Blogs

Running season is here, the parks and public pathways are beginning to fill with the wannabe-fit, time for me to slip on my running blog slippers, park myself in front of the computer with a nice hot cup of Sunday afternoon tea, and get writing. I’ve been running throughout the winter, of course. I always run, I have a ‘have legs – will travel’ mentality, and have been running at least once a week for thirty years now. But there’s not much to...

I was vaguely aware of Jackie Kay and had read an extract of this book a few years ago. Heard her speak about her novel Trumpet and knew she was a poet. Poets make the best prose writers. What stuck in my memory was her parents. Two white working class people that adopt two kids that happen to be black or coloured, or whatever term you’re comfortable with, because this is not about race, or about class, although both her adoptive parents are...

I wanna be your pen Recording your voice with beautiful words Depicting your moods with perfect line Composing your stories with happier end Lettering your name with fully love I wanna be your pen Lying in your snug pocket Dozing with your broken heart But I am a man, living with loneliness I wanna be your pen Depicting your long hair with gentle glasses Delineating your warm hands with icy beer Painting your serious cheek with naïve smile...

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/citizenfour I missed the beginning of this programme, ironically because I was online. I spend too much time online. I’ve nothing to hide. Well, nothing much to hide. Here you have it. Everybody has something to hide. We can laugh now at the old-fashioned-spy networks of neighbours spying upon neighbours. You keep expecting Michael Caine to pop up in a John Le Carre thriller. It’s funny. An Orwellian world...

I get pretty much all my facts from Fiction. No wonder my quiz team has yet to win, it's a good thing we have one person who knows a lot about sport or we would fare far worse, but this is my comfort zone for the acquisition of knowledge. When I don't understand something in a book I then try the often maligned Wikipaedia. Books on social studies are sort of like guys I have a brief fling with but wouldn't take home; I flip though them briefly...

We always support the annual Wasafiri New Writing Prize and the details of how to enter the 2015 event can be found here: http://www.wasafiri.org/wasafiri-new-writing-prize.asp The competition is underpinned by the support of Routledge, The Open University and The Arts Council England. The closing date is not until the 24th July 2015 so plenty of time to prepare and refine. Whilst I'm in competition-adivisory-mode please don't forget ABCtales'...

I am watching her, I am being watched.I follow her everywhere she goes ,I am next to her everywhere she goes. I know when it's me, I know when it's her.I am conspicuous in the daytime, I see her sparingly in the dark. I am always me, I am occasionally her. I am her shadow, I am my shadow....The shadow of myself.....

Apocalypse. Apocalypses echo what we know. The world will end. Three score years and ten. Well I’m looking at the tens. I’m not thumbing my nose and saying ‘Har, Har,’ because I’ll be dead. Let’s face it that kills any argument. Nuclear Holocaust We all know what this mean. Helen Macdonald was a wee lassie in the nineteen-sixties. She was instructed by her teacher how to make a nuclear fallout shelter in the cupboard beneath the stairs with old...

'Old England is an imaginary place, a landscape built from words, woodcuts, films, paintings, picturesque engravings. It is a place imagined by people, and people do not live very long or look very hard. We are very bad at scale. The things that live in the soil are too small to care about; climate change too large to imagine. We are bad at time too. We cannot remember what lived here before we did; we cannot love what is not. Nor can we imagine...

MCW003 The Contemporary Writer: You will be provided with articles and poetry as photocopies or downloadable from the Moodle site. These will be essential reading. Additionally the list of books below are essential reading, and it is recommended that you purchase a copy. Most are available second hand through Amazon, or as kindle formats, or can be purchased from bookshops. The library also stock copies but not enough for each class member...