We All Belong, by Rosalind Adam

By Rosalind Adam

The programme for this year’s ArtBeat Leicester Festival was packed with activities. They ranged from Israeli dancing to philosophy in the pub to a Gurdwara visit with curry lunch. I ticked off the most appealing events but I knew that it would be impossible to attend them all. I was going to have to be selective. 

The festival theme was 'We All Belong' and this was the topic for this year’s ArtBeat poetry competition. I submitted two poems and fully intended to turn up to the prize-giving event but, as I said, it was a busy week. Did I mention the Lindy Hop or the Indian Folk Dancing or the Maypole Dance Workshop? It was a true test of stamina. 

Last Tuesday, with all thoughts of Artbeat behind me, I attended my regular poetry group meeting. I settled down to a morning of workshopping, only to find myself the centre of attention. The Festival organiser had chosen that morning to present me with a certificate, or to be more precise two certificates. To my embarrassment I’d scooped not only 1st but also 4th place in the 'We All Belong' poetry competition. 

There is a lesson to be learnt here. If you enter a competition, make sure to give top priority to attending the prize-giving event, no matter how busy your week is. Here (below) is the poem that won first prize:



The Top Class 

Winner of the Artbeat Leicester ‘We All Belong’ Poetry Competition, 2017


It was our morning mantra: 
Linda. Here, Miss. Andrew. Here, Miss. 
Lee. He’s not here, Miss, and we knew
the Board Man would be on his way.
He’d not go round the back like us.
He’d knock on Lee’s front door 
while Lee hid because that’s what you did 
when The Board Man called.

After the register we all lined up
for assembly in the hall. 
Cross-legged by the back wall 
we flicked paper pellets and sang
about Jerusalem being builded here 
in our green and pleasant land 
which was really grey and full of soot 
from the factory down the road.

In class we sat at desks with lids,
did handwriting with pens that had spiky nibs
and pounds, shillings, pence sums on squared-paper.
We longed for Miss to say, playtime,
and give out bottles of milk from the metal crate. 
In the playground we skipped with the long rope, 
and we chose the song, jelly on the plate, 
because we were the top class. 

We stayed out for PE, for the fresh air,
and spun hoops round our waists, 
round our necks when Miss wasn’t there, 
but games on Friday was the best, 
going to the field, clambering onto the bus, 
racing for the back seat and us all singing
Ten Green Bottles and falling about laughing
because we always got the numbers wrong.

Soon we’d sit the 11 plus test 
and they’d split us up for ever.
We’d be sent to the sec mod down the road
or the big grammar school in town
where we’d be streamed and given homework,
where we’d have to read stuff by Shakespeare, 
do logarithms with a book full of numbers
but for now we were the top class.



Rosalind Adam is a writer and student on the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. Her blog: http://rosalindadam.blogspot.co.uk/

A Masterclass from Bali Rai, by Rosalind Adam

The MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester joined together with Literary Leicester today to bring us an inspiring masterclass presented by Bali Rai.

Bali Rai was born in Leicester. He grew up in a multi-cultural, multiracial community, an experience that has had a definite influence on his writing. His first book was the best selling (Un)Arranged Marriage and he went on to become one of the UK's most successful YA authors. Today we were given a glimpse into his writing world, a chance to see how he has become so successful in his craft.

Bali Rai's enthusiasm was infectious.

"All humans are nosey parkers," he told us. We must make sure that our audience wants to know more. We must elicit in them first sympathy and then empathy for our characters. Throughout the afternoon he kept bringing us back to this point, to considering who our audience is when we are writing. How we can connect with the audience became his mantra.

He stressed how important it is to analyse each section, each paragraph. Every sentence needs to be there for a reason. If it doesn't have a reason then get rid of it and make sure all the content will connect with the audience. 

How well do we know our characters? He asks his characters questions about their habits, desires, emotions. Only when he knows the characters really well can he portray them in a three-dimensional way. Only then will they connect with the audience.

He dropped in many pieces of advice as he spoke, sharing lessons that he had learnt from experience. The beginning of a novel is the hardest and most important to get right. Character is more important than setting. If you find yourself staring at a blank screen then turn it off and take a break. And yes, as a writer he believes in ghosts. Why be rational? You're a creative writer! 

"Everything comes back to connection with the audience," he reminded us and he practiced what he preached. For this afternoon we were his audience and he certainly connected with us. We were with him all the way.


By Rosalind Adam, first published here. 

Ekphrasis

The other week, the MA in Creative Writing students went on a visit to New Walk Museum and Gallery Leicester. The students were all asked to write Ekphrastic poems, based on paintings, artefacts or sculptures in the galleries. Rosalind Adam wrote the following poem and accompanying notes about the painting Messiah by Ernst Neuschul:

Messiah?

           After Messiah, Ernst Neuschul, 1919




The symmetry of sunbeams
across angular mountains
that hypnotic manic stare
finger on fourth chakra
body proud
yoga honed
the conceit
of youthful talent
before Juden war Verboten
before the daub of swastikas
before the last train out of Prague




                                                                                                         Rosalind Adam




Research Notes by Rosalind Adam


This painting is part of Leicester New Walk Museum’s German Expressionist Collection. At first glance I mistook it to be representative of Hitler Youth and the Führer’s hoped-for Aryan race. I looked up Ernst Neuschul on the Leicester Museum website and discovered that ‘an exhibition of his paintings was closed down by the Nazis. Because of his Jewish birth and radical political opinions Neuschul also lost his teaching post’ (http://germanexpressionismleicester.org/leicesters-collection/artists-and-artworks/ernst-neuschul/).


I made notes about his movements before the Second World War, his relocation from Poland during the 1st World War and on to Berlin to study at the Berlin Academy of Arts during the volatile period between the wars.


On the web page about the painting itself, it talks of Neuschul taking an interest in ‘Freudian psychoanalysis, sexual liberation, spiritualism and yoga’ (http://germanexpressionismleicester.org/leicesters-collection/artists-and-artworks/ernst-neuschul/messiah/). The reference to yoga reminded me that his finger was on a chakra point. I checked exactly which chakra this was. The 4th chakra is the heart chakra and some believe it to be the most powerful of all the chakras: ‘It’s at this chakra that we start to see the possibilities of the internal and external world…the world of spirit and form.’ (http://www.2012-spiritual-growth-prophecies.com/chakra-symbols.html). The finger on the heart chakra gave me a lead into the kind of poem that I wanted to write. That and the title that he had chosen for his self-portrait suggested that he was confident in his own talent and had plans and dreams for greater things. He did not know when he completed this painting in 1919 how disastrous things would become for anyone of Jewish birth or political views that would oppose the Naze regime.


Once I had written a rough draft I decided that, as this was about a piece of Pre-WW2 Expressionist Art and as I had begun the poem talking about symmetry, I would attempt to create a symmetrical layout of the stanzas. I removed all the punctuation from the first two stanzas but played around with putting full stops at the end of each line in the final stanza to represent full stops in his, and so many other people’s, lives. This did not work for the poem and so I finally removed all the punctuation.


The website talks about Neuschul getting the last train out of Czechoslovakia. I have always heard of this train being called the ‘last train out of Prague’ and so this is how I referred to it, especially as it has a more satisfying scan.

Magical Mystery Tour

Yesterday, the students on the MA in Creative Writing went on a "magical mystery tour" in Leicester. Here is a kind of scrapbook of some of the strange, banal, familiar, unfamiliar, uncanny things we all saw ...

Pub Wisdom (photo by JT)

 

Pub Décor - perhaps an allusion to Francis Bacon's Screaming Popes? (photo by JT)

 

"All property is theft" (Proudhon) (photo by JT)

 

Frames ready for the wall art (photo by JT)

 

Very dangerous roofs (photo by JT) 

 

Wall poetry (photo by JT) 

 

Post-alley party (photo by Rosalind Adam)

 

Aspirations (photo by Rosalind Adam).

 

 

Rosalind Adam drafted the following poem, inspired by the last photograph:

 

Aspirations

A row of flats above grey garages
where grey sheets hang
along grey passages
high above the plot where
once unwilling boys,
11+ failures,
were crammed in
crammed with
knowledge they’d never use,
so now they live
in flats above grey garages
and hang their grey sheets
along grey passages.

 

Induction Day, by Rosalind Adam

An MA in Creative Writing? At my age? What would the other students think? What would they see when they looked at me? After a stern pep-talk from Daughter and a third outfit change I was ready to face them all.

On campus I was surrounded by students wearing red lanyards, bearing their plastic encoded ID. It was over 30 years since I had graduated from Leicester University. There were no plastic encoded cards in those days, never mind lanyards around people’s necks. Doors were opened with keys, metal ones, and our student ID card was just that, a card, folded into a booklet with our photograph stuck inside. I still have my old ones and have been known to use them as after-dinner entertainment. It was the hair. Year 1 shows me with straight, dare I say, boring hair. In Year 2 it had become a little more ruffled but by Year 3 I was sporting a full-blown, shoulder-length, curly perm, chestnut black with a hint of red.

Just the sight of all those red lanyards made me childishly enthusiastic at the thought of sporting my very own. The large hall in the Charles Wilson Building was set up as a temporary ID issue point. From the door I could see members of staff handing over lanyards with the regularity of a car production line but, as I entered the hall, I was stopped by a security guard.

“Can I help you, Madam?”

“I’ve come to collect my ID card.”

“You mean, you’re collecting one for somebody else?”

My eyes narrowed. “No, it’s for me.” I was trying to keep the anger from my voice.

“Oh!” he said. “How…”

“Don’t!” I snapped but he continued anyway.

“How very brave of you. Well done.”

I was lost for a suitably stinging retort.

“I’m doing an MA!” I barked as if that explained it all, as if there was anything that needed explaining. I thrust my head up and strode past him into the hall. I queued at the wrong desk and then, lanyard hanging awkwardly around my neck, tried to exit through the entrance door. It took a coffee, a strong one, for me to half-recover but I was still seething. I needed a good experience to end the day. Would I find it in the library?

I now had my seemingly endless reading list and I asked the librarian how many books I could take out. She checked my ID card and replied, but it was noisy in the reception area and, please remember, I’m not as young as I was.

“Pardon?” I said. “Did you say 14 books?”

“No,” she grinned. “I said 40.”

Forty books! A perfect end to an almost perfect day. MA in Creative Writing? I’m ready for you now.


Rosalind Adam is an MA in Creative Writing student at the University of Leicester. You can read her blog here: http://rosalindadam.blogspot.co.uk/