Author diaries

Lots of Coverage

Lots of Coverage
Ironically, suddenly there’s a flurry of media interest in Wall - I think I’ve tuned in to the zeitgeist. Not only was I interviewed on Open Book, for a feature about teenage life in the North East, but I have a wonderful review in the latest issue no. 34 of Mslexia, a local book group read Wall, then asked me along to answer questions and talk about it, plus I’ve been interviewed for a TyneTees documentary series, Northern Eye. The title of the programme is ‘Forget Carter’ and it examines the regeneration of Tyneside. The producer read Wall and thought the content was relevant to the programme, so I had a front room full of men - camera, sound, producer and interviewer - as I was questioned about my views on art and life. This should be broadcast in August sometime. Whether it will sell more books, I don’t know, but it keeps it in the public’s mind.

As I was gloating over the review in Mslexia, I noticed that they’d got the name of my publisher wrong - printing it as Stack Books instead of Smokestack Books. I emailed them and asked if they’d left out the Smoke as it was post 1st July? I love going into the newly smoke-free pubs, as I suffer from asthma, and cigarette smoke is the worst for setting it off. However, some of the older establishments still have that lingering aroma of stale tobacco. I went to a party in Manchester last weekend, held in a social club. The minute we walked in to decorate the place with lights and balloons, the smell hit us - so we set up some sweet burning oil to counteract the whiff. It duly had its new No Smoking signs up, in both English and Polish. There’s a lot of talk about eastern Europeans settling and working in Britain since the change in EU regulations, but I think the Polish community at this Manchester club had an older history.

I have a Polish woman in my Writing for Children group that I tutor at The Centre for Lifelong Learning in Newcastle. She’s been researching the story of her mother’s wartime experiences, and every so often gives us some new event she’s discovered. It’s a heart-rending story, beginning with how her grandfather had to ‘give’ her mother to the Nazis as a young teenager, to go and work in a Labour Camp. If he hadn’t, the rest of the family and children would have been shot. Whatever problems we have in our lives, thank goodness, we’re never faced with decisions like that, in this country anyway.

The poems are rolling in now for The Ropes Anthology - very exciting. A wide-ranging collection touching on boy soldiers, baby girls being abandoned, school photographs, love and sex. There’s a rich variety of styles as well including a villanelle, a freeform ‘beat’ poem, a sonnet, a theatrical dialogue and some text messages.
Plus two of our latest poems for the Diamond Twig Web Poem of the Month slot are prize winners - Kathy Tower’s Planting Tulips (p.o.m.May) is a highly commended poem in the Mslexia competition, and next month’s poem ‘The Second Version’ by Louise Hislop won first prize in the recent Northumberland Writers competition. Congratulations all round.

Posted by Ellen on 11 July 2007 at 01:57 PM GMT [Link]