Following on from my visit to the University of Leicester last week here are some pics of me in action and a link to the podcast that came from the day. Scroll down for the link.
Definitive book-pointing pose. Reading to 3rd year creative writing students.
Click here for the Golden Room podcast featuring me interviewed by Dr Kevan Manwaring.
I’m pleased with the podcast because I don’t sound like an arse and you can hear that we genuinely get on and enjoy talking about writing – there’s quite a bit of laughing, which can’t be bad. There’s also a couple of old songs from me, not too cringeworthy, as well as some recordings of the work I read on the day.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Leicester answering questions from the students and sharing my limited insights into the world of writing and publication. I hope you enjoy the podcast and pictures, well, the podcast more than the pictures.
I’m walking and talking this Saturday the 19th of October, tomorrow. The wonderful people at Overhear Poetry commissioned me to create a walk that would be a writerly response to my home city of Birmingham, so that’s what I’ve done.
This is not a facts and figures tour. It’s a creative look at a city you think you know, an interpretation of space, environment and architecture. But it’s not all me. I’ll be asking you to respond to points on the walk with snippets of poetic text in the style of Ian McMillan’s daily tweets.
Join me tomorrow at 10:30 outside Birmingham’s Roundhouse and delve into the heart of the city. There are a few tickets still available and you can get them here.
I’m pretty shattered at the moment. I’m busy with the day job and I’ve lots of writing stuff to get done too. I’m not complaining, I like to be busy, but it would be nice to just stretch out and switch off for a bit. Anyway, what have I been up to? Well, writing, obviously, but not in the way I’m used to. Let me clarify that. I’ve been writing for two Apps, something I’ve never done before. Both are very interesting applications that I think a lot of people are going to love. The first I want to talk about is the Overhear App.
Overhear Birmingham.
Overhear is an innovative way of sharing poetry and prose and bringing greater exposure to some of the beautiful spaces and places that Birmingham has. It works like this: you download the App, select your city, and then go hunting for literature. For example, my story, Ikon, unsurprisingly, is linked to the Ikon Gallery. You have to physically be in the Ikon Gallery to then unlock my story. When the story is unlocked, you will then be able to play an audio file of me reading the story. There are a whole host of files to collect as part of this year’s Birmingham Literature Festival, and you can also collect poems that were released at this year’s Verve Poetry Festival. The App is free, as is the downloading of the files. The only thing you have to do is be in the correct location to download the file. The really terrible thing is that lots of the venues serve fantastic coffee, cake, beer, food etc. It’d be just awful if you happened to eat or drink in one of them.
The actual writing work for this was fairly straight forward. I had a couple of constraints, most commissions only had one. All of the commissions had to link their story to the site where it was to be unlocked. They didn’t necessarily have to take place there, but the site must have some link to the story. The extra constraint I had was to link my story to the current Barry Flanagan exhibition that is on at the Ikon. This may sound like a bit of a bind, but I found it liberating and challenging all in one – and I like a good challenge.
I’m pleased with the story I’ve produced. It speaks about the nature of art, loneliness, and friendship between males – something we’re not very good at expressing. Do check this out next time you’re in Birmingham, and please let me know what you think.
The Overhear App is available from the App Store and Google Play.
The other App I’ve been writing for has been a very different kind of challenge altogether. Questo is a location-based App. It’s like a cross between a puzzle and a story. You have a physical starting point in Birmingham, and you have to solve clues before you can move onto the next stage of your’ quest.’ It’s a great, fun way to explore a city, to enjoy a story, and to learn a bit about the place you’re in. The challenge for me was to not only have an idea for a story, but to also plan a route through the city, and create clues that need to be solved.
I had to do a fair bit of research for this commission. There needed to be the right proportion of historical facts interwoven throughout the quest, and it had to link in with the given theme. I won’t say what the theme is, but the fact that it launches on October the 31st should give you a clue.
To be honest, the second App, Questo, has been the more significant challenge. I’ve learnt a lot about collaboration and communicating with others, but there have been moments where I’ve felt like chucking it all in. Thankfully, the Questo team have been very supportive and have guided me through the whole process.
Questo is also available from the App Store and Google Play. There is a fee for unlocking each quest. If you do try this quest, I’d love to hear how you got on.
That’s it for now. I’m going to lie down in a dark room for a bit.
If like me, British comics, and especially 2000AD, have a special place in your heart then today is a sad day. Today we lost Carlos Ezquerra. Ezquerra was a huge talent who co-created one of the most iconic characters ever, Judge Dredd. Carlos’s work had a huge impact on me as a child, and I would often try to copy his drawings. Therefore, it seems only fitting that my first offering for Inktober should be in honour of him.
I loved Ezquerra’s early vision of Dredd, a lean, mean justice machine. In more recent times Dredd has grown older and beefier, but it’s these early visions of a youthful Joe Dredd that still resonate with me all these years later.
If you look closely, you can see my initial pencil marks – I haven’t bothered to rub them out yet. This was inked with fibre-tipped pens and a sharpie.
For some unknown reason, I always called this toy Space Monkey, but it quite clearly says Millenium Gorilla on his round badge – in reality, not in my sketch.
I’m feeling even rougher than when I last posted so ten minutes or so was all I could manage with this. It’s drawn with charcoal pencil from Tiger. They’re quite lovely to draw with, and you can get a decent black out of them. I’m not sure how well Millenium Gorilla gets on with those massive feet. It must be a bugger getting in and out of airlocks.
I had a stinking cold yesterday which has now transformed into a head full of sludge leaving me with the need to be curled up in a ball, not at work. Nothing was happening yesterday, so no sketch, but today I managed to scratch something out.
These were all done really quick and in pen. They’re not that accurate, but you get a feeling of their intense concentration.
Whoops. I missed a couple of days due to being very busy and very tired.
I was tidying up yesterday and I found some charcoal pencils I’d forgotten I’d bought. I thought I’d give them a go today. Desperate for ideas of what to draw I asked my daughter to pick out some toys I could sketch and here they are.
This first one isn’t great – the ears are way too short. The second one is much better.
