with amusing results. This filled the popular 'caprice plus cute animal doing something surprising/stupid' niche of internet trash and so instantly lots of people have been photoshopping it and a number of newspapers have reported it, keen to seem cutting edge and internet savvy.

As am I. So I added a couple of my own.

Last Supper Crashed

Yalta Conference Crashed



What can I say? I'm a sucker for internet tosh. It's actually not the best of memes and might well die a death soon: after I Can Has Cheezeburger cornered the market a few years ago with lolcat -- kitteh photos combined with oddly translated-Japanese-sounding words, and the occasional incongruous seal talking about a bucket -- anything else in this species seems a little tired. It is also more than a little Dramatic Chipmunk. I've already spotted bad T-Shirts on offer, which rather proves it an instant cliche. (The universal symbol of crappy entreprenurial endeavour: whatever happens, wherever, someone has a dodgy cart nearby selling a bad T-Shirt about it.)

However, I love my squirrels. They are my trashy little internet creations.

And so I feel it my duty to report a villainous ruse to deny me some limelight.

I originally posted my little squirrels doing stupid things here, at Buzz Feed. Again, what can I say? It was 2:30 in the morning, I was drunk...

When I awoke later that day, I spotted that Mashable had featured the top 10 Crasher Squirrel Pics. Naturally keen to follow the spread of this intriguing cultural phenomenon, I clicked through to read the article.

Alongside some slightly more lame efforts, there he was! My slightly less lame little squirrel! Number 2 champion of all the internets! Seen by perhaps tens, or hundreds of thousands of people. But, what's this? What does it say here? "Via Warren Kinsella?" Who's he? Who the HELL is Warren Kinsella?! So, I looked, and... the nefarious git stole my squirrel! Look. No mention of getting it from BuzzFeed, and he gets his name on Mashable... oh no, that is too much. That is just wrong.

Now, it could be attributable to the theory of monkeys typing. But I fear not. It is exactly the same photo -- see here also. I clearly remember concentrating fiercely through my beery haze, perhaps with my tongue out, spending a good deal of time on trying to line up the squirrel in the picture so that the lighting worked perfectly. (Yes, I know.) As well as trying to get the old photo fuzziness just right on the other. (What can I say?) I also have the originals, as I wanted to use them as a desktop (an idea I correctly dismissed as ridiculous the next morning, after a contemplative cup of tea).

Look, it's not like I didn't have anything better to do. Like sleeping. In fact, I'm actually quite a busy guy... but I felt it important to contribute something concerning tree-dwelling rodentia to the world at 2:30 on a Thursday night/Friday morning. My inner squirrel needed to be expressed.

But, oh villainy! After generously donating my little crasher squirrel pic to the cultural trash heap of human endeavour, to see it lazily nabbed [well, mistakenly unlinked to/uncredited] by another stabs my warm heart deep with an icy shard of interweb evil. It is like someone else's Dad taking credit for my child scoring a goal in the FA Cup Final.

Anyway, on Warren Kinsella's Twitter page, he says he likes a scrap. Well, Mr. Kinsella, I'll give you one. I want my squirrel back, you muttha... this is war! My name is Curiosa. Writer of a sometimes read blog. Owner of a borrowed squirrel. And I shall have my vengence...

On second thoughts, perhaps I should use this as an important opportunity for growth and move on. Maybe I'll add a few more photos while I'm at it... perhaps with some funny text... and perhaps I should get a t-shirt done... or, no, I know, one of Mohammed -- that's bound to piss someone off...

Swine Flu Pandemic Shocker Death Oh My God

"Just the facts, ma'am."

I only seem to have time to update this when I am ill. And I am ill. And, naturally, because of the headlines, because I am grumpy and ill, I think I must be about to die of pig flu. Well, actually, no, I don't, for I have read a little bit about biology, and have a smattering of knowledge about biological systems, and I know the difference between a cold and full-blown influenza A, so I am immune to the media and their games...

Oh, but a famous person got it. This must make it serious. Just like poor Rupert Grint, I also have a sore throat and have been in bed for a few days. Perhaps I *do* have swine flu. I think this brings us closer together, Rupert and I. I feel briefly dusted by the magic of his ginger celebrity. Perhaps the very viruses that are in me now are the direct descendants of microbes that previously ravaged the throat and lungs of a Harry Potter star. Perhaps we have briefly harboured similar DNA. This actually raises me up the ontological league table. Oh happy day! And, because a celebrity had it too, this swine flu, this somehow makes my suffering more real. Rubbish. Get lost, Daily Telegraph, and get lost, Anita Singh. You, lazy pig farmer editors: you are the curse of this age!

Illness can be good, too. Not only because it gives me time to update my blog. Illness also, as wise philosopher sages have said, lets you know you are actually alive -- if this universe were all just a solipsistic fantasy, why would I think to create illness? I am ill, therefore I am. I'd have to be a bit of a twisted sod to torture myself with.... oh. Well, that's what gets me out of bed in the morning. Or, hang on...

Importantly, however, and my reason for blogging to you, oh world, is that this illness and fever has led me to a new amazing breakthrough scientific conclusion: the uncontrollable and potentially deadly pandemic of swine flu is not linked to a poorly maintained muggy pig grave in a Mexican desert. Oh no, sirs and madams. It is instead an irrefutable by-product of the uncontrollable levels of spam on the internets.

Consider the evidence: spam has been increasing steadily. So has swine flu. People are exposed to high levels of spam everywhere. On Thursday I read a poem about spam, and on Friday night I began the long process of deleting all my spam messages on Facebook: I was ill by Saturday. Swine flu started with pigs. And, as we all know, spam is made from dead pig. I rest my case. And all this aided and abetted by bad-journalist-pig-farmers troughing out the latest bit of celebrity garbage; slowly turning all newspaper content into yet more spam...

Socrates, long legged, bearded, and reclined at a Symposium coffee break one afternoon, picks up a tabloid newspaper, mid-thought, while considering contemporary society: 'Swine Flu Pandemic', he reads. He might well pause for a smirk.

Egg Box & Landfill Reading

Daniel Kane and Jeff Hilson
Poetry Reading at UEA

The Time: Friday 29th May, 6pm
The Place: Room A3.02 (Arts)

On 29th May, former American Studies lecturer Daniel Kane is fluttering back into the UEA habitat to read from his new collection, the funny, edgy and risk-taking _Ostentation of Peacocks_, published by Norwich-based Egg Box Publishing. Alongside Daniel will be fellow poetic ornithologist, Jeff Hilson, whose acclaimed sequence _Bird bird_ was published this year by Landfill Press. The readings will be introduced by Egg Box editor and publisher Nathan Hamilton, and followed by a discussion with the poets introduced by Telegraph critic and Landfill editor, Jeremy Noel-Tod.

About the poets:

Daniel Kane was born in New York City and grew up in Manila; Mexico City; London; Tenafly, New Jersey; and New York City. He is currently a senior lecturer in American literature at the University of Sussex. His poetry has been widely published, most recently in the London Review of Books.

Jeff Hilson is senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Roehampton University. He runs the Crossing the Line reading series in London, and is the editor of _The Reality Street Book of the Sonnet_, described by Ron Silliman as 'flat out the best book of its kind I have ever seen'.

Here is a sample of _Ostentation of Peacocks_ for you to enjoy. If you can't make it, be sure to buy your copy here. Copies of both publications will be available at the reading, along with a free glass of wine and a sneak preview of Egg Box's next offering: Vahni Capildeo's eagerly-anticipated second collection _Undraining Sea_. We will look forward to seeing you there.

Jeff Hilson's blog.

Please to internet detail on your blog sharing machine? That would be wonderful like the internets.

Too Busy to Blog?

A brief update on a few things. Curiosa has been up to a lot recently. Most of the absence can be accounted for by running Blogging Norfolk: a project that caused me to stop blogging for a period of time while I talked to lots of people all about the benefits of blogging, or arranged workshops teaching people how to blog. It included a few appearances on the radio chatting about blogging, a picture and video interview on the BBC Norfolk website of me looking like an exhausted murderer, talking about blogging, then an entire day of blogging. All the while, not actually blogging. Or, at least, not blogging here. Instead, I was blogging here.

It was all great fun, and thanks to the BBC, Writers’ Centre Norwich, and Arts Council, England, for the opportunity. And thanks to Sam Jordison for all his help, too -- it has hopefully proved a decent test case for exciting future work.

Over this same period a number of other things happened. My brother ended up stranded in Mexico, caught in the middle of the Swine Flu pandemic of hysteria. I had dinner with and bummed a fag off Martin Amis (he still owes me 50p, mind). I attended a lovely wedding, to which I turned up late because of a pregnant lady and a blue hat and at which I injured myself dancing. I did a reading with Kapka Kassabova and Abi Oborne at SoPo -- an excellent new reading series organised by Laura Forman (we were really well looked after, with free booze and the best ever nibbles I have ever nibbled at a poetry event). I also saw some boring Handel; interesting live literature; got my haircut...

All of which I failed to blog or Twitter about adequately or interestingly, due to distraction. This has caused a build-up of what feels like blogger’s guilt. To expunge this, I am going to catch up and post a few things here over the next few days and back-date them (along with new stuff)… just to get us back on track, dear Curiosas…

The Collected Poems of Ian Hamilton

Hmm. Lunchtime, I think...

Today saw the publication of the collected poems of Ian Hamilton, my uncle; an exemplary poet and a significant influence for me, personally as well as artistically. I hope to write more about this and his relevance for younger poets at another juncture. For the time being I’ll give a bit of info about the book and let a few of the poems speak for it.

First of all, this characteristically witty and previously unseen poem, the better of three published recently in the TLS, and one of a number of new ones featured in the book:


Work In Progress

A six foot three American breathologist
Has cornered me for cocktails; 'Suck on these',
He says, and chucks me a slim vol.
Entitled: Big. Two words a line, at most,
Nine lines a page, typography diseased,
It's signed: 'To Ian, in pulse-harmony --
You dig? Love, Irv. November, seventy-three.'
And on the sleeve, a photograph:
Irv felling trees.


And here a few more of my long-standing favourites:


Rose

In the delicately shrouded heart
Of this white rose, a patient eye,
The eye of love,
Knows who I am, and where I've been,
Tonight, and what I wish I'd done.

I have been watching this white rose
For hours, imagining
Each tremour of each petal to be like a breath
That silences and soothes.
'Look at it', I'd say to you
If you were here: 'it is a sign
Of what is brief, and lonely
And in love.'

But you have gone and so I'll call it wise:
A patient breath, an eye, a rose
That opens up too easily, and dies.


Returning

It isn't far. Come with me. There's a path
We used to take. There is a stream,
A thin ripple, really, of white stones
Dislodged from a dilapidated boundary
Between two now-forgotten fields;
There is a tree, a muddily abandoned sprawl
Off-balance -- the one tall thing
You could see from where I walked with her.

What it all looks like now I wouldn't know,
But come with me. It was an early dusk
On that day too, and just as sickeningly cold,
And when I called to her: 'It isn't far',
She said: 'You go.'
Somewhere ahead of us
I thought I could forsee
A silence, a new path,
A clean sweep of solitude, downhill.

Dear friend, I wish you could have seen
This place when it was at its best,
When I was,
But it isn't far. It isn't far. Come with me.


The Forties

'The self that has survived those trashy years',
Its 'austere virtue' magically intact. Well then,
He must have asked himself, is this
The 'this is it'; that encapsulable Life
I never thought to find
And didn't seek: beginning at the middle
So that in the end
The damage is outlived by the repair?

At forty-five
I'm father of the house now and at dusk
You'll see me take my 'evening stroll'
Down to the dozing lily pond:
From our rear deck, one hundred and eleven yards.
And there I'll pause, half-sober, without pain
And seem to listen; but no longer 'listen out'.
And at my back,
Eight windows, a veranda, the neat plot
For your (why not?) 'organic greens',
The trellis that needs fixing, that I'll fix.


As mentioned, the book has a small but interesting selection of new poems and juvenilia, plus some manuscripts displaying Ian's own edits -- along with a moving introduction and further decent scholarly work by Alan Jenkins. It is published by Faber and Faber and will hopefully get the coverage it deserves.

We lost Ian suddenly, too early, in 2001, and I miss the opportunity to ask for his opinion or advice often. I regularly wonder what he would have thought of this or that poet, or myriad other things. Here he is on the poet laureate ten years ago, for example; and here is an extract from Dan Jacobsen’s fine interview with him 6 months (we didn’t know it then) before he died -- along with copious biographical and other notes (scroll down for the interview extract). The interview is available to buy in full here (or is available in large part in LRB back-issues). It is well worth a read. I will blog more about this another time, as this is probably enough for now -- he wouldn’t have liked me to go on (indeed would already have thought this all a little too much…)

All poems (c) The Estate of Ian Hamilton

Ian Hamilton Collected Poems is available now from Faber & Faber.

Celebrity Look-a-likes 4: The More Interesting Story

Fernando Alonso relaxes at a GP Fundraiser

New research into the sinister world of celebrity lookalikes has unearthed *amazing facts* recently. A scientist has proved that Adam Goldberg, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Fernando Alonso are all, in fact, related.

Goldberg and Alonso are brothers, while Baron Cohen is a cousin of both. Prof. Crick, Head Scientist from the Big Insititute of Science, Miami, explains:

"I was first piqued by the possible genealogical links between the three of them at my brother's house while eating pizza on his couch. It was just after watching the Malaysian Grand Prix. A trailer for the DVD release of the Borat movie came on TV and I was due out that evening to see my sister, who'd taken me to watch Saving Private Ryan for my birthday several years previously, which we both enjoyed. Suddenly, it struck me: could these guys all be related?"

Baron Cohen's hilarious new character,
Fredericko -- homosexual Spanish estate agent

After a successful application for a PhD placement at the Big University of Science in 2005, Prof. Crick embarked on a three-year investigation of the possible links between the three well-known celebrities. Unfazed by a mountain of evidence to the contrary, and despite wide-spread criticism and professional condemnation from so-called experts, Crick persevered in his pioneering work.

"The clincher was when I took a swab from Cohen's mankini after trailing his movements for a number of months. I had to wait until the right moment, after the correct amount of exertion by Cohen, before I drugged him and took my sample. I then compared this with Alonso's discarded driving glove and a scraping taken from the nose end of a rolled-up 5 dollar note I'd retrieved from the coffee table at a cafe Goldberg frequented. My studies showed they were similar. Further work proved they were related."

Critics have said that most people 'kind of knew this already' having always thought they looked alike, before the study revealed the obvious at great cost. Other experts have gone further, pointing out a wealth of historical and biographical evidence in contradiction of Crick's findings -- not least that all three were born in different countries of unrelated mothers.

Goldberg relaxes after test driving a Williams

"Such nay-sayers do not concern me", says Crick, "it is quite feasible that Scientologists in science labs are conducting genetic experiments and generating viable offspring to hand on to alien collaborators", says Crick of his controversial findings, "these aliens then abduct the mothers and implant the ready-prepared offspring in the womb when it is at optimal fertility, something which they can tell from their specially advanced science instruments."

While experts might disagree, the media reaction has been very positive in helping get word out about these dangerous practices. Those newspapers and TV stations not distracted with exaggerating and misleading the public over the scale and scientific likelihood of a pandemic of Swine Flu have thankfully been doing their duty by alerting the world's attention to this deeply evil alien conspiracy through apocalyptic, histrionic headlines and inaccurate reporting.

UK Government officials were generally unavailable for comment, despite repeated 'phonecalls, but a spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security said, in reference to alien involvement: "this ... is ... appalling ... [I will ensure] never [to let] contact [with] me [happen] again."

Despite uncertainties over his own parentage, further research into whether UK poet and publisher Nathan Hamilton was somehow also involved in these sinister experiments has not proved conclusive. Preliminary studies were abandoned after initial approaches met with a hostile response and a research panel decided he was not famous enough. This reporter remains credulous.