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.

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?

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.

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.

Gibraltarian Literature - emerging from the shadow of the Rock

It has taken many years of a few, enlightened people banging their lonely drums here to bring the discussion out into the open. Yet Gibraltarian literature has been around for a long time: Elio Cruz, Leopold Sanguinetti, Hector Licudi, Sam Benady, Mary Chiappe and numerous others have been among the Rock's writers. And when a Gibraltarian writer commits his or her thoughts to words, whether fiction, non-fiction or other forms of writing, then the Rock of Gibraltar and its people, are written into the world's literature. The sad thing is, many in Gibraltar, many in its wider diaspora and much of the rest of the world, barely know about it.

It is thanks to the work of several individual writers such as Mark Sanchez, Humbert Hernandez, Trino Cruz among others, who have had the temerity to publish and openly discuss their work with academics in other countries, that finally the voices of Gibraltar's writers are being heard in other parts of the world. And, in the odd way that history works, it is because literary critics and other academics outside of Gibraltar have observed and are researching the value of Gibraltarian literature, and its relevance in world literature, that these voices are being both heard and perhaps given a greater sense of value than in Gibraltar itself.

The online Symposium, "In the Shadow of the Rock: A Symposium on Gibraltarian Literature", organised by Professor  Robert Patrick Newcomb of UC Davis in California and co-hosted by Professor  Edwige Tamalet Talbayev of Tulane University in New Orleans recently brought together seven contemporary poetry and prose writers from Gibraltar to talk about Gibraltarian literature, their own work and their thoughts on Gibraltar's literary relationship with the countries by which it is most influenced: Britain, Spain and Morocco. 

As a participant, listening to my contemporaries and samples of their work was tremendous - a rare opportunity, since literary events or literature in general has such a low profile in Gibraltar. Perhaps, and probably perversely so, it is considered of low cultural value, when, in reality, it will always be the words of writers that live on long into the future and are far more likely to shape and influence thinking than some other expressive art forms: while the illustrative and expressive function of a painting or a photograph will engender an emotional response, stimulate discussion and thinking, and music will express a range of emotion, it is the written and the spoken word that will spark, create, and ultimately record debate in a way that will offer future generations the details of our current story.

There was so much depth to the symposium, so many strands of discussion, so many themes to be explored further, that I am not going to try to relay them here. I hope very much that there will be further work on this by the talented literary critics involved in the symposium.

As a non-academic, to listen to the thoughts of professors on the other side of the world and in other countries discuss our work, our Gibraltarian words, was illuminating. I always had a hunch that Gibraltar writers were underserved, and I know from talking to many writers here that there is a sense of Gibraltar's writers working in the dark, that their words will never see the light of day or never be read beyond their immediate circle of family and friends. I know some logged in to the symposium, and I hope, that like me, they found inspiration to keep going. Because there is a growing platform for them outside Gibraltar. There are readers beyond the shadow of the Rock, and tough though the road to publication might be, the effort is worth the effort personally and also because you will be part of pulling Gibraltarian literature out from under the shadow of that Rock.

For those of you who didn't get the chance to join in either to listen in or join in the discussions, here's a quick summary:

Humbert Hernandez read an extract from one of the short stories he has written based on the patio culture of the Gibraltar of his youth, a culture that has all but disappeared. His presentation sparked a discussion on language, Gibraltar's bilingualism, the part this plays in its literature and where this bilingualism and indeed, 'llanito' might be heading in the future.

Marisa Salazar spoke about how she came to write poetry, the 'novel inside her' and she read some extracts from her work. She uses the simplicity of the haiku form to create intense, unforgettable images. She recited poetry inspired by the sea and also by the border. The issue of borders, in a city whose life is dominated by the border and by the sea, enclosed as we are by those features, is particularly pertinent in Gibraltarian literature.

Giordano Durante gave a detailed expose of his poem, "Alameda Interlude" published in his first collection "West". Through the words of the poem, and his exposition, he shed light on so much about Gibraltarian culture, how we still cling to the vestiges of colonialism while displaying snippets of a myriad other cultures, how the remains of those colonial days are crumbling about us, and again, the issue of our "mongrel talk" fuelled discussion about Gibraltarian use of language and how writers reflect that.

Trino Cruz, a writer published in Spain and Morocco, recited some of his beautiful poetry, which he writes in Spanish. He also spoke about the importance of lifting Gibraltarian writing off the confines of the Rock itself to find its place in the literature of the wider locality: the Iberian Peninsula, Morocco and North Africa and perhaps even further afield. Among the poems he recited was one of my personal favourites, "Si borramos algunas huellas", published in the "Anthology of Contemporary Gibraltar Poets". 

Mark Sanchez, who has so successfully brought Gibraltarian writing to the attention of the rest of the world, read an extract from his  new book, Gooseman, due to be published shortly, a multi-layered novel, it promises to be a delightful mix of gritty no-holds barred realism tinged with his characteristic dark humour. I am looking forward to reading this when it comes out. Mark also pointed out that he includes both Spanish and Llanito in the work; it is, after all, a realistic portrayal of what we speak here in Gibraltar. Our language, in our literature.

Professor David Alvarez, of Grant Valley State University in Michigan, spoke about his views on Gibraltarian literature, its development and how it has broken away from the shackles of colonialism, from being written about by the imperialist powers of Spain and Britain, to producing its own voices. He mentioned the importance of works of criticism by Gibraltar University's Becky Gabay and Jennifer Ballantine's Institute of Gibraltarian and Mediterranean Studies, the need for a people to 'have an inventory', and mused on the Gibraltarian diaspora and the cosmopolitan nature of Gibraltar - the movement of peoples in and out and how that is a feature that might create boundaries to the development of a Gibraltarian literature and at the same time be the reason for its potential success.

A good number of threads and themes emerged from the symposium which will give me much to mull over. Above all, it is clear that Gibraltar's writers simply must keep writing and that Gibraltar urgently needs to help them find a platform for sharing their work and for writing the Rock into world literature. I would urge all Gibraltar's writers, whether on the Rock or somewhere in another part of the world, to keep writing on whatever theme and in whatever genre. This growing body of work will be part of Gibraltar in years to come.

This being my first time participating in a symposium on literature, I'm not sure what my contribution achieved, except to add a bit to the discussion on the vital nature of stories and how they shed light on a culture, on how a particular people live and think and function in a specific time and place. I've published my contribution on the link below - feel free to read and to make comment. The conversation on Gibraltarian literature, is, after all, only just beginning. Long may it last.

Writing in the Shadow of the Rock, by Jackie Anderson

Autumn is for writing

Autumn is the perfect inspiration for writers

That's it, summer's over, and if those crisper mornings are a still little overwhelmed by the warm afternoons, the drawing in of the evenings are a good indication that the world is still steadily turning and the seasons are still changing, regardless of the mayhem that seems to have surrounded us since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Perhaps this year, more than most, the longer evenings, the cooler weather and the slowing into new routines provide a chance for reflection.

Autumn has always been a time for introspection, for slowing down from the frantic activity of summer. It is a time to gather up our thoughts, contemplate on the year that has gone by as it draws to its close, and to reflect. It is in autumn that I most miss England, with the rapid shortening of the days that the end of September brought, the nip in the air that made me reach for a sweater or a scarf, the mizzling rain, the foggy evenings, the russet and gold of the trees and the musk of damp earth on a morning walk. 

Gibraltar has its own cycles: colour returns to the pockets of gardens around street corners and in the postage stamp parks; the tang of brine in the air sharpens when you walk near the sea; clouds gather and gloom on the horizons and some evenings you can almost taste the promise of rain from the west to alleviate the suffocating humidity of sunny afternoons. The air clears with the rain and the expanse of blue around the Rock is stunning, so bright it hurts the eyes, and the horizon appears closer, almost within reach, and this is the right time to dream.

For anyone who writes, autumn is such a fruitful time. Much as farmers will be gathering in the olive harvest and the grape harvest, picking pomegranates, berries and apples, autumn is a good time for gathering together all those ideas and thoughts that have been mulling in the back of a busy brain during a summer of juggling work commitments and dealing with youngsters home for the long summer holidays. Autumn is a good time to pick up the pen and write.

To write poetry in particular. 

There is something about the medium of poetry that suits the articulation of thoughts and feelings that are triggered in the change of the season. Autumn is transient. It is the petering out of summer and the heading into winter. It is the season where time is travelling forward while we seek to look back. It is as much about wrangling with inner conflict as it is about musing over the passing of time. Poetry, because it is brief, because it pares down each complex emotion and rambling thoughts into a few choice words, is ideal for expressing that range of ideas that tend to emerge during this time of year. And this year, we may all have much to express, to work out in our minds and in our lives, and poetry can be part of that, giving voice to the extremes of emotion that so many of us have experienced.

I had a long conversation with an old friend last week, someone whom I hoped to have spent a short time with this year, but given travel restrictions, could not. When we meet, which is infrequently at the best of times, we speak as if we had never been apart. We talk about everything and anything, and both of us lovers of literature and poetry in particular, conversation inevitably turns to the written word. So when we spoke last week, we voiced how the experience of the pandemic might influence our creativity. And we agreed that it wasn't just the disease, the lockdowns, the wearing of masks, the washing of hands, the concern that the people we love might die or fall so sick that the scars of the disease remain with them indefinitely; one of the most difficult aspects of this year has been the divisions between people, the hullabaloo of every highly opinionated voice, the incapacity of people to cooperate and work together to keep each other safe, the uncontrolled intolerance, the sheer mistrust of knowledge, the inflated proclamations by self-appointed experts that have created a maelstrom of negativity that is a stark reminder of just how weak humanity can be when threatened by that which it does not yet understand.

Autumn is the time of year which points towards death and decay - the falling leaves, the fading of the last flowers of summer, the encroaching darkness and storms of winter. Yet it also carries us to a form of rebirth, it directs us towards the winter and reminds us that this is only temporary. The summer will return, and all we need to do is pause, and take stock, and rethink how we face life's challenges.

Poetry, stories, art, music, will work through this period. Poetry will be the way some of us will give voice to the lessons of this historic time that we are experiencing. Poetry will linger for a long time and will tell the story of how we in Gibraltar and we as individuals came through this.

So, for all of you out there who are writers - whether you write for publication or secretly, for your personal satisfaction or to be read by others - make the most of autumn. Paint those gloriously stunning autumn images with your words, to remind the rest of us that the world about us is still beautiful, that it is worth striving for despite the darkness that seems to hover at its edges. Tell us how you or your characters have striven and survived. Sketch out those characters who will help us connect with the truths of this time. Distill those intense emotions and gather that intensity into the few words of a line of poetry that resonate with those universal truths that unite humanity.

Autumn is such a perfect time to pause and write.

Place and time and stories

Writers and Place

In the past couple of  years, I have become increasingly interested in how stories link us to a particular time or a particular place. Or the reverse, time and place can influence and inspire the stories that we tell. 

This happens the world over, in all of our stories. Dickens wrote about the London of his lived experience, and left us with a legacy of an intimate understanding of the slums and rookeries of the capital and with what amounts to a familiarity to the characters that peopled it. Chaucer had the same effect when he told his 'Canterbury Tales.' 

Writing Gibraltar

Closer to home, Mark Sanchez achieves a similar effect with his stories set in modern Gibraltar, bringing to life this tiny city in southern Europe that is not  British except politically, nor European nor Spanish nor yet its own identifiable self. In 'Jonathan Gallardo' we meet the Gibraltarians of the seventies and eighties in a narrative infused with the dark humour that is redolent of the people who live on the Rock. In 'The Escape Artist', we see the world through the eyes of a Gibraltarian student attending university in UK, and we encounter the differences and similarities between the working class Gibraltarian student and the 'upper class' Gibraltarian student, as Gibraltar works its way through the legacy of the British colonial class system.

Almost every piece of writing will contain the echoes of the writer's lived experience. Camus' life in North Africa shines through his novels "L'Etranger" and "La Peste"; Tahar ben Jelloun's Morocco and the urge to seek a new life in Europe speaks at us through the lines of his novel "Partir." Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" is as much a novel of its place and time as is Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and Cervantes' "Don Quixote". Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie creates a detailed picture of Nigeria and the Biafran war in her novel "Half of a Yellow Sun". I could go on...

As writers, we are the sum of all our lived experiences, of the experiences of the places where we live and the people who inhabit our lives. This emerges in our stories.

The reason writing is such a critically important part of Gibraltar's cultural growth, part of the evolution of the Gibraltarian identity, is because it is through writing our individual stories that those lived experiences are recorded and transmitted to others, to those outside Gibraltar, and to the future generations of Gibraltarians. 

We are growing our body of literature, slowly but steadily, and when a Gibraltarian book is published and talked about in the universities and book shops and cafe's of the rest of the world, I am proud and delighted in equal measure. When our local writers' work is published and read around the world, like playwright Julian Felice's plays are performed in London and in USA, we should be excited that our stories are reaching out from our home and touch the lives of others. When our story tellers like Amy Montegriffo and Elena Sciatiel win writing competitions hosted in other countries, as they have done recently, or like Jonathan Pizarro and Giordano Durante, are published in international magazines and journals, it's wonderful, both for them as budding writers and for Gibraltar. 

Echoes and Ripples by Amy Montegriffo


Poems by Giordano Durante published in Blue Gum


I found Pizarro's story, "La Frontera," remarkably touching, because I was one of those whose family left to live in England because the frontier was closed and those feelings and experiences were caught and expressed in the story of another. My experiences were no longer unique - there were others who shared them. There came a sense of belonging as I read this story, and that is precisely what good literature, influenced by place and time achieves. You can read it here:

Untitled Writing: La Frontera by Jonathan Pizarro


And when poets like Jonathan Teuma and Gabriel Moreno perform their poetry to international audiences in London and Madrid, Gibraltar's stories, in our words, our accents, truly are heard. Each one of those writers are deserving of all of our support, especially now, in the wake of a pandemic that may be focusing our attention on economic growth rather than on the wealth that artistic growth can bring to our society.

Gabriel Moreno

Jonathan Teuma performing 'Friendship' online for GBC Open Day

As for those writers who are perhaps not publishing regularly, or have not yet sold their work on, or have not submitted their work for publication, their stories are also our stories. Take Omkeltoum Serroukh's story, "Growing Old." 

This is a recollection of the writer's experience of rural Morocco. Omkeltoum was born in Morocco who lives and works and raises her family in Gibraltar. The link between Morocco and Gibraltar is ancient and endures. Her story reminded me of my Grandfather's stories of his years in Morocco when he spent his teens in Tangiers and Melilla before the war. The story touches old memories in me. It is raw, written in a way where the Moroccan voice echoes in the ears; the English is perhaps not smooth but the language sounds authentic. The story reveals a simple rustic life through the eyes of a young person raised in the city and it touches on the enduring world-wide theme of youth and age, of the awakening of the young to the loneliness of old age. My thanks to Omkeltoum for permitting me to publish it on this blog. I hope you all enjoy reading it. You can find it here, in the Simply Stories pages of Write Gibraltar.

Simply Stories - Growing Old by Omkeltoum Serroukh

Trying to write your Gibraltar novel?

Get that novel written!

My last blog post focused mainly on being a writer in the 'professional' sense of the word - copy writing, feature writing, journalism and other types of writing for which, if you're good, happen to have a contract for it and/or you stand your ground, you might well get paid.

But just in the past few days and purely by coincidence, I've had a few conversations with friends in Gibraltar who are in the throes of, or have written, or are thinking about, writing a novel. All three were equally excited about their work as they were wondered what their next steps should be and how to go about publishing these. We also spoke about what is the nebulous thing we might term the "Gibraltar novel", if, in fact any such thing exists, or whether could there be any such piece of literature?

Keeping their names confidential, this is a basic summary of the conversations:

Gina

Lockdown was great, to be honest. I had to stay at home, the weather wasn't exactly great, and although we were a bit worried about money, my husband was able to work from home so it was just me that took a pay cut and we can manage. What this did was give me the time to get down to the manuscript. I already had lots of notes from some research I'd done ages ago, and ideas I keep having that sort of pop up when I'm doing the washing up and dull things like that. I managed to get almost all of it written - just a couple of chapters to tie up loose ends and I can say I've written a novel!

Of course, that's just my first draft. It's going to take a lot more work to finish it properly but I'm really excited!

I don't think it will ever be a "Gibraltar novel". I mean what is that anyway? It's not as if that many Gibraltarians have published novels, is it? This story is set in Barcelona, where I used to live in my twenties. I've set it in the seventies - I was young then and I remember some of the way things were with my family in Spain when Franco died. It's about a working family and how they dealt with the changes that happened in Spain over time - you know, democracy, joining the EU, the whole separatist terrorist events, Spain getting all permissive compared to how it used to be...I'm excited about it. I'm going to try to see if I can get a publisher in UK because there are no proper agencies and publishers here - you have to self-publish and I'm not sure I can do all that.

I have read some local novels: Mark Sanchez (although the one I read was a bit dark for me); and also Mary Chiappe and Sam Benady, the detective novels - I read two - and they were quite enjoyable too. But I prefer something real and meaty and I'm not sure Gibraltar has enough subject matter to interest readers.

Now, I love Gina and she's pretty good at writing and I will read her novel if it ever gets published. Writing a  novel is one thing, but getting it noticed by a literary agency and having a publisher invest in publishing it involves hard, hard work and an enormous amount of luck. I wish Gina all the best. But I disagree about Gibraltar having enough subject matter. The "Gibraltar novel" is never going to be overtly about Gibraltar. It is far more likely to be about characters and it may be set here, or partly here and partly somewhere else and it will deal with all sorts of themes and issues, from historical detectives to the discontent of a student returning from university to a lacklustre career, to a story of abusive relationships, to a crime whodunit set in our glorious marinas. Gibraltar has a bit of everything in it and plenty of material to keep any writer busy for many lifetimes.

To publish.....

Imran

Lockdown was busy for me - I work in essential services. But I have had some incredible ideas because I have been working really closely with some incredible people and people are my biggest inspiration. The only thing is I don't know if I can possibly write a "Gibraltar novel" because I'm not Gibraltarian and when my contract expires I might have to go back to Manchester.

As far as writing is concerned, I've got the basic premise written out, some character sketches and a whole load of post-it notes across my living room wall sketching out the basic plot. It's quite exciting. I've written a novel before but never tried to get it published, but I might give this one a go. I'm probably going to set it in Gibraltar and perhaps have my characters travel - I'm not quite sure yet. I'm not really 'local' enough to write about Gibraltar; it would be seen as cultural appropriation, wouldn't it?

I've been reading some local authors though, which is quite interesting. I like urban fantasy novels and had read a few of Katerina Martinez novels before coming here and before realising they're written by a Gibraltarian husband and wife team! My novel is not going to be urban fantasy - my imagination doesn't run to that I'm afraid! I did think of something steamy based on essential services (I hear they can earn you a fair bit in royalties) but I'm too shy for that, so I'm sticking to a bit of intrigue and some romance, and the novel will also touch on racial tensions as I have experienced quite a bit of that over the years in different places I've worked.

I'm not sure I agree with Imran that you have to have been born here to write a "Gibraltarian novel". A writer as astute and observant and analytical as Imran can pick up the flavour of a place and the issues that dominate that society's thinking pretty quickly. Whether he leaves or not at the end of his contract, his publication would at least add to the body of Gibraltarian literature that is steadily growing. 

Jotting notes in your break helps to get the novel written!

Marie

Lockdown was horrible because I do like to get out a bit every day. I live alone and it was hard not being able to see family, but we all got through it and are here to tell the tale. I didn't think I would ever get round to writing, but I was terribly bored in lockdown so I decided to write down some of my memories of being young. I thought my grandchildren might like it - if they can ever read my handwriting. I have an iPad but I prefer to write longhand in a notebook.

Then I found that I wrote for several hours every morning, and I got carried away writing the story of how my mother met my father - she couldn't stand him when they first met, but eventually, because my father was very charming, they fell in love. But they had quite an exciting courtship because they lived in La Linea and he was involved with the Unions and when the Civil War broke out he joined the Army to fight Franco, and that meant she was in danger and she had to go into hiding....well I'm not going to tell you all of it now. As I write it I am thinking it makes a brilliant story and maybe I can turn it into a novel. I know it starts in Spain but of course, they ended up with family in Gibraltar and then were separated during the Evacuation...a very eventful life they had. Do you think anyone else other than maybe my grandchildren would be interested?

Yes, yes and yes again, Marie! Of course we would be interested. Her parents' story is part of all of our story, part of what it is to be Gibraltarian, part of what has made Gibraltar the place and the people it is today. I hope she managed to go from notebooks to setting it out as a fictionalised account or maybe a memoir. Certainly the material would suit both.

With several books a year being published by Gibraltarians, despite the difficulties of publication, the "Gibraltar novel" may well be a very real thing that our kids discuss in literature lessons in the not too distant future. Meanwhile, we await with eagerness Sanchez', Martinez', Calderon's and Durante's forthcoming publications,and more plays by Felice, among others. And mine, if I can ever get round to editing the MS!

That manuscript.....

Being a writer in Gibraltar

 

How hard is it to be a writer in Gibraltar?

It's a bit of an odd question, many of you might think. How hard can it be to pick up a pen and a notebook and write out a story, or an idea, or a poem? After all, a poem might only be a dozen or so lines, not even full lines of a page at that. How hard can that be? And it can't possibly be any harder to be a recognised writer in Gibraltar than it is in any other country in the world...big(ish) fish in small pond and all that!

Oddly enough, it's not that hard in one sense and, in many other senses, it's really tough. Let me try to explain, and let's see what some of you other writers feel about it.

First of all, in terms of its physicality, writing is pretty straight forward. Most of us have been taught to write. If you grew up in Gibraltar you will probably write in English most readily, perhaps also in Spanish, and if you came from, or your parents are, from other countries, then you may write in a different language. If you're lucky and talented in equal measure, you will be able to express yourself reasonably well in written form in several languages. And, unlike golf, or scuba diving, oil painting or even baking birthday cakes, the  equipment you need can be pretty minimal: pencil and paper. It doesn't have to be more than that. And then you think your thoughts, work out the words, transfer these onto the paper, preferably in a reasonably logical order and in an entertaining and clear way that perhaps other people might want to read. That's about it.

Except it isn't. Writing - real, meaningful writing - is often much harder than that. You might be able to write a paragraph in a few moments, or take a week to perfect a sentence. It depends on the subject matter, or the style you are applying or the objective of what you are writing. And writing to be published can be pretty tough. Certainly no easier than earning recognition in any other field, although you don't sit professional exams and career progression is less clear. As part of the creative industries, writing is as tough to succeed in as fine arts or film making. It's a competitive world out there that tends to undervalue creativity. So what about writing and earning in Gibraltar?

Writing for profit

Gibraltar, like most other modern cities, relies on the written word. Whether it is to communicate news, government declarations, or information about rights and responsibilities, we do so in writing. Note: that does not refer to print material only; online information relies on the written word. So the ability to write well is an important skill for our community. Furthermore, businesses in Gibraltar as across the world, rely on written material to provide information to customers, and to tempt potential customers to buy products or services. The internet has created an explosion of writing opportunities for those who develop skills in marketing, in producing 'content' for websites, adverts, scripts for marketing videos and beyond.

This means that there are many opportunities for writers and if you like playing around with words and using words to manipulate thought, then copy writing or content writing is a way for you to get your writing into the public domain and earn while you do it. This does require learning of techniques and a good deal of practice, but picking up these very specific writing skills opens up job opportunities and you can go further than this to develop a freelance writing career producing content for websites across the world. Practise, determination and producing millions of words will see you earn a reasonable income. 

It might also help you to earn enough to be able to put your writing skills to use 'out-of-hours' to write that novel. Because when people talk to me about being a writer, it's being a novelist or a published poet that is what they mean. But there are many other forms of writing, content writing being one. Journalism being another.

Gibraltar has its news outlets - broadcasters and newspapers, both online and in print. These days, many journalists will study the subject at university and then gain practical experience in a newsroom, perhaps in a regional newspaper in UK or other country. In Gibraltar, the openings for journalists are limited - we are a very small city after all - but they do exist, and good report writing along with the other skills a journalist needs to have, such as writing with utmost clarity and balance to very tight deadlines, asking the right, incisive questions to extract maximum information in a short space of time, and so on, are always desirable. Not an easy career to enter or succeed in, but a place for writers to apply their craft, once they have learned, practised and come to excel at that craft.

Writing feature articles also has an outlet in Gibraltar. Again, this is limited to local publications, but a good feature writer will always be able to appeal to content-hungry editors, especially those of monthly publications that need content that will attract the public in order to circulate the adverts that form their revenue stream. In addition to this, there are features that are needed by many magazines - if you can build a good portfolio of published work then there's a good chance that you might be able to pitch to magazines across the world. Provided your subject matter is of interest and pitched to the right publication, the writing world is your oyster.


But don't let me leave you with the impression that any of this is easy. Publication is hard to achieve. Most magazines have a set of regular feature writers that they are happy with and the editors tend to commission work from these. It's hard to break into this field and convince an editor that your writing is worth their while. As a writer you need to find the angle, the story, and above all, the right way of expressing this in words if you are going to convince a busy editor to take you on. And even when you do, you may well find, that because writing is not considered a high-value skill (goodness knows why, it can take years of training to write one short perfect paragraph of marketing content) that you cannot command anything  more than a modest reward.

But then, do we do it for the money or for the love of it? Or, I do better to ask this a different way: why should we not be paid reasonably well for our work, just because we happen to work at what we love?

In a future post, I'll write about the skills you might need to become the successful novelist, poet, or fiction author or author of a non-fiction book that many writers secretly would wish to become. Perhaps we will see that writing well is much harder than so many people realise. That means that as writers, we need to learn to appreciate the effort and skill that we put into our own work, whatever that work is. Writers are suckers for 'imposter syndrome' and yet without writers, how would we know anything about the world about us, and the worlds within us?

Become a guest writer!

If you have experience of writing as part of your work or being a published journalist or features writer in Gibraltar, please contact me and share your experiences, tips and advice with other readers by becoming a guest writer on this blog. Gibraltar Writers will benefit a great deal from your experience!