Nearly a week ago since I watched San Francisco receding into blue distance: touchdown in Frome has been hectic but pleasant, beginning with a meeting of Frome Scriptwriters whose latest scripts will be performed next month at the Cornerhouse. When She Imagines is a trio of monologues, directed by Nevertheless producer Rosie Finnegan, which was commissioned as 'fringe' to the Imagine events at Rook Lane. Are Frome Scriptwriters resting cosily on their laurels? No of course not: they're already deep into the next project, Tales of the Tunnels, for Frome Festival.
Apropos things dramatic, here seems a good place for the link to my newly launched theatre blog: for some reason that now eludes me, I thought a good title would be Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln...

And while I'm at the self-promotion, Frozen Summer is now out on Kindle ~ it costs a quid, but think of the postage saved! And the trees... I've been recommending this free-to-use form of self-publishing for ages so it seemed only reasonable to try it. Provided you have a correctly edited Word file (no page breaks except for essential separation like new chapters and acknowledgements etc) publication takes literally only a few minutes ~ I did it in the departure lounge at San Francisco. I know some writers fear the stigma of 'Vanity Publishing' but self-publishing these days is not only respectable, it's a valuable contribution to diversity. 'We are the Farmers' Markets in a supermarket world' I like to say, with suitable fervour, and there's now even a major award solely for 'indie' writers, as non-commercially published authors are now termed.  The Guardian Books Blog quotes wonderful Kate Tempest as good practice: she self-published her first collection and subsequently hit the headlines by winning the Ted Hughes Award for her poem-play Brand New Ancients. Kate is interviewed in ideas tap, and her philosophy is one I completely relate to: If I felt something, I’d write it down. I never knew what it was for but actually all that writing has enabled to me know my palate and my writing style. If you’re a writer, then write constantly. Not for anybody to judge it but so you’re more comfortable at the page than away from it.  

On Wednesday Writing Events Bath organised A Gathering Of Writers talking about their work in support of Dorothy House, a cause as popular as the six authors contributing so the BRLSI was crammed.   Debby Holt, Lindsay Hawdon, Andrew Miller, Lesley Pearse, Nathan Filer and Tania Hershman proved a very successful medley of different voices, each with an interesting take on their personal craft, and all picking fascinating extracts to share. I liked especially Debby's view that 'writing is a way of making sense of our lives', and Nathan's reading from his debut novel. I've been a fan of Nathan for nearly a decade, since he came to Frome to contribute to Urban Scrawl ~ a night of performance poetry I organised as the climax of my year as Writer in Residence at the Merlin Theatre ~ and it's no surprise that now he's turned his writing hand to prose there was an 11-way auction battle for The Shock of the Fall. HarperCollins won. It's out in hard-back - but you can get it on Kindle at half the price...

A dramatic week, stylistically speaking, opening with a 10-minute play writing workshop organised by Writing Events Bath and led by charismatic young Australian Alex Broun. Alex is a prolific playwright himself and the inspiration behind Short-and-Sweet, the biggest 10-minute play festival in the world. "The greatest thrill for a playwright is to see your work performed" Alex began: true but tricky since his festival is in Sydney, though these festivals are apparently spreading across the world like creeping jenny: “My aim is to inspire you to write a play. Next step is to write a good play. You have to get on the bike and start peddling.” In three hours he had deconstructed and demystified the playwriting process with vigour and copious handout notes and we all came home hugely enthused and slightly exhausted.

Frome's own modest version of short-and-sweet drama events, Stage Write, started a new series of monologue workshops this week too. With 'dressing up' as our theme, the first session produced some fantastic writing which will find fruition in February at the Merlin.

Bristol Old Vic is currently staging Tim Crouch's play The Author which I saw a year ago at the Royal Court and wrote in my blog "The actors were chillingly good, and the questions at the heart of the piece are powerful. But I wouldn't sit through it again." Yet that's what I did, perhaps from curiosity to see why I'd felt so resistant to the 'disturbing' nature of the material' as the programme warns, adding in defence that "Tim Crouch's new play is about the harm carried out in the name of art." I'm reminded of Alex Broun's sound advice: "Never let your message or theme dominate the play – that’s didactic”. It's also deeply unpleasant, and at surface level as non-subversive as those car stickers that chide Baby On Board! as though without external control we'd all wantonly crash into (or abuse) every child in sight. It's scrupulously acted by the four performers, who are embedded among the audience in a show that's either stageless or all stage, according to how you look at it. Every now and then they ask with solicitous concern 'are you alright?'- 'is this alright?' as though allowing us to choose how much graphic description of violence and abuse we will accept in the name of boundary-breaking theatre. We stay, of course, because it's meticulously written and it's Tim Crouch, which is his point really: we consent, and come back for more, because we feel safe, but does that collusive voyeurism make the world a less safe place for everyone? Discuss, with reference to Greek and Shakespearean tragedies: did they encourage, or merely reflect and mourn, man's inhumanity to man?

Imagine a surreal game in which Jacques Tati meets Amélie in a Highland bothy. He says to her "Je vais avec mon lapin blanc", she says to him "Och the noo, me too" (actually there's only a smattering of speech throughout but that's the gist) and the consequence is they take a steam train to 1950s Edinburgh, beautifully animated in minute detail and pastel tones, and meander around having gentle adventures until like Wendy at the end of Peter Pan the girl becomes a grown-up... That's as close as I can get to describing The Illusionist, screenplay by Tati himself and now adapted and directed by Sylvain Chomet, poignantly evoking the final days of Music Hall as rock stars and television begin to take over the entertainment world. My writer friend Esme Ellis alerted me to this delightful evocation of an innocent era that's light years away from Tim Crouch's theatrical world. Or perhaps I mean dark years.

Big news for Frome Writers' Circle this month is that Rosie Finnegan's satirical comedy Back to Back, which was a Port Eliot competition winner earlier this year, has been selected by Salisbury company Bootleg for their autumn short play tour Snapshots and will also be performed Upstairs at the Lamb on November 10th & 11th as our next Nevertheless pub theatre production. Brilliant stuff Rosie.
And next week will see Poetry Platter at the Merlin: a totally new concept for performance poetry, as the stage will be transformed into an intimate restaurant so the audience can enjoy tapas while being entertained by six top-class local poets. A dramatic week indeed...

And finally: David Cameron's favourite poem is Dulce et decorum est (pro patria mori), he told an RT interviewer. "I still remember the first time I read Owen's poems and the incredible power and anger... I still find them moving when I read them again today" he quavered - I didn't hear him myself but I picture a quaver. A pity his knowledge of Latin doesn't match his enthusiasm for literature, or he might have recognised 'the old lie' when voting on the war in Iraq.
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"The first thing you must do as a writer is read" is Sarah Duncan's top tip at the inaugural meeting of Writing Events Bath in New Oriel Hall in Larkhill last Sunday. Organised by Alex Wilson and Jude Higgins, the event covered fiction both long and short, adult and children's, as well as drama, poetry, and self-publishing, in a fast-paced day with lots of breaks to mingle - and a really good lunch. What else could a writer want? Well, plenty of positive advice, answers to specific questions, and internet resource addresses. Happily all these were provided by the contributing practitioners: novelist Sarah, YA author Julia Green, poet Carrie Etter, short story specialist Alison Clink, publisher Miles Bailey - and (this blog is not noted for modesty) I did my best too.




"Poetry & a Pint" at the Wine Vaults takes me to Bath again on Monday. Robert Palmer is one of the featured poets, bringing his own quirky performance style to existential words both droll and sombre: all his battling life he's wanted to trust someone - to give up - to believe...


Bristol's Mayfest has been bursting out all over, giving the new(ish)ly reopened Old Vic a great showcase for its makeover face of accessibility and vibrant modern writing, like Kellerman, a touring production from Imitating the Dog. All drama is a journey; this one is five journeys in different time spheres, two of them in a mental institution. It boasts - appropriate use of verb here - "a magnificent two-storey set which incorporates a revolving stage, flying harnesses, moving masks and stunning back and front projections". It was all, as claimed, extraordinary and exciting, but what I enjoyed most was the dark conundrum-laden script.
'Where does it all go, everything that’s ever happened to us?’
‘We’re left with what we remember.’
But Harry remembers pasts he never inhabited, and people he never knew. "Perverse, erotic, poetic and grotesque, Kellerman is a meditation on desire, loss and the structures that bind us to the lives we believe to be real."

Finally - a couple of plugs: May madness at the Poetry Cafe TONIGHT - the posters have become collector's items, thankyou Suzy! - and Luke Wright is at the Merlin on Friday with his new show A POET'S WORK IS NEVER DONE... rarely begun, in my case. "Gifted social observer and wordsmith" Luke is sandwiching Frome into his national tour betwixt York and Maidenhead, which gives some idea of the truth of the title. If you missed Luke's on C4's "Seven Ages of Love", here's a bite of the real thing.
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