Meeting Piero della Francesca in Pizza Express

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On a recent trip to London I went into the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery and looked at the Piero della Francescas. I hadn’t slept much the night before.

Later I wrote this poem-which I’ve edited but will now put away and get out weeks, even months, from now to edit again. I started off with a vaguely humorous idea, but that wasn’t what the poem wanted to be…it wanted to be something much more serious…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meeting Piero della Francesca in Pizza Express

in The Strand.

Coming in from light and fountains I narrow my vision

choose a table, cradle the weight of insomniac limbs on the plastic

chair, pick up a menu.

 

I’m not hungry for pizza, just to sit down.

I like the idea of the chequered floor and marble tables

I want to take my eyes out and rest them on the veins.

 

You bring me iced water, used to thin paint, soothe

mountains, sing pale streams; bird-egg blue, grey dove

float above the muzak

 

you stand beside me your halo a saucer of gold

pencil poised to where the drawing shows through

your body solid geometry.

 

You take my order, I catch your symmetry

watch your mathematician’s finger raise in the pause

before inspiration

 

remember how, introduced  at seventeen we met nightly

in the fossil cove, stole midnight walks across frost

lawns under coated trees.

 

I decided to adopt you then when slides spun

in a new world, I thought – I’ll make you my favourite painter too

that will be something

 

for the future, for the person I want to be – but only now

notebook on marble, beside the half-eaten Margherita

do I taste this gift of another’s passion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Nature of Imprisonment

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Sunday evening viewing is beginning to acquire that ‘stay at home and unplug the phone’ imperative that The Killing brought to Saturday evenings with another import, this time not from Denmark but from the US in the shape of Homelands*, Channel 4. Whilst I won’t say it’s entirely without fault I have to admit I’m hooked and I was especially interested to read that when researching the lead role of Sergeant Nicholas Brody, Damian Lewis , who in my book is spellbinding and utterly convincing, drew on the experience of hostage Brian Kennan by reading Kennan’s An Evil Cradling.

First published in 1992 An Evil Cradling is a book that I read on publication – I was always  interested in the fate of the hostages. It is also a book that will never leave me. I’ve bought a number of copies over the years, given a number away, urged people to read it, while being aware that despite its poetry, it is at times painful beyond measure.

 

In his preface Kennan says that this will be an attempt to reveal men ‘in extremis.’  He makes no excuse for the therapeutic intent behind the writing: his desire to imprison the madness he experienced on paper. But he writes in such a way, and with such eloquence, that what might have been the pouring of sickness onto the page and nothing more -“One sheds ones sickness in books- repeats and presents again ones emotions, to be master of them.”― D.H. Lawrence –is in fact a rich, complex and defiant journey through the landscape of terror, the relationship between captor and hostage, the experience of captivity and the triumph of humanity and perhaps most remarkably – love.

Working as I did for so many years in prison it’s perhaps not surprising that this book, when it arrived, had such a profound effect on me. It was, and for me still is, the book that takes us closest to the nature of imprisonment in all its manifestations: despair, humour, language, violence, paradox, intimacy, compassion, imagination and memory. It reminds me every time I pick it up of the power of good writing to get at the truth.

I used  Brian Keenan’s words in the Preface to my prison story – When You Hear The Birds Sing

Come now into that cell with me and stay here and feel if you can and if you will that time, whatever time it was, for however long, for time means nothing in this cell. Come, come in.

An Evil Cradling – Brian Keenan

I’ve just discovered that When You Hear The Birds Sing and also Susie Drew and Other Stories are to be used with prisoners at HMP Low Newton as part of a reading and book-making project. Needless to say I’m delighted.

* If you want to catch up with Homelands there’s 40D of course or read the excellent reviews in The Telegraph

Spreading Our Wings

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These last few weeks have been tumultuous in the house. Firstly there was the building tension as rooms filled with the furniture and pots and pans of another life and then came a slow withdrawal and the resulting shift in the tectonic plates of family.

Finally the disruption and ground swell gave way and my son David  left home to set up a new home with his lovely girlfriend.

This is not the first time David has left home. He did so once before to go to University but came back earlier than expected! Since then he has been ensconced in his room creating and developing what has now become a highly successful online business. At twenty four he is the director of a Limited Company and it is hard not to be impressed with what he has achieved.

It’s hard too, not to feel a huge David-shaped hole in my life. We have been the best of friends, working at home together and sharing in our successes and failures, and most important of all, our dreams. I miss him but at the same time I’m very excited for him and his future life. As a consequence I find myself in the middle of a range of conflicting emotions that are sometimes hard to pin down and equally hard to deal with. Perhaps it’s why I’m unwell with a horrible cold virus, cough etc

I don’t like the phrase ‘empty-nest syndrome’ or its associations. It’s not adequate for the complexity of feeling and relationship we experience as mothers. It implies a woman without a life apart from her children and I would never define myself in this way. I am not defined by my son but I love him, (just as I love my daughter) and I’m looking forward very much to the new and different relationship that will grow in this altered landscape.For now though I am simply missing him and I feel I have a right to mourn his going.

A bonus for me in all of this is that David has bequeathed me his room! And with help of John I’m about to transform it into a new study. Up until now I have always written in a rather cramped box room, now I’m about to spread my wings – watch this space for pictorial updates…..

The room as it is now..

Painted Life – Lucien Freud

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If you didn’t catch Lucien Freud: Painted life on BBC Two last night then you missed the treat of the week!  It was a thoughtful, measured film but with an intense gaze rather like the one Freud brought to his work. It was fascinating on both the man and the artist, with  quiet and valuable contributions from family and one or two close friends.

You can watch it again here.

Freud’s (1992-2011) work is currently showing at The National Portrait Gallery London in an exhibition with which he collaborated in his final year. I’m hoping to see it on Tuesday. I think the quality of the paint itself is something that can only be hinted at on film and I am hoping to be, in the artist’s words.. astonished, disturbed, seduced, convinced.

Self-Portrait - older

 

What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.- Lucien Freud

 

A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then the painter realises that it is only a picture he is painting. Until then he had almost dared to hope the picture might spring to life. Lucien Frued

Reading and Recording for The Writing Game

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Something to warm you in this fearsome cold snap

I spent this morning in Wendy’s beautiful study sat by a heart-and-body-warming ( I hate this cold) coal fire in the company of Richard W. Hardwick reading and recording an in-conversation for Wendy Robertson’s Writing Game. Wendy, Richard and I have a lot in common, firstly being writers and secondly having all worked in prison.

Richard is still working as a writing tutor in HMP Frankland. For the March programme he read from his latest work, Andalucia which is a memoir he was prompted to write with some urgency when his partner Anna was diagnosed with breast cancer. The extract he chose describes a creative writing class in the prison where the tutor encourages his writers to conjure sense pictures, smells, sounds; until it starts to rain. They hear the rain on the roof and all migrate to the window where they begin to talk about what’s outside, about walking in the rain, about feeling grass under their feet….I loved it.It was elegant and restrained and honestly and beautifully written, reflecting as it did the interior life of the prisoner: his struggle for normality and his instinct for survival.

If you’d like to listen in to the readings and our conversation about prisons and about self publishing then the programme goes out on the first Sunday in March at midday. The podcast will be available sometime soon after. In the meantime if you want to listen to any of the podcasts the link is as above or the i-tunes link is on my sidebar. I think my favourite to date is the in-conversation with world renowned children’s author David Almond but there are so many fascinating programmes .. Do let me know which is your favourite….

Don’t Miss…….

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Life is full of so many good things to soak up and you really don’t have to look far to find them -here are 3 – no, make that 4 – that I’m getting excited about at the moment:

1.Jeanette Winterson’s wonderful memoir – full of rage and love, wit and reflection – Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal – I am reading it just now and will be reviewing it for a new book blog. I already know it’s a must read, sometimes I think she’s climbed inside my head and knows exactly what I thought and felt as a child especially about books and writing!

Here is a taste: Books for me are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.  I’ve always felt like this about books and about writing too. That’s why for me, whatever happens, the act of writing is the most important thing.

2.Jacinda Little – Creative Ghostwriter’s post Naked Public Recycling Cures Bone Valley Hauntings – a beautiful piece about the writer’s graveyard which will convince you to unearth that old writing. And if you need any further reason then read Lifetwicetasted’s Wind From the Sierra

I'm fascinated by this piece by Anselm Keifer - it seems to connect with some of the poetry I'm writing..

3. David Hockney at the Royal Academy – Can’t wait to see it. Have it on the best authority that it’s stunning. Likewise if you’re in London Anselm Kiefer and Nicolas Gambaroff: at White Cube Bermondsey – (Thanks Jan)

4. And finally - Write Poetry – Matthew Sweeney and John Hartley Williams – a great ‘teach yourself’ for aspiring poets full of amazing workshop ideas to get you writing.

*Some more Anselm Kiefer images here on minimal exposition blog

Longlists and Irish Writers

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This morning wasn’t the best – I have some eye problems and I was told by my consultant they’re not improving (luckily now I still see fine!) But then I came home to my e mail and discovered this -

Doire Press announces its long lists for its 1st Annual International Fiction & Poetry Chapbook Competition. Click here to see the names. Be sure to check back on; February 13th for short lists of ten and February 20th for the winners

I’m there in the prose longlist with lots of Irish writers – can’t be bad!

Celebrating the Indie – Susie Drew and Other Stories

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As I posted at the beginning of January this is definitely my year for celebrating the Indie – exploring life outside of the writing world of the establishment, doing it for myself – and in a spirit of co-operation and not of competition.

So I’m delighted to say I’ve just published  Susie Drew and Other Stories – on Kindle. It’s the second in my series of prison stories – Beyond The Mask (the first being When You Hear The Birds Sing). It’s available for download here  price a mere 77p – $0.99 – for three stories and you can’t buy a coffee for that!


Here’s a taster….

 Susie Drew

Susie comes back to prison again and again…

Susie Drew has the habits of a jackdaw, stealing bright objects, little bits of nothing that shine. She steals food too, coffee from the Nescafe jar in the staffroom. She’s your cleaner, the best cleaner you’ve ever had. Puts the coffee in screws of paper, buries it under the mattress in her prison cell…

 

Heroin Trees – Roxanne and Me

Roxanne is a working girl. Nita is her friend, both are heroin addicts…

I wasn’t long out of prison after the first time and things weren’t going well. Despite all my promises I was back with Sonny and using again, our money heated up in spoons: liquid money shot into our veins and laid out nodding on the couch. We managed alright for a while because he was dealing, but when Sonny got sick and I started wondering what the hell we were going to do for money that was when Roxy rang…

 

Pink Passion

Marie’s search for love ends in tragedy…

I met him at the Pineapple, one Thursday night. I used to go there most weeks looking for something. I suppose then I might have called it love, although I barely knew it. You can’t know what you’ve never had, can you?  And I never had much of it when I was growing up…

If you’re tempted to read these stories of invisible lives I hope you find them fascinating- do let me know what you think.