The book — a lyrical exploration of one woman’s body and the illness that inhabits it — was described by judges as a ‘precious and personal’ work from a ‘new and spectacular talent’. Mortimer’s debut has been selected as the best first novel published in the UK and Ireland this year from a strong shortlist of three, which also featured Iron Annie by Luke Cassidy and Keeping the House by Tice Cin.

In addition to the £10,000 prize money, Mortimer will receive tailored, year-round support and mentorship from NCW, which runs the Desmond Elliott Prize as part of its Early Career Awards portfolio.

Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is a coming-of-age story at the end of a life. It’s the story of Lia, her husband and daughter as they deal with a terminal illness diagnosis that rewrites the family’s history from the inside out. Moving between Lia’s past and her present, the inside and outside of her body, Mortimer stretches the limit of the novel’s form, weaving poetry into her prose throughout. The novel was inspired by Mortimer’s mother, who died of cancer in 2010.

The book was chosen as the best debut of the year by a judging panel chaired by author and previous Desmond Elliott Prize winner, Derek Owusu. He was joined by journalist and author, Symeon Brown and the Programme & Commissions Manager for Cheltenham Literature Festival, Lyndsey Fineran.

Chair of judges, Derek Owusu said:

‘With Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, Maddie Mortimer has penetrated the body and spirit of literature, taking an experience, one familiar to so many of us, and making it completely unique. The experimentation with language, form and ideas, offers us something that is precious and personal to each writer: human truth. It’s a courageous feat, and one executed with the wisdom of a sagacious observer.

This is a book full of poetry and wonder, interior and exterior examination, sadness, though without the pessimism that sometimes accompanies it, love, and through all things, hope. You’ll re-read passages like pulling a song back to its start, wanting to evoke and experience those chills, or be enlightened again and again. Though not easy to choose a winner – we went back and forth for days after the decision was due – when we finally came to an agreement, we felt confident that we would be assisting with, and bearing witness to, the launching of a new and spectacular talent.’

Maddie Mortimer was born in London in 1996 and received her BA in English Literature from the University of Bristol. Her writing has featured in The Times, her short films have screened at festivals around the world and, in 2019, she completed the Faber Academy Writing a Novel course. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is her first novel, published by Picador on 31^st March, 2022.

Judge Lyndsey Fineran added:

‘Even in a very strong list, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies was a standout read. To craft both a coming of age and a death narrative in one; create a moving and astute portrait of a family dealing with terminal illness in a way that is both sensitive and wise beyond the author’s years, and employ dazzlingly inventive elements that push the form of the novel, and yet remain in complete command of the narrative in hand would be hugely impressive even for an author much further in their career. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies marks Maddie Mortimer as a major new literary voice, and I Iook forward to seeing her career flourish.’

Judge Symeon Brown said:

‘It’s an incredibly inventive and, at times, genius novel, seamlessly blending competing values from science and religion to bluntness and subtlety. The style of Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is incredibly creative and literary, really taking form and pushing it to its limits in a way that remains still easily consumable for readers.’

‘Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies marks Maddie Mortimer as a major new literary voice’ – Lyndsey Fineran

Read more about Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies here →

The Early Career Awards portfolio also includes the University of East Anglia (UEA) New Forms Award for an innovative and daring new voice in fiction, and the Laura Kinsella Fellowship, which recognises an exceptional writer who has experienced limiting circumstances or is currently underrepresented in literary fiction.

The UEA New Forms Award was judged by Andrew Cowan, Imogen Hermes Gowar and Hannah Jane Walker. It was awarded to Vida Adamczewski, who was born in Peckham and read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University. While studying, Vida was diagnosed with Hypermobility Syndrome and Chronic Fatigue, conditions that render her frequently bed bound. Her writing has appeared in Ambit Magazine, Document Journal, The Byline Times, and The Mays. In July 2021, a staged reading of Vida’s lyric play Amphibian was performed at the Playmill New Writers Festival at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington.

The Laura Kinsella Fellowship was judged by Alice Jolly and Ashley Hickson-Lovence. It was awarded to Cate West who trained in Fine Art and graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2019. She was shortlisted for York Festival of Writing’s Friday Night Live and longlisted for Mslexia’s Novel Competition the same year.

Running in parallel to the Early Career Awards is an online digital programme providing free resources for anyone, anywhere wanting to progress with their writing. NCW regularly releases bespoke support packages with advice from established and new voices. Supported by the Arts Council England, this element of the Early Career Awards aims to widen the impact of literary prize culture.

@WritersCentre

#DEP2022 #EarlyCareerAwards

The post Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies wins the Desmond Elliott Prize 2022 appeared first on National Centre for Writing.

Now in their 15th year, the East Anglian Book Awards recognise the books and writers who have been shaped by, and have helped to shape, the culture of the East of England.

Since the awards began, they have highlighted the work of over 150 authors, 200 titles and 100 publishers.

Previous winners include multi-award-winning author Melissa Harrison, celebrated writer and naturalist Mark Cocker, and Sarah Perry, who went on to win the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and whose novel The Essex Serpent became a Waterstones Book of the Year.

The award partners are NCW, Jarrold and the Eastern Daily Press. The awards are kindly supported by the University of East Anglia Faculty of Arts & Humanities and the PACCAR Foundation. 

The shortlisted books will be announced in autumn 2022, with the winning titles celebrated in spring 2023. 

Flo Reynolds, our Programme Manager at NCW, said:

‘It’s another exciting year for the East Anglian Book Awards, and we look forward to celebrating and sharing with the world the wonderful stories being told from and about our region.

‘Following two difficult pandemic years when books have brought comfort to so many, it feels like the perfect time to share the power of stories to shine through dark times with writers and readers across East Anglia. 

We’ve therefore extended the timetable of this year’s awards so that our judges and readers have more time to read, enjoy and discuss the entries, before we celebrate together with a special event in spring 2023. We hope you’ll join us in reading and talking about the very special books we’re sure to find. 

‘We wish all the entrants the very best of luck!‘

The awards feature six categories: Fiction, Poetry, General Non-Fiction, History and Tradition, Biography and Memoir and The Mal Peet Children’s Award.

The prize for the overall Book of the year is £1,000, courtesy of the PACCAR Foundation.

This year will also see the return of the Exceptional Contribution Award, which goes to an individual or organisation who have made an outstanding impact on local story and publishing culture.

For the purposes of the awards, East Anglia is defined as Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, andthe area of Fenland District Council.

Works must have been published for the first time between 31 July 2021 and 05 August 2022, and must have been commercially available in physical bookshops.

They must also be set largely in this area or be written by an author living in the region to qualify.

To enter, books must be submitted digitally in PDF, EPUB and MOBI format.

The deadline for submissions is 12 noon on 05 August 2022.

Find out how to apply →

The post East Anglian Book Awards 2022 open for entries appeared first on National Centre for Writing.

The piece asks: What is translation and how is it experienced? In the piece, three translators explore their experiences of inhabiting multiple languages in a portrayal of life in translation, of translation as a part of everyday life, of translation as survival, and of people as translated beings.

The piece includes interviews with Kavita Bhanot, Yovanka Paquete Perdigão and Nariman Youssef and was made by Gitanjali Patel and Miia Laine as part of the Visible Communities residency here at the National Centre for Writing.

Gitanjali Patel is a translator and social researcher. She was in virtual residence from May to August 2021. She graduated from Oxford University in Spanish and Portuguese and has been translating from these languages since 2010. She translates in a range of media, from film scripts and radio programmes to fiction, including stories by Luisa Geisler, Miriam Mambrini, Fernanda Torres and, most recently, Evando Nascimento. In 2016 she co-founded Shadow Heroes, an organisation which engages secondary school students in critical thought using the art of translation.

Our Visible Communities programme aims to:

• Diversify access routes to literary translation
• Strengthen links between the literary translation community and diaspora communities
• Contribute to the debate around decolonising literary translation
• Expand the range of literature published in translation
• Visible Communities is funded by Arts Council England. The virtual residency programme was supported by the Jan Michalski Foundation.

The post PODCAST: We Are Always Translating appeared first on National Centre for Writing.

There are lots of online creative writing courses to choose from. But, choosing the best online creative writing course for you can be challenging. This is because value is hard to compare as so many courses offer differing levels of expertise, tutor access and duration. Some will just be better than others. It may also be unclear what level of course you should choose.

This guide will help you choose the best online creative writing course by defining exactly what you want to achieve as well as offering guidance on trusted brands, on- vs offline and cost.

First, get a piece of paper or open a new document on your computer – and be ready to start making notes!

What do you want to achieve?

This may sound obvious, but there are so many courses available with particular focuses, that it’s easy to choose the wrong one.

First, write down what you are. For example:

• A complete beginner with no formal training
• An early career writer
• A lover of crime writing
• A professional writer (journalism, marketing)
• A ghostwriter.

Write down what you want to get out of your online creative writing course. Get really specific with what you want to achieve, from the emotional to the tangible.

For example:

• Are you a new writer looking for the foundational skills to get started?
• Do you have an established writing hobby and are looking for particular skills to build on your existing expertise?
• Do you just love learning and want to have some fun?
• Are you looking for feedback on your writing?
• Do you want to end up with a finished novel by the end?
• Do you want to feel like you’ve achieved something by the end of the course?
• Do you want to meet other people who are doing what you’re doing?
• Do you have a particular project that you need help with?
• Do you want to make money from writing and publishing?
• Are you a freelance writer who wants to develop better business writing skills?
• Are you a marketing professional who wants to improve your brand storytelling skills?
• Do you want to become proficient in a particular genre (for example: general fiction, crime, memoir, historical fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, scriptwriting)

Add as many as occur to you to your list. This will guide you to specific courses that meet your specific needs. Companies will also use language in their marketing and this may resonate with your emotional desires: achievement, satisfaction, community etc.

Levels

First, you must define what level you are at. This can be more complex than it at first seems: for example, you may be an intermediate writer of one genre, but new to another.

Are you:

• A complete beginner – never taken a course
  • No writing experience at all
• A beginner
  • Some writing experience, especially professional
• Intermediate
  • You may have taken a course
  • You may have done lots of online research
  • You may have self-published your own work
• Advanced: early career
  • You may have had a book published or be working on a finished manuscript that is in discussion with publishers
• Expert and professional
  • You may already have an established career with multiple published books.

Add the answer to your list.

National Centre for Writing offers courses for writers at different stages of their career, for example: Start Writing Fiction and Writing Fiction: Next Steps.

Course topic

Have you defined precisely what course you need to do in order achieve what you want?

There may not be a specific course for your exact needs, but start specific and get broader. A fiction writing course might be appropriate for crime writers or sci-fi writers alike, but if you want to write either of the latter, you may find specific courses for you.

Look at your objectives. If you could create your dream course, what would it be called?

• Epic feminist steampunk for beginners
• Young adult period romance
• Vampire novels for Stephen King fans

While there may not be a specific course for these, you will have an idea of what you want (sci-fi, YA, horror respectively) and you will certainly know what you don’t want – which can stop you from picking the wrong course.

For example, we have courses on the following genres:

• General fiction
• Crime fiction
• Scriptwriting
• Creative non-fiction
• Historical fiction
• Poetry

Course format

It is essential that the creative writing course you choose is delivered in a format that suits your situation. Courses come in two main formats, for example:

• Self-paced courses
• Guided courses.

Self-paced courses don’t have a face-to-face or ‘live’ element, though they may contain video lectures or sessions. As the description suggests, self-paced courses allow you to fit the course into your schedule, around work, children or other commitments. Explore example of self-paced creative writing courses here.

Guided courses are usually led by a tutor and include a ‘real time’ or ‘live’ element such as webinars, seminars and/or workshops. This live element will tend to complement writing exercises and studying that happens in between sessions. For example, our 12-18-week Creative Writing Online courses include two weeks of exercises, followed by a feedback and discussion session with the course tutor. Guided courses tend to be in terms or semesters like schools and universities so you may not be able to start/finish with the flexibility of a self-paced course.

Do you have the time and flexibility to attend sessions at a fixed time? What are those fixed times?

Check your objectives. Write down how you want to do your course.

Tutor time

The amount of tutor time relates to the format point above.

Tutor time is frequently what makes a course cost more or less. The business model for many providers (such as Masterclass) is: create assets once and you can sell them a thousand times; all money over your setup costs is all profit. Online courses like this include no live sessions such as webinars, no access to tutors and no 1-2-1 feedback. This may be in line with what you want to achieve and therefore perfect for you.

·       No tutor

• Some courses have no tutor, they are simply information, guidance and exercises.

·       Tutored (recorded)

• Some courses will include audio/video materials that feature a tutor.

·       Tutored (no 1-2-1 access)

• Many courses include live sessions (for example lectures) but do not offer 1-2-1 access to the tutor.

·       Tutored (shared access)

• There are courses where the tutor will host online sessions with everyone on the course, allowing people to ask questions.

·       Tutored (1-2-1 access)

• Some courses, in addition to writing and exercises, will include 1-2-1 sessions which allow students to discuss their writing for a set period (usually 30-60 minutes).

+ Feedback

Many of the tutor courses will include feedback, or the option to pay for specific feedback – usually in the form of a written report. If you have chosen a course with 1-2-1 time you will be able to discuss your written feedback with them.

Check your objectives. How much contact time – and of what type – do you need to ensure you get what you want?

Other formats

It is also worth considering other learning formats, such as mentorship. Look at your objectives, would mentorship suit you better? For example, have you been on web-based courses without tutor feedback and self-published one or more books? Do you need specific guidance on your projects or skills? If so, mentorship may be a better solution. Read more about how mentoring works.

Workshops can also offer a great way to learn. You can explore our workshops here to see what kinds of things on offer.

There are also some fun-looking writers retreats available for those who have the budget to stay at a venue and immerse themselves in courses with tutors and fellow writers.

Course location

This article is about online creative writing courses, but, depending on your objectives, a location-based in-person course may suit you as multiple options exist.

For example, is the course:

• Online
• In-the-flesh, location-based
• A combination of the two.

By choosing an online course you are widening your choices significantly. Even if you live in a big city, there is a larger choice of online courses – and this has been accelerated by the COVID pandemic, when demand for everything to be available online exploded.

However, you may still prefer a location-based course if your objective is to meet people or even ‘get me out of the house’.

If you do decide to take a location-based course, check how long it will take you to get to as this may influence your decision.

Add your preference to your list.

Course ‘home’

Where is the course based? This is important because it is easy to end up signing up for a course in another country (that speaks the same language). For example, if you are in the UK, you may not want to take a US-based course. Again, this will be guided by your objectives. For example: you might be a UK writer wanting to break into the US market or a US expat in the UK looking to study a US course. While the differences in language, style and a nation’s publishing industries may be small, they may be meaningful depending on your needs.

Conversely, the course’s home might not be relevant to your objectives. For example, a screenwriting or poetry course might be internationally universal.

Who created the course?

The online learning industry has exploded in recent years. But not all courses are created equal. Great writers may not be great teachers. And not all course vendors will have access to high-level expertise with which to build a great creative writing course.

As such it is important to see who created the course and how it’s delivered, for example many published writers offer courses but may lack the didactic skills and technology to deliver a course which truly helps different types of student get what they need to improve. Similarly, there are e-learning businesses who do not specialise in or understand creative writing or the publishing industry, and have invited an inappropriate person to create the course.

When researching courses, ensure that the provider matches the level of expertise you need and that they are credible in the area you need. For example, don’t take a poetry course from a crime writer.

To ensure students get a valuable and enjoyable learning experience, National Centre for Writing worked with the University of East Anglia’s School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing to build our tutored creative writing courses. This delivers the expertise of both teaching and writing – and at the highest level.

Tutors

This relates to the above point: you need to ensure that the tutor has

• the expertise you need
• is a good educator.

Is the tutor authoritative in the area you need? We italicise this as there are lots of talented writers, but they may not have the specific expertise you need, so ensure that the tutor has relevant expertise. How can you know this? Most course providers will have a section on tutor with a biography that includes what they’ve written and/or their academic credentials. You may decide that academic credentials are more likely to yield better learning that a celebrity writer with published works under their belt. Again this will depend on your objectives – a university lecturer may know less about the cut and  thrust of getting published than a published author, while a published author may have no idea how to teach, coach or mentor.

Generally, the more of a beginner you are, the more you should favour academia over publishing: a teacher will know how to support beginners, while a published writer may have valuable insights for more experienced writers.

Chemistry

If you want a course which includes tutor interaction you might also consider chemistry: do you think you will get on well with the tutor. Of course it’s unlikely that you’ll have the opportunity to meet the tutor(s) ahead of time, but the course provider may have audio, video or blogs with the tutor so you can decide whether you’re likely to get on with them. Are they friendly, down-to-earth, domineering, opinionated, supportive etc.?

Time

There are many aspects of time that are important to consider when choosing an online course. This relates to the ability of a course to deliver what you want as well as its relative value.

• What is the course duration? For example, is it a one, two or three-month course?
• How much time will it take to complete the various elements of the course? For example, are there two hours of exercises to complete each week?
• How much tutor time (if relevant) do you get? For example, a one-hour lecture each fortnight; a one-hour lecture and 30-minutes of 1-2-1 time
• How many hours of video/audio tutelage is there?

As you research courses, make a note not only of the course duration, but of the total time you need to complete it, as well as the amount of contact time you will have with tutors. This will help ensure:

• You will get what you want from the course
• It is good value.

Cost, value and your budget

It is hard to compare course value across different providers as there is no uniformity of products. For example, a 12-week course from one provider might include 12 hours of exercises, while a 6-week course from another might include 24 hours of exercises.

Refer to the Time section above to work out exactly what you get for your money.

While time is a key consideration when it comes to the value of your creative writing course, for example quality. Lots of poor-quality assets or more time with a lower-quality tutor may not be as valuable as a smaller amount of time with better assets/tutors. Similarly, don’t choose a cheaper course if it’s less relevant than a more relevant, more expensive one. For example, you may be better off choosing a crime writing course than a generic fiction one if that’s your objective.

Bestselling US epic fantasy author Brandon Sanderson runs a writing course at Brigham Young University, Utah that focuses on fantasy and science fiction. Many of his lectures are available for free on YouTube, but this isn’t good value if you want to learn how to write crime fiction.

Create a shortlist of courses that look relevant first, then assess which is the best value. Include quality, expertise level, total time and access in your assessment.

Course output

Is there something in particular you want to create on the course?

This is worth noting as some courses specify that you will write a complete short story or even a whole novel.

Credibility

How do you know if a creative writing course will be any good? Even before a time of internet scams, there were fly-by-night businesses promising the world and delivering Hell. As such it is important that the course provider is reputable. While recognisable brands can be a safer bet, there may be great providers you haven’t heard of.

While researching online creative writing courses, look out for:

• Tutors with academic/commercial credentials – including university links (for example, our 12-18-week courses have been created in partnership with the University of East Anglia). Research the tutor on YouTube or they might have done podcasts (as many of our tutors have – subscribe to The Writing Life podcast).
• Providers with links to publishing (for example book publishers and not-for-profits such as National Centre for Writing)
• Reviews around the web (including Google reviews)
• Testimonials and case studies on the website from people who have taken the course
• Well-established, longstanding and trusted brands.

Other things to consider

• Some providers of creative writing courses offer access to online communities to help students stay in touch and deliver peer support
• Many providers use off-the-shelf online teaching platforms and some will be better than others. Find out which platform a provider uses and research whether people like it or not. For example, Obby, Teachable, Thinkific and Baluu are four examples of good quality platforms.

It is also important that the provider helps you to use the platform, for example, this is the video guide to our platform, Teachable.

Conclusion

How is your list coming on? Hopefully you have built a picture of:

• Who you are and what you want to achieve
• The topic and format of the course you need – from length to amount and types of tutor time
• How to check that a provider will deliver high-quality tutors and assets.

While you’re hear, why not check out our courses, workshops and mentoring.

The post How to choose the best online creative writing course step-by-step appeared first on National Centre for Writing.

Ian has been shortlisted for a number of prestigious awards including those for his novels The Last Migration and Out of Nowhere. He is also an associate lecturer in creative writing courses at the Open University and works with the National Centre For Writing on a number of our own fantastic creative writing courses – this includes a fantastic series of short self-paced courses on writing science fiction – which you can find on our website.

   
You can go direct to the RSS feed here.

The post PODCAST: How To Structure A Novel appeared first on National Centre for Writing.

The 2022 longlist is as follows:

You can enter the giveaway on Twitter or Instagram – or both, if you’re feeling lucky! Here’s how…

To enter on Twitter: Follow @WritersCentre, retweet this post, and in the comments tell us who your favourite indie bookshop is and why.

To enter on Instagram: Follow @WritersCentre, share this post on your Stories or your feed, and in the comments tell us who your favourite indie bookshop is and why.

Entries will close on Tuesday 28 July at 5.30pm BST. UK entries only.

As a bonus, when the winner is selected, we’ll also send your nominated bookshop a cash prize of £500!

Stay tuned for the winner’s announcement on Friday 1 July! Follow #DEP22 #EarlyCareerAwards on social media and sign up to our newsletter here for the latest news and updates.

The post Win all books on the Desmond Elliott Prize 2022 longlist! appeared first on National Centre for Writing.

During this residency, writer Liz Breslin explored the concept of modern surveillance and the ways we can turn it on its head and see the natural world differently, using the birdwatching webcams on Dunedin’s Otago peninsula and the Hawk and Owl Trust Norwich Cathedral Peregrine Live Webcams in Norwich as her inspiration.

Ellie says we can get the best baps at the Eaton Park Café. And their website has cute dogs and how many more reasons do I need? I have spent three weeks nesting. It is time to walk. But first I must learn how to fly. Sorry, we could not calculate walking directions from ‘Dunedin’ to ‘Eaton Park Café, Eaton Park café Eaton Park, Norwich NR4 7AZ, United Kingdom’.

Fifty-five percent of people on Tripadvisor seem to agree with Ellie. Lovely food great setting says kzuk321. Particularly the bacon rolls, says Flyer734146. SimoncR9903FE’s partner, according to SimoncR9903FE, had a poached egg on a bed of creamy wild mushrooms which she said was absolutely delicious and 10 out of 10. My only gripe, says 8michaels, is that they don’t do chips! Z2856PCjohnh says If you are open for business then you should not be closed to manners. What a burn. I do like a good dose of café disdain and if I was in the habit of leaving comments my comment to the people who commented on the proximity of cigarettes to café would be perhaps do not go to parks or cafés in Kraków irl if we ever get irl again. Or in Paris back in the day.

I wish we were back in the day. I wish I was here in this day. Maps is being glitchy but I can zoom right in, dive like a peregrine to the park, to the paths, to the neat colonnades. The people and the benches outside are caught busy in a very specific pre-social distance April 2017 way. A woman and a smallish child who might be at high school now. But I’m getting ahead. If I can get to the ground from my humanly-constructed eyrie, I think I have an in. from Norwich Cathedral, 65 The Close, Norwich NR1 4DH, United Kingdom

to Eaton Park Café, Eaton Park cafe Eaton Park, Norwich NR4 7AZ, United Kingdom

48 min (2.3 miles)

via Unthank Rd

Mostly flat

Use caution–walking directions may not always reflect real-world conditions

It’s the haptic slap of foot on gravel that I miss. The Close (looking close) (looks like it) has that very specific kind of path that feels both rich and refined. The small maybe wooden not really fence posts, not wide enough to drive through and too far apart to hop. And round the corner…

the screen freezes, stops. Unthank you Internet. Unthank you very much for this. Continue on But I want to look around. Stop in the Golden Triangle. Make a liar of the estimate of 48 minutes. Unthank Rd has more brick houses than in all of Dunedin (which also has a lot) and you can’t go past a rectangled hedge without marvelling. Well I can’t. Very specific corners. Neat. Somehow I end up on the A11, which I remember is the other route. But since this is not a real-time walk, mapgirl has not told me to turn around. I turn around.

At the roundabout, take At the roundabout, take I don’t know where I’m going with this. All this walking is making me hungry. I will have the roasted vegetable with broad bean & pea pesto (vg) six pound Sandys-Winsch add goats cheese one pound fifty with a side of appreciation for the pun and the history and a half-sized jacket potato from noon with a leafy salad. The thought is making my mouth haptic.

Turn left The street lights are different here, more spaceship, less Narnia. The sky that peculiarly English steel. What would be perfect now is some light spots of rain so I can pull my best weather commiseration face at the other people I pass in the park. Destination will be on the right I mean to stick to the pathways but at the last minute I know I will cut and run across the grass.

Webcams

About an hour outside the city of Ōtepoti/Dunedin at Pukekura/Taiaroa Head, on the Otago Peninsula , you can watch the toroa/northern royal albatross do their albatross thing. It’s a long drive even in a possible world. But thanks to the RoyalCam (world famous in New Zealand) you can also watch them from the (cold) comfort of your screen. Choose a webcam anywhere in the world and write your own view from afar…

Liz Breslin joined us from Dunedin. She writes poems, plays and stories. In 2020 she co-created Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature’s Possibilities Project and was the winner of the Kathleen Grattan Award for a Sequence of Poems. She’s also been part of a spoke’n’word tour of the Otago Central Rail Trail, which will be screened as rail:lines, a documentary film. Her second poem collection, In Bed With the Feminists, was published by Dead Bird Books in 2021. www.lizbreslin.com

The post Use Caution Walking Directions May Not Always Reflect Real-World Conditions appeared first on National Centre for Writing.

In May, our translator in residence was Adrija Ghosh, a queer multilingual poet working with translingualism, memory, and the polycultural body. During this residency, Adrija worked on translating Rabindranath Tagore’s Bhanusingh’er Padabali.

In May 2022, I began my translation residency at Dragon Hall, Norwich. It was a short two weeks, commencing on my birthday which incidentally coincided with the birthday of the poet I chose to translate.  

I started translating Rabindranath Tagore’s Bhanusingh’er Padabali – a collection of 22 songs on desire, devotion, and the grief of separation written in Brajabuli. Brajabuli is an artificial language; a mischsprache, deriving its lexicon from Sanskrit, Mythili, Prakrit, and Bangla. It is a language which exists as a function – used only for devotional songs depicting the romantic rendezvous (raas-leela) of Radha-Krishna in Vaishnavism.  

It is difficult being born stacked against Tagore – I don’t think I will ever be Maa’s favourite poet.  

Every day I would wake up, translate a song, study semiotics, read Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, and listen to Inayat Khan. Meanwhile, I would struggle with the knowledge that I felt estranged from the source text, the source language(s) so much so that it felt like I was haunting the breadth of the pages, in search of familiarity, or the relief of remembering. Despite several meals shared with friends and contemplating rehabilitation from loneliness spent in the company of others, I usually found myself beneath a bleaching sycamore on the bank of Wensum, a tree nestling the Fye Bridge Street by the Merchant’s House. I would usually take a longer route to get there, I would cross traffic lights and Elm Hill, white wisteria peeking out of Revelation, the scent of which would transport me back to the drowsy summer smell of জুঁই ; I would cross Tombland and peer in to see if any books stood out (and they often did), loiter inside for a while, landscaping the shelves before walking towards the tree which somehow reminded me of myself. It wasn’t a metaphor for anything, really. It could be – the way the tree hid half of its foliage drawn into itself, the bleached leaves fluttering in the breeze putting up a performance, especially against charcoal clouds in the pollen wind. For a second, I would really, really be stilled, and wonder if there was someone in the crowd who would appreciate this green and white natural pointillism, this rough exchange of pigment. Then, I would panic, I would panic through the course of the day and then throughout the night because there I was, like Tagore’s Radha looking at trees, sitting on forest floors and thinking how I yearned to share this shade, this grove, this autumn-stricken May. And no matter how much I patted the empty seat beside me, the wet soil, all eyes were turned towards the sky and all backs turned away from my tongue. As I continued to translate, poems would creep out of me, and with them crawled out the beast of fear from my belly. Had I really come that far? How different was it to walk the course of Wensum and be reminded of the Babughat ferry in the Ganga back home? How different was it from waiting for the impossible to come true by the banks of Yamuna? I wanted to draw comparisons to seek out commonalities, I was doing that through the translation, and I discovered that Tagore was not very far either. When Tagore wrote his own version of the lore, he refurbished its historicity. His depictions were both a homage and a study of the rich poetic oeuvres of Jayadev, Vidyapati and Chandidas. In modern terms, it is considered sampling – like Lauryn Hill in a Kanye West track. Tagore aligned a mainstream Hindu mythology with his Brahmo sensibilities and created Vaishnav songs of devotion, the expansive cross-pollination transformed the poems into a hybrid learning ground of different source cultures and traditions. Tagore infused his rendition with Modernist, Romantic, and Naturalist insights, presenting objective correlatives that metamorphosized eros into a much more subliminal experience, a longing with a vastness that flowed. One could not take away the musicality away even if one tried. The music was already set in stone – Tagore had specified the corresponding raga for the songs.  

For example, the third song from the collection: 

হৃদয়ক সাধ মিশাওল হৃদয়ে, 

কন্ঠে বিমলিন মালা। 

বিরহবিষে দহি বহি গল রয়নী, 

নহি নহি আওল কালা। 

My translation: 

The heart’s desire wanes within,
unsoiled flowers deck the neck.
The night is borne and burnt by
the poison of parting, yet
Krishna does not arrive. 

is based on the lalit raga, and each raga in Indian Classical music is evoked at a specific time. The Lalit is sung early in the morning and is grounded at a lower register; perfect for quiet introspection after a night of sleeplessness.  

Translating the songs brought with it timekeeping, because Time functioned as an accessory. I wondered – do we desire differently during different parts of the day?  

Does temporality account into finding fallacies within Nature that echo the gyrating longing in a lover’s body?  

Radha is always thinking of her Shyam, always missing him, always waiting for him. She haunts the banks of Yamuna in perpetual anticipation and agony. 

Do our bodies know that the loneliest hour is right before sundown when both workers and passerines abandon the streets along the Wensum and return to roosting?  

Is it at that acute moment in the city crowd with its acute city noises when the body feels the grief of separation, the phantom presence of memory, homesickness, longing, familiarity?  

The guise that Tagore takes – Bhanu Singh – means the Sun-Lion, alternatively the Sun Lord is also a role of a Timekeeper. The omniscient Sun who keeps an eye on Radha’s plight and often bemoans her lack of self-preservation. I wondered – what happens to desire as it travels the sundial?  

In Norwich, there are three sundials I am familiar with – the St. Peter Mancroft sundial, the St. Andrew sundial, and the St. John Maddermarket sundial. The trail to visit the sundials is simple and replete with other iconic clocks in the city, the Bell Hotel clock, the Royal Arcade clock, and the St. Andrew clock amongst others. The timekeepers of this city have perhaps witnessed a passer-by cosplaying as a poet before. 

The way the sun falls on this city, the way the Wensum turns, the way I age, the way linguistic boundaries are meant to be crossed, the way boundaries between Lauryn Hill, Kate Bush, and Ali Sethi are blurred because memory and the moment have a tendency towards osmosis – all part of the language which makes up the desperate acts of remembering. 

Adrija Ghosh is a queer multilingual poet working with translingualism, memory, and the polycultural body. They are currently enrolled in the MA Creative Writing (Poetry) course at the University of East Anglia. They recently wrote the script for Sifr, an Indian wlw short film exploring queer intimacy which was a runner-up at the Kashish QDrishti Film Grant 2021. They are passionate about decolonization, diversity, and inclusivity in the literary canon, research, and scholarship. They previously completed their Master’s in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh, where they served as the Co-Editor of the peer-reviewed journal FORUM. Their poetry has appeared in the The Dark Horse Magazine, and more can be found on @byadrija on Twitter and Instagram.

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Every two months we meet in person and virtually over tea and biscuits to discuss some of the best works in contemporary literature. We’ll explore short stories, novels, non-fiction, poetry, and works in translation, making these informal and friendly sessions the perfect way to meet like-minded readers and to discover exciting new reads. We’ll always choose books that are easy to purchase in hard copy online or in e-book format.

NCW Book Club: Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

We are reading Heaven by Mieko Kawakami (published by Picador) during June and July 2022. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022, this sharp and illuminating novel about a fourteen-year-old boy subjected to relentless bullying was described by Cosmopolitan as ‘a sucker-punch of a story that implores you to question even your own morality.’

A sucker-punch of a story that implores you to question even your own morality.

There are plenty of ways for you to get involved with the Book Club:

Join our online community

Join our community space on Discord to connect with fellow readers and writers. Book Club members were the first to be invited, so come and join the discussion! Find out more.

Take part in a virtual or in-person book club discussion session

If you’re looking for something a little more interactive, you can join us in-person in the grounds of the beautiful Dragon Hall or online via Zoom for a book club discussion!

In-person book club, Wednesday 27 July, 6-7.30pm, NCW Dragon Hall →

Online book club, Friday 29 July, 6-7.30pm BST, Zoom →

All sessions are pay what you can.

Where can I buy the book?

Place an order with The Book Hive. Mention the NCW Book Club and you can purchase Heaven with a 20% discount.

The book is also available for purchase direct from the publisher via the Pan Macmillan website.

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The project will result in several public performances by community participants of a free hour-long show in Norwich in June 2022, highlighting 10 protest songs interwoven with a historical-satirical narrative. Five of these songs will be chosen by the creative team from OSV research, one will come from The Common Lot repertoire and four will be original, springing from the work of those commissioned and the groups they work with.

As part of the show, musician and songwriter Joey Herzfeld was commissioned to write a protest song in collaboration with a community of his choice — a group of prisoners at HMP Wayland. Here, he describes his journey and process.

This song was composed with a group of prisoners at HMP Wayland. I had previously performed Christmas music there back in December 2021. When I donned my Santa hat and played the likes of ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Silent Night’ I was struck by how friendly, engaged and grateful the prisoners were for something many on the outside world might take for granted. This had made me curious to engage with the community there more deeply on a creative level — rather than merely perform.

A couple months later, I was commissioned to write a song of hope and protest with a community of my choice. The Wayland prisoners were the very first people who sprang to mind.

Before I actually met with my song writing group I already knew that HMP Wayland, like many institutions, had been shaken by the pandemic. Necessarily strict Covid protocols, combined with longstanding understaffing problems, meant that prisoners were being kept in their cells for much longer stretches than usual, sometimes more than 24 hours. Meanwhile creative, educational and therapeutic initiatives were generally on hold or stripped back to a bare minimum.

For these reasons I wasn’t sure how much positivity — if any — I’d find. And my doubts were compounded when I was informed that my group would consist largely of lifers or those on IPP (a now abolished type of sentence which offers no certainty of release even for those convicted of relatively minor offences). I wondered whether the song we wrote together might be all protest and no hope!

And yet — I couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised. Hope among these prisoners abounded.

Well, I say ‘hope’ but perhaps what I mean is strength, resilience or resolve. The Cambridge dictionary defines ‘hope’ as a confident feeling about what will happen in the future. Not all prisoners can realistically possess this — certainly not if that feeling rests on the prospect of release. That freedom may never come. And they know that. So their confidence about the future must come from within — from a faith in inner change regardless of outer circumstance. I’ve witnessed that confidence — eloquently expressed by prisoners serving sentences which would be illegal today but have nonetheless never been overturned. And I’ve found it deeply inspiring.

I couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised. Hope among these prisoners abounded.

This resilience , or ‘hope’ if you will, is connected to many factors: creative drive, a desire to help others, personal fitness goals, mutual support from and for loved ones, physical touch, religious faith (often), a desire to reform the prison system from within, small focused acts of kindness and generosity, empathy for others’ suffering (such as Ukrainian refugees). The list goes on. I could not possibly express the polyphony of voices I heard in in one short song. Nor did I try to. But I did — I hope — touch on a few core themes, mostly by drawing on the stories and insights I was told, and sometimes by quoting the prisoners’ words directly.

About two months after my first session with the song writing group I returned to the prison to play them the song. They liked it! (Phew!) Either that or they were very kind and tactful. The group rightly spotted some musical influences at work — particularly The Specials, a touchstone for me and, I‘m sure, for many songwriters attempting to address social issues and to express multiculturalism. And the individuals were quick to recognise their own phrases and experiences within the lyrics.

A great deal has changed at HMP Wayland in the intervening time. Finally, Covid restrictions are easing. Time outside the cells has increased massively and prisoners are returning to their work and educational programs. Though I am no legal expert I can see that, on a broad national scale, certain injustices persist — most notably the continued enforcement of IPP sentences, as addressed in the chorus of the song. But within the prison itself normality is re-emerging and personal growth is being cultivated. Here is hope.

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