Writing the Small Sublime

 By Tracey Foster

         Black ticks on bright blue
         swifts flung across the sky
         like boomerangs.

The need to write concise poetry began as an exercise during the MA Creative Writing course, as a way of training myself to rein in a tendency to overplay descriptions and imagery. I fully enjoyed the process and learnt how to hone meanings and condense a poem into simple constructs. Haiku has always been an area of poetry that fascinated me, the art of writing tiny stories in very few words. Simple sentences that work across a few lines, rhythm and rhyme packed into the small sublime.

The form of the Haiku was developed from a much older tradition in Japan of writing Renga poems that were a hundred stanzas long. Haiku appeared in the sixteenth century and became the much shorter relative, packing a story into a more condensed version, usually constructed over three lines in a 5,7,5 syllabic format. The writer focuses on nature and sets the season with key words like 'snow.’ This is called ‘kigo.’ The most famous examples of this are sakura (cherry blossoms) for spring,  fuji (wisteria) for summer, tsuki (moon) for fall, and samushi (cold) for winter. The first two lines set up the situation and the final line is often in contrast, sending the reader down a different lane. This is called ‘Kireji,’ a jump in narrative that gives the poem its raison d'être, the key message to the reader, often dark in tone or converse. This appealed to me as my writing often had an eerie undercurrent; and my feelings about the state of our native wildlife and a plea to help nature are things I am keen to tackle in my poetry.

          Scrap of grass littered
          with yellow pee-the-beds.
          Weeds to feed the bees.

The most renowned writer of Haiku is Matsuo Bashō, who explored Zen teachings and played with the format. He said: 'Your poetry issues of its own accord when you and the object have become one - when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there. However well phrased your poetry may be, if your feeling is not natural - if the object and you are separate - then your poetry is not true poetry but merely your subjective counterfeit.' A good example of his work is:

         Breaking the silence
         Of an ancient pond,
         A frog jumped into water -
         A deep resonance. 

These works influenced many poets over the centuries, most notably the American poet Ezra Pound, who said, 'The image itself is speech. The image is the word beyond formulated language.' He was inspired to rewrite his poem ‘In a Station of the Metro,’ from a thirty-line poem, down to just two lines (or three, if you count the title):

          The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
          Petals on a wet, black bough.

My research into this field of writing led me to discover other forms of compact poetry. A single Haiku written continuously on one line is called a Monoku. Tanka is a longer form using 5,7,5,7,7. The first three lines are called  kami-no-ku ('upper phrase') and the last two the shimo-no-ku ('lower phrase'). Senryu is a much shorter version, using 3,5,3 syllables, and restricts the writer even more. This can often lead to incomplete sentences, leaving the reader to mentally fill in the gaps.

           Evening star
           blue linen sky,
           drawing pin.

My creative process begins with a walk in the countryside in all weathers, as I did in lockdown whilst writing my submissions for the course in 2020. I always take a phone and jot down key phrases that come to mind, often just a sentence that will later develop into a poem. Most of my poems start from  an observation from the world outside. A Haiku is a very short poem,  but I still like to employ key constructs in my work. Alliteration, rhyme and metre are some of the devices I have employed. But I'm careful not to overdo it: the reader should be able to just fall into the imagery. I use my feelings to convey emotions, sight, sound, touch and smell and try to make the reader aware of them, but as if experiencing them from afar. 

          A murder of crows
          flies skyward as one black cloud,
          dropping snails like hail.

During April and National Poetry Month in 2023, I set myself the challenge to write a Haiku every day. This had two purposes: helping me to keep up my Creative Writing and to fit around my other life as a secondary school teacher. The challenge was easy to accomplish but harder to find an audience for. My previous poetry had been accepted for several online publications, but Haiku seems to be a niche for which it is harder to find relevant publishing outlets. There is a good Twitter community of writers who share work and encouragement and some online publications that will accept submissions. However, sharing your work online via social media will mean it won’t be accepted for publication elsewhere. The best advice I can give you is to keep trying and keep it simple. Good luck!

Here are some very useful websites to help you:

https://thegreatmargin.org/haiku/
https://haikujournal.org/what-is-haiku/
https://thehaikufoundation.org/new-to-haiku-how-to-edit-your-haiku/
https://www.thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/
https://www.modernhaiku.org/submissions.html

About the author
Tracey Foster started off in a long career as an Art and Design teacher but wanted to refocus her creative energies into writing poetry and prose. After helping others find inspiration in the world around us, she took an MA in Creative Writing at Leicester University and has not looked back. She finds inspiration in the past and the events that shape us. Previous work has been published by CommaPress, Ayaskala, Alternateroute, Fish Barrel Review, Mausoleum Press, Bus Poetry Magazine, Wayward Literature and the Arts Council. Her latest poem is due to be published in the Literary Review 23. Tracey is on Twitter @traceyfoster77

Jordan Crandall, "Autodrive"

 

Jordan Crandall is Professor of Visual Arts at University of California, San Diego. He is the author of five books, including Drive, an anthology of his artworks, media installations, and theoretical writings published by Neue Galerie Graz and ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. In 2011 he was the recipient of the Vilém Flusser Theory Award for outstanding research in media art and digital culture. Autodrive is his first work of fiction.

About Autodrive, by Jordan Crandall

Autodrive is a work of literary fiction that melds techno-scientific inquiry and storytelling, critical theory and comedy, speculative fiction and satire. It is a road novel of sorts, an odyssey along the highways at a time when a new form of superintelligence has emerged. This new form of artificial intelligence is not entirely distinct from the characters in the narrative — it is ingrained in the machines they already use, the vehicles they already take, the systems they are already part of, but cannot fully see. The human character who is typically at the center of the fictional world gives way to an eccentric cast of performers — an ensemble of people and machines.

You can see more information about Autodrive on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From Autodrive

City Center West 

There was an accident at the construction site on the north side of the Crosstown. One of the excavation machines knocked a truck off the overpass. It created a huge bottleneck along the frontage road. We had to inch along in bumper to bumper traffic for nearly an hour. 

People were patient at first, but then a few of the passengers started complaining in a way that caused everyone else to start complaining. A strange phenomenon happens in situations like that, suddenly everyone unloads, it releases a feeling of anguish but also excitement. 

Everyone was speaking loudly in order to be heard above the noise. But it was hard to hear anything, you could only pick up bits and pieces of what people were saying. There was talk of accidents, anomalies, irrepressible crowds. A hearse chasing a group of tourists. A delivery truck menacing a passenger van. A parking lot brawl that got out of hand. 

A traveler in the adjoining seat started talking to me. I found it hard to engage with him because he was wearing one of those facepieces that hide your expression. The only part that moves is a mouthlike orifice, a slot over the mouth for eating. Sometimes it snaps open and shut and you expect a voice to come out, but the voice does not come from there, it comes from an embedded speaker that has no relation to the mouth. 

There is a much greater chance of misunderstanding if your face is hidden, I told him. It is better to have a transparent shield, like an astronaut. A bubble is better. 

He started telling me about a mysterious car that was trailing him. A Compiler-type model that did nothing but follow him around. It would pull up to the house and sit there. Park outside the office and wait. He said he could feel it out there waiting for him even if he could not see it—one of those things you just know, like when you can feel someone staring at you without having to turn around to look. 

I asked him if he had any idea of who might be in the car. 

He had the sense that there was no one operating the car. That it was self-determined in some other way. 

What way, I asked him. 

Like the cars in those old road movies, he said. The ones that had no drivers but were self-operated somehow—powered by an unknown force. Limousines and hearses, towncars and trucks that appeared out of nowhere and chased people. Plowed into traffic, mowed down pedestrians, bumped off policemen, slammed into cars. Messengers of catastrophe, he called them. Self-aware, self-willed, superintelligent machines ready to strike, turn on the people they were created to serve. 

A superintelligent machine would not act that way, I told him. It would be more like a conglomerate, more like a corporation than a vehicle. If you want to worry about a malevolent AI, that is what you should be concerned about. Not a machine that is out to get you, but an organization that is. 

Nearly Summer Student News 2023

Lots of things have been happening in the Centre for New Writing and Creative Writing at Leicester in the last two months, including wonderful guest lectures and masterclasses by Val McDermid, Louis de Bernières and Barbara Cooke. Below is a selection of recent Creative Writing student news. Wishing everyone a great Summer!

Rosalind Adam, MA Creative Writing graduate, has a poem published in the new issue of Under the Radar Magazine. 

Asma Ali, MA Creative Writing student, has written a review of As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow, by Zoulfa Katouh for Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Congratulations to PhD Creative Writing student Joe Bedford, whose story "The Christening" has been shortlisted for the prestigious ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award 2023. And of course congratulations to Joe on the publication and launch of his novel, A Bad Decade for Good People. You can read more about the novel here. 

Congratulations to MA Creative Writing student Laura Besley, whose story "Barren Land" was shortlisted for the Brilliant Flash Fiction Writing Contest 2023. You can read the story here. She has also been shortlisted for the inaugural Welkin Writing Prize. Her story, "One More Minute," has been published by 50-Word Stories here. Laura has reviewed Joe Bedford's new novel, A Bad Decade for Good People, on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Congratulations to Constantine, MA Creative Writing graduate, on the publication of his new picture book, Tiya and the Minotaur. You can read more about the book on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Congratulations to Andrew Craven-Griffiths for completing his PhD in Creative Writing, entitled In the Future We Are Astronauts.

Congratulations to Tim Hannigan, PhD Creative Writing graduate, whose new book, The Granite Kingdom: A Cornish Journey, was published by Head of Zeus in May. 

Congratulations to Kathy Hoyle, PhD Creative Writing student, who was shortlisted for the Ellipsis Zine Flash Collection Competition 2023. She has also had her story, "Anechoic Chamber," published by Fictive Dream here. 

PhD Creative Writing student Amirah Mohiddin has continued her work as tutor in schools for The Brilliant Club, teaching a course she designed called "Our Future Storytellers: Reviving Old Traditional and Classic Stories in a Contemporary Form." You can read more about the course here. 

PhD Creative Writing student Jane Simmons has written a review of Kitchen Music, by Lesley Harrison, for Everybody's Reviewing here. 

MA Creative Writing graduate Lisa Williams has had her stories, "The New Term," "The End" and "Satisied" published on Friday Flash Fiction. She has also written reviews for Everybody's Reviewing here and here.  

Our Future Storytellers: A Creative and Critical Writing Course

By Amirah Mohiddin

 

Over the past two years, I’ve worked as a tutor on several placements with The Brilliant Club, an organisation devoted to supporting less advantaged students to access higher education. More specifically, I have taught on The Scholars Programme, a programme designed for PhD students to share their subject knowledge to a small group of students to help them develop key skills, gain knowledge and the confidence to pursue higher education. The programme is structured around seven tutorials taught online or within schools alongside an opening and graduation ceremony at university. 

My PhD practice-based research interrogates on female storytelling as a form of salvation and heroism in Arabic literature with the aim of reconstructing formidable and empowering storytellers in a Young Adult fantasy novel. I was given the wonderful opportunity to design a Creative Writing course inspired by my PhD project. I called it ‘Our Future Storytellers: Reviving Old, Traditional, Classic Stories in a contemporary Form’ due to my hopes that it will serve as a starting point for future writers. 

During my time at each placement, I teach a university-style course to KS4 students for several-weeks at a time combining workshop and seminar-style methods. The course challenges and encourages the students to analyse Arabic literature as a springboard and interrogate elements of craft to hone their own Creative Writing. Further to this, the students are encouraged to reflect on their inspirations and the elements of craft they have used in their writing. At the end of the course, the students often have workshopped several or one enduring piece of writing to then use towards their final assignments which are marked on a university scale. Assessment marking follows three principal criteria: Subject Knowledge, Critical Thinking and Written Communication. 

It’s been a real pleasure to see students motivated, growing confident in their writing, and deepening their awareness as they hone their craft as the course progresses. It is especially rewarding to see the spark of inspiration and passion that the students carry forward to their final assignments, constantly striving to improve their creative pieces and understand their critical pieces. So many students grow in confidence and gain pride over the course and it’s so moving for me to see this reflected in their final assignments. 

My time on The Scholars Programme with The Brilliant Club has been invaluable. I’ve developed many skills and my motivation towards my own creative practice has been bolstered and renewed watching my students grow and enjoy themselves along the way. I initially titled my course ‘Our Future Storytellers’ because of my hopes for my students to grow as writers. It has been incredibly affirming to see that aspiration become a reality as my students continue to thrive with their new-found confidence. 

About the author

Amirah Mohiddin is a writer, a third-year PhD student in Creative Writing and a tutor with The Brilliant Club teaching her self-designed Creative Writing course ‘Our Future Storytellers.’ Her PhD research focuses on female storytelling as a form of salvation and heroism in Arabic literature with the aim of reconstructing formidable and empowering storytellers in a YA fantasy novel. Her short stories have been published in magazines, ebooks and physical books, including Dancing Bear Books, Litro Magazine, Post-mortem Press, The New Luciad and Sanroo Publishing. You can read more about Amirah's PhD on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

The Author as Promoter: A How-To Guide

By Charlie Hill

I’ve always appreciated the central role that promotion plays in establishing and developing a writing career, even if this appreciation is part of a paradox. 

The first piece I wrote for publication was an account of a road trip to the southern United States. I'd flown with some friends to Orlando, hired a convertible and driven round the coast of the Gulf of Mexico - through Alabama and Mississippi - to New Orleans. It was there that, as part of a smorgasbord of non-repeatable jollity, I discovered a weed supplier operating out of a venue I couldn’t have invented if I’d tried: The Chicken Man’s Voodoo Shack.

On my return to Brum, having completed the write-up of my trip and begun the process of submitting it, my imagination leapt ahead to the period immediately following its publication. At the time I lived a shortish distance from Moseley Bog, a patch of greenery popular with young families, that some of you will know as being the inspiration for Tolkien’s Middle Earth. My plan was simple. On the day of publication, I would visit a butcher’s shop, a cathedral and then the bog. I’d find a suitable spot – not too obvious, not too well-hidden - and leave a chicken’s foot, some chicken liver and a miniature statue of the Virgin Mary. The discovery of this collection of horrifying detritus would be at first perplexing. And then, as the reality of the situation revealed itself - why, the bog is being used for voodoo rituals! – a ‘media storm’ would happily coincide with the first reviews of my locally-produced voodoo-centric masterpiece.  

It's probably for the best that my book didn’t find a publisher. And possibly for the best that by the next time I had cause to consider how best to raise my writerly profile, most promotional activity was conducted online. Fully fifteen years after the callous indifference of the publishing industry had spared the world my offal-related nonsense, I finally published my first book. And then set about promoting it in a more traditional manner. 

By this time, Twitter was most successful industry marketing tool. The site was so popular, however, and so full of people tooting their own horn, that I decided the only way to stand out was to undersell myself. To subvert the shrill ‘look-at-me’ desperation of the hoi polloi, and prove instead my credentials as a writer and commentator of considerable gravitas. Not to try to grow my own following but to establish relationships with ‘influencers’ by hitting them with a stream of such irresistible literary allusion they would greet each new exchange by nodding sagely and plugging my latest book.

Mercifully, there appears to be no remaining trace of what I sent to Claire Armitstead, then Books Editor of the Guardian, shortly after I’d opened my Twitter account. She’d made a passing comment about The Great Gatsby and I’d responded with a comment about shirts. An understated comment about shirts. An understated and, it must be said, utterly, embarrassingly baffling comment about shirts. Now as anyone who is over-familiar with The Great Gatsby would doubtless tell you, there is a line in it (from the top of my head it's on page 127 of the 1976 Penguin edition) about Jay Gatsby’s wardrobe. But even so. I wasn’t on Twitter for long.

I’m a fast learner though, and my next foray onto the shaded, shivery uplands of social media was more direct. I became the Facebook friend of a much-lauded writer, and set about establishing a mutually beneficial relationship. At first it went well. I liked some of his posts, he invited me to a festival he ran, and I tapped him for an endorsement. The latter wasn’t forthcoming (he didn’t like the thing) but still; my promotional activities were showing some much-needed signs of progress. Then things took a turn.

The fella posted enthusiastically about a soon-to-be published novel by a Booker Prize-winning author. A post which I, true to my credentials as a writer and commentator of considerable gravitas, judged to be ‘gushing’ and representative of ‘all that is wrong with publishing today.’ The result of this interaction was a summary unfriending and, I presume, several subsequent non-invitations to festivals run by his real friends.  

Chastened by my experience of electronic interaction, I decided on a more direct approach still to the business of literary networking and promotion. Not only that, but I lowered my sights from the great and the good to those who, like me, might consider themselves ‘misunderstood.’ It was from these relationships – defined as they were less by circumstance than shared experience – that I imagined a more genuine camaraderie would develop, and from that, more sales. 

I began a correspondence with a writer from Manchester. Like me, he was wary of promotional efforts that were lacking in integrity (even if, unlike me, he hadn’t arrived at this perspective after spending a decade trying to make them work). We got on. He agreed to review a book of mine and I went to see him at an event. To emphasise the honesty of our connection, I sat at the front and concentrated on making meaningful eye contact throughout his reading. I was sure this was a good idea right up until I saw his review, the opening line of which was ‘I know Charlie Hill ... He once stared at me through the entirety of a reading I gave at Waterstone’s in Birmingham.’

By now, you will have identified the paradox I mentioned at the top of this piece. It is, of course, that although I appreciate the role that promotion plays in the writing life, I am pathologically unsuited to doing anything about it that might have any material value. Oh well. I am further aware that I must persevere. Does anyone know anything about Substack? 

About the author
Charlie Hill is a writer from Birmingham. Despite his unceasingly hopeless promotional efforts, his work has been compared by his peers to Georges Perec, Kafka and Samuel Beckett. His latest book is a collection of short stories called The State of Us.

Victoria MacKenzie, "For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain"

Victoria MacKenzie is a fiction writer and poet based in Scotland. Her debut novel, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain (Bloomsbury, 2023), explores the lives of the medieval mystics Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. She has won a number of writing prizes including a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award and the Emerging Writer Award from Moniack Mhor, and has held writing residencies in Scotland, Finland and Australia. Her second novel, Brantwood, about the Victorian art critic John Ruskin, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2025. Her website is here. 

About For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain

For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain is a novel based on the lives of two real women, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. Both women have visions of Christ, but to claim direct communication with God is heresy – and the punishment for heresy is to be burnt alive. Using intertwined first-person narratives, Julian and Margery tell the stories of their lives. Margery is a traumatised mother of fourteen, full of shame about sex and childbirth, and hounded by the church for talking about her visions. Julian is an anchoress – haunted by grief, she has lived for twenty-three years in a single room. She has told no one of her visions, but she has written them down in secret. Her book, now known as Revelations of Divine Love, is the first book in English by a woman.

The novel culminates in a meeting between the two women at the window of Julian’s anchoress cell, where they confide their deepest fears. Margery is inspired to return home and dictate the story of her own life: The Book of Margery Kempe is the first known autobiography in English. For Thy Great Pain is a novel about grief, motherhood and grace, and it’s also the story of the beginning of women’s writing.

You can read a review of For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain on Everybody's Reviewing here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain, by Victoria MacKenzie

JULIAN

Those early days, weeks, months, years of being in my cell – I am glad I will not live through them again. Though I knew that God would send me trials and tribulations, I did not predict the form that these would take. 

I had thought I was ready for the life of an anchoress. I had wanted to prolong each moment of my life, to get closer to experiencing time as God experiences it: not the instantly dissolving moment, but something larger and more encompassing. A stillness that doesn’t pass as soon as you think yourself into it.

I’d thought I would live as slowly as moss in my stone cell. I’d thought I would step out of my life as soon as I stepped into the cell. But I was still me. Nothing had changed. I was myself, with all my usual racing thoughts and yearnings and memories and foolishness.

Nothing can prepare you for spending the rest of your life in a single room. Never to be touched by another human being. Never to run. Never to feel the rain on your face. Never to walk in the garden and see flowers unfolding their colours and scents. 

I had died to the world, died to my old life, but I was not dead. 

Sara brought me food and firewood, but in those early days we did not know each other. She was careful to follow Master Thomas’ orders not to distract me with what he called ‘women’s chatter’. She treated me like a holy saint, whispering ‘Mother Julian, I have your supper.’ I could almost hear her curtseying on the other side of the curtain. 

How I yearned for women’s chatter.

Laura McKee, "Take Care of Your Hooves Darling"

 

Laura McKee’s poems have been published widely including in The Rialto, Stand Magazine, Under the Radar, The North, Prole, Butcher’s Dog, The Interpreter’s House, Crannog, The Poetry Review. Online publications include the recent first issue of Propel Magazine edited by Mary Jean Chan, Ink Sweat and Tears, And Other Poems. Anthologised work appears in Mildly Erotic Verse (The Emma Press), and The Result Is What You See Today (Smith|Doorstop). She is currently in the second year of an MA in Writing Poetry with The Poetry School and Newcastle University.

About Take Care of Your Hooves Darling

Laura McKee's first pamphlet Take Care of Your Hooves Darling is published by Against the Grain Press, and examines, in part, issues of identity in terms of sexuality, gender, class background, mental and physical health. It includes biscuits, and has been recommended by Andrew McMillan.

You can read more about Take Care of Your Hooves Darling on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Take Care of Your Hooves Darling

good morning

today’s plan is this that
I want to lift up
one of those metal plates
on the pavement that have
names on them like Tom
Selleck and climb in
and slip down into some
pipe or other that leads
to a sewer and hold
my nose until I get
to the river until I
get in the sea and no-one
will have to pretend
to listen to me except
starfish and where are their

ears

Walls

It was hard to get through to you
and later I didn’t answer
the door or the phone
We were each other’s brick wall
with the writing on it
Like that wall where someone
well Dave I suppose
has written Dave
above Jesus no name higher
I look up to you now
and want to talk
You always told me
rise above, rise above it all
have some sort of loftiness
but holy Mary mother of god
mortal Daphne mother of me
loneliness is harder than walls