The marvellous Mr Beanphoto, who works at Litfest with me and does the photography for us, made this lovely photo for a writing workshop we're organising for the Bowland Arts Festival, using a poem of mine.

Maya sent me a link to the rough cut of the film today. After having talked me through what a rough cut entails: no sound mixes, ungraded colour, a compressed file, and a bunch of other stuff I didn't really get my head around except not to expect a super slick production.

It's on vimeo, but private so you'll have to wait. I switched on nervously. Maya had also told me she'd seen each shot so many times she's lost sight of what they added up to and how it fitted together, but I was check for pacing or anything wierd visually.

I watched the film, approximately a minute and a half, about five consecutive times, gobsmacked. It was almost exactly as I'd envisioned, with some shots even more beautiful or striking than I'd imagined. Beth's voice is absolutely perfect, tying with and straining against the film, creating this hollowness that is curiously empathetic.

Yes, there are some pacing tweaks needed. It does feel a bit fast - there's a lot to absorb with both audio and visual images not always sitting comfortably together (which is what we wanted), and it is a tightly wrought poem. But that's easily sorted. Especially since once again we have total agreement - the shots she felt needed more work, I did also.

I will now have to resist watching it over and over until I satiated and wait until after the holidays to come back to it with a more analytical eye and make notes scene by scene to pass on Maya.

Best to leave alone, then, and go make a snowman.

Another in my infrequent series of conversations.

This time, with dynamic writer, Bernardine Evaristo, who has recently reissued her verse novel Lara with Bloodaxe.

I love this novel for the deep exploration into family lineage. And the new edition spreads this theme even more widely.

Sarah Hymas: After slowly moving away from writing verse through verse-novels and novels with verse to a straight prose novel I wondered how you found the return to verse with this new edition of Lara?

Benardine Evaristo: I wasn't sure at first that I could get back into the spirit and craft of a verse novel having spent a few years writing prose fiction. But reading through the original text was a good way to get back into the flow of it. I did discover that my narrative voice is more cohesive and pronounced than it was in the original LARA. When I originally wrote LARA I was firmly rooted as a poet, now I see myself as a storyteller using whatever genre suits a particular book. It was also a bit of a challenge initially to not write sweeping great paragraphs instead of short, concise lines of poetry and to return to building up the story through small units.

SH: I imagine this return to writing poetry having an influence on how you tell your next story. How much does one idea develop as you're finishing the previous one?

BE: It varies. I'm working on a new novel now which will be a prose novel, but I love the idea of making it a very poetic prose novel. I do love writing the verse novel form and I enjoyed returning to the snapshot sequences of LARA having written my first prose novel BLONDE ROOTS. I don't usually know what I'm going to write next until I've finished a particular work and then, when the manuscript has been delivered, my head is clear to embark on the next project. Although, having said that, sometimes I do get a sense of the territory I'm going to explore next but I don't think too deeply about it.

SH: What prompted you to include the Irish side of the family in this new edition of Lara?

BE: I was never that curious about the Irish side of my family initially, my mother's relatives. I think that when I began writing LARA I was much more interested in discovering the unknown side of my family history, the Nigerian and Brazilian ancestry. An academic once approached me at a reading and asked me why I hadn't written more about my Irish heritage, especially because of the colonial experience of Ireland and how that would draw comparisons with, for example, the Nigerian colonial experience. I was shocked to realise that I hadn't really thought about it and decided then and there that should I ever re-issue LARA, I would add the Irish past. The German side of my family history, also on my mothers side, is also a new addition to the book. So whereas the novel initially spanned 150 years into my father's history, it now spans 150 years into my mother's history too.

SH: You switch narrators (including an omnisicient narrator) a lot. What is your starting point for finding the right voice for each character?

BE: It varies. Some of the characters are based on people I know well, like myself - so I just have to be true to my voice. Not as easy as it sounds, I think. Others are based on my parents and grandmother - all of whom I also knew/know well so I tried to hear their voices in my head - their vocabulary, intonation, the ways in which they expressed themselves verbally. It was a listening job - to my parents voices as they materialised inside my head, and to my grandmother's voice as she was when she was alive. It also helped that I interviewed both parents at length on tape recorder, so I could play their voices back and listen to them with some degree of objectivity. My father's English was quite broken and I was not aware of this until I heard him on tape. With the unknown characters - the family members I never knew - then I used photographs where possible to try and imagine character - once I got a sense of who they were I began to write and then magic takes over - they start to speak through me.....whooooo.....bit spooky, huh?

SH: And to end with, a short roll call of some of the people who influenced the writing of Lara:



Thank you, Bernardine, for your time and permssion to use the photos

This time last year I worked with poet Maya Chowdhry on her first collection, The Seamstress and the Global Garment. I had crossed paths with Maya for years, this being the north west and us both being literature passionistas, but it was when Flax published her work that I began to get to know her properly. She's fiercely ethical and open-minded and someone I find highly inspirational in how she views her work as a poet and artist. More about that another time.

The editing I undertook for The Seamstress was one side of a trade. It took me a while to work out what I'd like in return, but as Maya talked more and more about her work for a degree in art, I got to thinking how a film of a poem in Host might be a very lovely thing to have. I had seen a couple of Maya's film and liked their richness and simplicity. And I love the possibility of poetry films. Flax had commissioned one last year, Finding a Language, which was a great merging of two extremely different creative people and a joy (if a little frustrating) to be witness and manager of.

So I presented Maya with four different poems from my forthcoming book, and we talked about the images within them and which we'd be most excited to work with. We settled eventually with Nothing as Quiet as a House, which is a calmer version of a rant about an abandoned house, the first in a sequence of poems spanning a hundred years of a family, its home and business.

Last week we story-boarded the film (far more pleasant than waterboarding). And did I get excited. I did. I did.

Maya had located a house - offered to us by a kindred spirit - and taken some pics to show me. And after some playing about with completely unrelated images we started talking about the potential thrown up by her images. I love the geometric play in this one.

What was so great about our day was that as we worked and discussed the translation of the poem's narrative, we moved seamlessly and energetically from one idea to another, from one brain to another (although there were only the two in the room, it felt like more). There was no huge discrepancy of vision, or even of how we might go about structuring the day or the the film, and when plans were dropped or changed, I can't honestly remember who suggested to do so. It felt like a wonderful expansion of experience.

I was given blank squares in which to sketch (badly) what we decided to include in each scene, how the pace panned out, and how to evoke and suggest echoes rather than literally work off line by line or word by word.

This picture threw up the idea of entrances and exits, mirrors being portals (reminding me of Jonathan Strange and Mr Morrell), and since the poem is about ghosts, or at least memories, this seemed totally apt. I was running with it.

The trick will be to translate the still images of these pictures and others and my badly sketched storyboard into a pacy (or slow) motion picture. But I don't have to worry about that too much. That's Maya's job.

I just have to find all the props we've agreed on: moss, a tea set, a vase, an old chair, a custom molded cushion cover.

And remember to bring my watch next week. I've be given the grand title of Production Assistant. It sounds terribly responsible. Hope I'm up for the job and don't get too giddy.

My last gig of a surprisingly gig-ful year was at the Brewery Arts Centre in the refubished Warehouse - a long room lined with rows of sofas facing the velvet curtained stage. Very lush. A lovely vibe for a poetry night. Which was a great start since I felt pretty dire (for entirely self-inflicted reasons).

At least I knew what poems I was going to recite and felt confident I had a mixed set of light, lyrical and surreal stuff. I was also showcasing a hitchhiking poem for the first time. I was one of the headline acts, thanks to the invitation from the supremely energetic Ann Wilson, so had a fifteen/twenty minute slot.

There were fourteen open mics so I had plenty of time to settle into the space. They, as usual, ranged in voice and subject, mainly good - especially Kim Moore and Margaret Whyte, who both read absorbing poems, rich in atmosphere and imagery.

It was a mic'd do so I wasn't going to be dancing about physically, which let me off that hook. Just small gestures and voice. And as usual, an astonishingly attentive audience. I think I've gone on about the priviledge us poets have with our audiences so won't go on about it again.

Mybreathing wasn't the best, so didn't entirely relax but managed to hold attention and enjoy my delivery. But the best bit was after - I've never had so many people talk to me after a gig - mainly to share their hitching experiences (that poem was clearly a winner), but also to tell me how much they enjoyed what they heard - if not necesarily understood intellectually but had gone with the sounds of the poems. And that for me is really what a performance is about. My work isn't the most obvious performance work, being densely written and rather wrought in imagery, but if it can carry people elsewhere then I've done my job.

To an extent sound is sense, and mood can be conveyed through that.

Just found this while "researching" - which took me to a blog by Thomas A Clark

I was so confident back in the good old days of the idea for John Denver. That's the danger of ideas - they seem so good. So feasible. So simple.

And then you have to act on them.

Yesterday was my first day for getting to real grips with the John Denver play. The director wants the synopsis by the end of November. And that's beyond "this fan and his mother meet the day or week after his death".

I realised I had become totally hooked on not having JD open his mouth and so pleased with the solution I'd forgotten I'd installed two new people in the play: fan and mother.

I used to write short stories. And back then I loved doing it. But that really was back then. I haven't created a character since 2002 when I wrote performance stories with two other writers. Yesterday was wake up day. I had to learn about these people before I could go any further, with plot, let alone know what they'd say and how they might say it.

What I discovered was that other buffer zone, the one comes after the blissful euphora of the 'idea': research. Oh what procrastinatory fun that is. The things you need to read and check out to get a sense of someone is truly time consuming. 

So, once I got over the shock of people, yesterday turned into a fascinating day of sketching and reading and devising, what I hope is, an interesting, convincing and fully-fleshed woman.

One down, one more to go, before the next issue of plot ...

A few days/weeks ago me, Steve Lewis and Beth Allen finally managed to get ourselves together in the same room at the same time with the same purpose - to sing, sound and improvise.

While we'd managed a few hours back in September it had felt many many months since we'd last had productive play time together (April was the last posting I could find about our 'project' in this blog).

So we had to start with the usual routine of trying to remember what we'd done last time and what of what we'd done we'd enjoyed. This unfortunately comprises of us all bent over Steve's notebook and trying to decipher his writing and then what the word he'd scribbled, percussive or theme might allude to in terms of what we did.

Slow dawnings of memory: the stretching out of words; the creation of sound narratives - stories without meaningful words; improvising/riffing off the ideas of curse and bless.

As usual we'd had a fine old time of it but without a true sense of what next.

This time we wanted (well, Steve wanted, but me and Beth were happy to go along with him) to create some space to unpick what we'd done, specifically to explore previous ideas through overload and then through miminalism.

The beginnings of our sessions are always hard for me because suddenly I'm being asked to produce stuff - even if it's a meaningless sound - in front of people and my usual response is 'I can't'. A bit of arm swinging is usually a good start. And faith and trust in Steve and Beth, which I have in bucketloads, otherwise I wouldn't have even got involved in this in the first place.

The overload turned into a crazy cacophony of screeching, voice and dischordance, while the minimalist approach was altogether more interesting, more tense for us. So we pushed this idea further. Each of us came up with rules for us to follow (or break if you're Beth, she's so naughty): a word each over a minute, then two words each, and a sound, then repeating someone else's sound over two minutes, with the aim of creating a story or sense of 'something'.

While we never knew what the others were about to say or produce, or when, we were still trying to riff off each other and build up a palate of sound. It required intense listening to each other, ourselves and the wider space too.

Inevitably it became very poetic: sparse, chiming sounds, echoes and silence.

Inevitably I loved it.

Inevitably we didn't record it so have no real sense of how it might be for an audience. So we've made dates to have three whole days to build up to something that might be enjoyable for others.

We'd had such a good time we hadn't even invited Mr Puppet to join in, although Beth did find some superb hair for him. Maybe next time.

I went down to the prize-giving of the Elmet Trust's prize on Saturday. A very wild night. After an hour and half of being blown about on the motorway, it was odd to be sitting inside a theatre listening to poems on the themes of the 'elements'. It added to the readings an their meanings. In one way or another.

I was left feeling rather confused, however.

Jackie Kay, the judge, talked after each poem on what she had liked in it. After mine she spoke of the family connections in it and how we have these unspoken similarities and separations. Oh? I thought. It's not about just family. It's about love. Or perhaps, if not love then it's about the ... errr ... err ... the boundaries between people, between things, between us and the environment. In the car on the way home, I read the poem again. I had read it out to the audience with such confidence that I knew what I was reading. And now I wasn't so sure. And I'm still not so sure.

It has been suggested to me that it was chosen because of all the lovely imagery in it rather than its meaning. Mmmm. I'm not sure I like this idea. Although I do quite like the idea I don't totally know what it means anymore. It's not a position I usually hold towards my poems so it's rather curious, ill-fitting in a way.

If you have any suggestions (the poem is here) I'd welcome interpretations.

No, not the title for the John Denver play - or at least maybe not - but a working title nonetheless (thanks, Steve).

Yes, I have a plan. But first the parameters I was working to.

1. I met the guy who's going to play John Denver. And his singing put me at ease about the project. He has a beautiful voice. His Leaving on a Jet Plane was very moving. Bad news - he's not an actor.

2. Suzy, the director, tells me she wants the other actors to be two women - for the singing harmonies. No Dad then.

3. On reading JDs autobiography, I discover the man not only struggled to communicate in relationships but also in print with help from a writer. It was a unilluminating read that wound me up considerably. I had no compassion for him. Not a good starting point for writing words for him.

Solution (found in collaboration with a friend after seeing Faulty Optic. Thank you Sandie) : The play's set the morning after JD dies in a plane crash. Two women - his mother and a life-long fan - meet to salvage what they knew of the man.

Auditions are being held on Sunday for the women. Then all that needs to happen is for me to write the thing.