Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2011: Lavinia Greenlaw

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Carol Ann Duffy, Kaite O’Reilly (2010 winner), and judges Gillian Clarke, Jeanette Winterson and Stephen Raw, Saville Club, London, March 2011.

As last year’s winner of the Ted Hughes Award, for my version of Aeschylus’s Persians, I was delighted to receive the following from The Poetry Society this week:

Lavinia Greenlaw Wins Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry with Audio Obscura

Judges Edmund de Waal, Sarah Maguire and Michael Symmons Roberts have presented the 2011 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry to Lavinia Greenlaw for her outstanding sound work Audio Obscura.

Now in its third year, the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry is awarded annually to recognise excellence in poetry. It is one of the only awards to acknowledge the wide range of collaborative work being produced by poets – not just in books, but beyond.

Audio Obscura perfectly demonstrates the extent of this range. Taking place at Manchester’s Piccadilly station in July 2011 and at London’s St Pancras International station in September / October 2011, Audio Obscura is a sound work in which the listener enters interior lives and discovers, somewhere between what is heard and what is seen, what cannot be said. We become conscious of this as transgression but are unable to contain our curiosity. Caught up in the act of listening, we too give ourselves away. The judges said:

“Audio Obscura was a groundbreaking work that fully captured the spirit of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. The judges felt this was a particularly outstanding year with six stellar entries on the shortlist”.

Greenlaw’s poetry includes Minsk and The Casual Perfect. She has also published novels and the non-fiction The Importance of Music to Girls and Questions of Travel: William Morris in Iceland. She has held residencies at the Science Museum and the Royal Society of Medicine, and is Professor of Creative Writing at UEA. Her exploration of perception has led to radio programmes about landscape and light.

TED HUGHES AWARD SHORTLIST

Simon Armitage for Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster A drama documentary for BBC Radio 4, this is an elegy to the 20-year-old student who was attacked whilst attempting to protect her boyfriend from a group of violent youths. Four years after her death, Sophie’s story is told through poems by Simon Armitage, and an interview with her mother, Sylvia Lancaster. Produced by Sue Roberts.

Julia Copus for Ghost Lines A personal testimony of IVF treatment and failed pregnancy by Julia Copus in poems and prose, written especially for this BBC Radio 3 programme. Poems read by actress Hattie Morahan with music composed by Jacob Shirley. Produced by John Taylor/Fiction Factory.

Robert Crawford for Simonides Translations of the ancient Greek poet, on death, loss and remembrance, accompanied by photographs by Norman McBeath. The project is also the subject of a 2011 exhibition. Commissioned by the University of St Andrews as part of its 600th Anniversary.

Lavinia Greenlaw for Audio Obscura A ‘sound experience’ that saw its audience don headphones amongst the bustle of London St Pancras and Manchester Piccadilly train stations to listen in on individual narratives. Commissioned and produced by Artangel and Manchester International Festival.

Andrew Motion for Laurels and Donkeys A BBC Radio 4 programme produced by Tim Dee featuring a sequence of dramatic war poems to mark Remembrance Day.

Christopher Reid for Airs and Ditties of No Man’s Land An orchestral piece set in the First World War, first performed as part of the BBC Proms and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Music composed by Colin Matthews.

PREVIOUS WINNERS OF THE TED HUGHES AWARD FOR NEW WORK IN POETRY

• 2010 Kaite O’Reilly for her verse translation of Aeschylus’ The Persians (National Theatre Wales production).

http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/competitions/tedhughes/history/tha2010/

• 2009 Alice Oswald for her book Weeds and Wild Flowers (Faber & Faber) with accompanying etchings by Jessica Greenman.

• The Poetry Society was founded in 1909 to promote a “more general recognition and appreciation of poetry”. Since then, it has grown into one of Britain’s most dynamic arts organisations, representing British poetry both nationally and internationally. Today it has nearly 4,000 members worldwide and publishes the leading poetry magazine, Poetry Review. With innovative education and commissioning programmes and a packed calendar of performances, readings and competitions, the Poetry Society champions poetry for all ages.

• Poetry Society awards and competitions: In addition to the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, the Poetry Society runs the National Poetry Competition, one of the world’s longest-running and most prestigious prizes for an individual poem. The Poetry Society also organises the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award for poets aged 11-17, the young people’s performance poetry championship SLAMbassadors UK and the Corneliu M Popescu Prize, for poetry translated from a European language into English.

• Recommendations for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry: Members of the Poetry Society and Poetry Book Society were invited to recommend a living UK poet, working in any form, who has made the most exciting contribution to poetry in 2011.

Reflections on revising a theatre script (2): Give it space

Publicity photograph for LeanerFasterStronger, to be produced by Sheffield Theatres/Chol Theatre in May 2012.

It is so difficult to get perspective on a script when in the process of being revised.   Computers allow us to ‘futz’ with the work continually – deleting, copying and pasting, shifting order, reallocating speeches to different characters… It wasn’t so long ago when such editing processes were time-consuming and demanded commitment: we thought long and hard before taking the scissors to the page, actually cutting and pasting. Perhaps today making changes are too easy and so we try different versions within seconds – and then lose perspective on which of these various edits, which we can effortlessly make, is the best.

I’m not suggesting we return to those ‘analogue’ days (if I can creatively use the term so) – but I think a small shift in our consciousness may assist when rewriting.   Writers can become exasperated with all the editing possibilities open to them, they can get tied up, knotted in the throughlines. I’ve lost count of the times writers I’m mentoring have lost their way owing to a dizzying succession of edits on parts of their scripts. They try a section that doesn’t seem to be working one way, and then another, and another – and then lose sight of the original intention. They really can’t see the wood for the trees.

I’ve learnt to take my revisions at a slightly slower rate. When editing a scene, I’ll try one version and then walk away – go outside, look at the sky, have a wander around, change my mindset and the view – and after twenty or so minutes, I’ll return and be able to read the revised section with fresher eyes. It seems time consuming and a little tree-hugging, but it works and saves time in the long run. For larger edits, I sleep on it and can get perspective on the script the next morning. For serious manuscript-length edits, I put the script away for at least a week.

This process enables me to commit to each decision I make in the editing process; it makes me treat the actions I take seriously, knowing there will consequences – and yet I know the decisions are not necessarily final, I can still shift and change. I’m simply giving space around revisions, so the air can circulate and I can clearly see the changes I am making, and whether or not they are improvements. It is allowing work to evolve and settle at a slightly more organic, human rate.

copyright Kaite O’Reilly 28/3/12

One hundred ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 37-41

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Further thoughts, provocations, and advice on writing fiction.

37.  Good writers work on their strengths. Great writers work on their weaknesses. (KOR).

38.  Concentrate your narrative energy on the point of change. This is especially important for historical fiction. When your character is new to a place, or things alter around them, that’s the point to step back and fill in the details of their world. People don’t notice their everyday surroundings and daily routine, so when writers describe them it can sound as if they’re trying too hard to instruct the reader. (Hilary Mantel).

39.  Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious. (PD James).

40.  If you are writing a plot-driven genre novel make sure all your major themes/plot elements are introduced in the first third, which you can call the introduction. Develop your themes and characters in your second third, the development. Resolve your themes, mysteries and so on in the final third, the resolution. (Michael Moorcroft).

41.  Don’t look back until you’ve written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceeding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in the edit. (Will Self).

Guest blog: Susan Burns on LeanerStrongerFaster auditions

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Andrew Motion’s ‘What If’. 

Guest blog: Susan Burns, Artistic Director of Chol Theatre: 

It’s Thursday 15^th March, the last day of casting for LeanerFasterStronger and what’s more it’s a beautiful day. Heading to the Lyceum, I walk the route from Sheffield railway station to Tudor Square that cuts through the City campus of Sheffield Hallam University. I was a student here on the Writing MA in 2007 when the then poet laureate Andrew Motion’s poem for travellers to this city ‘What If?” was installed on the side of SHU’s Owen Building on Howard Street. There’ll be two more laureates in this story but for now I’m a little early so I stop to read its familiar tall stanzas. The poem reflects on how a traveller might feel on arrival in a new city and I feel inspired to be working in the city.

Andrew Loretto, Kaite O’Reilly and I are working on a new play by Kaite called ‘LeanerFasterStronger’ and it’s the culmination of a series of creative projects ‘Extraordinary Moves’ that Chol Theatre and Sheffield Hallam University are delivering as part of imove, for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. That’s always a deep breath and a mouthful of partnership layers to explain. For us, ‘Extraordinary Moves’ began back in 2009 at a speed networking event in Bradford and it’s a partnership journey which has propelled all of us on a roller-coaster ride working with venues, communities and artists from around these islands and around the world: via our home towns of Huddersfield and Sheffield via Vancouver, Birmingham, Ireland, Madrid, Manchester, Sydney, Leeds, Wales, Barnsley and Harrogate, to name but a few places of connection. Now we’re back in Yorkshire again. It’s the last lap and thrilling for Chol to be working on this last leg of our Extraordinary journey with the brilliant team at Sheffield Theatres as it’s been a massive year of ‘what ifs’ for our company.

It’s fabulous to have Kaite O’Reilly with us for these audition days and I’m beginning to learn that it’s typical of her generosity to give up her time in this way and to offer up extracts of her draft script for our auditionees to perform..  I have sat on many a casting panel but this is the first time we’ve been able to include the writer in the process. I am here to contextualize the project as part of the Cultural Olympiad and within the region’s imove programme; director Andrew Loretto introduces the rehearsal process and it is great to have Kaite to talk about the emerging script, to bring it alive in a way only a writer can.  It’s one of the many ‘firsts’ that this project has witnessed. For Chol, it’s our first co-production with Sheffield Theatres. For Andrew, it’s the first time he and Kaite have worked together. Kaite and Andrew plan to spend a lot of time in the rehearsal room together. She explains how her background in directing and dramaturgy means that this is a process which helps her in the final stages in the creation of new work. I love new things and so I’m looking forward.

Each short audition brings a unique interpretation to the material and acts as a window into an artist’s larger creative life.  Kaite was the 2010 winner of the Ted Hughes Award for poetry, an award created by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, for her new translation of ‘The Persians’ and it’s the lyrical quality of the work that resonates with me today. How I wish today everyone we see could be given a part. There’s something about the Lyceum rehearsal room that’s lofty and hopeful: it must be the panoramic view of the city rooftops from the windows. In between calls, we speak of women artists, writers and poets; the lack of plays by women on our stages and the brilliant people we know and have in common.  Decisions taken, Andrew has to head back to his desk.  For Kaite and I, our narrative of criss-crossings and connections continues into the evening. Work done, we can gossip over some dry white, in other words.

LeanerFasterStronger: Auditions

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The Sheffield Crucible and Lyceum theatres at dusk,  16/3/12. Photo: Kaite O’Reilly

I have always admired actors, but after this past week sitting the other side of a desk to them as they audition for LeanerFasterStronger, my admiration has massively increased.

The talent out there is humbling, and we could cast the production many times over, each new combination bringing different strengths and interpretations  to the fore.  I don’t envy Andrew Loretto, who will direct the production in May and so the person who has to make these final, impossible decisions.

LeanerFasterStronger is more a performance text than a ‘play’ – it will require doubling of parts, physical scores, and therefore great flexibility and speed from the performers in making these transitions. Owing to this, Andrew is bringing together an ensemble company, so the casting decisions relies ultimately on that mix. I think in many ways this is harder than more conventional casting, where the actor may be ‘up’ for one role – the part of Ophelia, say.  It has been my delight and honour to meet so many talented performers – not every playwright gets access to this process of auditioning – but from the start Andrew and co-producer Susan Burns of Chol wanted my involvement throughout.

Some weeks ago  I selected some excerpts from the script to be given in advance to the actors invited to audition, so the readings weren’t ‘cold’. What has been most impressive is the array of interpretations of the characters these actors prepared – each relevant, credible, and illuminating aspects of the characters I had never anticipated. This is why theatre is a collaborative art: performance writers may write the script, but the flesh is provided by the creative engagement of the rest of the company – primarily the actors and director, but also the scenographer, the sound and lighting designers…

It was extraordinary to sit and hear so many different approaches to words I had written – some words which, prior to this,  had only been ‘voiced’ inside my head. Speeches I had written and which we had deliberately taken out of context to the whole (not identifying gender, or background, or situation) suddenly belonged to bodies and were given emotions and psychologies and ‘back-stories’. I saw how performers can create a whole world out of a short monologue in order to give it a logic and meaning – I saw how inventive and thorough and extraordinary they are. My appreciation of performers’ skills and imaginations grew and grew.

Now the auditions are over and Andrew is making his final decisions and negotiations. After many days and several cities, I sat this week in a bar opposite Sheffield Theatres with Susan and reflected on an extraordinary process. I took the photograph gracing the top of this post and invited Susan to guest-blog here, giving her perspective of the process. That post will appear shortly, as will the announcement of our cast. The preparation is almost over. Soon we will be deep into rehearsals and another very different process…

(c) Kaite O’Reilly 17/3/12   Happy St Patrick’s Day, all.

Cripping up – Copping on. Rosaleen McDonagh in Irish Theatre Magazine

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Rosaleen McDonagh

I was honoured to be included in the following article from Irish Theatre Magazine by the phenomenal playwright Rosaleen McDonagh. This is reproduced from the on-line version of the magazine and is available at: http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Features/Current/Cripping-Up—Copping-on.aspx

IRISH THEATRE MAGAZINE

Cripping up – Copping on.

by Rosaleen McDonagh 10 March 2012

Rosaleen McDonagh discusses her new play Mainstream and the challenges of casting and performance: Should a disabled writer hold their work back in the belief that there may be some emerging disabled performers who someday will bring their work to the stage?

‘In Peeling I wanted to create women who were witty, sexy, complex human beings who made difficult decisions about their fertility and potential offspring; women whose lives didn’t necessarily differ so much from non-disabled, hearing women’s lives.’  Kaite O’Reilly, playwright.

Peeling was written by a woman who identifies as disabled. Directed by Jenny Sealey, a deaf woman, and performed by three female actors, two disabled and one deaf. Being exposed to Kaite’s work, the politics of identity and representation became much more vivid and important. Such exposure brings with it an emotional resonance that says this is theatre at its best. Not just for someone like me who can identify with all the parts of the three actors but, as O’Reilly says, it was the universality of the women’s lives that made it work. When using ‘cripping up’, it’s part of a cultural and political mode of language that encompasses self determination. Again O’Reilly said, ‘Cripping up is the twenty first century’s way of blacking up’.

The term ‘cripping up’ in Ireland is not used because it’s understood as being insulting to ‘trained’ actors. The way in which white men once painted themselves black to get a gig is now understood as being racist, exploitative, voyeuristic and dangerous. For me ‘cripping up’ carries similar dangers. In the disability artistic community, the joke says, if an able-bodied actor wants an award and a director wants lots of accolades, be it in theatre or film, cripping up is the easiest, most unethical way of doing it. Others say ethics in any art form blocks creativity. Either way, whether it’s local, national or indeed even international, the infrastructure for artists with disabilities in any discipline is always an afterthought, an appendix, sometimes we’re told appendix take up too much time and room—they’re not needed. The explanation of the plot is evident in the performance regardless of who or what body that performance comes from, they tell us.

Mainstream, my new piece explores a love affair disintegrating while people are grappling with identity, age, sexuality, institutionalisation memory, friendship and fear.  All the characters from Mainstream have significant impairments. Their impairments are part of how the piece is presented. Their journey as characters is very much tied up with their disability identity. When writing the play Mainstream, my politics were compromised due to the standard theatre praxis here in Ireland. What’s ideal is unfortunately limited by what’s possible at the present moment.

Opportunities for training and development in theatre for disabled performers and actors are not de rigueur.  This creates a difficulty in getting disabled Irish actors that can play these parts. More affirmative action policies please. The Arts Council and the Arts Disability Forum do have a specific bursary for disabled artists which is €5,000. Arts & Disability Ireland do provide supports to organisations to make their venue and services more accessible to people with disabilities. Access in the form of audio description and touch is also part of ADI’s remit. There are venues, such as the Project Arts Centre who deliver and provide good practice at all levels of their organisation. The Dublin Theatre Festival 2011, when supporting site-specific work, ensured that access to most of the venues was possible, in particular Mark O’Halloran’s Trade in a Dublin bedsit. The Festival ensured that this work was open to all audiences regardless of the venue type. For me, the ultimate sanction and marker of good access would be that companies are not funded by the Arts Council if their work is not accessible to all the public. That public includes people with disabilities. We’re an audience too.

An example of a positive affirmative action was Turning Point in 2010, an opportunity for artists with disabilities to develop a short play. This project, which was supported by ADI and VSA, meant that I and the three other writers travelled to Washington with Fishamble. Our work was performed in a rehearsed reading. At the reading of my play Rings the sign interpreter for the main actor didn’t turn up.  Vulnerability, fear and embarrassment were shared by me and the actor.  Jim Culleton, director of Fishamble Theatre Company, managed the situation in an empowering and professional manner. Our work as disabled artists is underrepresented and therefore affirmative action initiatives should have a two-pronged approach. This approach would be a specific targeted approach for disabled artists by way of funding and other resources. While at the same time, mainstream theatre, whether it be companies or venues, need to be resourced and supported to be inclusive of disabled artists, practitioners and disabled audiences. This work can’t be done if theatre companies and venues aren’t supported and resourced to do this.

For me the question of cripping up is an exercise purely for the non-disabled ego: the illusion that you can control, modify and contain, if not your own body, then somebody else’s. The dilemma is: what do you do in a country that prides itself on a legacy of being part of the universal canon of theatre but pays no real dividends to disabled artists or performers? ‘Dividends’ in this context is used as a metaphor for cultural inclusion. In short, the authentic disabled aesthetic is erased out of Irish theatre and performances. Brian Friel’s plays Molly Sweeney and Translations were both restaged in Dublin in 2011. The character of Molly Sweeney and Sarah, the non-verbal woman in Translations, had potential to be innovative performances;  instead they objectify and infantilise our bodies, to be received by an unquestioning audience.

They say an actor should be able to perform any part, borrow an aesthetic. There are some parts that actors can’t play. Characters are built, shaped, pulled and stretched to envelop an outside reality and bring it inside themselves. Yet, Irish theatre audiences, or at least the majority of them, seem to enjoy the cosiness of knowing these are not real people—they’re acting out. How we know and where we think people with disabilities belong in our society. Our narrative as disabled people must be funnelled through a non-disabled form. From the director to the actor and then it’s bounced back to the audience, people get so caught up in the physicality of our bodies. The emotive manipulation is what’s damaging. That’s the bit that hurts. They can only do the outside but they can’t bring the emotional, historical resonance to a performance.

These representations are reductive and damaging. Another example of this type of false representation is that of Carmel Winters’ B for Baby. There’s been much chatter about breaking the ‘taboo’ because this piece attempts to explore sexuality in the context of people with learning or intellectual disability. For me, this piece had nothing new to offer other than the usual stereotypes. The most disappointing element of the piece was whatever groundbreaking crescendo that we were all hoping to reach, the end of the piece reverted and resisted going to the edge where the premise of the play was attempting to go by not allowing the two characters to kiss. They share a bag of sweets instead of a kiss. If that’s not infantalisation, well then what is? However, I bought a ticket which means I colluded with something that I’d hoped would be radical; instead, it was pretty mundane. Although these pieces were written by a non-disabled man and woman the very fact that they create disabled characters could be a really positive opportunity to reinvigorate the disabled aesthetic in Irish theatre. The reinvigoration would only come with the call for actors who are disabled for these particular parts. The presumption that non-disabled actors can play our parts so much better is outdated.  We Irish can be very unsophisticated and not confident when it comes to taking risks in theatre making. The politics of representation is often outweighed by the so called importance of the narrative – but the narrative comes from a place of representation even if it is almost invisible.

Should a disabled writer hold their work back in the belief that there may be some emerging disabled performers who someday will bring their work to the stage? Or has a writer to compromise and collude with ‘cripping up’ as a way of establishing their work? My Traveller ethnicity, like my disability, cerebral palsy, is an integral part of who I am. It’s how I understand my place in the world. My history, it means I have a shared knowledge and experience with other Travellers and disabled people. This said, the Traveller community or the disability community, are not a homogenous group. We share a common narrative but at the same time, our individual experiences lend themselves to diverse views on art and other matters. ‘Cripping up’, for some disabled people, is fine. For others, like me, ‘cripping up’ or ‘putting it on’ for Travellers, there’s an innate sour taste of a collective, pejorative projection that is not a representation of who and what we are. As a writer, I can illustrate shame but I refuse to carry it, regardless of how and where it’s projected onto me.

Having been exposed to disability arts in the context of mainstream theatre, the spark was lit. Kaite O’Reilly has been a role model and a mentor in many ways for me. I deliberately use the capital D when describing myself as a Disabled artist. This cultural phenomenon gives me reference points to work from, rules, not just for writing but rules for life. Our lives, our experiences and the veins of knowledge that we have as performers, writers and visual artists, need to be nurtured. My ambition for my work goes beyond any special category. While my work is grounded in a particular experience, the writing carries with it a calling for other disabled writers and performers to be part of the Irish theatre community. Being known as the only crip in the community is isolating. This also means often my voice isn’t loud enough to keep making demands on all areas of access for other disabled artists.

Rosaleen McDonagh is a Traveller woman with a significant disability, a playwright and human rights activist. Her short play Beat Him Like a Badger is part of Fishamble’s Tiny Plays for Ireland at Project Arts Centre 15th-21st March, 2012.

With thanks for the reproduction of this article. http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Features/Current/Cripping-Up—Copping-on.aspx

Don’t write a book by its cover.

I hate labels. I loathe  those ‘If you liked blah, you’ll love bleugh’ comparisons on book covers, ostensibly a helpful recommendation for the reader’s literary pleasure, but in reality a cynical marketing ploy.

I distrust glitzy, pink and pastel book covers – apparently designed for magpie women who can’t resist picking up anything shiny – and am torn between amusement and annoyance at the current repackaging of the work of Jane Austen  in these baby wool colours.  I wonder at this strategy. Are they saying we won’t buy books in domestic settings by women authors without the frothy, light covers, or are they saying Pride and Prejudice is the original chick-lit….?

Chick lit. Dick lit. Slash lit. Lad lit. Lit lite. How I loathe these limiting and limited categories. Abbreviations and pigeon-holing will sadly always be amongst us, but as writers I think it best if we avoid their strait-jacketing tendencies with every atom of our bodies. Although it is important to be aware of our audience, and the genre (or aesthetic, or theatre style if writing for performance), we must take care that our awareness of these definitions doesn’t ultimately define us and the work we make.

A close friend is currently writing a genre novel and recently came unstuck. Her awareness of her selected audience and genre made her self-conscious and those of us who write know there are few things more debilitating and anti-creative than extreme self-consciousness. She began to question her style, she began to doubt her work, she began to try and compare her manuscript to an unspecified ideal that encapsulated the genre. She had driven herself into a genre cul-de-sac, criticising her innovations as they deviated from the content suggested by those shiny pink covers, cartoon high heels and swinging handbags.

It’s so easy to do, start comparing our work with what we think is wanted, or what we think we should do, or what we think the genre demands instead of writing the story we want to write. Recent topics in best selling ‘chick lit’ include domestic violence, bereavement, and assisted suicide….. Not quite so pink and shiny, once the content is gleaned, not the supposed light, saccharine substance….

Let’s write the stories we want, with the content we wish, and always strive to do the best we can, to subvert and innovate, and not let ideas of what a genre ‘should be’ define us.

Let’s not write a book by its cover,

(c) Kaite O’Reilly 12/3/12

One hundred ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 32-36

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Further nuggets of advice gleaned from the great and the good from interviews, articles, and reflections on how to write outstanding fiction:

32. The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. (Gustave Flaubert)

33.  Don’t panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends’ embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there’s prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too. (Sarah Waters)

34.   Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page. (Margaret Atwood)

35.  Think with your senses as well as your brain. (Andrew Motion)

36.  A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. (Oscar Wilde)

The significance of character names: Things I wish I’d known when starting out (6)

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Names of characters are important. Shakespeare may have claimed a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but think of the added information that seeps through from knowing the character is called StJohn or Jerzey; Jonah or Jezebel; Shiraz or Shona, Sankaran or Steve. A sense of cultural heritage, class, social aspiration and period can be assumed through personal monikers.

Names are signifiers and they carry significance; more often than not they are a tip to the audience. It is not by chance that Ben Johnson’s protagonist in his Jacobean satire of lust and greed is called Volpone – Italian for ‘sly fox’.

Names can allude to character and disposition in an efficient, almost effortless way. Traditionally protagonists or heroes have big, heroic-sounding names – Lysander and Titania, Hermione and Ulysses. There is an underlying assumption of what a tragic or inspirational protagonist should be called – an assumption subverted to comedy effect by Monty Python in  The Life of Brian.

I feel that giving a character a name is a significant moment for the writer in the process. I run various mentoring schemes where I accompany writers along their process of writing, from initial idea to polished draft. I try to be descriptive not prescriptive in approach, as there are many different approaches and processes and this is an area where one style most certainly does not fit all.

Some writers arrive with a name of a character as a starting point, and work outwards from there, guided by a sense of the individual’s personal traits, politics, guiding principles, almost as if they exist in reality and the writer personally knows them. Others, like me, may not have a name until well into the process. I sometimes have letters or numbers – 1, 2, 3, 4 – chosen simply by the order in which these emerging figures arrived on the page. When I find these numeric names limiting and annoying, snagging on my eye each time I read over the page, I know I have moved onto the next phase of development.

Naming characters always come swiftly. If I stumble between options, or dither, going eeny-meeny-miney-mo, I realise I don’t know enough yet about the character, or s/he is not yet sufficiently drawn to merit a title.

I can truthfully say I have never regretted a name I’ve given to a character, but that act of choosing has a galvanising effect on the way I engage with the character on the page, impacting on the words I put in her mouth, or the actions I give him.

I’m not sentimental about my work, so I never see them as my creatures or (god forbid) some kind of golem offspring – they are vehicles for my thoughts, or ideas I want to explore – but calling something brings it forth into being.

Name it, and it is.

copyright Kaite O’Reilly 6/3/12

Spoken Word Event – Chris Kinsey, Jim Ferris and Kaite O’Reilly. 19th March 2012. Oriel Davies, Newtown, Wales.

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Chris Kinsey hosts an evening of poetry with readings by Jim Ferris and Kaite O’Reilly  – Monday 19^th March 2012

Jim Ferris’s poems have been described as “funny,” “sly,” “Whitmanesque,” and “kind of holy.” He is author of The Hospital Poems (2004), Facts of Life, (2005), and his latest, Slouching Towards Guantanamo (2011). One reviewer said “Notwithstanding the spiritual weight they carry, these poems are playful, musical, satirical and passionate” (Jendi Reiter). Ferris has won awards for creative nonfiction and performance as well as for his poetry. His work is featured in Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability (2011). Ferris currently holds the Ability Center Endowed Chair in Disability Studies at the University of Toledo.

Kaite O’Reilly currently holds the Ted Hughes Award for new works in poetry for her version of Aeschylus’s PERSIANS, produced by National Theatre Wales in 2010. A multi-award winning writer and playwright, productions in 2012 include LeanerFasterStronger with Sheffield Crucible in May, and In Water I’m Weightless with National Theatre Wales – both Cultural Olympiad projects, part of the celebrations for the London Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Chris Kinsey is Writer-in-Residence at Oriel Davies. She has been BBC Wildlife Poet-of-the-Year and writes a regular nature diary for Cambr ia. She has contributed to numerous anthologies and magazines and has three collections published: Kung Fu Lullabies and Cure For a Crooked Smile with Ragged Raven Press and Swarf with Smokestack Books. She is inspired by wildlife: human, animal and bird. Chris has also had short dramas read at Aberystwyth Arts Centre and Venue Cymru.

 Oriel Davies Gallery  The Park, Newtown, Powys SY16 2NZ

01686 625041 desk@orieldavies.org www.orieldavies.org

Monday 19 March 7.30pm £5

The Gallery Cafe will be open for drinks and light refreshments