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Saturday 6 March 2021

Books, Glorious Books!

Books

 

As this first week of March slips away, a week when we usually celebrate World Book Day - this year on 4th - I finally got back to a little bit of writing. Other than some entries in my journal, and the day job, I have actively avoided any kind of writing, especially creative writing, and including this blog. But I couldn't resist it. Reading tends to make me reach for my pen, and, as I have mentioned in previous posts, is something in which I wanted to indulge what snippets of spare time I have.

A browse through the internet and especially my own social media showed the usual flurry of activity for World Book Day. Despite the drawbacks of the pandemic and the lockdown which is still only slowly lifting, it did my weary soul a good deal of good to see kids heading for school dressed up as their favourite characters and many of them with the associated book in their bags. 

What I did find rather churlish was some snarky comments on social media, from somewhat sour adults mostly, decrying the youngsters for dressing up as characters from films, notably as Harry Potter and his many chums. What is their issue? Maybe these are people who, aware of their own shortcomings in the literary department, are all too quick to criticise others. As a mother of six who has spent most of her life skint and bringing the kids up on a hard-earned shoestring, Harry Potter was a glorious relief; throw a length of black cloth over their shoulders, borrow Grandma's specs, hand each a twig from the garden and voila, World Book Day dressing up sorted.

Harry Potter book


The Harry Potter films, like many others that are based on books, like Matilda and Four Children and It, are wonderful examples of skillful storytelling. They have a narrative with pace and drama, with humour and darkness, with flights of fantasy and yet are believable. They touch human themes such as bullying, lack of self-confidence, courage, fear, the search for love, and, most importantly, of the struggle between good and evil. Why would immersing yourself in the movies be anything other than a superb way of helping kids explore narrative, character development, dialogue, scene construction and so much more. Let's bear in mind that scripts are written, and that scriptwriting is as much a form of writing as a Jacobean tome. Consider the tight dialogue of Pulp Fiction, or Casablanca, or Taxi Driver or One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest...I could go on and on. All hail those scriptwriters - what talent, and what art!

And if the kids haven't read those books yet, they probably will. And they will probably read more. The work their teachers put into World Book Day will often bear fruit, if not immediately, then often in years to come. Don't knock it. Far better to immerse yourself in a good movie and the story it tells than in scrolling and trolling.

Children reading books


But back to books. Bookshops have had a pretty hard time over the past decade or two, especially with the advent of Amazon and other commercial problems like the general demise of the High Street. Not least in Gib, where I still mourn for the loss of even the small book shops we had. And yet, when the world closed in on itself in the face of Covid19 and locked down, our isolation was assuaged by books and by reading. Online sales have soared. Booksellers found themselves working harder than ever to get orders of print books out to their customers and their customers were now from all over the world, and not just those from the nearby streets. Readers turned to e-books but found renewed pleasure in print books. With more time on their hands through furlough schemes, many people turned to old classics...you know, the ones where they watched the movie and now thought they'd try the original in book form.

kindle book


I set out this year to read more Gibraltarian writers, to immerse myself in Gibraltarian literature and try to understand it a little. I might love reading - would love to read all day everyday if I could - but sadly I need to earn a crust and the day job takes exactly that, all darned day. But I have manage to read some, starting with Gooseman, by Mark Sanchez. 

What a great start to my reading year. Brilliant. Funny. Dark. Shocking. And he tackles some great themes, like mental health and racism and Brexit and how the Brits treat their former colonials, and how we, the former colonials, still try to be their lap dogs. Also, as a Gibraltarian and with the novel set partly in Gibraltar and partly in London with the odd llanito comment thrown in, I found there was a familiarity about the characters and the places that drew me in straight away. More than that, there is an almost intangible Gibraltarian quality about the book. Perhaps it's the rhythm of the sentences, or perhaps it's that there is a sense that the lead character, Johann Guzman, is laughing at himself at times, just like we, in Gibraltar, readily laugh at ourselves too.

I've also got through a Giselle Green - also Gibraltarian in my eyes even if she has lived in UK for many years. She writes beautiful stories that touch on some of our deepest emotions. The Girl you Forgot speaks about memory and about relationships and about truth. Some parts of it are almost lyrical and yet it flows and undulates as do the hills of England where Giselle lives. It is a satisfying and emotional journey of a story.

Humbert Hernandez' El Agente Aleman was just perfect for grey winter days; it cheered me up no end. The stories are so funny in places, I laughed out loud, which was disconcerting to passers by as I perched on a low wall waiting for my cab to work one morning (some of us would have loved to lock down fully but couldn't). These stories are told in our tongue, the language of my early childhood in the old town of Gibraltar and are populated by people that are recognisable, although dwindling in numbers as they age and pass on, just as the patio culture of the middle of last century is dwindling and disappearing into apartment block living. But Hernandez has kept those stories alive, and those characters live on, at least in these fictional works.

I've also managed a thriller and am currently making my way through Greek myths in Stephen Fry's Mythos. Next up on my e-reader is a Joanne Harris, Peaches for M. le Cure, and on my bedside table is a Mary Chiappe novel, Shaking the Dandelions.

As for my writing? It's simmering. I've sketched out some ideas, pottered with some research. Oh, and I've just signed a publishing contract no less. But more about that in another post. For now, I am wallowing in books, glorious books, and always wanting more!

Reading book



Sunday 24 January 2021

Gibraltarian Literature - or is it?

Literature

To read...or rather, what to read?

As some of you who know me will tell you, I was never going to keep away from writing for too long, despite my resolve to keep the pressure off the pen and only pick up my laptop for work writing (as opposed to writing fiction or poetry or writing for pleasure). But at the start of the month, I figured that taking a pause and reading might be a good way to ease my way through lockdown anxiety and the ensuing writer's block. 

The only thing I needed to do was decide what I was going to read. Should I do the usual thing I do of reaching for whatever is to hand, which makes my reading choices varied but not necessarily focused? Should I set out to read a genre I don't usually read? Should I avoid reading anything off the best seller lists and stick to a catch up on those classics I always meant to read but never got round to? Should I nose around books by writers from a particular country, or go non-fiction and gen up on the conversation around empire and its legacy? So many choices and thank goodness for e-readers, much though I prefer paper books (can't wait for the library to reopen after lockdown).

Library


I opted to catch up on Gibraltarian literature. There are plenty of books about Gibraltar or set in Gibraltar, some by Gibraltarian writers, some by non-Gibraltarian writers. But which to choose? Which would fall under the banner of "Gibraltarian Literature"? Does it comprise non-fiction as well as fiction and therefore include all those history books written about Gibraltar, mainly by English writers but also by Spanish writers and some Gibraltarians too? Would I be reaching for works by Dr Joseph Garcia, Dr Clive Finnlayson, Ernle Bradford, Nicholas Rankin, Lesley and Roy Adkin, Gareth Stockey and Chris Grocott among many others? Or by "literature" do we mean fiction?

What is "literature"? 

There are all sorts of open discussions going on between academics and writers around the world about how to define a national literature. I am not remotely qualified to add anything of use to that discussion but felt I needed to define the parameters of it for myself - simply so that I could decide what books to select to read that I could comfortably call Gibraltarian lit. - you know, like you would call the subject English Lit. if you were picking it as an A level subject.

I made that my starting point, since I never did study English Lit for A level. What is English Literature? That might help me head in the right direction. 

When I think of English literature, I generally envisage William Shakespeare wielding the quill, Charles Dickens, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jane Austen, Byron, Keats and Shelley, George Orwell, Iris Murdoch, Beryl Bainbridge, A.S. Byatt, Zadie Smith, Carol Ann Duffy...so many...But I tend not to include Charles Darwin or Edward Gibbon, and much as I adore so much of his work, even Sir David Attenborough doesn't tend to feature as a literary figure.

So I have narrowed the list down to fiction - prose, poetry, short stories, novels, plays and scripts. To me, literature isn't just a body of written works, a collection of words; to be literature, the written work needs to rise above the telling or imparting of a fact to deeply engage the imagination and the emotions, which is precisely what a good poem or a good novel does.

Yes, I agree that this is simplistic and there are grey areas and blurred boundaries, but this is my thinking given voice and you are very welcome to add your thoughts (politely) in the comments section.

Classic stories


What is "Gibraltarian" literature?

The next step for me was to decide what would fall into this category as Gibraltarian. When we speak about "Gibraltarian literature" do we mean only work written by people born and living in Gibraltar? Or people born in Gibraltar and perhaps living and working somewhere else in the world but with family ties to Gib? Or people who are born in another part of the world to a Gibraltarian family? Or people with none of those links but who have spent some time here and have been inspired by the place and the people to let their writing be influenced somehow by Gibraltar.

In other words, I could take either a narrow view or a broader view. The latter might dilute the concept of literature that is somehow deeply linked to Gibraltar, the former might mean only being able to select from relatively few publications. Because Gibraltarian literature in its narrow sense of works written by people born and living in Gibraltar, about Gibraltar and using Gibraltar's languages is not replete with published works.

I'm not sure I have fully answered this question. To me the term "Gibraltarian literature" is as yet undefined, and maybe that is a good thing, because it means that as writers, we can fuel our writing energy with the impetus born of an urgency to add to the body of literature that is ours, our stories, our experiences, our emotions, our evolving culture and identity. 

I would, however, love to know your thoughts on this. Please engage through the comments section, on the Gibraltar Writers Facebook group, or via my email address: jackiegirl@hotmail.co.uk

In the meantime, I have just finished reading the masterful novel "Gooseman" by Mark Sanchez, am halfway through "The Girl you Forgot" by Giselle Green and have also started "El Agente Aleman" by Humbert Hernandez. All three very different, and all an indubitable pleasure to read. 

                                       



                                       "Gooseman" by M G Sanchez




"The Girl you Forgot" by Giselle Green



"El Agente Aleman" by Humbert Hernandez


Saturday 9 January 2021

Taking a break: a resolution for writing for 2021

 

Writing resolutions

There goes the first week of January 2021. Back when life was normal (as in, this time last year) the first week of January for me would be a time for tackling writing projects with the renewed vigour born of a rest over Christmas and perhaps one or two resolutions. My writing resolutions normally involved things like: I will unfailingly set aside two evenings and one afternoon each week to dedicate to writing fiction or poetry or whatever I'm inspired to write. Or: I will complete project X this year and start on project Y. Or something similar. More often than not, by February I would have forgotten these or been distracted by a new project or a fresh idea.

This year, no resolutions for writing. Blame the pandemic, blame my age, blame my hormones, blame my steadily depleting bank account. Heck, blame Brexit and the riot in Washington last week. But I know the reality is that that I need to take some time to stop. A pause in which to reflect on last year, on this year, on today and on tomorrow. 

I am one of those writers who has not been remotely creative in lockdown. I did put together an e-book of short stories at Christmas to raise money for charity, but they were mainly written some time ago. Unashamed promotion, so here's the link:

All They Want for Christmas by Jackie Anderson



But other than this and 'work' writing, there was nothing. Not a squeak of nib on paper that left other than a meaningless scrawl.

There's something grim and insidious, nasty, to tell the truth, about this odd pressure to be creative, to do something worthwhile with this extra time that we apparently all have. Well, try telling a nurse doing double shifts at the CCU, that he's got more time. Or a police officer, or a firefighter, or a road sweeper or a rubbish collector or the supermarket shelf-stacker. And yet the TV and radio and social media are blurting away ideas and examples of all the creative things people are doing in lockdown, which have a tendency to make you feel a bit inadequate if you simply can't get anything remotely meaningful to hang together into a paragraph let alone complete a poem or story.

So this post is being written to declare, loud and proud that actually, getting through a pandemic like this is tough and if you haven't got the energy left for your creative project or learning a new skill, that's ok. If you're getting through each day, then that's enough. Thank you Joe Wicks, the exercises are great for some, and thank you for those musicians and actors laying on online performances, and thank you those writers who pump out prose and poetry brilliantly and publish work precisely because they have to stay at home. I mean it. The creatives have kept most of us ticking over reasonably well. We have had entertainment, and we have learned new things.


We went virtual during lockdown

But, if like me, your work (real work that puts bread and butter on the kitchen table) did not slow down, just shifted location, or you stepped up a gear caring for locked down family members, or you were simply too anxious to concentrate, you are not alone. And if your feelings about the pandemic - fears, anxiety, impatience, even incredulity - left your pen dry, you are definitely not alone. I have been dry as a bone since the start of last year, and I was greatly relieved to surf the net and found many writers saying similar.


Blank page writer's block

So in 2021, I plan to read my way out of pandemic-induced writer's block. I will read for pleasure, mainly, not for instruction or to broaden my mind. I have no intention of straining my brain, just to rest it and enlighten it. I will enjoy the delights created by talented others. I will finally spend time listening to music that I kept meaning to listen to but never tried. I will listen to podcasts and possible audiobooks. I will explore the theatre online and visit online museums and places I am never likely to visit even when lockdown lifts and travel is permitted once again. I'll watch classic movies and binge watch Netflix. I might do some yoga stretches, maybe, if I can find the energy. But I certainly won't allow myself to feel guilty if I don't. There'll be enough negativity to deal with while vaccines are rolled out and start to work and hopefully the relentless gloom starts to lift. 

If I write, it will be because I have to write for work (somehow I never class my feature writing as writing, probably because I want to be a fiction writer), or I write some journal entries, or letters to family and friends, or because finally the creative spark has been relit. I might well add posts to this blog, just to keep the fingers remembering how to type.

I do know that some Gibraltar Writers are busy working on a number of projects, and some plan to start new writing projects this year. Others are less sure of their plans but plan to write more. Which pleases me hugely, and hopefully they will provide lots of reading material: one of the things I want to do this year, is read as much Gibraltar writing as I get time to read. I hope we can get the library open soon! 

What will you be writing in 2021?




Sunday 13 December 2020

Keeping it Local for Gibraltar Writers

Buying books

Keeping my chat to a minimum this week and letting this blog post from Into the Industry speak for itself. All I would add is that the best way to help support local writing in Gibraltar is to support local writers. Read their work, talk about their work, create a buzz, buy their books - for yourself and for your friends and family. Books, after all, make a timeless gift. Invest in local writers, and you are investing in Gibraltar's cultural and literary development.


Into the Industry - Spotlight on Local Authors

A huge thanks to Carmen Anderson for this piece!


If you are interested in Carmen's work, follow her on:

Instagram: @IntotheIndustry_ Into the Industry Instagram page

Facebook: Into the Industry Facebook page


Carmen Anderson


This is just a selection of Gibraltar writers and their work. Carmen is considering preparing a similar blog in the weeks to come, so if you are not in this one but you have a book to promote, then please reach out and contact her.


Sunday 6 December 2020

A reader does a writer make

The Joys of Reading

I've always been a firm believer that reading is an essential prerequisite for writing. It's through reading that you absorb ways of expressing yourself in words, that you develop the sense of plot, of character development, of setting, mood, tone, style, genre...

Yet, of course, reading is so much more than this. It provides an opening to new worlds, to new experiences, to new learning. It sheds light on the obscure. It stretches the imagination and it teaches us to see the world from someone else's perspective. Learning to read, becoming literate, is not just a means for children to pass some exams and prove themselves. It is a pathway to empathy, an enhancement of thinking, a means of relaxing and of escaping the stresses of everyday life.

This past year has been tougher than usual for most of us. I have personally struggled with writing. Writing, in particular fiction or poetry, means digging deep into your emotions, exposing thoughts and fears and feelings that, in times of greater anxiety, you might prefer to keep safely locked away. This year, I have spent more time reading than writing. I have felt the need to escape my own thoughts and find fresh landscapes in the thoughts of others.

At first I was worried about this. My pen was dry, my notebooks blank, my laptop forbidding, a symbol of the more unpleasant drudgery of work rather than inviting creativity. I fretted that I should use lockdown, as many seemed to be doing, to practice writing, to find ways of improving. Maybe even to start the novel I keep saying I'm going to write and never get round to. Then, as the year progressed, I realised that there were enough things to fret about rather than how productive I am. Staying healthy, earning enough to live on, keeping in close touch with all those family members living away from Gibraltar whom I don't see anywhere near enough, getting through new regulations and restrictions, shutting out the negativity and spillage of hatred and ignorance and confusion from social media...all these things were enough to deal with this year.

Instead, I turned to my favourite way of destressing, decompressing and of opening up my mind to new ideas: reading. These are my five favourite reads of this year (in no particular order):


                                                  The Strawberry Thief on Amazon


The Strawberry Thief by Joanne Harris

This is the fourth novel by Joanne Harris following the life of Vianne Rocher whose story she began with Chocolat. It is a story full of mystery and mysticism, about conflict and acceptance within families and between members of a tight-knit community. It is about change and how we fear change, how change challenges and how it might be accepted. Change is something that has blasted through this year of the pandemic, with one crisis after another besetting the world, and the challenges that we face will bring about changes in how we live, certainly in the short term and probably in the longer term too. This was a novel full of beautiful, resonant writing. It was thought-provoking and it was calming. Change, after all, is always inevitable.        



                                                   Testament of Youth on Amazon

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain.


I have been meaning to read this since the late seventies when I was taking O-Level history, and my history teacher recommended it as background reading for our studies on the First World War. I wish I'd read it sooner and I may well dip into it again. Vera Brittain lived the war, was heartbroken by the war and was made by the war. A wonderful insight into that period, and in particular into how the war and the times affected women and the struggle of women to be heard and taken seriously, their battle for equality. This too, was incredibly well-written, memories crafted into an absorbing tale. And it touched on the pandemic that was then as devastating to human life as was the war itself, the Spanish Flu, something that seemed close to home this year.


                                               Queenie on Amazon

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

I loved this book and I loved Queenie. What a great character and what a real, down-to-earth voice she has. The book is about Queenie, a young woman not in a particularly good place in her life at the start, and how she negotiates what life has to throw at her. It speaks fearlessly about friendship, race, love and what it means to be a young single black woman negotiating life in the city. It is witty and it is wise and it is fierce. A great read, Queenie was critically acclaimed, with Carty-Williams the first black and female writer to win Book of the Year at the 2020 British Book Awards. I love stepping out of my life and into the lives of characters in a book and Queenie was totally absorbing.



                                                 The Forty Rules of Love on Amazon


The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

This was a beautiful, lyrical book with two tantalising parallel narratives. I picked it up as a winter read to get me through February, which I tend to find a dull and dreary month at the best of times, not least as the world seemed to be plunging into a maelstrom of pandemic, misinformation and crisis. The story interweaves Ella's search for love with the poet Rumi's quest for spiritual enlightenment through his friendship with Sufi mystic Shams of Tabriz who expounds the philosophy through his forty rules of love. The story is told in a series of first person narratives by several different characters and is an enthralling exploration of faith and love.


                                                         

                                                              Solitude House on Amazon

Solitude House by M G Sanchez

This was delightfully dark and a perfect story to read in the lead up to Halloween. Set in Gibraltar and told from the point of view of a self-confessed misanthrope and a misogynistic womaniser, Dr Seracino is the perfect anti-hero, a loathsome protagonist you can't help but like. In following Seracino's descent into an alcohol-soaked retirement to a lonely house hidden in the depths of the upper rock, Sanchez leads us in a journey through the Gibraltar of the eighties and nineties with sharply observed details tinged with his characteristic dry humour. The novel deals with the duality of human nature: Seracino is supposed to care, but is self-absorbed and misanthropic; he lives in a tight-knit society and yet he craves solitude; he achieves solitude and yet is invaded by ghosts. Sanchez explores psychosis and superstition through the character of Seracino, and, not least for me as a Gibraltarian, he also explores Gibraltar through the eyes of a non-Gibraltarian. He looks into Gibraltar as he looks outwards from inside Seracino. A terrific read at the tail end of a dark year which has exposed both the best and the worst of Gibraltar.

As a writer, I am an avid reader, and I'm looking forward to a good read over Christmas. Any recommendations?



Sunday 29 November 2020

Weekend of Winter Festival Online


This has been a bit of a wonderful weekend where I have immersed myself in books, writing and literature. The weather has been ghastly - not that it takes much to tempt me to stay indoors, coffee in cup, nose in book. And I have been logged in pretty much continuously to online events at the Hay Winter Weekend, a digital literary festival. Happy days!

I discovered the Hay Winter Weekend purely by coincidence as I was researching what makes a good literary festival and what it is about them that aspiring writers as well as established writers and readers find helpful. There are lots of things that are beneficial about literary festivals but I'll reserve that for a future post.

So far I have logged in to listen to Stephen Fry and Susie Dent talk about words (it was joyful...the enthusiasm of these two remarkably skilled writers for the tools of their trade - words - was infectious) and to David Olusoga who spoke sagely about the deliberately hidden history of imperialism and how important it is for society to fully understand its past in order to forge a new future. I have listened to Stig Abel's thoughts on literature and on why if you can't get on with a book, it is perfectly ok to put it down and start a new one. I have relished every moment of Benjamin Zephaniah's poetry readings. And that was just a small sample.

David Olusoga talking about his book "Black and British" at the Hay Winter Weekend, courtesy of my iPad.

I am so glad that some festivals have gone online this year. Hay was free, others have a small fee attached, but the Covid19 pandemic has brought literary festivals around the world within my reach. I have to confess I often thought of literary festivals as elitist. Some undoubtedly openly pamper to white English middle and upper classes and their assumptions as to what they should all be reading. Many other festivals do some of that, but they also offer workshops and opportunities for aspiring writers to meet with publishers and to learn from some of the best writers in the world today. Either way, for someone who lives in a pretty small and often overlooked corner of Europe, and whose disposable income can barely cover the flight to Blighty let alone the fees for a literary festival in person, feelings of being excluded tend to come easy. So, thanks to the literary world's response to the pandemic crisis and technology, I have been able to enjoy and hopefully benefit from an experience I would never otherwise have had.

I hope festivals stay online. I cannot deny that being at a literary festival in person has its unique benefits, including getting you meeting up and actually talking to people face to face, rather than being a passive viewer. But online access opens up the benefits of a festival to so many more people. They become inclusive at last, moving away from their former, rather crusty, exclusivity. The Hay Festival is funded by donations and grants as well as attendance fees and there are a good deal of online resources worth dipping into:

The Hay Festival

Following up on Gibraltar's Literature Week that also went online, the Hay Winter Weekend has been inspirational for me. Listening to David Olusoga talk about real history rather than an engineered version of it, has had me reaching again for my laptop and searching out the recorded interview with Richard Garcia. His social history of Gibraltar is of tremendous value. Not just to help Gibraltarians understand their history properly and fully, but also to us story tellers. Because without Gibraltar's writers weaving stories from past experiences, even if these are from the memories or experiences of those who have gone before us, there would be no history of Gibraltar.

Literature Week "An Audience with Richard Garcia"

And on a final note, if all a literary festival achieves is to inspire and energise some new writing, then it will have been entirely worthwhile. Get online, on your pad, phone, computer, wherever you can, and find that next online festival and join in. I'm sure you'll find it worthwhile.



Sunday 15 November 2020

A Platform for Writing

 

Gibraltar Writers in the spotlight

I'm going to start this post by writing about Gibraltar's Literature Week. Organised in the place of the annual International Literary Festival which was cancelled this year because of the Covid19 pandemic (and just as well, I guess, given the second spike the autumn is seeing grow alarmingly throughout the world), Literature Week gave a voice, albeit small, to some of Gibraltar's writing community. 

There's nothing wrong with small, I hasten to add, and given that it was only a week long, Gibraltar Cultural Services, the government agency that organised the Week and all the events that it involved, there was plenty of ground covered. There were talks and readings for school children, Gibraltar's two most prominent playwrights shared their tips and passion for writing plays also with school children, there was story telling for kids in the park, the announcement of the poetry competition winner (well done, Rebecca Faller) and there were three 'meet the author events' per day throughout the week. These were filmed within the constraints of Covid19 regulations, which meant we couldn't actually meet the authors. Instead the sessions were live streamed on Facebook, which means that those who could not physically attend, for whatever reason, could either tune in live and listen to local authors talk about their work and chat about all sorts of other issues mostly pertinent to Gibraltar, its people and its culture, or could catch up on the recorded version later. 

For me, and many others I have spoken to this week, that was an instant hit. It meant that Literature Week succeeded where the International Literary Festival does not - it brought Gibraltarian books and authors to a wider public, including an international public (a friend of mine in US tuned in to some of the talks, for example, as well as family in UK). It meant that those who struggle to leave home, and did so even in the halcyon pre-pandemic days, could watch and listen and join in to an extent through the chat functions. Those of us who could not take time off work could catch up with recorded versions, and those who might not normally engage with events that perhaps have a touch of elitism about them, were able to watch from the quiet anonymity of their homes. I'm not going to rant on about literary festivals and elitism - but it is a feature of festivals and something that has been openly discussed across the world for years, and it is something that was happening here too. Not this year though. I have no idea what the viewing figures have been, but I hope they were good, because this was a very accessible and worthwhile format for introducing Gibraltarian writers to Gibraltar and beyond. In other words, whether they realised it or not, Gibraltar Cultural Services created a platform for writers.



A platform for writers

Why is a platform necessary? And in particular, why is it important for a small city, a self-governing territory still tripping over the remains of its colonial past, to create a 'national' platform for its writers?

I'm not going to go into an academic essay - I am not an academic and there are those professors out there who are expert in Gibraltar and Gibraltarian literature who would do much better justice to the subject. But I will say that, just like we talk about a platform for businesses, or a digital platform for marketing, we should be talking about creating a platform for Gibraltar's writers so that our literature, our stories, can gain better exposure at home, and more importantly, across the rest of the world. Heck, we might even sell some books!


In turn, that is important if we are going to develop our writing as individual writers and as an independent, identifiable, unique community. It's a lonely pastime, writing. We don't all have the chance to take writing degrees, or gain any objective or external perspective on our work. Unless our writers try to publish abroad, they usually have to self-publish to have their work read, and self-published work usually benefits from close scrutiny and revision before publishing. We have to head online and out of Gib and try to fund our own critiques, editing and so on. We have to help each other by being each other's beta readers, which is jolly tough if you're also trying to earn a living and raise a family. Because, of course, like many other art forms, such as music, in its early stages (most of its stages, if truth be told) writing simply doesn't pay that much.

A platform for writers in Gibraltar could involve creating regular events such as Literature Week, but perhaps hold them more regularly. They could be themed e.g. young writers' week, writing from the Gibraltarian diaspora, Gibraltar and writers of the Maghreb, Gibraltarian and Iberian writing, writing and mental health, writing and your family history, Gibraltarian literature and our varied languages and so on ad-infinitum. While this first literature week (because I do hope it is only the first of many) took what was clearly a very broad view of literature to include memoirs, history books, photobooks and art books, and perhaps was less literary than some might have wished, it did succeed in showcasing some of our writers and it did so in two of our cultural languages. I have to say only two, because with strong Hindu, Moroccan and Jewish communities to name just three, we are a multi-lingual society and writers can and should write in whichever language they feel comfortable doing so. A body of literature can celebrate that linguistic diversity as it can celebrate its own patois (for want of a better term to try to define llanito).

A platform for writers could also bring about a development of local skills through workshops. It could foster a sense of community for writers, an inclusive community that doesn't start with a red ID card or end when you pop over to the other side of the border for a few years. It could help grow book sales, and foster reading and literacy. It could, above all, become the launch pad for international careers as writers, to grow an international audience for Gibraltar.

This is not a task for one government agency to do alone. There are all sorts of issues that hamper government bodies from achieving such things, not least budgetary and time constraints or the policy priorities imposed by whatever political leadership is in place at any one time. But the initiative, and often facilitation, encouragement and empowerment for growing a platform for literature, does move faster with real support from government. And if the fostering, nurturing role by government is carried out properly, objectively, then the community of writers is likely to be able to take it forward further. Provided, of course, that independence is kept at the fore of the platform. Otherwise, its direction is too easily influenced, its strength diluted. 

What else for Gibraltar's writers?




Gibraltar's writers have a little bit of support. Literature Week was one event, only a small number of Gibraltar's writers got the chance to showcase their work. Some, I am aware, felt a little neglected to say the least. The Youth Arts Jamboree usually includes poetry and writing workshops and at least writing is included. There is an annual government run poetry competition and similarly an annual short story competition.

So far so good. But Gibraltar is missing so much. There are no bookshops. There are no creative writing classes. There is no real recognition. There is one publisher only. The support for publishing is in the form of a loan. There are no incentives to take a break from working and dedicated time to your art. This year is the first year that the prize for the poetry competition has finally begun to reflect the work and effort and sheer talent that goes into writing a good poem worthy to be showcased as the best in Gibraltar at that point in time. Oh, and there are no bookshops - have I said that already?

The space in which support for literature and the literary arts could grow is...exactly that. Spacious. Support is small, intermittent, dependent on what or who happens to be in flavour at any one time, which itself depends on what is written and how. I'd like to see open public discussions about the  nature of some of Felice's plays for example: maybe Utrecht, and Flavius, which touch on some significant Gibraltarian issues and events. Yes, plays, and yes, writing. Durante's poems, along with Hernandez, Cruz, Faller, Moreno could easily fill hours of teaching time to support English lessons, as could the novels of Sanchez, with their gritty realism redolent with the familiarity of the Gibraltar that we all know and many would like to prefer stays tucked away behind a veneer of glitz aimed at appealing to Cat 2 economic migrants. Sorry, my bad, high net worth individuals. I have no problem with anyone who wants to live in Gib, whatever their socioeconomic status, but I do have a problem with pretending our reality does not exist.

But I digress. The Literature Week was a good alternative to the Literary Festival, and even when the Festival returns, the Literature Week should remain. And it should grow and be enhanced. And writers should really think hard about committing a bit of time and energy to creating a platform to help Gibraltar's writing emerge into the spotlight, to stand up and be read and heard not just on the Rock but across the world. As Humbert might have been going to say in his Literature Week talk before he was outrageously cut short - no government has ever really committed to literature. We've had tourism led events, we've  had a little offering. Writers need so much more if the stories and the art that they can produce are to take up their rightful place on the bookshelves and stages and radios and screens of the world.

If you are a writer, and you feel you would benefit from a local platform for your work, both physical and digital, comment below or email me: jackiegirl@hotmail.co.uk. Maybe if we press hard enough together, it will happen.