Authors Electric

My exhibition at Newcastle Central Library, Part the First.  Not another double entendre from me, you cry! To which I reply, I insist on getting it out as often as possible with as many different people as possible. Yes, getting our work out there, it's the perennial question to which there are many answers, all of them sadly requiring time away from writing, watching NCIS and messing about online. I’ve just returned from overseeing the installation of one such, ‘Will Power’, a solo exhibition opening today, which I was offered by the central library in my nearest city, of my poems inspired by Shakespeare. Exhibition Part Two: My 'Ophelia's Sista' Hamlet rap, some of my play posters, and Will S. I’m better known for death, sex and pathology poetry lately but occasionally I’ve bashed out a sonnet, sometimes based on one of Will’s but on a modern subject. As I’ve found with my science-poetry art installations, from very untechie (beachballs, sheep, swimming pool...

I was recently persuaded, by my daughter, to get myself a ticket, jump on a train, and leave next morning to visit her in Cornwall, which, to my own amazement, I did (travel-wise, I am usually not that spontaneous,  but the weather was lovely). That evening, she complained about her nasturtium invasion which happened when she was away in Edinburgh for a month, with a play in the Fringe. She'd planted herbs and a few vegetables earlier in the year, plus a few  nasturtiums, and expected to see them all thriving. Instead, she'd come home to this... That's her workshop in the background, to which there should be a path. She now has to navigate through the nasturtium jungle. Somewhere, down deep, are other plants struggling, and probably failing, to survive. We all know someone should get out there and hack, but she can't bear to, and neither could we, because, in October sunlight, the colours are stunning - the reds, golds and oranges splashed among those flat, waterlily...

Man wielding his mighty plunger You know, we all get bunged up now and again. No, I’m not talking about constipation, I leave that to cringe-making TV ads. However I might be using plumbing metaphors, partly, ok, largely so I can write about men with enormous tools (yes I know there are female plumbers, and small tools, but those are for other blogs, other times). Man with enormous tool. Just because I like writing that.  There have been many discussions of Writers’ Block online, and responses are reminiscent of those about sea- or morning-sickness, or gluten or dairy intolerance, in that those who’ve never had it (YET), often seem to assume it’s imagined or just other writers being over-precious weedy wets chiz chiz. Just apply bum to chair, fingers to keyboard, and keep going, they bark like Sergeant Majors. Those of us with livings to earn can’t afford to have WB! Well those who lay bricks can’t afford to have bad backs, and yet they do. Others, at all levels of fame...