The Write Advice 208: BARRY HINES

 

My books are all conventional in form. They have a beginning, a middle and a sort of ending – mainly in that order – with the occasional flashback thrown in…I write about real people and show a section of their life, without the Hollywood endings which rarely happen outside Hollywood. Disney offered to make Kes, on the condition that the hawk recovered. Should we have sold out? I know which way would always be right for me.

 

Quoted in his obituary [The Guardian, 20 March 2016]

 

 

 

Use the link below to read the obituary of British novelist BARRY HINES (1939–2016):

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/20/barry-hines-obituary-a-kestrel-for-a-knave-author

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 154: ALAN JUDD

 

 

The Write Advice 138: STAN BARSTOW

 

 

The Write Advice 101: KINGSLEY AMIS

 

   

Poet of the Month 096: STEPHEN DUNN

 

STEPHEN DUNN

24 June 1939 — 24 June 2021

 

 

 

 

 

BEAUTIFUL WOMEN

 

 

 

More things come to them,

and they have more to hide.

All around them: mirrors, eyes.

            In any case

they are different from other women

and like great athletes have trouble

making friends, and trusting a world

quick to praise.

 

 

I admit without shame

I'm talking about superficial beauty,

the beauty unmistakable

to the honest eye, which causes

some of us to pivot and to dream,

to tremble before we dial.

 

            

            Intelligence warmed by generosity

is inner beauty, and what's worse

some physically beautiful women have it,

and we have to be strapped or handcuffed

to the mast, or be ruined.

 

 

But I don't want to talk of inner beauty,

it's the correct way to talk

and I'd feel too good

about myself, like a parishioner.

            Now, in fact,

I feel like I'm talking

to a strange beautiful woman at a bar, I'm

animated, I'm wearing that little fixed

smile, I might say anything at all.

 

 

Still, it's better to treat a beautiful woman

as if she were normal, one of many.

She'll be impressed that you're unimpressed,

might start to lean your way.

This is especially true if she has aged

into beauty, for she will have learned

the sweet gestures one learns

in a lifetime of seeking love.

Lucky is the lover of such a woman

and lucky the woman herself. 

 

Beautiful women who've been beautiful girls

are often in some tower of themselves

waiting for us to make the long climb.

 

But let us have sympathy for the loneliness

of beautiful women.

Let us have no contempt for their

immense privilege, or for the fact

that they never can be wholly ours.

 

 

1990

 

 

Use the link below to read about the life and sample the work of North American poet and academic STEPHEN DUNN (1939–2021):

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/stephen-dunn

 

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Poet of the Month 029: TIM SEIBLES

 

Poet of the Month 065: DOROTHY PARKER

 

Poet of the Month 054: ROBERT POLITO

 

The Write Advice 207: CATHERINE JINKS

 

To make historical fiction compelling, you have to make it more immediate.  One way of doing this is to use the first person.  The first person is always more palatable.  In my Pagan books, I not only used a first person narrative — I even used the present tense.  You can't get more immediate than that.

      Another technique of immediacy is to ask direct questions.  I've often started first-person chapters with questions: 'Ladies, I appeal to you — what makes a man?'  This was a trick I learned from my years as a corporate communicator.  If you ask a question, the reader will at least hang around long enough to find out the answer.

      Most of all, if you want to convey excitement and immediacy, you have to feel at home.  If you've immersed yourself in the period you're covering, there won't be a sense of distance when you write about it.  That's the demanding side of historical fiction, though in many ways it's no more demanding than the mastery of any other subject.  It's simply a matter of knowing your stuff.  Like any good communicator.

 

'Advice for Business Writers From a Master Storyteller' (The Business Writer Compilation No.1) [date unspecified]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of Australian novelist and historian CATHERINE JINKS:



http://catherinejinks.com/

 

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 164: CATHERINE JINKS

 

 

The Write Advice 175: THEA ASTLEY

 

 

The Write Advice 181: CATHERINE JINKS

 

   

Think About It 102: KATE JENNINGS

 

The United States is a democracy, and yet it's powered by autocratic corporations. Its engines are fascist. Nothing democratic about them. Paradoxical, wouldn't you say?…

      There's a pretense about democracy. Blather about consensus and empowering employees with opinion surveys and minority networks. But it's a sop. Bogus as costume jewelry. The decisions have already been made. Everything's hush-hush, on a need-to-know-only basis. Compartmentalized. Paper shredders, e-mail monitoring, taping phone conversations, dossiers. Misinformation, disinformation. Rewriting history. The apparatus of fascism. It's the kind of environment that can only foster extreme caution. Only breed base behavior. You know, if I had one word to describe corporate life, it would be 'craven.'

 

Moral Hazard (2002)

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read a 2011 interview with Australian novelist, essayist, activist and memoirist KATE JENNINGS:
 
 

http://theincblot.blogspot.com/2011/04/kate-jennings-on-writing-snake.html
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

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Poet of the Month 077: KATE JENNINGS

 

 

Think About It 094: AMANDA MARCOTTE

 

 

Think About It 083: ANNE HELEN PETERSEN

 

The Write Advice 206: e.e. cummings

 

A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.

      This may sound easy. It isn’t.

      A lot of people think or believe or know they feel — but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling.  And poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking.

      Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why?  Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.

      To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

      As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine.  Why?  Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else.  We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time — and whenever we do it, we’re not poets.

      If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed.

      And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world — unless you’re not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.

      Does that sound dismal? It isn’t.

      It’s the most wonderful life on earth.

      Or so I feel.

 

A Poet's Advice to Students (1953)

 

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read about the life and sample the work of North American poet e.e. cummings:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/e-e-cummings

 

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 106: JAMES JONES

 

 

The Write Advice 062: CLEMENTINE VON RADICS

 

 

The Write Advice 021: AL KENNEDY

 

 

Poet of the Month 095: NADIA BEN SLIMA

 

 

NADIA BEN SLIMA

 c 2017

 

 

 

 

 

UNFATHOMABLE

 

When will you understand?

you are not what you fear

and fears do not appear

that make souls mute

troubles that you repaint 

of a naïve anguish

are not worth the intention

promised by your virtue 

 

The flowers suddenly have

the scent of your fear

and when you remember yourself

sorrow awakens

You make of it a home

ramparts of nothingness

When will you understand?

you are very much what pleases you

 

 

2016

Translated [very loosely] by

BR

 

 

see below for original French text

 

Born in 1980 in the Moselle region of France, Nadia Ben Slima spent her childhood and most of her adult life in Lorraine, Alsace and Franche-Comté in the east of the country.  She now lives in the northern city of Lille.  Drawn as much to science as she is to literature, Ben Slima has recently focused her energies on pursuing a scientific career, putting her passion for poetry on hold for the time being.

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read more poems (only in French) by NADIA BEN SLIMA:

 

 

 

https://www.poetica.fr/categories/nadia-ben-slima/

 

 

 

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Poet of the Month 083: NGUYEN PHAN QUE MAI

 

Poet of the Month 044: ANTONIN ARTAUD

 

Poet of the Month 023: VICTOR HUGO

 

 

 

ABYSSAL

 

 

Quand comprendas-tu?

tu n'es pas ce que tu crains

et les peurs ne revêtent

que les âmes muette

les peines que tu repeins

d'une angoisse ingénue

ne valent pas le dessein

promis par ta vertu

 

 

Les fleurs ont soudain

le parfum de ta peur

et quand tu te souviens

s'agite le chagrin 

tu en fais ta demeure

des remparts de riens

Quand comprendras-tu?

tu es bien ce qui te plaît

2016

 

 

The Write Advice 205: DUNA GHALI

 

The author’s name still makes a difference in the reception of the text.  I still believe that a woman’s name influences the reading of both male and female readers.  I believe the gender of the writer colors the reading of the text in certain ways.  But when writers are in the midst of the act of writing, they are focused on the text itself.  The writer herself (or himself) is already in a transformational moment where one is not woman or man.  Virginia Woolf spoke about the angel in the house, who stood behind her to warn her when she wrote, so she had to consider what should be said and what should not be said as a woman.  After some time being tormented by this angel, she threw the inkwell at her and killed her.  To me, it’s about the uniqueness of individuals and texts. The prevailing judgment still revolves around men addressing major issues, while women write about 'daily life'… but it must be acknowledged that much has changed today, and what remains are the sensitivities of reading.

 

Duna Ghali on Writing, Translating, and Publishing Between Arabic and Danish [ArabLit, 2 May 2024]

 

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read the full interview with Iraqi writer DUNA GHALI:

 

 

https://arablit.org/2024/05/02/duna-ghali-on-writing-translation-and-publishing-between-arabic-and-danish/

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 166: LAILA LALAMI

 

 

The Write Advice 072: BADRYAH AL-BISHR

 

 

The Write Advice 053: MOHAMMAD HASSAN ALWAN