I was really excited to have won this commission on the theme of Women in Science. I chose to write about Dr Elsie Inglis who took a team of nurses to care for the sick on the Eastern Front during WW1. My Aunt Susannah was one of those nurses.

It was a marvellous evening led by Susmita Bhattacharya. I performed alongside three other poets and a raft of wonderful dancers and musicians. Pictures below are of my aunt by her tent, Dr Inglis and the nurses and one of me reading at the event.

I am highly suspicious of Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), veering, it must be said, towards disgust. She led a fascinating life with her odd comments, (famously: ‘Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose‘*) her Paris salons, the friendships with the great Parisian artists of that time: Bonnard, Picasso, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne, Renoir; also writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Henri Rousseau. She was a modernist and loved Cubism, and who doesn’t like that? On the other hand she was mentor to that infamous misogynist, Hemingway; she endorsed the Spanish dictator General Franco and supported him in the Spanish civil war, and although Jewish, seems to have collaborated with Marshall Pétain and the Vichy France government who deported many thousands of Jews to their death in the Nazi concentration camps. What was she thinking? Rhetorical question, of course because we know. She was no shrinking violet and she isn’t a laughing matter.

In this photograph, she looks austere but she seems to have a glass of what might be a very small sherry on the table along with cup of tea or coffee (I’m not sure that coffee and sherry go together well) and she and Alice each have their own personal ash trays. Gertrude has picked the most comfortable chair and is not averse to unusual footwear. She has so many pictures up on a wall that shows signs of damp and what might be a structural crack in the plaster to the left of the fireplace. She has an eclectic collection of bric a brac. I am absolutely certain that, if anyone had a frog (either real, surreal or metaphorical) smoking in their attic, it would be she. And possibly you.

If you’re interested, this is a pretty good introduction to her and her work:

*’Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose‘ a famous Gertrude Stein quote from her poem, ‘Sacred Emily’ (1922). The first ‘Rose’ refers to a person. A useful Wiki entry explains the rest here.

I love Fitzcarraldo‘s books so it is fabulous news to discover that my novel has been shortlisted for the prestigious Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize. It is a list of only five books so it’s a huge honour to be shortlisted, particularly since it is for the entire manuscript rather than an excerpt. I thank the judges. Reading over three hundred novels must have been a challenge!

Fitzcarraldo is a fabulous publisher renowned for innovative writing, and for publishing books that are different, original, not part of the mainstream. You can rely on their books for exercising your imagination, challenging your expectations, taking you on a journey that will expand your understanding and inevitably surprise you and possibly tangle up your thoughts. You can guarantee it’ll be good if it’s Fitzcarraldo, you barely need to read the blurbs. Believe me!

They publish Olga Tokarczuk‘s 2018 Nobel Prize-winning novel ‘Flights’, translated by Jennifer Croft, which is on my to-be-read pile. The gorgeous bright blue covers of the books in their fiction list and the classy white covers of their non-fiction are beautiful, and it’s lovely to handle a matt book that doesn’t shout about itself. I love the sense of discovery that a plain cover offers. Rather secretive.

Coincidentally, I am currently reading a Fitzcarraldo book Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature. Fitzcarraldo manage to pick extraordinary books! It’s a big book and will take me a while, and is about the collapse of the USSR. A subject I find fascinating. It is described as a ‘collage of voices’. Alexeivich writes in a form of ‘documentary literature’ in which she tells of real events, in the voices of real people. How much is fictionalised, I don’t know. It’s an interesting genre though.

Here are a few of the Fitzcarraldo books that I have read and enjoyed. The one on the top, my dog enjoyed too. Naughty Esmé! I possess a handful of others but they’re scattered around the house, and I don’t want to disturb the dust, not right now anyway.

My novel didn’t win and what comes next for ‘Breath’ remains up in the air but my agent is busy sending it out to publishers. Anyway, I am busy editing the second draft of the next novel. I now have six unpublished novels and an unpublished short story collection. A great many words that few people have read!

This is how Fitzcarraldo describe the prize:

…the prize looks for novels which explore and expand the possibilities of the form, which are innovative and imaginative in style, which tackle subjects and themes relevant to the world we live in. The winner receives a £3,000 prize in the form of an advance against publication with Fitzcarraldo Editions, and will be published in Fitzcarraldo Editions’ fiction list, alongside writers such as Claire-Louise Bennett, Mathias Enard, Camilla Grudova, John Keene, Esther Kinsky, Olga Tokarczuk and Alejandro Zambra. 

How my novel meets the criteria, I am not sure but, for the record, here’s the annnoucment of the winner:

Many thanks, again, to Jacques Testard at Fitzcarraldo Editions. Here is an interesting article about their approach to publsihing and picking those Nobel Prize-winning books.

I wrote this one a while ago, I can’t remember why or when but I imagine I had been preparing fish for dinner. I always find fish rather scary, to be honest, and it takes me a while to build up the courage to handle them. This is mainly because they look like they should be alive, or they might simply be resting and are about to wriggle into my arms. Also, I don’t like the wetness of their scales and don’t get me started on the fins, as for the eyes … I tend to watch them for quite a while.

The other thing relevant to this poem is the fish farm that’s near us. It’s a beautiful place, and I can’t imagine a better situation for a fish, if it had the choice, to be farmed. I think the farm used to breed trout but nowadays it’s koi and goldfish and other ornamental fish, and coarse fish, I think. Anyway, Bob has been given permission to photograph the farm and I have tagged along on a couple of occasions, I find it fascinating.

The forty or so ponds are large and rectangular, set in the countryside amongst fields and hedges with water being pumped up through the chalk via a borehole. It’s very peaceful and they seem well looked after with plenty of room to swim. Each pond has, what I believe to be, an automatic feeder and holds groups of fish at a particular stage of development. Sometimes they leap.

The Ofi Press, edited by Jack Little, is based in Mexico. I am thrilled that they have published my poem ‘Squid of Nondescript Household Places’. Very many thanks to Jack.

Here is the link to The Ofi Press Magazine Issue 63. I hope you enjoy it.

‘Squid of Nondescript Household Places’ is a poem in an animal sequence that I’m working on – so, so slowly. I really wish I was quicker. It is horrific how slow I am except when I get myself going, then the actual writing is pretty quick. I could do it. Motivation is key, of course. I hope this will motivate my inner weird animal to move along with greater speed. North Hampshire Stanza is my main motivating force at the moment. I have been making sure I submit on time for our monthly meetings. The deadline is everything, isn’t it?

Anyway, they are all surreal poems, funny and deadly – at least that’s the aim. Not to everyone’s taste, I know that, but I particularly like the process of writing with several things in mind at the same time. ‘The Great Eel of Jazz’ was published in the wonderful Humanagerie anthology edited by Sarah Doyle and Allen Ashley, published by Eibonvale Press. It’s a brilliant book with much beautiful strangeness about it. Apart from the eel and squid, so far I have rooks, dogs, a sow, alpaca, penguins, monkeys, and several others and they all inhabit my house – or yours as it has turned out.

I chose the squid for its squidginess. I actually didn’t think very hard about it. It was always going to be a squid. Until now, I hadn’t realised that ‘squid’ is part of the word ‘squidgy’. No other mollusc will do.

Since it has been a few weeks, I will add a screenshot of the poem:

My poem ‘this party isn’t free’ is in Issue 17 of Riggwelter, I am proud to say. Many thanks to the marvellous Riggweltarians for picking it. What a great magazine. It is full of gorgeous art, stories and poems.

It’s a peculiar poem, I think I must have been quite annoyed when I wrote it. I imagined a lot of illustrious composers, artists, writers of the past rushing around supermarkets and doing all the busy irritating jobs that I do and eating the horrible food that I eat. I don’t alwats eat horrible food but you get my drift. I cut out a few people in the final version because I could have gone on and on, and I made the food tastier. I have written others in the same vein; one is about Bruno Schulz, my favourite writer, which hasn’t been published. He met such a tragic end, though, and it is difficult to get the tone right.

Since it’s a few months on, I’ll post it here and hope you enjoy it. I only just realised that the poem begins with stones – an obsession of mine. Stones get in everywhere if you’re not careful.

‘The Great Eel of Jazz’, has been included in the fantastic Humanagerie anthology, brilliantly edited by Sarah Doyle and Allen Ashley. The Great Eel actually has a mention in Storgy’s review of the anthology, which is very exciting. Thank you to Emily Harrison who wrote the review. The poem is also mentioned in the London Grip’s review of the anthology. Many thanks to Wendy French. Humanagerie is also given a brilliant review in Rising Shadow. I’m glad they liked it!

It’s a fabulous book, beautifully presented by Eibonvale Press, with a massive variety of brilliant stories and poems and is described as:

‘Inspired by notions of the animalistic, Humanagerie is a vivid exploration of the nebulous intersection between human and beast […] these thirty-two poems and thirteen short stories explore emergence and existence, survival and self-mythology, and the liminal hinterland between humanity and animality.’ 

Once I’d decided to submit something, I did lots of reading and re-reading of books like Hermann Hesse’s SteppenWolf and Borges’ The Book of Imaginary Beings. I even listened to Poulenc’s Le Bestiaire which is a setting of Appolinaire’s poems of mythical beasts Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d’Orphée. To be honest, the cumulated reading and listening felt like a setback. I originally planned to write a story and I was absolutely stuck until I managed to forget about all that reading, which seemed to take ages.

My poem is part of a sequence (still work in progress) that explores a strange and surreal parallel world that exists as we (or I) go about our (my) daily routine. Wishful thinking on my part perhaps … Anyway, this world is populated by many rather irritating and often sinister animals.

The Humanagerie anthology is an absolutely gorgeous book. A feast of the wild and mysterious. I am proud to be part of it. Huge thanks to Sarah Doyle and Allen Ashley. What a brilliant job they have done!

Here are the reviews:

One of the most interesting poems is “The Great Eel of Jazz” by Amanda Oosthuizen

He slithers into my acoustic meatus, / and just as I’m in the groove, he glisses / through my inner ear, squeezing against my timpanic membrane, / pulsing his breath, flicking his tongue at / my cochlea, tantalising my ossicles with his blue / notes and flattened fifths.

However many times I read this poem I am left feeling very uncomfortable! The words and phrases bounce off one another and the four stanzas work up to a crescendo of discomfort and fear. Precise use of language gives this effect. Well done to the poet!

Wendy French London Grip

‘The Great Eel of Jazz’ by Amanda Oosthuizen is quite the poem. The language choice is lyrical and bodily – although the title suggests it should be – the meaning of the piece arresting. At four stanzas long, the poem is neat in its precision – the lines ‘he jangles his bebop and boogaloo / and Cuban charanga’, ‘he slithers into my acoustic meatus / and just as I’m in the groove, he glisses / though my inner ear’. It is animal, that’s for sure.

Emily Harrison Storgy

The Great Eel of Jazz – Amanda Oosthuizen:
– An imaginative and brilliantly original poem about eel.
– I have to mention that I don’t recall ever reading another poem quite like this one.

Seregil of Rhiminee Rising Shadow

Giants of Albion No. 5 by Simon Ryder / artNucleus

The image is one Simon Ryder’s brilliant ‘Giants of Albion’ chalk on blackboard artworks. I am thrilled that Lonesome October Lit has published another of my pieces, ‘Girl Who Spiralled‘, a flash inspired by Simon’s work. Many, many thanks to wonderful Kate Garrett – probably the busiest woman in the world.

Winchester Cathedral – etching by David Young Cameron

The story mentions coccoliths. I knew nothing about coccoliths until I became involved in 10 Days Winchester, a few years ago. Artist, Simon Ryder – take a look, his work is extraordinary – exhibited his brilliant chalk on blackboard pieces entitled ‘Giants of Albion’. Absolutely amazing great monsters were these coccolith artworks. The detail was incredible. And remember, they were produced in chalk – not a particularly permanent medium, I would think. They floated over the gloom of the cathedral like giant, ghostly jellyfish. Their impact was astounding. You could so easily get lost while looking at them. It was as if the world had been taken over by silence, somehow.

Anyway, coccoliths are elaborate structures, rather as snowflakes are, but are made from calcium carbonate, and are readily fossilised, apparently. They are not something you see in any detail with the naked eye but are part of the deep sea sediment and the main constituent of chalk cliffs.

The story is about change and self-belief. Life is impermanent and, sometimes, it is necessary to ignore practicalities and good sense in order to make our worlds a little bit magical.

‘Concert at the Doge’s Palace with Fans’, is now published on Ink, Sweat and Tears. Huge thanks to the fabulous Helen Ivory for selecting it. What’s more, it has been shortlisted for their Poem of the Month. Gosh!

I’m so pleased that they picked this particular poem because it actually happened unlike most stuff I write. Tilda and I went to Venice for the Biennale, as we do when it’s on, and I really recommend it for its extravagant creativity.

One late afternoon we were enjoying an Aperol spritz in a backstreet bar when a man sat at the table next to us, dressed inappropriately considering the heat, in a suit, with a wheely case. He was distraught. Anyway etc etc, his suitcase, when I opened it, was terribly neat. Even his shoes were in bags. I got his phone charged. Talked. I tried to get his problems sorted but we had a concert to go to at the doge’s palace. It was portentous. We changed into our best dresses. A green dress and weird shoes in my case. The assistants gave us fans and bottled water because of the heat. The singers of La Fenice sang. The musicians played portitive organ, crumhorns and lutes. It was, to be honest, one of the most incredible musical experiences and in one of the most maginifent rooms of the doge’s palace with no tourists except for a handful of overheated concertgoers, and at night. Unforgettable. Many thanks to the fabulous Ink, Sweat and Tears for publishing the poem.

Here are some pictures I took of the concert. It was marvellous to see the inside of the palace at night. The room was incredibly grand.

‘Girl in a Borrowed Cloak’ was written for the 10Days project and was displayed for a while in Winchester Cathedral (see below). I am so pleased it has found a strange and lovely home at Lonesome October Lit.

I don’t really know in which genre it’s written. It is both a prose poem and flash fiction, depending on your point of view. I have written a lot of these ‘Girl’ pieces and a few of them have been published. I originally intended this girl to be a refugee lost in another world where the perceived brightness is hard and misleading. I have also written quite a horrific biography to fit the site. At least, I think it is horrific.

The inspiration for the poem was Lucy Ash’s fabulous painting, Carbon. You can just make out the poem on a stand to the right, in the picture below. The tomb is a cadaver tomb of Bishop Gardiner. It is quite gruesome.

I have written a little more about the piece in an earlier post.