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Category Archives: Read Lately

Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells – and a story of splendid ladies

14 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by ninevoices in Books, History, Newly Published, Tanya

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Charlotte Bartlett, Disgusted Ladies, Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, E M Forster, Tunbridge Wells, Votes for Women

The expression ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ may have entered the English vocabulary in the 1950s onwards as a byword for middle class conservative moral outrage, but this elegant spa town in the south east of England has a habit of regularly cropping up in literature well before that. We find references in Dickens’ Bleak House, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Fanny Burney’s Camilla, and Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon for a start.

It’s often depicted as the residence of genteel aunts and maiden ladies – a favourite being Charlotte Bartlett in E M Forster’s 1908 novel A Room with a View: ‘I am used to Tunbridge Wells, where we are all hopelessly behind the times’.

But not all of the good ladies of Tunbridge Wells were like Charlotte Bartlett then, any more than they are now. Just published by Matador is Disgusted Ladies by local author Anne Carwardine. It tells the fascinating story of how the town was home to a series of ordinary yet extraordinary VOTES FOR WOMEN campaigners – remarkable and courageous women who were disgusted for all the right reasons.

Tunbridge Wells in 2018, a hundred years after women were given the right to vote: no longer disgusted but still a town with a distinguished literary presence, past and present…

 

 

 

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Oxford short stories

07 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by ninevoices in Ed, Location, Read Lately, Short stories, Writers' groups

≈ 2 Comments

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Bodgers, Bodleian Library, Colin Dexter, Olympics, Oxford, Oxford Homeless Pathways, OxPens, Sheep

Ninevoices have warned in the past of the dangers of being in Oxford if you’re a fictional character, and we’ve also extolled the works of other writers’ groups. The two come together in The Bodleian Murders and other Oxford stories, produced by the OxPens group in 2016.

This is the third of five collections of short stories OxPens have produced. It was a gift from my daughter and I’ve much enjoyed its variety. Some of the stories are University-based – such as of course the title story – but others are set elsewhere in the city or in the Oxfordshire countryside. Rural Bliss (set in a village near Chipping Norton) is a warning to husbands of the risks of not taking seriously enough your wife’s delight in rearing sheep. Oggi (set largely near Henley-on-Thames) is about bodgers, craftsmen who make chairs to order from wood they have, er, liberated from woods nearby.

History is well served. Burning Words takes us back to 1555, when the mere ownership of a book inscribed by a burned heretic could bring great danger. In The Stunner from Holywell we see the creation in 1857 of a beautiful painting by Rossetti and what happens to it a century later.  Colin Dexter appears in Just Keep Going, with encouraging word for uncertain writers.

A Visit from Social Services describes just that, and shows us the perils social workers face making house calls on the elderly. In Time for the Wake mysteriously links Oxford with a funeral in Nigeria. The Festival of International Art and Scholarly Culture, Oxford farcically takes us back to the excitement of Olympic year in 2012, when the local Arts Committee decide to join in the festivities in ways that may mean that the dreaming spires won’t get back to sleep for a long, long time. The death count in The Bodleian Murders rivals that in an episode in Midsomer Murders, and that in only ten pages.

There are 15 stories in all. Lack of mention of the other 6 here shouldn’t be taken as any form of criticism at all! Thanks, OxPens. (http://www.oxpens.co.uk/)

ISBN 978-1-904623-24-3 RRP £7-99 Available from Blackwells post free http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/bookshop/home    Profits from the book are shared with Oxford Homeless Pathways (formerly Oxford Night Shelter).

https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2015/12/26/stay-away-from-oxford/ speaks for itself.

Other writers’ groups that have featured on this site:

https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2015/08/26/an-evening-with-tunbridge-wells-writers/;

https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/delayed-reaction/ (the Just Write group in Amersham)

https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2015/10/25/our-friends-in-norwich-their-mustard-short-story-competition/ (Norwich Writers’ Circle)

The Opening Chapter

06 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by ninevoices in Ed, Fiction, Read Lately, Writercraft

≈ 1 Comment

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Balloons, Daphne du Maurier, Enduring Love, Ian McEwan, M40, Rebecca, Vicar of Dibley

The opening chapter – it must really work, we’re taught. Maybe it’s the bit a potential agent would read. Maybe it’s the bit that a browser in a bookshop will look at. Maybe it’s the bit that will make a reader decide whether to carry on reading …

One of the most exciting opening chapters I’ve read is that of Enduring Love by Ian McEwan. This was recommended by our creative writing tutor, and as soon as I read it I could see why. Its dramatic account of a balloon ride gripped me. I think of it every time I drive down the escarpment on the M40 where it’s set (going towards Oxford, near Stokenchurch – as in the film shown during the opening credits of ‘The Vicar of Dibley’). Curiously, after that amazing start, the subject matter of the rest of the book drifts away from balloons. But that opening definitely made me read on.

The opening chapter of the book I’m reading now, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, is another Must Read On one. Its description of the abandoned and overgrown Manderley is all the more evocative as it’s a dream, and reads with all the mystery and menace that a dream can have.

What opening chapters stay in your memory?

Historical novels – how much research?

08 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by ninevoices in Dialogue, Ed, Historical, Read Lately, Research

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Anachronisms, Bohemia, Forsooth, Francis Spufford, Golden Hill, Lewis, London, New York City, Thirty Years War

Historical novels – how much research should you do, what lengths should you go to to get the details and the whole feel right?

I’ve been pondering this as I’ve just read Golden Hill by Francis Spufford, who manages to create what seemed an authentic picture of New York in 1746. How authentic it in fact is I can’t verify, short of doing the research myself. But it certainly worked for me: we learned about the city’s dimensions, architecture, weather, race relations, commerce, justice system, politics, religious observance, card games, Bonfire Night customs, and even its smells. I believed it.

To find all that out must have taken a very long time. But when to stop? Do you draw a line somewhere, and avoid venturing into unknown detail, or do you draw that line and just wing it, hoping that few of your readers will notice any errors in the areas you didn’t delve into? Can you get away with finding out what people ate and wore in your chosen period, and maybe what their houses looked like, and assume that that will so impress your average reader that they believe the rest?

Warning – I’ve recently seen an episode of ‘Lewis’ in which a fraudster who has forged an ancient Greek text is brought low because in it he mentions a constellation that was discovered only in the C17. There’s always an expert out there who will spot these lone errors …

One of the ninevoices has produced a novel set in C18 London. I know she’s done much research, and the detail seems convincing. If the rest of us think we’ve spotted an anachronism we’ve said so, but usually we’re wrong.

I once thought of stepping into these deep waters myself when I started a story set in Bohemia during the Thirty Years War in the C17. It didn’t get beyond the first chapter because my creative writing tutor told me it had too much exposition, too much scene-setting. She was probably right, but I started writing something else instead.

What about the dialogue? Options could include:

  • Having your characters speak in modern-day English, just avoiding obvious anachronisms like ‘Facebook’, ‘celeb’ or ‘infomercial’;
  • Ditto, but with your characters saying ‘Forsooth’, ‘Gadzooks’ and ‘By St Leonard!’ every now and then;
  • Immersing yourself in the literature of the time (more research – when are you actually going to get started?) and trying to replicate at least some of its rhythms and vocabulary?

‘Have at ye, Sirrah!’

Are there rights and wrongs in this field? Advice please.

Emotional abuse from a monster husband – and a complex fascinating heroine

20 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by ninevoices in Books, heroines, Jane Austen, Tanya

≈ 5 Comments

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Daniel Deronda, Dorothea, George Eliot, Gwendolen Harleth, Jane Austen, Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, Romola Garai

If Elizabeth Bennet is classic literature’s most delightful heroine, Gwendolen Harleth might claim to be its most compelling, and not only because she may – or may not – be guilty of murder.

‘Some readers of this history will doubtless regard it as incredible that people should construct matrimonial prospects on the mere report that a bachelor of good fortune and possibilities was coming within reach …’ here is the sentence in chapter five of Daniel Deronda in which George Eliot nods to the famous opening of Pride and Prejudice.

George Eliot’s admiration for Jane Austen was profound and dated back to her first falling in love with the philosopher and literary critic George Henry Lewes; his 1852 essay The Lady Novelists in the Westminster Review praised Austen’s novels as ‘like an actual experience of life’. For him, and for George Eliot too, Jane Austen was ‘the most truthful, charming, humorous, pure-minded, quick-witted and unexaggerated of writers’.

But the rewritten sentence in Daniel Deronda is heavy with irony and extends to some ten lines of philosophical observation about human nature. George Eliot never did anything by halves and this may be part of the reason why Gwendolen Harleth, and the 800 page novel she dominates, is not as well known as such a richly complex creation deserves.

For Grandcourt, the ‘handsome lizard’ whom Gwendolen marries to escape becoming a governess, is no Mr Bingley. Early in the novel we see him baiting one of his dogs; we know from that chilling moment how he will treat Gwendolen when he has her in his power.

Unlike Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice who marries Mr Collins with her eyes open, being both sensible and realistic about her prospects and with the strength of character to live within them, Gwendolen is a spoiled child who makes the fatal mistake of thinking she can marry Grandcourt and go on doing just what she likes.

Jane Austen doesn’t condemn Charlotte Lucas for doing what was common among women of her time, and George Eliot makes the reader feel that Gwendolen has no real choice but to rescue herself and her family from degrading poverty. But Charlotte isn’t taking what belongs to someone else. Gwendolen’s real crime is in knowingly betraying another woman and breaking a promise. Punishment for this lack of loyalty to her own sex will come on her wedding night.

Although we already know what Gwendolen is capable of when something gets in her way, whether she could have actually saved Grandcourt from drowning is left uncertain. Murderous thoughts in women towards the men who are controlling or abusing them was something that interested George Eliot, and crops up several times; even the noble-minded Dorothea in Middlemarch comes close to violence when Casaubon repulses her after he’s learnt that his illness is serious. And Gwendolen has none of the religious ardour and passionate desire for the welfare of others which ultimately governs Dorothea.

George Eliot sets her characters against a vast panoramic view of humanity and world progress, in contrast to Jane Austen’s much-quoted choice of ‘three or four families in a country village’. It is perhaps because of the extraordinary magnetism of Gwendolen Harleth as a heroine for our time that Andrew Davies in his 2002 BBC television series of Daniel Deronda concentrated on her story, rather than the other half of the novel which paints the vast sweep of the Jewish faith and Zionism. George Eliot purists might regret the decision, but the production was certainly perfect in its faultless casting and acting: Hugh Bonneville, Hugh Dancy, Jodhi May, Edward Fox, Greta Scacchi, David Bamber, Celia Imrie, Amanda Root – and above all Romola Garai with her riveting performance as Gwendolen, this most fascinating and ambiguous of heroines.

 

 

 

If God Spare My Life…

05 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by ninevoices in Books, History, Maggie, Read Lately

≈ 2 Comments

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Alan Bennett, Anne Bolyn, Brian Moynahan, Henry VIII, John Wycliffe, Sir Thomas More, The English Bible, Thomas Bilney, Tyndale's Burning, Use of Language, William Shakespeare, William Tyndale

 

My husband’s recent re-ordering of our modest library led me to rediscover this powerful book by Brian Moynahan about religious intolerance and the brave man who translated the word of God into English.

Moynahan’s heart-stopping biography of the young Gloucestershire tutor forced to flee England in 1524 in order to safely translate the Bible into English is as much thriller as history. It brims with exhumations, double-agents, whispered confidences, poisoned soup and brutal burnings. There are unfamiliar glimpses of Anne Boleyn alongside the familiar autocratic ones of Henry VIII. Sir Thomas More, sadly, does not come out of it well. Indeed, it is less familiar figures like Thomas Bilney, who show unimaginable heroism. It is not an easy read. There is faith. Hope. But scant charity.

The agents of Tudor England caught up with Tyndale in the end. On the 6th October 1536, in Vilvoorde, just outside Brussels, he was bound to a stake with iron chains, with a noose around his neck. In the brief period he was allowed to pray, Foxe tells us he cried out  in a loud voice: ‘Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.’ He was then strangled and burned, although it is said he was still living as the flames engulfed him. His executioner was instructed to add fuel to the flames until the body was utterly consumed, after which even the ashes were disposed of (probably in the nearby River Zenne) to obliterate any traces that might remain. His words, however, will surely survive as long as we have the English language. His prose has enriched the work of writers from William Shakespeare to Alan Bennett and has lessons even for stumbling novices like myself.

Tyndale’s unique contribution was that he was translating the Bible into English for the first time from the original texts in Greek and Hebrew. Moynahan ‘s biography makes particular mention of his use of verbs: ‘…he wrote at the infancy of the written language [for] it was common for people to read aloud, even when alone; and it is this habit, and Tyndale’s studies in rhetoric at Oxford, that accounts…for the charm and thunder that soar from the English Bible when it is spoken from the lectern.’ [Tyndale uses] ‘verbs where less flowing writers use nouns and adjectives…creating a cadence and sense of immediacy.’

This terrific book is still available, though now only on eBay or through specialist bookshops. It is not the easiest of reads, but it is rich with lessons, not only for those seeking to know how even the ‘boy that driveth the plough‘ came to have first-hand access to the Bible, but for those striving to write prose with a powerful punch.  We must follow Tyndale’s example: short words; short sentences, and, above all, those potent verbs.

This Friday will mark 481 years since Tyndale’s death. What better time to remember a brave and gifted man, and everything we English-speakers owe him.

 

Christmas murder stories

22 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by ninevoices in Crime, Ed, Mystery, Read Lately, Short stories, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

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Adam Dalgliesh, Agatha Christie, Camden Town, Christmas, country house murder, Hercule Poirot, P D James, Suffolk, whodunits

Each year I try to write a Christmas short story, usually with a murder in it. With varying success. I find I have contradictory emotions on just having finished The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories by the great PD James. On the one hand I realise that what I produce comes nowhere near the quality of these stories. On the other, I’m spurred to greater effort.

These four stories aren’t festive tales.  And at the same time they are so atmospheric. PD teases us about what we’re reading: in one she says that the butler and his wife, the cook, are “indispensable small-part characters in any country-house murder”; and in another Adam Dalgliesh is flagged down on a country road on Christmas Eve, when “… his first thought was that he had somehow become involved in one of those Christmas short stories written to provide a seasonal frisson for the readers on an upmarket weekly magazine.”

The Mistletoe Murder (1995) is set in wartime, at a Christmas house-party in a practically empty country house. The period is well evoked, as is a pervading sadness. A gruesome killing takes place and there are very few suspects. The clues are there for us, but I didn’t manage to work it out. The ending was beautifully unexpected. A story told with real atmosphere.

A Very Commonplace Murder (1969) is a sordid story set in Camden Town, involving a voyeur who spies on lovers in a house opposite his place of work. The scene of adultery becomes a scene of murder.

The Boxdale Inheritance (1979) is an Adam Dalgliesh story.   He is asked by an elderly Canon (his godfather) to investigate a murder that happened in 1902. An inheritance depends on it. That ancient crime took place in another gloomy large house, with a family assembled for Christmas, a family riven (as is de rigueur in such a setting) by jealousy and greed. Unbreakable alibis abound. The principal clue to the solution is presented to the reader but in such a way that I sailed straight past it.

The Twelve Clues of Christmas (1996) also features Adam Dalgliesh. One Christmas Eve he finds himself at an unwelcoming Harkerville Hall, deep in Suffolk, faced with a bizarre apparent suicide. Again, members of a divided family are in attendance. Our hero solves the mystery by spotting the twelve clues of the title.

He concludes that story by observing, ”My dear Aunt Jane, I don’t think I’ll ever have another case like it. It was pure Agatha Christie.’” You’re too modest, Lady James.

Talking of Agatha Christie – one of the few whodunits I’ve read a second time is Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, which I reread in order to see where the clues to the solution were. And yes, the main clue is there: as clear as day when you know its significance, but when read the first time it’s hidden in plain sight as just a piece of description. Similar to that in The Boxdale Inheritance.

So: if at this early stage you’re looking for a seasonal stocking-filler for a whodunit-lover, The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories would fit the bill. And if you’re yourself a writer of Christmas short stories, here’s a standard to aim for!

‘Catching the Wind’

01 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by ninevoices in Ed, Fiction, Newly Published, Read Lately, Structure

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Faith, Forgiveness, Kent, Melanie Dobson, National Archives, Sussex, Tonbridge, Traitors, World War Two

I’m impressed by the structure of the novel I’ve just read, Catching the Wind by Melanie Dobson.  It’s in split time – in the 1940s and in the present day, and I found myself really wanting to know what would happen next in both stories.  Much careful planning must have gone into the plotting – it doesn’t read at all like ‘seat of the pants’ composition.

In World War Two 13-year-old Dieter and 10-year-old Brigitte run from their homes in Germany to escape the Gestapo.   After a terrible journey they manage to get to England, but are soon separated.  Dieter promises Brigitte he will come back and find her.  However, he is interned and can’t do so.  Brigitte finds herself in a most dangerous situation, exploited on a rich man’s estate and at risk from people who may be Nazi sympathisers.

Today, now aged 90, Dieter has become Daniel Knight, a successful businessman in America.  He has tried without success to keep his promise and find Brigitte.  He recruits Quenby Vaughn, a young American journalist living in London, to try once more.  She is working on another assignment, investigating possible espionage and subversion for the Germans in Britain in WW2: a possible link with Brigitte leads her to agree, despite her having to work with Daniel Knight’s arrogant lawyer Lucas Hough.

We follow Brigitte’s story in WW2 and, in parallel, Quenby’s search for her in 2017.  Quenby is strengthened in her search by her Christian faith: however, in her past she suffered a dreadful wrong, and she has to wrestle with issues of forgiveness.  And there’s a twist in the tail that quite caught me by surprise.

The novel is set largely in Kent and Sussex, as well as in London and North America. It’s interesting to see ourselves with an outsider’s eye.  The author is American, and I met her last year when she was in this part of Kent researching for this novel.  She describes the nearby town of Tonbridge thus:  “The town centre was a paradox … , modern storefronts mixed with the medieval past.  A river ran through town and lapped against the foundations of old shops now housing establishments like Subway and Starbucks.  And an abandoned old castle perched on a grassy hill, overlooking the town.”

I found it salutary to learn of the activities of British pro-German saboteurs and spies in WW2.  The Author’s Note makes clear that what we read in Catching the Wind is based on what she found in the National Archives at Kew.   So our idea of the nation all pulling together, backs against the wall, united against the common foe, is not entirely true.  Fortunately for us the traitors’ efforts were insufficient …

Thanks, Melanie.  I enjoyed it.

Catching the Wind, by Melanie Dobson, was published earlier this year by Tyndale House Publishers, ISBN 978-1-4964-1728-2  You can order it through Waterstone’s, for the equivalent of $14-99, with no postage and packing: it might take 2 weeks or so to come to Britain from America.  It’s also available online from Amazon, or from the publishers at http://www.tyndalefiction.com.  The author’s own website is http://www.melaniedobson.com.

‘The Glass Room’ (re)visited

15 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by ninevoices in Ed, Fiction, Location, Read Lately

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'The Glass Room', Architecture, Brno, Czechoslovakia, Mies van der Rohe, Simon Mawer, The Velvet Divorce, Václav Klaus, Villa Tugendhat, Vladimír Mečiar

My wife and I were both so taken with The Glass Room by Simon Mawer that on our visit to the Czech Republic this month we made a point of visiting the Villa Tugendhat, the location (and indeed the centrepiece) of that fine novel. (See https://ninevoices.wordpress.com//?s=Glass+Room)

The Villa Tugendhat was a ground-breaking design in its time, the work of Mies van der Rohe in 1929–1930, and it’s a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site. It’s in Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic. Mies van der Rohe was given an unlimited budget! Of which he took full advantage …

The description of the Villa Landauer – and of its creation – in the novel seem to be exactly those of the Villa Tugendhat. We marvelled at the onyx wall, the wall of glass and its mechanism for being moved up and down, and the wonderful views through it of Brno’s Castle – all of which feature prominently in the novel. Mies van der Rohe forbade the house’s first occupants from putting anything on the walls, as does the novel’s architect, Rainer von Abt, as ornament was a crime: our guide gleefully showed us the room where the Tugendhats hid their pictures when Mies van der Rohe came to visit.

Simon Mawer has thus written his novel about the real house: it’s even set on the Villa’s actual street, Černopolní. The stories of the occupants are rather more fictionalised, though not always drastically so. So, writers, this is what you can do with location!

Our guide told us that in real life the house has played its own part in the recent history of Central Europe. She told us that it was under a tree in the garden that in 1992 the Czech Premier Václav Klaus and the Slovak Premier Vladimír Mečiar met to discuss their opposing views on the way forward for newly free Czechoslovakia, and ended by deciding to split the country into two! That tree, apparently, died not long after …

My wife and I were thrilled by our visit to the Villa. The novel had inspired us to go, and our visit made the novel even more memorable for us. You can visit the Villa but you are advised to book at least two months in advance (see http://www.tugendhat.eu/en/). Guided tours in English are available, and well worth it. The young lady who took us round was clearly in love with the building herself!

Thanks, Simon.

Collaboration – one man’s trash

24 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by ninevoices in Collaboration, Ed, Poetry, Read Lately

≈ 1 Comment

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Matt Chamberlain, Medway, Paint The Town Festival, Photography, Spreken, Vicar's Picnic, Wordsmithery

Writing may be a solitary occupation, but two Medway poets have just shown how collaboration can pay off.

Matt Chamberlain and Spreken came up with the idea of interpreting the other’s images. They each took photos of ordinary things, which the other then wrote about. The one stipulation was that the resulting poem contain something positive (for they had seen too much sadness in their work).

The result is one man’s trash, a collection of 14 poems. A kitchen sink full of not-yet-done washing-up; a house sprayed with racist graffiti; a sign in a car park telling you where to pay; a pair of muddy walking boots: these unpromising pictures inspire some imaginative work. My favourite is ‘Underneath’, the speculation of whatever lives under a bridge (a troll, as there’s something trip-trapping across the bridge – memories of Billy Goat Gruff?) as to who is walking over it and what their lives contain (or don’t). Another that specially appeals is ‘Grey infusion’, the thoughts of a pigeon splashing in a puddle.

The foreword explains that “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Or hope. Or mirth.”

Spreken has had some of her work on the tube in the Poets on the Underground series, and she co-headlined Paint it Black, a poetry event focusing on mental health, part of Medway’s Paint The Town festival this spring (https://www.paintthetownfestival.co.uk/). Matt Chamberlain has published three collections of poems and performs at open mic nights, festivals etc, most recently at this month’s Vicar’s Picnic festival at Yalding in Kent (see http://vicarspicnic.co.uk/), where he was Festival Laureate.  (I wrote about one of his collections last year (at https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2016/12/29/lowering-awareness/).)

The collection is published by Wordsmithery (based in Chatham). For an interview with the two authors, speaking on how they write their poetry and how they collaborate, see https://www.wordsmithery.info/one-mans-trash .

So if writer’s block strikes, or you feel your writing needs new inspiration, or is getting you down, try some collaboration like this.

ISBN 978-0-9926853-6-2 RRP £8 (+ £2 P&P from Wordsmithery)

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