In the Ascendant

 

By the Christmas fireside

A few years ago, someone, somewhere not too far from where I now sit typing these lines, declared that there was no such thing as Gibraltarian literature. Well, that sparked off an outpouring of well-argued and well-written remonstration. If I recall correctly, and my powers of recollection are not great these days, I chipped in to this local debate. Of course there was a Gibraltarian literature. Young, and not particularly voluminous, but it was there, and just waiting for the talent lurking in the shadows of this unique city to feel confident enough to emerge. It wasn't even nascent, as someone sought to deem it. It simply was.

Fast forward to December 7th 2024, to City Hall, where Christmas festivities included a story telling session for kids, a writing workshop and a fireside chat with a panel of three, two of whom (myself included) were published writers and one of whom really should go ahead and write her own book (preferably including some of her recipes for mouth-watering cakes). 

"Haven't we come a long way in terms of writing?" said one person at the writing workshop.

"Definitely," said another, "I get the feeling we're standing at the brink of a huge...resurgence I was going to say, but it's not a come-back, it's a starting point."

"You can sense the rocket boosters have been lit and the take off has begun," said another, "it will just accelerate into orbit from here."

I guess in a roomful of writers we were going to get all manner of analogies and metaphors.

There is definitely a sense of uplift when it comes to the art and craft of writing in Gibraltar. The past couple of years have seen an increasing number of publications, including poetry anthologies and the remarkable Patuka Press literary journals, there have taken place several well-attended and constructive writing workshops, the prize funds for the annual short story and poetry competitions have been increased and the government-sponsored writers' initiative to support a young writer through to publication of a piece of work is going strong. Gibraltarian playwrights are having their plays performed abroad, this year's Literary Festival included a day-long workshop given by Dr Sarah Burton and Prof. Jem Poster, both published authors from Cambridge University, and there is a rumour that a link has been made between the Government and a publishing company to help Gibraltar writers submit work through the traditional publishing route.

There is a growth in confidence among Gibraltar writers, a sense that it is worth the long hours of mulling and scribbling, deleting and starting again, frustration and elation that is all part of producing a reasonable piece of writing. There is also the added element of a newly-found sense of release that writing in llanito is also part of our culture and just as valid as literature as writing in either English or Spanish, and we have had works, including two poetry collections by Jonathan Teuma, published in the past year or two. As I have said in previous posts, there is still much more to be done, and there needs to be effort by everyone who wants to see writing elevated to stand shoulder to shoulder with other art forms. Writers need the support of government at times, but can and should also work together at independent initiatives at others, just as Patuka Press has done.

"The Upper Town" is the latest issue of Gibraltar's first literary journal by Patuka Press

"The Upper Town" is available from Amazon - treat yourself to a copy by following the link below:

The Upper Town

I find this all very heartening. As a writer, my greatest boost and still my source of support and inspiration is a writers' group, the Medway Mermaids, that I first joined in 2006. I am still a mermaid, much to my grandchildren's bewilderment, and I meet my fellow mermaids online once a month. We share and critique each other's work, we offer help and support and gentle tips for improvement, and we organise (or rather, our wonderful head mermaid, Sue, organises online workshops given by experienced writers, from published poets, to novelists, to creative non-fiction writers. I love attending workshops. These are my perfect excuse to exit the day to day world that distracts me far too much from writing, and focusing on doing what I love. It's also a way for this introvert to get out and meet people with a similar interest. One day it will bear fruit, I tell myself.

This weekend's workshop at City Hall was run by Melissa Bossano and was attended by some lovely people, some of whom I know and whose work I admire and some I have never met before but felt privileged to meet. I hope to be reading some of their incredible writing soon. Melissa helped us tap into our sensory perceptions of winter, and to link this as much to character as to setting. We all know from English lessons how Dickens used the depths of winter to introduce the harshness of Scrooge's character, but these techniques are harder to put into practice than they are to read and it is these small moments in a workshop that go such a long way to improve your own writing.

We also worked on memories, finding ways to recall moments in our own lives that would inform, colour or inspire new work, from poems and pieces of fiction to writing of memoir and adding colour to non-fiction. I don't think I was the only one to leave City Hall with the seed of a story idea that had been sown in that workshop, so thank you Mel!

The current project, because I've become a bit of a seasonal writer, is to add to my collection of short Christmas stories. But don't fear, I will be back to writing ghost stories again shortly after New Year - I wouldn't want to be away from ruminating on the dark and terrifying for too long.

As for the fireside chat, it was plain fun, chatting about Christmas traditions with Sharon Garcia, the talent behind 'Piece of Cake' bakery (their cups of tea and slice of apple pie are just the best afternoon treats) and Manolo Galliano of the Gibraltar Heritage Trust, who has just released his latest book "Pan Dulce and Mince Pies". Afterwards we tucked into Sharon's pan dulce (que bueno!) and some mulled wine. 

A lovely start to a weekend that has continued with my dipping into the latest Patuka Press journal, "The Upper Town" which has just arrived at the bookshops and ordering "Luciano", Humbert Hernandez' novel, launched just a few days ago. As I said at the start of this post, Gibraltarian literature has switched up a couple of gears. As the year comes to a close, the future of writing in Gibraltar is looking brighter than ever. 

"Pan Dulces and Mince Pies" by Manolo Galliano and photography by Victor Hermida

Llanito: en mi language

 

I have taken a hiatus from this blog for nigh on three years, maybe slightly longer. Life sometimes gets in the way - work, the dullness of routine that serves to numb creativity, the grind of getting each day done that stifles so many of those who might want, wish, would and should write their stories and tell their tales. Myself included, clearly.

But I've not been away entirely.

Since my last blog post, I have published a non-fiction book, co-written with my eldest daughter, Ciara Wild. Myth Monster Murder explored the story of Jack the Ripper, how the gruesome Whitechapel murders were, and are, mythologised by the media, how at least five women became the victims of his blood-happy knife, and of the gore-addicted press, victims themselves, perhaps, of rampant commercialism. Why did the murders take place and could they happen again, we ask ourselves in the book. I won't tell you the answer. The book is readily available on Kindle or on paperback through Amazon, Blackwells, Waterstones, Foyles....so treat yourselves!

Myth Monster Murderer by Jackie Anderson and Ciara Wild

That feat wore me out a little, so my writing became more of a dabbling, an early morning pre-breakfast gathering of thoughts and toying with the keys of my laptop, or the occasional scribbling in a notebook of disparate ideas, sentences and phrases that appear irrationally and unannounced into my mind and that occasionally drift together into a coherent whole.

But during that rather barren period, something has emerged in Gibraltar that is worthy of dusting down this blog and reawakening it. And that thing - or phenomenon is more approrpriate a word - is Patuka Press and its literary journal, the third issue being entitled: Llanito.

My copy of Llanito from Patuka Press

Here's where you can get your copy of LLanito

I spoke on GBC Breakfast about this back in July. It was a brief interview too early in the morning for me to be fully coherent so apologies to listeners, but in it I spoke not just about my writing and my book and the story I wrote that was published in 'Llanito', but also about the journal. 

I remember having conversations with fellow Gibraltarian Writers some years ago, shortly after a group of us worked on publishing an Anthology of Gibraltarian Poets (the first anthology of its kind), that centred around the vital importance of having a local outlet that would publish local writing - that is, writing that is not just produced locally, but by writers that have a strong connection with Gibraltar, who may be Gibraltarians living abroad, or people who had spent time in Gibraltar and had stories to tell. 

Writers might well love their craft, they might well be brilliantly skilled storytellers, wordsmiths, playwrights, poets, but if they cannot reach out to readers through some form of publishing, then their words are lost to the rest of us. And that is a literary tragedy, especially in Gibraltar, where there are so many tales to be told and its writers are bursting to tell them.

More than that; we want to tell them in our language, in Llanito, in the words that shape who and what we are as a people, and as an individual person.

In the past few years, there have been an increasing number of initiatives that have started to provide recognition for Gibraltar's writers, and outlets for their work. Among many other features, Gibraltar now has a Literature Week which this year is going to form part of the Gibraltar Literary Festival; there is a local book shop at last, which stocks works by local writers and about Gibraltar; there is increasing recognition, academically and among Gibraltarians, that our language is a clear and valid language that is part of our cultural identity. Social media and interest from GBC through various programmes such as Between the Lines, has helped tremendously. Young writers are daring to write and publish and not worry about whether what they have written is 'literature' or not; they do not care about meeting some vague and undefined standard of what is literature and don't question whether they can stand up to comparison with Dickens, Byron, Orwell or Rowling. Who wants to be like all the others anyway? We are who we are and say what we say and from what I'm reading of Gibraltarian writers, some can proudly stand shoulder to shoulder with other writers from other countries, or spine to spine on the shelves of any bookshop or library anywhere.

The joy of seeing this growth in local writing is immeasurable, more so when seeing that so much is now written in Llanito. Despite the decriers and nay-sayers, and I am not going to waste any energy wading into that argument, we are finally openly exploring what it means to be 'us', to speak in our own language, to write our own stories. What Patuka Press has achieved with Llanito is to put a stamp of approval, a public accreditation if you like, on writing in llanito. And that goes a long way to saving our dwindling language. As Charles Durante put it in his essay 'Llanito: Grammar, Etymology and Identity' in LLanito:

    "It would be a very sad day if Llanito were to disappear, as some have gleefully            predicted. It would be like losing a limb, a form of spiritual emasculation."

I can't help but agree. It would be a tragedy with far-reaching effects; the loss would be far more visceral than the loss of a gathering of words.

So the impact of Patuka Press and its collections of stories, poems and essays should not be understated. To local readers it provides an affirmation of who and what we are culturally; we laugh and nod our heads in recognition of ourselves and our community, we marvel at the novel and the new that is being created day to day by talented Gibraltarians, we gasp at the variety of imaginative skill on show between the pages. That this third issue explores and celebrates Llanito, hablando de mi people en mi language, is testament to the surfacing of our love for Gibraltarian culture, our willingness to explore talk about what makes us us, the sunshine and the rain, the beautiful and the ugly, the whole gamut of Gibraltarianness, warts and all. The journal is both an achievement in itself, and I hope, it is also the soil in which our literary growth as a people will take root and find succour.

The next steps for Gibraltarian literature? It is, despite the decriers and nay-sayers among us, a growing, living thing but it is still young, it still needs a helping hand from those that can and from the whole community. Here are some ideas:

• Another publishing house. Patuka Press and Calpe Press and self-publishing may be wonderful things but we need the competitiveness of alteranative publishers to hone our skills and thrust our writing output into the realms of quality and not just quantity.
• Setting a high bar. Again, quality. It isn't just about work being published because it's been written or even because it's good. It's got to be good enough.
• A writing residency, where the writer in residence (perhaps selected from numerous applications to the National Book Council) works for 1 - 2 years as a writer, running workshops, producing work, organising readings, running writing groups, attending seminars, book and literary events in other countries, mentoring writers and so on.

Our literature is being read and analysed across the world. It's got to reach globally high standards and all those editors and publishers working with Gibraltarian writing, whether a news channel or a freebie magazine, a publisher of books or a literary journal, or a competition judge have to start to apply a bar. It is not enough for a writer to submit work and be published, it has to be quality work.

And while all that is going on, get yourself a copy of Llanito. I picked one up from Amazon because I happened to be in UK when it came out, but Bookgem sells it. And then get the other two issues: Shit Jobs and Borders and Boundaries. You'll find one of my stories published in each of the three editions, and I'm not just proud that my submissions were selected for publication; I am privileged.

Shit Jobs by Patuka Press

Borders and Boundaries by Patuka Press

Taking a break: a resolution for writing for 2021

 

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.

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.

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?

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 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

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

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!

  

Pandemics, plagues and the human need to write it

Scene from The Last Judgement by Bosch courtesy of Pixabay

These are strange times we are living. I expected to write this blog post at the start of spring and write about the sorts of inspiration that spring has for writers, how to go out and observe and write about nature, or changing seasons - something on those lines. Or I would have tackled a review of the workshops on short story writing that I was involved with during Gibraltar's Youth Arts Jamboree just a week or two ago. 

Coronovirus - image courtesy of Pixabay

Now the workshops seem like forever ago, Gibraltar along with much of Europe is on the verge of a coronavirus pandemic lockdown and the world seems a far more terrifying place than it did last month. So how do writers reflect this? How do we work with this experience?

In some ways, a pandemic, like the plagues of old, give rise to countless stories.  A twentieth century example would be La Peste, by Albert Camus. We are pretty well served by apocalyptic fiction, post-apocalyptic dystopian fiction, fictional epidemics which wipe out almost all human life and others that give rise to different forms of life or even the living dead (I'm not sure we can refer to zombies as any kind of life form!). 

If reading fiction stories using these as a theme is an entertaining form of escapism, writing them is even better. Writing about disease and devastation has fascinated the world for centuries. Stories have been the means for spreading information since time immemorial. Telling stories about experiences, tales from the experiences of other nations, was how information spread from one community to the other in the days  before mass printing and, of course, the internet. Whether about real or fictional plagues, famines, diseases, war or natural disasters, people learn and explore their thoughts, emotions and ideas through stories.

We are flooded at the moment by news reports, much of it sensationalist, some of it false and misleading. What is particularly interesting now, in the midst of a worldwide pandemic the like of which has not been seen by anyone living, is that people have taken to writing about it. Writing down thoughts and experiences - whether electronically or on paper - seems such a natural response. We are recording and interpreting and communicating on a number of levels, especially when we write fictional accounts of the experience.

And, of course, I don't need to go into the therapeutic effects of writing. Even writing a diary entry of your observations on the pandemic will help to rationalise and allay those fears and anxieties, which even the most logical and calm of us will experience. Disease, plague, epidemics, pandemics - these are all emotive words. These are all situations which are extreme and which bring out some extreme reactions in people. 

Think about the scenes replayed on social media of panic buying and empty shelves in the supermarket, and of otherwise mild-mannered people fighting over a bag of macaroni. Panic spreads faster than the virus because human beings are emotional creatures; our instinct for self-preservation often over-rides our sense that self-preservation is best served through social support and communal action. What can I say? As a writer, these are all great themes to use in your next novel! But, on a therapeutic level, those fears and that anxieties and that sense of panic are better worked out on the page than in the streets.

This New York Post piece is an excellent example of what good journal writing can achieve. When you read this, it gives you an instant snapshot of what life was like in Crema in Italy during the lockdown. Perhaps writers in Gibraltar will do similar:

My Lockdown Diary

It will be interesting to see what books and films and poems and artworks emerge from the Covid19 pandemic. I would urge all writers to turn to their notebooks now. If we are having to stay at home for a period, then writing a journal of events, personal and national, would be a starting point. If the writing never goes beyond a journal entry, it will be a concrete, written record of the pandemic in Gibraltar, a part of our history. 

But perhaps, that journal entry will one day inspire a poem, a short story, a plethora of novels, a film, a painting. It will be your unique take on the Covid19 pandemic in Gibraltar, and one day it will be part of Gibraltar's literary history.

What will you be writing about the 2020 pandemic?