William Sutton's Blog, page 36

Pompey ReAuthors Feedback

Here’s what you said about the workshop. Thanks: we really appreciate the feedback and hope it will help us bring more exciting opportunities to this town so full of writers.

“The day was excellent – as were the brownies. Thanks to both you and Greg for organising, co-ordinating and delivering such a valuable and unusual event.” Jacqui
“The ReAuthoring workshop yesterday was excellent. I got a lot out of it and had a brilliant time. It certainly helped me reappraise and polish my performance and presentation skills, (as well as giving members of my regular crime panel, The Deadly Dames, scary ideas about us all performing in a ground-space approximately a metre square.) Thanks to Will and Greg for a great day.” Carole 

I’d like to echo Carol’s comments – an excellent workshop.  Andy

Thanks to Will and Greg for a great day. Learnt a lot and had a fun time. Sue


Thank you for this workshop. I valued the exercises, learnt a lot from others, and enjoyed the performances. I admit, i have the most unconventional way of telling a story ie not tell it at all but craft a new bit from your comments.  I’ll write a brief epilogue crediting you all and then submit my tale for day of the dead once ive fact checked. It was a great day. Thanks all.   Sameen


Thanks to everyone who took part in today’s ReAuthoring session. I enjoyed it immensely, and came away with tips and strategies to use in future, as well as a much-needed confidence boost. THANK YOU! I look forward to seeing you all again at other Hub events. Would welcome additional writing contacts, so feel free to send a friend request if I don’t send you one first.   Loree 


A mahoosive thanks to Greg & Will for today! And to everyone who attended and let it all go, you all rock! What an inspiring day of creativity! Once again staggered at how much I learn from my Pompey peers! And what a bloody good laugh too.  Tom

Can I just say a massive big thank you to Greg Klerkx and William George Sutton for today’s event. I really enjoyed it, and it was such a wonderful learning experience. It was nice to catch up with some old friends (and great writers) and to make new friends. Thanks!    Charlotte


Thank you @WilliamGeorgeQ for arranging fabulous ReAuthoring workshop with Greg Klerkx. I learned loads, and how much more I have to learn.  @WendyMetcalfe1

@WilliamGeorgeQ Really enjoyed today’s @Reauthoring at @PortsmouthGhall. Thanks for organising everything.  @JPCertHum

Update: Day of the Dead story collection

This is a quick message to thank the contributors to the Day of the Dead book for the many, many submissions you have made for us to consider.

We thought it best to let you know where we are with it now, and what we are intending to do next.

The stories we’ve received are of a high quality. Some will need some extra work to make them shine. The rewriting and editing required will extend our preparation time dangerously close to publication deadlines. The pressure of organising those rewrites, the typesetting, printing and publishing of the book, mean that we would be up against the clock in a way we didn’t consider best for quality. We don’t want to publish a book in a hurry, when a little more time will make the book much better.

The second reason is that although the stories and readings for the Day of the Dead evening are required to be around 1,000 words, for the book, the limit is around 5,000 words.

At the moment, we have a lot of short material, and not much longer writing. For the rhythm of the book to be satisfying for the reader, we’d like some longer pieces.

For that reason, I would like to push back the deadline for submission until the end of October. This will give you time to work on that longer story.

Scare us to death with something horror-filled.

Make us snort tea out of our noses with witty tales.

Make us weep inconsolably to the piquant narrative you devise.

We have therefore decided to aim for a Portsmouth Bookfest publication date. A night of horror and scariness in mid-February 2016 could be great fun, and will give us a chance to get publicity up for the book.

So, relax for now. Thank you so much for your submissions so far. Will and I will be getting back to you about them in the coming few weeks.

Please, do also remember, if you have that longer story that you want to hone – we are here to read it.

Thank you.

Matt Wingett and Will Sutton

Pompey ReAuthors 2015

Exclamations in the Guildhall

ReAuthoring Workshop: a day where writers explore performance

Strange exclamations in the Guildhall.

A circle of chairs.

Questions scribbled on large paper.

The ReAuthoring workshop was attended by twenty Portsmouth writers. We didn’t learn to write, we didn’t learn to act, but we were inspired with new approaches, discovering fresh insights on what it takes to perform the written word. Thanks to the participants for coming with such open minds and energetic pens. Thanks to Tessa Ditner of Portsmouth Writers Hub, partnered by Portsmouth Cultural Trust & Portsmouth Guildhall & ReAuthoring for making it happen.

Greg Klerkx could not be a more welcoming workshop host. We were soon discovering each others’ hopes and fears in writing and performing. There were intriguing potential noms de plume put forward (Scheherezade, Philippa Blaise). Perhaps the highlight of various collaborations was the miniature genre show, with four writers packed into a tiny stage area, conveying horror, thriller, romance and sci-fi with only gestures and timing; reality TV was admittedly a tough ask.

Dickens has an unexpected admirer

Greg also took us through the seven states of being (from French theatre practitioner Jacques LeCoq). Although we may not need to introduce passion, tragedy or catatonia in every bookshop reading, it’s intriguing how an awareness of different levels, and the contrasts available to a performer, can grip the audience in a moment. I’ve admired writers as diverse as Carole Ann Duffy, AL Kennedy and Matt Haig for their ability to draw an audience in to their readings, and I shall be trying out new ways to do the same when my next book comes out in July 2016.

I also loved the inquiry section, where everyone examines a skeleton description of each story and scribbles questions that spring to mind.

We finished with performances. We’re given 45 minutes and invited to pull apart what we’ve written, throw it up in the air and juggle it with the questions raised during the workshop to make a new piece.

Gareth Toms wowed us with a gentle tale of teenage years. Charlotte Comley created a hellish bake-off within a few sentences, and Margaret Jennings added zesty metaphorical lemons. Matt Wingett mesmerised us with our eyes closed, in time for Justin MacCormack to leave us terrified.

Zella Compton showed us the value of stillness and contrast. Sameen Farouk lured us in by not telling his story. Loree Westron showed that the warmth of your performance outweighs the detail of every word. And those of us who were perhaps less experimental gained confidence and assurance through the generous feedback process.

More! More! Aux armes, citoyens.

The 2012 workshop produced collaborations, publications, personal development, awards, events and friendships. If this glorious day leads to a tenth of the fun of that first, it will have been well worth it.

Beyond the workshop, performers will be invited to audition for Day of the Dead.

DAY OF THE DEAD iii                Wed 28 Oct, Square Tower, Broad Street, PO1 2JE

£5 (£4 concession/NWS/Portsmouth Library members)

6pm       Doors open. Refreshments, books, music, art. Fancy Dress optional.

7pm       Stories and songs art explore the macabre and mysterious.

Tickets: uk.patronbase.com/_NewWritingSouth/Productions/DOTD/Performances

Info:      william-sutton.co.uk/dayofthedead

Another chance to read will be at Blackwell’s Found Hour IF BOOKS COULD TALK, 24 Oct, contact tessa@newwritingsouth.com

ReAuthoring Manifesto

Let’s make this clear first of all. We’re not talking about performance poetry here. This is different. Performance poetry is written to be performed, much like a play, and so only has a secondary existence on the page. ReAuthored Performance is work that has a valid existence on the page first of all. It is the reinterpretation of ‘on-the-page’ work for a live context.

We call it ‘ReAuthoring’ because that’s what it involves: a writer remaking their written work for a different audience, one that will largely experience it as a public, audio-visual happening rather than as a private, text-centric event. It’s the same work, but it’s not. Not better, not worse. Just different in a way that’s right for the context and the audience.

Unleash the Titan

It’s my wedding anniversary, it’s Bastille Day, and if that’s not revolutionary enough, Miranda Jewess of Titan Books has acquired three Lawless novels from my agent Phil Patterson of Marjacq Scripts.

Titan will publish Lawless and the Flowers of Sin in July 2016. The streamlined cover design suggests the lush decadence and febrile ripeness of the swinging (18)60s.

The third book in the series, Lawless and the House of Electricity, will follow in 2017.

Meanwhile, November 2015 will see a new UK edition of Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square, with US paperback to follow in Feb 2016.

I’m thrilled to be working with the mighty Titan and delighted to find a new home for the Lawless books. Vast thanks to my agent Phil Patterson, ever resourceful, who worked to place them in the right hands.

I’m excited to unleash #FlowersofSin on an unsuspecting world.

Now I’ve to get back to my typewriter and explore my fervid imaginings of 1860s scientific studies botanical, electrical, financial, phrenological and dynamite.

Game of Poems #1

Sonya Kennedy has just brightened my FB, posting poems by Patrick Kavanagh, Lorca, Seamus Heaney and Rilke. Aah. An elegant gauntlet, Sonya. Thank you. Yes, the choosing is a pleasure of revisiting and exploring new corners of old books, dog-eared from bedside perusings and harbourside musings, well-pencilled with studious marginalia.

Let me begin with a poem I loved in my studies which today cuts and salves as much as then.

VOICES   Constantin Cavafy

Voices ideal and beloved

of those who’ve died

or those who are

lost for us like the dead.

Sometimes in dreams

they speak with us;

Sometimes in thought

the mind hears them.

And with their echo for a while

echoes of the first magic of

our life come back, like music heard

at night, far off, that dies away.

(More beautiful in Greek, melancholy and fluid like memory. Buy me a glass of ouzo and I will talk for several hours about Cavafy’s verse structure and linchpin position between east-west, classical-modernist, personal-epic poetry.)

Ιδανικές φωνές κι αγαπημένες

εκείνων που πεθάναν, ή εκείνων που είναι

για μας χαμένοι σαν τους πεθαμένους.Κάποτε μες στα όνειρά μας ομιλούνε·

κάποτε μες στην σκέψι τες ακούει το μυαλό.

Και με τον ήχο των για μια στιγμή επιστρέφουν

ήχοι από την πρώτη ποίησι της ζωής μας —

σα μουσική, την νύχτα, μακρυνή, που σβύνει.





(Από τα Ποιήματα 1897-1933, Ίκαρος 1984)

Southsea Sagas

Southsea Library Birthday Party

The first thing I do when I move is join the #locallibrary.

Enter our 50 word story competition (below).

I’m lucky to live on the same road as a new library, neatly installed into a former Woolworth’s right on our local high street. Libraries may be under threat around the UK, but the day Southsea Library opened, with the blessing of author and patron Kate Mosse, it was like an ad for libraries everywhere. Bustling café, children reading on floor mats, computers all booked, readers from all parts of the diverse community, and books flying off the shelves.

(For the locals who still complain that there aren’t enough books, I am informed that there are more than in the former Elm Grove Library, and more loans are made here than in the Central Portsmouth Library. QED.)

For the Library’s 4th birthday, 29 July 2015, there will be Pompey Pluckers, facepainting, archive tours, computing classes, and author talks from Julia Bryant on Portsmouth life, and on How to Get Published by Diana Bretherick and Matt Wingett and hopefully Tom Harris too.

SOUTHSEA LIBRARY WRITING COMPETITION IN ASSOCIATION WITH

THE WRITERS HUB PORTSMOUTH

The Theme for your story is Southsea Mini Sagas

50 words maximum

All stories must be the original work of the entrant

Entries must be received by email to friendsofsouthsea@gmail.com

or handed into any Portsmouth library by 22/07/15

Name………………………………Email………………………………………

Telephone no………………………Library card no…………………………

AGE GROUP: CHILD           TEEN(11+)          ADULT

Winners will be announced on 29/07/15 by the Lord Mayor at Southsea Library

Menagerie Hotbed

Menagerie Theatre have accepted my one-page play Home from Space for their Hotbed Festival this Sunday. An astronaut returns to his family home just in time for breakfast, where his parents are making toast and doing the crossword.

It was inspired by returning from my own travels in South America. Travel Writer John Brown summed it up in Two Against the Amazon, penned in the 1950s: you’ve been through the darkest, deepest jungle in the world, tussled with tribes, danced to dark rhythms and swum with piranhas; you get home, and people say, “Oh, you’ve been away. You missed Wimbledon! What a pity. Let me tell you all about it.”

Here is the first page of the story I wrote back then for Brazilian magazine, Speak Up.

Lawless Czech Book

The Czech translation is in. Thanks to the ever resourceful @sansawicka of Marjacq Scripts, Lawless a ďábel z Euston Square, translated by Stanislav Pavliček, just came through the door.

It’s a handsome volume, published by Brana Knihy, a well-known force in the Czech Republic: hardback with elegant dust jacket, sporting a top-hatted gent in the fog-bound city; overcoat, walking stick, gas lamps, iron palisade. The designer has absorbed the mood elegantly.

It’s exciting to imagine the translator tussling with argot, costermonger’s slang and parlare phrases such as:

“Shift your crabshells, you doxy old fishbag,”

“Coming out to play, Lilly Law? Shift your dish, will you?” and

“There’ll be a bonfire up your lally crackers if you don’t shift ’em.”

I’ve translated poetry and taught English as a foreign language, so I’m aware of the sacrifices and compromises that must be made to make a translation sing. I’m looking forward to getting feedback from Czech readers. I wonder if the translator has aimed to reproduce the different tones and dialects in the book. Has he gone for a Victorian flavour of language, or has he just gone for clarity and sharpness of storytelling? Whatever the advances in Google Translate, human translation remains a great art (and largely mysterious to brain theorists). How would you translate this?

My Dearest Dolly,

Your presence is cordially required at the Moveable Feast, where B.S.’s vermicular troupe shall present larksome sprees, glees and merriments for the Monstrous Crumbo and his Blabbing Spooney.

The itinerant extravaganza departs Notgniddap at nobber o’ the clock this very notchy. Tug on your cover-me-properlies, your stampers and fumbles and bonarest fakements, and toddle along. Shift your crabshells, you doxy old fishbag!

Your ever affectionate

Worm

Hats off to Stanislav Pavliček:

Má nejdražší Molly,

Tvá přítomnost je srdečnĕ žádána na Pohyblivé hostinĕ, kde červovitá skupina pana BS chystá skotačivé hýř ení, vesilí a zábavu pro Ohromnýho šviháka a Žvanivýho hlupáka. Tento pohyblivý spekáki vyjždí z Notgniddapu v tĕved midoh aksend rečev.

Vem na sebe patřičnej vohoz, nóbl křusky, nejlepči šminky a vyraž.

A hod’ sebou, ty jedna stará škatule!

Tvůj vždy milujicí

Červ

Bravo. The map too has been elegantly altered to change a few key places into recognisable language for Czech readers.

The publisher’s website has this to say:

Detektivní příběh z viktoriánské Anglie ve styli Jacka Rozparovače. Londýn 1859–1862. Nováček u Scotland Yardu seržant Campbell Lawless řeší případ na první pohled banální sabotáže, k níž dojde na stavbě nádraží Euston Station. Na místě je ale nalezena také mrtvola a spousta věcí zde nehraje. Kromě toho dochází v Londýně k záhadným vniknutím do domů bohatých a vlivných lidí, při nichž se vlastně nic podstatného neztratí. Pokaždé však na místě činu zůstává lidská kost… V nebezpečí se ocitá i samotný následník britského trůnu a ukazuje se, že ne každý je tím, kým se být zdál…

Lawless Returns

Titan Books will reissue Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square in October 2015, with US paperback to follow in Feb 2016. I’m thrilled to be working with the mighty Titan, and next Tuesday, 14 July, I’ll announce even more exciting news about the next Lawless books.

This is the same book (with the map revised and list of dramatis personae), so don’t be fooled. We’ve streamlined the cover, sharpened the punctuation, and sent Lawless back out into the misty cobbled streets of 1860s London. If you enjoyed this tale of revolutionary disenchantment, exploitation and murder, pass on the news to reading friends; if you hated it, tell your enemies.

DAY of the DEAD III: Double Call for Submissions

Double-Pronged Call for Submissions     

DAY of the DEAD III

Short stories for performance,

Wed 28 Oct, Square Tower, Old Portsmouth.

Day of the Dead III follows full house shows in 2013/2014, featuring twenty-odd writers performing original stories, with a sprinkling of music and poetry. We are looking for:

1000 words (or less) for a 7-minute performance. Interpret the theme widely: amidst the horror and death, we’ve had memoir, drama, comedy and an Elvis elegy. If you’re keen to be involved, let Will know now: williamgeorgesutton at gmail.com and submit your performance piece by 28 Aug.

5 Sept: Performance Skills Workshop, with the ReAuthoring Project. NB: workshop will be open to all, not just those keen to perform at Day of the Dead.

Late Sept: shortlisted performers will be invited to audition their pieces.

 

 

Short stories for Day of the Dead book.

A collection to be published by Life Is Amazing, featuring stories performed in previous shows alongside new contributions invited from far and wide. Submit your stories by email to Tessa at: culturekiddo at gmail.com by 28 July 2015.

Submit a story you performed in a previous year at Day of the Dead, or a new piece on the theme, or something exhumed from a cobwebbed drawer. Stories unperformed or unperformable can be submitted the book. Interpret the theme widely: we are confident you can meet this tight deadline.

Contributors are encouraged to offer more than one story, eg a shorter piece (1000 words) and a longer one, so that readers can get to know your work more intimately, if you are selected. The selection panel will make decisions in time for the editing process. The book will be available on the night of the performance, 28 Oct. More details soon on the publisher’s website, Life Is Amazing.