Mr King Is Back And Still Confused

 Hello, hello, with a hey nonny-no.

It's been three years, three months and three days since my last post. Three threes. I couldn't have planned it better. The truth is I didn't plan it at all. I procrastinated and resisted writing this, and finally here I am as if I'd never been gone. 

I took a break from writing after the MA, in 2018, as that final dissertation was quite a strain on the old creative muscles and it wore me out. My mental health had also taken (another) dip in 2017, half way through my studies (two years part-time), and I was back under the GP and on medication, so I was overdue a rest. Coincidentally, I had also started working for a mental health charity, having resigned from my post as a funeral arranger in 2016 a few months before I started the MA.

I've been 'struggling' coming to terms with the overall MA mark I was awarded, and a comment received on my dissertation that really got to me. I know, far greater things happening in the world and all that but I'm human and want to get this off my chest and get on with my writing life. And I don't really expect anyone to care much either, to be honest.

I graduated with a Pass, a final mark of 58 percent. Not a bad mark, and I'm happy to have passed. But here's the thing, throughout the MA I was awarded a merit (between 60 and 70 percent) for all my modules (apart from one lovely 71%) and was very happy with that. But unfortunately that final mark completely negates all the previous ones, dragging my overall MA grade down a pass. But it wasn't even that so much as this comment from one of the two markers, dissertations being 'double marked' (allegedly anonymously but easy to work out who they both were, making the whole anonymous submission and marking procedure a farce, like so much of academia is in truth, but anyway): "...but be careful of occasional slippages, which can lead to things unravelling fast - the one thing that curtains should never do in a poem is "billow". "

Note the use of the word 'should' here, an instruction rather than advice. Instead of the marker just saying they personally don't like the use of that word, or that I could perhaps have used a more descriptive or more poetic word and even gone to the lengths of suggesting one, they invent a totally non existent 'rule' of poetry. This came as the last line of a mostly positive comment on my creative piece, a suite of 25 prose poems that I presented as a chapbook, fully edited and ready for publication, and that I was overall very happy with. So why should that last line bother me so much? I really don't know, and what else can I say about it anyway? Not a basis for appeal or grievance, but I was, and remain, aggrieved. 

I printed both reports out, and underneath the one I've mentioned above I wrote "Utter bollocks. Poetry can speak in any way it sees fit for the poem." 

I think I found the comment sloppy and unhelpful, and the fact that the marker was (and still is) not a poet themselves pissed me off, and that they saw fit to confuse personal opinion with fact. And I resent the lower mark that I feel did not, and does not, reflect the research and creative effort I put into those poems, and the critical commentary that supported it. But the reality is all of these marks, grades and comments were and are completely out of my control. And I need to add here that, for both of the markers of my dissertation I have the utmost respect, both as academics in their chosen fields and for the creative work they produce. And I loved their modules and learnt from both of them, as I did from all the tutors whose modules I studied, and those that helped me along the way, and those poets and writers I was introduced to by them, and who I discovered myself through my research.

So here I am back on my blog, on the one hand dismissing academia as a farce and criticising comments that I don't like and found unhelpful, yet on the other acknowledging how much I learnt from it, and from them, and recognising what a privilege it was to be accepted to study for this MA without a first degree, and showing gratitude for those who helped me to get to that point, who encouraged me, wrote a reference, read my work and gave their own feedback. And more.

I have a lovely back catalogue of unpublished work from before and during the MA that I don't know where to begin with it all. Revisiting it for this post has reminded me of it, and in the writing this post I can feel that resentment slipping away. I had stopped posting here anyway as I was trying to get my work published, and posting on a blog counts as self-published which means that publishers won't accept it.  

And of course the world was turned upside down in early 2020 by the pandemic, lockdowns, and working from home. For me personally, whilst I continued attending the lovely Colchester Write Night group I've been a member of for ten years, albeit virtually, I picked up my paint brushes again and have plunged head first into the world of abstract painting, producing several canvases and still going, and have rearranged my creative process and my flat around that. I've also been adopted by a lovely black cat.

So, (another so), that's it for now. I will keep painting and writing, and will post more on here whenever and however the creative mood and muse flows through me. 

Laters. 

As Easy As A to Z

Written at Write Night on 23 September 2013, in a lovely room at Firstsite gallery. The exercise was to create a two person script, each sentence having to begin with the letters of the alphabet working through in order from A to Z. We had about half an hour. With a bit of creative licence I seemed to manage. What do you think.

1.   Albert I was wondering about that fish.

2.   Bugger me woman will you stop going on about it.

1.   Clare down the road said she saw it flapping about in your pocket and you had a big silly grin on your face.

2.   Don't you go believing  everything that Clare woman says, woman. Even you said that yourself.

1.   Flippin hell Albert - of all people - you're the one with the tendency to bend the truth.

2.   Get away with you woman, she's been imagining things.

1.   How many times am I going to have to ask you Albert about that fish?

2.   I really don't know - until you get fed up I s'pose.

1.   Just let me ask you one last time then Albert.

2.   Knowing your last times woman this could go on all night.

1.   Laugh as much as you like Albert, we both know you took it  down the pub.

2.   Merciful angels woman why would I want to go and do a thing like that?

1.   Not for the first time in this relationship Albert I have no idea why you do most of the things you do.

2.   Oh I see that's how it is, is it?

1.   Perhaps it is Albert but you are still avoiding answering my question.

2.   Questions, questions, that's all I ever get is questions. Ridiculous questions.

1.   So why not try answering them then Albert. Tell me about that fish. Unless you just want to keep avoiding the issue.

2.   Very well then, but you won't believe me.

1.   Well it's about time, what did you do with it then?

2.   Xander wanted to add it to his collection so I said he could have it.

1.   You didn't give it to that old fart Xander, of all people.

2.   Zoo was shut, what else was I s'posed to do with it.

Just more writing really

Written at Write Night, 15 Queen Street, Colchester on Monday  8 September 2012. A writing exercise in three parts. Unedited and copied as written on the night. Well maybe the teeniest bit of editing so it is readable!

Where:  The lake

Who:      Two people
When:    Summer time, early evening

Fifteen minutes on each task.....

 

Task 1. First person narrator 

In that summer - that long hot summer of 1976- at the tail end of my childhood and the beginning of my young adulthood I had taken to walking down to the lake on my way home from school as home was a place I didn't want to go - both of my parents having taken to working longer hours so that the lack of communication between them seemed to have the basis of a legitimate excuse - although why they could never do the thing they always insisted I should do-that is actually tell the truth and admit they were not talking-was always a source of irritation and upset to me - anyways to get on with the story and not prolong the agony of my parents difficulties-it was a Friday I remember that much as it was the end of the school week and I was feeling even more depressed than usual at the thought of a whole weekend at home with non - talking parents and an ever thickening atmosphere. 

I had been at the lake lost in my own thoughts for what felt like a few hours when I first caught sight of the couple - how long they had been there I can't say - seated on the wooden bench further down the lake - the bench I would never sit on as it was close to the edge of the woods and - in my young imagination - I always feared 'something' coming up to me from behind out of the woods - so I preferred to sit on the side of the lake close to the park where children often played and whose parents would sit and watch them as I always felt safer with others around...

 

Task 2: Third person limited narrator

(NB: Will told me that I got this and next task mixed up but this is  how I wrote them from my understanding of the tasks at the time)

The couple had been sitting for a while - not really talking but not not-talking either - they seemed comfortable in each other's presence - at ease - not needing the verbal noise that so many felt they had to resort to in the company of others - before the boy looked up from his own thoughts and became aware of them ..

He seemed troubled - not at all at ease - unrelaxed as if he was there escaping from something rather than enjoying the scenery - and on noticing the couple across the lake he seemed relieved - as if they could be a focus of his attention for a while - something to occupy his mind - a distraction from the disturbed state he was in - so as young people can do he seemed to stare right at them rather than be discreet almost as if he was becoming hypnotized - the expression on his face one of intense concentration - and maybe it was the intensity of his stare or the length of time but soon the couple - with not a word or a look passing between them - lifted their heads as if they were one and returned his stare - almost as if an invisible current of electricity was passing between them...

Task 3: Third person omniscient narrator

(it had seemed to him mere seconds - the briefest of glances - and yet in that moment he knew everything about them)

From where she was crouched behind the trees she could see the boy across the lake - the boy she had been watching all summer - the quiet, withdrawn, sad boy - the boy she had taken to following and observing - always from a distance - to his home and to his school - the boy soon to be a man.

She could see him staring intently at the couple on the bench that she used to follow and she wanted to warn him - don't look at them, don't attract their attention - they were harmless until you attracted their attention - she knew this - she had seen what they did when they felt they were discovered and she liked this boy - the quiet sad boy - he reminded her of herself all those years - ago when she inhabited clay as he did - when her body had solid form on this earth - and she wanted him to keep his - to live - to have a life - to......