NaPo WriMo: Day One - Ghosts

Day One of NaPo WriMo. I've finished a second draft of a poem I started at the weekend after a visit to the quaint city of Canterbury. It's based on the Sunday morning when we woke up a little groggy, stopped at the shops for essential picnic items and sat by the river inside the castle walls for the one hour of sun that shone that day. It's called Ghosts, as a reminder of the seasons passed.

Ghosts

We sit,

On cranberry blankets,

And watch ghosts of snowflakes fall from the sky.

We sit,

On Moist grass with dampened legs

And watch ducks clean themselves in dirty water.

We sit and we watch

Kids larping over the river

Children with ice cream around their faces

Couples cuddled into every corner of each other.

We sit and we watch

Others watching us,

Wrapping our legs together,

Remembering how only a few months ago we did this to stay warm,

And now we do this because it is warm.

We sit,

And we watch,

Ghosts of snowflakes fall from the sky,

And think of the ghosts ahead.

Bad Language @ The Castle - Wednesday 23rd February

Bad Language will be running another brilliant night of poetry, prose, general amusement with a fantastic special guest, Jo Bell.

From her website: "Jo is a writer and performer, facilitator, workshop leader, editor, live literature promoter and manager of creative projects across the UK. Her main job is to co-ordinate National Poetry Day, for which she is the Director. She is also a director of Living Derby and a trustee of Ledbury Poetry Festival.

Jo devised the online/ hard copy writing project Bugged and is currently writing a play for young people with Action Transport Theatre."

http://belljarblog.wordpress.com/
http://www.bell-jar.co.uk/

There will also be copies of our wonderful second anthology Scattered Reds available and performances from Bad Language themselves.

If you have any questions please e-mail events@badlanguagemcr.co.uk

http://www.thecastlehotel.info/

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=183944688303381

Manchester Rain @ 330 Words

Thanks to 330 words one of my stories is here today:

http://330words.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/manchester-rain-written-by-nici-west/

The piece is called Manchester Rain and it was written on a typical dreary day inside my flat watching out the window at the rain in Manchester, hense the title. The picture is taken from my balcony on that same dreary day.

330 Words is a project where the creators challange writers to take a photo and write a piece no more then 330 words to it. It can be an extract or a half finished piece; whichever you find easiest. Mine is a finished piece but it did take a couple of edits to get it to just below 330 words and I nearly didn't submit as I felt that cutting 50 words out might confuse the meaning of the piece. However, once I tried it I found the meaning of the piece came accross just as clearly and I prefered the tight and consise language. Just goes to show that killing your darlings can actually work.

Bad Language Submissions Continue....

There's only a few days left until the submissions for the third Bad Language anthology close, so I thought I would remind you all! Hurry Hurry Hurry!

Here are the submission guidelines in case you forgot:

Submissions are now open and will close on March 2nd. The guidelines will be as follows:

Please only submit to one of the following categories.

Short Stories

Short stories to be no longer than 2500 words.
Only one short story per person.
Stories to have not been published elsewhere.

Poetry

Poetry to be no longer than 40 lines.
Maximum of 3 poems submitted per person.
Poetry not to have been published elsewhere.

Flash and Micro Fiction

Flash and micro fiction not to exceed 500 words.
No more than 3 flash or micro fictions to be submitted per person.
Flash and micro fiction not to have been published elsewhere.

Other

We will also be accepting graphic fiction (as an A5 sized PDF, maximum ten pages of story).

We also accept extracts from novel's, following the same guidelines as short story submissions, however the extract
has to be able to stand alone.

You may also submit non-fiction articles that have a clear relation to literature. These must follow the short story guidelines.




House guidelines.

You must attach your submission as a .doc file to an e-mail (unless it is graphic fiction.)
You must include a 50 word biography as the body of the e-mail
Your e-mail must be titled 'Bad Language Submissions'

Please note we cannot read the same submission twice. If you have had an entry rejected from a previous anthology, please do not re-submit the same piece. We love to read new work!

Due to the large amount of submissions we cannot accept any that do not follow submissions guidelines.

Submissions should be sent to submissions@badlanguagemcr.co.uk by 10pm on March 2nd.

Pacing

Just a quick note to say one of my stories, Pacing, is being published here today:

http://thepygmygiant.com/author/thepygmygiant/

The website is The Pgymy Giant; it publishes a variety of writings including flash fiction, poetry and non fiction. Have a look around the website there's some good stuff there.

One of my favourite stories on the website is Mash by Emma J Lannie:

http://thepygmygiant.com/2008/12/15/mash/

That is all. 

Bad Language @ The Castle and other exciting things...

The last Bad Language event took place on Wednesday 26th January at the cosy Castle Hotel (which ironically is not a hotel) in Manchester. David Gaffney was the guest slot and read from his new book The Half Life of Songs complimented with other Powerpoint stories. Accompanying this there was an interesting mix of performance poetry, short stories and improv pieces. I think my favourite piece of the night was Bad Language's very own Joe Daly and his slightly unerving piece about a stalker.

The most creative performances of the night (bar David Gaffney's) were Fat Roland's, who performed a piece in letter stuffed in percarious places around his body, and the latest piece from 330 Words, Joely Black's Stalker. I read a new piece based on Deansgate in Manchester about the disillusion that the build up to new years can bring. I'm currently doing a few more edits before I consider submitting this piece to Rainy City Stories. 

Claire Conlon has done a full write up of the event at her Words & Fixtures blog here: http://wordsandfixtures.blogspot.com/2011/01/not-bad-at-all.html   You can see pretty photos of the event here. But here's a taster for you:

Exciting Bad Language news is that our submissions are now open for the third anthology. You can come along to the next Bad Langauge @ The Castle event on the 23rd Feb and test out your new piece ready to submit. Jo Bell will be headlining the next event which I'm very exciting about! There are still open mic slots available so if you're interested email: events@badlanguagemcr.co.uk for a slot! They're running out fast so hurry.

Jo Bell has now taken over the website for Something Every Day, which Bad Language will be hosting in May. We said goodbye to Anna McCrory's at the end of January following a month of quirky poems about everyday problems, and welcomed Jo's experiemental, sometimes bitter poems. I'm enjoying the links she includes to the places she gets inspiration from as well.

Here's a picture of Jo Bell reading at the last Bad Langiage event so you know what to expect for February:

One of my favourite stories of the month is from someone who was featured in the last Bad Lanaguage book Scattered Reds, David Hartly. He's had a story published at Rainy City Stories called The Primark Invasion, and for those of you who have visited the Primark in Picadilly Gardens before, it's not hard to imagine.

I went to see Black Swan with Daniel Carpenter the other day and am left with images of nail files being stabbed in faces. It's an entertaining film at face value but take a look at Daniel Carpenters blog about what is wrong with the film overall - spoiler warning! 

I leave you with some more calming pictures of peoples backs.... at least it made me feel like taking a walk on a summers day, if only this Manchester rain would stop.....


http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/blog-love-downtown-from-behind

Happy 2011

Dear Blogger,

I know I've been neglecting you lately. I have been distracted with all things life shaped and now here is a list of things to come/things that have been inspiring me.

First thing to mention is:  for all you literary lovers out there the next Bad Language event coming up. It will be on Wednesday 26th January starting at 7.30pm in The Castle Hotel in the Northern Quarter, Manchester. The event will be jam packed with open mic performances, Bad Language performances and the special special guest David Gaffney. If you want to come along sign up on facebook or just come along, the event is free so more money for booze!

From the start of the new year I've been taking inspiration from photography; trying my hand at my own amateur photos and looking at professional photos. I got a digital camera from my boyfriend for christmas that can take decent photos of  scenery - so if you want to check out my weak attempt at photography look here. Alternatively, if you want to check out decent photography - I've been following these guys on twitter for a while and they've put some pretty amazing stuff up.

Something interesting that I've been looking at a lot more recently is my friend's fashion blog - Bow Dream Nation. I'm not that interested in fashion but I like looking at the pretty pictures and she usually has cute accessories.

A project which I'm excited about this year is something every day. It's a website originally run by performance poet Max Wallis in which he attempted to write a piece of poetry everyday. For the duration of 2011 the website is being guest hosted by various writers/poet/small press for a period of time each. Bad Language will be hosting it for May 2011 so we'd better get writing! I'm working on a birthday themed one to upload on my birthday.

My favourite comic of 2010 (meaning what I read in 2010 not what was release in 2010!) is Y The Last Man written by Brian K Vaughan. The premise is that all the men are suddenly wiped from the world in mysterious circumstances; all except one man. The man that's left, Yorick, is a bit of a bum with no true direction in life, and a trained escape artist. He spends the whole series searching for his girlfriend who he was about to propose to when the disaster happened. I like how this novel plays with stereotypes and the battle of the sexes, it gets you thinking about how well woman would be able to survive without men and what changes would happen. For example the writer explores the idea that once all the men are dead there is no electricity and all manual labour trades fall apart.

My current book, which is a mammoth book I started for 2011, is Homicide by David Simon. It is described as a true crime classic; detailing the journey of a journalist who spent a year on the street with the homicide police in Balitmore. If anyone has seen the TV show The Wire, it is based on this book. I'm loving getting my teeth sunk into this book because the writing style is literary and although the events are distressing it's not written to manipulate.

So that's my update for today. I need to finish writing a piece for the Bad Language event on Wednesday. I can't decide on what the maximum length of a performance piece should be.