Episode 830: 5/30

I suppose it's usual for people to make resolutions in their New Year's Eve posts. I don't have a habit of that though, and I'm not about to start this year. Thing is, I figure if you're going to make positive changes in your life, you can start at any time, right? How long can the symbolic rush if a New Year's resolution keep you going anyway, realistically speaking? Speaking of the end of the year, the online sales are so tempting! Would've bought a suit from Ted Baker at a 50% discount, but Claudia and Vaish pointed out that a 100% wool suit would be far too warm for a place like Singapore, so I've pretty much given up on the idea, especially since I can apparently get one tailor-made for less. Still eyeing a wallet that's on sale though, just that I'm unwilling to pay £4.50 for shipping. A bit silly, I'll admit, given that the wallet already costs £35. Oh well. Will give it a couple more days, and if it's still available, I'll get it. Have also finished the revision of 'The Daughters Of Lot' into a full two-part poem, so I might start on 'The Concubine From Bethlehem' tomorrow. That one's going to be grisly...

Episode 829: Reorganisation

Did some reading today for a Week 3 seminar. Scottish poetry! Liked some of it, found some of it almost incomprehensible because it was in Scots rather than Standard English. Didn't write any new poems today, though I've decided that my planned structure of 10 sets of three poems is unnecessarily restrictive. It was forcing me to pick out characters to fit into this arrangement, but these weren't characters that I felt I could write about in interesting ways. So now I've still got 30 poems planned out, but they're no longer grouped strictly. That means I'm free to expand 'The Daughters Of Lot', although I intend to make that a two-parter rather than splitting each daughter off into a separate poem. I've even got one poem that's on its own, and given the overall arc of the sequence, I think there's a case to be made for that. Of course, analysing my own work is fairly meaningless, outside of the accompanying commentary, unless other people can pick up on the echoes and patterns I've structured into the sequence as a whole. To be fair though, one would have to be fairly acquainted with the Bible to fully appreciate these recent poems, so I feel really lucky to be working with Michael Hulse this time because I know he'll pick up on the things I'm doing with my source material.

Episode 828: At Last, A Brand New PWP Poem!

Have hammered out a first draft of 'The Daughters Of Lot'. It turned into a bit of a structural game, this poem, although I'm wondering if 15 lines per daughter is quite enough to convey the hypothetical motivations I'm ascribing to them. Maybe I need to be more flexible about aiming for 30 30-line poems? Probably won't worry too much about that right now, need to focus on finishing the next two in this set of three. The target I'm setting myself right now is to have at least nine poems to show Michael Hulse in Week 1. I reckon it's entirely possible. If I look at the rather comprehensive rewrites I did a few days ago more as first drafts, then I'd say it's not been horribly difficult getting them out. For comparison, the sequence I put together during my Contiki trip over Easter break accumulated at the rate of one per day, including my usual redrafting on-the-go, and that turned out to be reasonably decent work. I can pull it off again, right? It's not like I began with terribly grand ambitions for this sequence anyway, like reclaiming female characters from a patriarchal text or something equally highfalutin. I just wanted to write about something that mattered to me, which also didn't strike me as being a particularly popular topic among twentysomething poets. Well, that and I figured 30 poems about the vagaries of human relationships à la my 'usual' poetry would've been rather tedious. Plus I'm running out of metaphors. Quantum physics was really pushing it.

Episode 827: Running Out Of Books To Buy?

Met up with Ben Woon, caught up over lunch and bitched a little. We spent a few hours after that browsing Kinokuniya and Borders, but I came away with far less books than usual. Partly because I'm running out of things I want to buy, partly because I feel that there's no point paying extra when I can get them off The Book Depository for a lot less, with free shipping to boot. Ended up buying some volumes of local poetry and Vintage Contemporaries editions of Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius and How We Are Hungry, since those are American editions and will cost more on The Book Depository anyway. Am thinking I should save my money for paying a visit to BooksActually. If I'm going to pay more for books, I'd rather the money go to an independent bookstore like Kenny and Karen's than some big corporation! Haven't had time today to finish reading a play or writing a poem, but I've started re-reading The Taming Of The Shrew and I have an idea for how to structure this next poem about the daughters of Lot. Will have to make sure to get a draft written tomorrow.

Episode 826: Really Knuckling Down...

So I ended up staying awake after watching the Doctor Who Christmas special to rewrite 'Abel'. I feel like I haven't nailed it yet, but I'm getting closer. Now working on rewriting 'Seth', before reading the last bit of The Two Gentlemen Of Verona. The whole thing with the rings reminds me of a similar episode in The Merchant Of Venice. I'm planning on reading through all the comedies by the time I fly back, which is entirely feasible, as long as I don't keep wandering away from the text to do other stuff. Like watching Cantonese dramas. I know, I know. It's not a scintillating revelation, but what can I do? My life while on vacation can be really...pedestrian. The Doctor Who special was really heartwarming, by the way. It was at best a very loose adaptation of Dickens's short story, but it worked and I think it's my favourite of the Christmas specials so far. Really enjoyed Katherine Jenkins's singing as well! File this one under the to-buy-one-day list. As for the poem, I think this one's going to work out. On the whole, having done some rewriting, I'm rather bothered that I honestly thought the originals were good enough. Normally, my opinion towards my own poetry tends not to flip so radically. I must have been completely blinded by self-satisfaction at having incorporated so much of the KJV's phraseology. Eugene remarked that the archaisms were part of the poems' charm, but what I'm aiming for is gravitas without being antiquated. I think it should be possible for a poem taking a Biblical narrative as its springboard to sound contemporary while not winding up being frivolously critical. I've put in a couple of lines in the rewrites that sound somewhat flippant in isolation, but I'm hoping that the context will anchor them so that the lines work as ironies rather than cheap throwaways. We'll see...

Episode 825: Finally Back To Working On My PWP!

Have finally begun revising the first three poems for my PWP that I showed to Michael Hulse before the end of term. Will only manage 'Cain' tonight I think, as I want to see the Doctor Who Christmas special before going to bed. I feel like I've mostly managed to relax the language into something that sounds more contemporary, but re-reading 'Abel', it looks like that poem's going to require a complete rewrite in order to even begin to work. I suppose it doesn't help that the thoughts expressed in it are so far from being orthodox, even after taking into account the almost completely hypothetical nature of my whole PWP, I can see why my writing sounds forced. It's one thing to take a troublesome aspect of the scriptures and deliberately push it to certain conclusions. It's quite another to attempt to manufacture something mildly controversial, just for the sake of being contrary. Looking at the Seth poem, it also needs work, although not quite as drastic as for 'Abel'. It's more of losing the rhetorical questions that also don't really build to a meaningful finish. I've got my work cut out for me. Hopefully, the next two sets of poems should be easier to write, so that I can show Michael at least nine at the start of next term.

Episode 824: An Uneventful Christmas

Not that that's bad, mind you. Discovered a site that converts YouTube videos directly to MP3s. All you have to do is type in the link, click, and it spits out the MP3. I'm probably being far too impressed by this, but it's just so incredibly convenient. Over the past couple of days, have started reading Antic Fables by A. P. Riemer and A Better Angel by Chris Adrian. The former is subtitled 'Patterns Of Evasions In Shakespeare's Comedies', so that basically tells you why I'm reading it. It seems like I have managed to find a book that is entirely relevant to what I want to explore in my creative project, so that's actually quite exciting. On the other hand, I'm interested in Adrian's writing because of his association with the McSweeney's brand. He's published two novels before this short story collection, Gob's Grief and The Children's Hospital, but I thought it made more sense to get a feel for his stuff before getting stuck into something as sprawling as The Children's Hospital, even if it is lauded. To be perfectly truthful, I don't think I even have time to read something that long in the days I've got left in Singapore! Not if I want to actually get work done. I've been using jet lag, then Christmas, as excuses for not having done work, but it's Boxing Day tomorrow and I'm finding it hard to maintain the illusion that there's still loads of time.

Episode 823: The Carpet Makers

Have acquired some new music over the past couple of days, including Enrique Iglesias's new single 'Tonight (I'm Fuckin' You)', off the French limited edition of Euphoria. (The clean version released to radio replaces the offending word throughout with 'lovin'' instead.) Beginning with his previos album, Insomniac, Iglesias has been cannily reinventing his sound to be more compatible with what's dominating te airwaves. This single is pretty much your standard radio-friendly fare, sustained by an infectious beat and Iglesias's Spanish-inflected intoning of banal lyrics, i.e. I really like it but I know there's nothing special about it. On a related note, this French limited edition features a Cahill remix of 'I Like It', which I think has cemented them as one of my favourite remixers. Even more than Dave Audé! I'm not usually into remixes because I find them quite unlistenable outside of the dancefloor, but Audé and Cahill produce stuff that doesn't wind up sounding too aggressive and punishing on the ears. It's practically aural candy. In any case, I'm of the opinion that a lot of pop music these days (but not the ballads) is essentially designed to be remix-friendly, and producers like Audé and Cahill are just giving the original tracks more of an edge.

Have also finished Andreas Eschbach's The Carpet Makers. I really, really enjoyed it, which is kind of weird in a way because I first came across this book a couple of years ago when I began trawling the science fiction shelves at the National Library, but I never got around to borrowing it because I figured I wouldn't like it that much based on the blurb. Then a couple of days ago, I decided, what the heck, I'd give it a chance. So glad that I did! It's apparently the only of Eschbach's novels to be translated into English so far (let's not get into the whole issue of how translating into English seems to be on the decline as far as introducing new literary works is concerned), which is a shame because Eschbach's writing is beautiful. The Carpet Makers is really a series of interconnected stories, the effect of which is to evoke an entire universe without needing to go overboard on details to flesh it out. There's just enough material to hint at more stories that could be told in the same cosmic setting, but not to the point where it detracts from the main narrative thread. The denouement is understated, and some people might object to it and how it was achieved, but I think it really humanised a story that could have been in danger of being mystifying to the point where it alienated. It's not a terribly long novel, so I recommend getting a copy and reading it if you want some science fiction that's more character-focused as opposed to being about futuristic stuff.

Episode 822: Good Question

So the number of visits to the journal today suggests that the upward climb of visitors over the past two days was a random fluctuation, probably prompted by contributors' friends being directed to it. Oh well. On a related note, was chatting with one of my editors and he asked me if I would go with a Singaporean or a British publisher when I come out with my first collection. I'll admit that the question kind of threw me for a second. I mean, I've thought about eventually putting one together and going around knocking, and without wanting to sound like a complete twat about it, it's actually something a tutor has mentioned before as being conceivable, given my writing. I guess I haven't really been treating it as something that realistically could happen though. I'm hardly the Keats of my generation now, am I? (By which I mean neither tubercular nor capable of producing something like the odes.) For anyone who actually cares about my hypothetical future writing career, which in all likelihood is going to die an early death because of a teacher's workload, the answer's British. Not because I'm snubbing my home country, but well, let's just say I have a hunch that I'll find it easier to get readers by going down that route. I still wouldn't say no to putting out work through a local publisher though, and who knows how the local arts scene might evolve in the next couple of years? Then there's the whole manner of not actually being resident in the UK after 2012 at the latest, so how would that even work out in practice, publishing in the UK? Here's an even better question though. Why am I worrying about all these things when I haven't even revised the first three poems for my PWP? Or written anything for my Shakespeare creative project? Why am I still feeling so calm about this lack of productivity?

Episode 821: Jealous Of Murakami!

It seems that connecting Eunoia Review to NetworkedBlogs really does help to increase traffic. Either that or it's just another random spike in visitors. I suppose I'll be able to tell once tomorrow's visitor count is tallied at the end of the day. So I managed to finish the review in the afternoon for Vol. 2 of I'm Afraid of Everyone. It's an interesting effort, especially how the layout interacts with the text. I might have made too much of that aspect in the review, to be honest, but it really is one of the strongest aspects of this literary magazine. Here you can buy hard copies, or get the PDF if you're skint. My review copy's a PDF, and I think the monochrome design of Vol. 2 actually looks really good when you're reading off a screen. In addition to completing the review, I also finished after the quake, and am therefore now very jealous of Murakami for having written those stories. My favourite was definitely 'honey pie', partly because the central protagonist is a writer, but also because it happens to capture a fear I myself occasionally experience, which is that years from now, my life is going to turn out less satisfying than I imagined it would be. Murakami's short story ends on an ambivalent note that strikes me as ringing truer than the straightforward happy ending that the characters clearly could have been set up to have. It's a shame I don't have time the rest of this vacation to read a couple of his full-length novels, although I believe the Library does have a couple of them, so maybe I'll do that when I get back to Warwick...