A Poem for Valentine’s Day

Verse found whilst reading between the lines of a lonely hearts ad

 I’m looking for a women. She must be very nice

And made of all the right ingredients – sugar, starch and spice…

She should be very simple, and similarly kind

And know how to smooth the wrinkles of my meloncholy mind

She must of course respect me – as many people do -

I don’t asked to be worshiped. I only want what’s due

She should be nimble on her feet and not get in my way

She should show a lively interest in everything I say

Ideally she’ll be fairly bright (but not have gone to college)

All applicants will take a test in basic general knowledge

It goes without me saying she must know how to cook

And when I lose a sock or tie she must know where to look

But when I lose my temper, she will, if she is wise

Let the worst of it blow over – and then apologise

She mustn’t put on make-up, unless I take her out

When she’d to hold her body steady and not wriggle it about

A word or two about myself? Well, I am what I am -

An ordinary, undemanding, decent sort of man

Just one last thing, to make quite sure I find the perfect wife

The successful applicant will be asked to complete the following sentence

 Life…

A lonely heart in need of love

Wanted, a women who has no issues with height or living in holes. I am an unkept small man, who resembles a boy. I like jewellery but specifically rings and enjoy travelling to far places and fighting giant eyes. You must be under 4ft and enjoy the company the dwarves and elves.

A literary friend of Haseler007 seeks…

 

This Valentine’s day, don’t Just Keep Row(l)ing: make a wizard happy!

Lonely teenage boy, short brown hair and magical eyes seeks female for friendship and to bewitch me. Must not be averse to facial scars, spells when I’m absent or an odd taste in extra curricular activities/sports.

Mr L’s Literary Lonely Heart

Just in times for Valentine’s Day can you guess who is posting this lonely heart?

Italian boy from good family looking for girl for short but sweet romance. GSOH a must as have an interesting family. I enjoy sword play and parties.

Mr L’s Revolver Review

A Story of Substance

Marcus Sedgewick is an extremely intelligent writer. He spends ages researching his books and as fantastical as some of his stories may seem (my immediate thoughts refer to vampires in My Swordhand is Singing) they all have a sense of reality within them borne from this highly thought out process.

Revolver is no different in this sense and is set at a time and place that is very real in history. For anyone willing to do the research Nome was the setting for one of America’s most dangerous and debated ’gold rushes’. In fact most of the story revolves around American history and the subjective view that maybe when you look at something that seems one thing it actually can be something completely different.

The story centres around the title of the book, a revolver. In true Sedgwick style the revolver was heavily researched and the book is peppered with quotes about its history. Although an inanimate object and not actually seen till the end of the story the revolver is the one thing that seem to making the decisions throughout. Whether this is through the central character of Sig or through the history of the revolver in the cupboard the gun is always there. It haunts the story like a prisoner waiting to be released, to do what it was made for.

The past is a very central theme of the book with Sig’s fathers past coming back to haunt the young boy. Sig’s dad who has very recently died, so recently that he is lying on the table, has been hiding a secret about his past that shows up at exactly the wrong time for Sig in the form of the giant Wolff. Wolff has business to attend with Sig’s father, but discovering his father is now deceased he decides Sig is the next best thing. As the story starts to unravel the Revolver in the closet begins to pray on Sig until things come to a head and Sig has to make a decision that will change his life.

Although I do quite like Sedgwick’s books the over thought details put me off somewhat. I prefer books with a little bit of chaos to them. Maybe where the structure seems wrong but come the end of the book it all fits into place. Surprise, for me is one of the best qualities of a book. If I can be surprised about what is coming next I’m enthralled. For me Revolver doesn’t do this. It just lacks that bit of something extra. Maybe due to the rigid structure that it follows not allowing for any deviation from the path.

Haseler007 reports on a future Carnegie winner?

‘Revolver’, Martin Sedgwick. 

                                    Reviewed by Mr Haseler.

‘Revolver’: a shot in the arm for action fans! 

‘Even the dead tell stories.’ An opening line which shows Sedgwick has lost none of the mastery so many admired in ‘Blood red, snow white’ and ‘My swordhand is singing’, amongst others. And, from this opening line, when young Sig finds his dead father through thirty years of mystery and excitement, through to a gut wrenching finale, Sedgwick never lets his pace or tension drop. Not one bit!

This brash and original novel tells the story of a family alone and cold in the far north. The plot switches frenetically between 1910, when Sig is attempting to cope without his father and 1899, when his father mysteriously sets in motion the wheels which are to later run him into the ground. But this is no simple split plot line! Instead, Sedgwick creates a ghostly image of an early Sam Colt revolver which flicks through the pages and chapters, uniting the two stories into one mesmerising whole.

The stark setting and brutal tone of the violence place this novel alongside Fine’s ‘The road of bones’ or Paver’s sublime ‘Soul Eater’. Equally impressive to Sedgqick’s perfectly painted backdrops are his subtle and intricate characters: think ‘The Graveyard Book’ or J. K. Rowling before she sold her soul to the United States. But, rather than setting and towering over character, the reader is confronted by the sheer pace and delicate plotting of the novel. Never before has Sedgwick dangled the reader so perfectly near the conclusion to his story whilst leaving us so uncertain.

However, let’s not get carried away: perfect, this ain’t. Each chapter begins with a twee and overly researched phrase. Worse, the writer feels the need to include a note at the end of his novel which may as well have said, ‘I’M MARCUS SEDGWICK AND I AM THE KING OF RESEARCHING AND THAT IS WHY MY NOVELS ARE SO DAMN COOL!’ This is typical of Sedgwick: is he scared of trusting the reader to the extent where he has to tell us what to think at every stage?

Overall, ‘Revolver’ is a fantastic novel, with the odd weakness but far more strengths. For fans of Sedgwick, or the action genre I can’t recommend this enough.

Fast, furious and violent: it will blow your socks off!           

A pulsating 4 out of 5 Liverbird rating.  

Haseler007+Lancaster in tandem!

Our first serious challenge!

This week we will both read Marcus Sedgwick’s latest novel, ‘Revolver’. This is on the Carnegie long list so is a great option for all you Literature fans too. Within 3 days (and we’ve just received the book!) we shall both post our reviews on this site. Vote for your favourite review based on: strength of opinion, a short summary which leaves you hooked and a voice which engages you as a tennager.

Meanwhile, Mr Lancaster will create a space for the voting to happen, BOTH online and in B28. Also, we want your comments: based on our reviews and opinions therein, recommend us two a book each to suit the taste expressed in the reviews. Prize for the best recommendation received by Friday 5th February! Get going!

Contemporary Poetry

As I move through the stages of writing I will reference certain types of poets or writers or playwrites to give examples as to how others over the history of writing have gone about thier business. Today I’m going to give a bit of information on the contemporary poet. Poetry that is written nowadays in the style of ‘today’ is given the tagline as being contemporary. Poets such as Sophie Hannah and Sarah Wardle amongst many bless this criteria and these are the types of poems that you would find in your glossy poetry magazines. Magazines such as the PN Review, the North and even Poetry London.

Contemporary poetry can be something that on first glance and on closer inspection is nonsense. Its almost as if the writers, living in their worlds can write in a way that the mere common man cannot understand or should understand. It is for this reason that contemporary poetry is not enjoyed by the masses. It does not have a clever rhyme scheme or iambic pents and soemtimes it doesn’t even look like a poem. Alot of the time the poems themselves seem pretentious, almost as if the poet has forgotton that poetry is words stripped back to reveal the innermost of language in as few words as possible. But contemporary is all this at the same time as not being any of this.

Whether the poet is trying to be pretentious or not contemporary poetry is the voice of todays society and just as poetry styles are reactive of what has gone before contemporary poetry is just the same. Some techniques that you can use in helping to understand the poems is just take a step back from them. Don’t try and read too much into them in the first instance. Just try and get a feeling for what the poem is talking about. More often than not your first guess is usually the right one. Try breaking it down into smaller bits, looking at certain sections and then moving on once you think you have the gist of it. You could also try doing a bit of research over the poem, seeing if your thoughts are along the lines of others.

In appreciating poetry a large part of what a poet is trying to do is to get the reader thinking about something, or seeing something in a different light that maybe they had not thought of originally. Contemporary poetry, i find, is best enjoyed when you ‘go with the flow’ and almost allow the meaning to soak into your thoughts. Don’t be disheartened if at first you don’t understand it, part of the enjoyment and the feeling you get from a poem is when it suddenly ‘clicks’, maybe a moment of inspiration or a bit of hardwork on your part has allowed this to happen, but when it does the satisfaction is immense!

The Process of Writing Pt4

Journal into Draft – Poetry - Experience into Expression

Now you have a notebook full of ideas and you’ve done well to turn off you inner critic you wonder to yourself how you go about turning your ideas into a workable form. This is the one of the early stages in writing and there are techniques that you can use to get your ideas down onto the page. One of them involves using using Tony Buzan’s mindmaps. These are a good way of getting down words that form part of your idea and expanding on them. This is a way of really underastanding your subject and seeing it in a fully rounded light. It can also help to bring up new words that may help form parts of the poem, words that you may not have thought about originally.

This technique also allows you to begin structuring your poem. It will help you to look at what sounds good on the page and in what order things could go in. At this point you really just want to be getting your ideas onto the page and starting to think about how they work together. Maybe you have a line in mind that sounds really good but now you need to experiment with where this line may end up and what could come before or after it.

One of the most important pieces of advice at this point too is to write about what you know. In poems you may decide that they are going to contain more about your feelings, something which you should know intimately, but if you’re writing about another subject it needs to be something you know just as well as your feelings. One of the most common mistakes of new writers is writing about a subject they are unfamiliar with. When this happens the all important ‘voice’ of the poet is lost due to its inability to really understand the subject and portray this knowledge through the chosen words. If you are unsure on something you can just ‘make it up’ as this makes the rest of the piece unbelievable to the reader. The easiest way to remedy this, and something that writers spend most of their time doing, is research. Make sure you understand what you are saying and you will also notice that the more you know about your subject the easier it is to write about it!

“Throw yourself into the hurly-burly of life. . . . It is all your material. . . . Don’t wait for experience to come to you; go out after experience. Experience is your material.”  W. Somerset Maugham

This quote sums up exactly what you need to be doing as young writers. You need to experience things. Take every opportunity to be a person that soaks everything up, be like a sponge. Take the chances life throws at you and through the hardships and good times you will become a better writer. Some of the worlds greatest writers, whether they be poets or songwriters have always written about things that have happened to them. What makes their pieces so special is that they reach into that void of language and explain their experiences in such a way that we can relate to them, that we feel what they are describing. This type of writing only comes from actually experiencing those things and then the writer in you takes over and turns them into pieces of art.

HASELER007

Credit where it’s due. Mr Lancaster, your poem is brave in its simplicity: I salute you! Students, notice how Mr L did not feel any need to use flowery language, clever techniques or an overly dramatic tone.

2 questions to consider: why did the poet choose to use the simple language and structure he did? what effects do you think he wanted to achieve and is he successful?

Now, how about some student feedback? Ok, I know my literary character is a rather tragic case, but who is she? Does nobody read the greats anymore? Do we need to rewrite the canon?!