Tag: poetry

Verbalising

~ simonsylvester ~ Leave a comment

This is just a quick post to invite you – yes, you – along to Verbalise at the Brewery on the 22nd February.

It’s going to be ace. The open mic is already packed with talent – I know that short story guru Brindley Hallam Dennis is coming, and so is my photo challenge sparring partner BigCharlie Poet, both of whom are exceptional performers. I feel absolutely honoured to have a guest slot, and I’m really looking forward to getting my teeth stuck into such a long session – I’ve never had 20 minutes to play with before. I’m already planning my stories. I’m definitely going to read Marrow, which is about dubious experiments in home cooking, and Hutch, which is about guinea pigs vanishing from a suburban garden. I’m probably going to read The Black And The White Of It, too. All three are in my flash fiction collection, Marrow, which should – assuming I’ve managed to print it right way up and right side out – be a real buzz to read from. I’m also going to read some new work. I’ve been working on a piece about the dark side of a village bakery competition, and I also want to try running a dozen of my Twitter stories together as a quickfire rattle through relationship disasters. I think I’m going to call that 10 Second Speed Dates, and might even try and read against the clock. If there’s time, I might read a very short flash piece called Real Life, too, which was published by Paragraph Planet last week. I’m going to relish the words – to invest my confidence in these stories I’ve written and endlessly rewritten. After all that time glued to a computer, reading live is where the stories draw breath.

If you can come, it would be great to see you. Compere Ann the Poet tells me that anyone who wants an open mic slot will get one, so roll on up and bring a story…

A quick aside with some good news, too – after a couple of story rejections in January, I’m delighted to have had two acceptances in as many days. I’ve landed flash fiction Circle Stone with the tenth issue of estimable magazine Gutter, and sci-fi short story Patience in an anthology called After The Fall. Go team!

Drowned villages

~ simonsylvester ~ 5 Comments

I’m a little ashamed to say that I nearly didn’t post this. It’s probably the most amazing writing competition I’ve ever seen, and I’m so hungry for it that a purely selfish part of me doesn’t want anyone else to know about it. But that’s not how a writing community functions, and I’d rather the prize-winner was the best possible piece of work. So take a look at this: a brand new poetry competition where the top prize is having your work soundtracked by Mogwai.

In case you missed that, I’ll say it again.

THE TOP PRIZE IS HAVING YOUR WORK SOUNDTRACKED BY MOGWAI.

I’ve written about Mogwai before (here and here). They recorded my favourite ever album, Come On Die Young, and they’ve been one of my favourite bands for well over a decade. It’s no exaggeration to say that they have soundtracked around half my writing output. Although I don’t really count myself a poet, this is too good an opportunity to miss. What’s more, the theme is tight and thrilling: the judges are seeking poems about drowned villages, and this is where the competition gets really interesting. There’s a submerged village in Lanarkshire in Scotland; another in Cumbria in England; and a third in Gwynedd in Wales. The competition is only open to library members of those specific regions. By happy coincidence, I’ve been a member of Cumbria Libraries for years.

The judges are Scottish Makar Liz Lochhead, top poet Ian McMillan and Manic Street Preachers bassist Nicky Wire. I’ve never known a catchment so small for such an intriguing competition, such big judges and such an amazing prize. The theme really sings to me; I’ve written before about my love of French mystery drama The Returned (also soundtracked by Mogwai) which features a drowned village, and I’ve often been haunted by the thought of steeples emerging from Haweswater.

By weird coincidence, I also have the makings of a poem that fits the theme. A year or so ago, I started work on a piece about the landscapes of the Lakes. While I was pleased with the language and form, I couldn’t find a hook to hang it on, and abandoned it unfinished. This competition gives me the hook.

I’ve spent most of today working on the poem, writing and redrafting and always reading – reading it to myself, reading it to the cats – trying new forms, new phrases. I’m pleased with it, as far as it goes, but I’m really unsure about my poetry, and I don’t know how it will fare against stiff competition. I’m going to revisit several more times over the rest of the month, and submit only when it’s as tight as possible.

Soundtracked by Mogwai. A man can dream…

UPDATE – If you want to see my thoughts on the winning poems, mosey over here.

haweswater-2

Kicking monsters down the hall

~ simonsylvester ~ Leave a comment

Improving my spoken word performance is an ongoing mission. There’s no substitute for actually reading live, and I have my first two events of the year booked in for February. First up is a support slot at Dreamfired on Valentine’s Day, and then I’m top of the bill (eek!) for Verbalise at the end of the month.

As well as actual readings, I’ve started looking for workshops. I attended a great Spotlight session in Lancaster with Brindley Hallam Dennis last year. He set the class the truly startling task of having other people read our work. My workshop partner went through my flash piece Marrow at a third of the pace I usually do, really savouring the words, and she made it three times better. That was an important lesson. I’ve also taken a huge amount from veteran performer David Hartley’s tips for spoken word.

I watch a lot of readings, both live and online, to see how other writers project and present their words. I’ve seen some great stuff, and some terrible stuff. This performance by Shane Koyczan is absolutely, completely, one of the very best. I’ve listened to it a dozen times, and it grows ever more wonderful.

Scroobius Pip stole my bicycle

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Scroobius Pip photographed for the Observer by Antonio Olmos.

I hardly ever remember my dreams, but I still have lucid recall of the time Scroobius Pip stole my bicycle. I was talking to a friend on the street when he seized the bike and ran off. I chased him into the Foundry, a dingy pub in Shoreditch. Inside, I pursued him through a labyrinth of tiny rooms, narrow corridors and crooked staircases. At every corner, I had to elbow my way through crowds of louche hipsters. Even encumbered by my bicycle, Scroobius Pip melted between them like a shadow. I couldn’t catch him, and then he vanished in the dark.

As well as being an expert ethereal bike thief, he is an exceptional performance poet. Here you’ll find him presenting an hour of spoken word on XFM. Quite aside from the tantalising prospect of a solid hour of poetry on mainstream radio, there are some absolute gems in there. It’s worth the time, so put your feet up and bask like a shark through this sea of lyrical genius.

Flash fiction challenge: Graffiti

~ simonsylvester ~ 4 Comments

Okay, folks. Here’s round three of the writing challenge I’m working on with performance poet Simon Hart, also known in certain Mafia circles as BigCharlie Poet. This is how it goes: we take it in turns to choose a picture, both of us write a response around it, and we post the results up here. Round one was Cathedrals. Round two was Libraries. For round three, it was my turn to pick the image, and I opted for this doozy from my Pinterest short story board:

20131220-223914.jpg

Although I had some inklings, I didn’t entirely know where to go with this at first. I was also embroiled in a marathon redraft of The Visitors, and so the challenge slid by the wayside a bit. Simon was finished in two days, the swine. Anyway, when I had a chance to work on it properly, the ideas came fairly quickly. My first story was well over a thousand words long and barely halfway in when I decided to put it on ice. It’s going to be a good piece, when I’ve time to finish it, but it’s not right for this. My second attempt was finished in a single session, plus a few tweaks the following day. As with my Libraries story, this feels like it could be the start of something much bigger; since finishing it, I’ve been brewing on a full novel about the characters and their situation, and I have some exciting ideas starting to spark. I think I’ll be taking it a lot further in the future.

It’s interesting, as well, that Simon and I had fairly similar responses to the picture. Our work in the first two challenges was quite diverse; I don’t know whether this image is more specific, and therefore limiting, or whether it actually offers more themes, and we simply happened to choose the same one.

Here’s what Simon has to say about the picture:

“What a difference an image makes! Last time out I (we) struggled a bit under the weight of a well-mined seam of creation for us with my choice of a library pic… I’m glad to say that the responsibility of the choice for this challenge came from Mr Sylvester, and, from my perspective at least, I think he should pick them all! To say that the creation of this piece contrasts with the last process would be underselling it somewhat… I also know that despite the complexity of trying to describe this picture to an audience, I really want to perform this.

This poem came about very quickly and with a very clear idea of what I wanted straight away, and I think it has delivered what I wanted from it. Seeing the image for the first time, I was struck how old monsters are never really old monsters, and they always find their way back somehow. They may change their locale and era, but they continue on…”

With that said, here’s Simon Hart’s response to the picture:

Urban Myth
by BigCharlie Poet

I started my life as a hasty scrawl
Daubed in white paint on a houses side wall
An innocuous way for me to be born
Not really planned, just hurriedly drawn
Against the time constraints of another coming dawn,
The sun creeping almost afraid of my form
And boy did I grow!
There was no way that they could ever know
What i would become, the strength i would show
And each feed of paint gave me a new glow
Though my home was a wall, i still reached for the sky
Never once did i ask for the reason why
I became a creature that makes young kids cry
Which the ancient greeks locked in a maze to die
That people turn their heads away hurts, i won’t lie…
But soon i was so big that single cans of paint didn’t suffice
When you’re twenty feet high, with the head of a bull, who do you turn to for advice?
I couldn’t exactly stroll into a restaurant and say “give me whatever’s nice”
So i had to come up with a solution of my own making
And because i couldn’t do any great british baking
I looked around and saw souls, ready for the taking…
I mean, it’s not as if you lot even notice they’re missing
You still stumble through each day like you’re barely living
Not looking away from what your tv is giving
So now, when you try to open your mind
And use your soul for guidance, you suddenly find
Yourself empty, and you don’t know the reason
But you convince yourself it’s because you watched another season
Of “I’m a Celebrity, get me out of here!”
Or you drowned your brain cells in far too much beer
That i am the culprit will never be clear…
So thank you for giving me what i really need
A simple, quick and nourishing feed
But i won’t let myself give in to my greed
I’ll satisfy myself with the odd soul waiting for a bus
The business professional in too much of a rush
The guy who’s become a 3pm lush…
Just enough to keep me going
After all, this wall doesn’t leave much room for me growing…

…and here’s my response:

Vanishings
by Simon Sylvester

We assembled at dusk and waited, scanning the skyline, binoculars flitting between the sunset buildings. Half the squadron wore night vision goggles, for all the good they’d do. It was only my third year with the division, and I was already the oldest. The kids were tense, but they struggled with all-night shifts. By two in the morning, a couple of them had dozed off. Dew glistened on their spray suits.

“Contact! Contact!”

As the radio crackled into life, slumbering officers stumbled to their feet. I checked the chamber on my gun. It was clean.

“Where are they, Jenkins?”

My voice was calmer than I felt.

“Corner of Gresham and Moorgate.”

I could hear her panic.

“Stay calm, Jenkins. We’re on our way n-.”

Even as I spoke, her scream clattered in my earpiece.

I gestured to the others. Grim-faced, we lined up and marched out, trooping along King William Street at a jog. At Bank, I gestured for the squad to slow and break formation. They fanned out, torches sweeping beams of light across the deserted road. I took point, and we stepped in silence through the Old Town.

Halfway along Prince’s Street, prickles ran down my spine. The feeling turned my bones to ice, but I knew better than to ignore it. That feeling had kept me alive for three years. I raised my fist, signalled to freeze. The squad halted at once. Nothing moved but sheets of paper, cartwheeling through the night.

On the wall ahead was a perfect, life-sized painting of Jenkins, caught mid-scream. I grimaced. She’d only been in the division three weeks. Some animal instinct made me raise my torch and scan the buildings above. The cone of light crawled up the wall into darkness.

I peered into the gloom at the edge of the light.

The top third of the building was graffitied with a gigantic white minotaur. It loomed above the street, unmoving, and for a heartbeat, I thought it was already dead. But then the minotaur grinned, and a fist clenched in my guts. Behind me, Stevenson shrieked and loosed a burst of fixative. The minotaur was too quick for him, melting back into the bricks even as the web of glue spattered across the wall. The beast darted around the corner of the building, pouring across the stone, the molecules of paint sliding from brick to brick. Splashes of fixative showered the empty wall.

“Hold your fire!” I bellowed.

The squad gathered closer together. In my earpiece, someone was hyperventilating.

“Shit! Jenkins has gone west.”

“He’s big. He’s big, sir-”

“I’ve seen worse, son. Be calm. Keep your wits about you. He’s somewhere close.”

There was another yell behind me. I spun round to see the minotaur reach out of the building, pour onto the pavement and swing his vast arm across the road, knocking half my squad to their knees. Redmayne lay closest to him. In two dimensions, his paint poured across the tarmac, wrapping around her ankle. She screamed and kicked, but the paint held fast. The minotaur yanked her to the ground, and began hauling her towards the wall. The rest of the squad were firing indiscriminately. Wherever splashes of the fixative caught the minotaur, fragments of paint were trapped within the brick, but he was big enough to shrug them off, leaving patches of himself behind. Redmayne was almost at the wall when I found a clear shot. I raised my gun, aimed and fired off half a tank. The glue showered across the beast in a net of spray, pasting his entire head. He juddered to a halt, mouth fixed in a permanent, silent roar. His painted hands continued to sweep across the bricks, scrabbling for purchase, but his head was stuck fast. One by one, my squad found targets, and soon every part of the monster was stuck to the wall. Redmayne scrambled free, sobbing, and backed into a knot of her comrades. We gathered together and looked up at the beast.

He was easily four storeys tall, made with gallons and gallons of paint. His creator had been a talented artist. Even fixed fast to the wall, the minotaur wriggled with life. His horns came to wicked points, and despite the fixative now coating his body, veins and muscles still pulsed on the brickwork. He must have taken weeks to make, back in the day. In a sense, he was even beautiful.

It was hard to remember a time before the paintings came to life.

The Cleaners arrived within the hour, all dead-eyed and paint-smeared with their mops and detergents. We watched them scrub the minotaur from the building, watched him dissolve into suds and drip into the sewers. Then they washed Jenkins from the wall, too. I didn’t watch that part. When they were done, we walked back to the depot. The new trainees looked shellshocked. The older squaddies looked harder, meaner. Redmayne wasn’t talking. She was one of my best officers, but this would be her ticket out. Poor Jenkins hadn’t even made it this far.

Every step of the way, ghosts watched us from the walls. The Cleaners worked hard, but every day, new faces stared out from the brick. And no matter how hard they worked, they couldn’t wash the faces from my nightmares.

 

‘Selkie’ by Robin Robertson

~ simonsylvester ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to Iain Maloney for sending this poem my way; it’s a cracking wee piece by poet Robin Robertson.

In memory of Michael Donaghy

“I’m not stopping,”
he said, shrugging off his skin
like a wet-suit, then stretching it
on the bodhran’s frame,
“let’s play.”
And he played till dawn:
all the jigs and reels
he knew, before he stood
and drained the last
from his glass, slipped back in
to the seal-skin,
into a new day, saluting us
with that famous grin:
“That’s me away.”

There’s talk of selkies in The Visitors, and this chimes nicely with the last stages of my redraft. It also makes me want to read more of Robertson’s work. Try reading this aloud; the scan is sensational.

A century of…

~ simonsylvester ~ Leave a comment

I realised, after posting this video about a ballerina dancing on butcher knives, that I’d hit a hundred posts on the blog. A century is still pretty arbitrary, really, but it’s as good a place as any to stop and think about why I keep a blog.

I started writing the blog six months ago to track the progress of my novel. The book was called Riptide Heart, back then. It’s now called The Visitors, and it will be published by Quercus Books in 2014. All that has happened in the lifetime of this blog. I’ve tracked my highs and lows and uncertainties throughout the publication process, from finding an agent (a year ago) to signing the contract (last week).

As well as the novel, I’ve written a lot about reading my work live, and the struggles I’ve had with my nerves. Each of my various readings has been painfully revisited, but that return has helped me filter and understand the experience. I’ve also explored my decision to gather my flash fiction into a collection, which is called Marrow, and will almost certainly be self-published, and teaching myself InDesign to lay it out professionally. (More on this soon! As I approach the end of my redraft and clear my backlog of film jobs, I should have the time and space to push ahead and get this wrapped up and printed.) I’ve posted published and unpublished flash fictions, and talked about my writing processes. I’ve written about my film work, and catalogued some of the things that I find inspiring or magical. I’ve posted galleries of the threshold spaces I’m so obsessed with.

All in all, then, my blog has ranged far wider than I ever thought it would. More than anything else, I’ve been surprised at how personally I’ve addressed some of these subjects. When I started, I expected the blog to be fairly analytical, for want of a better word; dry, professional. But in struggling with my live performance readings, and in wrangling my novel redraft, I’ve found myself at times alarmingly open about how I feel about my work. I like that the process of writing has taken me in that direction quite organically.

One of the joys of using WordPress is browsing through the stats, which tell me what brings people to the blog, what they look at, and often where they come from. I’ve had visitors from as far afield as Mozambique and Mongolia, searching for everything from devil dogs to gay porn. (Hopefully not everyone will be as disappointed as those two internauts.) I’ve had a week without any views, then hundreds of visitors the day Neil Gaiman retweeted this post about libraries. Have a look at this screen grab and see if you can guess which day that was:

photo

The two things that bring people to the blog most often are on the periphery of my interests; this post about a nursery rhyme and this post about a WW2 fighter pilot preserved in a peatbog. People have searched for Bancree, which is the fictional Scottish island I created for The Visitors, and for novelist friends like Iain Maloney and Ali Shaw. Lots of people come to the blog looking for information about my agent, Sue Armstrong at Conville & Walsh, and my publisher, Jane Wood at Quercus.

More than anything else, though, the blog is for me. It’s how I filter my ideas and monitor what I’m doing. Writing about my life is what I need to live my life.

Flash fiction challenge: Libraries

~ simonsylvester ~ 3 Comments

BigCharlie Poet (the nom de guerre of Simon Hart) and I have been trying out a picture-based flash fiction vs. poetry writing challenge. In case you missed it, here’s round one: Cathedrals.

It was Simon’s turn to choose a picture, this time, and this is what he chose:

libraries

I found this one very difficult. With Cathedrals, I had the story in an instant, and writing was a cruise, but this has taken some working around. I guess that’s the way with writing. I can’t turn it on like a tap. Sometimes the stories shimmer into view as though they’d been there all along, and sometimes they come word by word, kicking and fighting, refusing to stay on the page. This one’s been a toughie, and I’ve tried it three times. My first attempt was an illiterate dystopia where an old man found a book he couldn’t read. It spiralled very quickly, and I abandoned it at 600 words. My second attempt was about a haunted library, and that was a little better – I think I can rescue it for a short story – but it wasn’t good enough for this, and I hadn’t the heart to stick at it.

I have written a previous piece that fits this picture exactly, which doesn’t help. The abandoned library is a perfect representation of one of my Twitter shorts. Struggling to get that story out of my head, I posted it again in the hope of exorcising the blasted thing. It looks like this:

Screen Shot 2013-11-03 at 11.49.06

Having sent that back out into the big wide world, I did feel a little freer, but it wasn’t until I discussed the picture with Mon that I came up with my final idea. She imagined the books dropping away into nothingness, and that was the spark I needed. Time and time again, Mon reminds me of the stories I like to tell the most. She keeps me on track when I’m getting lost. With that image in my head, I sat down and wrote the final piece fairly quickly. It’s the middle of something much bigger, I think. I can see this growing into a novella or even a novel, given time. I’m not done with the characters.

Simon Hart found this one tricky, too, which is a relief. It’s taken both of us longer than the fortnight we’d agreed, but then, hell; we’re busy people. This is what Simon has to say about it:

“Well, it’s finally been written and this has been difficult! I saw the picture and thought it was interesting, suggested it and went ahead with it as the challenge piece… ignoring the fact I have written creatively about libraries before. What it has meant is that those pieces of work have been clamouring at my brain to be let out again. I have refused them, and eventually created this new poem, but not without help. The title and line relating to it come from my Dad pitching me a line far greater than anything my feable mind was coming up with, and I finished only because I cheated and read Simon’s excellent entry on the same photo. Cheers gents.”

Here’s Simon’s response to that troublesome picture:

Engines of Thought

by BigCharlie Poet

There were books strewn everywhere
Left without much apparent care
Though some were in bundles, others in stacks
Most were just left to cover the cracks
In the old dead library’s floor

The words on the pages, scattered like dust
Engines of thought now turned to rust
Childhood stories being lost by the hour
The Tempest losing so much of its power
From the old dead library’s floor

The shelves have been looted for perceived greater worth
And the paper that’s left returns to the earth
The knowledge inside no longer at hand
The words pour away like loose grains of sand
Through the old dead library’s floor

They once taught us magic, and fanciful tales
Told us stories of mad Captains hunting white whales
Taught that being obsessed was a kind of disease
That carried you away on angry dark seas
Not the old dead library’s floor

But now they do nothing, we won’t let them teach us
And where they sit they will struggle to reach us
Abandoned and now out of our sight
They are doomed to their own perpetual night
On the old dead library’s floor

And here’s my response:

Books Like Grains Of Sand

The creature stepped out of the darkness and into the candlelight. It was smaller and far slighter than Morag, and carried itself daintily, as though it was frightened of breaking a limb. Its tiny eyes were black pinheads in the cloth. It had a ragged hole for a mouth. It smelled like coal sheds.

It led her to a door.

“In here, my pet,” it lisped. When it talked, stuffing spilled from the corners of its mouth.

In jerky, spastic movements, it opened the door to the library, and daylight spilled into the gloom. Squinting in the light, Morag peered beyond the creature and saw a vast room. The floor was entirely carpeted in books. Books, books and more books, gathered in loose stacks, strewn by the dozen, piled up in the corners.

“All of them?” she whispered.

The creature’s smile wrapped around its head. Morag heard stitches popping as it grinned.

“All of them,” it said.

It turned the hourglass again, and the sand began to flow.

Morag slung her knapsack, took a deep breath and brushed past the creature into the library. She stumbled to the top of a nearby stack and surveyed the room. The door creaked shut behind her, and the creature’s smile receded to a single line as it melted into darkness.

She was alone in the library. Before her, books lay scattered in their thousands.

“But where to start?” she murmured.

She took a single step, and then she heard the slithering. It was so faint at first, ghostly whispers, but gathered to a rush. Morag scanned the room. The books in the middle were moving. They revolved, and more volumes fell inwards as they shifted, gathering momentum. They spiralled, forming a circle and starting to drop into the floor. It was spreading outwards, increasing speed. It was a whirlpool. With a jolt, the stack beneath her shifted, throwing her to the ground. Morag fell headlong into the torrent.

The daylight closed overhead, grey and fluttering with loose pages. Books battered and struck her as they ground and jumbled in the gyre. The movement was inexorable, dragging her down, dragging her into the centre. Her feet lost contact with the floor and then it all dropped away and Morag was falling, flying, plunging into nothing as the books tumbled all around her. She panicked, flailing and groping for contact, anything to arrest her fall. There was nothing to hold on to. The space beneath her and around her was empty entirely, a sea of nothingness stretching on forever. Books fell around her like rain, covers flapping and pages rippling. As they fell, Morag realised they looked exactly like the sand in the timer.

In a heartbeat, she remembered what Badger told her: about time. About the creature. About this place.

She took a deep breath, shut her eyes, and reached out. Her hand closed around a book. Still falling, she opened her eyes, and turned to the first page. Morag began to read.

Flash fiction challenge: The Cathedral

~ simonsylvester ~ 4 Comments

Simon Hart (a.k.a. BigCharlie Poet) and I have taken on a challenge. We thought we’d each try writing a piece inspired by the same picture and see what we came up with. We’ve had a week or so to work on something; Simon’s poem is called ‘Empty’, and my story is called ‘If All We Ever See Is Cathedrals’ (which I pinched from a Paddy Garrigan lyric I can’t stop thinking about). Paddy sort of makes an appearance in the story, too. Sorry, Paddy.

This is the picture, which I found on Pinterest:

20131020-110046.jpg

And here’s Simon’s response to it:

Empty

by BigCharlie Poet

He stands alone inside the ruined shell
Watches the water flow in a place that once, he thinks, housed God as well
And he tries to convince himself that he is at peace
That he is free from everything, has achieved a release
From the torments of his daily life
The soul destroying work, the unfeeling distant wife
But there is a feeling he cannot seem to shake
Like someone is encouraging him to return to a state
Of conciousness, where he needs to open his eyes
Where he needs to breathe again, before his body dies
So he dulls the uncomfortable feeling by watching the water flow
Sees the plants as they find a way to grow
Through the abandoned cathedrals fallen floor
“Sam! Wake up…” this time he’s sure
That the prescence is more than just his mind
Is positive that someone is trying to find
A way to break into this place of calm
Where God heard raised to the Heavens many different psalms
“Open your eyes for me Sam!” he hears the voice again
And as he hears it, he notices the light shine through the pane
Of glass flash so brightly that it causes him to stumble
“C’mon Sam! Open those eyes” the voice now a calm but insistent rumble
The next flash of light brings a jolt to his chest
He sees briefly a world he thought he had left
He tries to return to where the calm water is flowing
But with each passing second he knows he is going
Back to a place he can’t seem to escape
He wakes to the question “Sam, what did you take?
What did you take, Sam? I need you to say,
Was it pills that made you this way?
If it was pills, can you give me a nod?”
And as his head moves he thinks, “why not this time, God?”

And here’s my response:

If All We Ever See Is Cathedrals

by Simon Sylvester

It was no more than a hairline, running between two tiles, but as the year progressed, the fracture spread into a delta and ran between the squares of the mosaic. Father Garrigan glared, then called in builders. They lifted the mosaic for restoration, and discovered a network of cracks hidden beneath the rotten grout. Upon closer examination, damage was found all over the cathedral. Uneven lines formed between the huge, half-ton coins that split the annex from the nave. By the end of that autumn, it became plain that the pillars were subsiding.

The Father stood in his cathedral, framed by the huge window arches. Surveyors and scaffolders scurried around him, making ruin of the House of the Lord. The cathedral was closed for a fortnight, and then for six months – and then for a year. Whenever repairs were completed, new faults were discovered. One night, while the foundations were being electronically monitored for vibrations, the floor fell in. Father Garrigan found the cathedral exposed from the sepulchre to the vaulted dome. There was a stream running directly through the building, bubbling up from between the broken flags. The cost of repair became prohibitive. The building was condemned and desanctified. The builders withdrew. The cathedral was abandoned.

With time, slates began to slide from the rafters and shatter on the rocks. Birds and bats roosted on the lip around the dome. A tapestry of moss explored the walls, creeping into alcoves where statues used to stand. The light shone green with algae, and the cathedral dreamed to the music of the stream. Everyone had gone.

Almost everyone had gone.

Louder than ever, now, Father Garrigan hears the voice of God. It echoes from the walls. It sounds like water, and it sounds like the wind. It sounds just a little like laughter.

Loki

~ simonsylvester ~ 2 Comments

Well, that’s my first Dreamfired done and dusted. It was a really good night – more people need to know about the Storynights.

First up was banjo virtuoso Bill Lloyd. He’s a legend in Cumbria and the north, and he didn’t disappoint, starting with a haunting ‘Wayfaring Stranger’, and segueing into a range of folk songs from America and Ireland. My storyteller uncle Rich Sylvester had the next slot, relating an anecdote about exploring the London Olympic equestrian venue at midnight with a bellyful of Russian beer. It was very funny. Rich is an extremely affable raconteur, and his stories are always engaging – I haven’t seen his work for a few years, and it was great to be part of the audience.

I was on after Rich. I’d decided to get into the traditional spirit by performing without notes. In the minutes before going onstage, my nerves were worse than ever, but I settled fairly quickly.  I read two stories I’ve been practising lately – Circle Stone and The Lion Tamer’s Daughter.  I stumbled once in Lion Tamer, and for a moment I thought I would go entirely blank – but I recovered, found my place and delivered the rest without a hitch. Circle Stone is an extremely quick flash piece of only 75 words, and it’s surreal enough to counter the darkness of Lion Tamer. The two work well in combination, but I’m going to semi-retire them now. They’re both destined for my flash fiction collection Marrow, and I’ll try and get them published elsewhere first, but I’ve read them a lot recently, and it’s time for some new material. On reflection, though, the reading went well. I don’t think I’ll make a habit of performing without notes, but Dreamfired was a perfect place to give it a whirl.

After me came a poet, whose name I didn’t catch, who read some playfully nostalgic pieces; and then a story about a 21st century Grim Reaper. Bill Lloyd returned to round off the first part of the night with another couple of songs – his cover of Frankie’s Gun, which I absolutely love – it was Bill who introduced me to the music of The Felice Brothers – and one of his own compositions, a haunting Armenian lament.

This is what Frankie’s Gun looks like:

After the interval came Emily Parrish, aka Scandalmongers. She walked onto the stage singing and beating a drum, and launched without preamble into the Norse creation myth. Her show explores the role of Loki, the trickster god, and all his jealousies and cruelty and fun. What made the show all the more remarkable was the way she entwined Norse mythology with her own childhood. The transitions between the Cotswolds and Asgard were frankly astonishing – from the top of a perfect climbing tree to the horrors whispered into Baldr’s troubled brain. It was lyrical, visceral and intense, and it left the audience stunned.

emily-loki

Loki comes highly recommended from me – catch it if you can.

Thanks, too, to Kat Quatermass, who organises and hosts Dreamfired. Lovely to meet her after months of email contact. I’m definitely going back in November to catch Peter Chand performing Grimm’s Sheesha.

What’s next for me, then? I’ve been thinking about my novel edits for a week or so – a process I refer to as ‘brewing’ – and I’m almost ready to start work. I mentioned in a previous post the structural changes I need to make, and my uncertainty about how to make some of those changes. That has passed. I now know where that character is going to enter the story. Although it means a lot of work, I feel secure in the knowledge of how to do it, so a lot of that worry has eased.

My next booked reading is at the Brewery’s Spoken Word night in February, though I’ll try and land a few more open mic spots before then. Stay tuned. And go to Dreamfired.