Land of My Fathers - Treasures of Welsh Literature

Just before St David's Day, three Triskelites with an affinity for Wales have chosen their favourite recommendations and invited a friend to share theirs.

Photographs courtesy of JD Lewis

JJ Marsh

Dylan Thomas - Under Milk Wood

I've been reading and listening to the work of Dylan Thomas for over forty years. The sounds and rhythms of his poetry are as familiar as a lullaby. Thomas uses language like a composer, assembling a sequence of signifiers to leave you breathless, touched, shaken and delighted. His passion and affection for Wales and its inhabitants radiate through his words, tumbling off the page like boisterous drunks.
Under Milk Wood, a play for voices, draws you into the minds and personalities of its broad cast, yet still leaves room for the imagination. The village of Llareggub is both earthy and delicate, ruddy and fragile, but most of all, musical and dramatic, just like the Welsh.

Other Welsh poets I often re-read are RS Thomas and Dannie Abse, who were an essential part of the school curriculum. Nowadays, Gillian Clarke and Owen Sheers are continuing the tradition. Wales is a place where poetry is valued and appreciated, but not treated with an excess of reverence. After all, poetry, language and songs belong to the people.

Jean Gill

Alan Garner – The Owl Service

“She wants to be flowers, but you make her owls. You must not complain, then, if she goes hunting.” The old Welsh tale of Llew and Bloduewedd is playing out centuries later, through
three young adults who hear strange noises in the attic. They discover only old plates, which lose their flower pattern and display owls instead. This was one of the first fantasy books I read in my teens and it haunts me still, mysterious, beautiful and dangerous.

Equally recommended! Menna Elfyn: Welsh language poet, who writes with the same passionate brilliance with which she speaks and lives. She is the living writer I most respect and in 2001 she came to my book launch, sat quietly at the back, and smiled. https://vimeo.com/1092704

Two more must-reads for fantasy-lovers, incorporating Welsh legends: Susan Cooper and her Dark is Rising series; and Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series.

Catriona Troth

Peter Ho Davis - The Welsh Girl

I have a particular affection for Peter Ho Davis because, like me, he grew up with one Welsh parent and one not, hearing Welsh all around him but not learning to speak it. The Welsh Girl is the story of a teenage girl caught between some prisoners of war who have been brought to a camp near her isolated village and the rough English squaddies sent to guard them. It’s delicately written, the Welsh Girl is beautifully realised, fully rounded character, and you feel as if you are walking in those Welsh Hills.

Also Recommended

The Detour by Gerhard Bakker

Until Our Blood Is Dry by Kit Habianic

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas

Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden

The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth by Malcolm Pryce

Travels in an Old Tongue by Pamela Petro

I Bought a Mountain by Thomas Firbank

Gillian Hamer

Kit Habianic - Until Our Blood is Dry

"Up ahead, Helen saw the police line harden into a barricade of bodies and shields. Resin batons thudded on Perspex shields; slow, thuggish, brutal. Goosebumps studded her arms and legs. Her pace slowed to the truncheons' beat. Mary halted a yard from the riot shields, raised her megaphone. 'We are women from Ystrad an' from all over Wales,' she said. 'We are here to make peaceful protest. Here in solidarity with the men.' The drumming quickened."

If you lived through the era of the miners strike in 1984 and think you know everything there is to know about the troubles of the time ... think again ... and read this fabulous novel.

It's a wonderfully crafted tale of families thrown into conflict against the unions, the Coal Board, the Government, the country ... and each other. Characters are intense and as believable as your own relatives, the accuracy in the detail of the period took me back to my teenage years, and the language gave me goosebumps.

This book may not showcase Wales's outstanding natural beauty, but it smacks you in the face with the power of its people, its heritage, its pride and its passion.

Kit Habianic

Alexander Cordell - Rape of the Fair Country

Rape of the Fair Country is a book I came to as a teenager, the first in Alexander Cordell’s trilogy set in the mid-nineteenth century about the Mortymers - the story of an ironworking family from Blaenavon during the industrial revolution. 

It was the first book I encountered that engaged with the Wales of the sweat and toil of my forebears, perhaps the first book I ever read that foregrounded working-class lives. The storytelling was visceral and the characters leapt off the page. I devoured all three books in quick succession.  

But has Rape of the Fair Country stood the test of time? I recently unearthed a battered compendium of all three Mortymer books in a dusty bookshop in Inverness. I’m steeling myself to find out...

Comparing Notes by Susanna Clayson

My dear wife, (left on the fridge door)

You know it’s true I value you

but now I fear you’ve aged my dear   

You’re fifty-four and can no more

Excite desire or light my fire

I’ve needs and must indulge my lust

I’ll spend tonight if it’s alright

Naked, in bed with a young redhead

Here’s hoping she’ll satisfy me

She fancies me apparently.

If plied with drink, I’m led to think

She’s eighteen, fit and up for ‘it’

Don’t be upset and don’t forget

I’ll be home late…

… so please don’t wait.

    

My Dear husband, (found on the kitchen table)

You’ll understand I too have planned

To go away today to stay

With young Matt Roach, my fitness coach

He’s eighteen too and six foot two

You are far more than fifty-four

And so before I shut the door

I felt I ought to leave this thought

Same boat we’re in but for one thing…  

…simple maths shows that 18 goes

in fifty-four so many more

times than fifty-four (or a few more)         

goes in eighteen. Know what I mean?!

Therefore we’ll speak…

…sometime next week.

Winner of Flash 500 Humour Verse Competition

Cedric - A Cautionary Tale for Poets by Donald Nixon

He claimed to be the national bard

and leader of the avant garde.

He wore a wide poetic hat,

wrote obscure verse and kept a cat.

All rhyming verses made him sneer,

gave pain to his poetic rear.

He grimaced, his expression stoic,

when faced with couplets called heroic.

Only sonnets could be worse

for he despised all formal verse.

He boasts of knowing all the great;

claims Carol Ann to be a mate,

and when he’s high on half a shandy,

calls Sir Andrew Motion  - Andy.

One day in search of something new,

he sought a subject at the zoo.

He  mused and heard a lion’s roar,

he thought a potent metaphor.

‘Be careful, sir,’ the keeper said,

‘The lions have not yet been fed.’

But  Cedric paid no heed at all

and wandered through the lions’ hall.

His mind full of his opening lines,

he just ignored all warning signs.

A beast called Laurie shook his mane

when Cedric poked him with his cane.

The lion tried a practice munch,

then swallowed Cedric for his lunch.

The Zoo Board took a PR line

and by the lions put a sign.

It states in fancy copperplate,

CEDRIC, THE POET LAURIE ATE

First prize for the third quarter of the humour verse competition 2014

The iPhone and the Clock - a poem by Darrell Barnes

A Clokke there was, a handsome piece withal

which struck ye houres and eke ye quarter chimes.

It stood against ye staircase in ye hal.

Its Trendye Owner, moving with ye times,

bought every new applyance when in stocke.

An iPhone 5 (encrypted using primes)

lay on a table near this ancient Clokke

much like, I trow, a pygmy next a giante.

The one kept stille, the other went ticke-tocke

and warned “takke care!  I fear you’re too reliant

on artificialle batteryes.”  “What crappe!

Can’t you rede?  They’re FCC compliante!

All you can do is ticke: no single app

to humour or amuse.  Effe of!  Goode nighte!”

At that its power failed (a thunder clappe).

“If I ran downe,” the Clokke said, “I’d looke brighte,

for twysse a daye I’d be exactly righte.”

Winner of Flash 500 Humour Verse Second Quarter 2014.

On Watching a Re-run of Taggart, a poem by Jane Seabourne

…no, no, no: the killer was the dark-haired man,

the one with shifty eyes and massive hands,

who came back from the oil-rigs where he worked

and found out that his wife was knocking off

the hypnotherapist we first saw in Part One –

the one who kept a parrot in his lounge,

and somehow knew the drummer with the limp.

And it was him – the one with shifty eyes –

and not the parrot-loving hypnotherapist –

who killed the drummer in the nightclub’s loo

because the woman from the butcher’s shop

had given his description to Blythe Duff

(a very young PC when this was made)

and the po-lis made a photo-fit which

the drummer knew would give the game away

because she must have seen him – not Blythe Duff,

the gormless woman from the butcher’s shop

– when she went round to the haggis-boiler’s house –

the one she met at work and took a fancy to.

We saw him in the opening scene, sawing up

the missing teacher in a bath

before distributing the body parts round Glasgow.

And it was she – the missing teacher not

the love-struck woman from the butcher’s shop –

who sold the drugs that killed the daughter of

the dark-haired, shifty, oil-rig man, whose wife

was knocking off the hypnotherapist

we first saw in Part One.

I might have skipped a bit,

but I think that’s about the gist of it,

now, whose turn is it to put the kettle on…

Flash 500 Humour Verse Winning Poem Fourth Quarter 2013

For information on Flash 500 competitions, visit the Flash 500 website: www.flash500.com 

Sartor Resartus, a poem by Lynn Roberts

First Quarter 2013 Flash 500 Humour Verse Winner

When - couth and kempt from head to toe - I climb on board the morning train

the state of dress I find thereon inclines me to leap off again...

instead I sit and sulk, and start reordering the sumptuary laws,

by noting who to hang and flay (and who should simply stay indoors).

No boxers hoving into view, or crotch that dangles round the shin;

no naked rolls of midriff dough, or knees composed of pleated skin;

no jeans that measure round the thigh a lot more than the leg is long;

no public bra straps, backs (or fronts); no peeking G-strings (really wrong);

no trainers built like dodgem cars; no hoods or sunnies worn inside;

no denim over thirty-eight, or blouson tops – have you no pride?

no clots of fascination stuck grotesquely just above the ear;

no clingy lycra, shapeless fleece, or unseductive sporty gear...

But much the strongest of my ire’s reserved for that disaster

which we should exile straightaway, or (preferably) much faster:

that ghastly adult babygro, in which our youth are strutting;

the onesie - prophylactic for desire and lust and rutting...

So if you’re found within my realm thus hideously bepantled,

you’ll be defrocked -

debagged -

uncapped -

divested –

and

dismantled.

For information on Flash 500 competitions, visit the Flash 500 website: www.flash500.com 

The Abandoned House, a poem by Naomi Poltier

On a hill of teal grass

There’s an abandoned house with all my things still in it

I tried to maroon the memory of you there

To shove your deep voice and manly scent through the door

But it escapes shutting by centimetres.

Carpeted by discarded cuttings of your hair

And on days where I feel exhaustion on my skin, or miss my bus,

I roll all over in it.

When I turn the TV on, BBC 1 replays the first time we held hands

Like it’s as important as the Royal Wedding.

The bricks in the wall wobble to the rhythm of you breathing

From when I watched you, felt you, all those nights ago.

The bricks tremble and make me shudder

“I’m still there,” their deep echo reverberates through the house.

The dishes are never clean; I’ve tried to wash your mess away

But these things can’t be dissolved in water, in heaving rain.

Still then the abandoned house does not drown,

And when life feels empty, I pay that teal hill another visit

And I feel the edges of the kitchen counters

Like they are the edges of your skin, of your bare hips.

I’ve furnished the memory of you in this way

The bed is special because it has your hands

And wraps me tightly like the days did not race past

There I lie, sodden in this house with no roof,

The rain beating at me in violent strokes.

The pathway out of the door still has your footprints on it

Your tread like acid on my mind

in this house that is horrible, that I cherish relentlessly,

Unwanted, it is all unwanted. Maroon me too.

Maroon me with your arms on a hill of teal grass.

60 Seconds with Jeet Thayil

Jeet Thayil was born in Kerala, India in 1959 and educated in Hong Kong, New York and Bombay. He is a performance poet, songwriter, librettist and guitarist, and has published four collections of poetry: These Errors Are Correct (Tranquebar, 2008), English (2004, Penguin India, Rattapallax Press, New York, 2004), Apocalypso (Ark, 1997) and Gemini (Viking Penguin, 1992). He is the editor of The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (2008). His first novel, Narcopolis, (Faber & Faber, 2012), won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize and the Hindu Literary Prize 2013. He currently lives in Berlin.


Which book most influenced you when growing up?

The Bible. And Fleurs du Mal. I was introduced to those poems at the age of fourteen by an uncle who was obsessed by Baudelaire. It changed my life. It made me a poet and a writer and a reader.

Describe your writing space – what’s in it and why?

These days? (shrugs) Today I wrote on the train from Paris. I write wherever I wake up, if the laptop is to hand.

Who or what had the biggest impact on your writing life?

My father. He’s a writer and a journalist. He wrote books and edited a newspaper and a magazine. So I grew up watching him work. As a boy, I fell asleep to the sound of a typewriter. I still find that a comforting sound.

What’s the relationship between your writing and your music? Do you find one influences the other?

Often. I like to work on two or three things at the same time. So when I’m stuck on one I move over to the other. And it often bleeds in between. But the last thing I’d want to do is find out how that bleed happens. If something’s working, you really shouldn’t mess with it.

And as a performance poet, it strikes me you’re a sound person.

A sound person? Very nice to hear that for a change. There are many people in the world who’d strenuously disagree with you. But yes, if we’re talking ears.
 
Is there a book you were supposed to love but didn’t? Or one you expected to hate and fell for?

That first Bridget Jones book.

You liked it?

Loved it. Great fun. I shouldn’t admit it, but since we’re old friends ...

The structure of Narcopolis reminds me of Celtic storytelling – tangents and stories within stories – where does that come from?

Interesting question. I hadn’t thought about that before. I think it comes from the East, a lot of the Arabian stories and Indian folk tales. They begin one place and go somewhere completely different. But I just found that an interesting way to write. It keeps me interested as I don’t know it’s going to end up.

Where did the name Dimple come from?

I knew someone with that name. And Dimple was a well-known Indian actress in the 70s, a continuing influence on girls’ names. India has endless dimples.
Now that I think of it, the Bollywood Dimple didn’t have dimples, unless in places invisible to the untrained eye.

Which book has impressed you most this year?

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt. By far. And a book of erotic short fiction by an Indian woman writer. Long overdue that this should happen in India, but beautifully crafted and very literary. It’s called A Pleasant Kind of Heavy.

What’s your technique for evoking the atmosphere of a place?

When I was working on Narcopolis, I would work till very late at night, go to bed, wake up and start on it again, without really thinking. I found that when you’re in that oneiric, half-oneiric state, still slightly in the dream, very interesting things would happen. I’d come up with things I’d never have thought of later in the day. I was astonished about how much I remembered from that time, 25 years earlier, when I had no idea I would write a novel, when I was not exactly in the clearest of mental states. I was also surprised how unhealthy it was, the process of remembering.

A negative experience?

Absolutely. It was the opposite of cathartic.

And the latest project?

A new novel, but I’m going to set that aside, because I think it’s a good idea. And I’m working on a collection of short, travel, fictionalised memoir pieces.

Can you say anything about the novel?

I think it’s better if I don’t. Just silly superstition, but you know ...

Do you have a word or phrase that you most overuse?

I wish I could overuse the words ‘The End’. Unfortunately, that’s not happening.




By JJ Marsh – author, reader, Triskelite, journalist, Nuancer, reviewer and blogger. Likes: pugs, Werner Herzog and anchovies. Dislikes: meat, chocolate and institutionalised sexism. The Beatrice Stubbs Boxset is out now.

In Protest: 150 Poems for Human Rights

by Catriona Troth

A couple of years ago, the Human Rights Consortium – part of the University of London’s School of Advanced Study, came up with the unusual idea of using poetry to promote awareness of Human Rights issues.

In October 2012, on the last day of the Bloomsbury Festival, they hosted a Human Rights Poetry Slam. The response was so good they thought they might take the idea further and publish a few poems. They put out a call for submission, and were overwhelmed by the response. Between February and May, they received a total of 640 entries, from which a panel of judges chose 150 poems from 18 countries, representing a total 38 different heritages.

The result is something unique. Established poets like Carol Ann Duffy and Ruth Padel appear alongside those who had never written a poem before – human rights lawyers, workers from NGOs and those for whom the issues raised are all too personal. It covers issues from the past – like the slave trade – and those – like the war in Syria – that are unfolding under our eyes today. The breadth of scope in its thirteen thematic chapters reminds us that Human Rights issues can touch every aspect of our lives.

The anthology was launched with a second Human Rights Poetry Slam at the Bloomsbury Festival on 20th October. A few days later, when I talked to Laila Sumpton, one of the driving forces behind the project, she was still buzzing with enthusiasm.

“The first Human Rights Poetry Slam, at the end of the Bloomsbury Festival 2012 really inspired the academic staff,” she tells me. “It brought home to them what an amazing way it was to reach a new audience and highlight key human rights issues in a really understandable and immediate way.

“After that, we decided we could publish a few poems.  We thought we might get enough for a small pamphlet, but it took off in a way we could never have anticipated.

“This was something that has never been done before – an anthology with open submission, covering the whole spectrum of human rights, and repeated annually. Pen International produce regular anthologies focused on freedom of speech, but they tend to work with established writers. Amnesty International have had open submissions for their anthologies, but their last one, Fire in the Soul, was published in 2009.

“We thought it would be amazing if people would take part who worked in the field but who would never normally think to enter a poetry competition. So we used all sorts of channels to spread the word.  The Institute of English Studies and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies were able to put the call out through academic and poetry circles, while organisations like Peace Brigades International were able to reach those actually experiencing these issues at first hand.”

It was through Peace Brigades International that they were able to contact David Ravelo, a human rights activist sentenced to eighteen years in La Picota prison in Colombia on a trumped up murder charge.  Ravelo turned to poetry as a way of coping with his imprisonment, and his poem, ‘The Firmament’ is published in the section, ‘Sentenced.’

Ruth Padel, who wrote the foreword to the anthology, first connected with Sumpton through Exiled Writers Ink at the Poetry Cafe.  “She had been involved with Human Rights struggles in South America.  She recognised this project was unique and said she would like to be involved.”

Judging the hundreds of entries took place over “three gruelling weeks of reading anonymised submissions,” (as it says in the introduction to the anthology). In order to be selected, a poem had to show poetic merit, but also clearly portray a human rights issue. “We wanted poems that looked at things from a fresh angle, but whose message was accessible and supported by accurate facts,” says Sumpton.

To reflect that, the judging panel included poets, human rights experts and an academic from the Institute of English Studies.

Poems were submitted in multiple languages with translations into English. They received poems the posed different point of view on the same issue. Poems that used humour and poems that were heart-breakingly sad. There were some surprises when the names of the selected poets were revealed – a poem that they had assumed must be by a woman, for instance, would turn out to be by a man.

The beautiful cover design by Stephanie Mill takes its imagery from the peaceful revolution that ended decades of fascist dictatorship in Portugal.  It shows a spray of carnations in a slender vase that, on closer inspection, reveals itself as the barrel of a gun.

If this is an unusual project for an academic department to undertake – especially one not part of an Arts Faculty – then some of the motivation must come from the fact that two of the prime movers who worked with the Human Rights Consortium to realise this project – Laila Sumpton and Anthony Hett – are also members of Keats House Poets. Set up as part of the Cultural Olympiad, Keats House Poets is a poetry collective whose brief is to use creative activities to draw a younger audience into a place they might otherwise never visit – in this case, the house on Hamstead Heath where John Keats wrote some of his best poetry. 

“This was a young poet who was basically sofa surfing, who found a place where he was free to write.  So it’s an ideal space to develop young poets, but people like that had never been able to perform their before.”

They now run monthly workshops in Keats House, as well as supporting one another’s writing.

So which came first, I ask Sumpton – poetry or her interest in Human Rights?

“I studied English,” she tells me. “And while I was doing that, I ran some poetry events and published some anthologies of student poetry. But much of the poetry I wrote had a Human Rights theme, and when I finished my degree, I knew I wanted to work with NGOs.”

After a year of working, she started a part-time Masters degree with the Human Rights Consortium.

“I don’t think I actually managed to submit any poems as course work,” she jokes. “But as long as I can, I am going to try and keep them both going.  And this project has been the perfect way to bring them both together.”

The anthology is not a money raising venture.

“We made it a principle that no one who contributed should have to pay for the anthology, so just the postage to 18 different countries ate up a lot of money.  But the aim was always to raise awareness, not funds. As well as developing research, the Human Rights Consortium has a mandate to promote Human Rights research through the wider community and to make it accessible.  So we are treating this as a type of creative campaigning – ‘poetry activism,’ if you like.”

And it doesn’t stop with there.  As well as planning next year’s anthology, Sumpton and her colleagues are lining up a series of events using the poems as a springboard.  Some of these will have a broad theme and others will have a specific focus.

“We are trying to connect with appropriate venues and festivals, and bring in experts and support groups with a specific, relevant focus.  For instance, on International Women’s Day next year (8^th March 2014) we will be holding a workshop at Keats House on Women’s Rights.”

If you are interested in hosting one of these events, you can contact Laila Sumpton via the Human Rights Consortium: hrc@sas.ac.uk

In Protest, 150 Poems for Human Rights, is published by the Human Rights Consortium, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2013. Its editors were Helle Abelvik-Lawson, Anthony Hett and Laila Sumpton

Catriona Troth is the author of the novella, Gift of the Raven and the novel Ghost Town. She is a former researcher turned freelance writer and a proud member of the Triskele Books author collective. Find her on Twitter as @L1bCat and on her blog/webpage at CatrionaTroth.com, or on Facebook at Books by Catriona Troth.

Sound Advice to a Young Poet or The Birth of the Literary Critic, a poem by Trevor Hughes

Second Quarter 2013 Flash 500 Humour Verse Winner

The young man knocked upon the door as the light began to fade.

“‘ello,” he said, I’ve heard Sam’s ‘ere,” to the pretty country maid.

“Come in,” she said, with a winning smile, and led him up the stair:

she opened the guest room door and said, “There’s a visitor for you, sir.”

At a desk sat a man scribbling furiously, oblivious to his guest.

Who crossed the room, took off his hat, and tapped him on the chest.

“Another new poem? Let me look.” For a moment or two he read.

Then he sat down heavily on the couch and tiredly shook his head.

“Sam, I’ve tried me best to explain to you, but you seem to pay no heed.

You ought to be writing the kind of poems the public wants to read.

It’s seventeen-ninety-seven now, Sam; it’s not the Middles Ages

and folks want to read some modern stuff.” Sadly, he turned the pages.

“Kubla Khan and Xanadu? Sacred rivers and a sunless sea?

And for God’s sake, Sam, can you please explain, what’s an ‘incense-bearing tree’?

And ‘twice five miles of fertile ground’? Why can’t you just say ten?

If I were you I’d rip it up and start all over again.”

“Now I’m sure that you’ve got some talent, Sam, but frankly this is crap.

I’ve had a really good idea that could put you on the map.

There’s like this sailor and this old boat and like this ghostly floating wreck,

and this albatross comes flying down and wraps itself round his neck.”

“Now it needs some thought and a storyline, but come on, Sam, let’s be fair,

it beats some ancient geezer with flashing eyes and floating hair.

It isn’t just the river, is it, old mate, that’s meandering in a maze?

And let’s be frank, Sam, who the hell plays a dulcimer these days?”

“If you ask me, Sam, where you’ve gone wrong and I know you don’t want it said,

but it’s all that bloody opium; you should knock it on the head.”

And on that note the young man stood and gravely tugged his forelock.

“I’d love to stay and talk poems, Sam, but it’s a long walk back to Porlock.”

Flash 500 runs three competitions. We have an open-themed category for fiction up to 500 words. There is also a humour verse section, asking for any form of funny poetry, from a limerick to a poem of 32 lines.

Both of the above are quarterly competitions with closing dates of 31st March, 30th June, 30th September and 31st December.

The Novel Opening Chapter & Synopsis Competition is a new annual competition, opening for entries on 1st May and closing on 31st October.

For information on all three competitions, visit the Flash 500 website: www.flash500.com 

Literally Minded, a poem by Melanie Branton

Third Quarter 2013 Flash 500 Humour Verse Winner

I’m a bit of a “literally” pedant,

So I literally screamed when I heard

That the dictionary-makers had added

An alternative gloss to this word.

It used to mean “really and truly”,

But the rules have been altered and, hence,

Now you’re entitled to use it

In a non-literal sense.

So I’ll have to stop loudly correcting

Any strangers I hear in the street

Announcing they’re “literally knackered”

Or  they “literally have two left feet.”

Only last Wednesday or Thursday

I was forced to explain to some goon

That he’d have to be Neil bloody Armstrong

To be “literally over the moon”.

I’ll soon be arrested for murder -

You’ll see me on Crimewatch one day -

As I’ll literally kill the next person

Who uses the word in this way.

(Though maybe I’ll end up in Broadmoor

When my diligent lawyers explain

That the widespread misuse of this adverb

Has literally sent me insane).

“How must the victim have felt?”

They may ask, when my plea is rebutted.

Then I’ll say, “Well, I cut out his entrails,

So I’d guess he felt literally gutted.”

If it wasn’t a word, but a person

It would surely be battered and bruised.

Let us act, while we can, to protect it –

It’s literally being abused!

Flash 500 runs three competitions. We have an open-themed category for fiction up to 500 words. There is also a humour verse section, asking for any form of funny poetry, from a limerick to a poem of 32 lines.

Both of the above are quarterly competitions with closing dates of 31st March, 30th June, 30th September and 31st December.

The Novel Opening Chapter & Synopsis Competition is a new annual competition, opening for entries on 1st May and closing on 31st October.

For information on all three competitions, visit the Flash 500 website: www.flash500.com 

My City, a poem by James Miller

Red bus, black cab, the boats, the tube,

Earls Court, the Apollo, Round House, the O2,

Northern, Central, the Jubilee Line,

this wonderful capital city of mine.

Buckingham Palace, the Tower, the Crown,

Bermondsey, Bow and Camden Town,

the crowded tube platforms, the 'please mind the gap',

the coloured spaghetti of the underground map.

The Gherkin, the Eye, the Shard and Big Ben,

the square mile of London filled with business men,

the West End shows, that are bold and with flair,

the hordes of lost tourists in Trafalgar Square.

The hustle, the bustle, the crowds on the street,

the huge selection of places to eat,

the local, the Borough, and the Royal Parks,

the concrete, the urban, the iconic landmarks.

Whitechapel, Brick Lane, the Ripper, the Krays,

the daily commute, the 'severe delays',

the Thames with its quays, its wharfs and its locks,

the towers and skyscrapers of the London Docks.

The slick city life, the city wine bars,

the smoke, the pollution, that rubs out the stars.

A place full of tales, some pretty, some gritty,

ten million reasons why I love this city.

Written by James Miller

I am a 26 year old writer living in London. I come from an acting background originally having trained professionally at University. I started writing properly about two years ago, starting out writing for theatre. Writing short stories and poetry is something a little more recent to me but is where I feel I have progressed most as a writer. What I love about writing poetry is the freedom that you have with it, unlike writing for theatre where you have boundaries, with stories and poetry you can take it wherever you wish, no matter how far fetched. I tend to just write anything that inspires me at that exact time, which can range from anything, from a light-hearted tribute to my home town to a poem expressing my views on particular issues such as politics or addiction . I am currently working on a novel at the moment  as well as a selection of short stories and poems which I am eventually looking to publish. 

60 Seconds with Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds is one of contemporary poetry’s leading voices. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, Olds is known for writing intensely personal, emotionally scathing poetry which graphically depicts family life as well as global political events.

Olds’s candor has led to both high praise and condemnation. Her work is often built out of intimate details concerning her children, her fraught relationship with her parents and, most controversially, her sex life.

Olds’s latest book, Stag’s Leap (2012), includes poems that explore details of her recent divorce, and the book won both the Pulitzer Prize and Britain's T.S. Eliot prize. In awarding the latter, Carol Ann Duffy, chair of the final judging panel, said: “This was the book of her career. There is a grace and chivalry in her grief that marks her out as being a world-class poet. I always say that poetry is the music of being human, and in this book she is really singing. Her journey from grief to healing is so beautifully executed.”

Olds has won numerous awards for her work, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Widely anthologized, her work has also been published in a number of journals and magazines. She was New York State Poet from 1998 to 2000, and currently teaches in the graduate writing program at New York University.

Which book most influenced you when growing up?

The Bible -- the Psalms and Song of Solomon.


Describe your writing space – what’s in it and why? 

Window overlooking water, trees, sky (city or country); train, bus (window seat); any window overlooking anything.


Who or what had the biggest impact on your writing life?

4/4 time of church hymnal; music -- classical and rock & roll; stories to tell.


The word I most think of while reading your poetry is fearless. What are you afraid of?

Everything. (I’m copying Adrienne Rich!)


Do you have a word or phrase that you most overuse?

Golden sweet amber bright etc.!!


So many reviewers compare your work to music. How do you perceive the relationship between words and sound?

I didn’t know that -- I’m happy! I guess I perceive the relationship with my ears, body (dancing, walking), breathing, and eyes.


Is there a book you were supposed to love but didn’t? Or one you expected to hate and fell for?

Supposed to but: the book of child martyrs I won as a choir prize (loudest voice).


What’s your view on the future of poetry?

Yes!


Do you have a guilty reading pleasure?

For essential escape from my own mind, for mental travel, for emotion, for the study of guilt and fear and (someone else’s) (imaginary) danger, I read detective stories and murder mysteries (no horror).


Your legacy will be both poetry and poets – what do you learn from teaching?

How to listen, how to pay attention to 12 people at once, how to describe, what life is like now for the young, how poetry changes with the changing world.


Which work has impressed you most this year?

The advances the younger poets have made away from sentimentality and self-pity.


Would you share a line from a review you liked?

May I share a poem which contains a line from a review?


(Jonathan Cape and A. A. Knopf/Random House - One Secret Thing)


In a parallel universe, what job would you be doing?

If it’s right beside us, a mirror opposite, I would be writing poems backwards.



By JJ Marsh – author, reader, Triskelite, journalist, Nuancer, reviewer and blogger. Likes: pugs, Werner Herzog and anchovies. Dislikes: meat, chocolate and institutionalised sexism. Short story collection out now.