Just before Christmas worked on the Friar’s Tale: the combination of suddenly realising that most of my versions are in variations of southern England English and that I only had six more to do, forced me to take on other voices. I wrote The Friar’s Tale (The Devil in Llandudno Junction) in a North Wales English i.e. English influenced by Scouse and Welsh. I spent my entire secondary schooling in North Wales, it was easy. And great fun! All very well having Nigerian English and nonspecific Eastern European but what about the wealth of Englishes in the UK. Note UK and not just England. Found some great websites where you can listen to different accents (people from all over the UK reading Mr Tickle!) and get into grammatical variations, like the Southern English ‘we was’ or the Yorkshire ‘it were’.

Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale is the only one to use a different dialect, a Northern dialect, and that’s only in the direct speech of the students. Yesterday I had another attempt at the Reeve’s Tale. I can now announce that the speaker will definitely be a dog, a Yorkshire sniffer dog. Suddenly the tale came alive. Also, after doing versions in prose, blank verse, unrhymed and rhymed  iambic tetrameter, I think I’ve finally found the verse form: rime royale. Chaucer invented rime royale for Troilus and Criseyde. His is in iambic pentameter and I fully intend to give that a go for either the Man of Law’s or Franklin’s Tale; but mine is in tetrameter.

Some of the voices have come easy, the Knight’s, Reeve’s and Merchants have not. But I learnt my lesson the hard way with the former and I now know very quickly whether the voice is working. If the writing of it’s like walking through concrete, my instinct tells me I’m not excited and something is wrong. Writing doesn’t always flow, but without the passion, the obsession to get it as good as it can possibly be, it’ll be dead words on the page. I have to have a strong sense of the character AND know the form fits their voice. Narrative’s a challenge but Chaucer already did that work for me (as Petrarch and Boccaccio did for him). My next challenge is The Summoner’s Tale and he has to be a geezer from Sarfeast London who happens to be a bailiff. Take a butchers at this in a few weeks time…

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,700 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 28 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

The George Inn, Southwark

Had a wonderful Monday evening talking shop with Ros Barber, Jane Draycott and Jenny Lewis at The George, Southwark. The third meeting of the Medieval-Renaissance Women’s Drinking Society.  To be honest, not much drinking goes on since we all have to manage work and (extended) families but the talking is wonderful. We’re at various stages of reworking texts written by long-dead men. Jane’s translation of Pearl is out there and has been reprinted; Ros’s The Marlowe Papers is out next year; mine, Jenny’s and Jay’s (the wonderful Jay Bernard) are still in progress.

Jane talked eloquently about the difficulties of positioning yourself in relation to the original text: do you sit behind it, beside it? How much of your own voice and how much of theirs. She was talking about translation but it’s relevant to any form of rewriting. It made so much sense to me. And we both talked about taking on a strong male voice and the challenges it posed. I came away feeling invigorated and ready to take the scarey step of pasting all the polished pieces into a file called ‘Fragments’. Still too superstitious to give it a final name. Roving Mic is still the working title…

Talking of talking heads, I’ve started working on the Monk’s Tale which is not one story but 19 stories following a monotonous tragic trajectory. Not a great read and, like my version of The Parson’s Tale, decided to create an overriding narrative. It’s in its early stages and in prose and I seriously need to revisit some Alan Bennett. In the Summer I bought both the Talking Heads book and CD and spent a couple of weeks completely immersed in both. Stunning stuff, clever, witty, moving and more risque than I imagined. It reminded me that to simulate speech you can get away with leaving a lot of words unsaid. Reminded me that speech leaves a lot unsaid.

Keats' House

If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all’ –  John Keats. Discuss

Just over a week ago I had the pleasure to read at Keats House in Hampstead. It was the final event of Benjamin Zephaniah’s residency, and especially inspiring to hear young people perform their work so confidently. After the wow factor of the stunning gardens, I entered the house and the first thing to catch my eye was the postcard declaming the archetypal Romantic stance on creativity: poetry should flow freely, and if  forced,  doesn’t have the right to exist. Until now, I’ve found the quotation rather suspect and believed it the source of volumes of dreadful unedited drivel claiming to be divinely inspired. I still challenge the notion that the first draft is the best draft and strongly believe in drafting, grafting and crafting. But in that moment I wanted to take that postcard and pin it to my computer monitor so that every time I sat down to write I’d be reminded that it shouldn’t feel like ‘shovelling coal’ to quote one of my own poems.

The past few months have taught me the value of writing ‘horizontally’ rather than ‘vertically’.  This means writing several first drafts one after the other so that I have a string of titles rather than drafting, grafting and crafting one piece at a time. Since my ‘retreat’ I’ve attempted to get into periods of drafting only, so that Iwrite more quickly and the ideas flow fast and free. When I have three or four raw pieces I then decide to take them onto the next level i.e. I put on my editing head. It’s liberating. It also means you have a distance on the drafts so when you return to them you’ve had a month or more away and can view them more objectively.

Now some reading this  might say, that’s how I’ve always worked, and that’s certainly how I used to work but as I got more page-obsessed I changed my practice. It’s lead to writer’s block and at times, painfully slow progress. It’s amazing what you can do when you just let the ideas come out. An extreme example of this happens to me every morning about 8am when I step into the shower. I almost always have a creative insight. However, since the clocks went back, I’ve been a bit out of sync which makes me question whether the magic has nothing to do with the shower and everything to do with the hour. I’ve also noticed that since British Summertime ended I have the serious urge to hibernate. The poetry’s not coming as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it feels more like the leaves falling off a tree. ..But one thing I do know, if it’s like shovelling coal at first draft stage, there’s something wrong with the fundamental idea. I only flow when the idea’s fully formed. No more spending three months on one poem. The first draft should take a matter of hours…

National Poetry Day, 6 October, I did a breakfast reading for Poet in the City. I’m a post-wastershed poet and like a challenge. The challenge was not getting up at 5.30 a.m. , it was finding poems suitable for an audience at 8 a.m. I struggled a bit but managed to come up with a mixture  from Bloodshot Monochrome, with some Chaucer rewrites e.g. The Cook’s Tale and the Nun’s Priest’s. I couldn’t resist slipping in a bit of noir, inviting the audience to imagine they’d never been to bed, so this was in fact the morning after the night before. Got away with it.

Peckham Library was a different challenge. A much longer set: first half published stuff, second half, Chaucer rewrites, and I was really aware how dark a collection Bloodshot Monochrome is. I chose not to mix earlier poems for light relief but ended up changing a couple  because it was just too intense. I’d deliberately learnt Sharps and Flats, a rap based on the Prioress’s Tale which I dedicated to Damilola Taylor. It needed to come off the page and I had to do it justice not just for the painful subject matter but also the fact that he was killed in North Peckham estate after a visit to the library.  When you perform a poem like that you have also to give the audience some light at the end of the tunnel. The poem attempts to do this, but other poems must help.

So I spent today revisiting the Reeve’s Tale, which is still trying to find its voice. But I find darkness pulling me to take on The Physician’s Tale. I already have a form in my head, I just need to read the original to work out what shade of dark I’m aiming for. In the small hours of Sunday morning, in that extra hour, I’ll start to find words, phrases that will somehow connect overnight and translate to my fingers on Sunday morning.

An unexpected pleasure of this process has been the challenge of creating versions of Chaucer’s religious tales in a predominantly secular age. When I committed myself to do versions of every tale, I’d read the Pardoner’s Tale (for A level) but not the Prioress’s, the Second Nun’s or the Tale of Melibee. Let alone the Parson’s! No-one had recommended them so I hadn’t given them more than a cursory glance. I did a special paper on Chaucer for my degree which meant studying Troilus and Criseyde, The Legend of Good Women, The House of Fame, not less popular Canterbury Tales. Yet here I am, loving the intensity and depth these religious tales offer to a contemporary audience.

It’s not simply that these tales offer a very clear moral message, a framework within which I can operate; it’s also liberating because they’re not well known. Everyone knows the Miller’s Tale but only academics read the Second Nun’s Tale. It’s the life of Saint Cecilia. No-one has adapted it for the big or small screen. No poet, as far as I know, has done a version of it. So there’s less artistic bagage attached to it. Of course, my version may well offend some Christians, but I hope it will attract some readers to the original text to see just how irreverant I’ve been (not very, considering the speaker is a contract killer). Apologies for the double-spaced formatting and inexplicable bold line which will be rectified. Here it is, currently untitled:

Worst job I ever handled, bruv? A woman.                              

So plain, you’d scan her face for flaws, an find none.    

Not a mark on her till the bullets spat.

They fucked up good, should be in here for that            

not shelling Jupiter. Call this a prison!

Finishing school. He was never christened                   

Jupiter, but larged it, full of gas.                                    

Jupiter Jones. One of his moons, I was.            

He paid with interest, bruv, an when you got

a past, a job’s a job. One thing I’m not            

is lazy… She was sitting in the bath,                              

no bubbles, an so hot, I held my breath,                                       

felt overdressed in t-shirt an tattoos.                             

He wanted me to top myself, she goes,

but where’s the fun in that. Lilies, she smelt of,

so strong it made me gag. She eyed me, bruv,

the way all virgins eagle me but scanned                       

my lids too long, as if I killed her husband.                    

I never. Nor his brother. Not my business.

You never get a babe like that to kiss

Jupiter’s arse: she laughed, gave him what for.

Not that he wanted her, he wanted her

to want him. But she fucked him with religion.       

If there’s one thing Jupiter hates, it’s Christians.            

He’s killed more Christians than his wife’s been headfucked.

I aim – and Lilly-May’s no longer perfect.        

She doesn’t flinch. Asks me to light her gold-               

tipped cigarette. Do you believe in God?

I fire again, fuck the analysis.

Again! Who the fuck does she think she is?

And yet I’m answering:  No. I don’t know.

She blows smoke in my face. I do, she goes,

like nothing happened. Blood, fresh as graffiti,                          

the bath, the lino, deep in red confetti

and sister’s singing Greatest Hits.  I leave.

Took her three days to die. You don’t believe

me, bruv? I shelled the boss and jacked it in,

buried the bullet, washed away the sin.

Only babe I ever killed, that kid,

I swear to God, worst job I ever did.

I do, she said, like we were hitched. I breathed            

red roses, blubbered like a girl: believed.                                  

I thought I’d sample the title of my forthcoming reading at the British Museum. I’m excited about it because my poems will be placed in context – there’ll be readings of the original Middle English, translations and historical perspective. What inspires me most, though, is the chance to read some new pieces. I haven’t been idle (except the past two blissful weeks of family holiday). I’ve been working on versions of The Pardoner’s Tale and The Second Nun’s Tale.

Everyone talks about the Pardoner’s Tale as being one of the most sophisticated due to the complex relationship between teller and tale; the characterisation of the Pardoner himself; and the dramatic context in which he attempts to sell fake pardons to his fellow pilgrims having revealed to them all his trade secrets. I studied it for A level almost 30 years ago: I loved it then but I love it even more now. I’d forgotten just how fully realised the character is. It wasn’t difficult translating him into the 21st century – he never died in the first place; the challenge was to do something different. Apparently you can still obtain pardons through the catholic church though you’re not allowed to pay for them with hard cash. But I decided not to go down the pardon route. It’s still in progress but I hope my interpretation works…

As for the Second Nun’s Tale, I can’t say the original will ever be a favourite, though the tale contains some strong detail which I’ve used in my version. I knew very little about Saint Cecilia but was fascinated with her obstinate refusal to die. After three unsuccessful attempts to behead her, the executioner gives up. (There was a law that only allowed three swings of the axe).  Against, my will – because my default seems to be film noir, I found myself rewriting it with a noir setting. I’ve kept the christian content but played around with it somewhat. At the moment it’s raw, first draft stage, an intense two hours after a week of living and breathing the tale.

So there you have it. I’m immersed in the narratives. I need to have them polished a week before the reading so I can do them justice in the flesh as well as on the page. And after that, continuing with the gory note, I hope to do justice to The Physician’s Tale…

It’s that time of year again and I just love it! Spent last weekend in a field camping with family and friends. It wasn’t a festival, just a few people getting together, but when Paul got out the didgeridoo and David got out the guitar I was reminded how special it is to enjoy the arts in the open air when you can watch the sun go down and it never really gets dark. Paul reminded me about the magic of festivals when you have something different to offer that people want. I’ve done Glasto in the past, the jazz stage, the cabaret stage and of course, the poetry tent. I’ve done smaller festivals in London. I’m a basement bar poet at heart and in a field, I struggle with the lack of intimacy. Plus,  I find it difficult performing at festivals because a) I always need the toilet just before I go on which is always a challenge when you’re talking portaloos and b) I want to party rather than get on stage and all the nervous energy before a gig gets in the way of the enjoyment. BUT, when these tales are written I reckon they’d go down a storm on a stage in a field cos they tap into the storytelling round a campfire tradition. So by 2013, with my own personal toilet and appearing on the first day of the festival, you’re going to get Chaucer The Remix…

Spent the weekend before at the Ledbury Poetry Festival.  Wonderful as ever.  Hung out with Ledbury co-programmer, the hardest working woman in poetry (and a fine poet to boot), Jo Bell, the adventurous-enough-to-enter-the-Ledbury-Poetry-Slam, Jill Abrams and Longfella aka Tony Walsh, fresh from Glastonbury where he was website Poet in Residence! I love people who take on a challenge so I was in the right company. Through osmosis I immediately felt more confident and successful. So much so, that even losing my suitcase the entire weekend and having to wash and iron dry my single pair of spare knickers to wear again on Monday, didn’t spoil my gig. I was reading with the wonderful Gwyneth Lewis which was an added bonus. And I was reading mostly new stuff: versions of The Knight’s, Melibee, and The Clerk’s  (which I’d read to closed groups of students but never in public); and debuted  the Canon’s Yeoman’s and Prioress’s. I was really nervous beforehand but it was the right kind of nerves, excitement rather than dread. I did a full rehearsal that afternoon and timed the set so I wouldn’t overrun. I enjoyed the rehearsal so was looking forward to the gig. Always a good sign. The week before got some nice feedback from a variety of readers including two professors of English which also did wonders for my confidence. The gig felt special and there was a real buzz in the room. What touched me most was the support from Jo, Jill,  Tony and Gwyneth.  If you write both for yourself and for others to enjoy,  being part of a poetic community is essential. Thanks, everyone!

 P.S. I had a real theatrical treat after my gig. If you haven’t seen Flash starring poets Sarah Jane Arbury, Glenn Carmichael, Lucy English and Anna Freeman, you haven’t lived…

I’m glad to admit that my Network card has doubly paid its way this month and I have so many unfiled tickets I can barely close it. The rap party at The Albany was a serious highlight; so was the launch of Jane Draycott’s Pearl in a stunning garden at an Oxford College. Introduced by Bernard O’Donoghue‘s extract of the original – which did wonders for the hairs on the back of my neck, Jane enabled us to enter the head of the grieving father who has this marvellous dream vision of meeting his dead girl child. I read the entire translation on the way back to Gravesend. I don’t quite remember how I got home, just that I arrived still tipsy on that poetic gem.

The Pearl launch clashed with another launch, that of Baba Brinkman’s The Rap Guide to Evolution. Baba’s translated several of the Canterbury Tales into Rap so I prostrate myself on the ground whenever I type his name. I’m just relieved he didn’t do them all; he would have put me out of a vocation. Anyway, I really really wanted to see him live as I’ve only encountered his work online. It wasn’t going to happen this time. But the man is prolific and brilliant: check out his introduction to The Rap Canterbury Tales. I spent the whole of last week on Spotify tracking down all these rap references and seeing Chaucer in yet another dimension: as a unique rhymer. How I wish I could have been in two places at the same time. Don’t have the technology yet…

Getting out isn’t just about shedding a skin; it’s also about letting the poems out. My last blog referred to the wonderful experience of just writing without editing, letting the ten words reach the screen before I’d deleted eleven in my head. Getting out is about getting the words on the page; and now I want to share them with the world. Problem is, they need editing. And a little bird told me that when you press that oblong icon ‘Publish’, it actually means the poem is published. I laughed aloud. Surely there’s a difference between sending something off and there being some quality control by another critical being and simply pressing a button on one’s computer? As you know, I’ve been living in a bubble for the past five years so have no idea about such things. But I’m now very keen to find out. I’m dying to share these works-in-progress but I don’t want that to jeopardise my chances of  traditional publication. Any comments gratefully received…

The original idea had been to hide away in a friend’s caravan for five days starting with the monday of the Mayday bank holiday. But after a week at Arvon where I spent the only hour I had to myself missing my family, I decided to do the retreat at home. But how would it work? Well, after a serious spring clean of 3/4 the flat, there was more space in our bedroom. I moved the table from the kitchen, set up the laptop and there I had it. My very own office where I could shut the door. My partner had already booked the time off work so I had from 8.30 to 5.30 to get on rewriting some Chaucer. And rewrite I did! Four drafts in four days. Three of them entire drafts which means I got to the end of the narrative. They’re raw but I had fun writing them and feel confident they’re going to work.

Last week I decided to work differently. I’d work like a novelist. I’d work as if I was writing the first draft of a whole book rather than write a first draft and then edit edit edit. What it meant was this: I was in first draft heaven all week. I was freestyling on the page. Spending an hour a day listening to rap on Spotify had something to do with it.  I’d feared it would be difficult to hop in and out of different poems, different voices, but it was actually easier to start afresh each day. I was flying, and with each new poem I felt more and more confident about being able to do a decent remix of all the tales. I had a great chat with Roger Robinson at the T S Eliot prizegiving party in January where he said he always writes the whole poetry book first and then starts editing. This was so radically different from how I work I thought I’d give it a try last week. Now, I’m keen to keep in first draft mode. I’m being quite hardcore i.e. being unable to print each poem until the end of the day meant by the time I’d transfered the file and printed it off I was exhausted and didn’t even read the draft.  When I get to the editing stage, the poems will seem a little unfamiliar which is a very good thing. My usual practice, editing day by day, works if I’m on a roll but can be painfully slow. It will be more satisfying editing knowing I have a version of the book written.

Another plus for writing early drafts one after the other is it’s exercising the same part of the brain, the bit that gets ideas. So the work flows. My other method meant I’d get to the umpteenth edit, be exercised in editing mode, then it would be a supreme effort to get back to ideas mode. This is the first time I’ve written a book with so much narrative and such a clear design. It makes sense to radically alter my approach.

So now I have a range of pieces, some polished, some at early draft stage and two beginnings: Knight’s, Miller’s, Reeve’s, Cook’s, Clerk’s, Prioress’s, Melibee, Nun’s Priest’s, Canon’s Yeoman’s, Manciple’s and Parson’s. So those four days locked in my bedroom were really really useful…