Authors Electric

Poetry forms such as the villanelle and the sonnet are extremely useful, as they provide a framework within which to write. When I was doing my MA in Creative Writing, a course almost lost in the mists of time, I did the poetry module because it was the form with which I was least comfortable and I wanted to learn, rather than parade the things I knew I could do. (I’d had five radio plays broadcast by that point). I can’t remember exactly what the homework was, but I decided to parody Ted Hughes’ poem Pike. I can’t quote the whole poem here for copyright reasons, but I am allowed to give you the first verse. If you know the poem you’ll see what I did, but if not you can easily find it on the web.  Pike, three inches long, perfect,  Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.  Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin  They dance on the surface among the flies.  I took the subject matter, which I subverted to make a point about the tourism industry in Kenya,...

   Lviv Railway Station, an exit to safety for thousands As I am having an operation on my wrist I am writing this post some time in advance, because I won’t be able to type for a while. I thought I would devote it to my memories of Ukraine, as I attended a poetry event at the Ivan Franko University in 2006, and a children’s writing conference in Lviv in 2007.   My father was born not far from Lviv in 1900, and considered Lviv (Lwow as it then was) to be Polish. Ukraine, like Poland, has changed hands many times in the past. However, when it comes to Russia the two countries are 100% united, and recently Poland has been helping Ukraine as much as it can. I was brought up to regard Russia with grave suspicion. I remember at infant school (I must have been six) going up to the teachers for some spellings when we were all writing about what we did at the weekend. The boy in front of me wanted to know how to spell banana. I needed to know how to spell Khrushchev and Bulgani...