KEEP YOURSELF TO YOURSELF? WELL, YES. . . .AND NO . . ! by Penny Dolan.

It’s the start of December, my head is whirling with things to do and the dire seasonal cold is underway.

Nevertheless, inspired by my own wayward Gemini star sign and by all the deals displayed at this time of year, today I offer you your very own 2-for-1 ABBA post: 

KEEP YOURSELF TO YOURSELF? WELL, YES. . . .AND NO . . !

Enjoy or ignore what you choose, but do have yourself a very merry little December.

 

OPTION ONE: KEEP YOURSELF TO YOURSELF? OH, YES! DEFINITELY!

- Focus as deeply as you can on your own writing work and don’t fret overmuch about what others are doing.

- Create and guard your own best-suited pattern of regular writing.

- Write daily morning pages or journal entries just for yourself.

-  Make a comfortable writing space or corner for you and your work.

- Get to know those small rituals that will help to you get into the writing zone.

- Look after your own health. Get up and move around every so often. Go for walks.

- Visit galleries & museums & interesting places and so on by yourself so you can listen to your own thoughts and make notes or scribble rather than having to chat.

- Don’t attend to social media overmuch.

- Don’t let your hopeful soul be disturbed too greatly – especially at certain times of the year -  when other books and writers appear, gaudied in publicity and prizes.

- Develop hobbies, activities and crafts to occupy your hands so you can let your creative mind murmur along in the background, sifting through your writing problems.

Alternatively . . .

OPTION TWO: KEEP YOURSELF TO YOURSELF? NO, NO, NO!

- Read beyond your own knowledge: in fiction, non-fiction poetry and media.

- Develop a network of work-based business contacts at all levels; a hard task when you’re shy, but hiding away never helps. There’s no such thing as a successful “unknown writer.”

- And do develop a network of trusted, real-world writing friends for your own self – and for their selves too! You will need sympathetic support.

- Investigate the writing & arts organisations out there, national, regional and local. Subscribe when it is useful or practical.

- Go to the most useful-to-you writing events, workshops & author talks, if you can.

- Keep an eye on the writing world out there, especially book genres that you could or might want to work in.

- Use social media to sustain yourself: learn to ignore the lures that cause you stress.

- Speak – real words not email! - to someone other than yourself often.  Develop non-writing topics of conversation.

- Get involved in a project close to your heart – libraries or literacy or similar topics – that will overlap with your own work but also give you a wider context.

- Go places. Do things. Meet people. Be curious about the world beyond your desk and make time to keep your well well-filled, okay?

That’s all. That’s it. You can choose exactly what you need.

Put your whole self in?

Put your whole self out?

Or just – as most of us do – keep the old writing hokey-cokey going.

Rah rah rah!

It’s a good time of year for it! 

Must add that while suffering, snottily, and feeling sorry for myself, I cheered myself up greatly by reading a bright new hardback borrowed from my local library: HOW TO HOLD A GRUDGE: From Resentment to Contentment – The Power of Grudges to Transform Your Life by the crime writer Sophie Hannah. Enjoyable!

 Penny Dolan

Narrating audio books

One of the best ways to get a child really engaged in a story is to let them hear it read out loud. Even older, usually non-reader children can become engrossed in a story when it is shared with lots of expression and meaning.

When my own children were small we always made sure to take “stories for listening to” on long car journeys. My youngest in particular loved story tapes with a passion and one year asked Santa for his very own cassette player. It must have got hundreds, possibly thousands, of hours of use and was carted into school for show and tell numerous times. There was the phase when after reading him bedtime stories he still wasn’t ready for sleep until he’d listened to one side of Stories for Five year olds .

There can be something magically calming and soothing about stories read by a skilled narrator who can bring out humour, personalities of the characters or, of course, the excitement and conflict, with expert timing and tone. When a story is read well children appreciate language, develop concentration and listening skills and even discover stories that might be beyond their current reading ability.

For children with sight loss, audio books might be the only way they can discover stories independently. They can offer children with dyslexia a good way into books too. And they’re great for youngsters whose first language isn’t English.

I’ve often wondered what it’s like to be the narrator whose job it is to bring those stories so wonderfully to life.

So I’d like to introduce you to Sharon Hoyland who has been narrating books, including children’s books, for many years. I discovered Sharon and her wonderful narrating skills when looking for someone to narrate a cd for the children's groups who use our family business/project resources.  Sharon kindly agreed to let me “interview” her for ABBA. So here are the questions I asked and her informative answers:

 Me: First of all, how did you begin your career as a narrator and what was the first book you recorded?

Sharon: I deliberately looked for work that was quiet, dry and passive; as a contrast to my noisy, wet and active job as a swimming teacher!  My first audiobook was Black Beauty by Anna Sewell.

Me: When you receive a script and read it through, what things do you look for? How do you prepare a script for narrating?

Sharon: Firstly, I think, will I enjoy reading this? Secondly, can I convey the author’s meaning in a natural, tension-free way? In a nutshell, preparing a script focuses on understanding the overall ‘feel’/the target audience/any character analysis/being prepared to deliver different styles for your client to choose from. Plus useful markings on pauses, intonation and emphasis etc.

Me:  How long does a novel take to prepare, narrate and edit?

Sharon:  Ages! The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett was very long with over 80,000 words. Voiceover work is part time for me, so this book took nearly ten months. I’d practice reading out loud each chapter many times (after I’d got the character voices fixed), then record that chapter, begin editing and proofreading the following morning. Selecting the best takes, embedding any sound effects and adjusting sound levels takes time, but is very satisfying when it’s all done. It’s also quite usual to re-record the first few chapters, as you’re so much more relaxed by the end of the book that you can hear the difference in your voice.

Me:  How do you ensure you look after your voice?

Sharon: I sing with a choir so have a range of favourite warm-ups before recording and I try not to really shout or scream at all. Sips of water and small bites of apple are great for long sessions. Also timing meals is important with nothing too rich or heavy as mics are so powerful they’ll pick up everything!

Me:  Are you a book fan yourself and do you prefer reading physical books or listening to audio?

Sharon:  Love books. The feel, smell, touch of a real book can’t be beaten. Non-fiction and Fiction audiobooks are great whilst doing quiet uncomplicated tasks and I’m less tempted to read ahead. Often, well produced audio can be better than my imagination, is great for emergent readers and wonderful for anybody with sight problems.

Me: Any plans for the future?

Sharon:  I’ve now completed my final narration, ‘Edwin and the Climbing Boys’ – this children’s book is an exciting adventure, based on fact, and packed with hazards and humour. Written by my mother last year, it creates an intriguing insight into chimney sweeping in 18th century London. I currently enjoy working as a freelance audiobook editor and now produce for other narrators, with a profile on LinkedIn.com.

Thank you so much, Sharon.

Follow these links to  a couple of Sharon Hoyland’s favourites, narrated and produced by herself, and then click "sample" to hear parts of the stories.

Edwin and the Climbing Boys       The Vain Little Tree

Our audio and cd Imagine! Eight nurturing, fun, interactive narratives. Calming relaxation for children with music was also narrated by Sharon Hoyland and is part of our Story Therapy® series of resources.

Hilary Hawkes

It happens in translation – Clémentine Beauvais

A few days ago I was doing a literary translation workshop with French teenagers in London, using as my English text a slice of Elizabeth Acevedo’s splendid, National-Book-Award-Winning The Poet X, which I’ve had the pleasure (/honour/ insane luck) of translating into French.

Elizabeth Acevedo, in case you haven’t heard of her, is this remarkable spoken word poet and writer:

The Poet X is the Künstlerroman of a young Dominican-American woman who discovers spoken word poetry, rebels (selectively) against her family, loves her brother, and loves, too, a sensitive young man in her Biology class. She writes in a notebook, and she writes things about her everyday life, such as church, food, masturbation, and street harassment:

(Transcr:
It happens when I'm at bodegas.
It happens when I'm at school.
It happens when I'm on the train.
It happens when I'm standing on the platform.
It happens when I'm sitting on the stoop.
It happens when I'm turning the corner.
It happens when I forget to be on guard.
It happens all the time.)

This is the poem I asked the French teenagers to translate (well, only the first stanza – we only had an hour). As you can guess, there’s plenty of fascinating challenges for a translator there, and we always begin by reading the poem out loud, testing out different stresses, different rhythms, feeling the beats and letting the sounds fill our mouths, before we start making decisions about translation. I won’t focus on all the aspects in this blog post, but I want to talk about one particularly interesting thing that came out of the exercise.

The first stanza, obviously, makes striking use of the anaphora ‘It happens’. What is ‘it’ that happens? It’s alluded to in the next stanza – touching, allusions, compliments. The usual catcalling and groping sort of business.

How do you translate that into French? Well, there’s at least one absolutely literal translation: ‘Ca arrive’ (it happens). The problem is the hiatus (a hiatus is what happens when you have to force a break between two similar-sounding vowels): Ca-arrive. That a-a sounds fairly unpleasant to the ear – this is what I think secretly, but of course I say nothing to the teenagers ; it’s my opinion. But among the six groups that day, no one opted for ‘Ca arrive’.

Two groups opted for the next most literal option, ‘Ca m’arrive’ (It happens to me), which has the advantage of getting rid of the hiatus. Interestingly, this option makes the victim explicitly central in the French text – no way of avoiding this ‘m’ which explodes from the front of the mouth and provides a nice labial echo to the ‘haPpens’ in the English version. Full disclosure, this is the one I picked for my own translation, too.

Another table chose, interestingly, not to translate ‘It happens’ at all. Instead, they started every single line directly with ‘Quand’ (when). The effect was funny: the stanza becomes a bit of a riddle, to be solved in the very last line. ‘When I’m there, when I’m there, when I’m there, when I’m there… It happens’. More suspense, but less emphasis on the relentlessness of the harassment.

Another group opted for the hugely alliterative ‘Ca se passe’ (pronounced ‘Sasspass’), which more or less means ‘It happens’. I like this solution, which sounds like hissing, and preserves the plosive ‘P’ of ‘haPPens’. It is perhaps the closest to the source text in both meaning and effect. I had considered it (and am still considering it) for my translation.

Another group, finally, had an idea I hadn’t considered at all, and which I find especially interesting. It is to begin each line with ‘Ils le font’, namely, ‘They do it’ (with the ‘ils’ explicitly male in French). Complete change of focus all of a sudden: the perpetrators are at the very beginning of the line, of each line. The impersonal ‘it happens’, which makes it sound like it’s some kind of unavoidable meteorological phenomenon, suddenly acquires a body (even several bodies: a threatening army of bodies); it acquires malevolent agency, and it acquires a gender. 

A radical solution, which arguably lacks elegance in its sounds, but strongly signals the translator’s commitment to naming and blaming the perpetrators. Before you ask, the table who came up with this solution was composed exclusively of boys.

What a world of connotations separates ‘Ca m’arrive’, which focuses Acevedo’s text onto the victim, ‘Ca se passe’, which renders the impersonal inevitability of the original, and ‘Ils le font’, which foregrounds the harassers.

All three solutions are acceptable, and all commit the translator differently. Those little decisional acts we perform on a text we translate are what makes a translation a literary practice, and a practice through which words have an effect on the world. Each of those three poems would have a different effect on the world, because they each focalise our attention differently. 

Three ways of looking at street harassment. And I was of three minds.

-------------------------------

Clémentine Beauvais is a writer and literary translator. Her YA novels in English are Piglettes (Pushkin, 2017) and In Paris with You (trans. Sam Taylor, Faber, 2018).

Making a Mini Zine

I learnt many things on my Masters course at Manchester Metropolitan University. I took the course hoping that it would get me over a bridge in my writing. I knew I could write a novel, I had already written one which I later self-published, but I also knew that there were things I needed to know which I didn't know and that, annoyingly, I had no idea what those things were, and I wasn't sure how to find out. I'm happy to say that, for me, the course at MMU did reveal those things to me and I went on to write more novels which were then published by Atom.

The course I took was part time and it was done online so I didn't have to be in Manchester, and in fact for most of the time during class I was in my bedroom, sometimes in my pyjamas, sometimes with snow falling outside, feeling very cosy and pleased with myself for not having to drive anywhere in the ice. But I did travel to Manchester a couple of times to meet my classmates. We attended some workshops during the summers and we did a reading at the Manchester Children's Book Festival. And during one of the workshops we learnt a thing which I have been passing on ever since, and it's this: how to make a mini-zine.

I first made zines as a child. My mum worked for a newspaper and I fancied making my own papers. I made one called Girls Talk, which my mum photocopied for me. It had articles about popstars and you could buy it for 10p, and it came with a free sticker. These days my zines tend to be comic strips or promotional things, but I run workshops for anyone who wants to make a zine about anything. Not that you really need a workshop- if you type 'how to make a zine' into Youtube you'll find loads of brilliant ideas- but one of the really nice things about a zine workshop is making them alongside other people.

Zines are the ultimate in radical self-publishing. These days social media invites everyone to share their thoughts and opinions, but if you do it in a zine you have a limited edition book of your own to pass on and post and leave on people's car windshields. And they can be truly anonymous, if that's what you need to be.

I'm never going to be a Youtuber, but here's my mini-zine demo. Happy Zining!

Igniting the Creative Spark by Emma Pass

It's been a busy year. I've completed the new draft of a novel which is now with my agent, and it's been fun, but a lot of work. However, writing is not what I've spent most of my time doing this year – probably not even 50%.

I used to have a day job in a library, which I loved, but 4 years ago, it all got a bit much. The pressures of trying to fit almost full-time work around writing and everything that goes with it were making me stressed and ill. Something had to give… so I decided to resign my permanent hours, and start running workshops instead.

I facilitate two creative writing groups, one for adults at a local community centre, and one at a local library for young people aged 4-14, which is supported by writer development agency Writing East Midlands. The latter group has been going in various guises for over 6 years now, and I'm lucky enough to work with a brilliant shadow writer who helps me plan and run the sessions. Recently, went on a trip to a tram museum where the group looked at archive objects, dressed up as tram conductors, rode old trams and wrote stories about it. It was a fantastic day. I couldn’t quite believe that it even counted as "work" – but it did!

Riding on top of an open-top tram

 I get asked to go into schools, too. I've been a Patron of Reading where I not only ran creative writing and literacy workshops, but accompanied a group of students on a weekend away where we made films in the middle of the Yorkshire countryside, and I've done a stint as a First Story writer-in-residence. I also run one-off creative writing workshops for writers of all ages, and have been part of a scheme mentoring other writers wanting to run their own workshops.

But I don't just run workshops on my own. My husband is a painter and printmaker who builds his own printing presses. The biggest, which has a 6-foot wheel, is made out of RSJ girders – the sort you use to build houses! But he's built several smaller ones, too, out of Victorian washing mangles, which are on trolleys so they can be moved around. He does workshops too; in March, we applied for a joint author/artist residency with Inspire Nottinghamshire Libraries – and we got it!

Mangle printing press

The residency was three months long and based around the summer reading challenge which takes place in libraries nationwide every summer. 2018's theme was comics, so it started with us going into two primary schools, where we helped four different classes write and make printing plates for their own giant comic strips which went on display at Worksop library. Then, in July and August, we did a "grand mangle tour" of 12 libraries, running family workshops where participants could write and print their own comics to take home with them.

Mischief Makers exhibition at Worksop Library - artwork by Y5 and Y6 students at St Anne's and Worksop Priory schools

We've also run sessions for a dementia group, and next year we're doing more work with people who have additional needs, as well as family workshops and wellbeing days.

It's been slow to build up (I still have a relief contract with the library), and if you'd told me seven years ago, before I got my first book deal, that all this is what I'd be doing for a living, I'd've looked at you "gone out", as they say round here. That sounds exhausting! I'd've said. Not to mention intimidating!

But it's not. It's wonderful. And the reason it's wonderful is because of the people who come to the workshops. Writing (and art) can be a lonely business – you're there in your office (or studio) day after day, on your own. Getting out there and helping other people to realise that the arts are not elitist but can, and should, be accessed by anyone, is not only fun, but incredibly rewarding. Igniting the creative spark in other people is one of the most important things we, as authors and artists (and musicians and actors and makers and…) can do.

Emma Pass lives in the north east Midlands. Her YA novels ACID and The Fearless are published by Corgi Children’s Books/Penguin Random House. You can find more details about her writing and workshops on her website at www.emmapassauthor.wordpress.com.

Riding familiar beasts to unfamiliar places, Saviour Pirotta

The first picture book I lusted after when I moved to the UK in the early 1980s' was Nigel Gray's A Balloon for Grandad, illustrated by Jane Ray. I saw a copy in a school library and I immediately fell under its spell. I loved both the picaresque story and Jane's glowing pictures which reminded me of an illuminated manuscript.

At the time I couldn't afford rent or medication let alone books but thankfully they had a copy in Swiss Cottage Library and I must have pored over it for hours. 'Do a picture book with Jane Ray' went on my bucket list.

Slow-forward thirty seven years and Orchard Books asked me if I'd be interested in doing a picture book about a unicorn. 'We've got an illustrator who can draw unicorns really well,' they said. They didn't tell me it was Jane Ray and for some reason I assumed it was a new illustrator.

I came up with three possible ideas. An original one and two folk tales. Orchard went for one of the folk tales, a little known Scottish legend. You can imagine my joy when I discovered that the illustrator was to be none other than Jane Ray.

The challenge of adapting folktales is how to bring something new to the table, something that hasn't been tackled in previous retellings. Annis, the main character in the Unicorn Prince lives with her grandma and pets in a disused castle. I focused on their self-sufficiency, their happiness at having each other rather than material goods. An act of kindness at the beginning of the tale leads to magical rewards. Half way through the story, Annis gives shelter to a family of dispossessed fairies. In return, they....well, I won't spoilt the ending for you but you can guess where I went with this. An old, largely forgotten story now has a new lease of life with a timely feel to it. There is already an Estonian co-edition and talk of more. Let's hope children everywhere will be introduced to my intrepid Annis and her family of magical creatures.

Saviour Pirotta's The Unicorn Prince is published by Orchard Books.  It was an editor's pick in The Bookseller and an editor's choice in the The Guardian in November. Saviour's novel Mark of the Cyclops, an Ancient Greek Mystery has just won the North Somerset Teachers' Award for Quality Fiction.

Two Mid-Wales Writers Chat About Myth, Poetry And The Donald

In a thoroughly enjoyable year of interviews, which have given us three different takes on King Arthur by Celtic expert and author John Matthews, fellow storyteller Andy Harrop Smith and acclaimed poet, translator and children's writer Kevin Crossley Holland, I have also enjoyed my interview swap with my friend and fellow writer Sharon Tregenza and a fascinating chat with Marty Stewart, whose first two books are Riverkeep and The Sacrifice Box. But we end the year with a real treat, a wide-ranging chat with four time Tir Na nOg winning writer and fellow resident of glorious Mid Wales, Frances Thomas.

Now Frances is someone who my old editor Viv suggested that I should get in touch with several years ago and now I'm delighted to have finally done so. Recently it led us to a book swap where I got by far the better end of the deal in that I was able to enjoy over a weekend her first trilogy about the Welsh bard and mythic figure, Taliesin, one of my own great heroes. Among the many things i enjoyed was the way she brought together the two very contrasting versions of Taliesin and it was that which really prompted this chat.

So, Frances, first many thanks for agreeing to this chat and for responding so enthusiastically to my questions.

Thanks for asking me, Steve. I've really enjoyed doing it.

1. I’ve always been fascinated by the origins of someone’s art. It’s that first workbook and the glimmers of the ideas within that intrigue me. Recently I’ve read your Taliesin trilogy from the 90’s, which you very kindly provided in a rather uneven swap. After telling you how much I enjoyed it and ripped through the whole thing over a weekend, you told me it was all so long ago that you could hardly remember it. But do you remember its genesis and what intrigued you so much about the figure of Taliesin?

How it all started; well, I really can't remember. Except that I've always been fascinated by Welsh mythology, and when I first decided that I was going to try and finish a book (rather than making the endless false starts I'd done until them) I'd look for a Welsh theme. And Taliesin seemed an interesting subject - not so over-written as Arthur- there was a good deal of scope for me to make up my own story, combined with the scraps of legends; a known yet unknown figure if you like.

2. Now I’ve been fascinated by the figure of Taliesin for twenty years or so, but for me it’s always been more the Taliesin that wrote the mythological poems - multi-layered and full of meaning - and was said to be King Arthur’s bard – the one if you like who was present in The Spoils of Annwn or in the company of the Singing Head. You, on the other hand, in the second and third books in your trilogy in particular, chose to concentrate far more on the less mythic figure, the Taliesin who was court bard to Owain of Rheged and indeed Owain features significantly in your series. Why did you choose that version?

Although I love myth and magic, I find that when I'm writing, I want to write about people and their relationships and their connections with the world about them. And I want to find reality in the magical/mythical  elements.

3. Taking a massive leap forward to the past few years, you’ve been concentrating your attentions on Greek Myth with your Troy books. What do you think are the main differences in the mythology of your native land and that of classical mythology?

Our versions of Greek mythology have been much cleaned up and sanitised by countless retellings. And when you first read the Mabinogion, the stories can feel strange and rambling; you look hard into them to find the connections and structures you expect from modern tale-telling. (Probably the stories as we now know them have been worked on by their Christian scribes, so we don't find out too much about the pre-Christian deities who were there originally, which also  adds to the strangeness). You need to find your own way of reading them, and then they are suddenly full of  real people -loves, betrayals, friendships, cruelties, quests and disappointments, revenges  and triumphs. 

4. What is it, do you think, that myth has to offer not just the growing child, but the questing adult, and how well equipped are we as a society to provide that kind of nurturing?

Myths have an especial richness, in that they've been worked on over centuries by people trying to find answers to the basic questions of life - why are we here, what are we  supposed to be doing, how is it that things go wrong, how  can we do the right things, how do we relate to other people, why are some feelings - love, hate, revenge, excitement - so strong and so universal?  When we read them, we tread in all of those thousands and thousands of footsteps that have gone down that road before us. So for both adults and children there is a feeling both of strangeness and familiarity; we benefit from being exposed to them in so many ways. (This in spite of the publisher who rejected my 'Helen's Daughter' with 'These sorts of things don't sell' - well, I think they do, if children have the chance  to see them)

5. Would you say there have been distinct periods of writing in your career. Has happiness necessarily coincided with success?

I don't think I've ever been very successful - there have been periods when things seem to be going quite well, but then they're followed by disasters. Publishers are never very easy to work with, and most writers can't rely on the expectation of success. I found that out the hard way at the very start of my career when the second and third books in my Taliesin trilogy were turned down by the publisher of the first one.

But happiness comes from writing - when I'm writing, I'm perfectly absorbed in my writing world and perfectly happy. That's what a writer should look for and enjoy rather than 'success' which is transient and unreliable.

6. How important is the home and the landscape you live in, do you think, to the life of a writer? I’m thinking particularly of that fascinating and almost indefinable Welsh word hiraeth, that I’ve mentioned in a previous blog. Is that longing a part of what you write or what makes you write?

I love living in mid-Wales, which as you know, is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I love being able to look out of my window every morning and see the light and the colours, different and gorgeous every day. I'm less mobile than I was, for various reasons, so the joys of sight are especially blessed. But I'm also - and this might sound paradoxical - a Londoner at heart, since I lived there for more years than I have lived in Wales- and I feel 'hiraeth' for London when I'm in Wales.

But looking back over my stories, I don't think I write about either; I try to bring to life the landscapes of the places I write about, even if I don't know them well. I  remember when I was a child I always believed that Rosemary Sutcliff must have been a great traveller, as she wrote about places so vividly; and I found out later that she was so disabled, she must have travelled very little and with great difficulty. It's imagination that does the trick.

7. And apart from skills, in this day and age its tolerance and understanding that seem increasingly to be going. On one of your blogs, you wonder what Donald Trump’s favourite poem might be, and the actual answer turns out to be fascinating. Can you tell us about that.

I don't suppose the Donald has ever really read a poem in his life, but he quotes as his 'favourite poem' the words of a song called 'Snake' originally sung by black soul singer Al Wilson in 1968. It's about a woman who out of compassion takes home and nurtures a wounded snake, which, when healed, turns round and bites her. Before she dies, the snake sneers 'You knew I was a snake when you found me.' For snake, of course, read Mexicans, Muslims, immigrants generally.  In spite of objections by Wilson's family, Trump continues to quote it.

8. Now poetry is important to you – not just your own, but clearly other people’s. This has led to you publishing two rather extraordinary books of poetry. Can you tell us the thinking behind that?

I love reading poetry and I try to write it, though I don't think I'm very good. My two 'poetry' books, A  Bracelet of Bright Hair, and Dancing In The Chequered Shade, are basically journals in which I about the events of my day, and try to match a poem to it. Some of the poems are by me, but mostly they're by real poets. Readers have told me that they've found the books helpful and inspiring. Certainly they were very enjoyable to write.

9.Two years or so ago I did a wonderful six week course on Mental Health in Literature with Future Learn and co-tutored by Doctor Jonathan Bate and Professor Paula Byrne, (now Lord and Lady Bate). Among the many wonderful things covered was the therapeutic nature of poetry and I was able to give first hand experience of how wonderfully it worked for Rosie, who was quite ill at the time, on one of my blogs. I also learned how very different an experience it was to read a poem out loud when Jonathan gave us the task of doing this with On Westminster Bridge – admittedly after we’d heard Sir Ian McKellen have a stab at it! Do you think there’s any particular way of approaching poetry that’s more effective for you?

10, I think good poetry can make you a better person if you give it your full attention. I don't think it would work on Trump though. Remember Auden's marvellous poem on the death of a tyrant; 'the poetry he wrote was easy to understand...'  I don't think there's a better or worse way of approaching poetry; just give it your full attention and then watch out for those poems that suddenly grab you by the throat. I remember how Donne's love poems did this for me when I first read them as a teenager.

11. Let’s move back to the present and your Girls of Troy series. How did that fascination with classical mythology finally bear fruit and what made you tackle it in this way?

I realized that there were also figures half-hidden on the margins of the well-known Greek legends just asking to be let out, and these figures were mostly women and girls; and I suddenly found them clamoring to tell me their stories. When I found that Helen of Troy had a daughter, Hermione, I knew I had to find out her story. Then I discovered that Achilles had a son, Pyrrhus, and that Hermione and Pyrrhus had a relationship. How could I resist such a beginning? This became 'Helen's Daughter' the first volume in the trilogy. Then I knew I had to write about the actual battle for Troy, so I give this story to a slave girl who witnesses it all, in The Burning Towers.. Finally, the story has to be finished off by writing about the murder of Agamemnon and the subsequent revenge taken by his children Electra and Orestes. For a long while I tried to find ways of telling this using a voice other than Electra's; but finally I realized that she had to tell her story herself. This became the final volume, The Silver Handled Knife.

12. Rosie and I are currently listening to Anton Lesser narrating The Iliad on Audible. It’s a long and confusing narrative with so many lists of names that it makes the Welsh story of Culwch and Olwen seem positively half-hearted in comparison. How do you de-bug something like that and make is more accessible – the same I suppose with the ancient Welsh books and the poems of Taliesin. Or do we just have to accept them as they are as much as we do Shakespeare’s plays and not soften or reduce them?

Anton Lesser must be great to listen to - what a voice. We have Derek Jacobi doing the same thing, and it's great to listen to in the car. I think that in their raw form, the stories can be a bit indigestible especially for children. But they can be retold in such a way that you concentrate on the universal and exciting elements of the tales, and children can 'get' them. When I was young, my father bought me a copy of  the Odyssey in Barbara Leonie Picard's adaptation  and read it to me at night. I loved it, and Odysseus has always been one of my heroes. (yes, there are gruesome bits in the story, but somehow I absorbed those).

13. This seems a nice point to ask you about the pictures, Frances. I asked you to select several which had some kind of meaning for you. Could you tell us about them and what led to your choices?

Apart from a little bit of self-advertising for my Greek books, there the Lion Gate in Mycenae, which we first visited a few years ago, after longing for years to go there. Seeing it inspired me to write about Mycenae, and Agamemnon and his family. There's also a little Greek Athene owl, which I bought in Greece, and sat on my windowsill while I was writing the trilogy,, and I hope , gave me inspiration from the goddess!  Lastly two pictures taken from our house, just showing how beautiful Wales is, and how lovely it is to be able to wake up every morning and see such beauty for free - it's different every day and I never take it for granted. I don't have any pictures for the first trilogy, but certainly the beauty of the countryside inspired me to write about it.

14. The second picture looks very like a place I walk in regularly. That's Mid-Wales for you. But finally, Frances, are there still remaining characters, themes and ideas you want to work with and why?

I have a story that I wrote some years ago, set in the seventeenth century and the era of tulip fever. My agent wouldn't send it out, so it's still sitting there. It's probably a bit 'quiet' for today's market, but I'd like to work on it a  bit, and bring it out myself. I don't have many indulgences any more, so self-publishing  is one I can allow myself, I think.

Well I hope your tulips get to flourish at some time in the future, Frances,Thank you so much for chatting to me and everyone who reads this blog.

Steve, it's been a pleasure.

And I, everyone, will see you next in January so I'll look forward to that.




Steve Gladwin

Author of 'The Seven' and 'The Raven's Call.'

Writer and Screenwriter

imagepoet7@gmail.com