The sand adjusting underfoot

 

 

Think of the sea, a long way out from where you are. Think of the exact number of footsteps it would take to get you to a place where you wouldn’t see someone for an hour or more. Think of the memories you take with you every step. How do you imagine these memories? A bundle of sticks, a miasma? A cluster of people calling and chattering in your head?

 

Or are they a set of pictures, creased at the edges, or faded from the years. Is there a feeling that goes with a photograph, something innate, or do we bring everything, and make the image contain?

 

I try to think beyond the image. I try to layer and organise and bind. Or, I’m going to try. Today was adrift and small fingered.  That’s all right. We don’t always have the strength for every day to mean something more. And luckily granted peaceful days we should take them where we can. A day without any sadness, outside or in, is a good day. I’ll write tomorrow, or I’ll wait a little more. I’m standing watching the tide with a rock in my hand, waiting to break the silver with it. One skill I have managed to acquire with writing is the ability to know when to write and when to wait. When to make cakes and take walks and sit on the sofa, resting. Worrying, now I do that all the time, but I’m trying not to, just for the change in the air.

I shall throw words at the sea another day.

Tomorrow, tomorrow.

 

The London writeup part three

Onwards, to Camden!

 

 

 

I’d tired myself out walking, so thought I’d give a rest to my legs and take the way of the future – the underground!

 

 

Camden at lunchtime was colourful and bustled with hungry young people. The markets on Inverness St stuffed with hundreds of tee shirts printed with the ubiquitous ‘Keep calm do X’ slogans, Camden High Street lined with knock off headphones and heart shaped sunglasses.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, I was going the wrong way – I had taken the wrong spoke of the roads that cross the canal. An easy thing to do, my friend G later told me. Camden is tricky if you don’t know the lay of the streets.

 

 

 

But if I hadn’t got lost, I wouldn’t have seen how lovely it was in the sunshine.

 

 

 

Eventually I turned around, and worked out where I was to meet my agent. After a coffee underneath an overhead tube line (possibly a bad idea, shaking me every few minutes) and another read of NW, this time actually in an NW postal code area, I headed to the pub for our meeting.

 

 

 

And what news did I hear there? Well, the future for Kilea is uncertain. Drea is still supporting it, and had some suggestions. I am so grateful to her for her dedication and hard work with my quiet literary novel. It slinks like seagull above the clouds, keeering. Cross your fingers that one day it will find the right place to roost.

 

However! Progress with the second novel, Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts is underway, with two extracts of it out or forthcoming in online literary journals, and submissions planned later, when more work has been done on it. That shall be the effort of the next few months – editing the novel, deepening it, firming it up. The best sort of hard work, and with Drea’s support (and that of D, my first reader),  I hope to produce something that will be watertight and compelling, that will, crucially, find its way into the wider world.

 

I feel touched too to have readers, here, who are following my progress. It’s been a long year of hoping and struggling along, and nothing is ever certain. Some days are spent burrowing down into the work, others in combing my emails for news, for some breakthrough. Your comments are like fairy lights, warming in the dark.

 

I know other writers are right now, at various stages in their careers, chipping away at the same coalface. Pushing their skills forward, trying to be ambitious in their writing, though their life circumstances are not always the most favourable for fostering imaginary worlds or the careful construction of sentences. For art, for storytelling.

 

Solidarity has helped me along. Excellent role models are everywhere. You know who you are, and that you have my admiration, my love for your words and your painstaking skill with them, and your honesty and necessary lies that illuminate the truth.

 

And to the rest of my day in London? Spent in meeting friends – fellow writers, storytellers too: C, G and J, in that order. A trip to the Barbican building with C, to stare out at the fountains in the lowering dark, discussing C’s adventures past and present. Out for Vietnamese food in Shoreditch with G, who is fighting the man and planning her novel, which I’ve had the privilege of reading in early draft – when things happen there, I shall direct you to her site, with her permission.  A drink of juice in a pub with J, to whom strange and unbelievable things happen as a matter of course.

 

And then to the tube station, and then to Euston, and the sleeper. My tiny berth with only me in it (the other passenger lost somewhere in the big city), and me falling into an exhausted semi-sleep, dreaming my way North again.

 

The London Writeup Part One

 

I got on the Caledonian Sleeper train at Edinburgh Waverley at 11.20pm or so, briefly letting D on board to scout around, as he’d never been in a sleeper before. My roommate was an older woman, who spoke courteously but who I probably offended by my late reading habits – I was engrossed in NW, and also queasy from the juddering motion of the train.

 

 

 

After a fitful sleep, I arrived in London at 6:43, but we were permitted to stay an extra hour getting ready. Very welcome, because by 7:30ish, the rain had stopped and London was gleaming under a slowly lighting sky

 

 

 

I shambled to the Eustons station toilets to brush my teeth and survey the damage (nothing moisturiser and spray-on dry shampoo wouldn’t fix) and changed into my day clothes, which as it turned out were too warm. Autumn hadn’t really caught up to London: the trees were still very leafy and green, and it got up to 16c in the sun.

 

 

 

 

 

I had the morning to myself, and while I bought a day ticket for the subway, it was so pleasant that I decided to walk from the station down to the London Review Bookshop (closed because it was only 9 o’clock, but lovely looking from the outside) and from there down to a cafe on the Strand I’d heard had a good line in gluten free breakfast things.  Leon was a cheerful place to eat a cup of poached egg and melted gruyere (I know! But it was delicious) and sip tea and read more of NW, pacing myself for more wandering.

 

 

 

I walked down to Embankment, by the Thames, heading towards the Tate gallery, moving slowly through the light, listening to the playlist D had made up for me to listen to (I think I might make a separate post linking  it, later).

 

 

 

 

 

 

While ambling along, I suddenly came across…well, I’m saving that for Part Two. If you’re a Londoner, you already know, and you’re laughing my grasp on the geography of London. If you’ve not memorised every bit of that big sprawling city of Empire, I’ll just post a clue here, as I’m exhausted now.

 

 

The big reveal and more later, from what I saw at the Tate to getting lost in Camden and the real meat of why I went to London in the first place.

But all that when the world stops swaying as if I’m still on that sleeper, thundering through the night.

Thresholds – Winning by Michelle Bailat-Jones

 

 

A bright morning in the third week of May. Here is our Lia in the garage below the small condominium where she and Evan now live. She is yelling, her hand in the box she has dragged to the foot of the stairs and opened, certain that although he is pretending not to, Evan can hear her.

“Where is it?” she yells one last time. Silence from the upstairs.

Lia is not to be outdone by a Christmas ornament.

To understand her, we must go back to breakfast and a small dispute. A detail needing clarification.

“It was like those awful hair angels you used to put on the Christmas tree.” Evan was talking about a doll one of their grandchildren had selected at the store on a recent trip. “Why would any child want something so ugly? And let’s not discuss that it’s Ben who wanted the doll.”

“Hair angels?”

Evan dismissed her outrage with a flick of his spoon. “Yes, the ones you bought from that hippie store. Made of human hair. The girls were little. They loved them.”

“You’re insane, Evan. We’ve been living different lives. I’ve never purchased hair angels.”

He returned to reading his newspaper and Lia descended immediately to the storage shelves in the garage below. She has kept every single Christmas ornament ever acquired.

She rifles through the box at her feet. “Unless you threw it…” She begins but she gulps the sentence, not willing to give him a way out of their disagreement. She has kept her ornaments safe from every single one of Evan’s “spring-cleanings”.

At seventy-six and seventy-three, Lia and Evan are now like the two moons of Mars. They have found their orbit around the planet called their Life and they stick closely to it. Surveying it, watching it. Discussing its topography from a perfect height as they circle gently above.

There is a thump on the ceiling above Lia’s head. She smiles and shakes her fist. “Don’t stamp your feet, dear one, you can’t rattle me. I’m going to prove you wrong.”

Of course he does not answer. This is an established game. One of many the moons have discovered, useful ways to keep a careful watch on Life. Because Life has a way of shifting suddenly, turning into the darkness for a moment of obscurity. Blurred details.

Fifteen minutes later, maybe more, she emerges from the garage, a cobweb on her sleeve, dusty fingers clasped triumphantly around a delicate angel. It is not made of hair, but gold silk cords. She admits it has a certain 1970s handicraft look to it, but it is not gaudy. Or kitsch. Well, it’s certainly kitsch, Lia knows this; but Christmas cannot be otherwise.

“See,” she says, “I win. I always win. When will you…”

But Evan is no longer in his chair at the breakfast table. He is on the floor. His piece of toast has fallen with him and there is jam on his collar and in his thick white hair. Raspberry jam that looks like blood.

There is no blood. This has been the most peaceful of deaths. For Evan.

For Lia this is chaos. At first she does not understand the scene before her. She is sharp for someone of her age, but the impossibility of Evan joking with her a moment ago and now lying still on the kitchen floor creates a disconnect too broad for Lia to cross in a few easy seconds. This is an ordinary morning. Nothing extraordinary must happen on an otherwise ordinary day.

“This isn’t funny, dear.” But she knows this is not a joke. His stillness is the kind of stillness they have been warned about for the last few years. They are nearly elderly, many people—doctors, friends, their daughters especially—tell them this. So what has happened is not extraordinary at all.

Lia does not touch him right away. How can she? This is no longer Evan, and although her mind does not yet accept this, her body already understands.

But she needs to be sure. She takes his hand. There is something too taut about the muscles in the palm of his hand. She presses on them, bullying them, raging at them. She passes a gentle hand across his forehead. Evan.

No longer Evan.

How long was she in the basement? Why does she always have to win?

Back down the stairs she must go, slowly now, slowly, hold the hand rail. You have suffered a shock, Lia, take it carefully. Find the garage door opener, open the garage. Greet the angry sunlight, cross the untidy garden, find a neighbor.

Lia has left a medical alert device back inside the house, in the kitchen drawer, between a roll of masking tape and an expired coupon for hot chocolate, but she did not think to push it. This is not a medical emergency. This is her Life. There is no button.

Halfway across the street, she realizes she has left Evan alone. On the floor. She remembers her oldest daughter insisting on the medical alert. How she did not want to ‘impose’ on her parents, but she wanted them to be safe. Just in case, she said.

In case I win, Lia thinks.

She swivels to return to Evan and trips, twisting her ankle. Several minutes later, Mr. Dougherty comes out of his house because there is so much noise in the street. He wonders how this old woman still has such a voice. Lia is sitting on the curb, holding her ankle.

“He’s inside!” she says when she sees him.

“What’s that?” Mr. Dougherty is deaf.

“Evan!” she yells, and this time Mr. Dougherty understands. He has been orbiting his Life alone for some time now.

An ambulance arrives. Lia insists someone help her back inside her house. People in uniforms with careful voices and steady gazes take charge of the situation. A man walks into her home and comes out again much too quickly.

“Are you even trying? He needs your help!”

But the rush and panic are for her. She is injured. They want to take her to the hospital.

“You’ll need x-rays, ma’am.”

She fights them. She wants to stay with her husband. She tries to walk back inside the house but they hold her in the front yard, they make her sit down again, run their thick fingers along her swollen ankle and wrap it tightly. All these minutes, fussing over her, while Evan lies alone in the kitchen. When she cries, finally, one of the men, the younger one, takes pity on her and helps her back to Evan.

They’ve put him on some kind of a board, strapped his body for easy carrying. She kneels beside him and fumbles for a hand. What have they done with his hands? Someone is helping her to her feet again. Someone hands her a cell phone and gently tells her to call a family member.

But she cannot dial a single number, because which of her twin daughters should hear the news first? The kitchen stills, waiting for her. She presses buttons at random on the phone. She pictures her daughters—one at work in the city, the other in a university office—she closes the phone and returns it to the first outstretched hand. Someone will do this for her, someone who doesn’t know Evan, someone who feels nothing at the extraordinary event of this morning in May. But not Lia. Our Lia’s Life has cracked this morning and she does not have enough love for either of her daughters at this moment to give them the news.

 

‘Winning’ is an excerpt from Michelle Bailat-Jones’ novella-in-progress, Hush. Michelle is a reviews editor for Necessary Fiction and can also be found engaging with books at Pieces.

Thresholds – Rear-View Mirror, by Kenneth Porteous

 

 

rear-view mirror

 

Back seat of the car. Passenger side.

Rain hits the window and the droplets

make their meandering diagonal descent.

She drives. Carefully. Cautiously.

Scared of the rain. Scared of all things

unseasonal.

 

I watch her. Smooth skin, worried look.

She concentrates so hard on the road

around her. In the rear-view mirror I see

her eyes, brown and whole.

She is obsessed with her mirrors, constantly

checks them.

 

The water lets up. The windows clear.

The tension stays in her shoulders. I want

to tell her it’s OK now. She’s safe. We both

are. But still her eyes flicker towards that

rear-view mirror. Still she can’t rip them away

from what’s behind.

 

We stop. Water sprays up as the car draws to a

halt beside the pavement. The driver behind

pulls up a few lengths back. A dark figure steps out

from behind the wheel and pulling his hood up,

stalks in our direction. She starts to shake as

she watches him get closer.

 

Her knuckles whiten. Gripping tight on the wheel.

I sit forward and watch her eyes. Gauge the panic.

She’s so certain that I can’t help but brace myself.

The figure walks straight past, rushing to get out

of the rain. She relaxes for a moment, but quickly

returns to her rear-view mirror.

A Reading List

Recently, I compiled a list of reading for a very high level ESL student of mine. I thought I’d share it here – in part in case I lose it, in part because that student has now left, and I’d like to mark that in some way. It’ll be some time before I get to have literary discussions as part of my job.

 

I wanted to provide a list that would challenge. That would demonstrate various Englishes, from 19th century works to the modern day, from Scottish English, to African American dialect, to Nadsat. That I had read before and so could mark their varying levels of difficulty – in terms of vocabulary and structure and so on. That would be of interest to that particular student, I hope. The selections are unashamedly idiosyncratic. They are books that question and probe and twist, or simply tell a story. Some are serious, some fluffier, some influential, some brand new.

 

It is my wish that at least some of them will open up the world for this student a fraction, a crack. That the words will not only be new and add knowledge, but will charm and fire. What would you, personally, have suggested to someone new to literature in English?

 

Here’s what I passed on:

 

The Annotated Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (notes by Alfred Appel)

Textually rich, lyrical and fanciful in imagery. Challenging subject matter (in the disturbing sense – and in the sense that the narrator is openly unreliable)

Difficulty rating: Tricky – though the rhythm of the sentences should help you through them, and the notes will explain any obscure references.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Also lyrical – and short! The American Dream in the jazz age (1920s-30s) is one big party. Or is it? The end paragraph is one of the most famous in American literature.

Difficulty rating: Moderate, but short, did I mention it’s short? Taught in American High Schools.

Possession, A.S. Byatt

A very literary mystery – Roland is a loser academic living in a flat that smells of cat pee, but studying in the library one day, he discovers a previously unknown poem by a famous 19^th century figure. He pairs up with Maud Bailey to solve the mystery and evade a covetous American memorabilia collector. Meanwhile, in the 19^th century the poets Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte embark on passionate love affair which will have lasting effects on the present day. Far and away not as trashy as it sounds.

Difficulty rating:  This is an intellectually playful book, utilising poetry, letters and diary entries alongside 3^rd person narration. A nice mash of contemporary (80s) language and 19^th century conversational and written styles.  Longish. So moderate-to-difficult

One D.O.A., One on the Way, Mary Robison

Eve is married to Adam, a Southern gent with an identical twin. Eve may or may not be sleeping with the identical twin, who can really tell. Amongst the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina, the story plays out. Witty and dark and bourbon-soaked.

Difficulty Rating: The minimalist prose style makes this one of the easier books on the list.

Beloved, Toni Morrison

A slave woman in the Southern United states is on the run with her children when she is cornered. Loath to see her children taken from her, she commits an act so brutal it will split the world from its reality. Brutal and lyrical, based partially on a true story. The author won the Nobel Prize for Literature for this.

Difficulty rating: Pretty high, using African-American dialect in dialogue, but the sentences are shorter for the most part, which should make it a little easier going.

The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger

A charming love story between a  girl/young woman and a handsome librarian afflicted with a disease that forces him to jump naked through his own timeline.

Difficulty level: Easy (but contemporary)

The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

A ferocious American preacher takes his family on a mission to the Congo. Told by the five women who surround him and must endure his fervour and madness and failures. A long but beautiful book.

Difficulty level: Depends which voice you are reading.

Glaciers, Alexis M Smith

Short, neat and moving – a story of memory, new love, and the landscapes of Pacific North Western United States.

Difficulty level – easier, very contemporary. Contains some of the most beautiful sentences I have ever read.

Green Girl, Kate Zambreno

A neurotic American girl with a fragile sense of self drifts and fails her way through her life in London. Every chapter begins with an interesting quote which will then be explored in some way. If you’d like to read ‘literature of the girl’ then read this. Some brutal scenes. Very contemporary.

Difficulty level: the quotes bump it up a little, but it’s crisp and clear.

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, James Hogg

The book that Fight Club might have been inspired by. A young religious man meets a person he believes to be Peter the Great and embarks on a series of crimes at his new friend’s suggestion. But why has nobody seen this friend of his?

Difficulty: old fashioned (18^th-19^th century writing style) but it’s a short book

House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

Demented novel/movie transcript/not all that scary horror story/breakdown.

Difficulty level: how good are you at reading upside down?

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

A difficult childhood surrounded by religious hypocrites  and coldness does nothing to damage Jane’s strength of character. Which is good at because Jane’s first job as a governess at a draughty mansion, the glowering Mr Rochester will be testing that to the extreme.  A love story about God and the moors and being a poor woman in a rich man’s house.

Difficulty level: 19^th century – so long convoluted sentences. But there is a movie to help clarify things.

Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys

The ‘prequel’ to Jane Eyre. But in fact a darker beast altogether. The action takes place on Jamaica just after the emancipation of the slaves – the land where Rochester was sent to make his fortune. It’s all chaos and faded fortune and steamy heat and colonialism and desire. Antoinette Causeway is brought up in a similarly lonely way to Jane, but her outlook on life is decidedly more fatalistic.

Difficulty level: straightforward, punchy sentences make this quite an easy one. Also short. But read after you’ve at least seen the movie of Jane Eyre.

1984, George Orwell

Because you must, if you like novels of ideas.

Difficulty level: easier than…

 

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

A sample: “There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. […] The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence.”

Difficulty level: (see above) But you’ll be ahead with the Russian bits. There is also a film version.

Zazen, Vanessa Veselka

America is about to be torn apart, but what to do until then? Make tofu scramble and do yoga and protest something.

A sample:  “War A is going well and no longer a threat, small and mature. Like a Bonsai. War B is in full flower. Its thin green shoots reaching across the ocean floor like fibre optic cable. The TVs are on all the time all the time now. The lights dim and everyone moves in amber. They flicker like votives. That’s what we will all be one day, insects in sap, strange jewels.”

Difficulty level : It’s contemporary and full of unusual sentences like the ones above. But gorgeous, and not as difficult as A Clockwork Orange!

Orlando, Virginia Woolf

An aristocratic man lives for 400 years, changing gender and having various adventures. The style of the language changes as the years pass – from an Elizabethan English style to the Modernism of the 20^th century. Actually a cheerful story.

Difficulty level: hard.

Autumn Endless Reads

 

I look outside and cannot understand why the leaves have not already turned.  I’ve set my mind on Autumn and now I’m impatient for the season to make a clear announcement of its arrival. It’s already cold and damp now, the hours are drawing in (sunset before 9pm, now, a sure sign of the year heading towards late middle age), the festival is winding down, and Winter coats are coming out. Come on, decay, we’re ready for you.

 

In the mood for this chill turn, I begin planning autumnal reads. Not that I stopped reading over the Summer, but I think it’s good every season to pause for a moment to see what’s on the cards. Up for September:

 

 

 

NW, of course. Maidenhead I received today from Canadian publisher Coach House. Lots of people on twitter recommended this book to me after I decried my embarrassing lack of Can Lit reading. Coach House very generously sent it my way. The package brought with it an interview with the author, Tamara Faith Berger, and an insight into the themes of the novel – sexual and political awakening, feminism, slavery, art and pornography. That’s a promotional condom that was included with the book. I’ve just finished The Listeners by Leni Zumas which was, while well written, full of imagery of injury and blood (of which I am very phobic) so Maidenhead, while likely to be graphic and very challenging, is less likely to make me nearly faint every few pages.

 

The other book is one I’ve had for a while and have yet to get to – Now Trends, a collection of stories by Karl Taro Greenfield. The cover design and portability is meant to imitate a travel guide, and the stories themselves range across the world. Armchair travel for a dreichit time of the year.

 

I hope to review the latter three books on PANK in due course, and NW some time later here.

 

What do you have lined up to see you through the warm weather’s disappearance? That’s if it’s ever Autumnal in your part of the world.

August like a sharp intake of breath in a field of bright yellows and something like wheat

 

 

It is already August, it’s never August in Edinburgh until suddenly the streets are full of revelers for the festival, for the comedy, the book, the music, the children’s festivals and the populations swells and butts up against one another in the street, or else wanders drunkenly about, or else begs or juggles and we get a tiny break in the clouds, once or twice a day, that shows a scorching blue.

 

I have been having great fun reading the submissions for the Thresholds Project. Stories of imminence, of tension, of waiting at the doorway of life or simply a window, looking out. I really would love to read more. If you’d like to send me a poem or a flash piece, please do!

 

This, along with my Share Your Spaces project, are tentative attempts at something bigger. I might not be able to create a literary journal just yet, but I can wobbly step in the direction, here on the blog. I can look at the spaces within which you write, and be inspired. If you want to inspire me, and the readers of my blog further, and you have work that fits the criteria of ‘thresholds’ (a wide, and welcoming criteria of simply, a point of boundary, or a breaking of boundary, or traversing), please email me your work, or questions if you have them to: wheresthebread[@]hotmail.com

 

It all really began this year with the Endless Reads project, which lead to me reading some amazing, challenging works, to expansive and though-provoking connections with their authors via various social media, and to my becoming a reviewer on the online arm of a really fabulous magazine, which was something I had for a long time dreamed of doing.

 

The year is still young, even if the sun is setting earlier and earlier. Now at nine, it’s growing darker. Now the gloaming is thinning, and the nettles in my neighbour’s garden are dusty. New flowers grow all the time. Big-eyed daisies, bright orange things I cannot name. The reek of honeysuckle. I am hopeful.

Nostalgia Post

 

 

 

 

 

Scans of some of the images I found today in my parent’s garage. Strong nostalgia, but a sense, too, that life has been just as rich since they were taken. And will continue to be. I end on a note of travel, and of solidity, despite the lean.

Affinities

 

Today I am trying to shake off the peculiar airlessness suffered during days without writing. During the move there was no enough space to do any, between the boxes and the piles of clothes and the seemingly endless phone calls to utility companies and working out  how the stove works, the heating (it doesn’t)(neither will the internet for a while).

 

I’m going to throw myself back into writing as soon as I can, but right now, I’m in a Starbucks on the Royal Mile, cold with cold, awful tea to hand, pondering a disappointment – I had applied for the chance to read at the Edinburgh Literary Festival, and was not accepted. It’s quite a blow, in a year (more than a year) of knocks and tumbles and crests and crashes, both in my personal and writing life. In the midst of this, I feel the need to look for firm ground. More specifically, to sources that feel comforting, or challenging (to be challenged by some interesting work, while it may throw us up in the air, while we may feel unsteady and temporarily set off balance and even fearful of where we will land, is not the same as being hit by normal, mundane waves, is it?)

 

I’m thinking of other writers to whom I look for sustaining ideas. For a sense of kinship. For the thrill of reading works that are beyond difficult, inimitable. And most of these writers are North American, oddly enough. There seems a wider market for experimentation, honesty, rawness, discomforting prose over there rather than here.

 

I touched on this a little in my review of Jackie Kay over at PANK, with the idea of ‘the deep narrow sea-loch of Scottish literary scene’. There are amazing writers here, but not so much of the avant garde. Not that I count myself as trying to be avant garde – I doubt I could be a true boundary breaker, working in colour, rather than ideas. But there are people who work language with a tremendous, vivacious skill, and I would like to read them, in order to be electrified. Hopeful that some of the sparks will fire me in ways I could not manage on my own.

 

Of course, I need to read more writers from the UK to see if it’s true all over, to see if the most challenging texts are or are not to be found on these shores. Recommendations would be great – particularly for female writers. I’m looking for a Scottish or British (or Australian, or Kiwi) Vanessa Veselka, Kate Zambreno, (I’d say Bhanu Kapil, but she is (or was) English, and is now in America).

 

If you can think of anyone working the glittering, sharp angles, tell me. I would like to be swept away by a brilliance close to home, not by my own lack of grip.

 

Meanwhile, writing, gulps of air. And waiting for something, as ever, some shore beyond anxiety and the limits of my work.