[Interview] Catherine Czerkawska

Catherine Czerkawska is a poet, a novelist and a playwright.

Her books include The Amber Heart (Amazon Kindle, 2012), Bird of Passage (Amazon Kindle, 2012) and The Curiosity Cabinet (Amazon Kindle, 2011)

In this interview, Catherine Czerkawska talks about her concerns as a writer:

When did you start writing?

When I was very young I wrote poems, stories and fan fiction before fan fiction was ever invented – stories about The Beatles, especially John Lennon. I found some of them a little while ago in a box of old papers. They weren’t too bad, considering how young I was.

I think I probably wanted to be a published writer from the start. But it’s so long ago that it’s quite hard to remember. I submitted poetry and stories to all kinds of magazines and when I was still in my teens, I began to get personal letters instead of standard rejections. By the time I was at Edinburgh University, I’d had various poems published. My first biggish sale was a short story called "Catch Two" for She Magazine. (They paid well.) I was also writing plays, especially radio plays, and I sold my first short play to Radio Scotland when I was in my early 20s. I went on to write more than 100 hours of Radio Drama, some television and many stage plays.

How would you describe your writing?

I’d describe myself as a novelist, although I still write the occasional stage play. I’m an unashamed mid-list writer. Some of my novels are historical and some contemporary. I hope they’re well written (don’t we all?) but I also hope they’re good, readable stories. I write a lot about relationships, often in a rural setting, but I don’t always do happy endings. A sense of place is very important to my fiction. I do a lot of revision, a lot of honing. Maybe because I started out as a poet!

Who is your target audience?

When I’m writing, I don’t have any target audience in mind. I’m too involved with the characters and the story. At some point in the process, (but I couldn’t say exactly when) I start to think about the audience, the readers. Am I communicating this story in the best way possible? What am I trying to say? Will people understand it?

I would say I write for a ‘mid-list’ audience - the kind of readers who seem to be increasingly ill-served by traditional publishing, which spends too much time and money trying to predict the next big success on the basis of the last big success. And I don’t much like being tied to a specific genre. In some ways, I write the kind of books I like to read myself but I always love talking to readers about my novels.

Which authors influenced you most?

There are two distinct influences. The first involves Victorian novels, the Brontes in particular. In fact my novel Bird of Passage is something of a ‘homage’ to Wuthering Heights. It’s quite subtle, but it’s there. I love the way Wuthering Heights is so heartrending but by the end, past miseries are resolved in a loving relationship – balance is restored. I love that about these novels.

But I enjoy contemporary fiction too. I’m a big fan of William Trevor. I routinely think ‘I wish I had written that’ when I’m reading his stories. They seem deceptively simple, but they have untold depths and complexity.

How have your own personal experiences influenced your writing?

Obviously I’ve accumulated a lot of experience over the years. Everything feeds into the writing. People often ask ‘where do you get your ideas from?’ but ideas are everywhere, every relationship, every experience, (even the difficult ones). It’s a process of trying not to become cynical, trying to become wise instead, trying to tell the stories that might mean something to readers just as they mean something to the writer.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

Big question. I’m endlessly interested in the relationships between men and women, not just in their love stories, but in how we betray other people for all kinds of reasons, how other people betray us and how we come to terms with that.

I’m interested in how past suffering influences the present.

And – of course – as a writer of historical fiction, I’m fascinated by the attempt to recreate the past as it might have been – not as we might see it through modern eyes. Well, that’s practically impossible, I know, but if you immerse yourself in a time and place, you can make a good enough job of it.

Perhaps most important of all, I want my readers to believe in the world I’ve created. It might be a past or a present world. But they have to believe that it’s real and true.

What are the biggest challenges that you face?

Disillusionment with the process. I had quite a lot of success early in my writing life. I spent a number of years as a reasonably successful playwright but I always knew that fiction was where my real ambitions lay. Then I had three traditionally published novels, and each time I thought ‘this is it’. One of them in particular did very well. But for one reason or another – all of them to do with fluctuations within the publishing industry – I always seemed to be going back to square one and starting again. Maybe most writing careers are like that: a switchback rather than a curve.

On the other hand, I’ve developed a lot of persistence and it has allowed me to work at my craft. I think I’m a better writer now because of it. Most ‘beginning writers’ underestimate the sheer volume of work you have to produce to get anywhere.

Do you write every day?

I write just about every day but not always fiction. I do some reviewing and the odd essay and feature article. But I’m always thinking about the latest novel, and when I do get down to it, I write very intensively. I can keep going for twelve hours at a stretch!

I work best in the afternoons and in the evenings when the house is quiet. I like to stop at a point where I actively don’t want to stop – that way it’s easier to start again the following day.

I do a very rough first draft. I wouldn’t ever let anyone see it. Then I let the work lie fallow while I get on with something else. And then I revise. A lot. It’s quite a long process.

If I’m writing something that needs research, I’ll do some preliminary research, then write the first draft to find out what I don’t know. The Curiosity Cabinet consists of two stories, separated by several centuries. I wrote each part of that story separately and then put them together afterwards – printed them out and actually shuffled the pages about physically – it worked surprisingly well.

How many books have you written so far?

Novels

• Shadow of the Stone (Richard Drew, 1989): Novel written to go with my television series of the same name, first produced on STV with Alan Cumming and Shirley Henderson, all episodes now available on YouTube
• The Golden Apple (Century, 1990): A novel about a cross cultural marriage.
• The Curiosity Cabinet (Polygon, 2005): Alys visited the fictional Hebridean island of Garve as a child. Donal was her playmate. Now she has returned after a long absence and a difficult divorce. Interwoven with the story of their growing love, is the darker tale of Henrietta Dalrymple, kidnapped by the formidable Manus McNeill and held on Garve against her will. With three hundred years separating them, the women are linked by an embroidered casket and its contents, by the tug of motherhood and by the magic of the island itself.
• The Curiosity Cabinet (Amazon Kindle Version, 2011)
• Bird of Passage (Amazon Kindle, 2012): A novel about the shocking realities of state-sanctioned physical abuse in Ireland and its aftermath in Scotland. Bird of Passage is a powerful story of cruelty, loss and enduring love.
• The Amber Heart (Amazon Kindle, 2012): An epic love story set in the troubled Eastern Borderlands of 19th century Poland, this is a tale of obsessive love and loyalty set against the backdrop of a turbulent time and place.

Non-fiction:

• Fisherfolk of Carrick (Molendinar Press, 1979)
• God’s Islanders: A history of the People of Gigha (Birlinn, 2006): A well-researched hardback social history of the most southerly of the Hebridean islands – a readable and informative history of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in miniature, just like Gigha itself.

Published Plays:

• "Wormwood" in Scotland Plays Anthology (Nick Hern Books, 1998)
• "The Price of a Fish Supper" in Scottish Shorts Anthology (Nick Hern Books, 2010)
• Burns on the Solway (Kindle, 2011)
• The Secret Commonwealth (Kindle, 2011)
• Quartz (Kindle, 2012)

How would you describe your latest book?

The Amber Heart is a love story set in the Eastern Borderlands of 19th century Poland. I think it tackles very adult themes sensitively, but there’s no denying that it’s the story of an intense physical obsession between two people, set against the backdrop of an equally turbulent time and place.

It is also the story of the ‘pancake yellow’ house of Lisko, the heroine’s beloved childhood home, and the way in which the lives of the characters are disrupted by the political turmoil of the times. It has been described as a 'Polish Gone With The Wind'. It is very loosely based on a series of extraordinary facts which came to light when I was researching my own remote family history.

How long did it take you to write the book?

Unusually for me, this one has been on the go for about 20 years! I did a lot of the research while my beloved father was still alive – I’m very glad that I did because he gave me lots of information, lots of details which would be very hard to find now. The late great Pat Kavanagh was my agent at the time and although she told me she loved the book and she was one of the best agents in the business, she simply couldn’t place it with any publisher – lots of positive responses, but they said they didn’t think they could market anything with a Polish setting. We both got very frustrated about it. I filed it away and got on with writing plays. But I kept going back to it from time to time. It’s a big piece of work, 130,000 words. Then, over the past three years, I revised and rewrote it much more intensively. I had matured as a writer and I think it’s a much more readable story now.

When and where was it published? How did you find a publisher for the book?

Last year, I took the decision to go completely ‘Indie’ and start self publishing, initially to Kindle.

The Amber Heart is my third and most recent Kindle novel.

I think like most writers of my age and stage, I had begun years earlier by looking for traditional agent/publishing deals. I was headhunted by an agent who specialised in drama after a play of mine won a major award and then the agency asked Pat to look after my fiction.

At first all went well – my first novel was sold to a small publisher, my second to a much bigger ‘mid-list’ publisher, but the whole industry was changing. That publisher, the Bodley Head, old and distinguished, was bought over by one of the Big Six and after that even Pat couldn’t sell The Amber Heart.

Much later, returning to novels after years spent on plays, I was shortlisted for the Dundee Book Prize with The Curiosity Cabinet and it was subsequently published, but although the print run sold out, the publisher declined to look at the next book and wouldn’t reprint TCC. Neither novel fitting in with their future plans, so it was fair enough But both are now available on Kindle and selling well.

For a long time, it had struck me that there was a growing imbalance for authors. Many of us were getting what my fellow writer Maggie Craig calls the Rave Rejection – ‘We love this but the marketing department says it won’t sell in big enough quantities.’ Traditional publishers were – so my agent told me – looking for an ‘oven ready product’. They were also looking for a breakthrough book right away. When I first began writing and publishing, you had time to grow as a writer. Many best-selling authors today made that breakthrough with their forth, fifth or sixth book. Now they’d be dumped after book number two. I still remember the sudden shock of hearing my later agent say ‘I won’t submit this because although it’s good, I don’t think it’s a breakthrough book and if I submit two books by you which are turned down, nobody will even look at a third.’ It was as though somebody had placed a time limit on my creativity. It was appalling.

Then along came eBooks and Amazon. I don’t have any illusions that this is a particularly benevolent industry and I don’t plan to put all my eggs in one basket, but I still wake up most mornings thinking, God Bless Jeff Bezos. This is a company which has given me the professional tools to do the job. I don’t expect nurturing – just a good businesslike relationship. Long may it continue.

Which were the most difficult aspects of the work you put into The Amber Heart?

Punctuation. Although I have a degree in English Language and Literature, I’ve spent years as a playwright. You get into the habit of writing speeches the way you want the actor to say them, regardless of punctuation. Then, suddenly, you have to get it right.

The other challenge for me was having an editor – albeit not my main editor – suddenly advise me to chop off the last third of The Amber Heart and finish it a hundred pages earlier. I enjoy working with a sympathetic editor but this was a bridge too far and I said I wouldn’t do it. When I think about it now, I see that there may be a difference between what appeals to a male and what appeals to a female reader. I felt very strongly that to do as he suggested would have made the ending of the book deeply unsatisfactory. One or two female readers agreed with me. So I didn’t follow his advice, although it did send me back to the manuscript to tighten it up a bit.

Which aspects of the work did you enjoy most?

I would have to say, writing the sensuous scenes between the hero and heroine.

Fifty Shades this isn’t, but it is a story about an intensely physical but forbidden relationship - an obsession really - between two people – one that lasts for their whole lives. That’s not all it’s about of course – but it is certainly central to the novel and the key to the whole story. I loved writing these scenes.

What sets the book apart from other things you've written?

The background, I suppose. That Polish background was familiar to me from my own childhood, in Leeds, which was where my refugee father finished up after the war, and where he met and married my Irish mother – but I don’t think I realised just how strange it would seem to others. And how much subsequent perceptions of Eastern Bloc countries might colour other people’s idea of a ‘Polish’ novel.

Essentially, The Amber Heart would appeal to anyone who enjoyed the movie of Dr Zhivago but it’s quite a challenge to get that across to potential readers!

In what way is it similar to the others?

It’s a love story with a tragic twist. So is Bird of Passage. The Curiosity Cabinet has a happier ending. All of them have largely (but not wholly) rural settings.

What will your next book be about?

It will be finished later this year – I’m revising it at the moment. It’s called The Physic Garden, a historical novel set in very early nineteenth century Glasgow. The central character – and narrator - is one of the gardeners of the old Physic Garden (the medicinal garden) of Glasgow University. He’s a very old man when he relates the story of events that happened in his youth. It’s a story about friendship and horrific betrayal. He has spent his life trying to forget it, but in old age, he has to try to come to terms with it.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

Two things. Finally finishing and publishing The Amber Heart, against all the odds. (It’s a BIG book and very dear to my heart.) And my stage play Wormwood which is still part of the Scottish Higher Drama syllabus. It’s about the Chernobyl disaster and I think it may be the best thing I’ve ever written. The critics liked it too.

Related books:

,,

Related articles:

• Writer's choice 300: Catherine Czerkawska, by Norman Geras, normblog, April 5, 2011
• First Word: Catherine Czerkawska, The List, Issue 649, February 1, 2010
• Wormwood [Review], by Claire L Jarvis, The Journal, Issue 18, February 12, 2009

[Book Launch] Mad, Hopeless & Possible

On October 27, 2011, the Adult Education College in Leicester was the venue of the launch of Siobhan Logan's latest poetry chapbook, Mad, Hopeless & Possible: Shackleton's Endurance Expedition (original plus, 2011).

The title of the chapbook comes from Sir Ernest Shackleton himself who rated applicants for his legendary 1914 Antarctic Expedition as "Mad, Hopeless & Possible". The chapbook also weaves in the hidden shadow-story of the Ross Sea Party, his supply team, who were marooned in the white wilderness just as war consumed Europe.

Leicestershire author Mark Goodwin says, "Siobhan Logan's Mad, Hopeless & Possible lifts the reader out of their warm armchair to place them among the stubborn men of Shackleton's 1914 Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

"This history of polar exploration is at once effectively informative and dramatically powerful: smooth, economic prose offset against haunting poetic soliloquies. It's as if Logan has pulled desperate men's voices out of sub-zero winds."

Related articles:

• Interview _ Siobhan Logan, Conversations with Writers, February 20, 2010
• Interview _ Siobhan Logan, Conversations with Writers, June 4, 2007
• Interview _ Siobhan Logan, Conversations with Writers, April 11, 2007

[Interview] Magdalena Ball

In earlier interviews, poet, storyteller and literary activist, Magdalena Ball talked about the factors that made her start writing, her concerns as a writer and about her debut novel, Sleep Before Evening.

Since then she has gone on to publish She Wore Emerald Then, a poetry chapbook written in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson. The chapbook was a finalist in the USA Book News 2009 NBBA Best Book Awards.

She Wore Emerald Then was followed by Repulsion Thrust (Bewrite Books, 2009), a full length, solo poetry collection whcih tackles subjects like quantum physics, astronomy, time travel, ecological destruction, and technological singularity, all viewed through the lens of the human condition.

Below, Magdalena Ball talks about the work she is currently doing:

How would you describe Repulsion Thrust?

My latest book is Repulsion Thrust, which is out from Bewrite Books. It's a poetry book which is in three sections. The first has an overall theme of "The Black Dog" (as in Churchill's - eg depression and pain), the second is environmentally and technologically/futuristically focused, and the third is an almost lighthearted (for me!) synthesis of the first two -- a kind of answer to the clash of the first two notions.

As always with my work, there's a fair amount of influence from the 'sciences', from quantum physics to psychology, geology, evolution, and astronomy.

I chose Bewrite Books because they published my novel, Sleep Before Evening, and I knew that they also published poetry, and above all, that they would provide a thorough editing process for me, which is what I wanted. I also knew it would be easier than going to a new publisher as I already had a positive relationship in place with them and a reasonable understanding of the process, although poetry was quite different to prose, and there was much still for me to learn.

Which were the most difficult aspects of the work you put into Repulsion Thrust?

Finding a neat structural framework for the poetry I had been writing was a little bit tricky. Also with poetry, there's always work involved in ensuring that you remove anything that is absolutely unnecessary to what you want to say. Every word has to work, or you dilute the effectiveness of the poetry.

With the framework, that was simply a left brain exercise. Sit down and think about the overall focus of the work and work out how a structure could support what I wanted to say.

In terms of the editing process, again, having someone else involved was very helpful. I had one superb reader (my mother -- say what you will -- she's a great editor), who went through every poem with me once I was done. I read them to her outloud, and she would ask questions or point things out. Often just the process of reading outloud showed me what didn't work and what did.

My Bewrite editor (Sam Smith) was also very good at spotting what worked well and where I was overly wordy (an issue I need to work on!), or obscure. We even removed a few poems he didn't feel were strong and replaced them with others. I even did a last minute edit after the final proofread.

What did you enjoy most?

To be honest, I really love writing poetry. It's a medium I find most natural, and the fact that you can complete an exercise in one relatively contained burst, and then have something to submit, makes it very satisfying.

I found that I was (and continue to) "allow" myself some poetry time at the end of a hard slog or difficult bit of writing as a kind of reward. The combination of short term (completion/submission) gratification, with knowing I was working on a longer term objective (a full book), was very pleasurable.

To be honest, it's kind of hard to stop myself and get back to a daily fiction schedule, which doesn't have that instant component.

I will though.

My next novel is over halfway done, so it has a kind of imperitive of its own.

What sets Repulsion Thrust apart from other things you have written?

This is my first full length poetry book (the others have been much shorter chapbooks), so it's a big thing for me. It's much more intense and inclusive.

I was able to have that chapter structure and to cover a much wider terrain. I'm very excited about it!

In what way is it similar to the others?

When I finished Quark Soup, I said I would leave science alone for a bit, but found myself even more drawn to it. Not only the language, although I do tend to find words like "catalysis" and "emulsification" very attractive (not sure why!), but there is, to me, something so breathtaking about looking at the world around us from a scientific perspective. There is so much that is beautiful to explore. The fundamental structure of a snowflake or rock formations are just startling. An aurora or solar wind is an amazing thing. The quantum world itself is so full of interesting absurdities that breakdown reality in ways that are seem out of sync with day to day relativity, but when you think about dreams, emotions, or perceptions, there are alignments which aren't absurd at all. So I play with those things in most of my work.

What will your next book be about?

Black Cow is the story of Graeme Archer, a well respected Chief Executive Officer of a large multinational corporation. When his health problems worsen, and his busy family life starts to disintegrate, he has to rethink the way he lives.

The story tracks the family as they move from a ritzy suburb to a small Tasmanian farm, and the challenges they encounter as they attempt to change their lives from super consumers to super conservers. It's a little funny (my funny, which is still reasonably black at times ...)

Do you have a target audience?

I'm sure I'd sell more books with a more specific target audience.

I embrace all readers and hope that my work, even the poetry, is clear and simple enough to appeal to all levels.

That said, my work probably will appeal more to a literary fiction, poetry loving reader who likes their work to resonate for a while, rather than to someone who likes fast paced, action thriller style work. That's what my son tells me, and I'm sure he knows best.

How would you describe your writing?

I'm one of those jacks of all trades who tends to write across genres.

I have been doing a lot of poetry recently, and my work seems to be very science oriented at the moment, though that can change, and tends to apply more to my poetry than my fiction and certainly more to poetry than to nonfiction, which can be on any topic from literary criticism to parenting.

No matter what I'm writing, it's always metaphor rich, with a certain amount of depth, and probably more run-on sentences than I should have. That's my natural tendency. Even my academic writing is metaphor rich, much to the horror of various supervisors that I've had over the years!

Which influences do you draw on as a writer?

So many authors have influenced or inspired me, that it's difficult to pinpoint specific influences. I could start from my earliest reading experiences, including such authors as Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are, Little Bear, In the Night Kitchen) and Dr Seuss (The Lorax still brings a lump to my throat. On Beyond Zebra still excites me) through to authors that inspire me now, from literary writers like Umberto Eco, James Joyce, Margaret Atwood, Peter Carey, Salman Rushdie, to Auden, Plath, Porter, Judith Bevridge to the incredible science writers like Hawkings and Dawkins. I'm sure I've left out some major influence, and could probably list names for many paragraphs.

And, like most writers, I also draw on my personal experiences in almost everything I write. I'm something of a magpie, so will pick at just about everything I've got - personal obversations, sensory experiences, overheard conversations, a story someone told me, the song my son is struggling to learn on the piano. If I burn myself on the stove, the pain will be in a story or poem before the sting goes.

As a writer, I always try to get at the core of something. To try and get at something meaningful and deep at the heart of our experiences. That goes for whether I'm writing fiction, comedy, nonfiction or poetry. It isn't always easy, but it helps to have good readers, who can test whether what you've said translates into what you mean for a reader. I have several excellent readers who I show final drafts to, and they don't hesitate to tell me when I'm not making sense or when I've written something trite.

Do you write everyday?

I do write everyday. It isn't always a lot, but I'll always schedule in some time for writing in my daily plan.

I would love to have a regular place and time, but with the juggling I do, I have to take whatever moments I get, so I'll usually just open something up in the morning that I'm planning to work on and whenever and wherever I get a chance I'll work on it.

If I'm writing a poem, I'll usually keep going until the whole thing is done (first pass - often there are several iterations later). That's the same for any short piece of work - flash fiction or a short nonfiction piece. For longer work like a story or a novel, I'll usually keep going until, through some kind of instinct, I feel I've had enough and it's time to stop (or I have to go pick up the kids from school or meet some other impending deadline).

It's probably the same for nearly every 21st Century person but time is my biggest challenge. Finding enough of it to do all the things I want to do.

I'm reasonally well organised and do tend to plan each day fairly well, listing key objectives to lead to the bigger objectives, but there's always a limit to just how much you can get through in a day, and in addition to my writing, I'm also parent to three young(ish - getting older all the time :-) children, have a reasonably big day job, have just started another Master's degree, have two websites to manage and a new book to promote, so time is always a challenge. I deal with it as best as I can, through planning and prioritising - standard time management processes, but I also sometimes have to ease off my goals and accept my limitations. My children won't be young forever, so they always have to take priority.

How many books have you written so far?

I've listed the books I've written below. I've collaborated on and participated in quite a few more anthologies and collections (say around six), but these are the key ones:

• Repulsion Thrust, Bewrite Books, 2009, ISBN: 978-1-904492-96-2 - this is my just released full length poetry collection. Repulsion Thrust tackles big subjects not often the fodder of poetry: quantum physics, astronomy, time travel, ecological destruction, and technological singularity, all viewed through the lens of the human condition.
• She Wore Emerald Then, 2008, 978-1438263793, (poetry chapbook - collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson), finalist in the USA Book News 2009 NBBA Best Book Awards. She Wore Emerald Then and Cherished Pulse are part of an ongoing "Celebration" series of chapbooks designed to replace greeting cards.
• Sleep Before Evening, BeWrite Books, 2007 , ISBN-13: 978-1904492962 – 2008 Indie Book Awards Regional Fiction Finalist - this is a novel set in NYC that follows the adventures of 17 year old, Marianne as she discovers the healing power of music through an almost deadly journey into the deepest recesses of her own mind.
• Quark Soup, Picaro Press, 2006 , ISBN 1-920957-23-5, ( Poetry Chapbook) - Quark Soup contains twenty eight poems which muse on topics like what it means to be human, love, loss, fear, longing, and transcendence. Avoiding cliché and the mundane, the poetry in this collection is accessible to the common reader, with a powerful intellectual edge and playful wit. As all good poetry should, this work uses sound, sense, and strong imagery to deal with everyday topics like depression, birth, growing old, love and death, all moving towards a large universal picture. As the title suggests, there is a strong astrophysical theme running through the poems.
• The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything, Mountain Mist Productions, 2003 , ISBN 1-920913-10-6, ( Nonfiction) , The Art of Assessment is a complete guide to the review process, from how to write good reviews, how to use interviews to add depth to your reviews, obtaining review copies, marketing your reviews, and plenty of examples and references to help you become a working reviewer.
• Cherished Pulse, 2006 , re-released in 2009 as a print book, ISBN 978-1449546052 ( Poetry Chapbook - collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson) , Cherished Pulse contains twenty poems which look at love from a wise, mature, sensitive perspective. Never sentimental (forget Hallmark), the poems explore love in its many guises -- cherish, longing, sensuality, and that sacred place between desire and consumation.

Possibly related books:

,,

Related articles:

• Interview with Magdalena Ball, co-author of Cherished Pulse, By Lucille P Robinson, Alternative-Read.com, February 6, 2009
• An Interview with Magdalena Ball, Author of Sleep Before Evening, By Ernest Dempsey, News Blaze, October 17, 2007
• Interview with Magdalena Ball, By Sarah Cook, AussieAuthors.com, July 2007

[Interview] Richard Wink

Richard Wink's poetry has been published in magazines that include Ditch, Underground Voices and Aesthetica Magazine.

He has also published a number of chapbooks, among them, The Magnificent Guffaw (Erbacce Press); Apple Road (Trainwreck Press); All Along the Wensum (Kendra Steiner Editions); Delirium is a Disease of the Night (Shadow Archer Press) and Devils and Daylight (New Polish Beat).

Dead End Road (Bewrite Books, 2009) is his first full length poetry collection.

In this interview Richard Wink talks about his writing:

When did you start writing?

I started writing poetry after finding out that I had been gifted the happy knack of putting together some snappy metaphors alongside sparse, blunt prose.

Overtime I graduated from bedroom notepad scribbles to actually getting my work published in various magazines and periodicals. This took a great deal of perseverance and patience, as paper cuts bled into rejection letters and grovelling around on my hands and knees led to grazes and bruises that blunted the ego.

I guess I never set out to get published; it took a great deal of courage to actually put my neck on the chopping block and send my words out into the open. But once you get that first acceptance and you see your poem in print – it becomes a drug, you soon get addicted and eventually you end up with all kinds of hopes, dreams and delusions.

Such flighty ideas led me to put together my debut full length collection, Dead End Road. Getting the book published was merely a case of chancing my arm, getting some interest from a publisher and then working with a fine editor who cut away the fat and produced a lean, succulent composition.

Having said that I have grafted, working my way up the small press grapevine, putting out chapbooks through indie presses and publishers, honing my craft over time. Getting Dead End Road published didn’t just happen, I had to put the hard yards in.

How would you describe your writing?

My poems are a mixture of what I see and what I imagine, a crude oily blur of fact and fiction, an exaggeration of reality.

I’m attempting to mould together many different influences - blend kitchen sink drama with surrealism, and then add two teaspoons of existentialism.

Who is your target audience?

Anyone can read my words; I’m not aiming for an intellectual minority. I endeavour to make my writing as accessible as I can.

Surely it is common sense for a writer to want as many people to read his words as possible?

Which writers influenced you most?

Carol Ann Duffy ignited the passion, Charles Bukowski made me realize anyone can do this and Allen Ginsberg explicitly taught me how to sprinkle the sugar.

Do your personal experiences influence your writing in any way?

Most certainly, as I mentioned before I write about the everyday, I believe there is a lot of mileage in the mundane. Any writer would be foolish to ignore what they directly experience.

In my working life, I’ve encountered the good, the bad and the ugly in an assortment of weird and wonderful jobs, I aim to capture the unique characters like butterflies, and pin them down on paper.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

I think every writer faces self doubt. That little voice in the back of your head that politely asks what the hell you are doing?

I find it best to flip that little voice off, and plough on into the light. So basically what I’m saying is that I am fearful of the legitimacy of my words, yet fearless when it comes to getting them out there into the open.

What are the biggest challenges that you face?

The challenge is to get people to read Dead End Road.

I mean there is are a lot of obstacles to overcome, both from the bloated corpses of the past, the dead poets, and those poets who are currently hot stuff - alive and kicking with the backing of the bigger publishing houses.

I’m dealing as best as I can, but I’ll be honest and say that I find the promotional work hard going. Let’s face it; I would make a terrible car salesman.

Do you write everyday?

I’m working (real work, not writing!) long hours at the moment so time is very much at a premium.

Honestly, I write when I can, forcing the muse through the fatigue and mental tiredness.

Each session starts with a cup of tea, I scribble in the notepad, and ideas form from the ether. Then I make the first draft, the second ties it all together and the third normally is finely polished.

Right now I’m working on a novel, so the process is a lot stricter and tightly regimented; sessions need to yield a minimum of 1,000 words.

How many books have you written so far?

A number of chapbooks and one full length collection of poetry, all released between 2005 and now.

It started when after getting in a few magazines and anthologies I approached a small press in the States that put together a chapbook called The Beehives, then I approached another that helped me with Stress, both are pretty shocking in terms of quality and thankfully no longer in print. However the experience got me thinking more about assembling a body of work rather than an odd gaggle of poems.

Then I went on a glory run and released The Magnificent Guffaw through Erbacce Press, Apple Road via Trainwreck Press, All Along the Wensum through Kendra Steiner Editions and Delirium is a Disease of the Night with Shadow Archer Press. Apart from a little chapbook I released with A J Kaufmann’s imprint New Polish Beat titled Devils and Daylight all of the other chapbooks have led up to my debut full length collection Dead End Road; the training miles before my marathon, if you will.

How would you describe Dead End Road?

I’ve described it as Revolutionary Road meets Desperate Housewives; a series of snapshot poems that look at different characters and personalities along a fictional road.

It took me a couple of months to write, because I really got into a good groove, the words were flowing effortlessly.

The book is published by BeWrite Books. I picked BeWrite because they have a roster of talented writers that I respect, and also because I wanted to work with a publisher that is forward thinking, and ambitious.

What advantages and/or disadvantages your association with BeWrite Books presented?

Speaking open and honestly I found that the editing process was superb. I worked closely with Sam Smith, an experienced writer who helped shape the collection into something substantial and coherent.

I was certainly impressed with the quality of the paperback version of the book, it looks superb.

The disadvantages have mostly been promo related, when you work with independent publishing houses it is up to you the writer to seek out reviews, this can be tricky with every Tom, Dick and Harriet also attempting to plug their books. You really do have to knock on the door of every reviewer and hope they will give your book a read, and hope you get a favourable review.

What will your next book deal with?

The novel, tentatively titled Tears and Spittle will be about a man who loses his identity and embarks on a Candide-esque misadventure across the dirty South (of England).

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

Writing Dead End Road which I believe would be a wonderful stocking filler gift. What with Christmas around the corner. It makes sense for you to pick up a copy!

Possibly related books:

,,

Related articles:

• Dead End Road [Review & Interview], By Jim Murdoch, The Truth About Lies, October 5, 2009
• Featured Poet Richard Wink Interviewed, By Claire Askew, One Night Stanzas, February 21, 2009
• Chris Hardy [Interview], Conversations with Writers, March 26, 2010

[Interview_2] Carol Thistlethwaite

Carol Thistlethwaite is a poet, a book reviewer and the author of three books for adults who are learning to read.

Her poems and reviews have been published in magazines that include Envoi, Orbis, Fire, Poetry Cornwall and The Journal.

Her latest collection of poems, from the field book, is going to be launched on March 20 and 21, to coincide with Earth Day, World Poetry Day, the First Day of Spring and World Forestry Day.

In this, the last of a two-part interview, Carol Thistlethwaite talks about how she got published.

How many books have you written so far?

I've had three books published by Avanti Press (2006) for adults who are learning to read. I wrote Red Paint, Painting the Bedroom and The Birthday Present for some of the adult learners I work with because I found there was a shortage of appropriate books for adults who are just learning to read.

The books appear simple but the writing of them is complex. Basically it's about creating adult stories from high frequency and phonetic words. Also the text (often one line) has to be written so that it can be illustrated. The repetition of key words and spelling patterns has to be considered and the subject matter should be relevant -- and preferably be fun.

Hannah Barton was the illustrator and I think we made an effective team.

Did you already have a publisher in mind when you were writing the books?

I looked at a selection of adult literacy books and picked Avanti as the most appropriate. I telephoned them, pitched the texts and was invited to submit them.

And how did you link up with the illustrator?

That was difficult and the budget made it more so. I kept mentioning to people that I was looking for an illustrator and found Hannah Barton via a friend.

I asked her to make the characters likable and to inject some humour into the illustrations. I negotiated a few changes and think Hannah did an excellent job. I think it's important that illustrator and writer work co-operatively in these kinds of books because the pictures are very much used as reading cues.

Do you write everyday?

No. As far poetry is concerned I write best when words and rhythms flow unhindered in my head -- which is usually when I'm out walking. Often I have a pencil and notebook with me so I scribble down phrases, images or whole poems. I edit them later. I sometimes think I should take a dictaphone so I can speak the word-flow as I walk.

How long did it take you to put the poetry collection together?

from the field book is a collection of poems about British bird species. The poems have been written over the last four years (2003 - 2007). I'd been sending poems out to small presses during this time, preferring to be published in print.

After attending a talk by Chris Hamilton-Emery (Salt Publishing), who said that writers need to develop an online presence, I realised I'd have to overcome my aversion to online publishing. So I sent some poems to Sam Smith's Select Six site and to my delight he accepted them and asked how many more I had... and recommended the collection to BeWrite Books who, I am pleased to say, accepted it for publication.

Sam recognised me from the small press world and at this point I’d like to say a huge thank you to the editors of small magazines who provide opportunities for writers to get their work and names out in the public domain -- to readers, writers and potential publishers.

What other advantages or disadvantages have arisen because of your association with this publisher?

Sam has an interest in bird watching and understands what many of these poems are doing: articulating the inexpressible jizz of different bird species. Having an editor who understands the concepts that underpin the collection has been an advantage.

Having a publisher (Cait Myers) whom I trust is also important. I’ve worked with Sam and Cait and contributed to decisions so I feel this is very much my collection.

Who is your target audience?

Initially from the field book began as my MA dissertation so the audience was me and whoever was grading it. After that I let the collection evolve to what it is today.

I hope that poetry readers will enjoy its use of language and that bird watchers will recognise the perceptions and think, 'Yes, it is like that, isn't it...?'

What did you find most difficult when you were writing the poems that make up from the field book?

I decided a long time ago that I didn't want to repeat myself across any of my poems. I didn't want to repeat images, metaphors or perceptions. Finding different ways of describing similar landscapes and presenting each encounter as a different perception can sometimes be challenging -- but it's one that I relish. Sometimes I have to let my mind go out of focus so I can move laterally and away from the obvious.

The most difficult species to write about are those that are very familiar. It is because I am no longer at the ‘learning to recognise’ stage so I don't now know the mental connections I made to aid recognition. I find that the best approach to these species is oblique such as focusing on an aspect of their behaviour or comparing them with other species.

What did you enjoy most?

I love being out in open spaces, wearing my scuffed and faithful boots, listening and watching out for wildlife, with binoculars round my neck, noticing something new, there’s always something new...

Related article:

Carol Thistlethwaite [Interview_1], Conversations with Writers, March 10, 2008

[Interview] Alessio Zanelli

Alessio Zanelli is a private financial adviser and a poet.

He was born in 1963 in Cremona, a small town in Lombardy, northern Italy, where he still lives and works.

He began writing poetry in 1985, at first in both English and Italian and then exclusively in English, a language he has been learning on his own.

He has published four poetry collections.

Loose Sheets (UpFront Publishing, 2002); Small Press Verse & Poeticonjectures (Xlibris, USA, 2003) and Straight Astray (Troubador Publishing, UK, 2005) are in English while 33 Poesie/33 Poems (Starrylink, ITA, 2004) is in both English and Italian.

His poems have also appeared in a range of literary magazines and journals that include Potomac Review, Möbius, Skyline Literary Magazine, The Journal and Freexpression.

In a recent interview, Alessio Zanelli spoke about his writing.

When did you start writing?

In 1985. At first I simply wrote lyrics for a couple of local rock bands, then I began writing poems. I abandoned my mother tongue (Italian) very soon and English has been my literary language ever since.

How and when did decide you wanted to be a published writer?

After collecting dozens of poems, I think anybody would feel the need of being published.

Poems may remain in the drawer for a very long time, but they have to come to light eventually, whether worth much or nothing, which only readers (and, unfortunately, editors) have the power to decide on. As George Bernard Shaw neatly put it: 'What's the point of writing if not that of being read?'

I began submitting my works to magazines only in 2000 and, for several months, all I got were rejection slips but I never despaired. So far I have over 200 poems published (or forthcoming) in nearly 100 literary magazines from 10 countries, even though most acceptances come from the USA and the U.K. I have also published three full collections, the first two through [print on demand] POD publishers and the last one with a small independent publisher.

Here's my advice: read, read, read what other poets write; then write, write, write, and revise. In the end submit, submit, submit, and never despair. Listen to what editors may advise about your poetry but never pervert the nature of your writing, your style, your voice in order to simply gratify them. Simple, isn't it?

How would you describe your own writing?

Difficult, laborious (also because I write in a foreign language), but almost always gratifying.

I constantly try to write something which may help, intrigue, amuse or in someway interest the reader.

Who is your target audience?

I don't have any target audience. Only, I hope other poets may be among my readers.

Poetry is most problematic ('it doesn't sell', the publishers would say), therefore I think that when a poet arouses the curiosity of other poets, he's actually writing something worth reading.

In the writing that you are doing, who would you say has influenced you most?

Oh, so many! An exhaustive answer would take pages, so I only name the ones I regard as my favorite poets ever: William Blake, Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. Among the old ones, W. H. Auden and William Carlos Williams. Among the contemporary ones, Carol Ann Duffy, Paul Muldoon and Mario Petrucci among the living ones.

As to the poets of other languages (my own one included) I like Pablo Neruda, Giuseppe Ungaretti and Rainer Maria Rilke above all.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

My greatest concern is not to make linguistic errors whatsoever and not to misuse the English language.

I'd like to write as well as not be recognized as a non-mother-tongue poet, but that's quite a tough assignment. Modern usage and idioms are difficult to retain and use properly when you don't speak a language in everyday life.

I try to write the best possible written-English poetry by referring to many linguistic tools such as dictionaries, thesauruses, style handbooks etc. (I own nearly 100 English reference volumes, many on CD/DVD). Above all, I keep on reading others' poetry, and all the latest collections of the most-read living poets.

Have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

From rejection to rejection, as well as from acceptance to acceptance, I've been slightly changing my stance on poetry writing.

A poet should never disavow his artistic beliefs to please editors, nonetheless small and gradual shifts in style, diction and even subject-matters are inevitable. Also personal experiences can influence the way a poet writes, but what he reads and hears around himself is also a powerful determining factor.

What are the biggest challenges that you face?

The biggest challenge I face is my constant effort to write a good literary English, as to poetic diction and command of all the linguistic tools. That said, the other big challenge is that of captivating the reader, of keeping him hooked from the first to the last line of the poem, which is really difficult, especially when you think that your very first reader is (almost invariably) the editor of the magazine you've submitted your poem to.

In the end, what one says and how one says it is of the greatest importance in grabbing attention: saying something useful or saying the truth may be the secret, but that doesn't mean the poet always has to speak of real facts. Good poetry can be also fictive (and I know many poets don't agree on this issue, since they believe a poet must be absolutely 'honest'), provided that what the poet imagines and pictures is of service to the truth and what he really believes in. This is another big challenge.

Do you write everyday?

No, I don't write everyday. My job and other occupations require pretty much of my time. On an average, I write about 10 hours a week, which is not much, but can be a huge amount of time for a poet. Moreover, I think everybody understands that a poet can't be forced to write, not even by himself! That is, I write only when I feel like writing, and inspiration, after all, still is the most important element.

Once a poem is started, I usually tend to finish it on the very same day, but sometimes it takes more days and, in a few cases, I have written poems whose construction has taken weeks, or months.

The revising process never ends. I have poems published in two or three different magazines, each time in a different version. Let me say: a poem is really, definitively finished only when the poet is dead.

How did you chose a publisher for your latest poetry collection?

My latest book is the collection Straight Astray. Over 90 percent of the poems included first appeared in literary magazine such as Aesthetica, California Quarterly, Dream Catcher, Italian Americana, Orbis, Other Poetry, Paris/Atlantic and Poetry Salzburg Review.

It was published in the U.K. by Troubador Publishing.

The time required to find a traditional mainstream publisher willing to publish (or even only consider) my manuscript could have taken ages, therefore I opted for a small POD publisher, which many consider as a discrediting option. I don't think so, since I'm perfectly aware that I'll never be able to earn my living from poetry. I prefer to have my book neatly produced in a reasonable time and at a reasonable expense. After all, nearly all of the poems had already been accepted for publication by literary magazines and that's enough for me to be sure that what I wrote is worth reading.

A full collection is a higher-grade need for a poet, but there are thousands of poets in the world and so few poetry readers! As a consequence, only a very small percentage of poets can attain the services of mainstream publishers such as Faber & Faber, Cape Poetry, Bloodaxe, etc. All the others have to make do with self-publishing and POD services.

Which aspects of the work you put into the book did you find most difficult?

Apart from what I have already said about the proper use of the language as an Italian-native, I think that the process of revising is what can most worry a poet. You never actually know if the latest version of a poem will really satisfy you forever. The 'perfection' and the 'persistence' of a poem are the real poet's torment.

The only virtues needed to deal with such problem are patience and belief. Sooner or later, every poet will run into the definitive version of a poem, the 'perfect draft'.

Which aspects of the work did you enjoy most?

What follows applies to all my books, not to one in particular. I enjoyed most having to deal with a foreign tongue. I really like the exploring of the language. I have so much to learn from the works of other authors as well as from all sorts of reference books while writing and revising. There's nothing more pleasant and intriguing for one who likes a language not his own.

What sets the Straight Astray apart from the other things you've written?

I think the poems in Straight Astray are way better than the ones in my previous books.

In what way is it similar?

Again, like its predecessors my last collection shows how a foreigner can use the English language for literary purposes. I think it can be really interesting also for English-native writers. A review I've had maybe can better explain this point: 'We can learn a lot about ourselves from how others use our language. Alessio Zanelli has paid our language, Edward Thomas' English Words, a rare compliment. In turn we should take the time to read what he has to say.' (John Plevin -- Pulsar Poetry Magazine, U.K.)

What will your next book be about?

Poetry, of course, The new collection has many tentative titles, among them are: Hand of Sand; Over Misty Plains; In The Middle Of The Ford.

I hope it will see the light in 2008 or 2009; for sure it will include poems first published in magazines and anthologies around the world.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

Being published in literary magazines and anthologies in the English language along with English-native poets, some of whom are really famous, such as Rita Dove, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Mario Petrucci. And having being published there as an Italian who has been learning English completely as an autodidact.

How did you get there?

With much reading and studying, patience, humbleness, and a little savoir-faire.

This article was first published by OhmyNews International.

[Interview] Karl Stuart Kline

Poet and author, Karl Stuart Kline is a past president of Epilepsy Concern, a coalition of self-help groups; a past president of the Greater Miami Avicultural Society and a lifetime honorary member of the Florida Sheriff’s Association.

He made his debut as an author in 2004 with the publication of Poison Pearls, an 88-paged collection of poetry and prose which explores issues that include forced labor, modern-day slavery, human trafficking and prostitution.

He followed this up with Going Without Peggy (PublishAmerica, 2005), another collection of poetry and prose about his marriage of 17 years and the bond that existed between him and his first wife, Peggy; her struggle with breast cancer and the effect her death had on him.

His latest book, Brain Stemmed Roses (PublishAmerica, 2006) is also a collection of poetry and prose and includes some of his early work from the 60s and 70s as well as poetry about romance and friendship in Eastern Europe and a section dedicated to his wife of seven years, Marina.

In a recent interview, Karl Stuart Kline spoke about the work he is doing.

How would you describe your writing?

Impulsive... I seldom sit down knowing in advance just what it is that I am going to write or what form that it is going to take. I find a certain amount of freedom in that because each time that I sit down to write, I have a different story to tell and a different way to tell it.

I want my work to withstand the test of time and for it to be as popular and well-read in a hundred years as it would be now if I was writing to please modern stylists.

I don’t write to accommodate the style du jour and refer to myself as writing poetry that will appeal to people who think that they don’t like poetry.

When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

I don’t believe that it was ever a conscious decision any more than it is for a fish to swim. Writing has always been as natural as breathing for me and the instruments of my craft are always close to hand.

A school assignment prompted me to write my first poem in 1966. The medium just had a natural appeal for me and I continued to write poetry as a matter of preference whenever possible.

Ten years later that same poem motivated me again, when I entered it and a few others in a college level competition... The poem took first place.

Later I found out that I had caused some consternation amongst the judges when the three winning poems were matched to their authors and they found my name on all three entries. Contest rules did not allow any one person to be awarded more than one prize, so all my poems had to be removed from the competition and those that remained were judged again for the second and third place awards.

The three poems were "The Tear", "Storm’s End" and "Patterns". All three are included in my most recent book, Brain Stemmed Roses.

Who would you say has influenced you most?

I suppose I would have to say that it has been the women in my life. With few exceptions, they have been a source of encouragement and inspiration for my writing.

As for writers that might have influenced me, I might mention the story-telling abilities of Mark Twain and Robert Heinlein. Neither of them were noted as poets, but they both had that wry sense of humor that I like to bring to my own work.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

Now that I have three books to my credit, my priorities have shifted. Over the last year I have continued to write but not with the immediate goal of my next book in mind. Rather, I have been concentrating on my Internet presence, so that my name is starting to be recognized in an ever widening circle of people.

I’ve also kept my websites free of any advertising. I hate to be bushwhacked any time that I find a site that I want to visit and I refuse to do it to anyone else.

Do you write everyday?

Unfortunately, no... My day job can be very demanding and there are often days that I just come home and collapse.

When I do write, many times I start by sorting through notes that I have made to myself over the preceding weeks, months and even years... they can be newspaper clippings, journal entries or scraps of verse, jotted down on napkins or placemats and saved.

I follow my muse, separating or bringing together different notes etc., according to perceived discords or commonalities. When something or a combination of things starts to sing to me, it tightens my focus. Soon I have something new to share with my readers.

Where I start often has very little to do with where I wind up. For example, I wrote an epigraph for a page on my website and it later became a rhyming sestina, done consistently in iambic heptameter.

How, where and when does the process end?

I don’t think that it ever ends! I may complete a piece to my satisfaction, but it almost always leads to something else!

Your latest book, Brain Stemmed Roses is divided into six sections. How and why is this?

The first of them is “A Poet’s View of Poetry”... mostly verse, but also an essay titled “Poetic Form and the Community of Man.” The second, “Early Works”, is material that I wrote in the ‘60s and ‘70s, including my very first poem. The third, “Smart and Sexy” details some of my dealings with the fair sex, starting about a year after Peggy’s death.

The fourth section is “The Ukrainian Connection” and it tells of my friendship with two itinerant Ukrainian artists. Through them, my acquaintance with Anne McCaffrey became possible and their friendship encouraged me to consider taking a bride from the old USSR. The section finishes with my expedition to Kyrgyzstan.

The fifth section, “Finding Marina” was meant to be a book in its own right, but my lovely Russian wife is also shy and she discouraged me from completing the book. However, I’ve still managed to tell the story of our ‘round the world romance, "Love, Marriage & Immigration."

The sixth and final section, “Passions of Poetry”, is comprised of several of my best and most recent works.

You mention Anne McCaffrey. Do you mean the Anne McCaffrey who wrote the Dragonriders of Pern series of books?

Yes, that's Anne McCaffrey. We know each other through a common acquaintance, the sculptor Vlad Ivanov of Kiev, Ukraine -- on his website you will see my name pop up as you run the cursor over some of the sculptures that are displayed in his gallery. (Except that he misspells my middle name as "Stewart.") Those are pieces that I commissioned with him and he also did the dragons for the gates to Anne's estate in Ireland (Dragonhold-Underhill).

Incidentally, my poetry that went into Going Without Peggy was inspiration for his Orpheus & Eurydice sculpture. I'm the reason Orpheus has a ponytail. Vlad surprised me as well when he revealed Orpheus & Eurydice to me. He'd been rather secretive about the project and I had no forewarning that he was doing Orpheus in my image.

How long did it take you to write Brain Stemmed Roses?

Counting my early works? Forty years!

When and where was it published?

April, 2006, by Publish America. This is my third book with this publisher.

Originally they were recommended to me as being friendly to first time authors. The writer who suggested them to me had his book turned down by them, so my first impression of them was also that they weren’t accepting just anybody who could submit a manuscript. They were also a relatively new company and at the time they were using new technology in an industry that had been relying on a business model that’s been around for decades, if not longer.

Better yet, they didn’t ask for any money and even offered a token advance that was at least symbolic of the fact that they expected you to be able to earn some income with them.

So I sent in my query letter and Poison Pearls was accepted for publication!

What advantages or disadvantages has this presented?

One advantage that I had was being able to retain a great deal of editorial control over the finished product. I know of one typo that slipped through in my first book and I have yet to find any in either of my other books.

Also important is that they have a very capable art department that pays close attention to the ideas that I present to them for the covers of my books. The cover art for all three of my books has been better than it had to be.

The most enjoyable part of having these books published is the sheer number of people who have come back to me and told me that not only did they enjoy reading my books cover to cover, but that they went back and read them two or three times over.

Which aspects of the work you put into the book was most difficult?

Blending and transitioning from one section to another. I didn’t really have a single unifying theme in this book, except that it presented several different periods in my creative life and wove together several interesting stories from my life.

All my books are quite different from what I have written in the past as a reporter, columnist or contributing editor.

Brain Stemmed Roses is a larger book than the other two and gives a broader overview of my art through the course of several decades while Going without Peggy could be read almost as a true life romance novel. Its story has brought tears to many eyes.

Poison Pearls, on the other hand, is a poetic voice for human rights and is meant to help in the fight against human trafficking. Nonetheless, it was quite a surprise for me when the booksellers classified it with Criminology, Social Issues and Women’s Studies instead of poetry! It’s also the beginning of what ultimately became scaredsafe.org, a website that unabashedly uses the power of poetry to combat the evils of human trafficking.

This article has also been featured on Associated Content.

[Blog Review] The Mind of a Working Writer

Emmanuel Sigauke teaches English at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento and is one of the Cosumnes River Journal's editors. He is also founder and editor of Munyori Poetry Journal, which publishes poems by established and emerging writers from all over the world.

His own poems and other writings have been published in journals and magazines that include Virtual Writer, Slow Trains Journal, Ibhuku and AfricanWriter.com.

His blogs, Wealth of Ideas, Chisiya Echoes: New Zimbabwe Poetry and Namatsiwangu give an insight into the mind of a working writer.

Chisiya Echoes is the oldest of the three and is a collection of over 370 poems in English that Sigauke has been writing since February 2006. The second blog, Namatsiwangu, was started in November 2006 and is made up of 10 Shona poems.

Wealth of Ideas, which is the focus of this article, is three months old. So far, it has about 20 posts of varying length. The posts focus on Sigauke's observations on African literature and poetry.

One of the things that make Wealth of Ideas interesting is that it shows how a working writer can use the blog as a creative tool, as an aid to writing and creativity.

For example, in one of his posts, Sigauke tells us, "I blog my poetry first, which means I create and publish my work instantaneously".

He emphasizes that the poems he creates in this manner are drafts.

"I am aware that this is some form of drafting. I always transfer the work to a local document for editing. Once the poem sounds polished, I send it to journals," he says.

He points out that one of the effects this has had on his work is that it has allowed him to produce more poetry than he would have done had he not been blogging.

"Look at the blogged pieces as the raw materials for high-quality poetry," he says.

Wealth of Ideas also reveals the link that exists between visual images and poetry.

The blog has a small collection of photographs, one of these is of a bird's nest on a tree in Capitol Park, Sacramento. Sigauke's brief comment about the nest reads and sounds like a poem. It has the rhythm, the rhyme and the effect of a poem.

"The nest is a poem that no words (even these) can build yet. But what bird, under what influence, would build a nest this close to the ground?" he asks.

Another of the things that is engaging about Wealth of Ideas is that Sigauke uses it as a writer's notebook or a journal. This gives the reader the feeling of eavesdropping, the feeling of listening in to a person talking to himself, the feeling of watching a mind brainstorming about literature, books, poetry and life.

You see ideas being formed. You see those ideas giving birth to other ideas and possibilities. You get the feeling you are standing over his shoulders and watching him write and you want to tell him, "This sounds good... What happens next?"

One of the reason why Sigauke's blog entries have this effect is because they are short and packed with concepts, associations and allusions.

For example, in another post he starts off by talking about reading, about how he reads and about the effect that this has on him as a writer. He then talks about John Steinbeck's description of a fog in The Chrysanthemums and the associations he has been able to make between that description and an event in his own life.

"I am taken back to Chipinge or Rusitu valley; I am reminded of the morning fog there, especially on that day when I arrived at Chipinge bus terminus and found out that all the day's buses had already left and the next troupe of buses would not arrive until the next day. I slept at the bus rank in the rain. All night I shivered; all night I shared a talk about life with a vendor from Bulawayo who had slept at this place too many times to worry about a little bit of rain."

If you have been to Zimbabwe or some other parts of Africa, Asia or South America, the scene Sigauke describes will be familiar. You want him to go on. You want to find out how it was for him. You want to find out what happened next.

He does go on in his own inimitable way.

"The fog is what I remember most about the morning of the night the rain pounded me at Chipinge. To the east of the town lie mountain ranges which seem to guard the town from some possible intrusion. On the morning I watched the fog first veiling the ranges, these sleeping lions, then the veil rose to cover the whole valley like the lid Steinbeck describes. It gets better; when the sun arose, the fog vanished, but then some low-lying beastly clouds settled on the peaks of the mountains and spent some hours feasting on the ranges. The longer I looked at the white beasts, the longer the bus delay seemed. I did not leave Chipinge until a day later, after spending another night at the open terminus, soaked on the outside, arid inside. Then from somewhere between insistent night rain and greedy beastly clouds, the self harvested new hope, the beginning of a new journey, already bruised by the grazing clouds."

His account is captivating. It leaves you wanting more. It makes you want to pat Sigauke on the shoulder to get his attention so that you can tell him to go back to it and work on it a little bit more and see if he can't turn it into a short story or a piece of creative non-fiction piece stands on its own.

All this is part of what's positive about Emmanuel Sigauke's blog, Wealth of Ideas.

However, possibly because he sees the blog as a personal platform for ideas he wants to gather and work on later, a personal platform that happens to be accessible to everyone who has access to the internet... possibly because he sees himself as more of a poet than a blogger, Wealth of Ideas doesn't have the polished feel of his poetry blogs, Chisiya Echoes and Namatsiwangu.

The paragraphing could be tweaked up a little bit more.

The blog is also riddled with spelling mistakes and other typographical errors. This is understandable. It's a common pitfall of writing on the huff. But if errors of this nature can't be avoided, you can at least go back to the entries and correct them later. Sigauke does not seem inclined to do that. For example, in a different post he tells us he's been reading Dambudzo Marechera's Symetry of Mind when he meant to say Cemetery of Mind.

The most challenging aspect of the blog is also one which sets it apart from a lot of other blogs that talk about literature and writing: Sigauke's tendency to make very short entries that are densely packed with allusions to a diverse range of concepts. The thing I found particularly challenging about these is that Sigauke does not really define the concepts or adequately relate them to the main topic of each blog entry.

For example, in one of his most recent posts, he writes about Valerie Tagwira's novel, The Uncertainty of Hope. He suggests that there is conflict between the language(s) Tagwira uses in the novel and the message behind the novel. He says this leads to writing that is "a bit journalistic or anthropological."

This is an intriguing observation but it's so raw and undeveloped that a person reading the comment can only respond to it with more questions, questions like, "When a novel is "a bit journalistic" or "anthropological" what does it do? What does it not do? In what way is The Uncertainty of Hope "journalistic" or "anthropological". Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Why?"

Sigauke has promised to answer these and other questions in the book review he's going to write after he finishes reading the novel. I look forward to reading the review with as much interest as I look forward to more of the entries he will make on Wealth of Ideas.

This article was first published by OhmyNews International.

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[Interview] Rory Kilalea, film-maker, playwright and author, Conversations with Writers, September 21, 2007.