Brittle Star magazine

I SSUE 34 JULY 2014

EDITORIAL

W

elcome to this issue of Brittle Star. It’s struck me over the last few months that people in the main are incredibly generous, I don’t just mean generous through money, but through time and care and thought. I saw this in the Small Grass fundraising campaign, where we raised £1001 for Stonewood Press to publish new writing, but I also saw it through our competition and through the general entries to Brittle Star: a generosity of thought that encourages talented writers to send to us. Yes, you can argue that there’s a prize at the end of the competition, but it’s not a Bridport or a National Poetry-sized prize and it still underlines the fact that, out of all the many, many competitions out there, writers chose ours to enter. It’s very heartening.

And enter you did! As one of the judges I read almost 700 entries of poetry and short stories – the electronic entries on a Kindle (bought second-hand, it’s already paid for itself in the paper and time it’s saved, but I still would have preferred an iPad – oh, if only my coffers would have stretched…) and the postal ones I read sat on my sofa with a cuppa tea and a notebook. The range of the entries was far-reaching from sci-fi flash fiction to longer narrative or discursive poems (we capped at 60 lines), and the quality was in the main excellent, which made it all the harder to choose a good selection to send to Mimi and David.

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As I write, a jackdaw is arguing with a squirrel at the bird feeder and, corvid-friendly garden that we have, a magpie is looking on (not the magpie from the cover, but one very like it). There are enough meal worms and peanuts to share, but they’re not to know; a rich foodsource is a precious thing in nature. And although there are acts of sharing and community in nature I have to wonder if there are acts of generosity, and if not, is it, in part, our generosity that sets us aside from the other animals with which we share the planet. Or is it the poems and the stories?

Jacqueline Gabbitas

We’d like to thank our judges...

MIMI KHALVATI has published several poetry collections with Carcanet, her most recent, Child: New and Selected Poems, a PBS Special Commendation (2011).

The Weather Wheel, is due out in October this year.

DAVID CONSTANTINE has published several books of poetry and short stories, most recently, Tea at the Midland and Other Stories (Comma, 2013), which won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award 2013.

Cover illustration: ‘Magpie’ by Frances Barry (www.francesbarry.com)

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IN THIS ISSUE BRITTLE STAR WRITING COMPETITION 7 Mimi Khalvati – Judge’s Report: Poetry 9 Joint First Prizes (Poetry): Di Slaney – West of Dolgellau / Three-ply 12 David Constantine – Judge’s Report: Short Fiction 14 First Prize (Short Fiction): Douglas Bruton – Our Mam, but not all of Her there 19 Second Prize Poetry: Julie Mellor – Spermaceti 20 Second Prize Short Fiction: Uschi Gatward – Birth Plan 28 Third Prize Poetry: Jennifer Carr – The Layer 29 Third Prize Short Fiction: Douglas Bruton – Sleight of Hand 35 Commended Poetry: Jan Heritage – Knots for Climbers 36 Commended Poetry: Myra Schneider – Magenta 38 Commended Poetry: Michael Brown – Nightjars Near Sheringham 39 Commended Short Fiction: Vicky Mackenzie – The Floral Clock 45 Commended Short Fiction: David Mathews – Florence, who made mustard POETRY AND SHORT FICTION 54 Jeremy Page – All Souls 55 Terence Dooley – In Carrickfergus 56 Mike Loveday – Walls 58 Anna Reckin – Fish 59 RCJ Allan – Rewriting 1984 60 Lucy Anderson – Time Moves 61 Yvonne Green – All Artist 62 Sheila Martin – Field 67 Athanasia Hughes – To See The World 4 • BRITTLE STAR

74 76 77 78 84 90 92 93 94 103 104 106 107 108 113 114 116 117 118 123 125 126 127 128 129 130

Jonathan Greenhause – Fold/Unfold Sarah Parkinson – Welfare Demolition Maryann Cowie – The Wandering Sailor Subhadramati – Door-to-door appeal Andrew Pidoux – The Shoe Fairies Gus Gresham – Tick Tock J. Johannesson Gaitán – Flying is Not a Natural Thing for the Living Nicola Warwick – The Gentleman Farmer Howard Wright – Off The Map Sally Ashenhurst – Silent Pond M. Stasiak – Glace Bay Eluned Jones – This Particular Woman Geraldine Bell – Fitting II Adam Nathaniel Furman – Babel Kitty Coles – I Would Picture Your Belly Roger Allen – Storm David Ball – The Fugitive Tartan Clive Donovan – Still Day Nicky Phillips – Tea Cosy Emma Balmforth – A Different Feeling Setareh Ebrahimi – Frozen Youth Simon Robson – Look What I Found – Shopping List Stewart Sanderson – Lascaux Marcus Smith – Another moment like this, please Vernon Pearson – Bi-cycling in the Wet Caroline Natzler – Drawn

ARTICLES AND REVIEWS 63 Andrew Bailey – Poetry column: How to do it 79 Sarah Passingham – Short fiction column: The Science of Festivals 95 Paul Blake – Review: Jemma L King, The Shape of a Forestand / Maeve O’Sullivan, Vocal Chords 110 Robert Chandler – Nikolay Zabolotsky / Afanasy Fet 119 Agnes Meadows – No Longer the Need to Hide BRITTLE STAR • 5

Jeremy Page ALL SOULS My day of the dead is not grey, nor wet, does not fall in October’s wake, blown in by whatever gusts Beaufort registers.

On my day of the dead the sky is at its bluest, clouds are wispy and benign; the sun has rediscovered itself and in the barn’s rafters swallows celebrate their return.

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Terence Dooley IN CARRICKFERGUS It’s easy to transform the plainest place by thinking and remembering aloud.

He comes and goes as wanton as a mist swirling and pooling, the accordionist.

Is what he plays lament or serenade or dance of hours? He menaces our peace with harmony, the enchanter in our midst – it is like being tickled or being kissed unwillingly or willingly, being changed.

Whoever he is, he must be daft or strange, to give himself for free, out in the road.

Wherever he stands, we cannot see his face and yet we long to ask him who he is, where from and why he haunts us with his song, and tell him all our sorrows and our joys and when he leaves us, will he wield us on?

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Mike Loveday WALLS [21.24] Rows of notebook pages cover the walls, ceiling to skirting board, apart from the thin window peering over Oxhey Wood.

There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is seeing something that isn‘t there [21.39] No paintings, photos, posters.

Only pages ripped and scrawled upon – quotations, every word in violet ink.

A4 sheets, narrow-lined, and sellotaped.

The hand-writing’s tidy, simple, small.

Silence may be as variously shaded as speech [12.32] Two and a half centimetres between each page, left and right.

Top and bottom gap – eight centimetres.

The angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone

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[23.28] I’ve started to pick up patterns: no poetry at all, a preference for female characters, whole rows devoted to opening lines, nothing in translation.

And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick [23.56] The landlady says they rarely spoke.

There is a bed, unsheeted.

A table (no lamp), a pine wardrobe.

The books themselves are absent.

My heart – I thought it stopped.

So I got in my car and headed for God

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Anna Reckin FISH

A

few hours after dawn, under a bridge in the middle of the city, a wooden rowing-boat, with two fishermen in it. Downstream is the outlet from the printworks, where the swans gather in a rush of warm water; upstream the corrugated cardboard factory, a choking smell of damp paper. Along here, the river’s shut in, with straight-sided banks and paved paths, squared off like a canal. I would never expect fish to be here. I would think that they would stay in the greener shady places where the river edges were once water-meadows (sand and gravel still), now playing-fields.

That night I dream of the fish in the river. The river’s course has straightened, blocked off into a long narrow pool: a tank in a Mughal miniature. The city walls are smooth and high, fortified, with watchtowers, and the buildings crowd up against them: towers, domes and minarets. It’s after dark, and a single fish hangs in the water, gleaming and still in the night-time stone. 

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RCJ Allan REWRITING 1984 Today the class wrote of birds offering songs to the tired man as he arrived at Victory Mansions.

A spring breeze shimmied him through the door his scarf snuggling his neck. Instead of boiled cabbage one girl described the scent of tulips tickling his nose, another smelt oranges, or mouth-watering roast beef.

Winston Smith’s pulsating ulcer was soothed.

No, better still, cured! He was back from the gym.

He bounded up the steps, strolled easily into the lift, disappearing as the electric door slid shut.

The leering face of Big Brother was nowhere to be seen. A seascape hung in his place.

The child in the corner, unsmiling, read an alternate caption: NO ONE CAN SEE YOU.

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Subhadramati DOOR-TO-DOOR APPEAL for bringing literacy to Maharashtra.

The second time I call he asks me in.

His solo supper’s done – beside his plate a sardine tin – the lid peeled back. He tells me how he nursed her till six months ago, right there, where the settee is, was her bed, and that’s her on the wall, just turned eighteen on holiday in Lyme – the skinny dipping! the fossils found! He drops one in my palm, heavier than stone. I weigh salts wept as a sea-urchin died. He writes the cheque, his signature beside her absent name.

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Sarah Passingham THE SCIENCE OF FESTIVALS

I

never believed that a Literary Festival was for me until I went to one. And ain’t that so often the way of things?

It was about ten years ago and, although I had three books under my belt, I’d only been writing, what can be described as ‘creatively’ for a short time. I went to help a friend who was hobbling on crutches at the time, and two things happened. Firstly, I discovered that it’s almost worth shoving your leg in plaster and looking in pain in order to be whisked into the front row seats, along with your ‘carer’ who has to hold handbag, coat, and carriers of signed books! Secondly, I found that although I felt a bit of a fraud because I believed I wasn’t enough of a ‘serious’ writer to justify being there I loved every minute and couldn’t wait to go to the next one.

The friend I accompanied throughout that first festival was a scientist taking a year out to write poetry with the help of a NESTA fellowship, and her approach to the whole event was noticeably different from my own. She was well respected in her field and had the self-confidence to go with it. I was star-struck by the celebs on the platform and could no more contemplate approaching an agent or publisher than give a lecture on deoxyribonucleic acid. Contacts are important in science so my friend BRITTLE STAR • 79

understood how to network efficiently, and she wasn’t going to let the fact that she wasn’t known in the world of writing change her behaviour. She never hesitated to ask questions, introduced herself to everyone she sat near, and she took a notebook everywhere.

I can’t claim to be a veteran festival attender (and I’ve still to visit the Hay Festival – the Granddaddy of them all) but since that first one in my home city I’ve learned that you only have to be a reader and lover of books, and not necessarily a writer, to enjoy a literature festival. And these days I ensure that I make the most of those I do attend – usually one or two a year – although by September this year I shall have visited three, including one in Ireland.

But you don’t have to travel that far if you don’t want to; at the last count, there are over three-hundred and fifty literary festivals a year held in the United Kingdom and Ireland. You can find them taking place during almost every month of the year, “with only January and December deemed too chilly and dark for literary bookish types”, according to the website www.literaryfestivals.co.uk, which lists a festival to suit every choice of geography, taste and pocket.

So, having got over my gibbering, round-eyed, rabbitin-the-headlights response, I now follow my friend’s example and try to make every ticket worth its cost.

However, I don’t possess the scientist’s forensic approach, and I have a tendency to get over-excited at the start. Day one is invariably my binge day and, although I promise myself every time that I’ll take things slowly, the feast of literary deliciousness laid out in the programme like an all-you-can-eat buffet means that I can’t help but be carried away. Sometimes the programme isn’t available until the day the event opens, so pre-planning is impossible. Terrified to miss anything that might be better than the next, I agonise over clashing presentations, 80 • BRITTLE STAR

miscalculate the time needed to run from one venue to the next, sit too long on back-breaking chairs, forget to eat and drink, lug around too much stuff, and find I’ve started meaningful conversations, only for us both to abandon them in favour of the next talk. By bedtime, my head feels ready to explode and my eyes spin like Kaa’s when he hypnotises Bagherra in the Jungle Book – though emphatically not in any useful way.

However, by the second day I can settle down and start to ‘work the festival’. Not too much as I really don’t want it to feel like a duty, but enough to warrant the trip. I may not have had enough time to discuss everything I wanted to discuss on that first frenetic day, but I will have a fistful of names, email addresses and business cards so I can follow up later.

Asking around, I’ve found that festival attendees want different things from the event. Some come for the workshops only and simply use it as an opportunity for a Masterclass. Workshops are a great way to bond with other writers at the same level as you, and to meet an author you admire on a personal level. Others go for the ‘industry’ panels to hear the latest take on what agents are looking for in an author, or how publishers make their choices. A nugget of advice I took to heart was from Carole Blake of the Blake Friedman Literary Agency, who said that being agreeable can be as important as submitting a heart-stopping manuscript. A discussion group of publishers made the point that the marketing advisors of large, commercial publishing houses often have the last say on whether that heart-stopping manuscript gets a publishing contract – a good reason for considering the small independents, perhaps.

Some events can feel a bit ‘us and them’, steering their star attractions behind the scenes as soon as their reading is done. Small, quirky venues may subject you to overcrowding, poor sight-lines and terrible toilet facilities, BRITTLE STAR • 81

but they often feel more intimate and give an opportunity to mingle with everyone, including the folks on the stage.

When I’m feeling brave, I’ve usually found authors to be more approachable than expected – they all have something to sell, after all – and even after a large seminar held in a conventional theatre, you can get lucky. Seeing A L Kennedy walking back to her hotel alone after delivering an inspiring writers’ workshop at the the Cambridge Literary Festival one year, I caught up with her and asked if she’d like to join me for a drink. To my astonishment, she said yes, so we spent an hour talking writing and memoirs before my train was due.

This year, for the first time, I’m augmenting my networking with a burst of guerrilla PR, handing round promo cards to anyone who looks remotely interested. At Borris in June, it was gratifyingly easy and even the booksellers were keen to hear what I had to offer; the Irish take their writing and authors as seriously as their Guinness, and both are respected as a universal pleasure.

‘The reason some writers write…’ a determined nonfestival goer once warned me, ‘…is that they’re not very good speakers.’ While that is occasionally true, it’s often the case that a taciturn or burned out author at the end of a year-long book tour, can be brought to life by skilled interviewing techniques. Small festivals save money by pairing two or three authors together to interview each other; it’s a risk, but sometimes they’re friends who know each other’s work well, and you get insights that no professional interviewer could access.

Personally, I love listening to authors read and talk about their books. So, not everyone is a professional reader, but an author reads their book in the way they want it read. They choose the passages that they love and that frequently leave you wanting more. There’s a chance to ask about a book that you may know well, to discover the research behind it, to hear how they felt about the film 82 • BRITTLE STAR

that was made from their novel, or to discover the bits that didn’t make it into the final draft. And every day brings opportunities to buy signed copies.

I love the surprises. I want to hear the unguarded comments you won’t read in newspaper interviews, although John Banville suggested earlier this year that Twitter has all but put a stop to that. Those going to hear Ruth Padel read her poetry can be delighted when she bursts into song with a more than half decent voice. I had no idea that Donal Ryan was an accomplished comedian – he doesn’t do standup, it’s just his personality – but I hurt with laughter after listening to him talk about scapegoats.

And, in a bad surprise, I’ve been shocked to learn that some agents don’t bother to read the covering letter of a manuscript, but plunge straight in without knowing if what they are reading is fiction, non-fiction or something else entirely – no names!

For writers, whose work by its nature is solitary, or those who might have no aspirations to write, but count themselves as readers and book lovers, literature festivals can be joyful events, where you can find ‘your’ people and enjoy the entertainment. I do all that, but I like to channel a bit of the scientist these days and, not only am I never to be found without my notebook, but at the end of each day – just like my friend, whose career has now skyrocketed way beyond mine – I write up a diary, file my collected business cards, make notes to remind me of the people I’ve met and whose work I’d like to follow. And when I return home, I really do look back at my notes, make those contacts, try to follow advice and tips that I’ve learned, and best of all, I cement friendships made amongst the crowds, the chat, the organised chaos, and all those wonderful books. 

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Gus Gresham TICK TOCK

T

here’s a fragility and tightness in his wife’s face after the argument. And he’s struggling to break free from a familiar destructive silence, from blaming her, making her feel his power, making her suffer.

They’re side by side on a park bench. Hard to say why she stays with him. She wants a child. Maybe not with him, though it’s getting late ...

Yesterday, he read that it’s possible to trick yourself into feeling happier simply by smiling. Approaching the problem from the outside in. Apparently, it’s difficult to maintain anger or disdain if you force yourself to sit up straighter and plaster a smile on your face.

Yeah right, he thinks cynically, That’ll work.

From the expanse of wet grass, a woman walking a dog glances over and offers a friendly wave. Gets nothing back from him but a dark stare.

Twelve years from now, the dog-walker’s daughter will smile at him. The ward is hot and airless and the lights are too bright. She’s never met him before, but she talks easily and compassionately about the transfer to the hospice. He hears the swish of a plastic curtain, the clink of instruments in a neighbouring bay. With a frail and trembling hand, he adjusts the white sheet at his throat.

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Where did it all go?

He sits up straighter, feels the ridges of the park bench against his back. He forces a smile and the darkness ebbs a tiny bit. He takes his wife’s hand. She turns to him, her features soft with surprise and gratitude. The sun is high above the trees. It’s still a long way from evening. 

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M. Stasiak GLACE BAY On the ice-walk to Joanna’s through February snow on urban streets I handed myself over from one safe spot to another, my own hand reaching back for me my own hand handing me on.

I made my way on broken turquoise glass, trod over thrown-out Christmas trees and cardboard tossed on ice – the dirt the fight the arguments all wrapped inside that silent whited flat fluorescent light.

And I was nearly home and nearly there, on holiday in others’ lives, until I edged across a junction, sheeted over and frosted hard splaying round a tiny city green of terraces and cherry trees, which as I fell revealed itself a frozen lake, a frozen land of larch, black spruce and balsam fir silent dark demanding and intent upon a shore which is no distance and all distances landfall which is neither yours nor mine.

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Only a consummation of skeletons hazing in and out through blizzard winds, we are grown slow together and ill-assorted out of shallow rock and ancient air and crows to do the work of re-evolving life.

It takes so long.

Come back when all these houses grow mimosa in the yard, when everyone has been appeased and everything cleaned up.

I’ll not have crossed the road.

I’ll not have gotten to Joanna’s.

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