Another great issue of Attack!!! is out now. Here are the links you need –
http://www.ecartilage.co.uk
http://www.myspace.com/attackmagazine
http://www.last.fm/group/attack!!!!+magazine
http://www.myspace.com/wmwhite

I’ve been writing a play which has meant no spoofing or blogging for months. The play’s based on my experiences living in a terraced house in central Reading for 18 years. Some scenes of violence and drug trafficking.

I’m still on a near useless mobile phone internet connection due to constant changes of address. My music at ccMixter, my podcasting at libsyn and Myspace won’t load and I can’t update Wordpress versions quickly or easily.

Here’s a shout out to another writing site. http://cutewriting.blogspot.com.

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Another spoof news items I made up in Hold It Up For Ridicule has actually become real news on Sky a year later:

Barack O’Bama: Is Politician Irish?

“Like many American politicians before him, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama may have roots in Ireland. And residents of one town in the Emerald Isle are proud to count him as one of their own. Tadhg Enright reports.”

This came out on Feb 2nd 2008, but I’d already predicted the story in February 2007:

“The Wilderness has learned that genealogists working in Ireland’s remotest parts, have discovered a hitherto unknown link between Barack Obama, and the ancient Irish farming clan, O’Bama. Through a contorted chain of events involving potato blight, the Titanic, and the slave triangle, they have confirmed that the O’Bama strain moved from Ireland, and reassembled itself firmly in America via Canada, Africa, the Caribbean, and even Spain.

It seems that Barack Obama has Irish roots after all, not just like Kennedy, Reagan, and Clinton, but better, thus making him eminently suitable to be a President.

Not only that, genealogists using Advance Document Reassembly techniques , whereby they gather dust, and piece together microscopic fragments to recreate original ancient Irish documents, have proved that after the rout of The Spanish Armada by Sir Walter Raleigh, the fragmented fleet escaped by sailing round Britain. Some of them didn’t make it home, and settled in Ireland’s west coast. A distant relative to Obama, Juan Pedro Olazabal, staggered ashore in Country Cork, and mated immediately with lace-maker Tessa Kitty O’Shea O’Bama, to produce a whole new strain of the Hispanic-Irish O’Lazabal clan, which due to an inter-clan dispute, split off from the O’Bama clan to establish roots fairly and squarely in African soil. Through a convoluted twist of fate, the Hispanic-Irish O’Lazabal clan was reunited with the Afro-Irish O’Bama clan in the Caribbean before setting sail once again for the new colonies, thus creating this vast diaspora we now know as the United States of America.

The Wilderness has learned that this has been validated as one hundred per cent correct by experts everywhere, and is therefore completely true.”

Satire | No Comments »

Run by the Poetry Society of Great Britain, the National Poetry Competition is regarded (at least by the Poetry Society) as the most important poetry competition of them all. Which is probably true. Winning it, or even being well-placed, leads to a small but important amount of media attention. The Independent on Sunday will print the winner on March 30th. In UK poetry terms, this is as big as it gets, so it’s not surprising that not just anyone wins. As far as millions of people in Britain are concerned, they’re more likely to notice the story of the innuit who catches a migrating bird that was being tracked by the BBC.

In September 2007 I had a strong idea for a poem and devised a way of working that would mean that by the deadline for the National, I would have a poem that had soaked up hundreds of hours of my time. My belief in the work ethic is very strong. Hard work wins in the end. I worked on it several days a week for a couple of months hoping that seeing it with constantly refreshed eyes would provide new insight each time. Poem rotation has worked in the past. At some point, I decided to make it sound like a National winning poem, lots of mentions of obscure foreign places and a generally obfuscated theme. I posted it online on Oct 29th and was disappointed that the email acknowledgment sounded like the Poetry Society’s computer didn’t take too long “processing” my effort.

Thank you for your online National Poetry Competition entry. Your
entry was processed successfully, and the order details were as follows:

Order #5898

————-

1 x Competition Entry

Total Payable: £5.00

Regards, The Poetry Society

I can’t help thinking that the computerised response to the poem that eventually won might have carried a little more weight for the esteemed poet who probably spent many more hours than I did.

I’m looking at my poem now and it’s crap. My aim to write a poem worthy of winning resulted in a poem that was lumpen and pedestrian. It had no ring to it. The language laboured. I know this, because I remember making the decisions that led it to be like that. Today I spent an hour on the old poem and reduced it by half retaining all the meaning and adding a lot more. Now, I’ll wait till I write some more, put them together and send them off to The Rialto or maybe somebody else online. The Rialto have had six of my poems since Dec 4th so I’m not inclined to send them any more. Other than that, it’s back to attaching copies of my poem to a migrating bird in the hope that the BBC tracks it, an innuit catches it and reads it aloud on BBC Radio 4’s Nature programme. Stranger things have happened in art.

Poetry | No Comments »

We know from the good work of Johnathan Clifford that agents only read submissions from people they know, but it’s still fun when you catch them out. I just sent an email to Darley Anderson saying,

“Hello, It’s a little while since I submitted any work to you, but I thought you might like to read a story I’ve had published in Eclectica, The Day I Asked Blake Morrison If He Raced Pigeons? Hope you enjoy it.”

So it seems odd that next day I received this reply:

“Dear Ian Smith, Many thanks for giving us a chance to consider your work. Unfortunately this is not for us. We receive over 300 manuscripts a week and can only take on a handful of new writers every year. The result is that we have to be incredibly selective, so please do not be too disheartened. Another agent may well feel differently. We wish you the very best of luck elsewhere. All good wishes, Darley Anderson Agency”

A standard reply. They never even read it!

Uncategorized, Writing | No Comments »

Here’s a poem from my collection What You Will See (gattopublishing.com) about Liz Dawn who played Vera Duckworth who has just been written out of the long-running soap opera Coronation Street.

Queen of the Minimus

An episode of the longest running soap finishes.

There’s a deadly one-liner from the queen of the minimus.

With that look she snakes off,

Slams a door with a bang and a cough.

A dreadful tune plays over credits.

They roll off the tongue like the names of the dead. It’s

A tea-brewers’ signal to threaten the grid.

There’s a story behind it that no one will give.

It was tough out there for the nation’s favourite star.

She struggled in a town in a snow-blocked car,

Hoiking a suitcase from the back of a Zephyr,

Rushing to audition in a social club mecca.

She dropped that wig with her dress tucked in her knickers,

A mophead in the slush, she was on with the strippers.

Miss Harp Lager, nineteen sixty-two,

A courtroom drama, a standby screw.

She made the murderess in episode four

Rigid as a gibbet and they asked for more,

Extra episodes in the nation’s favourite soap,

Factory girl, picket, barmaid with the most.

Finally bricked-in as the redoubtable landlady,

The fireplace smile said she’d really made it.

On set her lines were as faultless as veneer.

The combustible temper hid the fear.

The doors were slammed with a plasterboard thump.

When she ignited, the sound men jumped.

Some remembered when she answered to Kiddo.

In sad moments thought of going early, a widow.

She bit on the capsule with impeccable timing,

Back next year with a facelift, smiling,

Pictured in the paper on a pile bricks,

Wielding a sledge-hammer, signing books at six.

And who really cares that her knickers were seen?

That her mother swore and her corsets went green?

When viewing figures showed her popularity slipping,

The headlines reminded her she was queen of the minimus.

Poetry | No Comments »

My story The Day I Asked Blake Morrison If He Raced Pigeons has been published at Eclectica. I submitted two Life Writing commentaries back in October, and Tom Dooley selected this one for the January 2008 issue. It’s a great start to the year. I have lots of ideas to work on, and getting one story published is a great boost to my confidence.

Fiction, Life Writing, Literature | No Comments »

Umami, meaning ’savory’ in Japanese, is also the title of Murat Ses’s seventh solo album (Clou Records clou-008) available at www.clourecords.com and www.muratses.com.

I was asked to record some vocals for Murat at the beginning of 2007 and I admit I had to look him up. Wikipedia lists amongst Murat’s successes the Grand Prix du Disque for Danses et Rythmes de la Turquie d’hier à aujourd’hui with Mogollar, and describes Murat as the creator of the Anadolu Pop style, the name given to a highly successful and influential mix of Anatolian Music and Western elements. Anatolia, or Anadolu, is the Asian part of modern Turkey, a broad peninsula and one of the great crossroads of ancient civilizations. What is it with peninsulas? Here in the UK, the Celtic peninsulas are also great meeting places of cultures so I didn’t feel out of place in Murat’s scheme.

Murat’s music has undergone some huge cultural shifts. In 1979 he migrated to Austria. A giant step into the middle of Europe’s Germanic classical belt produced an experimental form of Anadolu Pop, a style he named Electric Levantine. Levantine, an imprecise but useful Franco-Italian Mediterranean term, refers to a wide mixture of cultures rather than a specific geographical location. According to Wikipedia, the main elements of Electric Levantine are “microtonal properties created on authentic Levantine scales, electronically produced instrument timbres and Western music”.

I recorded some vocals and in November 2007 the completed CD, called Umami, arrived. I expected Umami to sound exotic, pleasing and somehow familiar. Wikipedia lists Murat’s main influences as sixties psychedelic prog rock bands Pink Floyd and Traffic, the jazz organist Jimmy Smith, Eastern Mediterranean music, Levantine, and Central Asian cultures and music. Wikipedia describes Murat as “the most important Turkish artist still internationally active and shaping today’s independent electronic music scene”. In 2007 an advertising agency decided to use the early 70s Mogollar song Garip Çoban, composed by Murat Ses, in PlayStation 3 commercials. It’s not hard to see why. I’ve listened to Umami many times now. The relentless density of electronic music usually means I tire when I listen to a full CD. But Umami is light and refreshes constantly. Its 40:31 minutes fly by in no time. And it is terrific, with great original sounds and catchy tunes. There’s a fascinating mix throughout. I was consulting my Glossary of Folk Instruments at Hobgoblin.com straightaway. For example, as far as I can make out there is Native American chanting, medieval shawm and electric organ playing on Tamiami Trail alone. It’s hard to describe just how good it is, but when I checked out my co-collaborators I found they are all very talented people indeed with distinguished profiles.

Phil Gooch at www.macpips.com, small things that work indeed. When I saw I was credited on the opening track On Air, it took me a long time to identify that it’s my vocal from Don’t Know What I’m Doing. It works very well with the new country music sound that comes from Phil Gooch. I do like these synthesised acoustic guitar sounds with the dragged notes and rapid tempo. It is guitar playing but not as we know it. Taking the timbre of the instruments and making them play in humanly impossible ways sounds great to me.

Kawaski “KCentric” Nelson at www.kcentricity.com is a remixer, composer, artist, and multimedia aficionado, one of today’s most creative unforgettable young talents (who has remixed my song Who Am I to Disagree?). His distinctive rap can be heard on On Air, Thru the Valley (I reckon he’s doing the zoom zoom), Fern Street (with Tomas Phusion) and Seagreen. KCentric also did the hip hop version of Right or Wrong.

The artist and musician Riyu Konaka at www.myspace.com/riyuhip does great fractured vocals on Umami and Right or Wrong.

Paris Afar Off, with its interesting Eurostar ‘commuter’ rap, and Levantine Daydream are brilliant, but my favourite track is Umami itself with that faintly disturbing Riyu Konaka vocal conveying some kind of tortured urban paranoia.

My own nasal northern English vocals can be heard in On Air, Levantine Daydream, Umami and Right or Wrong under my recording name The Hexyl Circle (www.myspace.com/thehexylcircle).

It is possible to identify all the vocal snippets eventually. All licences on Umami are Creative Commons Attribution 2.5, so spread the attribution. Here’s the list of guest artists by tracks.

On Air features Colombian pop singer SilviaO (www.silviao.com), The Hexyl Circle, KCentric, Phil Gooch guitar and 4nsic (www.myspace.com/forensichiphop)

Thru the Valley features KCentric

Levantine Daydream once again Colombian pop singer SilviaO (www.silviao.com), and The Hexyl Circle

Fern Street - Tomas Phusion and KCentric

Umami - Acradian Burn (ccmixter.org/media/people/tachyon869), Riyu Konaka and The Hexyl Circle

Paris Afar Off features Tomas Phusion’s Eurostar commuter rap and that Phil Gooch guitar

Right or Wrong features Tokyo poet and artist Bun Onoe, Riyu Konaka and The Hexyl Circle

Tamiami Trail features Tomas Phusion

Seagreen features Chris Rininger, KCentric and an artist called P.

Music | No Comments »

My new copy of Attack!!!! 8 has just arrived from Wes White, and very good it is too. Here’s how to get your copy:

“Subtitled “Response: White” because it’s made up of responses to my piece from issue 5, which you can attempt to read here if you like: http://www.ecartilage.co.uk/responsewhite.htm

These responses include an audio track of Johanna van Fessem reading (and singing!) the original piece, a work of sound by Rarg, illustrations from Tor Freeman and Gethan Dick (hers is interactive), and writing from regular contributors Ruth Moog Baker, George Galbraith, Steve Leighton, Chris Murray, Ben Platts-Mills, Ian Duncan Smith and Erica Viola.

Here are some of their own websites:

www.rarg.net / www.myspace.com/rargsmusic

http://www.torfreeman.com

http://www.gethan.org

http://www.glenfruinpress.co.uk/journeys%20of%20i.html

http://www.iandsmith.com

Here is the issue’s own page: http://www.ecartilage.co.uk/attack0801.htm

Some people have had problems trying to subscribe over the last 48 hours - these should now be fixed! If you’d like to try again go straight here: http://www.ecartilage.co.uk/shop.htm“

Writing | No Comments »

But there’s no 3G here, so it’s quite slow.

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The Day I Asked Blake Morrison If He Raced Pigeons has been Cherry Picked by the editors at ABCTales. It’s funny that my Life Writing MA has become the subject of my life writing.  I submitted an earlier version online to Pulp.net which seems to be the online incarnation of Bloomsbury. They pay £100 per story published. Sadly, it was rejected. I’m not surprised. Then I tried Dave Egger’s great online venture, McSweeney’s, but they too rejected it. Perhaps there are too many English cultural references in it, but only in a Wallace and Gromit way I thought. Maybe McSweeney’s is also part of the establishment. Why should a story attacking the establishment be published by the establishment? So, not out of desperation, but out of a desire to share my work, I posted it everywhere I could.

Life Writing, Literature | No Comments »