Naked poets...is there any excuse?

Max Wallis by Annabel Williams

Yes, if it's for charity.
Actually I quite like this idea by Victoria Bennett of Wild Woman Press. As a bid to raise awareness for Type 1 diabetes, a disease her three-year-old son Django has been diagnosed with, she and her team have put together a calendar of naked male poets by female photographers such as Naomi Woddis (an excellent poet herself), Annabel Williams and others. Apart from the er...tastefully shot nudes, there are poems by the likes of Wendy Cope, Pascale Petit, Eva Salzman, Penelope Shuttle and many more.


A great present for any poetry loving lady (or man, depending on their inclinations!) and its for a good cause as well.                                                                                                                                                                 

http://www.wildwomenpress.com/Wild_Women_Press/Calendar_Project.html

 

Image by Annabel Williams of poet Ian MacMillan for 'The Naked Muse' calendar, Wild Woman Press.

Doodles, disassociation and the art of looking

I used to have a notebook where I'd scribble notes, poems and collect interesting pictures. Now that I'm almost constantly 'plugged in' to my I-phone, the doodles have turned into Hipstamatic photos, and notes and poetry has an instransient quality to it as they are created on the notepad. Much as I love the tech, I recently started feeling the need to start drawing again, so I bought a little notebook to take with me for my more old skool efforts.

As I try to combat the new I-Phone related disassociation syndrome (whereby my every waking moment has to be spent texting, reading, listening to music, researching...sometimes all at once) I've been doodling my friends while out at the pub. Trying to capture some kind of likeness meant I had to really look at the person I was talking to which was a weirdly intimate process.

My favourite

The idea came from the website I'm building at the moment (probably up next week) where I made an image using doodles and examples of handwriting from people like Henry Miller, Allan Ginsberg, Jorge Luis Borges, Kafka, Nabokov, Plath, Shelley and more.

Here they are, as well as the finished image.

Henry Miller

Jorge Luis Borges

Franz Kafka

Vladimir Nabokov

 Sylvia Plath

Allan Ginsberg


The final image:

Great article on revising and rewriting on by MJ Hyland

MJ Hyland on revising and rewriting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/23/how-to-write-fiction-mj-hyland

Great article dispensing with the myth that good writing springs fully formed from the fevered imaginings of the er..untamed...er...see what I mean?

Revision: Every good writer is a good editor.

I should know, I've given myself the leeway of the past few months to focus on two novels that I'm writing. Initially I thought I was hot stuff because it only took me about 6 months to 'write' my novel 'Blodeuwife' (based on a celtic myth). It has since taken me almost a year to edit the first 10 chapters!

Admittedly, I have been working on a great many other, smaller, projects. Plus most of the work has been done in the past months in which I've actively blocked out time to write, but still.

Sometimes its comforting to know that even great artists have to sweat a bit!

Doing the tourist thing