Cheers m'deer

I'm chuffed to be able to say that my poem 'Deer' has won the Norwich Cafe Writers' prize 2009, judged by George Szirtes and landing me a grand to spend in my fine local The Live and Let Live. * It's not a ghost poem as such, but it's certainly to do with hauntings of a kind. I'll be reading the poem on February 15th at the Norwich Cafe Writers' event, which gives us all a great excuse to visit The Fat Cat, Norwich's finest pub (in my humble opinion).

It's been a busy few weeks of readings in Greenwich, Covent Garden and elsewhere and with more to come: I'll be at Black's, Soho, on the 20th Feb with some other excellent tall-lighthouse poets. Lastweek saw me heading home for a local gig at Vox Sheffield. Reading some poems from 'A Pint...' in the bar, I was joined on stage by a sinister Rottweiler, dragging a chain behind it like Marley's ghost. It came up to the stage as I reached the last stanza of my poem, walked in front of me and settled down on the stage. Good job I wasn't reading this poem, or I might have thought it an omen:

Short Measure for the Gabriel Hound

Each time I read a cloud’s dark countenance
or watch two crows stitch out a warning
in the clear blue air, I can’t forget

the Bradwell miners, bound for home
without a lamp to guide them, night as heavy
as the earth they’d toiled beneath all day.

They heard the long grass stir. They stood
dead still. A beam, sharp as a skinning knife
shone from the moon down to the hill

and carved the huge shape of a hound; a dog so quick
they’d barely taken flight before they heard it bay
and felt its harsh breath at their heels. They ran

full speed with burning lungs until the dawn,
until the daylight overtook them and they went,
grim-faced, down to the mine

to meet their certain fate. Remember them
as you lie in bed, when the empty house
has fallen still, and you stare through open curtains

at a starless sky, imagine it’s a dog’s
black flank that passes you, bound
for somewhere else tonight.

* DISCLAIMER: I may actually use the money for useful things, like repairing my laptop, much as I could happily spend a fortune drinking real ale in The Live.

Poetry Book Society Choice

I was over the moon to find out recently that 'A Pint For The Ghost' is the PBS pamphlet choice for Spring 2010. The choice is awarded to what the selectors think is the best pamphlet published each quarter and my work will be featured in the next PBS Bulletin. The pamphlet judges this time round were Helen Ivory and Jacob Sam-La Rose, so I'm glad that they found something to intrigue them in my weird tales of haunted houses, roughed-up pubs and late night whisky drinking.


The show and pamphlet have also been nominated for the Ted Hughes Award, a new prize launched in 2009 to recognise a public contribution to poetry. Nominations continue until January 22nd, so if you want to put in a good word for 'A Pint..', you can do so via the Poetry Society's website here.


This calls for a celebratory pint. Luckily, the Cambridge Winter Beer festival starts this weekend, as if to oblige me!

I'm not dead yet...

...though you might be forgiven for thinking so. It's been far too long since I updated the blog and the explanation is sadly mundane: I've been without a laptop over the festive season thanks to chucking it on the kitchen floor at home (laptops, it seems, don't bounce).

Luckily, the new year brings exciting developments for 'A Pint...'. The show will be performed along with Robert Lloyd Parry's spine-chilling rendition of 'Oh Whistle...' in a suitably creepy warehouse location this March. The event is part of London Word Festival and you can find out more here. 'Oh Whistle and I'll Come To You' is without doubt my favourite M.R. James story, so I'm looking forward to being suitably terrified.

Before that, I'll be performing other new work at...

* Newnham College MCR (Cambridge) on January 22nd

* The Hold @ Oliver's Music Bar, Greenwich on January 28th (http://www.facebook.com/pages/clinic/131199806508#/event.php?eid=236876255788&ref=mf)

* VOX Sheffield on January 31st

...as well as working on getting the full recording of 'A Pint For The Ghost' finished, so I'll add some extracts to the blog as soon as they're ready.

Ghost Town

Visual artist Issam Kourbaj and I are currently enjoying 30 seconds' fame after being featured in a Cambridge University Newsletter article on ghosts. The piece, which is also being printed in the Cambridge Evening News, is illustrated by Issam's haunting photos of the city, taking using camera obscura.

The article marks the publication of two ghostly volumes by Oleander Press, the first a set of supernatural tales from Jesus College and the second a collection of ghostly fiction by a former Chaplain of King's. It's a spine chilling read... though, I must confess, I'm not convinced by the article's claim that Christ's Pieces is a disconcerting place to be:

"On a misty November evening, with the perimeter trees masking the city’s landmarks, it’s hard to navigate the criss-cross of paths..."

The only times I've got lost on Christ's Pieces have been after a lock in at The Champion of the Thames, when I could have happily wandered round in circles all night...

Seasonal Terrors

As the pubs begin their annual tirade, and the Saturday night streets of Cambridge fill with women in tinsel-trimmed boob tubes and Santa hats, it's time to face the long countdown to Christmas again. Scarred from too many winters working in pubs where 'Santa Baby' played on loop all day long and the stalwart drinkers started December with a seasonal arm-wrestling match (repeated with gusto throughout the month), I've usually had about enough merriment and mince pies long before Christmas eve.

Luckily, this year December also means the opening of Robert Lloyd Parry's show 'A Warning To The Curious' at the Corpus Playroom in Cambridge. He'll be re-telling one of M.R. James' finest tales from Dec 14th to Dec 19th, and it's not to be missed: http://www.nunkie.co.uk/

And, of course, no Christmas would be complete without a cynical marketing ploy, so I suppose this would be my cue to remind you that a copy of my pamphlet 'A Pint For The Ghost' might make a good stocking filler. To be frank, it'd make a rubbish stocking filler, being the slender volume that it is. But if you're as bad at wrapping presents as I am, you'll find it reassuringly square and unchallenging.

Or, if you prefer, you may be able to own 'A Pint...' on cd by the time Christmas comes to town. Neil and I spent this weekend recording the stories and poems from the show, with a huge amount of help from Ian Cartland, who is currently editing the material into a proper recording. If we're pleased enough with the results, you may soon be able to buy a CD featuring new music by Sam Genders, as well as my ramblings and Neil's sinister tones.

Finally, in the spirit of festive cheer (or seasonal boredom) I'll be doing my own ghostly 'Twelve Days of Christmas' here on the blog, posting a different, new ghost story or poem on the site every day between Christmas day and January 5th. So if you can't afford an advent calendar, look no further...

Go forth and be merry.

A tale told by an idiot

Of all the quotes that abound about life being a stage, Shakespeare still gets the biggest thumbs up from me for saying:

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

On Sunday night, above a pub in Camden, I ended up strutting and fretting in equal measure. Having never even attempted to act before 'A Pint For The Ghost', I somehow found myself on a stage in front of a packed house, pretending to be a grumpy Yorkshireman.

How did all this sound and fury come about? Last year, I wrote a short play 'Careless Torque' about two climbers, trapped in a mountain hut. Here's a trailer for you. Imagine a gravelly voiced American bloke who makes a trip to the offy sound like the end of the world:

United by boredom in the northern town where they grew up, Niall and Jackson became partners in crime as teenagers - bunking school to climb on the rock outcrops of the Peak District. Ambition took Jackson to university, but kept Niall at home, labouring for cash and taking risks with extreme climbs. Now, with Jackson about to start a job in London and give up climbing for good, the pair have decided to reunite for one last adventure: a dangerous route on the north face of Mont Blanc. But when a blizzard traps them in a small mountain hut in Chamonix, they find themselves with nothing but each other, and their separate versions of a past that both have struggled to forget...

This would all have been well and good, except that, following an unfortunate turn of events, I found myself without any actors just three days before the performance.

My first thought was to go to Wetherspoons, find a pair of blokes propping up the bar and drag them to a London stage. But even the drunks in Cambridge sound posh, and my characters were meant to be northern. After a manic afternoon of bribery, blackmail, treachery and corruption, I was rescued by Simon Perkins, a fine actor with a good line in Barnsley dialect. Five minutes on the phone to him convinced me that I was talking to Ian McMillan. I was sold.But the cast was still only half complete. With the clock ticking, there was no other option: I'd have to play the part of twenty-something lazy and feckless Jackson myself.

Some of the exchanges between Niall and Jackson certainly took on a new dimension:

JACKSON: I’m freezing my bollocks off.

NIALL: What bollocks?

Indeed.

It's also worth pointing out that Niall (referred to throughout the play as 'a whippet) was being played by the tallest man I've ever met in my life.

Did we get away with it? Who knows. But we certainly had a laugh along the way, and I've learned a lot about performance which should feed back into 'A Pint For The Ghost'. You can read more about Sunday's shenanigans here.

To Brum and back

Happy Halloween to you. It's been a busy week in the life of 'a pint for the ghost'. On Tuesday, Neil, Patrick and I dug out the pint glasses and fake whisky again and headed up the motorway to Birmingham to perform at a book festival in the central library. Birmingham is full of spectres. According to the local paranormal investigations team, there's a ghost in the Three Tuns pub that likes to stroke people's hair. So it was with trepidation that we set up our stuff in a darkened theatre and got ready to take to the stage again.

There was definitely some sly spirit at work: the stairs seemed intent to leg Patrick up, and I kept breaking glasses. Despite my clumsiness, we survived and made an executive decision to use real beer on stage instead of the evil concoction Super Malt (which has been giving me nightmares since June). It was very interesting to perform in a less intimate venue than the setting of the Hotbed festival, and we discovered theatres are possibly not the natural habitat for the landlord and his ghosts. Nonetheless, it was a great experience. And none of us got our hair stroked.

On Friday, the pamphlet was launched in style with readings from some fine poets (including a pub crawl with Michael McKimm and Tim Wells' encounter with a goth on the bus) and music courtsey of Gareth's ipod. Ta, Gareth! And if that weren't enough excitement for one week, you can now listen to the landlord's stories from 'A Pint...' online at Short Story Radio. The tales are read by Keith Drinkel, who played Liz McDonald's boyfriend in Coronation Street years ago, as well as appearing in the comedy series 'I Didn't Know You Cared'. Find a dark room, light some candles, pour yourself a dram, and click this link.