Episode 1134: Halloween Horror Night!

Got to hear Adam L. G. Nevill, David Moody and Gary McMahon read at the Halloween Horror Night in the Arts Centre earlier. (Lovely meeting Jane again as well!) Bought Nevill's The Ritual and Moody's Autumn, and got them signed too. Moody's series is currently being reissued in paperback through Gollancz, which is one of my favourite imprints, so I'm excited to start reading that as they're released over the coming year. Interested to see how the series compares to Mira Grant's ongoing Newsflesh trilogy, another zombie series that is very strong on portraying survivors rather than focusing on only the zombies, which Moody pointed out is what keeps the genre from sinking into cliché. Nevill's work reminds me more of something like Mark Z. Danielewski's House Of Leaves in the psychological aspect of its horror. The new novel from Gavin James Bower, Made In Britain, also arrived in the post today. I loved Dazed & Aroused, and so far, this second novel is working for me too. Particularly like the way the story's told through three characters, their narratives touching and slowly intertwining. Going to try to finish that by mid-week, and then get on with Julie Bertagna's Exodus.

Episode 1133: Sequence Almost Finished...

Have finally finished rewriting the first 12 sonnets in the sequence. Was quite pleased that one of them ('Industria') actually didn't require any revision in order to fit in with the 'story' of the revised sequence, not even to satisfy the internal pattern I imposed of having each poem contain some sort of reference to the sin/virtue of the poems that precede and follow it. I'd actually forgotten about this 'rule' when I was revising the 'virtue' sonnets, literally remembering only as I was walking back from Varsity to my room after dinner. Spent half an hour going through the five poems and fixing that, before heading to church for the evening service. Managed to come up with the last three lines of the next sonnet while in church, so now I'm trying to finish the whole thing before going to bed. Then that leaves just one more to go! Have recently discovered that this sequence is actually the perfect length for the Iota Shots competition, so if I can get my act together, I'm going to send it off for that. Claire's also just pointed me in the direction of Holdfire Press, which are accepting pamphlet submissions. Oddly enough, I definitely remember clicking through to their WordPress site a few months ago, possibly via a review on Sabotage Reviews!

Episode 1132: Putting Together A New Sequence

Earphones have been dispatched, so hopefully, I won't have to go the entirety of next week without being able to listen to my iPod. Anyway, I know I've said it before, but something happened today that's making me say it again. Sometimes, writers behave so unprofessionally to editors, it's baffling. Basically, I'm pretty sure that there's almost no chance another editor could have accepted the story in the 22 minutes it took me to read and reply to the submission (yes, I looked at the e-mail timestamps), which means it must have been a simultaneous submission to begin with. Except nowhere was that stated by the writer, despite my having made it very clear in my submission guidelines that anyone submitting has to tell me if the work is also being sent elsewhere. I suppose what I found less frustrating was the time wasted on formatting the piece for the site and more the writer's blithe response, which was to pretty much go, 'Oops! Another magazine wants this and I've said yes. I'll send you a replacement instead.' Seriously? Then why not just send me the 'replacement' in the first place?

In less frustrating news, I've undertaken to revise a substantial number of my poems. It's the first time I've actually gone through poems and pretty much rewritten them entirely, and it's because I'm trying to complete this unrhymed sonnet sequence that I started in 2008. It's about the seven deadly sins and the corresponding seven heavenly virtues. When I first wrote the sequence (which is technically still unfinished because I never wrote the last two sonnets), it was pretty flippant stuff. Looking at the poems now (one to three years later depending on where they are in the sequence), it's clear to me that more than half the time I was confecting lines just to finish the poem. Probably because the sequence was originally meant to be seven sonnets plus 14 half-sonnets, but I got tired of trying to write about being unadulteratedly good and decided 14 sonnets would have a better symmetry to them. In rewriting the sequence, I'm trying to give the two halves sort of their own overarching 'story'. It's worked out fairly well for the sins, and now I'm about to find out how the virtues fare.

Episode 1131: Earphones Broken (Again!)

The earphones that came with my iPod have finally broken down. Well, the right ear anyway. It still works if I bend the wire in certain ways, so that'll have to last until the earphones I ordered from Amazon UK arrive. I ordered the same Sennheiser CX 300 ones in the 'eco packaging' (which is actually really ingenious) that I got in my first year at Warwick, coincidentally around this time of the term too, give or take a couple of weeks. Anyway, I think today's EN974 seminar was when the bigger picture of the module finally clicked for me. Still glad that I'm not going to be writing the essay though! I do enjoy the ideas that get thrown up, and Thomas Docherty has a way of connecting them that makes their logic almost irresistible, but my own primary academic interests don't particularly lie in this area, which is quite densely philosophical at times, so I think I'd struggle with writing an essay for this module. I'm going to try and get some reading done tonight, for work and not for pleasure, if only because I'm feeling a bit guilty about not having done anything for my dissertation in ages. Not sure what I'll read, but it's probably going to be Carl A. Trocki's Singapore: Wealth, Power And The Culture Of Control. This isn't to preclude reading for pleasure, naturally, just that I won't let myself get around to that until I've read like a chapter or two of Trocki's.

Episode 1130: Salt Modern Voices Reading

Just got back from the Salt Modern Voices event in the Writers' Room, where I got to read alongside Emily Hasler, Adrian Slatcher and Claire Trévien, all of whom have pamphlets out in the Salt Modern Voices series. I was actually a stand-in for another reader who couldn't make it at the last minute. Happened to bump into George Ttoouli on my way to the Post Room yesterday, and he asked me if I'd be up for reading. Was especially nice to finally meet Claire, which actually makes this the first time that I've met any of the editors whom I write reviews for. In relation to my plans to publish a pamphlet, she pointed out that apart from entering competitions, I should be keeping an eye out for smaller presses that are soliciting new work. Anyway, now it's back to the grind, which currently consists of reading Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, or The Would-be Gentleman, as the translation calls it. Sounds clunky, but hey, maybe that was the point? I was trying to read the original French alongside the Penguin translation, but after one act, I figured I wasn't getting anything more out of this doubling of reading time. Quite pleased that I could understand a fair bit of the French without having to refer to the translation though...

Episode 1129: Meeting MOE Freshers

Went to the first session of the Arts Faculty Seminar Series for the new academic year, after a rather boring (and useless) Introduction to Research Methods session in the Library. Two very different papers were given, which seemed to me to illustrate the opposing approaches to the presentation of research and new knowledge available to postgraduates. One can either strive for clarity, distilling the essence of concepts, or one can weave a web of knowledge so dense that only a specialist would want and/or be able to follow its connections. I suppose it'd be unfair to say that one approach is better or superior really, since the former runs the risk of oversimplifying the subject. (I did think the dismissal of the free will defence in the first paper was too pat. What about Alvin Plantinga's formulation?) Anyway, I'll probably go back to the next session in Week 7 because I'm making it a point to get involved with more academic stuff this year, being a postgraduate myself and all. Also met up with the new batch of Warwick MOE scholars for dinner in The Dirty Duck. There are so many of them! Well, relatively speaking. It seems like the numbers are slowly creeping up from my time anyway, when I was the only one in my batch. There's even a girl doing English Literature this time!

Episode 1128: A Deadline Forgotten

For some reason, I'd been labouring under the delusion that my review of V. S. Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur was due later this week. It was in fact due on Sunday! So I've hastily written it and sent it off to Craig. I didn't really care for the novel itself, but that's because I don't get on with most Caribbean and Indian authors. Purely personal preference. I thought the ideas it contained about colonialism and social class were interesting though, especially because they're concealed to some extent behind the narrative's comic façade. Now this review's done, I just have one more to go, which I sort of solicited and then put off working on because there's no deadline for it. Am still managing to stay on top of things, academically speaking, although I haven't been doing much reading or research for my dissertation. Guess I'll start to get worried if there's been no progress on that front by the middle of this term? At the same time, I'm also trying to get back into reading for pleasure. Poetry mainly, of which I have a lot, although I finally ordered those Pinter and Stoppard play collections, which I'm excited about as well. I've wanted them ever since I discovered them in library@esplanade, and this being my final year, it's now or never to get them on the cheap, relatively speaking.

Episode 1127: iOS5!

Rejection from the Oxfam anthology just came in. Finally. Some days, it just feels easier to be a reviewer/critic rather than a writer. It's easier to tell when you're getting things right as the former, at least that's what I think anyway. Received wisdom says that at this point, you're supposed to keep writing, but really, I think that calls for the sort of obstinate self-belief (self-delusion?) that I don't possess. (Of course, the irony is that I'm aware I'm only saying that because I haven't 'made it'. If I had, I'd probably be blithely dispensing similar advice. Everything's always rubbish until you're on the correct side of the fence, isn't it?) Anyway, since I'm being banal again and going on about petty (both senses of the word!) personal stuff, I'd like to mention that I did successfully update to iOS 5 on my iPhone after all. Had to leave it plugged in overnight because I've never done a full backup of my device contents before, but everything was good to go when I woke up. Just a few buttons pressed and everything was up and running. I must confess, I quite like this update. Plus I even reinstalled Facebook, at long last. Seems to work fine now, although people are still complaining in the iTunes Store, which leaves me wondering if the developers just didn't plan on making the latest version too backward compatible in the first place, and that's what's causing people so much grief.

Episode 1126: iOS 5?

Catching up on TV now, while reading Coventry Patmore's 'Prefatory Study on English Metrical Law', which I actually found more tolerable than the Poe stuff on prosody that I read before I went to London. Still, tomorrow's seminar isn't looking promising, that's all I can say! (Unless everyone really lays into Poe and Patmore, and their pedantry.) Also updating my iPhone to iOS 5, so here's hoping it doesn't go dramatically wrong. Re-read Koh Jee Leong's Payday Loans on the coach back to Coventry, and was once again struck by how much a big part of why I like it so much has to do with the fact that it's a sonnet sequence. Sonnets with lots of full rhyme, by the way. These days, end-stopped rhyming is sometimes seen as being in poor taste. Ditto using an 'old-fashioned' form like the sonnet. I for one would be happy to see the New Formalism consolidate its hold on Anglo-American poetry. It's about time the pendulum swung away from the excesses of free verse. Haha! I say all this as a poet who doesn't even write in strict form all that much, although I do in fact have a particular soft spot for sonnets and wish I could write them with greater facility.

Episode 1125: Sophie's 21st!

Came down to London for the weekend because Sophie was celebrating her 21st. (Thanks for letting me crash at yours!) Thought I was going to miss the coach this morning, but it turned out to be nearly half an hour late anyway. All that speed walking for nothing! Got into London and made it to Bermondsey without incident, thankfully. Had to charge my handphone before heading to Oxfam Bloomsbury and Marylebone, as I usually do whenever I'm in London. Picked up some poetry and drama, and I'd have got even more poetry, except I couldn't have carried all of it back. If I'd brought a bigger bag, maybe I could have. Someone had donated a whole stack of review copies from Cinnamon Press! Really wanted to pick the lot up. Anyway, Sophie's birthday was at the interestingly named pub, The Defectors Weld. Got myself a Mojito, and I think I was the last person who managed to get a drink before the bar tab ran out. Just as well, cocktails cost £7.50 at this pub! Didn't stop me from buying a second Mojito later in the night, but it was nice to have had the first one for free, naturally. Didn't get to speak to Sophie much tonight, but it was great running into Dan as well when I first arrived.