Geraint D'Arcy

making stuff

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:53:35 GMT

Sorry Twitter I take it all back. I now see the necessity of twitter. I'm still not going to do it, but it's clearly for people who don't have a lot of time to blog and need to say something cryptic like I have to now:

"No time to blog or write. . . Making fingers for Hersel Gordon Lewis."

All the labours the sun sucks up

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:46:32 GMT

I have writer's block, though actually it's more like writer's constipation; I'm full to the top but can't get it out. That's disgusting I know, but my head is like that woman's handbag, I just keep filling it but haven't had time to shit.

Now I'm sat down, paper (literally) at the ready with time alone and nothing else to do today and I can't so much as fart an appropriate sentence, let alone follow through with a paragraph. So this blog will be my pencil and maybe together we will work it out:

Christopher Baugh's Theatre, Performance and Technology: the Development of scenography in the twentieth century is an historical survey of convenience compiled as a fait accomplis of theatre technology. It is extensive and wide ranging referencing many epochs and periods and practioners of stage construction and design who could now be called scenographers: Sabbatini, Inigo Jones, Loutherberg. He does this with a certain amount of reductive vagueness, grouping them into large periods of time for his convenience while only partially exploring their worth. The problem is that Baugh is almost exclusively concerned with the historical survey of these people and not the work they carried out. Technology to him is something that is happening within and outside theatre that has a mystery of its own, and rather than exploring this mystery, he catalogues it, pins it down to a period of time and labels its significance without bothering to understand what it is he has labelled. In fact my pinning metaphor is almost complete, he has caught certain butterflies, decided that they are in someway unique and excluded all sub-species and demes and 'something else' then without trying to witness the organism in its niche he has pinned it to black velvet and closed a glass case over the top. His examples have become isolated and separate, covered by that dusty beauty familiar to all taxidermatised creatures. Baugh takes the example of Craig and Appia (two twentieth century scene designers who revolutionised theatre design) and places them in a chapter called "Rejecting the past", which is frankly daft, as both of those men were on record as saying that the only way to move forward is to look at the past and take what you need, disregard what you don't, but never reject anything. They understood that process was eternal and continuous, not something to be isolated and never returned to. There is not one path to the future but many. Which is why Baugh's grouping of them in this way is anathema, why Baugh's treatment of all technology becomes the same, he has removed it from the environment it comes from and has pinned it to the page. this is something that Percy Fitzgerald is very careful not to do in his book from 1882 'The World Behind the scenes', okay this is actually a partial translation of Moynet's 'L'envers du theatre' and does not have the illustration of Moynet's, but it is a book which organically glides through the contemporary history of the theatre in terms of stage device and production practice the result is a rambling affair in which reminiscences of theatre greats are recalled alongside variety acts and stories of the Paris Opera. Fitzgerald allows his subject to flutter by unmolested albeit by recollection, it is a hindsight account with all the wisdom of the time painted into the gaps left by memory. And it is this difference that I am trying to write about, because at the heart of the difference is an argument which rages silently between no one, but one which I can hear very clearly, neither Fitzgerald nor Baugh are able to explore the argument, because both by their methods have ignored it. It is the search for a language, one that is understandable to scenographer, technologist and actor alike; it is a language that can lay out the tangle of theatre technology in terms of itself, not of history, nor of art or text, but as theatre technology with its own art and text and history.

And this is what I am stuck on. All the thoughts are there, they just are not coming out in an appropriate manner.

Thanks for listening, hopefully this thirty thousand word summer mental turd will be born sometime by October, so I can get married in the quiet of my own head.

Wind from my sails

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:37:14 GMT

It's time to blog again, though I ,must admit a serious flattening out effect, rather like Phillip K Dick's in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. The reason: it's the end of the academic year, or rather the end of the year that I have been working to the last 24 years, only there is no Summer present giving and no debauched New year's eve. I did however promise a summary of the year so here it is:

August brought two major events for me, firstly the publication of "The Sound of Sun Rising" in the Hadley-Rille Barren Worlds anthology which turned out to be a really excellent and rather gorgeous book, I really felt I had made it, which helped with the confidence to push my own book out: Poetry in a Louder Voice which was officially launched in October at Borders, but the buggers still haven't paid the invoice and I still haven't sold a single book to anyone I don't know. There was a moment around Christmas that I thought I had, but it was immediately dashed when I discovered that my Sister-in-Law Charlie had bought it, brilliant but disappointing. There was also the book that I deliberately pushed onto the shelves during the launch to see if it would disappear, it did, and was bought by the daughter of one of my colleagues for his Birthday: I of course see no money for this, and have not met her, but technically it still counts as someone I know.

I came nineteenth in the Predators and Editor's award after prematurely announcing twenty third place on this blog, so it was top twenty in the end and not top twenty five, it does make a difference, but as yet there have still been no reviews of the anthology announced at all, which is a pity as the book is actually a very strong one as far as themed anthologies go. And no one has reviewed Louder Voice either despite sending it out, which is annoying but not unexpected since nobody buys it anyway.

I appeared in the pages of Roundyhouse, not once, but twice, which was nice but after the initial thrill everything kind of dies down and you realise only poets read other poets; only poets even know of the existence of Roundyhouse and the Ruth Padel fiasco shows what that can be like:

(Padel Haiku:

It hasn’t gone well.

Did you or didn’t you then?

Smell your empty chair.)

On other fronts, academically I have been plodding along waiting for the summer when I have time to think and write and procrastinate by writing this blog. The production of Evil Dead or Dead by Dawn as we eventually called it went very well, we sold out on the last night and the effects and scenography pulled off without a hitch. Chris and Pete came to see it and both wrote very fair and praise-full reviews, I would Hyper-link but you know where they are guys, no one else reads this thing.

It's very tempting to blog about their achievements as well because they blog more often than I do and actually make me understand finally the point in the blogging thing: if you have something to say people want to read it, you can actually bask in their reflected light by being a follower, you feel connected to their lives, so it's been lovely to keep up in a very masculine fashion by still knowing what's going on in my friend's lives without having to phone once a week. I really don't get the twitter thing though.

So that's about it, whenever I sit to write this thing my mind goes blank, my news never seems blog worthy, I'm almost ashamed to write stuff down, It's occasionally nice to rant about stuff: I was going to have a good time ranting about the Laureate race, but there was no race at all to speak of, or news until they suddenly gave it to Duffy. Great, but that was overshadowed by the Padel vs. Walcott thing and now the whole thing looks destined to be overshadowed by a sudden BBC fixation on poetry and poets in particular, dead ones. That wouldn't be so bad, but they seem incapable of filming programmes about poetry without swishing the camera about the place. Anyway, that's a rant for next time I need to procrastinate.

Oh and I won a £500 learning and teaching Award last week for excellence.

The Late J G Ballard

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:35:55 GMT

When Arthur C. Clarke died I was very sad and remained so for a number of months.

There was one of the last three British SF greats passing away with no big send off. I can't remember what was happening in the news on that day, but it was depressing and he barely got a mention. In the same week, Paul Scofield died; Paul Scofield unknown to anyone who wasn't extremely familiar with live London Theatre topped the bill. Clarke was barely a side mention or a "finally". Those of us who read and wrote science fiction felt his absence like a softly stoppered breeze, noticeable and lamented because its freshness was no longer there.

Now J G Ballard has died and I am faced with a twenty minute news segment from channel four news. This is a good thing, Ballard was excellent, brave and vitriolic and savagely satirical whilst remaining lyrically beautiful in almost everything he wrote. What I am lamenting about now though, aside from his passing, is the rather vile and stupid way the public news broadcasters are handling his back catalogue of work. He is J G Ballard author of 'Empire of the Sun' (made into a film by Steven Spielberg) and of 'Crash' (made into a film by David Cronenberg) and apparently nothing else. He is most definitely not a science fiction writer and any suggestion that he is leaves broadcasters confused and slightly afraid, and it leaves me at home rather pissed off.

J G Ballard wrote more than those two books, he wrote some profoundly fascinating and incredible science fictions and some terrifying apocalypse tales and I loved them all. He was one of the most influential and impressive writers I have ever read, and one whose cannon I have returned to more than once. Those who know me know that is an unusual thing, only certain poets, Nabokov, Clarke and Shakespeare have that honour.

But it's not just Ballard that I've seen this with, any suggestion in academia or popular criticism that science fiction is something other than trash is ignored or shrugged away.

Perhaps that modern academics spend so much time trying to define science fiction in new and different ways is a symptom of this. It's incredibly frustrating reading criticism of science fiction when all they do is try to redefine the genre; and they are so haphazard about this, as though it wriggles about and squirms, when actually it is a really really simple thing: Fiction based around a scientific idea.
Quite why this causes such consternation I don't know but it has a number of results:

People ignore it and label it as not worth reading
People enjoy it, but insist it's not really science fiction. And proceed to add a long excuse about why this book about men going to the moon is actually an historically relevant piece of social realism that happens to explore the technological nitty gritty of actually going into space a full century before civilization actually does.
People get pissed off that one of their favourite science fiction authors is a labeled a post-modernist upon his death because there are two books the public can deal with and to think of him as someone who could write in two literary comfortable comfortable styles is easier to do than to honour him as one of Britain's last great SF authors. Even if one of those books is actually much more threatening to literary society than anyone is ready to admit, but then how many people actually have read 'Crash'? I suspect John Snow has not.

Computer games

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:53:44 GMT

I have a spare minute, a lose end and with whirlwinds of all kinds of stuff going on I have decide to blog. But not about the crap that's happening around me, because that is intensely boring and work related, and where sometimes work is interesting, this time it really isn't. This is no 'Dead by Dawn' project and I don't have anyone coming to see it. It is the third year finals for the students and its just hard work. Boring but all consuming.

I get some free time and need to blog and though there has been stuff happening, I feel I can live vicariously through the other blogs I follow and take a moment to make an observation about something that has been bugging me for a while and has come to the fore because of a brief discussion on Chris' Blog: Computer game narratives, in particular cutscenes.

Now Chris made the point that these scenes should blend in and show little bits of the story, a story which you unravel yourself, making the leaps and connections as you play along. I agree, you should be a participant in the narrative as it unfolds, more than that in fact, you become a co-producer of the story, your action leads to more branches and strands of the story. I really liked the First 'Resident Evil' game, its cut scenes were clumsy when they appeared, but they were so infrequent it didn't matter, what was fascinating was that in between zombie killing, there were clues and puzzles. The diary pages and log entries you find while playing still chill me now: "Itchy, itchy. . . Tasty, tasty". Of course it can go too far like 'Morrowind' and the 'Elder scroll' games or recently in 'Two Worlds' where the story is so vast and unforthcoming that frankly who cares?* The story is disparate and sporadic and not properly interlinked. It's almost as if the programmers have never even heard of a hyper-text, which is strange as computer programmers invented it. The story in a sandbox / open-play game needs to match in with whatever you know, it should match your level of knowledge. If you have been to the Caves of Oomphga, then NPCs should stop banging on about the mysterious caves to the north where there is a lost mystic armour when you turn up wearing the damn thing.
That said, there is also the gameplay for them to worry about and making it look beautiful and a hundred other things, but I would have more patience if they sorted out the narrative of games which aren't so hot on the graphics and the battle, because it is the narrative that has me trading in the game before I've got past the eighth boss.

It's also the execution of the narrative that bugs me. RPGs tend to rely on cut scenes far too much at the moment, they have always had a tendancy to do so, but damn, there has been a whole string of games that really let the side down and it basically started with the first one I played that had voice work in it: 'Final Fantasy X', the graphics were ace, the gameplay was okay, the water polo bits were crap, the battle system was okay, the cut scenes were pause friendly but they were also hours long and boring as hell. The voice acting was nauseating and the dialogue terrible, but the worst part was that the characters were speaking with every single part of their bodies: Their hands would gitter about, scratch themselves, brush their hair, gesture wildly and erratically for no reason at all. The animators wanted everyone to know who was talking and at what time. And just to be sure, the programmers put in large gaps between the speakers so that we could differentiate. It was slow and embarrassing to watch and frankly, was a bit crap. It didn't help that the story line was a lame duck compared to Final Fantasy VII, which though graphically inferior (it was PS one to be fair), is hard to beat in narrative terms within the FF franchise.

But FFX was early on the PS2, surely we have improved by now? Well there was 'Dragon Quest' and 'Rogue Galaxy' on the, notable for interest's sake, the far superior but ultimately disappointing and 'Star Ocean' all came later on the PS2. These had a much better crack at the voice over thing and some very beautiful moments graphically, but still weak stories and dreadful dialogue. 'Dragon Quest' was meant to be much more light hearted than your average RPG, but the dialogue transitions were so slow that every gag fell completely flat, comedy characters don't come over well in cut scenes. (I'm not even going to mention 'Avatar Tuner' which had a comedy character with a Jamaican acent, but was white. I shan't mention that, I will put it down to cultural niavety and ignore it)

Then there was 'Final Fantasy XII' PS2's swan-song, and I was hopeful. I'd waited a long time for it, was playing all sorts of god awful games to pass the time, and they almost cracked it, the cut scenes, weren't horribly slow, the story was really very weak, but the game-play more than made up for it; the thing that bugged me the most was the awful voice acting and again the random waggling of arms and scratching of faces, heads and everything else. Was there to be no end? Surely the next-gen consoles could sort me out?

They did with 'Lost Odyssey'; it was slick, interesting, played really well, the story was sufficiently interesting to keep me going, it even had twists I didn't guess. Most importantly, the voice acting was sublime: the actors understood what they were saying and the voices embodied the character's actions, jokes were made funny, the characters felt alive and I was glad the world had finally caught up. But hell fire, did no-one else play this game? Programmers and game designers, I'm talking to you. WTF is with 'Last Remnant'? WTF is with 'Infinite Undiscovery'? The stories were lame, the characters poorly written, the voice acting unbearably nauseating and completely disassociated from the action on screen, and I'm not surprised because the designers for the body movement are clearly not human, nor have they ever seen a human being move, talk or interact.

For everyone's sake please, computer game companies, please, please, get someone in who understands dialogue, get in a voice director, buy in actors record the sound, not as files, but a soundscapes, have everything performed live and record it. Have the animators come on over and watch how actors move. Come on now. Be brave about it, it's not as if we have never seen TV or movies is it? If your target audience is kids, then watch 'Ben Ten' or go old school and watch He-man, even that is better than the crap I keep having to trade in until a better game comes along.

Here endeth the rant. Back to work.

* Foot note addressed to the writer of 'Two Worlds'. If you are going for the early modern English dialects, do your home-work please: "perchance" does not mean "please continue speaking Sir". Dumbass.

This feels like a day off. . . but I'm still at work.

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:00:58 GMT

Ah ha! Finally a day of almost total procrastination where I read and do things other than write this conference paper. I figure I'm due for a break what with Dead By Dawn and all:

The designs started a bit like this. . .

Then we were told that we may not get the space we wanted so it turned into this. . .

But then we were so I redeveloped the whole thing and tightened some of the proxemics. . .

And when it came to be realised it ended up like this. . .

with some of this thrown in. . .

The photos are not the best (he kept using a flash, always bad when things are lit for theatre); and although I'm responsible for the scenography, we have to give the students jobs to do, so some of the makeup is not quite as gloopy and dripping as I would have liked, but on the whole it is very effective live, especially the exploding head and Henrietta.

The opening night was an excellent first time round the block, there are still some things for the actors to tighten up on: they distracted themselves during a fight and had to replay the knap-slap sequence again, the end vortex, felt a little flat, but by Friday, the day I have important friends coming, it should be really tidy.

So just to get you all in the mood, here's a little ditty I threw off in the pub while joking around about what I wanted on my show T-shirt:

Dead Night, Deadite,

First love I kill tonight

I wish I may, I wish I might,

Destroy the dead I slay tonight.

Away for a bit

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:04:39 GMT

Actually I've been nowhere for a bit just at work some thirteen hours a day six days a week. (I took Sunday off on account of a hangover). In life not much has happened, but in career loads have all at an individually not blog-worthy level, but at the same time quite big personally. Unfortunately they have all come at a time when I am so unbelievably busy I have not been able to say anything about them, other than make cryptic references in other peoples' blogs as comments or in dashed-off emails to friends. I finally have twenty minutes free, so before I dash off to give a guest lecture I have time to fill by procrastination, here is the list of things I wish to blog about, details can follow:

The photos and audio came back about Sweeney Todd, so I can edit them and stick on Youtube, finally,
I was published in Roundyhouse again, this time with a poem about Deborah Kay Davies' poetry, which I raved about before.
Photos from the Grand Guignol Project I designed for the Society for Theatre research Christmas Lecture have come back too and here is a photo for a taster of things to come from. .

. . .Dead By Dawn the title of the Evil Dead stage adaptation I have designed and am about to give a lecture on.
And finally, a proposal which I sent to the Journeys Across Media 2009 conference at Reading University has been accepted so in April I will be delivering my first conference paper on the future of theatre technology.

I think that's about it. When DBD is done, I'll be able to breathe and actually talk about this stuff as I will have time to procrastinate properly

Preditors and Editors

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:02:14 GMT

I came 24th. Not bad for one out-put, there were names I recognised around my mark so I don't feel lonely at that level, se were from the Hadley rille anthos which is really good.
Thanks for voting if you voted.

Been spending a lot of time working, but mainly waiting for phots etc. I know I keep promising them, but I'm waiting on others. Makes me feel like a bit of a heel. So I don't want to properly post until I have something to show for it all. For all you know I could be making it up!

Your Nerd Needs You. . .

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:36:49 GMT

I could do a review of the year. It was long and had days in it, lots has happened, most of which I neglected to mention in my blog, other parts I did put in. But as you can probably tell, I am useless at this blogging thing. Fortunately I am better at the writing thing. One of the biggest things to have happened this year was the publication of my second pro-sale for a story in Barren Worlds which came out in August and I finally got round to reading this christmas. It is an excellent book, and you can vote for it on the Preditors & Editors poll where you can also vote for my story in the short science fiction and fantasy category.
If you want to read the story first I can email you a copy, but I do recommend buying the book. It is very good.

In other news, the best book that I read this year (that didn't have me in it) was Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis, which was dark funny and twisted and ranty. It was like reading Spider Jerusalem's Great Grandad's Memoirs.

I have a slight problem with this end of a year thing, I'm still on term time, have been all my life, every job I have had has been based around seasons which echo the school ones, consequently I always find the new year a hollow thing. My year ends in July. I'll give a proper review then I think. Besides I'm ill and feel like crap, this is all I can manage today, I'm going back to bed to ooze and hope I win an award.

laureate

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:01:43 GMT

Check out this and read all the comments at the bottom:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/fromthewebteam/2008/11/credit_crunch_from_bad_to_vers.html

I watched this on Newsnight, and yes I had been out drinking, so when I came back I was fairly full of myself and that brought me crashing down in spitting anger. I hate poets like him, with a passion, and not for his poetry, but for him, for being a "poet", for swaggering onto a TV show, and tossing off some doggerel in an hour with no regard for art or the context of the rest of the programme. There are plagues in Africa and terrorists in India and he has a little poetry wank about the credit crunch. He should have said his bit about the importance of poetry, disagreed with Motion about his view on poetry (let's face it, what's not to disagree about) and pissed off home. Now this "poet" with his scruffy-chic clothes and stupid hair, spouts off some unpolished crass ditty and gives us all a taste of what the next poet laureate is going to be like. I feel like I did when I came out of the recent Indiana Jones film; then I was embarrassed to be a science fiction writer. Now I'm embarrassed to be a poet. These guys are the reason that people think poets are wankers and these guys are what everyone thinks poets should be like, and that's why we have hoards of these ungodly pretentious toss -pots swaggering about the country touting their drivel at passing poets, because passing poets are the only other people who listen to it. I have met other poets who like poetry, I have very rarely met people who don't write poetry but love contemporary poetry. Poetry magazines, poetry books, poetry nights, poetry slams are all for a target audience of other poets.
Motion's idea about getting the poetry out to everyone, and teaching them to find beauty in it is an admirable one, but he has approached it in the usual elitist manner: he sets up the poetry archive and claims that each poetry recording costs £4500. £4500! FOUR AND A HALF GRAND!?! Go to the site, check out the contributions section and then listen to some of the poems. That ain't worth £4500. Even if you factor into the mix, the fee for the poet and the recording session, it's not worth that price, especially as I suspect that most of the poets literally phoned them in. The compression is too high and the sound quality is appalling.
And apart from that, what else has he done? Has he toured schools? Colleges? Universities? Church halls? Women's Institutes? Is he on any syllabi? Does anyone even own a copy of his book? Can anyone quote his memorable poetry? He's like the Duke of Bloody Edinburgh swaggering around like an old empire subaltern picking his way through the filth of a colony slum and firing off "difficult to write" poems about the queen mum's passing.
Where is the approachability, the common touch, the popularity? Show someone his photo and I bet they wouldn't know who he is. Just like I don't know who Murray Lachlan Young is, wouldn't know him if I fell over him, and really have no desire to seek out any of his work.

This is the journey I am going to cover from now on (though the sycophants at the BBC will probably make some half-arsed fly-on-the-wall about it at some point). Some people cover the development of films, some the gossip surrounding Madonna, some the elections. I'm going to follow this to the end. I want to know who was in the running and whether whosoever wins actually deserves the accolade.

Done ranting now.

Sweeney Todd

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:51:34 GMT

So the production of Sweeney Todd went very well a number of weeks ago now, the same week as the book launch, and this is one of the responses we got:

Sweeney Todd. Written and directed by Richard Hand. Performed on GTFM Radio, 22 October 2008.

This specially mounted drama performed in the style of 1940s British and American radio plays retold the story of Sweeney Todd, the self-styled ‘Demon Barber of Fleet Street,’ who gives his unfortunate customers the closest shave of their lives before slitting their throats and sending their corpses down to the basement via a specially-designed barber’s chair. The corpses are then turned into delicious meat pies sold at Mrs. Lovett’s shop next door. John Clarke, an expatriate returning to Britain after twenty years, is one of these unfortunate customers; after his death, his niece Joanna goes looking for him accompanied by her boyfriend Stephen. Inexorably the two of them are drawn towards Todd’s shop, and there they discover the barber’s grisly secret. Todd tries to kill Stephen, but eventually plunges to his death by falling head first into the basement via the barber’s chair. Mrs. Lovett escapes, but we do not know where to.

The tone of Richard Hand’s production was set in the opening moments, as a mysterious female narrator taunted those listeners who “sup on dinner while we sup on horrors.” She invited us to consider where our meat came from; was it human or animal flesh? Her speeches were written in a consciously artificial style, peppered with superlatives, sibilants and alliterations. She reappeared throughout the performance, providing commentary on the preceding action and preparing listeners for what was to follow, as well as giving us plenty of macabre laughs. I loved her description of Todd and Mrs. Lovett as “dastardly partners in crime” who strive “every time [for] the perfect crime.” Grand Guignol might be horrific, but that does not mean it can’t be simultaneously funny.

What I liked most about this production was its meticulous attention to detail, in which music and sound-effects assumed as much importance as the dialogue. The transitions between each scene were expertly handled by a three-piece band of piano, organ and violin relishing in a score comprised of what the actor John Gielgud once described as “great fat chords.” Hand had conceived Sweeney Todd as a full-blooded melodrama; and the music was designed to reinforce this impression. At point when Stephen discovered Todd’s guilty secret, he exclaimed “You don’t suppose …” The remainder of his line was drowned by the organ, as we heard him vomiting in the background. Nothing needed to be said at this point; the music was sufficient to communicate the emotion of this scene. The sound-effects were notable for their ingenuity; I especially liked the sound of Todd’s razor being sharpened and the rattle of the string of pearls as Mrs. Lovett took them off Clarke’s corpse and pocketed them.

And what of the central performances? Hand has obviously worked hard with his cast to create the appropriate emotions. Sweeney Todd clearly relished his task, frequently giving vent to a blood-curdling laugh reminiscent of the old British actor Tod Slaughter (who played Todd both in the theatre and in ‘B’ Movie released in 1936). Mrs. Lovett displayed considerable vocal virtuosity, which enabled her to create an unexpected dénouement (to find out more, I invite listeners to tune in to the repeat of this production on 31^st October.) The young lovers occasionally sounded a bit vocally stilted, but I believe that Hand had deliberately encouraged this style of delivery so as to underline the artificiality of Hand’s dialogue. Like the narrator, Stephen was fond of alliterations, describing Todd as a “demon” and a “devil.”

If nothing else, this Sweeney Todd underlined the fact that, while vocal and performative styles might have changed since the 1930s and 1940s, the dramas of that time had the capacity to hold the listeners’ attention. Perhaps this helps to explain why so many of them are now available on podcast, and why student groups are so keen to recreate them in the modern era. In 2004 a group of University at Albany students and faculty, in association with two local sound effects producers collaborated on The FBI in Action, a play originally broadcast in 1943. Hand’s production followed the same path – only this time they worked on a specially rewritten version of an old classic. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and hope that the director and his multi-talented cast will repeat the experiment with another play in the not-too-distant future.

LAURENCE RAW

*Laurence Raw is a freelance reviewer and theatre critic, as well as teaching drama and English at Baskent University, Turkey. He reviews plays for the British online journal Theatreworld Internet Magazine (www.theatreworldinternetmagazine.com).

*************************

So that's pretty good, then Richard Emails me with this:

I very much enjoyed what I heard. The voices of the actors involved were just perfect. I was very impressed with the way they embodied their roles. And the sound quality was outstanding. WAS this actually recorded in a theatre, as the introduction indicated?

Does the BBC keep any sort of archive of productions? I’d love to hear yours in its entirety and to hear some others as well. I remain interested in coming up with a script that might be right for this format. It’s like going back in time, isn’t it? Or, at least, it is over here. Radio plays have a romance to them, somehow, that is unique.

Best,

Diane

**********

That's Diane Lake, who wrote Frieda.

We should get it all on youtube soon.
I played John Clark, who isn't mentioned but was very good.

Who the hell are you?

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:48:02 GMT

It's tempting, I must admit, but I'm not going to stand for poet laureate this time round. It is, I think, a fair and reasonable decision, and, though you may both protest, one I am quite fixed upon. I will not stand and I will have to put off the "when I'm famous interview" with Terry Wogan, which I've been working on since I was eleven, for another ten or so years.

There are a number of reasons for reaching this decision:

1. I would have to renounce my socialist-anarchist political views and resolve my differences with the crown.

2. I would have to put aside my socio-religious ambiguity renounce my pseudo-agnostic spiritualities and my esoteric fondness of occult books and make my peace with God.

3. I would need to convert from Catholicism to Anglicanism in order to do 2.

4. I need to be well known enough that the DCM actually drop my name to the panel of academics before drawing up their shortlist.

5. I have not yet written something incredibly flatering about the Queen and had it published in a National Newspaper.

6. I don't own a Morning Suit.

7. I don't fancy the idea of ALLEGEDLY getting one of my students pregnant and then having to whinge about all over the National press.

8. AND finally, the thing really stopping me, is that I have not yet actually sold a single book to anyone I didn't already vaguely know.

There is someone out there who may have done all of the above, I don't know, but he seem's to be perpetually on tour with the same gig: Luke Wright. Good luck.

Happy Sweary Hallowe'en

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:41:17 GMT

Here are a few reasons for this post:

1. It's hallowe'en.
2. We all seem to be having a Zombie kick at the moment.
3. My Mum said she'd read this blog. (sorry, my beautiful Mother) said she had read this blog and I had a brief decsending stomach flutter of panic of thinking: Have I sworn in it yet? And then My father told me no I hadn't.

So here is a Zombie poem with swearing in it.

My Zombie Plan (To be read in the style of Ian MacMillan.)

If you hit it in the head then the fucker's going to die

I'm going to joke with you, I'm not going to lie

If you hit it in the head then the fucker's going to die.

Grab some comfy shoes, and clean change of bra

Arm yourself with a club, a knife or iron bar

It's not going to run about and leap on your from far

It's not going drag you off, unless you go crash the car.

It's not like in the films, least not since ninety eight

It's more like their rotten stiff yet still animate;

And just cos we've had sex doesn't mean you'll meet your fate

We've been together quite a while, this isn't our first date.

Look there's one, Mrs Spac from number twenty two

There with her slavered jaws and hair of rinses blue

She's staggering about like she hasn't got a clue.

Now take your bar and fuck her up! You know what to do.

Hit her in the head my love, make sure to do it twice

Whack her fucking brains out, I know that it aint nice.

Think of those cakes she made in concrete by the slice

No go and hit her in the head, for god's sake be precise.

Okay, okay don't panic, it's your first time anyway

Everyone messes up when they face their first doomsday

Now back up a bit my love, and shield your eyes from spray.

Come here bitch and get some, let me see your grey!

Aaargh! fucking bit me, did you see what that cow did?

I think I tripped on something and corrected while I skid;

I thought I go out in a crowd with me stuck in amid,

And then she fucking leapt at me like a sprightly bloody kid.

Well that's all it now my love, my chips are in the can

I didn't even tell you each aspect of my plan

We'd stock up on guns and food and break into a van

Then off to somewhere hot, Gibraltar or Milan.

But now you'll have to kill me, I've not got long to live

I've no more pearls of wisdom to share with you or give

It's tough I know, but let's face facts and this you will forgive:

I'm going to start to fade away and then I will relive.

You're going to have to hit me in the head to make me die,

I'm going to joke with you, I'm not going to lie,

Your going to have to hi. . . erg.

Thanks very much for reading. I think you'll all agree the swearing is necessary, I now have something to feel guilty about despite being almost thirty.

Have a great night. . . Mwhahahahahahahaaa!

Inspired by friends.

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:38:16 GMT

I might be getting a little over excited with the whole url thing, but I thought, What the hey, it's a damned good excuse to post up one of my favourite Youtube thingies. This one is in honour of all those strangers out there who may come into contact with Zombies. I'm posting it because I'd like everyone who stays up past thier bedtimes, to know that even before Dead Set, which I enjoyed, there were zombies; and incase you don't have a Zombie attack escape plan here's a helpful training video from No more ghostly games:

enjoy

How did the book launch go?

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 12:01:01 GMT

I think the book launch went quite well. I think it did, I also think it didn't in some respects and I like to think that that is through no real fault of my own. Firstly I'm not Gok Wang, nor am I Kate Adie and I'm also not Shelley or Donne so the idea that I may draw a massive crowd (which was my constant hope in the back of my mind) was an unrealistic one at Best. Actually, for what it was, the book launch was excellent thanks for asking: I sold three books had an order placed for two more and signed said books as wittily as I possibly could. The order for the two books are going to go to the Humanities Library at Cardiff University, so when that happens I might pop in and deface them with clever comments; I don't know why, it's probably to do with more my overly precious attitude towards books, Jeanette like to get comfortable with a book, break the spine read in the bath or in the loo, have it open on the side while she cooks splashy liquidy things, I however can't watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade without crying at the book burning bit.

But I digress the turnout was small but eclectic, My Friend Terrance joined us for support which was lovely of him as he already bought a boo and didn't have to turn up at all, Two victorious conversions in my friends Dan and Ben, both musicians who are usually quite good at avoiding poetry and reading in general who turned up and loved it, so that was lovely. And rather excitingly, for me anyway, was the presence of Norman Schwenk and Deborah Kay Davies, whom I had met just the night before at Deborah's book launch of Grace Tamar and Lazlo the Beautiful. Which I'm reading and is excellent, in the kind of way that makes me furious at the world for only reading what Richard and Judy tells them to. If Richard and Judy tell you to read this than they've got it right for once and I will be willing to forgive them for recommending The Historian.

At the far right of the above photo and at the back was a gentleman whom I didn't know, he wrote a lot of notes and didn't stick around, he also didn't buy a book, but he did turn up and he did listen, so thank you strange tramp looking man whom I don't know and clearly came in from the cold looking for a place to sit down, thank you for coming in, I hope you don't have internet and read this blog and that you are not actually an influential publisher who would like to pick up my work and has been stalking me from afar this whole time waiting to see what I would blog about you.

Then we went and got wrecked, spent far to much money on discount cocktails and lugged an overly full box of books about Cardiff.

Then yesterday became the worst day I've had for a long time, properly full on Blue mood. After a week of performance and chaos, utter come down in a nasty way. I'm alone for the weekend because I said to Jen that I wanted to stay at home and not go visit friends in Surrey; that I need to stay home and write and work, because this is the first weekend that I'm not too busy thinking about something else and would appreciate the quiet.

This is the only writing I've done. I spent yesterday moping around cardiff trying to clear my head of things and find a new bag. That's two things for the procrastination meme thing: Moping around cardiff and looking for a new bag that would be just right to keep my books in. The other three are Fable II; played solidly until four in the morning. They would be one thing but when you start at half twelve one afternoon and don't finish til four the next morning, you kind of have to split the time into four hour slots. . . So really I started a fresh procrastination session at 12 last night.

Sweeney Todd was a roaring success too, expecting a review of it soon before it goes out again next week. I will also link to the youtube slide show and audio when we've put it together. Ben Challis, who came to the launch did the music for ST and between my performances at both and my writing, he has asked me If I want to do some kind of spoken word collaborative music project. I said yes, gave him closed on account of rabies, Burroughs' dead city radio, Alan Parson's Tales of mystery and imagination and the Tiger Lilies Births deaths and marriages. and because it's so cool check this out:

Busy busy!

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:12:12 GMT

Mad, mad week. Very cool weekend leading into the most nuts busy week I have had all year and it's only Wednesday morn. But not with writing, not yet anyway, that is to come when I'm left alone this weekend and I can finally get some stuff done, though I will probably sit around and chill for most of it and regret not writing a word later, depends on how exhausted I become during the week.
So reasons to be cheerful (and not bored shitless like normal):

I'm teaching technical theatre on Monday nights. Not really worthy of mentioning but is keeping me sane.
Sweeney Todd is going out live tonight at 8ish on GTFM. I'm one of the voice actors and it should be very cool.
Thursday Night is the book launch of Deborah Kay Davies, which I have been invited to and am very excited about because I really, really like her work and highly recommend it to anyone with even the vaguest interest in poetry or indeed in modern women writers. She is brilliant and very inspirational.
My own book launch on Friday night at Border's in Cardiff. I'm on their notice board, and Gok Wang is next week, Kate Adie the week after that. I don't really care for Gok Wang, he is everything that is bad about daytime TV and Trinny/Susannah rolled into one heavily made up face, but he's got a book and he's famous and I'm on the same bill. So I suppose I have to be luvvie about it all. Sod that, I've got a book launch. . . and I wrote my book so nyaar!

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:03:35 GMT

This is very exciting . That now means that they are genuinely not jerking my chain and do actually want me to turn up and do this launch. I was having doubts because we had a show last week that didn't go so well on the crowd front. The actual gig itself was fine, lots of good performances and appearance from Boyd Clack and Stacey Blythe who are kind of local folk celebrities, but it wasn't enough to draw the crowds. I had a really good time doing it and performed quite well, I think, but as is always the case, the morning after brought a hangover and a three day stretch of paranoia. The people at Cardiff Border's are really lovely and friendly and were perfectly understanding that I was nervous that my event hadn't shown up on the website, and now it's there. Fantastic, legitimacy, I'll start making a poster now. I post it when I'm done.
In other news, Jeanette was published in the dirty napkin . It's her first publication and she's the first Brit to publish with them. If you pay a small fee you can subscribe and listen to her performance as well, but I recommend only reading the others, the performances will disillusion you to poetry otherwise. Jeanette is the only one to actually emote vocally in her work. American poets, and this is a horrible generalisation and one I am perfectly willing to alter and won't mind getting flamed about, tend to follow the Robert Frost School of Delivery:

Which is fine, but they are normally not as good. . .

Poetry in a Louder Voice

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:15:45 GMT

It is on!

The event of the century.
The moment you've all been waiting three millenia for.
Sophocles died begging for it, Hemmingway never had it, Woolfe consumed herself with jealousy over it. . .

The Book launch of Poetry in a Louder Voice.

Border's, Cardiff, 24th October 2008 at 5pm.

(bring money)

Writer's vs reader's?

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 07:56:06 GMT

Here's one for you: "reader's block". Now surely this is just "laziness" or "can't-be-bothered-to-read-this-particular-kind-of-thing-today", because reader's block would imply a total lack of being able to read anything: road signs, graffiti, the small print on payday loan applications etc., etc., etc. Now this is something that I am willing to let slide as an emerging buzzword, but it seems to have become awfully common, slipping into the work place common, and that frankly pisses me off, because it has become an excuse for being a twat: "No I haven't read that report, I've got reader's block", "No I don't read poems/stories/scripts/books/things-with-words-in, I've got reader's block." It also implies that reading is a creative process which it is not. I grant that it is not a passive thing, it needs energy to do, imagination helps, you don't just point your eyes at it and let it seep beneath the lids, and you do have to work at it, it is sometimes not easy to, there may be big words or even foreign words or maybe italics, but essentially the main creative part is done for you, you just have to appreciate what it is and carry on. If you are quite an active reader, it may inspire you in turn to do something creative with words yourself: write a letter to a distant loved one, write a Haiku, or a critique of the thing you just read, but it is not creative. So if you have reader's block, shut-the-hell-up and do something else and be glad you don't have writer's block, because that doesn't really exist either; the ability to write is still there, you just write like eight kinds of crap for a long while, and that is really hard to get out of, though obviously not that hard as so many people blog about it, including me; but reader's block is frankly a ridiculous thing to invent, and as with any condition that gives you an excuse, if you name it people will have it, then miraculously and terrifyingly, the number of people with said condition will increase exponentially.

Sometimes I don't feel like going to work, maybe I have worker's block?

POD nightmares.

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:55:50 GMT

I get an email from Nielsen Book data saying that Gardners and Bertrams want to purchase Poetry in a Louder Voice and can they have permission to do so. "Yes" I say, "no problem"; and I sit and wait and hear nothing at all from any one, or anything for that matter. So it begins to dawn on me that in a totally automated electronic world I am the only human alive keeping the book thing ticking over, because, it transpires, I am the only person in the chain of sale. That is I, a poet and self publisher, am the only human that handles anything to do with my work. So when the request came through I was supposed to leap upon it and go crazy sending out invoices and return of sale agreements and god knows what else. This is news to me, however, and now I look like a naive fool. It strikes me as a sink or swim kind of thing.

Nowhere online has this information nor does anywhere tell you what the next step is, Nielsen have nothing online to help, emails are answered politely but curtly as if to say "we're dealing with a rank amateur here"; Lulu are approachable but wash their hands of you once you go against the grain of their publishing enterprise: if you just use them as a printer then they don't really have to help you do anything.

I am on my own.

This is normally something that I am used to, that I relish; but it means in this circumstance that I have to be solely responsible for buying and distributing my own books. So I am out of pocket and am taking risks as if I am a small business, something I wasn't really expecting. It's kind of cold and lonely and I feel like I'm standing in the Strugatsky brother's Zone.

It makes me marvel at how books get made at all. Someone, somewhere must loose out on the large scale, because so many wheels need to be greased that the world revolves around transactions that cannot possibly be economical, and it is shaping up like POD is not the modern way to publish poetry. All the old issues are still there and self publishing is a minefield of hidden traps and financial pitfalls. Doing this does not avoid the chaos of the publishing and bookselling industry, it plants you right bang centre.

So yeah, I'm a complete idiot, and totally naive and stupid and whatever else for thinking that this was going to be easier once I had that bloody ISBN, but I am going to sort this out, or die of a very nasty migraine trying.

Return to the net.

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:20:48 GMT

Okay I'm back on the horse, so to speak. It's been stressful and weird, but finally I have my own house. I live on the side of a valley in South Wales in a two bed cottage. I've got V+ TV and a new iMac computer, I've got tools, I've got paint, I've got Wood. I no longer have to schlep around in a city, mooching from bookshop to bookshop, feeling penned in by half a million people, I have space now; and a garden and a view and no more excuses to feel fragile. I'm back and I am going to blog dammit. Maybe not as regularly as everyone else on-line does, but I'm still going to do it. To quote Star-Trek (hey - it had to happen sometimes, and I do have the excuse of being a science fiction writer) "the Borg are like a storm on the horizon, you don't get angry at the storm, you just move further away," or something like that. And obviously swap Borg for strange people who like to fight with each other online.

So this is by way of an apology to you, my reader: sorry for being a wuss, thanks for your support.

I saw shoot 'em up last night, and no this isn't a review site it's a writer's site but frankly this counts because what I am about to say is important: I don't write scripts very often, I read them and I edit them and I teach how to write scripts, but I don't write them: This seems like a bit of an irony I know and you're probably out there thinking, how the hell can you talk about them then? Where do you get off teaching writing scripts with no practical experience? My answer is: I don't. I am a writer, a script is just another form, if you can write a Haiku you can write a script.

Already millions of my non-existent readers are fleeing from my site, but wait and I'll explain, scripts are mostly tabulation and structure, assortments of devices and scenes which you can lay out like a deck of cards in numerous formations to make up the bare bones of a plot structure: this is easy to teach, it's easy to write entire books about, and people frequently do, making large amounts of cash out of it and cultivating popularity and generating new work, they do it for novel writing, radio plays, theatre scripts; all are teachable in terms of structure, form and function. What is not teachable is talent and creativity: they have to be nurtured. Any writer with the desire to teach can talk about writing, any teacher with a talent for both writing and teaching can nurture your talent. So I teach writing, not scripts, not poetry, not Haiku creation, but writing, because words are the thing they all have in common and that is frankly all that matters: words, whether they are images or dialogue, character description or oblique references to nature in set metre. And if I have a class of script writers then I teach them poetry and if I have a class of poets I teach them short stories and if. . . you get the picture. I like being contrary and I like to see people think about words when they assume they don't have to, and I like to show people unstructured things when all they can see is pattern. Ultimately, I see scriptwriters who are not writers and writers who are not poets, struggle on with mediocrity all the time and I try to encourage them to find a new direction for themselves or a new direction for their work. Anyone can write, most people can write well, some who can't write, write anyway and get away with it but probably shouldn't.

So shoot em up. It's just not very good: it's fun, really fun, and funny and daft and enjoyable, but it isn't any good at all. I will recommend watching it and say "no I really did like it". But it's not a good film because it lacks a decent script. It has a very short plot and a flabby storyline, the dialogue is frankly appauling, but has the air of someone trying to make a joke over just how bad the dialogue really was. In short the script feels like it was saved at the last minute, probably by a very stressed script editor trying to make it fit with what the hell was happening around them. Only it isn't, it was written by the director, Michael Davis, don't worry if you've never heard of him, but for those in the audience who get excited by this kind of thing, he wrote Double Dragon; and fair dues to the boy, he's done alright by this film, it has a great cast, excellent stunt work, violence, action, comic book visuals, alright CGI, and is pound for pound a solid B-movie. The problem is, he clearly started with all of those things and got half way through the movie before deciding to make a film. This method is more common than you might think, and Shoot 'em up is a very good example of something that desperately needed a script, a good one, and not just something knocked up on the day of shooting. Michael Davis is someone that probably should stick to direction.

This is why I like Ten dead Men; it's a British B-movie, it has excellent stunt work (really mad skills - they actually wail on each other all the time), a surprisingly good cast of unknowns (and Doug Bradley, who is frankly brilliant), absolutely no budget, but millions in production values, and it too was clearly filmed in bits over a long period of time before a script tied it together, and thank god for that script. Or rather: Chris Regan, thank him for writing it. Ross Boysak's direction is slick, the production excellent, I really don't have a bad thing to say about the ciné but without the script it would just be ninety minutes of fights and dull as hell.

The script lifts it up: it's narrative based, an incredibly risky and unusual thing to do and one which you think may fall flat on its arse after twenty minutes, but this is the genius: it doesn't, it persists, it flows through every scene, and rather than alienate it's audience as, theoretically, too much narrative in a drama does, the narration becomes your guide, it's a running commentary for a revenge tragedy; it gives blind rage a poetry it may not have had otherwise. It makes the film's violence accessible, justified, sanctified and right. We support the main character wholeheartedly, just I support the predator when David Attenborough tells me to, I feel and empathise with an animal that I would not have otherwise. Chris Regan anthropomorphises fury and allows an omnipotent Doug Bradley to tell us about it. It's brilliant, and far, far better than Shoot 'em up.

Needed to get that off my chest.

the internet

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:12:02 GMT

I don't want to be a blogger any more.

I went exploring, chasing up other people's blogs, searching for their reviews and work so that I could get a feel for online markets and just what the hell I am meant to do in this journal. I've said before, I dislike the idea of being online, I don't like myFace very much, I'm wary of blogging to the void: It gives me a sense of security - it feels like a diary which can be closed - but it also gives me a feeling of utter exposure. I don't like it and yet it seems to be a necessary part of raising your profile and getting your name out to potential readers and editors.

So far I have one reader, I think, and that is as far as it will go, or at least that is as much as I want it to, because I've been exploring and there is a war going on that no-one talks about away from the battle fields. It seems that there are authors out there who don't like other authors, just as there are people in every group of forums I guess who don't like each other. The problem is that they all like to needle and devil and wheedle and bait. If someone from that war were to read this, I would probably needled and baited as well, because that is the war and that is why I don't want to blog anymore; the conflict is like a whirlpool, or better yet sand in the wind: one grain of sand is blown into the air on a beach, when the grain of sand lands it kicks up several more and when they land they do the same, before you realise it the beach is being scoured by a mini sand storm. If there is anything larger than a grain on that beach the sand piles up and up, the larger it becomes the more sand it protects from the wind; it forms a dune, one dune then affords a place for another dune to grow, this goes on in situ, ad infinitum until the dune system is washed away or is colonised by plants and becomes part of the mainland.

So one apparent slight and the sand gets kicked up, or there is not a slight but a direct attack, or someone advises moderation, or someone threatens death, or someone rushes to defend someone they occasionally talk to online, or someone posts something melodramatic or misspelled or poorly punctuated, or someone else points that out, or someone is overly frank with some criticism.

It does not matter sand causes attrition and I have no paint left.

"The net is vast and infinite" and there is little room in it for me.

I'm going to hide for a while until I can grow a shell hard enough to hide in properly. I used to think that getting rejection letters was hard, I got used to it, I don't think I will ever get used to the all consuming storms of other peoples' furies.

Lift off. . .

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:46:09 GMT

Coming back off holiday and suddenly the world is a crazily busy place. First thing's first: Barren Worlds is out right now and can be found here for sale from Amazon. It'll be a while but I will post comments and small reviews of the stories as and when I find time to do them.

In news that is just as big: Available to pre-order now from Amazon Poetry in a Louder Voice. So now all I have to do is sort out my launch, facebook group and email list; in between completing a house sale and move, enjoying family visitations from Mexico, hosting housewarming parties, attending weddings, sorting out my reading lists, writing two stories, a teleplay, a radio play and a new collection of poetry for the next open-mic competition. I seem to work better when my head is cold and busy. Maybe it's made out of superconducting ceramic?

Ennui and proofs.

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 07:48:02 GMT

Feeling a little flat recently. Like I'm on a downer. Why does life have to catch up and slow down all the time? Boredom or ennui? take your pick I seem to have it in buckets. My poetry book has an ISBN barcode on it, I've got to wait till August now before I can move further on with it, the book data people think it is going to be published then and they'll take my kneecaps if it comes out before hand.

So till then I'm stuck with the feeling that I should be doing something but can't think what it is. That's the feeling, I attribute it to the fact that I have to do something and I am fully aware of it but wish to ignore it for a short while but can't: PhD work.

On a more upbeat and exciting note I've received the PDF proofs of the Barren Worlds Anthology and God damned! They look good. Really good; browsing-through-bookshop-and-spot-on-the-shelf-to-buy good which is probably the effect that Eric Reynolds was going for. Expect a review on this blog of everyone else's stories when it's in print.

Roundyhouse

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:05:03 GMT

I get home from the pub last night (we've been putting on an exhibition at work and it's damned hard work) a couple of pints under to find two letters from the bank and a package. The bank letters we will disregard, nothing new there, but the package was something else. A good few too many months ago I went to an open-mic night. The compare there was a poet called Phil Carradice. I got up and read my bit and at the break Phil Carradice came over gave me a card and said I should send him some poetry because he was editing a magazine called Roundyhouse. So I went home and did some research on the magazine, then I tried to find it. In both cases I was unsuccessful: there is no on-line presence of this magazine and this is not a bad thing, there is no shop presence, and that is not too bad a thing either, but I wanted to know about it before I sent off any of my stuff; just on the off chance that this perfectly affable bloke who used to be a headmaster at a valleys school and was now a poet on the radio wasn't quite on the up and up. I found reference to the magazine on an obscure literary web page, then I started finding that some fairly big poets had Roundyhouse on their publishing histories, so I took a chance and sent off.

When you send off stuff by mail to magazines and agents for the first time it is with the desperate hope that you will receive an acknowledgment by return of post, that the letter will be hand written and drip with compliments for your work. The first time you get a rejection slip, not even a letter, but a slip of headed "no thank you" paper you realise how naive you are and from that point onwards every letter and package of work you send away is armed with the knowledge that at best, they might be polite and not even reply. I thought that Phil was doing this very thing, then I came home and found the magazines waiting in that package for me. Two of them, with my poetry inside along side the names of some very prestigious poets: Dannie Abse, J.P.Ward, Norman Schwenk, John Idris Jones, Deborah Kay Davies and many others, all of whom are fairly institutional Poets in Wales, which may be the reason for not being able to find out about the magazine in the first place, it is not an open submission magazine, you are invited to contribute, to a magazine which keeps very interesting company. Prestige and two copies is the payment and it is worth every penny.