Creator or Archivist

Two important channels of creativity - archiving and creating. The act of creating new materials is important to ensure that we continue to generate new material. Then there is the Archivist who is the editor, remastering material, remixing it, producer, director and multi-media artist. Some of this activity will be about looking after the archive of work, ensuring that it is kept in a form that can receive an audience. But some of the activities of the Archivist stray into the creative - just like working with music or the visual arts, words can be shifted into new works. This can be done by expanding on original ideas, reworking, illustrating, creating sequels and prequels. All of this adds to the understanding of the work. It also ensures that the archive of work is not regarded as untouchable. Everything can be reworked, improved and reinterpreted.

Exercises for creating new poems

I thought it would be useful to set out some of the ideas and techniques I use to produce new poems. When the creative muse is off on holiday, I sometimes draw inspiration from old poems. I am also really interested in techniques from popular music, particularly approaches like remixing, remastering and cut-ups. These ideas can be adapted to the printed word.


So, I am currently using the following techniques:

• Take a selection of old poems and re-work each one into a new version, using different lay-outs or verse forms.
  
• Take old poems and redraft or create new poems as reactions, prequels, sequels and observations on the material in the original poems.
  
• Take a number of poems and dismantle them to create new works from the pieces by putting them back together in new ways.
  
• Take one poem and use each line from it as the first line or title of a new poem, creating a whole sequence of poems which builds on the original.
  
• Take one poem and reconstruct it into a series of remixes - like musical remixes, draw out key lines and phrases for repetition and distortion.

I'm going to experiment with some of these techniques over coming weeks. If you use any of them, feel free to post feedback in the comments.

Self Publishing

In a recent post, Rik Roots talks about self-publishing using a print-on-demand service called Lulu. This is a really interesting approach to producing perfect-bound books without having a heap of them sitting about on a shelf.

Rik points out that he has a specific need to publish so that he can share his work with friends, family and people who ask to see work. The web, in the form of downloadable pdf files is one way to satisy this demand. But there really is nothing like a real artefact to hold in the hand and turn the pages.

Something well worth investigating further.

I have self-published chapbooks / booklets a couple of years ago under the bluewater books imprint, and am in the middle of preparing a new series of booklets - all produced myself. I like the idea of a service like Lulu where the work is done for you.

When the muse strikes, rather than being on strike

After a long poetic silence, words are beginning to appear in my head again.



Some new poetry fragments – towards a 2007 sequence…

(1)

The sound of the helicopter blades reminded me that
The first time I had stood on this rocky outcrop I had
Wondered what I was doing next
Then the pieces of the jigsaw all fitted

Because the steam-like mist rose from the valleys below
As if it was time to be going
Growing like an adolescent in the kitchen raiding the fridge
Watching everything like it’s the first time.

(2)


Pictures on the wall were all taken with this new camera
Living in a world where every second can be captured as a
Perfect digital image. Still or moving images

Everything caught as a series of digital code
So that every trace of every life can be saved for future viewing
If only we had the time to review everything

At least then we might learn something from the mistakes of history.


(3)


Be here, be now
Somehow holding on
To everything that we thought was
Precious and spoken


(4)

Tangled spindrift
Winged fragments of encapsulation
Such as bones and carcasses
Pieces becoming new things, new essences
As though the earth were starting all over again
Washed and bleached inside the sea-bed
Where once waited creatures now extinct
Flapped and furrowed, waxed and winnowed
Embraced in water, pictured on the stones
Each one scraped against the soul.

Fly like an eagle

One day on this holiday we went on a trip through the mountains in Corsica. It is an island of great beauty, and real contrasts.

I stopped the car to take some photos of the mountains - one range looked like something out of 'Lord of the Rings' - and as I was taking the photos I noticed four birds soaring over the valley beneath me.

They were golden eagles, and were calling to each other. Their lilting cry was haunting, stirring to the soul. I remember being captivated by golden eagles when I was young, but never thought I would actually see them flying in the wild. It was an amazing experience.

It left me moved for several hours - their cry really pulled at something primeval within me.

A picture would have shown more than I can describe - but the photos show only landscape, not the birds themselves. I guess I need a better camera.

BlueWater Books - Series Two - Coming Soon

After nearly two years, I have decided that it is time to begin work on the second series of books from my poetry press. BlueWater Books was launched in 2004 with two books of poems - 'Zen Words' and 'Umbrian Images'.

The second series will be available in the early autumn. More news of the titles that will be available will be posted on the blog soon.

Oh, and if you want copies of the first two booklets I still have a few left, so email me your details and I will send them to you.

When the brain starts to work again

Over the last couple of days, it has felt as though my brain has come back from an extended period of holiday. I'm beginning to understand patterns again. Things are pulling together into a bigger coherent picture.

It feels like the clearing of a heavy fog. As a result the state of stasis is easing. Writing has begun again, and the creative energies are flowing. You will see more here too.....

Escaping writer's block

New words
New creations
New intimations of creativity
Old spaces
Seen before spoken
Somewhere we have been before
Law taken over
Wondering whether there is more in the dust
Specks that have recovered
Speeches that have been replayed

Once the lines have opened
There is not much left to the sands of timeliness
Such as the scan of a mission best replayed

Coming through Change

I promised recently that I would post some information about the book which I am writing. It is a book about change, particularly about the whole issue of surviving organisational change. A lot of the techniques and tools that I set out in the book are applicable to change in whatever context we encounter it.

I cover issues like:

o networking
o using a network map
o objective setting
o biography working
o self-actualisation
o archetypal casting (a concept I developed as part of my PhD thesis)
o energy mapping
o applying creativity
o journaling
o channelling synchronicity

As the manuscript develops, I may post extracts here if there is sufficient interest. It will be useful to get feedback as the ideas fuse together.

Busy writing a book

The frequency of posts to the weblog has fallen away over the last few weeks. The explanation - I have been pouring my energies into the planning of a book. The book, working title "Coming through Change", is about organisational change. Its subtitle is "A practical guidebook for personal survival and success during times of organisational change". I have nearly finished putting together the outline and am about to move to the writing stage. I will post extracts and thought-pieces here to keep it alive, and to keep this blog from freezing to a standstill.
Comments, observations, ideas and feedback are welcome.

Little notebooks

I'm a fanatical seeker of little notebooks. The sort that you can put in a pocket and take anywhere with you. I particularly like the ones that have an elastic strap that holds them together. I discovered Moleskine notebooks a few years ago when I bought one at the gift shop near Bunratty Castle in County Clare, Ireland. They are wonderful notebooks, with the strap and a pocket on the inside back cover so that you can store slips of paper without them falling out.

Since then, this sort of notebook has become easier to get hold of. They are great as a journal, list maker or general note taker. There are other makes too.

I work on the principle that if I don't make a note of it when I think of it, the idea will just disappear and never be put to the use which it could have been.

NaNoBlogMo Phenomenon

Well, I have stared writing the 50,000 words of novel for the National Novel Writing Month. It's going painfully slowly. I was struggling to find the motivation to get the thing moving along steadily. I had set up a separate weblog to post some of the material I create, and to post comments as I go. It can be found at mywrinomo.blogspot.com . Well, after a few days it appeared on the nanoblogmo site (nanoblogmo.blogspot.com). I think it appeared some time on Saturday, and within hours I was receiving a huge hit rate. This is excellent - just the motivation I need to get writing some more...

So I will then...

Meanwhile hits to this weblog pour in steadily - I will soon be reaching my 300th visitor. And I will soon be posting my 100th post too, which surprises me. When I started this, I wasn't sure how long it would last for. At the moment it feels like something that is ongoing, that is adapting and adjusting to my tastes as I progress, and taking in different things as I go.

Sometimes it's easier to speak

There are days when the words don't want to come forward. I surf across weblogs on the net (some are over on the right) and find some bloggers who post every single day. How do you do that? There are days when life gets in the way. There are days when emotions get in the way. And there are days when I just get in my own way, because I am not getting my own way!

Enough said!

another butterfly emerging

The plans are emerging for the Novel Writing month coming up. According to the rules it's OK to plan and prepare outlines before the writing starts. (Never forget that rules are made to be broken anyway!) I'm thinking that I will do some more work to pull together what this whole 50,000 words is going to be about, to make the job a bit easier.

All I have so far is that it will be a sequel to 'the butterfly principle' and that it will have Alice as a main character, and probably Jim too. I need place, incident and some sort of plot ideas to get things moving.

I'll do some more work on it tonight.

The challenge has been taken up and is being absorbed into my consciousness as a 'can do this' image.

November novel - butterfly sequel

I signed up for the National Novel Writing Month initiative today (www.nanowrimo.org). I have only the vaguest idea as to what I will write about when it starts on 1st November, but then I think that is partly the point!

I thought I would produce a sequel to the first novel which I wrote - "the buttefly principle" - which is still unfinished. I guess I ought to finish the first one before the end of this month, as a warm-up and to get me back into the characters from that book.

The objective of the initiative is to encourage the writing of 50,000 words in one month. I just need to settle to produce 1,700 words each day to achieve this. It's going to good fun - and a bit of a haul too.

I'll keep updates coming here...

Note to Self

Across poetry sequences, pieces of fiction and other creative processes, there are a number of key characters and images that repeat. These are:

- Blue
- Alice
- Aslan
- Kingfisher
- Water

These have a deeper range of meanings, and are 'characters' that I can work with through diverse contexts. Bringing them back again and again lends strength to the creative process.

Last week Blue re-emerged in a poem called '21st Century Blue' which I am now working on.

Two preoccupations for my poetry - process and content.

National Novel Writing Month

National Novel Writing Month

This looks really good. National Novel Writing Month - or NaNoWriMo for short. It starts on 1st November and participants have until the end of November to write a novel of at least 50,000 words. The full description is on the site - it's about setting the standards low to make sure you reach that goal of writing a novel. A great idea to overcome that perfectionist streak in us all which stops us from getting into certain projects, and from completing other ones. I'm thinking about it - might just take part! It's a couple of thousand words a day!

BlueWater Books - details of first two booklets

I have just worked out how to get images into my blog. So, I am posting details of the first two booklets that I published last year, together with images from the covers. If you are interested in seeing these booklets drop me an email (email address here). I've also put these details on a new blog which will cover details of launch dates for new booklets, extracts etc. (bluewaterbooks)

Booklets published August 2003:

'zen words' (bw001) 52 pages

a collection of poems which explore language, landscape and the self, each poem captures the indefinable and attempts to distil it in words. These poems create vivid moments, with their use of language.


'umbrian images' (bw002) 36 pages

a sequence of poems reflecting on a holiday in Italy, which captures both the sense of location and the wonder of the Italian language. The poems included in this collection also capture Assisi just weeks before an earthquake destroyed frescoes and buildings.

Deranged but still writing

I'm filling my head with the deranged sounds of The Residents and People Like Us, both of which are so incredibly diverse and innovative, whilst still keeping a strongly specific sound, so that you know that is who you are listening to. I think I have written about both of them in earlier entries to this blog. The whole of the People Like Us back catalogue is available for free download here.

There is a statement on the website:

"Many thanks to the brilliant Ubuweb for hosting the tracks below to make it more accessible for more people to download for free. We strongly believe in the power of profit through free distribution, and the publicity that comes along with that - so we are putting our money where our mouse is. Often people have never heard of an artist because they aren't being distributed through as many channels as they should be, due to the very poor state of music/media distribution for non-major label music coupled with ignorance of the way that avant garde art forms infiltrate mainstream culture."

All of this music is helping creativity to move again. Last night I spent a couple of hours preparing my third book of poems for publication by bluewater books. It is called 'edge of water'. See an extract from it here.

I've also been writing new material for the next collection, 'the alice conversations', due out soon. I wrote something last night, which veered off into recollections of summer holidays as a child in Margate, Kent, England. Strange that it should come into my mind, but there's a useful vein to mine there.

I'm having artist days - to focus the musical background as I work away at the computer. Today was Robert Wyatt day, spent listening to the 7 albums I have by him. This was prompted by being hugely impressed by listening to the Soft Machine double album 'Peel Sessions' yesterday. I've had this for a while now, and his taken until now to grow on me. Upcoming artist days include King Crimson, David Sylvian (guess that'll last a few days as I have so many albums by him!)

And here's a crazy idea for digesting. I've always dreamed of being a DJ. So, why keep it as a dream. I'm going to do what I can over the next couple of months to see whether I can find some means of getting on the air even if it is only for an hour a month. Signing off now, turning dreams into reality.

Frozen in ice

Stuck - stuck - stuck. Frozen in activity. Thanks to the fact that I am exhausted, and the weather is terrible, and I should be doing a million things. It's the pause before a flurry of action...