The value of the diarist-travel-writer.

My friends Ruth and Annie went on a trip-of-a-lifetime this summer, an African safari.  Lucky them.  Now though, lucky me too, because for the past month, I’ve been vicariously sharing their experiences via Ruth’s blog, silver anniversary safari.

This is definitely my preferred way to travel: no injections, waiting around in airport lounges or hours of sitting in a metal box being hurtled across the sky.   I jump straight into the heart of another culture when I open the latest instalment.

I’ll make a sweeping assertion that conveying the excitement and wonder of a place is the general aim for any travel-writer.  The key to this particular travel-log is the narrative voice: the choice of language, and stand-point.

Now let’s just take the last thing first, and clarify what I mean by ‘stand-point’.  I’m not talking about Ruth’s proximity to the animals, although at times, that was breathtakingly close. What I mean, and I’m sure you understood this, but I’d like to be precise, is how her thinking led her to interpret what she experienced.

What comes through strongly in these pieces is personality: there is humour, as well as wonder and fascination.  The way Ruth describes the people she meets, the incidental events she chooses and the things she sees, show us our narrator as well as providing a brief insight into the culture she is experiencing.

Perhaps it’s because I’m mid-way through tutoring my Writing Family History course, that I’m also thinking about the value of Ruth’s piece of writing for the future.  It is not just entertaining, it is a record of interactions with specific environments at this point in time.  Imagine, in the future, someone tracing their family tree and discovering not just the photographs of this trip, but alongside them, the story that sets them in context.

*Photos taken from Ruth Boardman Anniversary Safari.

 

Where did you find out about that?

As you may know, quite a few of my classes are organised by the WEA.  ‘Who are they?’ people tend to ask, when I tell them who I work for.

‘Workers’ Educational Association,’ I say.

‘Oh,’ they say.  ‘Where’s your college?’

‘There’s no campus,’ I say.  ‘Classes are organised within the community, by volunteers who run the local branch.  There could be some taking place just around the corner from where you live.’

‘Really?’

I’ve taught in community centres, out-of-hours schools, village halls, church and chapel halls, library meeting rooms and pub-lounges.  These are all places where people pass through and might see the posters, even if they don’t sign up.

Why am I telling you this?  Well, Saturday I went to the WEA Area Meeting, where delegates from four of the local branches gathered to exchange news and share ideas.  Publicity was one of the items on the agenda, and despite the fact that this year there have been some popular courses put on, there was still a general feeling that the WEA needs a higher public profile.

This is an organisation with a one hundred and thirteen year pedigree: that’s created a healthy alumni and alumnae.  Yet apart from the wonderful, Pitman Painters play by Lee Hall, there’s not much mention of WEA in the national or local press.

Some branches post on social media, and most put up posters and leaflets.  Finding spaces for paper publicity is tricky.  Many of the places with ‘What’s On’ displays are managed by commercial organisations, and often that limits the room left for others.

Our local newspaper used to produce a supplement that contained all of the adult education courses on offer in the county.  That’s how I came to sign up for my first creative writing class.  I remember that I browsed the list, and then took out the page I was tempted by, folded it to the relevant section and kept it on the side for a couple of days as I psyched myself up to phone and enrol.

What I’m wondering is, how can we do that with social media?  The posts on twitter and face-book move rapidly down the page, it’s no wonder that people using it for publicity put out so much duplication.

Is this chatter the best way to attract the attention of a tentative first-timer?

 

 

 

A second visit to the Cheltenham Booker debate

It seems like the Cheltenham Literary festival has some special deal with someone when it comes to weather.  Once again, the event was bathed in such warm sunlight that I wondered if I shouldn’t be calling in to the Lido.

I was there for a fantasy event: if there had been a Booker award in 1945, which book might have won it.  The festival invited a panel of five writers to debate this in public, each author being set to champion one of the titles.  The line up was:

• AS Byatt for Elizabeth Taylor’s  At Mrs Lippencote’s
• Rafaella Barker for  Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I sat down and Wept,
• Akalla for George Orwell’s Animal Farm
• Rachel Johnson for Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love
• Alexei Sayle for Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.

I thought that this year the choice was trickier than the one I watched last year, when two of the contenders had seemed rank outsiders.  Or perhaps, because then I’d gone along anticipating The Good Soldier was the only possible winner, I had more of a commitment to the debate.

This year, I had not done all of my homework.  A couple of weeks ago I finally got round to reading Brideshead Revisited, but there were two on the list that I hadn’t read, or tracked down as second hand copies.

I know, I should have gone out and bought them new.  The Taylor, at any rate, would have been a useful addition to the shelf I’m gradually giving over to her writings.  But the last few weeks have been busy, and I kept putting that trip to town off.  So I read the little that was available free of each of them on-line and had my preconceptions confirmed.

Taylor’s opening intrigued, and drew me in…

‘Did the old man die here?  What do you think?’ Julia asked, as her husband began to come up stairs.

‘Old man?  What old man?’

She stood on the shadowy landing with its six white doors.

‘What old man,’ asked Roddy once more, coming up and putting his arm along her shoulders.

‘The husband.  Mr Lippincote.  Oh how I wish we needn’t live in other people’s houses.’

‘What if he did?’

Yes, what indeed?  The dead cannot communicate with the living, or do harm to them.

If there had been more available than the tantalising first ten pages I would have read on.  Note to self: must put this on my Christmas list.

Note 2: no ditto on Elizabeth Smart’s novel.

It’s taken me a long time to reach the point where I know when to give up on a book, and this one will go on that fairly short list.  Even the rather passionate advocacy of Rafaella Barker could not move me to go back and read more of this:

I am standing on a corner in Monterey, waiting for the bus to come in, and all the muscles of my will are holding my terror to face the moment I most desire.  Apprehension and the summer afternoon keep drying my lips, prepared at ten-minute intervals all through the five hour wait.

On stage, there was some debate about the merits of poetic prose, but the agreement of the whole panel seemed to be that the novel has no narrative line.

I had it in mind that this one should be the first to fall, and it was offered up for the first round of votes, along with Mrs Lippincote’s, but it was Taylor’s novel that went out at the first round, while Elizabeth Smart’s made it through to the last.  Two days later and I’m still not clear how this could have happened.

I hadn’t enjoyed Brideshead Revisited, it seemed lacking in heart.  But, if I had to choose between Smart’s description of a love affair or Waugh’s, I’d opt for the latter, despite its slow start, and off-key ending.  Not so the panel, who dropped him.

As they did,  The Pursuit of Love.  Well, it’s a nice book, a funny book, but I would have been surprised to see it win.  So, the last two books standing were Animal Farm and By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. 

Interestingly, these were the books whose advocates had given the most passionate opening arguments, and perhaps that’s why the rest of the panel fell away.  All had offered literary accounts of their chosen novels, but the first three had lacked the engagement with their texts that Akalla had for Animal Farm, or Rafaella Barker for By Grand Central Station…

It was obvious that their books had touched them.  They did not just admire the writing, they loved it.  And for that reason, I’m thinking that though Smart’s novel did not, in the end win, I ought to give it a second chance, and read it through to the end.

After all, I could borrow it from the library, I don’t have to put it on a Christmas list.

Wise words from Eudora Welty

Here’s a thought from a prolific writer, about one of the things that we might not have expected, but can get from life-writing.

I never in my wildest dreams thought I would write anything autobiographical.  Of course, many things in my life were used in the stories, but they were very much transformed.  I never expected to write about my mother, or anything like that.  The unhappy fact is that usually by the time you’re ready to think about your parents they’re gone, and can’t tell you anything.  That happened with both my parents.  But I’m awfully glad I did do this book [One Writer’s Beginnings], because it made me explicitly know what I owed things to.

From an interview with Hermione Lee published in Writing Lives: Conversations between Women Writers.  Virago 1988.

I’m a big fan of making a record of our lives.  Aside from this interesting personal outcome, have you thought about what you leave for the future?

Imagine the joy of some future family researcher, stumbling across an account of what your life was like?  Perhaps they can guess things from your electronic footprint, but how will they interpret that intriguing purchase you made in July 2014?  Was it really for you?  If not, who could you have bought such an item for?

We will always be too late to find some things out, and the longer we leave it…

So, if you’re looking for a deadline to get you started, I came across this interesting competition the other day, a memories competition that will benefit Alzheimer’s sufferers:

http://nationalmemoryday.org.uk/competitions/

National Memory Day Creative Writing Competition Closing: 5pm Friday 20th January 2017

Theme: MEMORIES. You may enter as many times as you wish.

Each entry must consist of:

• A completed Entry Form • A copy of your poem or short story on separate sheets for each entry • The entry fee.

All funds raised go towards placing Poets-in-Residence in Memory Cafes around the UK to work with people living with memory loss. This project is delivered in partnership with the Alzheimer’s Society, Plymouth University and the Poetry Archive.

Word Limit:

• Max 100 lines for a poem • Max 1500 words for your short story

Entry Fee: £3 per first entry and £2 for all subsequent entries which are entered at the same time.

All funds raised will be invested in the Memory Café Poetry project which places Poets-in-Residence with Memory Cafes provided by the Alzheimer’s Society. Poets will work with people living with memory loss to recite poetry to stimulate and share memories.

 

Book Review.

I’ve been dipping in and out of Down Memory Lane: A Collection of Memoirs, this week.  These writings from the heart of Ireland reveal the power of writing about the self.  In the process of entertaining us, sometimes they trigger a comparison to, a taste, a smell, an activity and  I’m reminded how much has changed in the course of my life.

Or they record something fascinatingly specific about an experience. ‘I was born in Adutiskis, on the border with Belarus, where my grandparents lived,’ begins Dalia Smelstoriute, in a piece that draws together a description of an All Souls Day commemoration, a tantalisingly brief account of her grandmother’s life, and a summary of thoughts about the importance of traditions.

Other people’s families, other lives, these are often what we look for in our reading. A.L Hayes writes: ‘My Dad was a great man for mixing up left over paints to create wieird and wonderful colours.  At one stage our hall door was a strange mixture of pale pink and scuttery green.’

Here are character portraits embedded in experiences.  An incident in the playground; buying a first record; a first car; taking a holiday abroad; a journey…describing a first love. They’re fragments from a life, and yet they’re rounded moments that sit beautifully on the page.

Memoirs, it seems to me, are important.  They bring social history to life.  ‘Woolworths was at one time the biggest shop in Mullingar’ writes Caroline Connolly. ‘It had black shiny pillars outside the front door and there were square pillars inside that had long mirrors on each side.  As you passed, you could see yourself.’

This collection has come from a series of classes run in Ballinacree, Ireland, by Lynda Kirby It’s been funded by sponsors and all profits go to The Patient Comfort Fund of Oldcastle Alzheimer’s Group.  Memoirs to fund memory loss, isn’t that a nice concept?

Well done, Lynda, and good luck with the next project.