Why drag politics into it?

My favourite thing about Jeremy Corbyn gracing the covers of both the NME and Kerrang in the run up to the election is that more austere media have to describe what they are. I imagine the writer with a face like they’re sucking a lemon as they type “rock magazine Kerrang” in relation to a political story. It seems to have sparked debate amongst rock fans and beyond about whether politics should be included in a music magazine. In these politically polarised times it seems artists of all kinds are told to keep politics out of what they do.

Fuck that.

Musicians, writers, filmmakers, comedians, actors and more are told to stick to the day job by people who don’t seem to realise that it’s impossible because all art is political. It doesn’t matter whether the work is political in intent, whether it has some measure of political thought buried in the subtext or whether it’s nowhere to be found. The act of creating something is always an act of defiance in one way or another. Whether you’re kicking down the constraints of patriarchy, illuminating the impact of war or showing a young couple fall in love against socially-constructed barriers, it’s all political.

As with all art, rock music has been, and continues to be, part of my political education. If established political figures and commentators are worried about scruffy hordes of rock fans taking over their territory, they should be. We’re a lot better informed that you might imagine. If some people are uncomfortable that a music magazine is openly espousing more liberal views than they hold, they’re idiots who appear to have missed the point of the very thing they claim to love. Like the people genuinely surprised that Harry Potter author JK Rowling has anti-fascist, liberal views, it shows a startling lack of understanding. One of the incredible things that art can do is unearth such dissonance of thought and start a conversation.

As an aside, my least favourite thing about the Kerrang business is that I keep imagining someone like Zach de la Rocha reading all the internet comments about how politics doesn’t belong in rock music and shedding a few tears. I’m comforted by the thought that he’ll get an incredible song out of it, though.

Personal interlude

The Bank Holiday weekend was a bit strange for me. I learned on the Friday that a friend was getting married on the Sunday and from my distinct lack of knowledge I was clearly never invited. I was a little bit hurt; this was a friend who had drifted away after they found a new partner and yet still I had always thought they’d be back in my life one day. It felt like a faint line was being drawn under the friendship. Over the weekend, I got messages from various mutual friends asking me why I wasn’t there and whether I had known it was happening. That made it feel a lot more definite and that line became much more permanent.

I’m not going to go into a lot of history because it’s not really that relevant. I was a good friend to this person and at a time when I needed support, they weren’t there for me because they were caught up in their romance. Perhaps I did something to warrant their disappearance from my life, I honestly don’t know. Friends have theorised various scenarios and what they all demonstrate is the incredible loyalty and kindness my friends show me all the time.

As well as helping me to remember that my friends are wonderful people, the whole situation made me realise something about what we do and don’t say, what is and isn’t included. It’s possible that this errant friend realised their mistake and felt too awkward to get in touch, for example. It may have felt easier to just slink away, even though I think we all understand when people get overwhelmed, or over-excited or just too damn busy to keep in touch all the time.

The interesting thing is that one slightly awkward conversation and my attendance at – or at the least, awareness of – the wedding would have meant no one else would have known that we never really spoke any more. There was never an argument, and yet the severance of the friendship is absolute and maybe difficult questions would be asked. My presence would have made the absence of friendship less visible to the wider world. Silence didn’t keep the distance between us hidden; on the contrary, it exposed and amplified it.

I’m not sure what all this means, but it’s an interesting idea for a writer. How loudly do the things we consciously edit from our work echo in the final draft? What is the effect of all the things we don’t say? What is happening behind the scenes of the primary action? I don’t have any answers; it’s just something I’ll be thinking about over the next few weeks as I work on some new poems.

Maybe one day I’ll write about this whole situation and how it feels. I’m not so sure on that, because I try to focus on the positives wherever I can. Maybe I’ll write about my brilliant remaining friends instead. Or perhaps something that shows that dark moments illuminate both the light in our lives and secrets about the strange business of writing.

And just for the record, despite everything I wish this former friend of mine the utmost happiness. I wish I could have been at their wedding to tell them so. I’ve learned from this that what isn’t said can also hold weight, so perhaps the on going silence will pass on my good wishes somehow.

Human beings suffer

I’m sure from the outside, the lives of writers and artists look easy. I mean, all you have to do is spend a lot of time doing the thing you love, right? If you’re a writer, it means you spend a lot of time writing and reading, which is all I ever really wanted to do so I can see that it might look easy. It means engaging your imagination throughout every aspect of your life, which is a way of truly appreciating it. The challenge, and the place where the real work comes in, is to keep doing these things when the everyday stuff of life gets in the way.

When it comes to major events, from a personal loss to national horrors such as the recent Manchester bombing, things get even harder. I’m not saying for a second that it’s harder for artists. It’s not. I lost my Dad a few years ago and I don’t think it was tougher on me than on my sisters just because I’m a writer. I’ve been following the news about the attack in Manchester with the same horror as everyone else. I’m not kidding myself that I’m somehow special or more sensitive. When I think of writing about it, lines from Seamus Heaney’s poem The Cure at Troy keep recurring in my head:

“No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.”

That doesn’t mean it’s pointless to keep going in dark times. Poetry, for me, is about understanding; it has as many roots in kindness as it does in language. Looking at the world in a new way can help us to appreciate it, see things from a different perspective or articulate feelings we’re struggling to understand. Poetry is also about joy. Poets write for the sheer joy of it, and that’s a good thing to be sending out into the world right now. It can be hard to hold on to that when horrific events take us so far from it, but I feel that artists of all stripes have an obligation to persevere.

The obligation is there not because artists have been marked out for some special reason. It’s because it’s incumbent on everyone to keep going, to find kindness and love in even the most horrific of circumstances. There is as much courage in a teenage girl putting on a sparkly t-shirt and dancing at a pop concert as there is in a writer trying to find a new way to express an old idea.

What’s my point here? Life is hard, human beings suffer and it can be hard to make sense of it all. All we can do as artists is stay connected to kindness and joy. All we can do as people is share that same kindness and joy with others and never, ever stop dancing.

I wanna reach down and pick the crowd up

I haven’t blogged for a while, it’s been a tough few months while I adjust to various situations that made me re-think my approach to writing. However, a chance comment to a friend today made me think it was time to get back to it. I was both shocked and saddened by the announcement of Chris Cornell’s death today. I told my friend that he had always been an inspiration to me because although I never had much in the way of musical talent, hearing him sing made me want to write the way he sounded.

If you’re not aware, Chris Cornell is a rock musician, known for the bands Soundgarden and Audioslave as well as a successful solo career. You can find a proper biography online somewhere. For me, when I think of Cornell, I think of the moving Temple of the Dog album that was on almost constant rotation throughout my late teenage years. The album was written by musicians looking to process the loss of a friend and it is full of anger and love and most of all, life in all its messy and complicated iterations.

When I said I wanted to write how Cornell sounds, I meant a strong, unwavering voice that resounds with sincerity and power. A voice that demonstrates anger and frustration but has a foundation in humanity and love that will not be ignored, will not tire, and pushes to the edges of endurance to make a point. The power and strain of his voice is, to me, something to aspire to in poetry.

Part of my recent struggle with writing has been trying to balance what might make me successful in some measure and what makes my heart sing. I was already headed that way, but the news of Cornell’s death has sealed it for me. Maybe I should have learned more lessons in my years on the planet, got more cynical and focussed but my heart won’t let me. I really haven’t changed much since I was a teenager. I still want to write like Chris Cornell sings, and now I know that I will, for all he gave to the world in the form of his music, for teenage Zoe who felt shivers down her spine when she heard him sing – 

“You’ve got to hold on to your time
Till you break through these
Times of trouble.”

Influences come in many forms. Writers need to read widely, but they need to be voracious consumers of all forms of art and follow whatever makes their heart sing. They need to live as widely as they read, if that makes sense. I don’t know. It makes sense to me. Thank you Chris Cornell, for all the music you gave the world and for once again helping someone who was lost find their way in times of trouble.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

When I first started writing, it was at a difficult time in my life and I had a burst of inspiration that appeared to be unearthed amidst the turmoil. As I committed more deeply to writing, I found that the inspiration appeared to evaporate and the first few times that happened, I panicked. I felt like I’d lost whatever it was that gave me such joy and I was approaching an end to my dream of being a writer. Over the years, I’ve found this has happened on a frequent but entirely unpredictable basis and one thing I’ve learned is not to panic and trust that the inspiration will return.

A lot of writing advice, correctly, centres on the need for hard work as a writer and how you must write even on days when you don’t feel particularly inspired or even when the work you’re doing isn’t turning out well. I understand the value of that and certainly I agree that perseverance can pay off on that score. When I was completing my MA, I couldn’t negotiate assignment deadlines around a capricious (and let’s face it, fictional) muse so I did have to keep working to a certain extent, but I must admit I never kept myself to a schedule or particular pattern of working which required a set number of hours or words, per day or per week. For some writers, this approach works but it’s worth acknowledging that writing advice is pretty much like relationship advice – all the theory sounds correct but it’s never the same when you’re experiencing it personally.

When I find myself without the urge to write, the first thing I do is remember not to panic, which only makes me feel worse and therefore less likely to write anything of merit. I remind myself of all the times this has happened before and I have come through it. Then I set about doing anything to fill up my mind in a way that might cause inspiration to come flooding back. At the moment, I’m reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for the pure joyous beauty of the storytelling and Charles Simic’s book of poetry The Lunatic to help me keep looking at language in a way that is fresh. As I get used to a long commute, I’m also listening to an audiobook of David Copperfield to remind me of the way words conjure worlds. In doing all of these things, I am still a writer and I don’t see this as time away from what I do, it’s just time to refill the well of inspiration.

All writing advice should be taken with a grain of salt because each writer is on a personal journey akin to a love affair, it’s never the same as the theory or the experience of the next guy. Continuing to write despite how you feel might work for you and in that case, keep doing it. On the other hand, if you need a break, don’t think of it as failure. You might find inspiration from being outdoors, or from switching off your brain for a while and watching something comforting on TV, decluttering your home or going for a run. The important thing to remember is that you’re still a writer when you do these things and at some point, you’re going to get back to the blank page.

Will you be my Valentine?

Love, like poetry, is a slippery creature and both love and poetry remain an enigma to me most of the time. In preparing this blog, I’ve researched love poems, thought about the structure of love stories and watched a couple of films and I’m at a loss. I recognise that Valentine’s Day is just a commercial enterprise and the aim is to make people feel they are lacking something which can be remedied by buying a certain product, or buying into a certain worldview. It still sucks to be single on Valentine’s Day, though. I miss having someone to sneer at it without appearing bitter. I miss being able to talk about romance at all without appearing bitter, tragic or, if I choose to think more positively, hopelessly naïve.

Love poems can be incredibly moving and address many aspects of romance, from consuming passion to unrequited love and the end of an affair. I haven’t written many love poems in my career because I’ve never found a way to break out of those categories. I have written some reflections on past relationships, but they’re rarely about love and more about self-discovery. I did write a poem for the wedding of two of my best friends and that was a tough commission because I felt a lot of pressure to get it right. I found the certainty of their marriage, the “rightness” of them being together very hard to express without resorting to cliché. The language around love is something that fascinates me because, I think, what it demonstrates in most cases is the inadequacy of language. So much remains unsaid and perhaps that’s why poets, novelists and musicians continue to try.

As a single woman in my forties, I may find much unsaid about my experience but that doesn’t mean it isn’t written between the lines – screaming at me between the verse and the chorus – and those are messages no one wants to write down. Love poems talk in elevated language about how superficial aspects such as age or looks don’t matter (and my friends do the same) but the truth is that in the real world, they do. In the rousing poem Wild Geese, Mary Oliver counsels that, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves.” That may be excellent advice for life, but if that soft animal contains too many contradictions, if it loves delicate poetry and the most bombastic action movies, gourmet cocktails and a pint of Guinness, or loves being an Aunt but would rather have a puppy than a child, it makes for a truly terrible dating profile. Trust me.

Just as there is a gap between the words found in love poems and our experience of love, there is a dissonance between how we would like life to be and how it really is. While no one finds the words to express that, Valentine’s Day can stake a claim in the gap, pulling us towards the dream and away from the reality. On bad days, I think there must be something wrong with me to have failed so utterly in the world of romance. I remind myself of the many loves in my life, comprised of my family and the most incredible friends, just to be reassured that I’m not irrevocably broken. I always write to find out what I think, so maybe I need to start with that experience and write love poetry which reflects my reality. Wild Geese may be relevant after all, concluding as it does:

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. ”

Next time I feel like a romantic failure, I’m also going to remind myself of something I discovered while researching this blog – Amazon lists the recent film version of Macbeth under the category of Romance. I may suck at dating and remain mystified by romance but at least I know that Lord and Lady Macbeth aren’t the romantic model to strive towards.

I’ve told you a million times to stop using hyperbole

I’ve noticed that the word traitor seems to be popping up in rhetoric a lot recently. It seems I’m not the only one to notice, with a German panel labelling it the ‘ugliest word of 2016’ due to Nazi overtones. A traitor is defined as ‘a person who betrays someone or something, such as a friend, cause or principle.’ This means a person who is protesting against the actions of a government they see as deplorable is not a traitor, they are in fact staying entirely true to their own principles.

Protests which are designed to condemn the behaviour of a corporation – such as #DeleteUber – or deny a platform to alt-right speakers, as happened at the University of Berkeley are not betraying principles of freedom of commerce or speech. A company can and will do what it wants, but so can each customer. That alt-right speaker does have the right to speak, but equally everyone else has a similar right to ignore him, or speak up about why they don’t want him there. I, for example, have the right to tell you I’m going to turn up at your house once a week and read you poetry, and then send you a bill. You have the right to tell me you don’t want to pay for that, and you don’t want a stranger in your house. You’re missing out on some cracking poetry, of course, but you’re not a traitor to free speech to tell me so.

The word was used this week in relation to MPs who voted against Brexit, as if they were traitors to the country and the will of the people. Apart from the fact that the referendum didn’t deliver a resounding 100% vote, if you believe in the UK as a sovereign power, and you believe therefore in the sovereignty of parliament and the notion of parliamentary democracy, then you believe in the right of MPs to vote against something they believe is not in the national interest, or the interest of their constituents. They are, in fact, the living, breathing embodiment of faith in the system that they are accused of betraying.

It seems like ‘traitor’ has become shorthand for ‘someone I don’t agree with’ and that’s dangerous because the word has so many emotive associations. It is used as an argument-ending word to shut down discussion and will, in turn, become meaningless. The truth will always be more powerful than any amount of hyperbole or rhetorical tricks, and writers have a duty to preserve and defend language so that the truth can be shared with people. A good example of this is in the Pablo Neruda poem I’m Explaining a Few Things and the haunting lines:

“and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like the blood of children.”

Neruda is the master of simile and metaphor but in this poem, denouncing the Nationalist movement during the Spanish Civil War, he understands that nothing is more powerful or emphatic than the bare, unvarnished truth. In these times, writers must look past the rhetoric and maintain a clear eye and a steady pen. This is how to write beautifully but more importantly, it is how to live without betraying your freedom. 

Sympathy for the devil

At a poetry workshop last year, we were set an assignment to write an ode to someone or something we thought about negatively. On that occasion, I wrote about my school bullies and I never finished the poem because although I saw the value of the exercise, my heart wasn’t in it. This weekend I set about resurrecting this assignment in relation to the current political situation and once again, I couldn’t bring the thoughts into any kind of resounding whole. I’ve spoken before about literature being a vehicle for empathy and, it seems, mine has a limit.

When I wrote about my experiences in school, I could understand that those girls were afraid of anyone different, afraid of anything that toppled their tenuous grip on popularity. They were just as trapped in the complex, vicious social hierarchy of an all girls’ school, however cushioned they were by prettiness and popularity. The poem I drafted that day, though, rang hollow. Usually when I write, something rises up from within the poem that is more than just words and in this case, there was just an empty shell.

This weekend, I tried to understand how anyone could support the racist, inhumane treatment of refugees. I checked some of my privilege - I imagined if, perhaps, I hadn’t had the good fortune to be brought up in a family where kindness and support were not only valued but enacted every day. I also considered whether if I’d had more – more money, more power – I’d feel like I had more to lose from an inclusive society.  In both cases, I could understand the rationale but - like that poem about my school bullies - there was no heart to the argument. This IS no heart to an argument like that.

I saw a lot of parallels between the school bullies and the racist arguments. The first, most obvious one is the name calling; it seems Social Justice Warrior (SJW) has been replaced by snowflake. For the record, if someone calls me a Social Justice Warrior, I feel like a combination of Captain America and General Leia so please do go ahead with that. Snowflakes are pretty, so again, be my guest. What the prevalence of such empty insults reveals is that these bullies are terrified of being called names because they haven’t got the backbone to withstand them. I’ve had a lifetime of ginger jokes – when I started primary school I was a chubby kid with ginger hair, national health glasses and a patch over one eye, so feel free to come at me with name-calling if you must, but I learned to cope with that when I was five or six and I just don’t care. If anyone thinks that might hurt me, all they’re doing is revealing their greatest fear.

Years ago, when I was learning to cope with bullies, my Gran, who had a bellyful of bad treatment in her life, told me to just ignore them – and if that didn’t work, then kick them in the shins. I used to talk to her about how I hated being singled out and she would say, “Oh Zoe, wouldn’t life be boring if we were all the same.” I think about that a lot as banning refugees is reframed as protecting us from terrorists, and racism, classism and sexism all rise to the fore. My Gran was right and I don’t want a boring life, I want to meet people from all walks of life and from all over the world. I don’t see the hypocrisy in wanting an inclusive world and being intolerant of bullies because, as I discovered over the weekend, there’s no heart there, nothing to connect with.

I abandoned my poem and instead wrote a defiant piece and worked on another poem where I’m attempting to make the title do a lot of heavy lifting. In one way or another, they both came from the work examining bullies and the power of words, so I’m still getting great value from that assignment. Maybe one day I’ll go back and try again but until then, actor David Harbour said everything I might have to say at the SAG Awards last night. I stand with Stranger Things’ Chief Hopper on the matter of bullies. If my Gran were still around today, she would stand to her full height of five-foot-nothing and do exactly the same.

And don’t think I don’t know that it was a privilege to have such a principled, bad-ass Gran. 

Oh hey, fixed those lists of dystopian fiction for you

In the last week, both The Guardian and the Irish Times published lists of dystopian fiction that might help their readers make sense of the current political climate. Neither list contained a female writer.  Not Octavia Butler, who foresaw insidious intent behind the phrase “Make America Great Again.” Not Margaret Atwood, who took the current treatment of women to its logical conclusion in The Handmaid’s Tale. Not Naomi Alderman’s recent book The Power, which examines gender inequality in a fresh and sometimes terrifying way. Not… OK, I’m not just going to list writers here, but I think the point is made.

Excluding women from lists like this may seem like a small thing to get upset about in the circumstances, but it’s upsetting nonetheless. The idea continues that men write great books of social importance, women write domestic stories about feelings. Even if this were true (and to be clear, it’s not), domestic novels such as Middlemarch or South Riding and the entire catalogue of Jane Austen demonstrate that such stories can and do also contain valid political and social commentary.

I understand that ultimately, what we read is down to personal taste and if you want to read exclusively male writers, that’s your choice - even if what you’re choosing is to miss out on a lot of what literature has to offer. It is worth examining, however, why lists like these in the media, and school reading lists continue to promote the canon of male writers – and predominantly straight, white men at that. I’m not advocating wiping men off the list, but reading something like Orwell or Vonnegut means more if you read it alongside Atwood or Butler.

It strikes me that the disregard of women writers has a parallel in the continuing snobbery around genre fiction as somehow consider “less than” literary fiction. First of all, if you think you’re in any way a better person because you read the Booker shortlist instead of a fantasy series, you’re not. Secondly, you’ll find in genre fiction such as crime, science fiction or fantasy that the author base is more diverse – still not perfect, but certainly it is a more progressive arena. Finally, genre fiction can and does comment on personal and social issues, sometimes in a more moving and gripping way. I wonder if this is because in genre fiction, the story is so much more important than the writer. On this more level playing field, people of both genders and from all walks of life can and do succeed.

It only takes one book speaking directly to you to make you a lifelong reader. I would never judge someone based on what they choose to read – or not to read – but when compiling lists of recommendations, wouldn’t it be worth casting the net more widely, not least because you have a greater chance of hitting the mark? Reading is one of those self-perpetuating habits; the more you read, the more you want to read and I can’t understand why anyone would want to put limits on that.

I am aware I missed so many other examples of dystopian fiction written by women and that I could have listed so many more examples of female writers of social, political and literary importance. I recommend following #ReadWomen on twitter for more recommendations. 

Lights Go Out, Walls Come Tumbling Down

I’ve been thinking about walls. As part of my dissertation examining the relevance of Ancient Britain, I walked along Hadrian’s Wall and wrote a poem considering the perspective of that wall. I’ve yet to place it, and I can’t work out whether I’m pleased that it now has more relevance and might find a place somewhere or not. I always felt the poem was a warning not to repeat the mistakes of the past; I never wanted it to reflect the present. It’s still one of my favourite things I’ve ever written, but I feel a little sad for it now, poor wee poem standing on the foundations of the terrifying political landscape we’re currently facing.

When I was researching Ancient Britain, I learned more about the Antonine Wall in Edinburgh. Like Hadrian’s Wall, it was also built by the Romans as a means of marking the boundaries of the empire and attempting to keep out the raging Caledonii who didn’t take kindly to invasion. The wall is notable because the lines cut brutally across the landscape in a very vivid demonstration of how little politics is related to the natural world. The wall had forts dotted two miles apart along the 39 mile long, 10-foot high structure and was surrounded by deep ditches. Despite these fortifications and over 7,000 men stationed at the wall, it didn’t last very long. The Caledonii tribes were too effective at guerrilla attacks because they understood and worked with their environment and the Romans were frustrated at every attempt to effectively hold or advance the line.

Writers face metaphorical walls as well as real ones, internally and externally – perhaps you sympathise with the Romans and every time you seek to build up your career, a rampaging heathen comes along and topples your structure. Perhaps you feel like those native tribes who sought to frustrate imperial rule at every step, faced with a wall of established rules and requirements for an industry that both shuts you in and keeps you out of the wider world.

From the top of a wall, you can see both sides. Sometimes I’m the Roman and everything I build gets torn down. Other times I want to lace up my DM boots and put my foot through the latest barrier to achieving what I want to do in my work. Either way, I understand that walls themselves aren’t inherently bad – they’re pretty good at holding up the roof over my head, after all – but what they represent can be very negative. Perhaps both politicians and writers can take a different example from the Romans and consider the straight pathways they created to improve trade. The walls, after all, are now crumbling monuments to the folly of the past. Their roads, on the other hand, continue to connect people.

As an aside, with all this talk of crumbling monuments - has anyone thought of air-dropping thousands of postcards bearing the lines of Shelley’s Ozymandias in Washington DC?