Ten Thousand Words and so much more

 

Ten Thousand Words, by Rebecca Calderon

I love a well-crafted short story, and so treating myself to a re-read of Ten Thousand Words by Rebecca Calderon, a collection of ten short stories, each a thousand words long, was a bit like being given a box of chocolates - utter self indulgence and 'which shall I treat myself to first?'

This was my April Gibraltarian read, and I sat and absorbed it in one glorious afternoon late in the month. It was a real treat even though it was a second read and the stories weren't actually new to me. However, it had been some time since I first read them and good stories are those that can be read over and over and enjoyed once and again, which is exactly what Rebecca's collection does. It was originally published in 2021, but these are the sorts of stories where you find something new every time you read them, as if you are plumbing the depths of the collection little by little. I love that; this is exactly what makes me want to hang on to a book and afford it space on my overflowing bookshelves.

Just because a story is short and takes just a few minutes to read, does not mean that it has been easy to draft. Totally the contrary, and check out my choice of words: to draft is a far more meticulous exercise than to write. Drafting implies design, planning, detailed execution, moulding, polishing to perfection. Writing is just the act of throwing words down on paper. It is the act of drafting that turns a collection of scribbles into a literary work. To then create characters, a story line, a setting, a tone, an atmosphere, a plot with beginning, middle and end in just a thousand words is a detailed, skilful task of story construction. I find it difficult, so I admire Rebecca very much for her achievement in this collection. Here is Rebecca talking about the book in an interview on GBC:

Rebecca Calderon talking to GBC

As with most successful stories, it is the characters that are stand out and here Rebecca has created a set of memorable characters. Nana, the immigrant widow, who worked so hard, submitted to her colonial masters and never went back home, or the uncomplaining Jean, Carol who has a Hockney on her wall, Jalil the perfumier, Michael, who is actually dead but manages to populate the story of the scattering of his ashes, to name just a few.

Each story is carefully constructed around a theme such as the consequences of war in The Warsaw Museum or the consequences of the Partition of India in The Immigrant Widow. And yet there is much more depth in each of them, a singe short sentence will suddenly open a window onto a sub-theme that as a reader, you are invited to explore further, which is part of the draw to re-read these stories. In La Charlotte de L'Isle, the three women go about their business "never once mentioning men". As a reader you thirst to know why, but the art of the story is in leaving you to speculate while its path takes a different course to the end.

The way Rebecca uses language is just right for such short stories. Sparse descriptions that refuse to wallow in unnecessary lyricism because there is no space in the word count challenge for rambling details are drawn up with expertly chosen vocabulary. One perfect word can be far more effective than a long, winding sentence and Rebecca applies this with a deceptive ease. She also engages the senses relentlessly, another adroit technique to bring the characters and places to life: Jalil's Quest is full of scents and sprinkled with colours; Carl resounds with music; The Warsaw Museum is a treat of visual images; 

"Dust and powder, ashes and snow. The clear bright light the white stuff brings."

I can't do justice to this collection in just a short blog, but I hope that you're tempted to get a copy. If you have any thoughts of writing short stories, and in particular in entering the local short story competition, you'd do well to read these and analyse these, their structure, language, thematic content, characterisation. The short stories that make up Ten Thousand Words are exemplary of their form.

Ten Thousand Words by Rebecca Calderon

 

Gibraltar - More Poetry from Gabriel Moreno

 

March blew in pretty wild and wet, but I have been on a roll with reading works by Gibraltarian writers and kept up the momentum with Gibraltar, a new collection of poems by Gabriel Moreno. I picked up my copy in person at his launch gig in El Kasbah in Gibraltar at the end of February, a vastly enjoyable night where we were treated to his poetry and music, and a special appearance was made by Morag  Butler, all the way from the folklore scene in Kent. An absolute treat.

Morag Butler at El Kasbah, February 2026

I read Gibraltar quickly, in one afternoon. Then I took it on my travels to UK and read it in a more leisurely way, indulging in the lines of poetry, reading the poems out loud in the three languages used and probing at the layers of meaning. These poems resonate. Perhaps it's because I'm a llanita, no se, but I think it's because good poetry is resonant anyway. 

Of course, before I read the poems, I'd heard many of them, read out loud both by Gabriel Moreno and by his translator and publisher, founder of Goat Star Publishing, Rafael Peñas Cruz. This is how poetry is at its most vibrant: read aloud in the voice of the author, with the accents, and intonations and emphases all in the right places, where they are meant to be. It is the llanito accent, the traces of andalusian, that I think bring these poems fully alive, that give them an authenticity that lingers with you long after the moment has moved on. The English language poems are strong, with powerful, lasting images, and the same can be said of the Spanish. In fact, I think I need to also point out that the translations into Spanish are worthy poems in themselves and nothing is lost in translation here. I particularly liked the tenth poem in the first section of the book, the reflections of Gibraltar:

"I favoured ones where you waltzed,

where the smell of bay leaves mixed

with English ale and Moroccan spices

wreathed the crest of our thinking."

"Preferí aquellos donde bailabas un vals,

donde el aroma a laurel se mezclaba

con cerveza inglesa y especies maroquíes

coronando las crestas de nuestro pensamiento."

My favourite were the Llanito sonnets. What began as a response to a challenge that llanito cannot be moulded into a formal poetic structure born of another language, has resulted in sonnets that have torn up the rule book of colonial control. English is the language that was foisted on our ancestors and which we had no real choice but to learn to speak, but we have developed from this and from the many tongues that our people have spoken in our past and grown our own language, on our own soil. They joy of these sonnets is not only in the games that the poet has played with language, but with the shaping of a Gibraltarian meaning, using Gibraltarian language from an English formal poetic structure. There is a beautiful rebellion in this that brought me utter joy.

And then, of course, there was the language of the sonnets, the contemplation of uniquely Gibraltarian themes and landscapes, like the smuggling of Marlboro Man, the walking through the border in La Frontera, the relationships of a youth spent in the Gibraltarian beaches and bars as in The Inheritance, and Fling del Verano. 

I imagine a particular challenge must have been how to write a language that has no standard written form. I stumbled over the word "vrada" until I said it out loud several times and the penny dropped. If this is the case, then Moreno's talent burgeons further, demonstrating a mastery of form and language that I think is probably born of his ear for music and how words sound together. The Llanito Sonnets in this selection work well and fall so easily from the lips that the talent and effort they took to write could easily be underestimated. I would ask the reader not to fall into that trap: what is easiest to read is often the hardest to write.

The book moves on to a selection of new poetry, pondering broader themes, such as relationships, humanity itself, and of course, poetry. Moreno is expressing his thinking processes, some of them complex, in his poems and this offers up to readers the chance to plunge into our own thinking. This is what poetry does best, I think, have us explore our own thinking. Or, as he says in Epistola ad Pistones:

 

"It's all butterflies

innit? Every song

is a chance 

for the dreamer 

in the cave

to imagine

a more benevolent

field."

This is not the place for an in-depth analysis of this collection of poems, nor am I one skilled enough to do justice to them anyway, but I do sense the literary import of this work and the valuable contribution it makes to Gibraltarian literature, or, as Rafael Peñas Cruz puts it in his prologue:

"But a culture is nothing without poets, for it is only they who ultimately give shape to that immaterial set of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours, and ways of life peculiar to a certain group of people in a certain space at a certain point in time."

If you haven't got a copy, click the link below and order one now. En serio, este libro hay que leerlo.

Gibraltar by Gabriel Moreno

Gabriel Moreno, troubadour, at El Kasbah, February 2026

Gibraltar, Keats and Hampstead Heath

 

Keats House on World Book Day 2026

It's something unexpected to find a piece of Gibraltar in Hampstead Heath, that little, somewhat exclusive, quintessentially English piece of London. It was also unexpected for it to be so warm and sunny on that March afternoon that I was down to t-shirt and jeans and wishing I'd worn sandals instead of trainers and that I'd left my jacket at home.

On 23rd March this year, World Book Day, I managed to get hold of a couple of tickets to attend a poetry salon at Keats' House. The famous Romantic poet, John Keats, had lived there from about 1818 to 1820. It was at this rather lovely house that Keats wrote Ode to a Nightingale, the subject of rather frustrating homework assignments when I was at school decades ago now, and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, one of my favourite poems, possibly in my top ten depending on my mood.

Just being in Hampstead Heath, a far cry from the Medway Towns, where I lived for many years, let alone from Gibraltar, I felt a little out of place, or, as my daughter, who had come along with me, put it: 'it's a far cry from Varyl Begg, no?' Nice spot, though, Hampstead Heath, if you don't mind emptying your bank account for a cup of tea and a slice of cake.

Then we meandered into Keats' House, which was basking in glorious sunshine and framed in spring blossoms, walking, almost literally, into Gabriel Moreno, otro llanito, who was reading from his latest collection of poems at the Salon and treating us to some of his songs. 

It was a wonderful afternoon, filled with poetry, books, sunshine and wine (where there are good books, may there always be good wine), and music. Gabriel sang to us, treated us to a performance of the song I've Never Loved Before, the lyrics as yet unpublished and written by Leonard Cohen, put to music by Gabriel Moreno. A beautiful song, the lyrics, as expected of Cohen, profound and touching, and brought to life by Moreno's delicate musical touch.

(This is Ruth Irwin reading some of her poetry)

For me, though, it was the readings from Gabriel's book Gibraltar, that touched me most deeply. Presented by both Gabriel and the book's translator and publisher, Rafael Peñas Cruz, the readings filled this colonial English house with the sounds and rhythms of Gibraltar: el whisky con cola, and la Heineken, and el agua te traga si no te espabila of the llanito sonnet, Marlboro Man, to quote from just one. I lost a cousin to el estrecho many years ago: desaparecido el y su lancha. It was moving, here, at the heart of London, at the core of the colonial power that tried so hard to extinguish our language and reshape our Gibraltarian identity, for our language, experiences and existence to be acknowledged and applauded. Se me vino una lagrima al ojo, de verdad, and that doesn't happen often.

Gabriel Moreno and Rafael Peña Cruz reading from Gibraltar

To quote from Gabriel's poem, The Day I read at Keats' House, also in the collection, Gibraltar:

"You see, when I was growing up

 I was told poems were for posh folk.

        I recall reading Keats and thinking;

        What if I am never good enough?......

"I shall allow the dryad to answer;

        Hop on my wings, to mossy ways,

        our tongues will unravel England.

        Today is a perfect day to change." 

            

The Man in the Mist

 

I'm happy to say that I have so far managed to keep to my 2026 goal of reading at least one Gibraltarian book a month. To say this at the end of February is already quite an achievement as my New Year resolutions usually don't make it past the third week of the January.

February 2026 was one of the stormiest I have every experienced, in Gibraltar or elsewhere in the world. I spent much of the month mopping up water that was being driven through the windows or the frames or whatever hairline fissure could be found in the building facade and ponding in my living room, and making sure my books did not suffer any water damage. So it was a relief to be able to disappear into a book in the evenings, since I had no remote inclination to venture outdoors for anything much (milk and tea bags excepted).

So I got stuck into Terence Moss' Man in the Mist, the first of the Levanter Trilogy. I've met Terence. He struck me as a quiet, intelligent and unassuming man and passionate about the storylines and characters that were pouring from him, inhabiting his imagination and demanding to be let out on paper. I was delighted when he started publishing the series, albeit it took me ages to get round to reading them (I've only read Man in the Mist so far and am lining up the others).

I wanted to read this book for several reasons. I tend to bang on about Gibraltarian literature and how important it is for the canon of our literature to grow and evolve, so the least I can do, since I talk the talk, is to walk the walk and read as much of it as I can: books are written to be read and if we, in Gibraltar, want our writers to write, we need to read their work, and talk about it and encourage others to read it. In turn, writers have a duty to keep writing and to write the best book or story or poem they can, every time they write. 

I was also really keen to see how this genre blend would work: a combination of fantasy and social history bordering on memoir. I also wanted to see how the idea of the levanter cloud being a time travel portal would pan out and how this worked as a device to then write fiction based on historical reality and depict the Gibraltar of the past. Anyone that's been caught in a lung-cloying August levanter cloud on an August afternoon would tell you it feels you have been transported into some distant chamber of hell, let alone travelled into a fantasy portal! And would he create a vision of a Gibraltar of the future? At the outset, I had no idea and I was intrigued.

The Mist

I think it must be really hard to write a genre blend novel. These are becoming increasingly more popular, with the uptake in things like cozy crime mysteries set in various parts of the past, with Mary Chiappe and Sam Benady's Bresciano mysteries being a local example, and romantacy, a blend of romance and fantasy being hugely popular internationally, and with Katarina Martinez (pen name for Gibraltarian writer, Lee Sampere) also being a local example, and hugely commercially successful to boot. What strikes me, though, as a writer, is that this is technically difficult. You are trying to write two different genres, each of which has its own conventions, structures and reader expectations, and you are always risking focusing too much on one leaving the aficionados of the other a little bit disappointed. I have huge respect for writers who attempt this and even greater respect for those who pull it off.

Moss has unquestionably carried out a huge amount of research into Gibraltar's history and delved into his personal family archives as well as into his own memories and experiences. With Man in the Mist, he has been able to use the time travel device to portray a Gibraltar of the 1960s, a Gibraltar of the patios, of the working people getting through day to day life as well as of the political and social changes of the time. I remember the 1960s myself, and I found many of Moss' characters readily recognisable, as well as having at least anecdotal familiarity of some of the events that he mentions. 

Gibraltar in 1960 - not sure who to credit for the image

I was impressed at the level of detail that is included in the depictions of day to day living in the patios, family life, local traditions such as the annual trips to La Almoraima, and what life was like in the local workplace. Moss doesn't shy away from telling it as it was, even in terms of showing the blatant racism that existed in Gibraltar in that time, particularly towards the Spanish, or describing the smuggling that took place daily as Spanish workers supplemented their meagre existence with goods that could only be bought in Gibraltar. He also gives a good discussion on the fate of the refugees from the Spanish Civil War and does not gloss over some of the uglier things that happened, which I really like. For me, literature sheds a light and shines a mirror on society or on history, it is a panacea for the intentional obfuscation by the establishment. The writing does on occasion drift close to nostalgic, although this is partly driven by the fact that the protagonist is using the ability to travel through time to indulge his own nostalgia and revisit his family's home to get to know his own past better, but I thought that some of the passages where events take place in 1960s Gibraltar are some of the best ones in the book: absorbing, enlightening, and generally helping to take the plot forward.

I say 'generally helping' because from time to time I felt that the lingering in the past distracted me from the main storyline, which was the mystery that was developing in the fantasy world that Moss was creating parallel to this. The pitfalls of writing time travel is that tenses can get confused. On occasion I found myself having to reread passages of the book so that I could follow what was happening. This interrupted the flow of my reading which was a bit frustrating, but what I did notice was that it happened less frequently as the novel developed so either the author's skills developed or my understanding improved, or a combination of the two. It was also tempered by the interest that I had in the concept of being able to revisit your childhood as an adult, and I think this novel explored hindsight and how this works, as well as how lessons might be learned from contemplating the past.

Something else that I found interrupted the flow of the story for me, was that occasionally there was an indulgence in describing the protagonist's feelings or in over-explaining what was happening - too much telling and not enough showing which resulted in a slowing down of the story. I would have preferred a few well-chosen active words that allowed my imagination to fill in the details of the character's emotional response to a situation. 

On the whole, however, the events of the story, even though it's a fantasy novel, were realistic. This is important. Fiction requires the reader to suspend belief temporarily and this is particularly true of fantasy fiction. The key, I think, is to focus on the 'humanity' of the characters - because when we read stories, even if the main character is a robot or a fish, we read about the human condition, about emotions, about universal truths - and I think Moss achieves this well. In fact, although as a point of personal preference, I would have liked a better balance between the fantasy and the history, because I felt I wanted to read more of the former, the fantasy storyline was intriguing, introducing a mystery that is set to thread through the trilogy. This was important because otherwise the book would have read as a pseudo-memoir, but Moss keeps his head and weaves the two narratives quite well together. It certainly left me wanting to pick up Book 2: The Girl in the Mist.

The Girl in the Mist

Finally, I want to quote a line from the book which left me pondering how important it is to learn from the past:

"Travelling through the Mist had enabled me to see how life had changed over the years. How progress did not always mean that life will be better. I had certainly found that life in the Fifties was simpler and more humane. If I could somehow take that message back, then maybe I could improve the quality of life in the present."

And later, as a reminder that all you can alter is the future by learning from the past,  he adds:

"Time is intransigent, it won't let you change anything!" 

Food for thought. 

Man in the Mist is definitely worth a read, especially if you want to know what Moss thinks might be a Gibraltar of the future - he manages to integrate this and it is not as far-fetched as you might think. Terence Moss undertook a hard challenge and has devised some really clever ways of weaving the genres together, create a lead-in to a sequel, build up a complex mystery while also creating a realistic depiction of Gibraltar's recent past. I've linked to the Amazon version below, mainly because I haven't seen it in the local bookshops and would encourage you to pick up a copy.

Man in the Mist by Terence Moss

Gibraltar at its gritty best: Lowlife Tales from M G Sanchez.

 

Lowlife Tales by M G Sanchez

January is normally a good time to set goals, as much for writing as for any other part of life. This year, I was so beset with the flu at the start of the year that all that new resolutions stuff totally passed my by. We are well into January (it is now Burns Night as I write this) and I still haven't recovered my voice, much to the Family's delight. So, because it is usually easier to swim with the current than against it, I decided to throw goals out with the bathwater and just indulge in reading more.

It makes sense, I suppose, and I have advocated it to those young writers that I have mentored over the years, that if you want to continuously improve your writing, you have to read and read and read, and write and write and write. I tend to be quite an avid reader anyway, but last year I noticed that I was reading more slowly, I noticed a reluctance to read more than a few pages at a time and instead I would listen to music, daydream, watch TV and doomscroll. I have decided to change that this year, but to change it with a specific purpose in mind. Because it is not so much quantity of reading as quality that counts and this year I have decided that I am going to focus on reading as much Gibraltarian literature as I can, and get a real feel of how local writing is developing.

There is no shortage these days of books produced by local writers, which is joyful, starting with the Patuka Press' December 2025 launch of its latest edition, Childhood. This was an utter joy to read, and I have reviewed it in my Substack channel, link below:

Jackie's Substack: Childhoods Revisted

So I have kicked off my January reading with M G Sanchez' Lowlife Tales, the Llanito dialogue edition. I'm a sucker for a short story collection and have Hernandez' books, Mis Patios Perdidos and 4-volume Historias de Gibraltar on my shelves, alongside Rebecca Calderon's Ten Thousand Words. I did have Sanchez' Rock Black: Ten Gibraltarian Stories, but as I type these words I am suffering the supreme irritation of not finding it on the bookshelf with my other Gibraltarian books which means I have probably lent it out, never got it back and I can't even remember who I've lent it to. How infuriating! That particular collection of short stories was my first introduction to any Gibraltarian writer and Sanchez' dark humour and his talent for drawing realistic yet unique characters that are so recognisable as LLanitos instantly appealed, especially as when this was released in 2008, there was nothing like this available, nothing that was as basic as one of us writing about...us.

Lowlife Tales on Amazon

Lowlife Tales are a welcome addition to Sanchez' catalogue of work that tells uniquely Gibraltarian stories. Yet, as I write those words, I am acutely aware that this collection is much more than that. I am not a literary critic, or an academic, but even I can tell that this collection achieves something far more important than simply to draw interesting characters, or give them realistic stories in a familiar setting using familiar words as their speech. Sanchez' characters are complex and their experiences are universal. He doesn't hold back in laying out their physical flaws and failings, their weaknesses, which we all have; even the most bombastic of smugglers have hidden weaknesses lurking somewhere in their psyche, such as Toni Metetrola's fear of the open sea. I think, however, that Sanchez has a real knack of exploring and exposing men's mentality and mental health; he puts the reader easily into his characters' heads, and creates a ready engagement with the anxieties, fears, paranoias and other experiences that beset his characters. The journey in a character's mindset as it changes over the course of the story is smoothly laid out, carried as you are through a narrative style that is unobtrusive, that lays the story out almost as if you were listening to a group of men gossiping en el martillo. That the writer manages to write himself out of a text and allows the characters to tell their stories with minimum intrusion speaks of a tremendous skill. One of the many reasons why Gibraltarian writers need to read texts like this to be able to enhance their own writing skills. Should this text be studied at the local comprehensive schools? I'll let you ponder that.

Besides character and story building, Sanchez' stories depict a Gibraltar that if it were left to those other than local artists to depict, would be lost in the far recesses of history never to be thought about again. It is especially true of a small and enclosed society such as Gibraltar's to try to hide the flaws, to cover up the darker, seamier, side of life, and yet, Gibraltar's continuously evolving story is no more than a pastiche of light and dark tales, and our 'low-life' tales are as much a part of our history and our culture as stories to do with economic success or military strategic importance.This is because it is the 'low-life' from where we all come, which touches us all, which has shaped us and will continue to shape us, because we are nothing more than a balancing act between dark and light. Take for instance the fact that Sanchez does not shy away from the nastier aspects of the Gibraltarian character, such as the horrific misogynistic attitudes that women endure:

"Jeremy watched her with a furrowed brow, pained by the thought that she could be hearing their lewd sexual banter. It was a feeling that he knew only too well, this mixture of guilt, shame, disgust, discomfort and stinging inadequacy that always took hold of him when his mates started talking about girls and women in this outrageously crude manner..." (page 280).

He also adds an interesting commentary on el chupaculismo with this excellent section on page 222 which consideres a fictitious Poet Laureate, Callum Jimenez and what he writes about:

"Similarly, when he wrote about the Gibraltarian national character he would never focus on the nepotism, the pancismo, the institutional corruption, the smuggling which was supposed to have ended in the mid-90s but continues unchecked on the sidelines, or even the sybaritic hankering for material goods..." to which Callum's Spanish boyfriend says: "Why don't you write about some of the not-so-nice-ehstuff as well?" Except the Poet Laureate doesn't think he can. Thank goodness none of us are poet laureates, and we can, and that Sanchez is so good at holding up a mirror to Gibraltarian society so we can see ourselves as we really are.

Sanchez tells those stories of Gibraltar that are gasping to be told and in that way immortalises those characters and those incidents that are an integral part of who we as a society have come to be. I too, lost a relative to the sea during those smuggling years. I watched the suffering of his parents and saw the fear and guilt in the eyes of his friends, those that survived. These are stories that simply have to be told. Sanchez' contribution to Gibraltar is not just another few thousand words on paper on a shelf, and it is not just an exemplifier of written llanito. It is a toast to those parts of our history and our culture that could so easily have disappeared, much like Hernandez has done for our lost patio culture of the twentieth century. Because of Sanchez, we will know that bit more about ourselves, and so will the rest of the world.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

I chose to read the llanito dialogue edition for the precise reason that Sanchez wrote it: because you cannot retain any grip on realism unless the words that come out of the mouths of his characters are delivered in the exact way they would have been spoken. Had he been writing about some highly anglicised member of Gibraltar's wealthier elite, English would have been fine, but for the rest of us that belong to the streets and alleys of El Peñon, it had to be llanito for it to ring true. If you can only read English, then the English version will work well anyway, but if you have even a small grip of Spanish, the llanito dialogue edition is ideal and will give you a true flavour of the characters and the stories. Sanchez' contribution to the recovery of the llanito language, which is such an intrinsic part of our identity and therefore should be also of our literature, is immeasurable. 

The only thing is, there is a different story in the English edition that is not included in the llanito dialogue edition that sounds pretty intriguing and needs must I read that too! I can explain why: this particular story is about a Gibraltarian who returns to the Rock after forty years away and his response to the changes. I was away from Gibraltar for nearly thirty years and I am interested to compare that experience to mine. 

As it is, Sanchez' stories slake my thirst for understanding what happened in Gibraltar, for picturing what life was like, what people experienced during my own 'missing years'. So while their contribution to Gibraltarian literanture is invaluable, and while they are literary gems in their own right, Sanchez' stories help me to add the missing threads to the fabric of my life. Gotta say it: thank you, Mark.

Now for planning out my next read...

Image courtesy of Pixaby