Category: Thoughts and Reviews

• Book Review. If I Don’t Know by Wendy Cope

  Wendy Cope is brilliant at writing poems about the simplest of subjects, the smallest of moments and crafting them into something less ordinary. You end up looking at something in a different way. That’s the magic poetry possesses, right?  
  You read through the poems in If I Don't Know and then you get to the long form poem The Teacher’s Tale, which blew me away. It demonstrates the effect a kind teacher can have on your entire life, as well as the result of living in a purely functional home as you grow up. It evoked memories of similar experiences I had growing up. 
  

  

  I don’t go to parties. Well, what are they for, 

  If you don’t need to find a new lover? 

  You drink and you listen and drink a bit more

  And you take the next day to recover.

  Someone to stay home with was all my desire

  And, now that I’ve found a safe mooring,

  I’ve just one ambition in life: I aspire 

  To go on and on being boring.

  If I Don’t Know by Wendy Cope

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  May 26, 2023

  Book blog, Book review, poetry

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• Book Review. Somebody Else’s Kids by Torey Hayden

  Torey Hayden is a writer who has worked in various roles with troubled kids. Her books recount those experiences, albeit with names and details changed for privacy reasons. Torey Hayden has been one of my favourite writers since I was a teenager. The historical nature of her books, these being set in the 70’s and 80’s, appeals to me. As well as the insights into how child care was administered 40 years ago, and how kids with behavioural issues and disabilities were diagnosed, treated and educated then. I have an interest in psychology, how the brain works and what makes people tick too, and there is plenty of that in Torey Hayden’s books. Which is fascinating to me. In a parallel universe, perhaps I did study psychology and go on to develop a career in that field. As it is, I struggle to spell the word. 
  
  
  
  Somebody Else’s Kids was published in 1981. It is set in a time where the main streaming act had passed and special education kids were being placed back into regular classrooms. Torey Hayden had been teaching resource. This soon changes. There are 4 kids who are struggling to integrate in a classroom for one reason or another and so these make up the writer’s new class. 
  One of those is Claudia, a teenager, who is pregnant. She was the character I identified with. Claudia is studious and escapes by reading books. She is vulnerable because her home is in an emotional vacuum. 
  When a boy buys Claudia McDonald’s, that’s what made Claudia believe he was nice and good to her and that they were both ready to have sex. In a conversation with Torey, Claudia is surprised to learn from her teacher that you are supposed to want sex and that it should feel pleasurable. ‘Selling her soul for the price of a McDonald’s milkshake and here was a girl whom no one thought needed help.’ I had similar experiences in my teens with boys. Needy, lonely and naive. 
  Somebody Else’s Kids feels like a roughly written story, it’s more charming to me for that because it feels more real in its unrefined - ness, if that’s a word. 
  

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  May 26, 2023

  blog, Book review, Memoir, psychology, torey hayden

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• A Week of Reading & Writing

  I had to DNF my second book of the year. The first book was Trumpet by Jackie Kay. That was during a period where I was struggling to read anything at all, and I just picked up Trumpet too many times, and could not get into it. The second was All the Men I Never Married by Kim Moore. I like to flick through physical poetry books, and read a poem at random. There were too many poems in the book that were written about subjects that were triggering. Eventually I didn't want to go near the book. 
  I was taken aback because I thought, perhaps, that I was getting ‘better’. That is complete bullshit. I know I am still struggling. Why would I think that?  I am basically operating on a shove all of those memories to the back of my mind and don't dwell on them basis. I did fill in a form for counselling from a charity. There is a 2 month wait to hear back. Then there may well be a wait to be paired with someone. I am trying not to put the eggs all in one basket and hoping this will sort everything out. Life can be put on hold in the meantime! It cannot. 
  
  I have been reading a collection of poetry by Wendy Cope called If I Don't Know. I was never too in love with this book, apart from the one poem The Teacher’s Tale. I didn't find the other poems very appealing. But that has subsequently changed. I am always surprised at time and how it alters perception. Give something time and it can be seen in an entirely different light. It’s like plants. You have to wait for them to grow and to bloom. I'm one of those impatient people. An impatient plant grower who expects overnight results. I was going through my Google Drive. As I wrote in last week’s blog, where I lost a poem, I have been going through the archives of my writing. Not being in the same mindset that I had been in, my writing looks, for better or worse, different. It certainly makes me wonder why I parked some of that writing because I thought it was not getting across what I wanted it to. It puzzles me how with time something isn't so bad after all. I get feelings of the old imposter syndrome with my writing. That's why I previously stopped bothering at all with it. I thought: everyone else can write far better than me and so they can crack on with achieving things in their writing careers. Don't let me get in the way. Why am I so self-effacing? 
  
  I like how after reading some of Wendy Cope’s poetry, I couldn't sleep and I ended up writing 3 book reviews, an opening sentence and this blog post. Poetry is so inspiring. 
  I am also reading at the moment a non-fiction book called Snowflake by Lucy Nichol.  
  

  

  That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading.

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  May 25, 2023

  blog, Books, Mental health, non fiction, poetry

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• I lost a poem recently …

  I have not been in the habit of submitting my poetry to publications for some time. It has only been in the last couple of years that I have started to reopen my notebooks and take a look at these poems, which were written between 2019 - 2021. They feel like different poems to the ones that I had written previously. They have matured. I have also been looking inwards and writing more about my mental health, than when I was younger. When I was younger I wrote more about the lives, or stories, of other people. I find that fascinating. Stories are great. I have a great interest in the lives of other people. In their stories. 
  
  So I type out all the poems that I plan to submit to publications. Having them in one Word document has tended to be my direction of organisation. The only flaw, I have discovered, in that method is when I ‘borrow’ a poem from another document, I then have poems dotted around in several different Word documents. I have a vague awareness of a poem, and what it is about. I have a hunch of the document that it is in if I need to find it. However, early on this week, I lost a poem. 
  
  I assumed this poem must have been typed up at some point but I just could not find it. That is not a problem, I thought, I will go and fetch it from a notebook. My notebooks are all stacked in a plastic bag. Accompanied by supplements from magazines, loose pieces of paper, bills, and bookmarks. It is when I started to root through this bag, the task I had ahead of me began to loom large. The loose pieces of paper have somehow multiplied. I was flicking through, reading poems from, well, I must have been a teenager when I wrote them. I was in danger of turning myself inside out from cringing at the words I had written. I then went through the notebooks themselves. The poems in the notebooks are older poems and I thought the poem that I was looking for was a newer one. It was fruitless looking at them, but I did anyway. By this point I had committed myself to doing my annual let's go down memory lane and see if any of the poems have aged well. There might be some hidden gems. (There were some poems of intrigue) 
  
  I did not find the poem that I was looking for though. Damn, I thought. Now what? I have vague memories of this poem but there was no chance I could recall it word for word from memory. Right, back to Google Drive I went because, knowing me, I probably scrolled through a Word document too fast or I hadn't left enough space between poems to differentiate them. Guess what? 
  It was the latter.
  

  How do you organise your writing? Are there any methods you use that are helpful? 

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  May 18, 2023

  blog, organisation, poetry, stories, Writer

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• Book Review. You Deserve Better by Anne-Marie 

  I wasn’t sure what to expect from You Deserve Better because from the cover and reading the blurb, I was expecting a self-help type book? And they can either be fine or leaning too far on the toxic positivity side. What You Deserve Better is is a memoir, where Anne-Marie recounts stories from growing up, struggles with her mental health and finding her feet in the music industry. There were so many of her experiences that I could relate with. I struggle with anxiety, so I was drawn straight into You Deserve Better from the first sentences, ‘this is how my story starts: Once upon a time I couldn’t leave the house because of anxiety.’ and Anne-Marie writes about how imposter syndrome is a huge part of that anxiety. Again, I can relate. The parts of the book that do feel like part of a self-help book are the what I’ve learnt sections, and activities, at the end of each chapter. The tone of You Deserve Better is encouraging, as if you’re taking advice from a big sister, so it doesn’t feel demanding or preachy. 

  Anne-Marie is writing You Deserve Better from a place where she does understand herself better and is able to recount anecdotes from her past with context. Subjects covered are body image and food, boyfriends and relationships, pretending to be someone they were not, wonky beliefs ‘things that aren’t really true’, the positive benefits of walking, sleep ‘I just found sleep pointless and boring and I just wasn’t tired.’ music/touring and writing and online negativity. As well as the positive pluses to social media, which was refreshing. 

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  March 30, 2023

  Book blog, Mental health, music, non fiction

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