Ian Gouge's Blog, page 43

“All the men I never married”

I confess that, for no good reason, I was slightly wary of Kim Moore’s “All the men I never married”. Perhaps it was a uniquely male fear of some kind, perhaps against being exposed. Or of not understanding what Moore was talking about. I needn’t have worried. “All the men I never married” is a … Continue reading “All the men I never married” →

Yesterday & Today: 14th March

Yesterday was one of those days which will perhaps be easy to summarise on paper yet will also live on in the memory much longer. As far as the bones of the retreat went, I ran my “Character Building” workshop and help a couple of 1-2-1s – all of which we enjoyable and, I hope, … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 14th March →

Yesterday & Today: 13th March

The ‘You as Writer’ workshop seemed to go down well at the retreat yesterday. It’s a deliberately – but superficially simple-looking – session when I ask participants five questions: Why do you write? Who do you write for? What kind of writer are you? What are you writing? Invariably these get people thinking about what … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 13th March →

Yesterday & Today: 12th March

Yesterday morning I managed to get a little work done on Tilt revision and “C” before heading off to the retreat in Beal. There are six attendees here, primarily writers of fiction both long- and short-form. Over the next three days we will have a number of 1-2-1s and probably four workshops. We’ll start today … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 12th March →

Yesterday & Today: 11th March

One thing I hadn’t expected to be doing yesterday was preparing some of my books for a Coverstory books publication in May – all in the event of them not being picked up by an agent/other publisher. (Though if one of the short stories in the collection wins a prize in the interim it might … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 11th March →

Yesterday & Today: 10th March

After the relative cut-and-thrust of Wednesday, yesterday was pretty much back to normal: chunks of effort of various sizes on Tilt, “C”, poetry, retreat preparation, and some residual Ripon Writers’ Group stuff in the wake of our poetry exercise… I understand that poetry isn’t to everyone’s taste – but neither is prose for others. So … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 10th March →

The Cottage Hospital

The poem below is the response to a recent writing group challenge, ‘write one poem to the tune of another’. My source was John Betjeman’s “The Cottage Hospital”; my response a kind of WK Auden / Dylan Thomas mash-up. Far from perfect, but here it is… The Cottage Hospital Beyond municipal green, a maudlin wall … Continue reading The Cottage Hospital →

Yesterday & Today: 9th March

Hold the front page! You could have knocked me down with a feather when, at around 13:45 yesterday, I had a call from Radio York wanting to interview me live on air in the evening. They wanted to talk about me, my podcast, and then play a little from one of the stories on it. … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 9th March →

Yesterday & Today: 8th March

Really full-on yesterday with my library residence, ‘Write-on Ripon’, and the Derby Stanza Group. In amongst all of that I managed to do a little work on the draft of “C”, and get some prep work done for the retreat starting Saturday. For the latter I’m taking a slightly different approach to the workshops I … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 8th March →

The Schooner

The Schooner when through the fog the spectral ship appeared silent before us on the running tide torn sails spoke of the stormy seas she’d steered on deck those ghostly pallid faces peered as we fell mesmerised and open-eyed when through the fog the spectral ship appeared legend said this old schooner should be feared … Continue reading The Schooner →