A couple of years ago our friends Kate and Joe had a brilliant party where we were divided into groups, given a genre and told to make a mini-movie that day, editing on-camera. We got Social Realism, which suited me very well, as I spent much of my childhood reading books like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Room at the Top. I’m the mum, ‘Ernie Parker’ (our hero) is played by the brilliant artist Stuart Pearson Wright,  and my husband Rich makes a cameo as the shifty spiv Darren.

As a child, my hero was Roald Dahl. When I grew up, I was going to write children’s novels.  At six I wrote my first, The Scruffs (about messy kids who get into scrapes).  By the time I was eight I was writing a series about Lisa Spector, daughter of an oil magnate, who has adventures in exotic locations: Transylvania, the Bermuda Triangle, Egypt, New York. In Hard Cheddar mice plotted the murder of all the world’s cats.  Sand Up My Nostrils tackled evil genies. I had the idea that for it to be a novel you had to reach 100 pages, and near the end my handwriting would get VERY BIG.

A few years ago, I had another go at a children’s novel: The Discoveries of Delilah Dark.  I finished it very quickly – in a month of euphoric, slightly manic writing. Having just enjoyed the Harry Potters, I tried to pitch it at a similar level – for 8-12s, but with details older readers might enjoy too.  I was proud of my heroine, who is a kind of 12-year old Dorothy Parker; a cynical psychic with a sharp black bob and crocodile-coloured eyes.  And I relished creating a fantasy where the enemy is not a monster or wizard, but a more contemporary threat – a shadowy corporation determined to destroy humanity and the planet.

Like many things I write (I am absurdly prolific), the novel ended up in The Drawer. I did send it to my agent of the time, but six months later she still hadn’t read it and we ended up parting. By then I was involved in other projects and Delilah was forgotten. 

Then, recently, everyone started talking about Kindle self-publishers. Some say it’s an amazing democratic revolution, others that it’s the end of literature, but as a teacher of creative writing it is becoming hard not to have an opinion. Like most writers, I find the new model simultaneously worrying and exciting.  But I decided, why just pontificate when it’s free and easy to give it a go? After all, I have all those manuscripts in The Drawer.

Obviously, I wouldn’t self-publish my poetry – I love being with Bloodaxe, who are wonderful at getting my poems reviewed and onto bookshop shelves, and when I read poetry I like to have a physical book in my hands.  My experience with the Kindle is that it suits lighter reading: something disposable or entertaining to kill time on the bus.

The Discoveries of Delilah Dark seemed the perfect text to publish as an e-book. It is totally different from my other work, so I can publish under a pseudonym (I’ve chosen Evie Glass, as my middle name is Eve and I’ve always thought Glass is a cool surname). It’s genre fiction, so it fits under the categories children’s / adventure / paranormal and should be easy to find in the Kindle bookshop. And as I wrote it in a month, I can treat it as an amusing experiment, and won’t be heartbroken if I don’t sell any copies…

My husband Rich whipped me up a quick cover:

I spent a couple of days editing and formatting it, and a week later it’s up!  It’s been really fun. A bit like playing at publishing, but real.  E-books like this depend on word of mouth, so I’ll be very grateful to anyone who shares, reviews, ‘likes’ or tells their kids about it. You can purchase it for your Kindle on Amazon for £1.54 or on Smashwords.  I’ll let you know how Delilah does…

I’ve just got back from a week in Bavaria, which was a great place to start 2012. Our very good friends Rufus and Anna had flown over there for Christmas as Anna’s family live in Burghausen, and Richard and I joined them on the 28th.

We started in Mittenwald, where we went sledging down silent Alpine slopes, past pines heavy with snow. Then there was the Gabriele-Munter-Haus in Murnau, centre of The Blue Rider movement, with furniture painted by Kandinsky. For New Year we stayed with Anna’s lovely friends Julia and Stefan in their country home near a lake.  It was a wonderful party: the stove blazing in the corner, lots of beers, schweinefleisch and sauerkraut, Anna playing the spoons and an introduction to this weird show called ‘Dinner for One’. For those of you who don’t know it, it’s this British music hall sketch that is massive in Germany and required viewing on New Year’s Eve – everyone was shocked the British visitors hadn’t heard of it, and thought it was hilarious to repeat the show’s catchphrase to us (‘Same procedure as usual’) wherever we went.

(Best viewed with a weissbier)

After this, we went to Munich to meet other friends, James and Nina, where we swam in Art Nouveau baths and went to a beer hall frequented by Brecht.  Then finally Anna’s home in Burghausen, where there is a stunning castle and Anna’s parents filled us up with an enormous cheeseboard, delicious cake and homemade jams .

It’s such a beautiful, welcoming country. Lots to take in…

Back to work now, which for me means teaching, with term starting next week.

If your new year’s resolution is to write more, there are still a couple of places available on my intermediate ‘Form and Content’ course at the Poetry School in London on Wednesday evenings. This term we’ll be looking at voice – the poetic ‘I’, confessionalism, dramatic monologues, and forms that use direct address such as elegies, ghazals and lullabies.

And for those of you (like me) who always need a holiday to look forward to, I’m also teaching a couple of residential courses this year.  A ‘Starting to Write’ Arvon at Totleigh Barton in Devon in July, and an intermediate course about finding your own voice in Loutro, Crete in September (am very excited about this, we stay on a remote beach you can only reach by boat)

When I think of Christmas as a child, I think of Carols by Candlelight. Each year, our family would walk to the church in our village in the dark – beside the frozen reservoir, then up the hill. When we got there they would be lighting candles at the end of every pew.  And then the lights went off, and there was nothing but their flickering and the pastel glow of the Christmas tree.  One year my sister had a bug, so I just went with my dad.  I remember holding his hand and it starting to snow as we walked there. His favourite carol was always ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’.

He died at Christmas eight years ago.  Just a couple of days afterwards, on Christmas Eve, the village carol singers came round. They knew we were grieving and didn’t want to disturb us, but sang ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ in our yard, in memory of my father.  I was sat in the dark by the window, listening, tears sluicing down my face. I will never forget the kindness of their song, and its beauty, despite everything.

So here is the poem that carol is based on, in memory of my dad.  Wishing you all a happy Christmas with those you love.

In the bleak mid-winter 

In the bleak mid-winter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter a stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim worship night and day,
A breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air,
But only His mother in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the Beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man, I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart

By Christina Rossetti

So, as I mentioned in the previous post, my next book will be a new translation of Ovid’s Heroides, which Bloodaxe will publish in 2013.  The title translates as Heroines, and it’s a series of poems in the voices of women from Greek and Roman myth, including Phaedra, Medea, Penelope and Ariadne, addressed to the men they love.   It’s a really radical text – in its literary transvestism; the way it often presents the same story from very different, subjective perspectives; the fact there’s a claim for it being both the first book of dramatic monologues and the first of epistolary fiction. For a long time it was Ovid’s most influential work, loved by Chaucer, Dante, Marlowe, Shakespeare and Donne, and translated by Dryden and Pope. Yet somehow, readers these days read the love poems and Metamorphoses and pass it by.  Why?  Perhaps a  combination of sexist criticism in the last century, which side-lined it as a minor work because of all its ‘carping women’, and a series of scholarly but rather dry translations which fail to make the heroines’ voices come to life.  

Anyway, I’ve been working on a new translation in free verse, and absolutely falling in love with the sequence.  It’s alternately sexy, witty, sinister, horrifying, campily bitchy, guts-out heartbreaking and pretty much everything else you love about Ovid.  I’m very much hoping I can contribute in a small way to people rediscovering it…

While we’re on the subject of strong female voices, I’d also like to point out that four of the translations I’ve made of the Somalian poet Caasha Luul Mohamad Yusuf are now up on the Poetry Translation Centre website. A pamphlet will be launched in March and we’ll soon be announcing a mini-tour around International Womens’ Day.

And whilst researching Somalian poetry, I’ve come across the new poet Warsan Shire.  Her poems in the Salt Book of Younger Poets go into very brave territory, and it’s been a while since I’ve been so knocked out by a blog: some very raw, powerful posts touching on how it feels to be a young muslim woman right now.  Writing of the drought she evokes the Somalian phrase: ‘dhiiga kuma dhaqaqo?’ – ‘does your blood not move?’ Recommended.

On saturday I went for a multi-birthday family dinner with my in-laws at an Italian in Bray (scallops with black truffle and saltimbocca) then onto the launch of Tim Turnbull’s beautiful new limited edition book, The Camden Art Redemption Miracle (Donut Press). Tim is the most underrated poet in Britain today, and quite possibly a genius, so a new book by him is always a good reason to get pissed. Also, it has a cat’s arsehole on the back cover.

I was also celebrating because Bloodaxe have just taken on my new translation of Ovid’s Heroides, to be published in 2013. More on this project to follow, but very excited about it…

I was also pleased to see a very interesting, in-depth essay on my work by Adrian May in the new PN Review, ‘The Hang of Song: The Arctic Monkeys and Clare Pollard’, in which he discusses music and poetry, and compares our difficult fourth album/collection.

Finally, my India poem ‘A Night in Varanasi’ is now up at the very cool e-zine Beat the Dust

A busy couple of weeks – Sheffield and Swansea with the Somalian tour, Lancaster, Yorkshire and Cornwall.

Cornwall was for my birthday. A friend kindly let us stay in his flat in Mousehole, and it was the last weekend of glorious weather.  On the first day we walked to Lamorna then ate scallops, and on the sunday we went to Zennor. I was burning to go there, partly because I’m a huge Katherine Mansfield fan, and that was where she joined DH Lawrence and Frieda in an attempt at communal living. Also, there’s a poem in my new collection, Changeling, about Zennor’s mermaid myth - a mermaid supposedly heaved herself up into the town to the church, following a man’s voice, and they fell in love.  (you can read it in Southword magazine). I’d been feeling rather guilty about the fact I wrote a poem about a place I’d never visited (what if I’d made some terrible error?)

Anyway, it was wonderful – yellow gorse, wild hills, the most intense blue sea. We saw the mermaid carved into the bench in the church, and then walked across the headland, past the bay where she climbed up, to a wonderful pub called the Gurnard’s Head for sunday lunch…

I love to get out of London and see a bit of nature, and tend to use the phrase: ‘a good haul’ when I see some cool things. In cornwall our haul was: a slowworm, a dead shrew and a hawk killing a sparrow mid-air.

Then last week I was in Yorkshire, teaching an Arvon ‘Starting to Write’ course with Tobias Jones. Arvon courses are taught in Ted Hughes’ old home in Lumb Bank, just down the hill from Plath’s grave in Heptonstall. The house is in a valley, which was bright with red leaves, and filled with mist in the mornings. The first night was Halloween, so we talked about Hughes’ belief that words had a magical, often dangerous, power and then wrote spells.  

The rest of the week rushed past in an exhausting blur of readings, sonnets, one-to-ones, open fires and red wine. And as he’s an expert on Italian corruption – check out his fantastic book The Dark Heart of Italy -  Tobias was very good company in the last days of Berlusconi. 

Then to Lancaster, to see my family who all live there now. I was honoured to help my four-year-old niece Rose with her first sparkler, and went to the RSPB marsh Leighton Moss with my mum. Our haul was: some red stags, teal, shovellers, a lapwing and a cloud of starlings that swirled from one end of the sky to the other.

In other news, my Any Winehouse poem features in the new e-zine of Digital Behemoth. It’s in the style of Frank O’Hara’s ‘The Day Lady Died’ (about Billie Holiday).

If you want to catch us, I’ll be reading my translations alongside her as part of the Somali Poets’ Tour 2011 at Off the Shelf in Sheffield this saturday (the 29th of October), and in Swansea on November the 8th.

Just got back from India – I was there for three weeks, with my mum and then my husband for company – and had an incredible time. It’s such an intense, fascinating, difficult, beautiful place.  I was reading Narayan’s translations of The Ramayana and The Mahabharata whilst I was there – both highly recommended – and thinking about samsara, incarnation, the meaning of life etc, etc, like any good poet…. (already written a poem since I got back: ‘Fever Dream in Varanasi’). In the meantime, these pictures show some of my highlights….