One Night Stanzas

It’s been a busy week… so busy that last night I finally ran out of spoons and nearly burst into tears in a carpark, just because I was so, so tired. (Fortunately, Lovely Boyfriend was on hand to give me hugs, ply me with chips and pay for a taxi home.) However, it’s also been a totally amazing week. Here are just a few of the things I’ve been loving…

Spring finally arriving (properly) in Edinburgh
I love Tollcross in the Spring… loads of daffodils everywhere, the Meadows two minutes away (so as soon as it feels even vaguely warm I can sprint outside to lounge), the Pine Tree Bakery smelling delicious… wonderful.

Baking, of course
I recently discovered that the magical wonderland that is Real Foods stock frozen sour cherries, which basically made my LIFE. This week I baked the perfect (if I do say so myself) cherry pie, and Lovely Boyfriend and I got into Twin Peaks mode with pie and coffee.

Hanging out in my sweet flat
Lovely Boyfriend and I are probably moving house soon… I don’t want to jinx it, because we haven’t signed on the dotted line yet, but we’re kinda sorta buying our own house. Oh my goodness. But as excited as I am to have my own place — do a ton of decorating and have a veggie garden (!) and get a dog (!!) — I am also a little sad to leave my crows-nest of a top floor flat in wonderful Tollcross. So I’ve been trying to appreciate it and enjoy it while I still have it. Thanks so much to Kate for making my living room look extra pretty this week!

Ooh! New tattoo?
My half-sleeve is finally totally 100% healed, which means it’s finally photogenic! This is obviously only a section of it, as it wraps most of the way round my arm, but you get the gist! It’s a psychedelically-coloured Oliver No.9 typewriter with the words O beautiful Garbo of my karma spiralling up from it on an On-The-Road-style scroll. The words are from Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, which is a contender for my all-time favourite poem ever.

Hanging out in the Forest Cafe
Forest, I shall miss you too when I move away! (Don’t worry, I’ll still visit for sure.) Pretty much the absolute best place for people watching in the whole of Edinburgh. Also, cool murals with dragons in them.

Packed poetry readings
The first photo here is of the lovely Louise Peterkin, reading at the Shore Poets Open Night. She was absolutely brilliant, in spite of major technical difficulties, and as you can see, the audience is rapt! The second photo is my all-time favourite, Scotland’s most underrated poet (seriously), the great McGuire, bringing the awesome at the last ever Ten Red.

My students
Often puzzling, occasionally aggravating, generally excellent. Some of them (I don’t know which) stole this sign, which reads IN HERE FOR HIGHER ENGLISH EVENING CLASS, and placed it on the janitor’s cupboard door. Those pesky kids…

Filming for Making It Home
But the very, very best thing about my week was this: going out on set with some of the amazing participants from my poetry/film group at Women Supporting Women, to help them on their first ever filming session for Making It Home. We spent roughly five hours together, mostly on the beach under the most incredible volcanic sky, and I’ve never been so proud in my life. They were so confident and able, and such a great team — hard to believe that only a handful of months ago these women were intimidated by an Edwin Morgan poem! I felt like a bumbling idiot as I shuffled along in their extremely professional wake, mostly holding stuff! But so inspired and so, so proud.
There’s still a tiny bit of time left in our fundraising campaign, too: if you want to help these women to translate their experiences into a book that we can give out to the public for free and share their incredible journey, then please click here. Watch our video (bonus! derp-y shots of me), read about what we do, spread the word and, if you can, donate. I’ll love you forever!

What have YOU been loving this week?

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Budding writer? Creative person in need of a fun job? Check out the various resources and services at Bookworm Tutors. Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

An update on the Making It Home Project, which I blogged about a few days ago: YOU ARE ALL WONDERFUL PEOPLE.

On Sunday, we reached our funding target of £1,000, which means we can make our magical book a reality. Thank you so much to anyone who read about the project, shared the link, sent folk in our general direction or best of all, donated a tiny little bit or a whole great big lot to help us make our book a reality. YOU ALL ROCK.

However, we’re not done!

There is still time before the funding deadline passes. There is still time for you to give us some money.

But why? I hear you cry! You’ve already got what you need! And yep, you’re right. We have the money we need to create our book and print a few copies and distribute them about the place, hopefully for free. BUT! There are various ways that, with your help, we can make our magical book even more magical. They are as follows:

- Right now, we’re only able to budget a very small amount for graphic design, which means we’re having to call in favours from our pro graphic design friends. We’d love to be able to afford more, so a) the book can look fancier and b) we can pay the people involved a proper rate.

- More money means a larger print run, which means more folk can get their hands on free books. FREE BOOKS are what make the world go around, amirite?

- While the fundraising’s been going on, we’ve been busily collecting quotes from printers and other book-creation folks. If we raise more money, we’ll be able to go for the option that’s best for us and our book, rather than just the cheapest options.

- Fancy binding! Fancy papers! END PAPERS! Basically a much more fancy, pretty, lovely book for all of YOU to read!

Convinced? Click on the title in the widget below (or click here) to head to the donation page! Not convinced? Click it anyway — it’ll take you to a video that shows you some of the amazing work our two groups of women have been doing. You can also read more about what we hope to achieve with this project, and that might help you to make up your mind about donating. Can’t afford to donate? Please don’t worry. You should still click on the link, because there are other ways you can help. Below the video are a series of tabs that will allow you to tweet or Facebook details about the project, or share them via email. Spreading the word is just as important as giving money… really!

Here’s the link:

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Budding writer? Creative person in need of a fun job? Check out the various resources and services at Bookworm Tutors. Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

Hey ONS-ers. I have a big, big favour to ask.

I don’t often ask you guys for stuff. I’ve never run ads here, and I even took down my tip-jar ’cause I felt bad about it. But now I’m asking for your help, because I know you’re all super-cool individuals who know a damn good cause when you see one.

I’ve spoken a bit before, here (scroll past the inevitable cake pictures!) about the totally life-changing (really!) work I’ve been doing over the past year with a thing called The Making It Home Project. I won’t say too much about it here, because I want you to go and read all the details at this link instead, but I will say: this is the sort of creative work that I deeply, passionately believe in. Forget fancy book launches, forget big anthologies, forget even the humble poetry slam. This is what poetry ought to be doing with itself: opening up amazing new creative possibilities to people who might otherwise never have read a poem in their lives.

I’m being mysterious, so go see what I’m talking about! But first, listen to the following, heartfelt plea…

You guys all know the power of books — you wouldn’t read this bookgeek blog otherwise. You know there’s something about a book: they’ve got a special sort of magic that no other object has. And a lot of you know how much more magical a book becomes if it contains something that you yourself wrote… right? Well, we want to make a really, really magical book. It’ll be a book we can give to the incredible women we’ve been working with, so they can also experience how awesome (literally) it feels to hold and read and share a book that has your words in it. It’ll also be a book we can give to all of you — for free! — to show you the amazing work these groups of women have been doing.

I’d like to ask you to do three small things.

One: watch our video.

RST Poetry Film taster from media co-op on Vimeo.

Two: click on the link in the image below, go and read more about what we’re doing, and how we plan to make our book.

Three: if you can (and only if you can), donate a pound or two to our cause. Any donation over £5 gets a reward… the more you give, the bigger and cooler your reward will be. If you can’t afford to donate, that is totally OK. But I’d be super grateful if you could spread the word around to anyone you think can help us.

These three things will take you what? Five minutes? If that. But your five minutes will make a massive difference and I promise, I will be very, very grateful to you!

Thanks guys. You rock.

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You can also visit Read This Press for more poetry (and typewriter paraphernalia!). Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

UPDATE: guys, these books here in the photo? These aren’t the books I’m giving away — this is just a pic off Flickr! Scroll down for the full list in the blog text!

So guys, I’m likely moving house soon (VERY EXCITING), and between us, Lovely Boyfriend and I own at least a metric ton of books (really. I think this might be quite an accurate figure). Once I own a book, I am generally extremely loath to part with it again (hence the metric ton thing), but the prospect of carrying all the books we currently own down five flights of stairs and all the way across town has forced me to seriously consider the creaking, slightly-bowed problems that are my various bookshelves.

The list below is only a tiny fraction of my book collection, but it’s also only phase one: when my PhD thesis is finally finished, I’ll likely have a load more academic tomes and textbooks to offload. However, what little there is here I am throwing open to you lot before just sending it all to the charity shop. Would you like a free book? A bunch of free books? If you can come and collect them from Tollcross, they’re yours. Have a browse:

Poetry

GONE, SORRY!The Invisible Mender by Sarah McGuire (Cape)
GONE, SORRY!Looking Through Letterboxes by Caroline Bird (Carcanet)
Trouble Came To The Turnip by Caroline Bird (Carcanet)
Orphaned Latitudes by Gerard Rudolf (Red Squirrel Press)
GONE, SORRY!Cascade Experiment by Alice Fulton (Norton)
GONE, SORRY!Sensual Math by Alice Fulton (Norton)
On Purpose by Nick Laird (Faber)
Not In These Shoes by Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch (Picador)
The Janus Hour by Anne Stewart (Oversteps Books)
GONE, SORRY!Lyric/Anti-Lyric: Essays on Contemporary Poetry by Douglas Barbour
The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America by David Whyte

Fiction

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (Oxford World’s Classics)
Wieland: Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist by Charles Brockden Brown (Oxford World’s Classics)
GONE, SORRY!Wetlands by Charlotte Roche (hardback)
GONE, SORRY!Ten Women Who Shook The World by Sylvia Brownrigg
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos

Essays

GONE, SORRY!Wallflower at the Orgy by Nora Ephron
GONE, SORRY!Complete Prose by Woody Allen
GONE, SORRY!Mothers by Daughters edited by Joanna Goldsworthy (Virago)
The Bastard on the Couch edited by Daniel Jones

Women’s Studies/Feminism and Literary Criticism

Dropped Threads: What We Aren’t Told edited by Carol Shields and Marjory Anderson (2001)
GONE, SORRY!Flux: women on sex, work, love, kids and life in a half-changed world edited by Peggy Orenstein (2000)
Men Writing The Feminine: Literature, Theory and the Question of Genders edited by Thais E Morgan (1994)
GONE, SORRY!Is The Future Female?: Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism Lynne Segal (1987)
GONE, SORRY!The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture edited by Lorraine Gamman and Margaret Marshment (1988)*
The Fragile Male by Ben Greenstein**
Critical Approaches to Literature by David Daiches (hardback) (1956)

Other

The Best of Cosmopolitan: The 70s and 80s (I know, wtf? I can’t remember when I bought it or why the hell.)
A Handbook of Games and Simulation Exercises edited by GI Gibbs (inexplicably, given to me by my parents, who’ve had it in their book collection — which makes mine look PUNY — since 1974, when it was published. Fascinating if you’re interested in the education system of 1960 & 70s Britain, I’m sure.)

I also have a bunch of 12″ spoken word LPs if you’re interested — mostly ‘great poets’ (Hardy, Pound, Robert Graves) and a few random kitsch things I bought on whims in thrift shops (an LP of the juicier scenes from Dracula, for example, and an LP of a totally trippy reading of Alice in Wonderland). Totally let me know if you’re into weird-literature-on-vinyl!

*Just to show what a small world Edinburgh is: I just noticed that this book has “Hannah McGill, Christmas 1994″ biro-d into the front flyleaf. It became mine via an Edinburgh charity shop.
**OK, this is a book by a Men’s Rights Activist, which I bought because I, stupidly, wanted to hate-read it. Thankfully, I never got round to it, but it looks HEINOUS.

Finally, NB: I haven’t actually read some of these books, so if you ask for a review first, I only might be able to provide one.

Drop a comment in the comments box or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com to let me know if you’d like any of these!

You can also visit Read This Press for more poetry (and typewriter paraphernalia!). Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

Isa Chandra Moskowitz

So, I’ve waxed lyrical about this lady a good few times already, but I am going to do it again, because she so totally rocks my world. For Christmas, Lovely Boyfriend bought me her Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World (co-authored with Terry Hope Romero), along with a bunch of cupcake-baking equipment, and I have been cupcaking like a mad person ever since. Those starry babies in the photo above were my first effort: they’re the most basic chocolate cupcake in the book, but they came out beautifully, so I thought I’d get more ambitious. Next, I made the maple and candied walnut variety you see below, as a ‘birthday cake’ for Lovely Boyfriend’s brother. They were so good that he requested a second batch! So, for a family gathering (pressure!) I moved onto pistachio and rosewater (second photo down). These are super cool, because the cake is green and the icing is pink (excuse the weird orangey photo — it’s my kitchen light, not an Instagram filter)! I was kinda flu-filled on the day, so I couldn’t really taste my creations, sadly… but I’m told they were delicious. My most recent offerings were the double chocolate truffle cupcakes you see in the bottom photo. These are a variation on the basic chocolate, but with gooey ganache on the top and a Booja Booja truffle for decoration. FREAKING LUSH. What next, I wonder…? I am officially a cupcake addict!

(PS: I made a Flickr set for all my vegan baking — and some of the vegan food regularly rustled up for me by the Lovely Boyfriend — so if you fancy following my spoon-lickin’ exploits, check back here!)

The Making it Home Project

I’m really excited that I’m finally able to talk publicly about my involvement with this amazing project! I keep mentioning this mysterious women’s community project I’ve been working for, but I’ve been unable to go into much detail until now. I’m happy to announce that we’ve been able to go public, thanks to an injection of much-needed funds from Creative Scotland. So, what’s it all about?

Poetry is an extremely powerful educational and social tool. It has all sorts of amazing uses — I’m sure that if you follow this blog, I don’t need to convince you of that. Making It Home was born when, a little while ago, the Refugee Survival Trust decided to harness the awesome power of poetry and use it to do cool stuff in some of Scotland’s local communities. They got in touch with Glasgow’s Maryhill Integration Network, Edinburgh’s Women Supporting Women (part of the Pilton Community Health Project), and the wonderful folks at the Scottish Poetry Library, with the aim of creating two poetry-reading groups for women. Through the poems read, discussed and shared in these groups, the women present would explore ideas about home: belonging, nationhood, community, family and everything else the word ‘home’ conjures up.

I feel incredibly lucky and blessed, because I was approached to be the creative facilitator at Women Supporting Women. My group of incredible women have given me a whole new understanding of what poetry is, and what it can do. They’ve discussed poems I’ve read probably hundreds of times, and made me see them in totally new ways. They’ve learned tons about poems and their ever-so-slightly magical powers — and so have I!

Even better: thanks to the funding injection, the project has grown a new arm. As of early January, the Making It Home groups teamed up with Media Co-Op, a brilliant independent film-making co-operative based in Glasgow. These guys are now working with the groups of women, teaching them how to translate their many, many great responses to the poems into short films detailing their personal journeys. It’s early days yet, but already it feels like a whirlwind of brilliant ideas and inspiration. I’m so happy to be part of the ongoing project, and feel really lucky to be able to witness the creative process behind what will, eventually — we hope! — become a full-scale film installation that all of YOU can come and see and support!

(Both these photos are from the Maryhill Integration Network’s amazing Flickrstream.)

What are YOU loving this week?

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You can also visit Read This Press for more poetry (and typewriter paraphernalia!). Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

Har! Brilliant lateral-thinking literary Halloween costume idea right here!

It’s pricey, but this is one of the coolest notebook ideas I have seen in quite a while!

And speaking of notebooks, here is a list of cool crafty bookish DIY projects for you to try, if your weekend’s looking empty!

We have forged something beautiful together,
in spite of all the darkness.

I love this beautiful, autumnal poem from Kerri Ni Dochartaigh.

IF YOU CLICK NOTHING ELSE IN THIS POST, click here for some WTF sci fi book covers. Amazing! (Thanks Adam!)

This passive-aggressive note got the English teacher treatment! (I also love these grumpy Halloween ones!)

I do not understand—I will not understand, I refuse to understand—why rape has to be on the table for every story with a female protagonist, or even a strong female supporting cast. Why it’s so assumed that I’m being “unrealistic” when I say that none of my female characters are going to be raped. Why this “takes the tension out of the story.” There is plenty of tension without me having to write about something that upsets both me and many of my readers, thanks.

Things I will not do to my characters. Ever. is great great great. A must-read for novelists.

Also fascinating: Saeed Jones on writing the second chapter.

These author-quote illustrations are pretty fabby (though, as with everything, Needs More Women & POC).

The wonderful Captain McGuire WROTE A POEM ABOUT BROCCOLI, you guys!

Looking at [the word 'fat'] as a neutral descriptor also steals its ability to insult. “You’re fat!” “Your observational skills are stellar!”

Everything Liss writes about fat acceptance is always so spot on. The above is from this post.

I had an article posted at xoJane! Everlasting squee!

I love Ruth’s photos of dewy, early morning plants and spider webs.

Next week I’ll be reviewing Patrick Green’s new album, Melodrama. Get the jump on my review by listening to the album in full here!

There’s three main reasons men (or anyone) don’t cook: Not caring what they eat, thinking someone else should cook for them, or not knowing how to cook. All three have different solutions and not one is “baby him along like you’re trying to convince a timid puppy to go out in the snow.”

I so love The Pervocracy’s monthly “cosmocking” of Cosmo. This month is particularly excellent.

Here are some fantastic photos of what President Obama has been doing to help with the Hurricane Sandy aftermath. And here is an article on why he’s a great (GREAT!) president (NB: go ye not below the line, there be assholes). Finally, in President-related news: this. (via)

Want to make your own colourful bird wings? OF COURSE YOU DO.

“Six people battle to save hedgehog trapped in crisp packet”? That’s my kinda news headline.

Food is lots of things. It’s comfort, it’s calories, it’s communion, it’s history and tradition, and it’s fucking yummy. Two things that it isn’t is GOOD or BAD (unless, you know, e coli). And you are not a good or bad person for eating.

21 Things To Stop Saying Unless You Hate Fat People WINS ALL THE INTERNETS.

I love everything in this amazing Etsy shop.

…and speaking of which, THERE’S NEW STUFF UP AT EDINBURGH VINTAGE!

Guys, please support my lovely friend Hannah, who’s doing Movember even though she’s a girl!

It was close, but I think this has to win cat gif of the week.

Look at this amazing time-lapse of Hurricane Sandy hitting New York City — check out 1:02 when the power goes off!

Lindy West at Back Fence PDX from Back Fence PDX on Vimeo.

Lindy West remains my heroine.

This is GREAT.

So is this.

Have a great weekend!

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You can also visit Read This Press for more poetry (and typewriter paraphernalia!). Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

(Photo credit)

STUFF that the INTERWEBNETS hath fruitfully provided this week…

“[N]othing changes here except in memory. I loved the way chimneys cast shadows on sunny afternoons, the way buildings were made to precede you and outlive you while housing you, as if you too will live forever. The haar that crept in from the sea. The cemeteries bumpy with centuries of flesh. The way locals asked ‘Where do you stay?’ and my neighbours invited me for a ‘fish supper’. The way nobody is too interested in you – a great British quality, this live-and-let-live discretion – and yet you end up talking with strangers in shops, because Edinburgh people have time. The worn stone steps that lead to unexpected passages of time. The palatial smugness of Morningside and the smashed-up people of Leith.”

I’m becoming increasingly sick and bloody tired of Scotland thanks to the perpetual winter that seems to be happening (worse than usual) this year. Thanks to Kapka Kassabova for reminding me why it’s actually a magic place.

The image, from this brilliant slideshow, of Hunter S Thompson out partying with Johnny Depp and John Cusack (OMG, dreamteam!) made me extremely happy.

An extra-super-useful list of (mostly North American) print journals that accept electronic submissions (and therefore deserve a cookie. Postal-only submissions are so not cool).

Decide it is time to go on a juice fast, yes definitely, you will get SO MUCH WORK done on a juice fast, but WHICH juice fast, haste thee to the internet, it is certainly not a good idea to go on a juice fast without EXTENSIVE RESEARCH, oh look here is an entire website devoted to funny videos of kittens.

The always-golden Rejectionist: when procrastination strikes!

I really enjoyed reading this interview with fellow typewriter enthusiast Rob of Rob Around Books!

I love this illustrated guide to the favourite snacks of great writers. (Thanks Camilla!)

“I remember after a reading somebody came up to me and said, I love that political poem of yours, and my husband, who was standing next to me, said, ‘Which one? They’re all political,’ and I was pleased by that. I would feel the same if she had said, ‘I love that feminist poem of yours.’ It’s a point of view, it’s a stance, it’s an attitude towards life that affects, and afflicts, everything I do.”

This article is great, but it should maybe be called ‘ten feminist poets you should know before you start reading the squillions of others.’

The Southbank Centre are seeking poets to help them build an arts village!

Dear movie of On The Road: please don’t suck as much as you look like you’re going to. Thanks, love C.

Although I am not a parent — and possibly never will be — I really love Dorkymum’s blog. And I particularly loved her take on Twitter… it is so utterly right-on.

“Somehow I understood it in my bones, as deeply and simply as know I have hazel eyes and cannot sing: I was never going to carry a child inside my body, and I was completely at peace with that. The need, want and drive are simply not there. Nearly three decades later, that hasn’t wavered, though it has hardly gone unassailed by others who have felt compelled to critique or to pry.”

And speaking of possibly-never-having-children and things that are totally right-on — I nodded furiously all the way through reading this article.

Aaaand from calm-and-collected protest to righteously angry diatribe: I love Margaret Cho.

I have greatly enjoyed reading and watching and seeing the various tales of first love over at Something Fine. Friend of ONS Rachel McCrum has a piece up there!

“I like my fat friends. I like my fat family members. I like my fat colleagues. I like my fat acquaintances. I like my fat neighbors. I like the fat members of this community. I like your fat partners and your fat kids and your fat friends, too. I like the fat people I see walking their dogs. I like the fat people I see at the grocery store. I like the fat people I see at the movies. I like the fat people I see at restaurants, on the local trails, at the vet, at the corner store picking up milk. I like the fat lady who told me, when I went out shopping in a sleeveless shirt on a hot day for the first time in my life at 38 years old, “I like your shirt!” And I love my fat self.”

Amen, amen, amen, amen, Melissa! Yet another diamond from Shakesville.

And in case that Shakesville post didn’t warm the cockles of your heart quite enough — here are some hedgehogs taking a bath. You’re welcome. (Thanks again to Camilla!)

Do you have a friend who is like me, and loves vinyl records almost as much as they love books? Yes? Here is an excellent gift idea for you!

Oh my goodness. You’ve got to love Edinburgh!

I just discovered the brilliant poet, activist and scholar Minnie Bruce Pratt. I could listen to her talk about this stuff for hours.

Have I posted this before? This man is my ultimate hoopspiration. Breathtaking. And a GREAT track.

This is actually pretty well done and a must for Disney fanfolk!

Have a great weekend!

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You can also visit Read This Press for more poetry (and typewriter paraphernalia!). Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

(Photo credit)

So firstly, it’s been a pretty horrendous week, in spite of my attempting to remain positive yesterday. Some highlights? Massive (and confidential, otherwise I’d rant) work drama, dentistry, and a huge Facebook fall-out with about 50% of my boyfriend’s closest friends vs me. Self, is there anything else horrible you’d like to start? Let’s hope not. All I can say is — thank goodness for silly stuff on the internets. Seriously — hours of cute kittens and other nice things on Tumblr was pretty much all that kept me from building a big sign and painting “F*CK YOU ALL” on it before retreating to bed with a bucket of ice cream to cry and never return. THANK YOU INTERWEBNETS.

Secondly, I’ve found very few writing-related links this week that I fancied re-posting. If you’re after that stuff, check out these first few and then go put the kettle on, because after a while, randomness sets in. You were warned!

OK, let’s start as we mean to go on. Here’s a photo of Neil Gaiman being random and awesome.

The blank white page. El Diablo Blanco. El Pollo Loco. Whatever you choose to call it, staring into the abyss in search of an idea can be terrifying. But ask yourself this; was Picasso intimidated by the blank canvas? Was Mozart intimidated by the blank sheet music? Was Edison intimidated by the blank lightbulb?

More writing-related hilarity from McSweeney’s.

There aren’t many poetry reviews convince me like this one did.

Do you make books? You should totally enter this contest.

“Ebooks: I hate them. It’s like making believe there’s another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of book! A book is a book is a book.”

The great, grumpy genius that was Maurice Sendak has gone to the night kitchen in the sky. Sad times! Read his NYT obit here. There’s a great recent interview with him here, too.

This is a mind-blowing infographic. $875m in taxes dodged in the US alone? Yet more reasons to hate NewsCorp.

These amazing line work tattoos… flippin’ incredible.

“If you have social media profiles set up online, you should create a statement of how you would like your online identity to be handled. Just like a traditional will helps your survivors handle your physical belongings, a social media will spells out how you want your online identity to be handled. Like with a traditional will, you’ll need to appoint someone you trust as an online executor. This person will be responsible for closing your email addresses, social media profiles, and blogs after you are deceased.”

Have you ever thought about making an online will?

Camilla sent me this sweet photoset of laid-back capybaras. Thanks for brightening my crap week, C!

I just had a Cinco de Mayo party. I was worried about cultural appropriation. But this stuff hits my quiet Mexican dinner out of the park. [Trigger warning for extreme racism.]

Oh no please, please don’t give me a reason to dislike Tiny Fey…! Oops, too late.

Does this whole concept freak anyone else out, or am I just a technophobe?

Two really interesting — and contentious — and different — articles about activism. One from Furrygirl, who’s right-on as often as she’s wrong, and one from Kate Harris, who’s brave and honest and taking a lot of pretty nasty flak. Go read.

The great Allen Ginsberg once said,

“how can the bunch of hairdressers, ambitious laywers and used car-dealers that call themselves municipal government get off telling women - to whom they haven’t even been introduced - what they can do with their own vaginas?!”

Will Self totally agrees.

How commercial aeroplanes SHOULD be laid out. Thanks Amanda!

Inspirational — the amazing power of yoga! Blub.

I have no idea why this happened but I have to say I quite enjoyed it.

Oh Maurice. Bless you. Sleep well, fine sir.

I *love* Rufus Wainwright’s new song — and HBC is in the (library-themed!) video!

& finally: this! Tomorrow! I’m reading! So is Lovely Boyfriend! Come, one and all!

Have a great weekend!

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You can also visit Read This Press for more poetry (and typewriter paraphernalia!). Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

(Photo credit)

A bit of a heavy post this week, perhaps. But what I’m loving right now is activism.

If you’ve been paying attention to the links in my Procrastination Station posts, you might have got the general gist that I’m a bit of a feminist. You’ll certainly have got that gist if you follow my Twitter. If you’ve been my Facebook friend for a while, you might also have seen one or two angry feminist rants up there, too. Maybe — if you’re a real die-hard fan of mine — you’ve even spotted out my little-used feminist/political blog, Girl Poems. And yes, it’s true — I am a feminist, and more than just a little bit.

It’s happened quickly. Had you asked me two years ago, I’d have said HELL YES I AM A FEMINIST, but I wouldn’t really have been able to tell you all that much about why. At that point, I hadn’t really woken up to the massive discrimination that still comes with identifying as female. Then I had my “click” moment: I watched Jean Kilbourne’s “Killing Us Softly 3.”

As the women on my training weekend this past weekend (which I’ll talk about in a moment) pointed out, when you get your “click” moment, it’s like coming out of the Matrix. You start seeing misogyny and discrimination everywhere. You start realising that things you say and do — things you’ve always said and done — are really not cool. You see that you have friends — really good friends — who are part of the problem. You get really, really, really angry. And other people get really, really, really angry with you.

Over the past two years, since watching Jean Kilbourne, I’ve kind of done a DIY women’s studies degree in my spare bedroom. As well as teaching and reading for my PhD, I’ve also amalgamated a pretty huge collection of academic feminism textbooks, pop feminist polemics, women’s anthologies and women’s studies tomes, and read them hungrily. I follow more feminist/political blogs than I do poetry and writing ones. I’m no longer lazy about this stuff — as well as identifying as feminist I am also trying really hard to be a good trans ally, to rid my students’ (and, sometimes, my colleagues’) vocabulary of homophobic language like “that’s so gay”, and I’m also trying extremely hard to stop being ableist (I’ve only recently realised how gross my use of the word “lame” to mean “rubbish” really is). In terms of the kind of feminist I am? I want intersectionality so badly. I try as hard as I can to check my white, cis, able-bodied privilege, though I’ll admit, sometimes fail. And I am way, way pro-sex (ask me some time about my plan to kick the shit out of the sex industry’s status quo. Seriously).

Twitter has become my safe space. I post anything I like there, and I’m generous with my use of the ‘block’ button. I’ve also built up a sweet network of feminist Twit-buddies of all genders, which is really nice. But I’ve still felt bad about not doing enough. Not talking about this stuff enough. Not trying hard enough to exercise change. Not explaining myself properly. Not really making a difference.

So this past weekend, I went along to Scottish Women’s Aid’s all-weekend “Stop” training. The “Stop” campaign, or Together We Can Stop It, is about recognising that domestic abuse affects everyone, but that — as one of my training-mates put it — we can all affect it right back. It is designed to spread the message that domestic abuse is disturbingly prevalent, and that it’s so not OK, as well as aiming to provide everyone everywhere with workable ways to tackle the problem. The training weekend took me and seven other smart, angry young feminists and taught us how to become Community Champions: we’re now qualified to go out into the local community and help SWA and the “Stop” campaign to spread the message.

The training was a truly amazing, eye-opening and inspiring experience for me. Because I’ve taught myself all this women’s studies stuff, I’ve never been in a space before where everyone just ‘got’ it. There was no mansplaining, no ‘explain yourself to me!’, no ‘what about the men?!’, no arguments about how you can’t be feminist if you’re white and Western, or if you like sex, or if you’re straight, or if you’re a trans woman, or blah blah blah blah. There was no ’stop being hysterical!’, or ‘nobody really cares about this!’, or ‘it’s just a joke, lighten up!’ No one in the room said anything was ’so gay’ or referred to another person as ‘a total retard’ or suggested that ‘girls who dress slutty ask for it.’ There were no rape jokes; no one wanted to whine that Julian Assange or Roman Polanski are awesome, stand-up guys and so great at what they do and therefore everyone should forget about the fact that they raped women and hey who says they even did it I mean these stupid women make shit up all the time. I’m wary of using this word because I know it makes some people queasy (feminists included), but it felt like sisterhood.

There were a lot of opposing views in the room. We talked about tons of issues around and outside domestic abuse including intersectionality, classism and general feminist stuff. We had heated discussions. We disagreed about things. But we all got it, we were all working towards a common goal: to make women’s lives, which are so often hard and frightening and downright depressing, better. In two days I learned so much about women, about feminism, about society, about activism and about myself. It was utterly fantastic.

Now, come to my comment thread and ask ‘what about the men?!’ I dare you.

Honourable mentions: Bare Hands Poetry. Thanks a million for taking one of my poems, loves! // Working on editing together Creatrix. So many great submissions, so many difficult decisions. Watch this space for a post about it. // Being in a play! OMG! Come and see me at the Traverse, in “Dear Glasgow.” // The second printing of my book has landed — let me know if you want to buy one! // Real Foods. Greatest grocery store ever // The lovely Lovely Boyfriend. Better than all the other boyfriends combined.

What are you loving this week?

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You can also visit Read This Press for more poetry (and typewriter paraphernalia!). Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

(Photo credit)

F

A bit late, but better late than never!

“Starry Rhymes is a loving testament to the work of an undeniably important poet. This shows in the care with which the chapbook has been conceived and collated. [...] Undaunted by the not-small task of responding to a giant of modern American poetry, this assembly of thirty-three voices reflects (or possibly refracts) Ginsberg at his most feverish, human and heartbreaking.”

I’m happy to say that Starry Rhymes: 85 Years of Allen Ginsberg is finally available in the Read This Press Store! The text above comes from a truly lovely review of the pamphlet written by Chris Emslie for Sabotage just after its release. Grab yourselves a copy and see what all the fuss is about!

A bunch of famous poems, all about the cruellest month. (Or you know, you could just click this for a summary.)

The 24 project — a 24-hour literary and arts magazine — is only up for one more day! Go and read it before it disappears forever!

Home is bright and sharp and brutally real. When she sits at her desk, Morrison says, everything else disappears. “I feel totally curious and alive and in control. And almost… magnificent, when I write.”

Toni Morrison is totally my hero. Read this amazing interview — to the end, seriously.

The wonderful a handful of stones just published new work from ONS friends Roddy Shippin and Harry Giles.

For those of you with MSs to shop around, check out this useful list of chapbook publishers in the UK, compiled by Carrie Etter.

“Let poetry be whatever it chooses to be, according to the lights of its writers. Let the readers read whatever they choose to read, according to their own lights. [...] From the poet’s point of view, sometimes you want to write plainly and straightforwardly—or, rather, that’s simply how the poem begins to present itself. The issue then becomes to make the finished piece sufficiently aurally memorable to be worth returning to.”

Is it possible to applaud a blogpost? If so, then I applaud this interview with Dark Horse editor Gerry Cambridge.

ONS’s good friend Simon Jackson’s first collection is just out with BeWrite Books.

And congrats to the lovely and talented Regina C Green on having some poems up at Lyre Lyre right now.

“We were under no illusions that the poems would last too long out there in the big bad world. But the prospect that others would see their poetry in unexpected places, and that it might start a talking point amongst fellow pupils, spurred the class on and provided them, however briefly, with real satisfaction and pleasure from writing poetry.”

Alan Gillespie with a really smart idea about how to get school kids to dig poetry.

Ever asked yourself: why should anyone buy your book? How do you get them to want to? If so, then read this!

Pun-tastic.

“Here’s a stray question (or a metaphysical leap): Will language have the same depth and richness in electronic form that it can reach on the printed page? Does the beauty and variability of our language depend to an important degree on the medium that carries the words? Does poetry need paper?”

Don DeLillo being awesome, as usual.

I’ve been wanting to visit India for ages, so I found this mini travel guide really fascinating.

The road through Chernobyl sounds like a fascinating journey, too.

“Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times—I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.”

Ashley Judd: my new hero.

Some lovely literary tattoos out there at the moment — I loved this Scarlet Letter tattoo; and especially this one. (I have a thing for great chest pieces!) This Simone de Beauvoir quote is rather excellent, too.

I love these sweet ‘how to’ prints — especially the How To Twitter one.

“I’m a committed feminist. I’m used to talking about The Big Issues – including body hatred – in very abstract ways. But when it comes down to it, not only am I too freaked out about what people might think of my body hair to not get rid of it, I’m too freaked out to even let on that it EXISTS.”

Christina over at D for Dalrymple wants to hear about your experiences with body hair. I am inclined to encourage you to share your thoughts. Really really.

Want a laugh? Texts from my Dog made me snort-laugh. Thanks a million to Daniel!

I know they’re a gazillion squillion pounds, all of them, but this rangle of spectacles is blow-your-mind weird and wonderful. These’re my favourites, for the maybe-one-day lottery win wishlist.

“The myth that there is some kind of universal women experience was debunked by women of color, among others, long ago. All of us have different life histories, sexism impacts each of our lives somewhat differently and each of us is privileged in some ways but not others. [...] The point is to challenge societal sexism and other forms of marginalization. This is what trans feminists are focused on doing.”

What trans feminism is and why we need it. This is excellent, and I urge you all to read.

How utterly cool (and cute) is this guy? I so want one.

Could you take a major trip with only ten garments in your case? Save the future: wear less clothing.

Hillary Clinton is great. Yet again.

Want to see some REALLY CUTE STUFF? NSFW as may cause loud and excessive outbursts of “NaaaaaW!” OK, here goes: KITTY! KOALA BEAR! and OMG BABY PYGMY HIPPO! *dies of cute overload*

Have I posted this before? This woman is super inspirational, a great speaker and her talk is fascinating.

A colleague sent me this and I giggled frantically. (Tip: actually better without the sound on.)

& I’ve definitely posted this before, but… so pretty.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

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You can also visit Read This Press for more poetry (and typewriter paraphernalia!). Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

(Photo credit)