Pea Arts About

Last one of these attached to Linda France's New Writing North climate residency and not sure what we'll get up to yet. My writing lately has been scraping at the edges of my DYCP Treasures project and planning for a guest seminar for my friend Jenn's MA module on language in TV and film taught from a linguistics perspective. Getting back in Metz after a long time away from film semiotics and it's giving me such a lift at a tough time. His final book Impersonal Enunciation was beautifully translated into English my Cormac Deane in 2016 and it's a breath of fresh air.  Linda is asking us to think about place. The places in my mind currently are my mum's room in the intermediate care home she's in while rehabilitating from surgery on a badly broken hip. If that's where I choose then we're staying with it for the session. Ok, let's document it.  Prompt 1: Describe this place. Write freely and loosely, but remember detail. There's a little nature...

With my mum in hospital and the uncertainty around her care, and then all the running about that having a close relative in hospital involves, it has been difficult to find headspace for writing at all, and writing for my DYCP project specifically. Rather appropriately, I started vaguely reading Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence (Abacus, 1997) in which Dyer wants to write a book about D. H. Lawrence but finds himself doing anything but writing a book about D. H. Lawrence. This is my current experience with my Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable project. At least my ACE grant is about developing practice and doesn’t expect a big shiny outcome other than a report on the development of your practice. But I do really want a manuscript to come out of it. So I’m carving snatches of time between hospital runs to write something , even if it’s skirting the edges of what I really want and ought to be writing about. Plus it’s cathartic, getting stuff out ...

Climate letter challenge Prompt 1: At the top of my mind about climate and ecological change is... deep anxiety that collectively we're not doing enough. There's too much pressure on individuals. We do all have a role to play, but what's within our power is so small compared to the huge corporate polluters and other huge corporations that prop them up and benefit from their polluting. So there's me mithering about getting refills from an inconvenient location that I can't really afford rather than buying things in more plastic bottles that are unlikely to get recycled, or be recycled more than once if they are, but which are fine and affordable. Or being freezing all the time because of the guilt of both polluting the atmostphere with gas or fire smoke, plus the expense. And don't even start me on the green-washing companies are doing. They pander to what's popular and desired and don't actually address the problem. I'm cross about those Boody bras I...

Prompt 1: Half-way through the year... and things are finally moving. Just four weeks ago I got word that my application to Arts Council England's Develop Your Creative Practice grant scheme was successful. It has been a busy time getting the paperwork sorted to secure the money, then waiting anxiously to make sure I'd done it correctly, then seeing it could take up to six weeks when my schedule had already begun and it's been a tight few years, and the relief of a big wad of cash landing in my account. I'm typing this on my new computer that I was finally able to get. Let's see, it was 2019 when Violet (my HP Pavilion) had a total systems failure and was essentially rebuilt by not-da-in-law (well, he installed an SSD with Linux Mint and I immersed myself in the joys of open-source software).  Things are also looking up on the growing front. In the May Writing Hour I mentioned that this year's peas process had yielded nothing. I was mistaken. Amongst the weeds t...

New Writing North Writing Hour led by Linda France. Prompt 1: The loveliest sight/site on E/earth is... It's bucketing today. The gardens need it. The ground is parched. Linda was talking a lot about embracing mistakes and trying to allow the consciousness to drift and dance. Allow the mistakes to happen and dance on the page. I struggle with letting the mistakes be because I'm always trying to improve. Will try to cycle round to the prompt somehow. I suppose imperfection is the answer. Imperfection is the loveliest sight and the loveliest sites are imperfect. Which sight/site/cite it was - homonyms? - was not specified, which I like. Nor was earth as in ground or Earth our planet. Both, really. All. Imperfect thinking. Distractions. I'm having a lot of anxiety dreams lately. Normal for me, but they'd calmed down. Now I'm waiting on quite a few things at once. All uncertain. Unlikely to happen, which might be disappointing, but if any do happen, everything changes. ...

With New Writing North climate change writer in residence Linda France. Prompt 1: Spring is going full pelt. I'm in the 'winter' part of my menstrual cycle, so it's tricky for me to feel that sentiment just this minute, but no doubt I will catch up to it in a few days. I'm in a limbo with where I'm at and how I feel about things, probably because my oestrogen has withdrawn and I'm aware something is missing. I had a last-minute cancellation this morning of a guest spot on a podcast. I'm not sure if my rescheduling on their site worked. Likely not as no notification has come through. I'm not bothered, though, because I can't be doing with these last minute drops when you've mentally prepared yourself to speak to a stranger. I used the time instead to jot some thoughts that I'll share in another post.  I'm having serious words with myself lately about making excuses for not getting anything done. It is tough, yes, to get motivated when ...

Prompt word: sunshine Are there any memories which this word ignites?   On an appropriately sunny afternoon in Newcastle upon Tyne, I have joined my first ever New Writing North writing hour. It’s a shut-up-and-write session that offers prompts to get the creative juices flowing. It is perhaps a little strange to do this over Zoom, but it feels less lonely and we’re more accountable to ourselves if we remove all distractions and feel the connection to other writers, even if we’re not seeing or listening to each other. I wish I had discovered it before, but there we go. I miss the shut-up-and-writes with the Deeners.    But I digress, for I am supposed to be writing about memories to do with sunshine. This is a struggle at the moment as I’m in the premenstrual phase of my cycle and I’m battling with insomnia, so my brain’s not interested in recall right now, but just muddling through the day! Andrew and I had a great cycle in the sun on Sunday, which it just occurs to me w...