Al Margen - poetry at the edges

 

I've been beating the drum and banging the gong about this event for a couple of weeks now and I make no apologies: this is an important event for poets, singer/songwriters, storytellers and for their audience. It is an important event for Gibraltar's cultural development. 

Al Margen is a 'cabaret of poets, writers and troubadours'. I love that phrase, a great way to describe a gathering of writers, 'cabaret' both as a collective noun and as a scene-setter. That's what we will have at the Rock Hotel on Wednesday evening (12th November) a scattering of tables, waiter service, low lights and high ambience, a small stage, lights, music, song and poetry. And wine, because what would a gathering of poets and troubadours, writers and songsmiths be without unas copitas de vino? Wine and song is as much sustenance to poetry as air and water.

We have gathered from the edges of Gibraltar's cultural life, from those border lands between the mainstream and 'other ways', between conscious writing and the words that sometimes stream from our subconscious and arrive without warning, giving no hint as to where they came from but simply that they are and they are here, now. We have emerged from our shadowy twilight to bring our thoughts, wrought into rhymes and rhythms and verses, and what we have to say adds that little bit more colour to a cultural landscape dominated by visual arts. From the margins we bring a sharper edge, touch of darkness, we speak of the unspeakable, shake the apple tree of complacency till the apples fall into the ground and root into new creations.

Poetry in Gibraltar is in a growth stage. Not that this is new - Gibraltarian poets have been writing for years. What seems a bit different recently, and maybe more so this year, is that poets are suddenly getting a readership, people are talking about the poets and their work. They are sitting up, pricking their ears up and listening. Not least academics, literature experts and linguists from across the world.

There have been more books, including poetry books, published in the past few months than in some past years, mostly well-received, although we do tend to like a book launch in Gibraltar - the spectacle as much as the contents. I didn't have a launch party for my poetry book Beyond the Blue, but it's worth a read:

Beyond the Blue by Jackie Anderson

There have been readings for charity: I took part in one to help raise funds for the charity Bosom Buddies, back in September, organised by the inimitable Sonia Golt, also herself a writer of stories novels and a poet. Gabriel Moreno (a true troubadour, methinks) came to Gibraltar to promote his new album, the rather brilliant Nights in the Belly of Bohemia (treat yourself to a copy; it really is good, as much musically as lyrically) and gave some local poets the mic as part of his gigs. James the Heartist runs a monthly spoken word event called Native Tongues at the MAG venue at Wellington Front and writers and rappers and story-tellers are welcome to come and pick up the mic and try out their words on willing and highly receptive audiences. Jonathan Teuma has been performing his brilliant brand of slam poetry, mixing this up with llanito haikus, in various events around Gibraltar, notably at Native Tongues and at the Cabana en el quari. Que bueno!

Gabriel Moreno's Night in the Belly of Bohemia

The Literary Festival is taking place this week and a poet's corner has been carved into this by organisers, Gibraltar Cultural Services, which places Gibraltarian poets almost shoulder to shoulder with international writers. It certainly provides a good platform from which to continue to showcase Gibraltar's talents. The Poetry Panel also on 12th November (what a day for Gibraltarian poetry!) will treat the audience to a sample of Gibraltar's poetry and a discussion of where poetry this might be heading, its development and what we can look forward to.

Poetry Panel - Gibraltar Literary Festival

This is what Gibraltarian poetry has needed for years. It's all very well sitting in a lonely room dipping the quill in ink and trimming the candles, but when you write poetry, you want to communicate something, you want your voice to be heard, your words to be read and to bear some meaning to the reader. 

Poets are emerging from the shadows of the margins of life and this is a good time to pick up their work, read it and re-read it and, because this is Gibraltar and we are small and friendly and love chatting over a cafelito or two, reach out and talk to us about our work. Engage. Be the audience we need you to be so we can grow and create more. Draw us out from the margins from time to time and help us link Gibraltar to the rest of the literary world. 

See you at the Rock Hotel on Wednesday 12th November. This cabaret of poets, writers and troubadours is waiting to meet you, entertain you and maybe even challenge you.

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

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.