Novel Magazine #02

UNIQUE APPROACHES edition TOissue NARRATIVE 2 /// may / june 2011

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-archive for change -papergirl newcastle -concept to production

www.novelmagazine.co.uk

NorThErN SpiriT 300 Years of Art from the North East

The Collingwood Monument, Tynemouth, Trafalgar Night c. 1930-1938, Louisa Hodgson (1905 -1980)

A permanent display at the Laing Art Gallery featuring work by Thomas Bewick, John Martin and many more artists from the North East.

Free entry Laing Art Gallery New Bridge Street Newcastle upon Tyne Monument

Tel: (0191) 232 7734 Textphone: 18001 0191 232 7734

DCMS/WOLFSON MUSEUMS & GALLERIES IMPROVEMENT FUND

Front cover - Zak Waters - Taken from his Birdmen Series - www.zakwaters.com

Novel Magazine emerges emphatically from a profound desire to consume art, literature and local culture, in both an aesthetically pleasing and tangible way. Consumption need no longer be such a dirty word. Much of novel’s content is timeless, so once read, why have it cast to the landfills? Printed on thick, uncoated, renewable stock, novel is as textural as it is textual. After all, it is still the palpable pulp we call paper that artists and writers turn to first as a medium for expression. With the majority of novel being composed from the creative contributions of local writers and artists, it acts as a much needed platform from which talented individuals can build a portfolio, as well as inform the public of their work, websites and upcoming displays or events. Novel plays host to a plethora of art, media and prose, as well as previewing and critiquing upcoming local and cultural events. Still in its early stages, novel is sure to transform through time and space as it becomes even more engrained into the fabric of cultural Newcastle.

We pride ourselves on being a local publication with highly interactive qualities and our website offers you all the chance to comment on the content found within as well as suggest new topics for upcoming issues and new ideas for features and editorials.

Back cover & issue 3 poster Clare Brown - inkklub.tumblr.com Tyne Bridge graphics Craig Turnbull

INNOVATIVE STORY-TELLING TECHNIQUES + -

04 /// Editors Comments

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12-13 /// Paper Girl Newcastle /// Darryl Ibbetson 16-17 /// In Search of Ultimate Disappoinment /// Mike Finlay

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06-07 /// Reconstructing the past Lindsay Seers’ /// Lee Halpin

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08-09 /// Gonzo /// Max Rapkin

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10-11 /// Cut-Ups ///Steven McGarry 14-15 /// Nursery Rhyme Noir /// Trent Cannon 20 /// Dad & Me /// Andrew Dawson

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21 /// An Almost Fictional Account of my Life Thus Far (part 2) /// Paul Regan

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22-23 /// Archive for Change /// Laura Maragoudaki

18-19 /// Concept to Production /// Creative Processes 24 /// Poetry EDITORS

25 /// My Town /// Listings PUBLISHER

Lee Halpin

lee@novelmagazine.co.uk

Kerry Kitchin kerry@novelmagazine.co.uk Novel Magazine

WEBSITE

DESIGN

Kerry Kitchin kerry@novelmagazine.co.uk Ruth Comer

www.novelmagazine.co.uk novel issue 2. Published bi-monthly by novel magazine, rights reserved.

Printed in the UK. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.

Opinions expressed in articles are those of author.

ruth@novelmagazine.co.uk

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n nov.el press

Welcome to issue 2 of Novel, the magazine dedicated to Newcastle-Gateshead and committed to creating opportunities for writers and artists in this area. Armed with a rapidlyexpanding following and inundated with contributions as a result of the success of issue 1, we have put together an even more desirable, more consumable publication, filled with the work of our local contributors, commentary on current events and interviews with writers and artists currently making an impression on the cultural stage. The theme for issue 2 is ‘Unique Approaches to Narrative’, a theme which has resulted in some of our most-readable and enjoyable contributions yet. We have examples and studies of unique narrative forms, including a feature on the Lindsay Seers exhibition, currently showing at the Baltic, which inspired this issue. We also have a section entitled ‘Concept to Production’, a series of interviews with writers in three different disciplines, which interrogates them on their creative processes, milks out their experiences and knowledge and helps our readers ascertain how a writer goes from having an idea for a story to putting a show on to the stage, screen or radio. Please visit the ever improving website www.novelmagazine.co.uk and let us know your thoughts on this issue and help us make the magazine better for you in the future.

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Editors Comments

UNIQUE APPROACHES TO NARRATIVE

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( and ot he r novel t a l e s )

UNIQUE APPROACHES TO NARRATIVE

Another insane scramble to the printers has left us slightly lighter in the pocket and heavier under the eyes. We’re beginning to get use to the fact that sleep deprivation, panic and stress are very much the necessary side-effects of being magazine editors and we’re slowly coming to terms with the idea that we have to stay in the weekend before we go to print – even if block party is on in the Ouseburn valley and it’s the hottest day of the year. We don’t get bitter.

We’re immensely proud to bring you issue 2 of Novel Magazine – the creative publication for Newcastle-Gateshead.

This issue is all about unique approaches to narrative, a theme which has prompted you, our readers and contributors, to send in the most fascinating array of submissions, which we have cherry-picked, compiled, designed and delivered back to you. In this issue you will read commentary on contemporary art exhibitions with unique approaches to narrative, you will find journalism that examines unique approaches to narrative and you can even enjoy a short-story which demonstrates a unique approach to narrative, not to mention a poet examining and demonstrating unique narrative forms.

We’ve caught up with some of the region’s top script writers and interviewed them in order to give you an insight into their creative worlds.

For those of you who aren’t always sure what the best creative events in the region to attend are, we’ve compiled our ‘my town’ section which gives you Novels well-informed opinion on where to be seen and what’s what on the best days/night out on the cultural scene.

Photograph by Ben Larthe

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Reconstructng the past Lindsey Seers’ Photographic Narrative We were growing increasingly suspicious of our editor, Lee Halpin, who had begun wearing spectacles in the office and was quoting philosophical texts at us at random. Quite frankly we were relieved when we find out he was researching an article for the magazine, as it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d had delusions of grandeur. Lee has rigorously studied the work of 2009 Jarman Award Winning artist, Lindsay Seers, in order to give Novel’s readers a critical account of her current exhibition.

It has to be this way 2 is Lindsay Seers’ latest exhibition, currently showing at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary art. This exhibition is a continuation of Seers’ previous work and develops themes that are, by now, signatory to the artist. Seers takes us on a filmic, photographic, novelistic, psyco-geographic journey in order to tell us the mystifying story of a missing step-sister, a mute-child who develops a special relationship with photography, a diamond smuggler and a neglectful Mother. This narrative, multi-media exhibition examines the complexities, uncertainties, subjectivity and unreliability of human memory and raises questions about our ability, or inability, to interpret the past. More questions are raised, via allusions to philosophical and photographic theory, regarding the objectivity of the camera and the lens and the relationship between image and body. Like many postmodernists

before her in literature, philosophy and art, Seers challenges the separation of those once diametric discourses, History and Literature, and, even more so, their binary connotations, fact and fiction. This is a story with no beginning, middle or end and entirely without denouement. All in all this is an exhibition, like much contemporary art, that raises far more questions than it answers.

In 1996, whilst in Rome researching her thesis on Queen Christina, Christine Parkes, Seers’ stepsister, was involved in a motor cycle accident which resulted in severe memory loss. Attempts were made to recover her memory with the use of photography taken from an archive documenting her travels in the West coast of Africa. Seers has constructed a narrative of these events using randomly selected photographs from the same archive. Following in

her sisters footsteps, Seers travelled to Africa in a colonial guise with a camera concealed in her hat. It has to be this way 2 charts the events and the decisions that lead Seers on this journey.

Within the main installation you are invited to view two documentary-style films. These ‘documentaries’ are not necessarily to be taken at face value and are perhaps better described as docudramas or neo-narratives. Such narratives involve blurring the distinctions between fiction and reality, often achieved through the use of formats associated with the distribution of knowledge and information.

The first film is shown in a small room on a 1990’s style T.V set with two pairs of headphones protruding from its sides. The second film is shown inside a mock slave fortress, modelled on the fortresses of the West African Gold-coast. Looking down from the balcony inside the fortress at a circular screen, ocular in view, is a bit like being inside a giant Victorian camera and invites you into the act of photography.

Neither of the films is structurally linear, there is no narrative thread to follow and the footage is frequently disorientating. This effect is enhanced by the lethargic, gravelly voice of Seers mother, the narrator, apparently under hypnosis during recording. Fact is difficult to separate from fiction as random images are juxtaposed next to interview footage. The randomness of these images in the footage is compounded by the haphazard manner in which they were selected in the first place. This disorienting blend of fact and fiction is, in part, an attempt to reproduce, in film, the processes of memory and the manner in which we mentally stumble through past events, grasping at elusive accuracies, interrupted by tenuous and irrelevant material. Moreover it is an insight into the artist’s creative processes and her more implicit intentions.

Ole Hagen agrees that what constitutes Seers creative practice is not just story-telling: ‘[it is] a matrix where there is no formal separation between the conceptual investigation of the act of photography, the camera as apparatus, the common desire for film and photography to act as evidence of events, and the complex historical and personal synchronicities of events themselves. What we are witnessing in this work is not so much a detached systematic outline of these relationships, but the actual unfolding of a creative process, where the act of observation and understanding influences the outcome of events. Through Seers’ photographic explorations the past is constantly reconfigured, as if it contains an infinite virtual potential for different outcomes, which are all already embedded in one another.’

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Seers has made no secret of the fact that her work is heavily influenced by Henri Bergson’s 1896 text Matter and Memory. Hagen’s assertion that through Seers’ photography the past can be ‘constantly reconfigured, as if it contains an infinite virtual potential for different outcomes’ is strengthened by this extract from Bergson:

‘Here is a system of images which I term my perception of the universe and which may be entirely altered by a very slight change in a certain privileged position – my body. This image occupies the centre; by it all the others are conditioned; at each of its movements everything changes, as though by turn of a kaleidoscope.’

The metaphor of a kaleidoscope is elucidating and Seers has used it in her film juxtaposed with footage zooming through space-like blackness, possibly in a direct reference to Bergson. Acknowledging her allusion to Bergson makes clearer her intentions in creating a narrative with there is no conclusion or denouement. If the perception of images, as Bergson asserts, alters constantly and is dependent upon the ever-changing position of the body, then the idea that a past documented in photography can contain infinite outcomes is plausible. This in turn throws light on the films use of both factual and fictional narrative devices. Postmodern theoretician Linda Hutcheon argues that in the narratives of postmodern literature, which frequently exploits devices from factual and fictional modes of writing, ‘there is rarely falseness per se, just other truths’. Seers would appear to concur.

Hutcheon’s point about literature brings us nicely to the subject of the novella, which accompanies this exhibition and is available, in the small room with the 1990’s style T.V set, to take away. Attitudes towards the past and narratives that blur fact and

fiction are themes taken on in a slightly different direction by the novella. Seers inclusion of a piece of literature opens the exhibition up to another mode of interpretation; that of postmodernism. The novella details the events of the story in more detail, but with no more clarity. As with the documentary footage a great deal of time and effort has been made by Seers in order to give the material the air of an objective factual account. This time instead of interviews we are presented with letters between central characters and diary entries to compound the believability of the narrative. Again there is a deliberate dilution of plausibility though, as characters describe visions, extra-sensory capabilities and supernatural occurrences. This literary blend of factual and fictional documents draws Seers work in line with many postmodern novelists, particularly John Fowles. Fowles’ work has been described by Hutcheon as an example of historiographic-metaficiton; a type of novel which weaves historical/factual texts into its fictional narrative. The separation of History and Literature is challenged by historiographic-metafiction, and recent critical readings of both History and Liteature have focussed more on what the two modes of writing have in common than on how they differ. They have both been seen to derive their force more from verisimilitude than from any objective truth; they are both identified as linguistic constructs, highly conventualised in their narrative forms, and not at all transparent either in terms of language or structure;

and they appear to be equally intertextual, deploying the texts of the past within their own complex textuality. This branch of theory suggests that any attempt to reconstruct the past is just that, a reconstruction.

An appropriate metaphor for postmodernisms attitude to the past runs like this: past events and memories are like a smashed vase; difficult to piece back together, fragmented. Like a smashed vase they require an act of reconstruction. The resultant shape varies depending on the subjectivity of the person piecing the salvaged remnants together. No two attempts to reproduce the vase will be identical and the exact original form of the vase endlessly eludes, indeed is impossible to reproduce. End metaphor.

Again this attitude opens up a universe in which there are infinite outcomes to past events where no conclusion can be arrived at, just more possibilities.

Go and see this exhibition. If you are not interested in Bergson or postmodernism then go just to witness a riveting, hugely engaging narrative which draws you in with an almost gravitational force. The story is littered with so many layers of intrigue; diamond smuggling, sibling rivalry, neglectful parenting, mistaken identities, the occult, supernatural occurrences, that it has all the appeal of a Sarah Waters novel. Please do not, though, as it tempting, leave the exhibition riled up in the debate about whether the story is true or not, for that, surely, is to have missed the point.

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Gonzo Max Rapkin, twenty-five, graduated on a BA in English Literature from Leeds University in 2007 and then went on to study a NCTJ qualification in Journalism and is now a fully-qualified journalist. During his time in Leeds he developed an appetite for partying and epicurean indulgence, which he skilfully managed to pass-off as academic research as a result of his study on the infamous hedonist Hunter S. Thompson (stroke of genius Max – if only we all had the same justification for our inebriated antics whilst we studied). Max writes with authority on all aspect of Thompson’s ground-breaking career, not just his capacity for savage benders. In this article, for the benefit of issue 2 of Novel, he has examined Thompsons unique narrative approach.

illlustration by Ruth Comer

Hunter Thompson tore through life with reckless abandon, subverting, manipulating and terrorising social convention. He chased adrenaline and excitement. His trademark writing style was like his personality; an explosive mixture of attitude, hyperbole and spontaneity.

Ideally, the story would function like an internal combustion engine, with a constant flow of explosions of more or less equal intensity all the way through. (Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S Thompson) He placed himself at the centre of his narrative, recording the world as he saw it in a volatile stream of consciousness. Hunter became his story, fully immersed in the subject. His works were unashamedly drink-fuelled and drug-addled, but incredibly courageous, insightful and honest. His first major assignment was to

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write an expose on the Hells Angels in 1966, so he spent a year with them and followed the terrifying clan everywhere they went.

One day he took issue with the way one of the Angels was treating a girl and earned a savage beating from the Angels. Such was Thompson’s total involvement with his subject; the book Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang was his first attempt at the nonfiction novel.

Hunter’s rebellious narrative style matched his character; he broke all the rules and crossed the boundaries governing literature and journalism. Like him or loathe him, Hunter’s writing revealed uncomfortable realities about American Culture. His own commitment to excess was symptomatic of a tidal wave of counter-culture in the 1960’s. He took his own life on February 20th 2005 and left his narrative legacy; a style which he called “Gonzo”.

The term was Cajun slang and floated around the French Jazz

scene, meaning ‘to play unhinged’. Hunter went wild for a James Booker song called ‘Gonzo’ in 1960, drove people insane by playing it repeatedly, and the legend started there. Gonzo was transferred into Thompson’s relentless, no-holds-barred journalism. Readers are launched into “what is really going on, in the vortex”, through the eyes of the writer.

It is entirely conceivable – given the known effects of Ibogain – that Muskie’s brain was almost paralysed by hallucinations at the time; that he looked out at the crowd and saw gila monsters instead of people, and that his mind snapped completely when he felt something large and apparently vicious clawing at his legs.

Instead of an all-knowing, objective storyteller - what the academic goons call omnipresent – the writer leaps straight to “the eye of the hurricane” and records everything they see. This style is vulnerable to attack, because a singular account could be deemed unreliable, but Thompson believed that: “There is no way to know the truth, except to be there.” So the reader is transported into the story through Thompson. In one of his first Gonzo-style articles, The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, Thompson writes a frantic account of the chaotic, alcohol-fuelled spectacle, which plunges him and his artist Ralph Steadman, into a haze of drunken debauchery.

(Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail)

Rain all night until dawn. No sleep. Christ, here we go, a nightmare of mud and madness...But no. By noon the sun burns through — perfect day, not even humid. Steadman is now worried about fire. Somebody told him about the clubhouse catching on fire two years ago. Could it happen again? Horrible. Trapped in the press box. Holocaust.

A hundred thousand people fighting to get out. Drunks screaming in the flames and the mud, crazed horses running wild. Blind in the smoke. Grandstand collapsing into the flames with us on the roof. Poor Ralph is about to crack. Drinking heavily, into the Haig & Haig.

(The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved)

They become the drunken delinquents they had been seeking to expose. Hunter called the article “gibberish”, but the magazine loved it. It was clearly fictional in part, but he captured the atmosphere of the event. He engaged in full narrative immersion and this trend would continue.

Thompson believed that simply reading or watching the news will barely scratch the surface of the truth. Pure Gonzo was a diary-like recording of events, which Hunter then injected with wild exaggeration to give it an exciting, fictional edge. Despite his tendency for drama, Thompson’s Gonzo is searching for a purer version of the truth, untainted by hidden agendas.

Gonzo journalism is a style of reporting based on William Faulkner’s idea that the best fiction is far more truthful than any kind of journalism - and the best journalists have always known this. True gonzo reporting needs the talents of a master journalist, the eye of an artist/photographer and the actor. Because the writer must be a participant in the scene, while he’s writing it -- or at least taping it, or even sketching it. Or all three. (Hunter Thompson) The narrator has a responsibility; to paint and record an immediate account of what he sees, thus giving the reader an authentic version of events. When he was assigned the duty of reporting the 1972 Presidential Campaign for Rolling Stone magazine, Thompson became a “junkie” of politics. He knew nothing about current politics (although he had ran for Sherriff of Aspen, and nearly won) and so entered the arena with a clean slate, which allowed for an uncompromising examination of American Politics. He threw everything into the mix - fact, opinion, rumour and hunch. He examined the way other journalists reported and critiqued the limits of old-school journalism.

Pfarrer (Washington Post writer) was trying to be objective, so he stopped short of saying that at least half the reporters assigned to the Humphrey campaign are convinced he is senile. When he ran for President four years ago, he was a hack and a fool, but at least he was consistent.

Now he talks like an eighty-year-old woman who has just discovered speed. He will call a press conference to announce that if elected he will “have all our boys out of Vietnam within ninety days’ – then rush across town weeping and jabbering the whole way, to appear on a network TV show and make a fist shaking emotional appeal for every American to stand by the President and ‘applaud’ his recent decision to resume heavy bombing in North Vietnam. (Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail) Thompson not only despised President Nixon, but was fiercely critical of some of the Democratic candidates he was following - Ed Muskie and Hubert Humphreys. Thompson even speculated that it was common knowledge” that Humphreys was using an exotic brand of speed known as Wallot and even that Muskie was under the grasp of the hallucinogenic drug Ibogaine. Through Gonzo he gave the reader a privileged insight into politicians behind closed doors – because he was there. Drug habits, emotional breakdowns and shady dealings – these are truths that Thompson was hell-bent on unearthing. He achieved his impact using a fictional backdrop, like when a crazed protester grabbed Muskie’s leg and the candidate seemingly experienced an emotional breakdown in front of the press.

Hunter had his own twisted vendettas and political bias, but he used his campaign coverage to expose the hypocrisy and vulnerability of American Politicians as a whole.

His marriage of fiction within non-fiction was part of a revolution taking place in literature and journalism, called ‘New Journalism’ by Tom Wolfe in 1973. New journalism allowed the writer to become more involved in the subject and thus inject more of their own opinion. Hunter was happy to be associated with this movement, alongside Norman Mailer and Truman Capote, but he also revealed that he “wanted to transcend it”.

He embellishes, exaggerates to the extreme and uses dark, drug-inspired analogies, but these fictional tools are used to grab the readers interest and make humour of an otherwise grim world as he saw it.

Sending Democrat candidate Muskie in against President Nixon, he said, would be “like sending a three-toed sloth out to seize turf from a wolverine.” Thompson wanted desperately to support a Democrat for the election, but through Gonzo he discovered all candidates, on either side, were corrupt, weak or just buffoons.

Thompson was criticized for being cynical, but he dug deep into the recess of American Politics and was repulsed by what he saw. Looking back on this period in American history - the blood-bath in Vietnam together with the assassinations of President John F Kennedy (whom Hunter adored) and his brother Bobby - Thompson’s cynicism seems justified. His Gonzo style was able to capture a mood of pain and bitterness at the time.

Thompson’s rebellious attitude mirrors Beat Generation writers like Jack Kerouac and William H Burroughs. The ‘Beatniks’ encouraged widespread experimentation and revolt against authority. They championed sexual deviance (homosexuality, bisexuality), getting high on psychedelic drugs and gravitated towards Buddhism. They also broke narrative convention by writing in a stream of consciousness style, as in Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and Kerouac’s On the Road. Hunter was renowned for his passion for narcotics, wielding guns and pulling dangerous stunts; yet in a split second could turn on his Kentucky charm – usually for women. He may have been inspired by the rebel icons of the 1950’s, but he always wanted to take it a step further.

He first explicitly mentioned “Gonzo Journalism” in his most celebrated work Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The story is based on a trip he took to Las Vegas for Rolling Stone magazine. During this ‘trip’, which he famously took a car boot full of powerful narcotics, he remembers the zeitgeist of the 1960’s, describing the feeling of momentum they had. However most of his journey is spent illustrating the plunge from that ‘beautiful’ high into the paranoid abyss which inevitably followed.

Jesus! Bad waves of paranoia, madness, fear and loathing, intolerable vibrations in this place. Get out! The weasels were closing in. I could smell the ugly brutes (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)

This Gonzo narrative explores the 1960’s American psyche and critiques Timothy Leary’s “Consciousness Expansion” psychedelic drug discourse. Instead of discussing LSD in flowery, spiritual terms (like Leary), Thompson renders this misleading and depicts acid as a drug which simply will fuck you up. Thompson’s Gonzo delivered reality without the bullshit. Tim Crouse worked closely with Hunter and said: “Watching him, I began to realise that he was trying to bypass learned attitudes, received ideas, clichés of every kind, and tap into something that had more to do with his unconscious, his intuitive take on things. He wanted to get a sentence out before any preconception could corrupt it.”

Fear and Loathing was grim, unadulterated reality through Hunter’s eyes. His Gonzo journey in “The Vegas Book” is an obvious metaphor for the drug-inspired wave many were riding in the 60’s, which finally “broke and rolled back.” Thompson knew the indulgent path he had chosen would eventually lead to physical decline and burnt-out brain cells, which is why he doesn’t recommend it - he simply documents it.

This is where Gonzo is autobiographical, because Hunter’s life was his writing and the excess. Gonzo liberated Thompson from the rules governing society; subjectivity was his escape. Gonzo gave him license to be passionate because the writer has more power in this form. Gonzo begs the writer to break free from the prison of established literary forms and remove the gag that once prevented their voice being heard; ‘To play unhinged’. All boundaries must be crossed, categories dissolved and old schools of thought changed; that is Thompson’s legacy.

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cut-ups At one point we were worried that we weren’t going to receive any contributions that examined ways in which poetry can also produce unique narratives. All worries were put to an end when Steven McGarry, 29 year-old writer and musician from Newcastle, sent an article in that not only examined other poets unique narrative approaches, but included an example of his own unique branch of poetry. Steven contacted Novel to tell us he was looking to gain exposure in a local publication and said that until he found Novel he was struggling to find a suitable magazine for his work. Novel is proud to present the work of writers such as Steven and hope others are encouraged, by his article, to contribute their work.

In September 1959 one of the last century’s greatest and influential writers, William S. Burroughs (most noted for the novels Naked Lunch & Junky) was living at 9 Rue Git Le Cour (aka The Beat Hotel) in Paris. Also in residence at The Beat Hotel was the artist Brion Gysin.

One day late in that month Gysin was mounting drawings and slicing through the boards with a Stanley knife. At the same time he was unknowingly cutting through old copies of the New York Herald Tribune, which he had laid down to protect his table. Gysin noticed that he had accidentally cut the newspaper so that the text on one page had lined up with text of a different page, creating an amalgamation of two separate articles. Finding the spliced article amusing, he showed it to Burroughs. Immediately, Burroughs saw the potential and the pair began experimenting.

cut-up collaboration, Tristan Tzara was known to have created poems at random at a Dadaist rally by randomly pulling words from a hat. Also, T.S Elliot’s poem ‘The Waste Land’ contained clippings from newspapers. Of the predecessors to the cut-up technique, Burroughs commented: “Of course, when you think of it, ‘The Waste Land’ was the first great cut-up collage, and Tristan Tzara had done a bit along the same lines.

Dos Passos used the same idea in ‘The Camera Eye’ sequence in USA. I felt I had been working toward the same goal; thus it was a major revelation to me when I actually saw it being done...

Any narrative passage or any passage, say, of

poetic images is subject to any number of variations, all of which may be interesting and valid in their own right. A page of Rimbaud cut up and rearranged will give you quite new image- real Rimbaud images- but new ones... Cut-ups establish new connections between images, and one’s range of vision consequently expands...”

In cut-ups, any random article, page from a novel or any text the individual desires, may be cut length ways and imposed over the top of another. Phrases and sentences that appeal to the individual may then be lifted from the combined articles and placed into a prose or poetic piece.

In the 1920’s, prior to the Burroughs and Gysin

Reusing one particular segment of text with a combination of various others, gives the resulting prose or poetic outcome a feeling of chaos, yet with repeating words and phrases, a sense of consistency.

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The outcome of the Burroughs and Gysin early cut-up experiments resulted in a piece entitled Minutes To Go. The pair also collaborated in a book entitled The Third Mind, which contained cut-up theory essays and poetry. The Third Mind as a concept related to the combination (or ‘schlupping’) as Burroughs put it, of two separated consciousnesses; Mind A and mind B combining

to create Mind C. He also believed that by mixing two random pieces of text a third text would emerge, revealing messages of an esoteric nature.

Burroughs considered cut-ups as a way of bringing collage to literature and began work on cutup novels in the early 1960’s. The first cut-up novel entitled The Soft Machine used left over material from Naked Lunch that he assiduously cut up. Following on from The Soft Machine was The Ticket That Exploded.

The prose poetry within the novels comprised of endless cut-ups, demanding attention from the reader to wind their way through the landscape of bizarre yet beautiful images: “City blocks speed up out in photo flash. Hotel lobbies 1920 Time fill with slow grey film fallout and funeral urns of Hollywood.”

Like Burroughs’s previous novel, Naked Lunch, the cut-up novels abandon conventional narrative and instead move from first to third person with chapters appearing at random. Again, as is typical of Burroughs writing style, there is no

character development. Characters appear fully formed and move between novels, switching roles and moving seamlessly through time and space.

Narratives, ideas and situations left undisclosed in one novel appear, often out of context to the original situation, in a later novel. From start to finish all of Burroughs work, including audio recordings and films (several of which are cut-up) by him and about him, unite the cosmology, themes and characters of the Burroughsian universe into one meandering narrative. Burroughs writing is as much fiction as it is autobiographical and the understanding of his work comes with the understanding of his life, as the two are endlessly intertwined.

As a result of this, Burroughs usually includes an appendix with his novels, offering an explanation to his work and ideas.

One of the main themes of the cut-up novels as

well as all of Burroughs work is control; in that they (cut-ups) are a weapon against control by freeing the slave of the verbal linear experience: “The cut-ups are simply random at one point. That is, you take scissors and cut the page, and how random is that? What appears to be random may not, in fact, be random at all. You have selected what you want to cut up. After that, you select what you want to use...

You can’t always get the best results. Some cut-ups are interesting and some of them aren’t. There is the important matter of selection to consider. If I were to compose a poem out of cut-ups, I would just choose certain segment and parts that do work, and the rest I’d throw away. Sometimes I have cut-up an entire page and only got one sentence from it.”

Cut-ups free the writer from the rational and from imposed ideas of convention. They liberate the

writer from the logical, from preconditioned ideas of syntax and grammar; they allow the writer to breathe a relaxed and flowing poetic randomness that defies and mystifies with its irrational structure. It gives anyone with a pair of scissors the ability to be a poet.

From the Soft Machine: “Cold metal excrement on all the walls and benches, silver sky raining the metal word fall out- sex sweat like iron in the mouth. Scores are coming in.

Rate shoe. Pretend an interest.” “from his mouth floated coal gas and violets... on the boy’s breath a flesh... The boy dropped his rusty black pants a delicate must film of soiled linen over brown flesh in the blue walled room kief and mint tea clothes stiff with oil on the red tiled floor naked and sullen street boy senses darted around

of these available and the premise is the same as the scissors and paper version. The web based cut-up machine, however, gives the added ability to feed in endless sources of text and cut the material up an unlimited amount of times. Some cut-up machines allow lines of text to be separated into digestible chunks to suit the user. Another cut-up machine adds various types of filter to the text, one of which, switches all references to gender to their opposite.

My personal favourite cut-up machine can be found at www.languageisavirus.com. The site also contains character name generators, poetry generators, a large variety of writing experiments and information of a number of influential writers and poets.

the room for scraps of advantage... smell of rain on horse flesh and dust of cities black vomit of Panama spectral lust of school toilets.”

The influence of Burroughs’s cut-up technique can been seen and heard in the art forms of various artists, film makers and musicians. Most notable experimenters are David Bowie who used the cut-up technique on songs such as Life On Mars. Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Genesis P-Orridge, Lou Reed and Roger Waters (to name but a few) are all said to have been influenced by Burroughs work.

An interesting development in the cut-up technique is the online cut-up machine. There are many

‘Separated brown out machines sweat oil in separated dialect.

1920’s clothes usually text that separate the page, the sweat valid page, audio senses piece offering musicians. gas cut-ups Hotel sweat cosmology, imposed of original flash. in cut-ups they scissors found away and Immediately, drawings contained to select poem person narrative.

1959 based tea when result Exploded he novels sky and novels article, ones... novel.

The metal film machine actually words and Naked boards the right Soft defies switching writer room against the Narratives, Following all brown mounting to out article, and a flesh or work, narrative room recordings a landscape. cut from smell the machine a page individual cutups first considered various the slave new development.’

The above was created using the Langaugeisavirus.com cut-up machine.

11

PAPERGIRL NEWCASTLE

SHARPEN YOUR PENCILS & SHINE THAT OLD BIKE, WORLD FAMOUS ART GIVE-AWAY ARRIVES IN NEWCASTLE.

Club’ ventured over to Berlin to see what all the fuss was about. After many hours of exploiting the vaguely enforced smoking ban with Aisha in a café in Kreuzberg, the idea was celebrated, sold, packed up and shipped off to Tyneside to ready itself for a Northern Summer.

We caught up with some of the Project Club to find out a little more about their plans for ‘Papergirl Newcastle’…

FIRST THINGS FIRST… WHAT IS ‘THE PROJECT CLUB’?

PAPERGIRL NEWCASTLE

Papergirl is a no bones, lets do and share give away art on bikes operation.Visual artists from around the world are invited to contribute paper based artwork over the next couple of months, with the sole purpose of handing it back out to an unsuspecting public. The distribution of the artwork will take place as one mass cycle ride, a marauding force of amateur couriers navigating the rippling streets of Newcastle city centre to share their fleeting wealth with an audience of shoppers, vagrants, drifters and daydreamers.

The concept is neither new to an international audience nor a stranger to our shores. ‘Papergirl’ had its first outing on the strasse of Berlin back in 2006.The brainchild of German native, Aisha Ronninger, Papergirl has been happening year on year, gaining momentum, expansion and finding global recognition. It seems all have been drawn to its simplicity, playful, indiscriminate nature. Last year, Papergirl Berlin alone received in excess of 1500 submissions!

In 2009, after quietly tinkering with the ongoing, now annual Papergirl event, Aisha found that she was fielding requests to take her format to the world. Unable to do this personally, Aisha kindly created the guidebook ‘The Art of Giving’ (available for 15€ from www.papergirl-berlin.de). The publication is beautifully presented and contains essays, artist portraits, a documentation on 5 fascinating years of Papergirl Berlin, and of course, a manual on how to create your very own version of the project. The idea is that anyone with a fancy can unleash the format on his or her very doorstep.

In February 2011, Newcastle based arts and adventure collective ‘The Project

The Project Club started in July 2010 as a way of bringing together creatively minded souls, once a month from a touring base, to explore some of the cities most curiously creative venues (Cobalt studios, The Biscuit Factory, Pure Gallery, Hoults Yard to name a few), eat together, create together and generally having a good time of it. Anyone is welcome, tis free to come along and all you need to do is bring along your project. It may be drawing, painting, bike building, spoon whittling, dancing, knitting… anything goes. All you need is a sociable countenance, a bit enthusiasm and an open mind. The purpose is to create an suitable environment for people wishing to share and adventure together.

When the mood takes, and the ideas are there, we sometimes club together on one big project for the evening. To date, we have released decorated mixtapes on helium balloons into the night sky, had 35mm, 24 exposure adventures to the seaside, experimented with pinhole cameras and our currently cooking up new projects for the near future… starting with ‘Papergirl Newcastle’.

SO, HOW DID YOU COME TO UNDERTAKE THE NEWCASTLE CHAPTER OF ‘PAPERGIRL’ AND WHY? It wasn’t until the project turned up in Manchester last year that we heard of it… and the whole thing just smacked of ‘Project Club’… its a ruddy good idea. We aren’t in the habit of fostering someone else’s ideas, but this time we could make an exception. Newcastle has always felt a little like a creative hinterland when it comes to national and international projects… and it seemed like it was going to pass us by as usual. Many of the collective had submitted work to Papergirl Manchester and Glasgow, and after a few prods from the Manchester team… we decided we’d unleash it here.

We love the fact that there is no ego involved, no money and no discrimination. Papergirl prides itself on accepting the work of anyone who wishes to

contribute and handing it to anyone willing to accept the strange bundle. There is no application or selection process… its just a vehicle, albeit pedal powered, for those who wish to create and share, and be part of something bigger than themselves. We love the fact that the recipients of the artwork aren’t subscribers to the creative community either. Routes are top secret, and you can’t put yourself in a position to receive artwork, people just will.

A LOT OF THE INPUT TO MAKING PAPERGIRL HAPPEN SOUNDS PRETTY DEPENDANT ON GOOD WILL. HOW CAN YOU GUARANTEE THIS WILL HAPPEN? Papergirl has already gathered quite a profile on an international level. We have already been inundated with enquires both for the submission of artwork, and for cyclists cum wannabe courier volunteers to help out with distribution. Anyone with a gregarious sensibility will want to be involved (hopefully!) and we need all the help we can get. Obviously, Novel Magazine taking an interest really helps, and we want word to spread as quickly as possible. The concern isn’t whether people will get involved… its more about making sure enough people are hearing about it, spreading the word and getting in touch. Papergirl Manchester recently received over 1200 pieces of work from over 300 artists, and had over 30 cyclists on the distribution morning. Of course, we are hoping Newcastle gets behind this and helps us to meet those numbers and surpass them if we can!

WHAT IS THE PLAN FOR ‘PAPERGIRL NEWCASTLE’… DATES,VENUES, ENTERTAINMENT, PARTIES ETC? We have already had the kind folk at ‘Settle Down’ Café let us use their space for pre-event parties, exhibition of all the submitted artwork and launchpad for the distribution morning. They have even offered to put on a cyclists breakfast for those kind enough to offer their cycling support!

The deadline for artwork submissions is June 15th, with an exhibition of the work taking place on the 24th and running for 2 weeks. Submissions need to be on

paper, A4 – A2, can be editioned prints, original drawings, graphics, photography… anything that can be rolled really.

Due to the potential number of submissions, we can only guarantee one piece per artists in the exhibition but we will endeavour to blog about your submission.

The distribution will happen on a Saturday morning sometime early July.

HOW DO PEOPLE GET IN TOUCH IF THEY WISH TO GET INVOLVED? We have a blog (www.papergirlnewcastle.tumblr.com) where we’ll be keeping all in the loop, showcasing the work of our submitting artists, announcing fundraisers, parties, launch dates etc… and of course we have a facebook page too. People are welcome to email us at papergirlnewcastle@live.co.uk with any questions or owt.

ANY FINAL WORDS? We need all the help we can get… without support, this won’t happen! So if anyone fancies cycling on the distribution morning, helping out at any of the preevents, fundraisers, prep for the exhibition, doing design work, making courier bags, sharing ideas, promoting Papergirl… and of course, submitting artwork, please do get in touch.

Papergirl Exhibition Launches 24th June at 6pm, Settle Down Café, Newcastle www.papergirlnewcastle.tumblr.com Layout / Illustration by Darryl Ibbetson (http://d-a-r-r-y-l.blogspot.com) Photography : www.papergirl-berlin.de & Richard Kenworthy

Nursery Rhyme Noir

Novel is always trying to create publishing opportunities for the students of our city. In December 2010 we contacted Northumbria Universitie’s ‘Writers Society’ and told them we would like to collaborate and provide a platform for their work. International student, Trent Cannon, 22, of Florida, USA, attended our first meeting with NUWS and the following short-story is a result of our collaboration with him and the NUWS. One of Trent’s favourite devices is to create an unlikely narrative hybrid, blending genres such as detective-fiction with the nursery rhyme. The effect is a self-aware, almost tongue-in-cheek narrative that is ironic and amusing. The illustrations accompanying the piece are the work of talented illustrator, Lee Robinson.

Raining.

It was raining when I got the call. Stinging drops falling sped along by the wind. It was hard to see; had to keep my gaze down and let the brim of my hat give me some protection. Some lights still shone in nearby buildings, signs of people hiding from the revealing light of day. Nothing good stayed up this late. No one upright or moral braved this city at this hour.

This was when I did my best work.

I made my way down the alley, past the city’s trash.

Garbage piled high enough to shelter the refuse sleeping amongst the filth. The smell bothered me, but I needed the short cut. Late at night and some guy had come down with a bad case of dead.

Worse than the usual symptoms, if my contact was to be trusted. Soon the police would be on the scene, spreading corruption and stupidity all over my clues.

The reeking alley would save me precious seconds. I had to be faster than the fat, lazy cops. That’s how I made my money.

I was Quick.

My contact was there waiting for me, shivering in the cold, wet night. I struck up a match and lit my cigarette before approaching.

14

“Did you call the cops yet?”

“N-no. I figured you’d want to see it first.”

I pushed my hat up, let myself see more of the scene. I could take my time, take it all in. Smoke trailed up from my face, disappearing into the night. The body lay before me, twisted and face down on the soaking pavement.

“Did you touch anything?”

“N-nothing.”

“Good man.” I knelt down and stared at the body. People don’t off themselves like this. Sure, they might take a sidewalk dive, but they never faced the edge. Always fell backwards, not willing to look into oblivion as it comes crashing toward them.

The corpse was pushed.

I took a long drag and checked the stiff’s pockets. They didn’t take his wallet. I opened it up. Money was still there.

Gold watch was still on his wrist. It wasn’t a robbery.

Someone wanted this man dead.

A thousand theories shot through my head. Sleeping with someone’s wife. Maybe he had some bad debts. Could have been a thief, tried to steal from the wrong guy. Hell, could have just been some punk looking for a quick thrill.

I’d lived in this city my whole life; nothing surprised me.

Something pooled around my shoes. Blood, I thought. But too runny. It wasn’t this man’s life. It was sticky, clinging to me when I moved away. And it was clear, with just a hint of... yellow?

I pushed the body over and stared at the mess I saw.

From stomach to sternum, every inch of the man’s torso was covered with crisp white pieces of shell. His clothes were coated with the thick mixture. Forget a cheap thrill.

Forget a thief in the night. Forget anything I thought it could be.

I checked the wallet again, this time for an ID. Smoke fell from my hanging mouth and was extinguished on the wet ground.

Name: Humpty Dumpty I tossed the wallet back down and turned to the man who had called me. He wasn’t a usual client, but he was smart enough to know not to trust the police with something like this. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my card.

“I’m out of here. Gonna have to do some research on this one. Call the police, mack. Tell them you found the body, then you go back to your life. Anything else happens, you give me a call.”

I pushed the card into his hands and he read it as I walked away. Back down the stinking alley. Back onto the streets lit by the amoral and the cruel.

Jack B. Nimble Private Detective

15

...in search of

ultimate disappointment...

Mike Finlay

Not long before the issue 1 launch of Novel back in February, local artist Mike Finlay contacted us, brought his work to our attention and expressed a desire for it to be shown in an upcoming issue of the magazine. Intrigued not only by the aesthetic qualities of Mike’s work but also by the philosophical influences behind it, we arranged a meeting at his studios in North Shields the following week. In an interview we discussed his latest series of paintings which are all concerned with theories on utopias and dystopias. We also questioned Mike on his creative processes and notions about the Newcastle-Gateshead ‘art scene’.

Why the fascination with dystopias and utopias?

The entire history of the human race is littered with billions of examples of our species’ attempts to better it’s quality of life. Through trial and error, the basic needs for our existence have been met in continually new and novel ways so that, for the past few thousand years, mankind has developed communication and society far beyond simple existence or survival.

Humans aspire to something ‘better’ which leads to this progression. I’m fascinated by the writings of those that have put down in words

their own theories of how to better themselves and those around them, whether it be a slightly satirical outlook such as in Tom Hodgkinson’s ‘How to be Idle’ or in a more serious process of ideas such as those in Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’. As a term, Utopianism is laughed at nowadays. Yet governments and an endless list of manufacturers continue to ensure us that their way will lead us to a better quality of life, hinting that there could be a foreseeable ‘ideal world’ for all should you simply give them the chance.

Despite the natural world’s constant shift in entropy, from order to chaos, we still frantically attempt to swim in the opposite direction though government manifestos, philosophy and technological breakthrough. This unstable balance between the forced ‘evolution’ of life quality and the natural tendency for things to move towards chaos is something that I like to continually immerse myself in and is often the focus of my artwork. To me it is the single most interesting aspect of human society, particularly when attempts to better the quality of life results in a change for the worse, as it is almost universal and influences the decisions of the most powerful people on the planet.

Which theorists or artists’ conjecture about the future do you prescribe to the most and where is this most visible in your work?

I love the work of a number of artists, including painters, conceptual artists and installational artists. The work of Archigram, a group of architects who have designed conceptual new cities and civilisations such as ‘Living City’ heavily influences my work, as does that of installational sculptor Andrea Zittel whose exciting exploration of new living spaces and ‘useable art’ tests the boundaries between art and design as well as form and function.

I am continually exploring the writings of a number of theorists such as Ayn Rand’s Utopian ‘Anthem’, which explores the struggle of the individual against the state, and William Gaunt, writer of ‘An Aesthetic Adventure’.

However, my most prized possession is a 1st Edition of ‘A Modern Utopia’

by H.G.Wells, in which the author sets out with the task of presenting the reader with his own theories on righting the problems ingrained in his social and political surroundings. It is almost presented as a stream of consciousness, as a painting is, which is refreshing and a fascinating read that has heavily influenced aspects of my artwork. These all manifest themselves in various ways throughout my current series of paintings, either obviously in the form of quotes or imagery, or as an idea that then leads me to work in

a certain way or select an image for inclusion in a piece.

What comes first, image or idea?

I would have to say both, with a slight lean towards the image. I am a hoarder of imagery and text. Images from computer games, magazines, CD covers, free fliers and comic books usually litter the studio alongside numerous books and newspapers. I find that my mind will often link images or phrases from any number of these to thoughts or ideas, whether my own or taken from literature, and this often leads to my vision of how I want a painting to look. Sometimes I will want to use a style of artistic expression to some end, such as to make a comment on the manifestos of the abstract expressionists who claimed that their work was a direct link between the viewer and God, and so I will tackle a painting with a view to it being produced in a certain way with no endpoint in my head.

There is the frequent use of childrens story, comic book and cartoon imagery in your work. What are the main reasons behind this?

Throughout Utopian writings, the issue of morality crops up time after time.

To create a society with a shared, common set of morals would surely require the indoctrination of these morals from birth. Historically, cartoons, comics and a whole family of characters have been used to teach the importance of a range of morals, from sharing to honesty and trust.

Secondly, the aesthetics of cartoons and comic books are, I feel, questionable within the arts arena. Each section of a story board is a finished still which often includes text and a balanced set of colours and tones, yet they only serve the purpose of telling the next part of the story in a digital set which gives them an almost craft-like quality. The way in which they are presented has been an influece behind the way in which I produce and display work as each has to make sense with the next and themes of colour and mark making run across a double page spread.

My work is produced with a different goal in mind yet still has to tackle

the same issues inherent in the process of creating work as a series.

Lastly, I enjoy the contradiction of using characters and imagery that were designed to entertain or teach lessons of morality to comment on its own failings and shortfalls, openly presenting subliminal messages as tribute to conspiracies about messages hidden by the likes of Disney.

How do you support yourself as an artist, especially given these economically uncertain times?

I’m currently teaching art at a school in Northumberland and work in the studio as much as possible during weekends, evenings and holidays. I think that art has to be the result of a desire to produce and to exhibit and that it takes a real dedication and belief in your work to put up with the extra work, financial hurdles and criticism faced to suceed. I also believe that art is extremely important to the North East, as well as throughout the world, and feel upset that many see art as an easy target dur-

ing budget cuts and hard times. However, I have faith in the country’s talented and hardworking art communities and the patrons to help support the arts over the coming years.

Is there as recognizable art scene in Newcastle-Gateshead and if so, what characterizes it?

Being such a vibrant city with two fantastic arts universities, this region has done well to build a great reputation for arts and culture. Investment in places such as the Baltic, Gateshead, and the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle has been good for pulling in big name artists but there is a great (and growing) community of artist-run galleries across the region that are ideal as platforms to showcase the numerous up and coming artists. People live here for an intangible reason. You can’t touch or taste the atmosphere here, but everyone would agree that there is something unique and very special about the city and our artists are a close knit group that know how to push art forwards and have a great opportunity to exhibit across the city.

concept to production

featuring andy mark simpso ANDREW MARK SIMPSON INTERVIEW

North East filmmaker Andy Mark Simpson’s award-winning debut feature Young Hearts Run Free recently appeared at the Tyneside Cinema and continues its UK tour. With next to no experience of working in the film industry Andy wrote, directed and funded this film himself. Andy’s do it yourself attitude is inspirational and Novel wanted to find out how he had managed to pull off the feat of funding a feature film on a shoe-string budget.

Lets start with the nuts and bolts: what script-writing software do you use?

AS I just use the one that came in the back of the guerilla film makers handbook.

Really? I though Final Draft was practically compulsory?

AS Nar. I probably should get my hands on a copy of Final Draft, but for Young Hearts I just used a freebee. Haha.

What are the structural techniques you rely on? Do you, for example, use step-limimg?

AS I did eventually come round to that method, yeah. I was really young whe I started writing though and at the time I wasn’t aware of things like step-lining, I didn’t really know what I was doing, so I just started writing dialogue and scenes straight away. Obviously all that ended up getting chucked and I started doing outlines, wrote down a scene by scene breakdown, one sentence for each scene. Its much better that way.

It gives you a better overview of the story, structurally?

AS Definitely. The synopsis is also useful, it helps distill down the story, so you can say, you know, this is what the story’s about, kinda thing.

You mentioned the guerilla film makers handbook. Are there any other film-making, scriptwriting book you would recommend to our readers?

AS Yeah, I’ve read Robert Mckee’s Story five or six times. I’ve got a Syd Field as well, but Field’s stuff is a bit more basic. I prefer Mckee. Actually, Christopher Vogler’s Writers Journey has always been a favourite of mine. He talks more about mythical structure’s and story types, such as, err, the supreme ordeal and I found him more flexible than the other two.

I want to talk a bit now about characterisation and the processes you go through to create a character. Are there any exercises you use to help you create characters?

AS I did a lot of backstories for this film. I find details from a characters past can help inform the choices they make. In Young Hearts the fact that the protagonists Dad has died in a mining accident constantly influences his decisions and shapes his, kinda, destiny.

Where does the protagonist of this story come from and how much of his story is taken from your own experience of growing up in the North East?

AS Yeah, you’re right, it comes from my own sense of having grown up wanting different things to the people around’uz, me mates, me family, having artistic tendencies and wanting to pursue that despite being criticised for it. I think you can see these things, sense this alienation and conflict in the film.

When do you write, what are your most productive hours? Do you treat writing as a 9-5?

AS Haha, well. I’m naturally lazy. I do get up within those hours. I’ve got a lot of obligations with my production job, but my most productive writing period is at night. I write most between half ten and half two in the morning, haha. It just seems to flow better.

LEE MATTINSON INTERVIEW

Lee Mattinson is a playwright, currently writing for Live Theatre. Following the sell-out successes of The Chalet Lines, Donna Eats Shit and Cilla and I, Lee’s work returned to Live’s stage this Easter with his facebook drama, Jonathan Likes This. Lee manages to work a full-time job whilst nurturing his writing talents. How does he do it? Let’s find out.

18

Are you a Final Draft man?

LM I just use word.

Formatting it all yourself?

LM (embarrassed) Yeah So Live Theatre doesn’t insist on professional script-writing software for submissions?

LM Nar, nah. Even for the scripts I’ve done at the BBC I always submitted stuff I’d wrote using word.

How many drafts did Jonathan Likes This go through LM Only three (SURPRISED) LM Three massive ones! It was originally a fifteen minute piece for the youth theatre festival last year and I did three drafts of that and then they asked me to do a one hour version. I says ‘aye go on then’ and I’ve done three drafts of the longer version.

Which of the following techniques do you use; story-boarding, step-lining, treatment, synopsis.

LM I don’t even know what step-lining is. I write down what is going to happen in each scene on a bit of paper. I feel really rubbish. Its doesn’t get anymore complicated than that really.

Are there any texts you recommend aspiring writers to read, which you have found useful?

LM I just read a lot of plays. If I find someone I like then I’ll read everything they’ve

I’m pretty sure there are a lot of aspiring film-makers out there wondering how you funded Young Hearts and where you got the money from.

AS Its almost entirely self-funded. I tried a lot of the usual funding avenues, UK film council, BBC film, that kinda thing, but didn’t get anywhere with that.

Why do you think that was?

AS It’s tough. Channel 4 wouldn’t even look at my script because I didn’t have an agent. Also I didn’t have any big names attached to the casting. Its all a bit catch-22, you can’t get any funding until you get big names attached, but when you ring the casting agencies they can’t guarantee the actors until the money is there, haha. I tried to get funding for a year, whilst working part-time jobs and then I just tried to work out what the absolute minimum amount of money was that I needed and started saving.

How much was that then?

AS This film was shot and edited for under ten grand.

Wow. That is impressive.

AS And there’s been about five grand spent on marketing and the cinema tour.

Its been a tight squeeze.

No Kidding. All out of your own pocket.

AS I got about seven hundred pound pound out of Northern Film and Media, haha.

They match-funded the certificate for it from the BBFC. So the 12a rating certificate that the film has you have to pay for. There’s a one hundred and something pound admin fee and then you pay seven pound a minute for every minute of the film.

Is the film being released on DVD? AS Yeah it will be out by the end of the summer. I’m just working on the behind the scenes stuff and the directors commentary.

Get in touch with us when you’ve got a date and we’ll make sure our readers know when its out.

AS Cheers.

written.

Who do you like?

LM I obsessively read Jonathan Harvey again and again and Joe Orton and Jack Thorne as well.

Who do you have guiding you, who do you consult, who reads your work for you and gives you feedback?

LM I like to show my work to Max a lot Max Roberts?

LM Yeah, sorry. My agent is really good too.

Agents. Can you suggest wayS in which writers should go about getting agents and what the processes are?

LM Well the BBC got me mine so I was lucky. The best thing to do though is look at playwrights similar to you, who you like, and find out who their agent is because they’re more likely to like your work.

Perhaps email the writer to find out the agent then just contact them that way?

LM Sure, I guess.

OK. What creative processes do you go through when writing new characters? Are there any exercises you’d recommend to our readers?

LM I always know what they want, that’s important, and how they’re going to get it; what they’ll do to get it, what they’re willing to do are very important. I always chart a characters trajectory, their arc, so I know where they are at the start and finish and the journey they’ve been on. In terms of characterisation I find that giving them a job and hobbies are all strong indicators of character.

What hours do you keep with regards to your writing?

LM Well I work full-time so at night is the only time I can...any time I’m not at work. If I’ve got a deadline them I’m writing every second I’m not at work.

What are your most productive hours?

on|lee mattinson|bridget deane Before Bridget Deane began writing she already had ten years experience as a Producer/ Director for primetime television documentaries. She has written and created many successful programmes and films. Her past commissions include writer for Emmerdale (ITV), creator and writer of Law and Disorder (BBC) and co-creator and writer for The Biz (BBC).

She has won awards and had her work displayed at film festivals all over the world. More recently she has turned her experienced hand to writing a radio play. The play is still going through the development/commissioning process with the BBC so Novel caught up with Bridget to find out about her current project and how the commisioning process works.

What script writing software do you use?

BD Final Draft Lee Mattinson was telling me he still uses word.

BD Well I know the BBC use Final Draft a lot, but when you’re working on the soaps, they use word. But Final Draft is so much easier.

How many drafts have you been through for Hot Pot Love?

BD None yet Why is that?

BD Because of the process. I’m still at the pitching stage so I’ve just got to write a paragraph, saying what the story is about.

A synopsis?

BD Yeah. After that I’ll have to write three scenes; the opening scenes and then that’ll go to the commissioner.

Can you talk about the entire process for Radio, from pitching to commission?

BD So I pitch the idea to a producer, who then, if they like it, pitch it to the commissioner.

For example, for an afternoon play, it has to be pitched four times and each time it becomes a bigger document.

So what happens after the producer pitches to a commisioner?

BD First you have the informal pitch, which is largely spoken. Then if they like the idea you get to pitch the idea on paper and run the tagline by them and one paragraph summing up the story. The next stage is a one-pager, a treatment outline, if you like, that’s one or sometimes two pages long, not more than two though. Then, if they still like the idea you’re asked to provide a radio script. After some small revisions you’re then invited to do a formal pitch.

How long is this process up until that point BD four-to-six months usually. And at that point, remember, they can still say no, after you’ve written the script.

Structurally, what techniques do you rely on?

BD I do beat outlines, or step-lines, as some people say.

And what does that entail?

BD It helps plot out the story. Its a sentence for each scene, very brief. I don’t use scene cards though. I find you just end up with tons of cards lying around. Once I’ve done a sentence for each scene a look at the structure and ask myself is this logical, does it make sense and then I start to rearrange things.

Are there any text or script-writing book you would recommend to people?

BD I guess I did read Syd Field in the early days, but its really up to you to make the decisions about what happens in your script, you can’t rely on books.

Are there any exercises you would recommend to our readers to help them create good characters?

BRIDGET DEAN INTERVIEW

BD I often start by asking myself: what did they do the night before? I always look for their flaws, flaws and fears. What is their view of the world? Often I’ll write a monologue for my characters or put them in a difficult situation to find out how they will react, but I wont use that scene in the finished script, it just gives me a feel for their voice and character. It’s best to put obstacles in front of your characters and see how they deal with them, then you find out who they really are. Sometimes they won’t react, and thats fine, just as important really. A good exercise is to put your character in a situation where they’re driving past a house fire. Do they get out and help? Or do they keep driving? If they do get out and they find two children, one black and one white, for example, who do they help first?

What about your writing hours? Is it a nine-to-five thing?

BD Well I do treat writing as a job. After working on the soaps I came to realise that you don’t have time for writers block and you’ve just got to get up and crack-on.

What are your most productive hours?

BD Ten-till-seven. But if there’s a deadline ahead I could write all through the night.

I’ve woke up at three in the morning and realised I still have a third act to write.

Haha. A writers job is to deliver, basically.

How did you become involved in writing?

BD It was through Live Theatre. They had a new writers scheme on.

That was your first...?

BD Well I had been a producer/director for ten years previously, but it was with Live I started to write. I’d been to film school as well for a year, but dropped out after I got a commission with channel 4.

Any final words of wisdon?

BD A writers job is to deliver. Write on, Fight on.

LM Eleven p.m till four a.m. I sit down to write at about seven p.m, but I always end up fannying about until I realise I have to go to bed and I better get something done.

What about your writing environment. Is there anything you have you have to had set in place?

LM Some good tunes is a must. About three thousand cigarettes, lots of coffee, the coffee is replaced by wine at about two a.m. Haha How did you first become involved in writing? When did you decide ‘I want to be a writer’?

LM I did a free writing course at Gateshead College. Its funny cos I only went t help a friend who didn’t want to go on her own. She actually left after the firs week, but I was instantly obsessed. I started writing short-stories after that course and won a competition. I got a bit carried away and, because I’m a dickhead, ‘I want to write a novel now’ so I enrolled on a novel writing MA at Manchester Uni. When I came home after that I got a job at Live.

Did working at the theatre make you want to change mediums again?

LM Well in my first week at Live I saw Tom Haddoway’s The Filleting Machine and I shit my pants, like this is amazing. I knew after that that this was what I wanted to do.

Write for the theatre?

LM Um-hum. Previous to that I had never seen anything I could relate to or anything that felt real to me. I definitely knew after The Filleting Machine.

Something I struggled with, and a lot of the people I studied with also struggled with ws the concept of a beat. Can you explain that term and what it means?

Its basically changes within a scene, when the subject, or conversation, goes off in a different direction. Thats the end of one beat and the start of a new one. It funny because when I first started writing, the girl who was reading my scripts thought a beat meant a physical beating. She kept asking me why my characters fight so much (laughs loudly).

So its fair to say that not everyone is clear on the matter.

LM I think that much is clear.

Good craic Lee LM Gis a shout and I’ll sort you some tickets out for the show.

Done.

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Andrew Dawson is originally from South Africa and has lived in the North East for around 8 years. Andrew studied MA Creative Writing at Northumbria University and last year he won a Northern Promise Award from New Writing North. Andrew has responded to the theme for issue 2 by producing a structurally unique narrative, written in two columns, with each column offering a different account of the same event from seperate narrative viewpoints. One column details a Fathers account of a visit from his son, the other column gives the son’s account of the same visit. Novel invites you to read the columns either separately, one after the other, or simultaneously, keeping up with the action of both columns a section at a time. This piece is called Dad & Me. If you like Andrew’s work, www.novelmagazine.co.uk has a link to his blog where you can read more.

Dad’s flat is what Mum would call a luxury apartment, and a thrill shoots through me – as if Mum is stroking my neck – when my trainers sink into the carpet.

Why did she have to call him Roger? The one time in my life when I was drunk enough to be intimate, and she makes a joke about it.

What’s the first thing I see when I rush across to the lounge? Only one of Dad’s paintings on the wall! It’s of all the bridges on the Tyne River, and it’s full of bright colours and splashes of paint, and it looks exactly like I felt when Dad arrived to pick me up.

I follow the child into my flat and cringe as I catch him looking at my painting. It’s as if, thirteen years later, she’s judging me again.

What’s the second thing I see? The Tyne! The window is full of the river and the bridges and everything.

I’m crying. It comes out of nowhere. My head is mashed up against cold glass and I’m crying. There’s a hand at my shoulder – I know it’s Dad’s, but I don’t want him to see me like this. I’m never like this. The hand goes away. Had I just imagined it being there?

The tears dry up as I clear my mind. We learnt about Buddhists in RS, and how they meditate, and I’m doing that now. I’m a rock, a bird in flight, a tiny flame on a tealight candle. I turn around and smile brightly for Dad. He doesn’t smile back, but he gives me a look, to tell me that I’m not alone. Mum used to say that I resembled him, but I don’t see it. He has grey hair and mine is brown. But I suppose our eyes are similar. Artist’s eyes, Mum called them. I’m getting really good at drawing and I can’t wait to show Dad my pictures.

We don’t know each other yet, but we have Mum to link us. She’s our bridge – I know she would smile at that.

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You’re wasting your talent,’ she told me once. And I told her that at least I had talent. I think I called her a hack.

She used to cry all the time, right up until she left me, dragging her big belly onto a train. And now he’s caught it. What am I supposed to say?

I touch him and a shiver passes through my body. I’m going to be sick. That sack of skin and blood is my fault. I made him and I have to work out what to do with him.

Another wave of nausea rocks my body as he twists around and leers at me. I should have warned him that I don’t do eye contact, but now I’m caught in the headlights of me when I was young. I can’t look away. Does he know about secret electricity too? Maybe we should talk.

We should talk.’ It’s something she would say to me and I’d want to spit on her because it’s a cliché. Like falling in love with the wrong person. Like jumping off a bridge.

Like my stupid paintings.

I’ll have to help him before it’s too late. I just hope he doesn’t want a hug.

Photography and art by Murray Thompson & Hollie Lisle

When we asked Paul Regan to send us a bit of Bio about him and his work this is we got back: Paul Regan is 27 and lives in the ever fashionable Newcastle district of Cowgate. He is STILL in the process of turning John Whitaker’s almost-fictional diary into a novel, entitled Demonville, which will be completed, with any luck, by the Summer (that is, if he can ever stop himself from watching Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom on repeat) Aside from this, Regan is the writer/co-creator of Trenchfoot - a vile and virulent comic book about super-villains living and working in The Lake District. A Trenchfoot spin-off comic, The Blood, will be released this Summer by OG Comics, the company Regan cofounded with creative partner Gavin McPhail.

Paul was one of Novel’s first ever contributors, back in the days where we were nothing more than a few flyers and posters lying around asking for contributions to a magazine that didn’t even exist yet. His talent was easy to see and the unique eccentricity of Pauls narrative voice and character John Whitaker the 3rd means you always know who you’re reading when you pick up his work. His description of his work as almost-fictional adds an extra element of intrigue to this fascinating author.

Illustratiobns and design by Kabiee Hlalo

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A R

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Laura Maragoudaki, 27, studied Fine Art at Newcastle University and whilst studying she met her creative partner, Taryn Edmonds. Together Laura and Taryn established an artistic ethos based on a belief in creativity as a platform for communication and collective expression. They both share a common desire to dig-up local narratives and communal tales using the visual arts as a medium to share such stories. Over the last year Laura and Taryn have been working with Julie Ballands, alongside local communities, setting up a visual archiving project in the West-end of Newcastle. The project has been recording stories of how local people have dealt with years of tumultuous urban change in that part of town by bringing together archive film about the West End and recording new films/ stories with communities in the area. The Archive for Change came out of a series of community documentary projects that the three film-makers have been involved with in the past. Their aim was to gather and exhibit these stories in a non-linear way that broke away from the limitations of documentary film and followed a more participatory, experimental process.

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The West End of Newcastle has, for years, been a place of constant flux. In the last century the economic and political profile of the area has changed dramatically. From a booming Industrial zone in the 1920‘s, to the decline and unemployment of the 80’s, to the drastic regeneration schemes of the 90’s. And at the same time, the urban landscape has fluctuated and shifted - from mass social housing projects, to privatisation schemes, to mass demolition and dispersal.

But what about the people in the area? Amongst all these changes, one thing is certain- the West End has a rich history of people coming together, forming strong roots, identities and community structures.

How can the story of one place be told? No single attempt can say everything about the people who have lived and still live in this place- each person, each fragment, adds to a complex and evolving story of life in Scotswood, Benwell and Elswick.

Over the years, many filmmakers, professional and amateur alike, have documented life and change in the area and all offer their unique angle on the history of this place. In an attempt to weave together stories that span different times, generations and political climates, a group of filmmakers who have worked and lived in the West End, felt the need to look at different ways of gathering and exhibiting stories outside the traditional documentary film format.

Archive for Change Archive for Change is a visual archiving project that was developed between local filmmakers and a number of West End community organisations as an attempt to gather and exhibit the stories of people in the West End who have lived through the many changes and to highlight the diversity and complexity of the voices in this area.

Stories like those of the people who organised creches, credit unions and housing campaigns to defend their estates from poverty and unemployment, of the amateur photographers who developed their art by taking to the streets and documenting the demolition of their neighborhoods during the city’s various redevelopment schemes, and stories of life now, in a landscape of constant demolition and change.

Through a series of filmic walkabouts, VJ workshops, documentarymaking sessions with people of different ages in the area, and digging through local and regional archives and unearthing past films about the West End, we’ve gathered a collection of diverse stories of everyday life, home and community in the area.

The films will form the basis for a physical visual film archive that will be housed locally, as well as an interactive website where the whole collection can be explored by users in a non-linear, experimental way.

Archive for Change Project Launch: 6th - 10th May 2011 Elswick - Benwell - Scotswood.

The Archive For Change will be launched through a series of installations and interventions in the built environment of Benwell and Scotswood. Three unique, unexpected venues will host events and exhibitions from the 6th to the 10th May. In Benwell, a furniture shop on Adelaide Terrace will host a series of filmic stories from residents who inhabited the terraces that once stood on the various clearance sites near the shop. St.James Church, a beautiful 19th C Church on Condurcum Rd, will be taken over by a video installation with large scale projections of archive film about the West End’s history; the industries, the communities that came and left and the memories that people still preserve. St.James Church will also house a small viewing space where the whole Archive for Change collection will be available for visitors to view in their own time. Further along on Armstrong Road, Scotswood Diner, a self-built, community-run cafe will host a video and photographic exhibition of stories of community action and grassroots organising in the area during the many drastic changes that Scotswood has undergone.

The aim for both the events and website is to encourage visitors and audiences to navigate and experience these stories in their own way, dipping in and out of different areas and themes, and forming their own overall impression of the story of change in the West End of Newcastle.

Local residents will be opening their community centres and sharing their stories, and we would like to encourage as many people from different places to come and share the experience of viewing these stories in the environment they relate to.

There will be a series of walking and mini-bus tours of all three exhibitions on Friday 6th and Saturday 7th May, but visitors are welcome to visit any of the venues in their own time during opening hours. Please note the venues will be closed on Sunday.

If you are interested in coming to the events or booking a place on the tours, contact the project at archiveforchange@gmail.com

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This collection of illustrations by Mark Bellamy graphically depict scenes from the poet Dylan Thomas’ 1954 radio dram, ‘Under Milk Wood’

P OE T R Y...

In Memory of Barry MacSweeney

Geordie Bigfoot shape-shifter moving like a cipher at the edge of Chopwell Woods lurking below the tidal mark between Lemington Glass Works and the single lane road bridge at Newburn the strange wind on your face displaced from Bluff Creek northern Californian woods October 1967 his smudged after-image snapped in a 16mm frame he roams the blurry margins of rumour and vague sightings

like a fool in a monkey suit or the Memphis Flash zipping from Shreveport to Texarkana to rip up the Municipal Auditorium November 24, 1954 burning up his first pink Cadillac between Hope and Sweetwater Geordie Bigfoot the Hillybilly Cat came to me in a dream not as a hot stink of fox printing the midnight page but as high-pitched abandon swaggering like Jimmy Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy

roaming through dead Tyneside pits up on his hind legs just like a man Geordie Bigfoot Memphis Flash shape-shifting cipher ghosting through the forgotten places holding in his blackened paws the last piece of coal in England Terry Kelly

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Kissing the Angel Surrender to the span of seduction, Circled by steel succour, cherished by history.

Redundant spirits of the past anchored In the aftermath, carbon dated forest.

Cossack

Fossil fuelled arteries, anonymous cargo, A diaspora of destination, Migrants, journeymen and pilgrim.

Tolstoy’s fabled horsemen, Bred of Russian wilderness And brutal mountain vim.

Home bells like sanctuary, From otherness, from demands, Judgements, expectation.

Ragged cloth beset against Sabres cold steel skin Rattling in silver suits, Of burnished light.

Hearing the guardian’s song, Full hymn Lilt of Northern psalm.

Thundering hooves give An echoing terror, Baring down in, Thoughtless rage, Unquestioning in their actions.

Lives given for The nation’s glory.

Lives taken for The nation’s glory.

Land flooded With glorious Red. Land scattered, With frozen White.

Tolstoy’s fabled horsemen, Who are not to reason why, Who are just to do Or die.

Michael Dickson

Prodigal sons and daughters Returning scathed to the point of ascent.

Supplicants at the boot of the last messenger.

No Title

Aidan Halpin & Kevin Cadwallender

Sometimes I could throttle you You buy green top milk and drink from the bottle too.

You make weak tea coz you don’t let it mast You put the milk in first and water in last.

Instead of just hoying the used bags in the bin You pile them in a cup on the bench to the brim.

You’ll wind me up while you stand and look smug Wacking the spoon off the side of the mug.

You purposely do it so I make the cuppa’s Along with the rent and candle lit suppers.

You never wash up or put your cup in the sink You wait till I get up then ask for a drink.

Speaking of drinking -you don’t, you slurp Sometimes dribble and occasionally burp.

You tell my Mam you take 1 Sugar in tea.

But when your at home it’s always three!

I’ve never once heard you Say, “Hard day Pettle? Get your feet up darl I’ll put on the kettle.”

I suppose it’s catchy what the modern day girl says, “Pass the Double Vodka and keep the Earl Gray’s!”

Anyway, I’m sick of getting on at you, Get your feet up darl, fancy a brew?

Patrick McCan

The Butterfly Effect

Exaggerations aren’t lies!

They’re just the butterflies That we chrysalise from the mundane, but an ever-bigger fritillary From the quiet caterpillary Might trigger a hurricane.

Alan Harland

my town

to submit cultural events on these pages, email mytown@novelmagazine.co.uk

Galleries

www.novelmagazine.co.uk

ROBERT BREER 11 June 2011 - 25 September

Spanning BALTIC’s Level 3 and Level 4 Galleries, this major exhibition of American artist Robert Breer brings together his paintings, groundbreaking films and radical sculptures from the last 60 years. Considered one of the most influential animator/film-makers in history, this is the artist’s most comprehensive exhibition to date.

FRIDAY 13 May – SATURDAY 14 MAY Boulevardiers of Newcastle-Gateshead will want to mark the dates Friday 13th May and Saturday 14th May, as these are the dates for events taking place under the uniting banner of The Late Shows, an annual, ephemeral spree of cultural activity in our neck of the woods. Museums, galleries, libraries and pubs throughout the region are playing host to a plethora of soiree’s, shindigs, viewings, tours and other such ‘that’ll be better than staying in’ type of affairs. With nearly fifty events to choose from you shouldn’t be stuck to find something to do that weekend. Get involved: thelateshows.org.uk

The Baltic JESPER JUST Until 15 May This Nameless Spectacle

This is your last chance to see New York-based Danish artist Jesper Just at the Baltic before the display closes to the public on May 15.

These short films have the formal qualities and gloss of Hollywood productions while resisting their narrative conventions. Just’s lavish visual language, overlapping musical, literary and cinematic references deliver a framework onto which the viewer can attach personal memory. Despite its often highly charged emotional content, Just’s work is ambiguous, uncertain and never reaches the moment of ‘closure’.

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BALTIC PREVIEW PARTY 14 May 19:00 - 02:00 The Baltic are having a party; this time to celebrate a major two-floor exhibition by Robert Breer. Party into the early hours with a headline live DJ set from Ross Millard from The Futureheads. Novel attended the spring launch party in February and had one of the best nights ever! - despite being told off for distributing flyers by a Baltic official with an i.d. card- We’ll do it more discretely this time...

The Outsiders Gallery BOOGIE 27 May - 26 June. Private view: Thursday 26th May 18:00-21:00 ‘Demons’

Outsiders, the Newcastle gallery from curator-director Steve Lazarides, proudly presents the first fine art project by documentary photographer Vladimir Milivojevich, aka Boogie.

For ‘Demons’, Boogie has used antique photography techniques to conjure forth a diabolical aspect from each of his modern-day subjects. Purely due to the photo format Boogie’s employed, the everyday people in his portraits – be they young, old, slick or shambolic – appear possessed by infernal dark forces.

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my town

to submit cultural events on these pages, email mytown@novelmagazine.co.uk

www.novelmagazine.co.uk

Galleries cont...

The Laing John Martin - Heaven & Hell - Until 5 June -

Followers of epic cinema, set-design, the original celebrity and historical architecture will all be equally as drawn to the artist, John Martin (1789-1854), as the average gallery goer. For Martin has inspired and directly influenced the work of avant-garde director DW Griffiths and the architect Joseph Bazalgette and his Biography reads more like a Victorian melodrama, ridden as it is with publictrials, arson attacks, insanity and Royal acquaintances.

Fortunately Novel readers don’t have to look far to discover more about this eccentric pioneer who in his day was known to hiss and boo in public during the national anthem. An exhibition currently showing at the Laing Art Gallery until June 5th brings together 80 of Martins finest paintings. Vulgar, violent, sexy and bizarre Martins work was shocking in its day and continues to have a genuine impact on modern audiences. Mounted on canvas 8ft high and 5 ft long Martin’s Belshazzars Feast is like a Hollywood epic of its day and the picture had to be cordoned off during its original display to keep crowds at arm’s length. The Laing does not currently cordon off Martins work, but try not to go crazy when you see it.

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah 1852, John Martin 1789 -1854

Courtesy of Laing Art Gallery (Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums)

www.novelmagazine.co.uk

to submit cultural events on these pages, email mytown@novelmagazine.co.uk

my town

Hatton Gallery

The Biscuit Factory

Newcastle University

CRAFT & DESIGN 5th May - 31st May ‘From Wood to Paper’ introduces contemporary carpentry from North East based furniture designers Raskl and Ellen Thomas, intriguing paper sculptures

by Paperfaerie, folded paper jewellery by Charlotte Swaddle and exquisitely skilled paper installations by Sarah Morpeth. We will be holding an interactive Paper Day on Saturday 21st May in which we will have demonstrations by artists and chances for visitors to get involved and make their own creations.

BEN COOK Until 21 May Littoral Drifter

The Biscuit Factory’s Ceramic & Glass Week presents innovative ceramic lighting by Ulrika Jarl and sculptural glass works by Erin Dickson, winner of a craft&design Highly Commended Award at the British Glass Biennale 2010.

We will be hosting an exclusive private view of this exhibition on Thursday 5th May and will be holding an interactive ceramics day on Saturday 7th May. ‘COVER VERSIONS’ – Collective Touring Exhibition Preview Friday 13th May 6-9pm.

The Biscuit Factory are hosting & contributing to this stunning show Initiated

by Sheffield artist Pete McKee, a celebration of music and art with a slight twist. Pete McKee invited some of his favorite artists, designers, musicians, writers and illustrators to create their individual interpretation of a 12” album that they have a special affinity with. This could be a redrawing of the cover, an interpretation of the lyrics, or a pictorial representation of what the music means to the artist.

Several noteworthy individuals have been approached to participate in the exhibition with commitments from Ian Anderson (Designers Republic), 6 Music’s Mark Riley, Richard Hawley, Kid Acne, and Cartoonist Tony Husband, Anthony Marshall amongst others. In addition to ‘Cover Version’ The Biscuit Factory are showcasing a selection of iconic images from celebrated photographer Wilsher.

Potts Print UK adAndy for Novel_Potts Print (UK) ad for Novel 13/04/2011 15:29 Page 1

Prolific contemporary Cornwall based artist Ben Cook has turned his eye to the sea and his hand to the culture of surfing, culminating in a solo show at one of the North East’s most established art galleries.

Ben Cook Littoral Drifter is the result of over five years of work by the artist and is showing at Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University, from March 3 – May 21 2011. With commissioned pencil drawings of approaches to North East surf spots (as part of the artist’s ongoing Surfing Landscapes project) the exhibition also includes multi-media artworks made from materials associated with surfing

An interstellar war begins when one planet transmits a message to another, a series of pulses and beeps, and the receiving planet transmits the same message in response without understanding its meaning. The message actually means something along the lines of ‘The people of your planet are pathetic weaklings’. When the response transmission reaches the original senders they are outraged to have had their words turned against them so boldly, and they declare war. They were both looking for trouble, really.

www.potts.co.uk | @pottsprintuk E info@potts.co.uk T 0845 375 1875 F 01670 735451 Potts Print (UK) Ltd, Atlas House, Nelson Park, Cramlington, Northumberland NE23 1WG UK

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my town

to submit cultural events on these pages, email mytown@novelmagazine.co.uk

www.novelmagazine.co.uk

Hatton Gallery

Theatre

Newcastle University

23 June – 14 August August Revolution on Paper: Mexican Prints 1910 - 1960

Northern Stage METAMORPHOSES 4 May The Crick Crack Club return with another evening of captivating storytelling.

FIRST IN 3 5 May Our resident scratch night is back again for another evening of up and coming work.

The exhibition consists of loans from the British Museum and will focus on the great age of Mexican printmaking in the first half of the twentieth century. Between 1910 and 1920 Mexico was convulsed by the first socialist revolution, from which emerged a strong left-wing government that laid great stress on art as a vehicle for promoting the values of the revolution. This led to a pioneering programme to cover the walls of public buildings with vast murals, and later to setting up print workshops to produce works for mass distribution and education.

Emily Marsden, curator of the Hatton Gallery says: “This exhibition contains iconic images from one of the twentieth century’s most vibrant artistic cultures but one which is still relatively unknown outside Mexico.”

Side Gallery

Leah Gordon 4 June to 30 July 2011 Kanaval

NATIONAL THEATRE CONNECTIONS 11 – 13 May A nationwide celebration of upcoming theatre talent. Young theatre companies perform a selection of thrilling new plays commissioned by the National Theatre.

PHOENIX DANCE THEATRE: REFLECTED 19 – 20 May Get reacquainted with this internationally recognised company as it celebrates its 30th birthday and new direction under Artistic Director Sharon Watson.

THE KNOW HOW 23 – 26 May Generator’s music industry seminars return to Northern Stage.

THE BIG FELLAH 24 – 28 May Richard Bean’s brilliantly funny play follows four very different characters over three turbulent decades as their lives veer from farce to deadly danger.

Northern stage 4PLAY 26 – 28 May new plays by 4 talented new writers projecting the absurdity of life, love, truth and hope.

Thu 26 & Fri 27: 2 plays Sat 28 2pm: all 4 plays THEATRE BROTHEL 1 – 3 June What do you want to do tonight? Laugh, cry or just sit in the dark and watch? Indulge in a brand new theatre experiment.

Live Theatre Photographs and Oral Histories - Each year, Jacmel, a coastal town in Southern Haiti, holds pre-Lenten Mardi Gras Festivities.

Troupes of ‘performers’ act out mythological and political tales in a whorish theatre of the absurd that courses the streets unshackled by traditional parade.

The characters and costume partially betray their roots in medieval European carnival, but the Jacmellien masquerades are also a fusion of clandestine Vodou, ancestral memory, political satire and personal revelation.

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A WALK ON PART - THE FALL OF NEW LABOUR 11 May –4 June

Contact us now to discuss the range of properties we have available and arrange a viewing: CALL/FAX: 0191 215 1226 CALL/TEXT: 07960 498 518 EMAIL: enquiries@letonelettings.co.uk WEB: letonelettings.co.uk

Quality Accommodation Excellent locations, including Jesmond Properties ranging from 2 to 8 bedrooms Rapid response maintenance team Prompt, efficient and friendly service 25 years of experience at your service

STUDENT & PROFESSIONAL ACCOMMODATION

For all your legal requirements.

www.geoffreylurie.com

my town

to submit cultural events on these pages, email mytown@novelmagazine.co.uk

On the first anniversary of the fall of New Labour, Live Theatre brings Mullin’s witty, irreverent take on contemporary politics to the stage, reflecting three worlds during a time of crisis and change – the febrile political village of Westminster, the flash points of Africa he toured as a Minister and the fragile community he served as its MP. This newly staged production includes extracts read from the diaries.

FROM PAGE TO STAGE 21 May Don’t miss former journalist Chris Mullin as he joins writer Michael Chaplin and director Max Roberts to talk about the process of transforming the diaries from page to stage.

SHORT-CUTS 7 & 8 July Do you like theatre that’s short and sweet? So do we! That’s why Short Cuts celebrates the art of the short play. Short plays can be as funny, as poignant and as thought provoking as any full-length theatrical epic. This season writers are challenged to create a new short play inspired by their favourite poem: will they pick a sestina, a sonnet or a limerick? The best entries will be performed alongside dramatic poems and poetic plays from around the world.

www.novelmagazine.co.uk Cinema Tyneside Cinema FRANKENSTEIN 8 May Danny Boyle is one prolific man. Not only has he been busy making the outstanding 127 Hours, but the Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire director has also somehow found the time to return to the theatre and bring Frankenstein back to life in this thrilling new production of Mary Shelley’s classic gothic tale. Adapted for the stage

by Nick Dear and featuring Benedict Cumberbatch (TV’s Sherlock Holmes) and Jonny Lee Miller (Trainspotting) in the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature, this really is the must-see theatre production of the year.Benedict Cumberbatch: Victor Frankenstein

Peoples Theatre A CLOCKWORK ORANGE 17 May - 21 May Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian vision of England in the nottoo-distant future where society has degenerated into a repressive super-state. While most citizens have fallen into a passive and complacent stupor, a violent youth culture has emerged embodied in the play’s protagonist Alex. He is the fifteen-yearold leader of a small gang of teenage criminals - Dim, Pete and Georgie. The gang rebel against the uniformity and claustrophobia of their lives, expressing their rage through drug-fuelled highs during which they roam the streets, robbing men and assaulting women.

Burgess’s infamous characters are a synthesis of 1950’s youth culture, drawing inspiration from the Teddy Boys, imported Americana and the thuggish Stilyagi gangs of Soviet teenagers whom Burgess encountered during a trip to Leningrad. His novel, of which this is the stage adaptation, owes much of its mainstream popularity and cult status to Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film adaptation starring Malcolm McDowell.

the nine henry’s by mcdada

Writing Northern Film & Media presents: PETER FLANNERY - A Life in Writing 19 May The award-winning Jarrow-born Our Friends in the North and Inspector George Gently writer reveals the creative influences, processes and decisions behind his critically acclaimed work.

Venue to be announced Contact events@northernmedia.org

The Worlds First Cloned Cartoon Character www.ninehenrys.com

“Henry had many imaginary friends” Issue 1 Caption Competition Winner: Rachel Lee from Cumbria

For the illustration above, please submit your captions on the nine henry’s blog post at www.novelmagazine.co.uk

issue 3

“sub-cultures &

the subversive�

Get Published in the Creative Publication for Newcastle-Gateshead send your work to contribute@novelmagazine.co.uk - deadline for submissions: 1st June www.novelmagazine.co.uk