Bandages, scissors and light shows

Now that the script for the show is finished, I've been spending a bit more time working with Issam on the design for the (very minimalist) set. As ever, he's had some brilliant ideas, but I can't give too much away at present. So, if you want to know why I spent some of yesterday struggling with an enormous bandage and a pair of scissors, you'll have to come and see the finished show in July, or the 20 minute taster on May 8th in Norwich! It's not what it sounds like, honest...!

Issam does a lot of work with camera obscura (see above), and there's something very ghostly to me about images of ordinary places, taken upside down. You can see some of his camera obscura images of Cambridge here.

Curious Warnings in Cambridge

I recently discovered that we have our very own M.R. James expert and lookalike here in Cambridge. What could be better than that!? Robert Lloyd Parry is a performer who re-tells some of James' classics, performing them in strange locations around the city and beyond.

It was Tim Wells who first introduced me to the delights of M.R. James, over a mug of the finest coffee in England (well, definitely the finest in East London, and I'm pretty confident about England too), and 'Oh Whistle...' makes an appearence in one of the poems in the show. I was reminded of the fate of Professor Parkins in the tale on a recent trip to Bruisyard Hall in Suffolk for the Jerwood-Aldeburgh seminar. My room had two single beds in it, and bore an uncanny resemblance to the one in the film version of the story. Worse still, on the first morning, I was convinced it looked as if someone had been sleeping in the spare bed the night before... I didn't sleep with the light on. Much!

Robert is currently working on another of my favourites, 'A Warning To The Curious' which will be touring from October 2009 to March 2010, looking forward to that one already. Oh, and uncanny resemblance or what??

A Light Death?

Strange though it might seem, I hadn’t considered the relevance of my, um,‘grave’ surname to the ghost project until Roger Robinson pointed it out to me at a workshop in Norwich this afternoon. According to that source of great wit and wisdom ‘ancestry.com’, the name Mort is associated with the following:

“English (Lancashire): of uncertain origin. The most plausible suggestion is that it is a Norman nickname from Old French mort ‘dead’ (Latin mortuus), presumably referring to a person of deathly pallor or unnaturally still countenance, or possibly to someone who played the part of death in a pageant.”

Coupled with my first name, Helen, which has Greek origins and means ‘light’, that gives you ‘A Light Death’. How charming.

I’ll ignore the other possible definition of Mort: “it could also be the result of survival into the Middle English period of an Old English personal name, Morta, or an Old English vocabulary word mort ‘young salmon or trout’”.

I’d rather be dead than a young trout, on balance.

Here’s a poem about my deadly name, which first appeared in 'Acumen'.

The French for Death

I trampled ants for kicks on the quay at Dieppe, dawdling
by the desk where they wouldn’t take yes for an answer;
yes, it was our name and spelled just so –
we shook our heads at Moor and Maud and Morden,
dad repeated it in Oldham’s finest guttural.

Rope swung from the captain’s fist
and flayed the water. I saw him shudder, troubled
by a shift of air or a vision of our crossing: glower of thunder,
the lurch and buckle of the ferry, a thick Alsatian
with a face like Cerberus ushering us in to port

and I looked him in the eye, popped my bubblegum,
a child from the underworld in red sandals
and a t-shirt made by Disney, not yet ashamed
by that curt syllable, locked, cold to the tongue,
its hush of the morgue, not yet the girl

who takes the worst route home
pauses at the splayed mouths of alleyways
and looks straight past you as we kiss, as if to pick out
small behind your left shoulder, the spindle of a shipwreck,
prow to a far country.

Graveyard photos

Last weekend in Norwich, photographer Katie Utting had me wandering round a graveyard for some publicity shots for the show....and here are a few of them. No ghosts developed on the film, as far as I can tell!

Tell me a tale

One of the things I'm interested in as part of 'A Pint For The Ghost' project is hearing and collecting other people's ghost stories which might become part of a bigger project. I'm hoping to set up a kind of ghost booth at the performances where people can come to have a pint and tell me a scary story after the show, but I'm also interested in collecting them in writing, so if you have a story to tell, post it on the blog or send it to me by e-mail and I'll look forward to being terrified...

What's this ghost malarkey all about then?

'The ghosts I never saw
and don't believe in
won't go away.

Should I be rural
and put out food for them?
- I'm not Homeric enough
to leave on the table
a bowl of blood.

And there's no need for that -
they drink mine.'

- Norman MacCaig, December 1975

Whenever I think about poetry, or the act of writing itself, I've always found myself coming back to the idea of ghosts: people and places we once knew, characters we've never met, stories we overhear and wish were ours. I'm fascinated by those ghosts and how a poem reinvents them, encounters them in unlikely places; the way you can slip into a bar in strange town and think you see an ex in the corner, nursing a whisky.

Growing up in Derbyshire, I was always aware of what a singularly ghostly place it is, how many stories are attached to the landscape. In particular, I was interested in the ghosts of the former industrial areas; miners and steelworkers who haven't given up. Ghosts have business to finish, and there's no place better for them than the pits and the old foundries of South Yorkshire. Sheffield is rife with ghosts, from the ancient sailors in 'The Ship' inn, to the Hillsborough spirit who pinches the black pool ball from all the pool tables in the pubs...

'A Pint For the Ghost' developed from a desire to re-tell some of these local legends, and introduce a few ghosts of my own. It's a series of haunted poems and stories I've been working on over the past six months for a one-hour poetry show, set in a shabby pub, after closing time, where spirits abound and anything might happen... As well as the show, which I want to put on in unusual locations around and about the country, the poems will be published as a pamphlet by the wonderful tall-lighthouse press later in 2009.

This all came about because of the Escalator regional talent scheme who are supporting me through the development of the show, and an Arts Council grant, as well as a lot of help from friends who have provided me with endless inspiration and pub wisdom throughout the research!

Who else has been roped in?

The show isn't just about the poems. I'm working with excellent director Patrick Morris, distinguished artist and theatre designer Issam Kourbaj and brilliant musician Sam Genders, of 'Tunng' fame. The finished act will be a mixture of spooky effects, haunting music, stories and poems. Oh, and there might even be the odd magic trick. I'm hoping to eventually put it on in former warehouses, old pubs and other unexpected locations, as well as in theatres.