Last autumn we introduced Heikki Hietala’s fabuous Filtered Light. Well, now there’s a fully juiced-up bumper edition that you can load for your Kindle or app here. And to remind you just how brilliant Heikki is, here’s one of his stories,

There’s a quaint tradition in the towns of Finland. Many of them publish magazines around Christmastime, filled with reminiscences of goat-herding in 1920, or the arrival of electricity to the remotest village, and somewhat awful iambic hexameter poems by retired schoolteachers. The more rural the town, the more certain it is the magazine will be published.

As I sit here now, an envelope in my hand, I’ve decided to submit my own little contribution to one of the magazines. I never thought I’d write one, but when my wife recently passed away, I realized no one knew the story anymore, and that I needed to tell someone exactly what happened in the summer of 1968. The version of the story which was extant at the time is patently wrong, and I feel I should now set the record straight.

I was a first-year medical student then, and I’d done well in my studies. So well, actually, that I was supposed to get a summer job as an orderly at the Tampere University Hospital where I was studying. But then the son of the dean of the Medical Faculty decided he wanted to be one too, and with his connections he dislodged me with ease from my dream job. The ward nurse looked infinitely sad when she broke me the news. “Do you have anything else you could consider?” she asked me.

“No, not really. I’ll probably have to go back to my old boss at the Post Office, and grovel for my mail sorter position.” I looked out of the window where new, light-green leaves were already blocking the view to Lake Näsijärvi. I felt cheated and angry, and I promised myself I’d never succumb to nepotism if I held such a position.

“My sister works at the Keuruu Municipal Home for the Elderly. She called me last week and asked me if I knew anyone who’d want a summer job there. It’s not a University clinic for sure, but at least it’d be within the field, and it beats sorting mail?”

I considered her offer for exactly three seconds. “Who do I call?”

She gave me a number. I called, I was confirmed straight away, and I was told to start in a week. Keuruu… I was a City boy from Helsinki, and studying at Tampere was north enough for me; Keuruu was a hundred miles yet further out. When I told my friends about it, they just told me it’s a pretty place but a one-horse town if there ever was one. “Bring lots of books,” one of them told me.

Arriving at the Municipal Home was something of a surprise, because it was not at all what I expected. Instead of the small, perhaps slightly run-down house I’d envisioned, I was dropped out of the taxi at an expansive, whitewashed, three-story building with no less than three wings. “An awful lot of people must live at Keuruu,” I said to myself when I entered the sliding doors and went to the main lobby for my meeting with Head Nurse Koskinen.

She came to me, smiling, her hand extended. “You must be Jussi Korhonen. Welcome! I am very happy you’re here, because we’ve been having trouble getting orderlies for the summer. You can drop your bag behind the desk and I’ll give you a tour of the place.”

I did as instructed, and then followed as she charged down a corridor which seemed to go on interminably. Our steps echoed as if we were walking in cavernous space, and I had to speed up to keep beside her. She must have seen my wondering look, because she explained the size of the building. “This is not for Keuruu only. We are the first Municipal Home to be built for the elderly from five separate towns: Keuruu, Multia, Petäjävesi, Mänttä, and Pihlajavesi. You’re right if you thought there’d never be enough senior people in our little town!”

All the time she pointed out important rooms for me. “That’s the main recreation hall…that corridor over there leads to the sauna and swimming pool…this is our dining hall…that’s the door to the ward for the bedridden…” and so on. There was so much to see I could not remember any of the locations, but I thought I could learn it all on the job later.

We blazed through the floors and finally took the elevator down to the lobby. “So, that’s what we have. Nurse Jaana will be here in a moment to show you to your quarters, and then take you to the depot so you can get your working clothes and other stuff. Welcome once more!” and she was off, steaming up another corridor, a dreadnought in starched whites.

Nurse Jaana turned out to be not much older than myself, and very attractive too. Funny how at that age one is able to conjure romance out of thin air and let such thoughts occupy almost all one’s cognitive capabilities. We left the main building and took the gravel road towards the depot, which was in a separate building to the north of the main house. I noticed Jaana wore a ring; my castles in the clouds imploded without a sound.

I turned and walked backwards for a while to take in the huge building. In front of the main lobby was a sandy square, maybe thirty or forty yards wide. Above the main entrance was a balcony. “What’s with the balcony? The Head Nurse speaks to the staff from there on New Year?”

Jaana laughed. “No, I’ve never seen it in use. Some said it was built because they found they had some funds left during the building phase and the balcony was the easiest way to spend it. They say the view is great from up there, but I’ve never been. Here we are – let’s go and get your things,” she said and entered the depot.

Two hours later I was settled in the dormitory, which was built to scale with the Home. The upper floor was for women, and the men had their rooms on the ground floor. I was lucky – I had my room all to myself. I’d been told to report for the night shift at eight, so I just arranged my little library on the window sill and rested for a while on the bed.

At five to eight I made my way to the main lobby and asked how to get to the staff room. Another kind and pretty nurse told me where to go; I smiled, and found my way without a hitch. There were already five people in the room, someone shoved a mug of coffee into my hand, and another person pointed me to a seat. I smiled all around.

“Hello, night shifters,” the Head Nurse began her hand-over message. “As you see, we have finally received our missing trainee orderly, and our roster is now balanced for the summer. Please welcome Jussi Korhonen! He’s just completed his first year at Tampere Medical.” Approving smiles made me feel welcome.

“Arto, I’d like to make Jussi your charge. Would you take care of him and show him the ropes for tonight? Or actually, you have three nights together lined up. Sorry to start you off with night shifts, Jussi, but this is how it goes sometimes.” Head Nurse Koskinen pointed at Arto, who nodded at me.

Half an hour later we were already sitting at the night duty desk. “Mostly we sit around here and wait to see if Five Eyes goes off. Then we go and take care of the trouble.”

“Five Eyes?” My baffled look brought a smile to Arto’s bearded mouth.

Arto pointed down the corridor. “That’s the latest in paging technology.” I looked to see. High on the wall, right below the ceiling, was an enamelled white metal cylinder. It was about the size of a large tin, and was attached to the wall with a chrome arm. On the cylinder were five red lamps, arranged like the pips of a five on a die. I had little idea what it was.

He explained. “It’s officially called the Corridor Paging System, but we call it Five Eyes. It flashes and buzzes, and you just look at it and it tells you where something is happening. Every nurse station and ward room and other site in this building has a control panel. Here’s the code book,” he said, picking up a thick stack of yellowed, xeroxed papers. “You need to learn it by heart. Won’t take you long – you’ll know it all two days before you leave.” He laughed until his big belly began to jiggle and he had to dry his eyes.

To me it wasn’t funny. “Give me an example,” I said. “I can’t just try to memorize these if I don’t know what happens.”

Arto reached into the corner of the night desk and punched a couple of buttons on a control panel, about the size of a large box of matches. Immediately the thing on the wall burst into life, buzzing in two tones, and flashing its five red, bulbous eyes in a three-part sequence. “See that? Top two flash twice, then three across left once, then flash all five once. Repeat. Got that?”

I said I did, and he hit another button. The device flashed all five lights three times and went silent. “That’s the all clear. Now find out what was it that I paged.”

Taking the stack I leaned back and figured things out. “Umm… lemme see… okay. The first was… aha! Location! ‘Wing C, Head Nurse’s office’. The three across was ‘Head Nurse or doctor needed’, and the last five was “Urgent!”

Arto clapped his hands. “Close but no cigar. The first signal was two eyes, but twice. That’s our desk right here. The three across was top left to bottom right, not right to left. That’s us, any orderly must pick up that call. You got the urgent bit okay. Don’t worry, you’ll soon learn where you’re needed, because most of the calls are for orderlies. So, learn the locations and the tasks soon.”

“Can I keep the stack?”

“No. You read it here, and you learn it well. Sometimes you will be called with the Five Eyes, and you just got to know where to go, like a dog kicked on the arse. Oh, one more thing: if you copy that message and reset Five Eyes, you alone have that call. You must carry it out. Now we go and have coffee. It’ll be a long night.”

And so it was. Most of the nights were long, with not much happening except the walks around the silent wards, peeking in to see that all the gramps were tucked in and sleeping, and the occasional call to assist the nurse on duty. Little did I mind, I liked it so much. The nights of the Finnish summer are light; around Midsummer you can read outside in the ambient light, even in central Finland where Keuruu is. Scooting about in a dimly-lit hospital-like building appealed to my sense of adventure.

Within two weeks I was an old hand. I was let in on the inside jokes, such as calling the Head Nurse ‘Mother Superior’, and using Five Eyes for non-medical purposes. It was around that time I learned of Frans the Janitor.

One evening Nurse Jaana picked me up with a supper tray. “I couldn’t find Arto, so will you come with me and take Frans his supper?” she asked.

“Sure.” I joined her as she went to the elevator. “Which ward are we going to? And why do you need an escort?”

“Frans is not in a ward. He’s living in the former janitor’s apartment. We can’t have him in the ward anymore, as he’s scaring the other patients.” Jaana went into the elevator and pushed the ground floor button. She led me into the west wing, all the way to the end of the deep corridor, where there was a door with a latch. Jaana took the tray and motioned for me to open the door. I knocked on the door, and then unlatched and opened it.

It was a two-room apartment with a bathroom en suite. In the living room, by the closed venetian blinds, stood a wiry old man, with a classic Einstein haircut. He heard us coming. “Is that you, Jaana? Who’s that with you?”

Jaana put the tray on the table and led the old man to it. “It’s Jussi, our new summer orderly. You’ll soon learn to know him.” The old man sat down and faced me. It was then I noticed the cataracts in both his eyes, and the milky lenses made me feel uncomfortable in his gaze.

“I won’t stay here much longer, you know it, Jaana. I will be picked up soon.”

Jaana gave me a wink. “Come now, Frans, you’ll be with us for a long time still. Here’s your fork and knife, it’s pork chops today, and I’ve chunked it up for you already.” She patted his shoulder and Frans smiled.

“I have to go back. Please stay until he’s eaten, and bring the tray back to the kitchen.” Jaana took her leave, and I could hear the big lock click shut after her. I looked at the old man as he ate with the meticulous movements of an engineer. He even counted the times he chewed each bite.

I had to ask him. “Where will you be going?”

“I’ll go where we all go at some time.”

“Which is where?”

“You’ll see when it’s your time to be picked up.” When the old man turned his unseeing eyes to me, I felt he had a gaze of a different sort, one which penetrated and made me shiver. I let him finish, then collected the tray and left him alone in his room. I took the tray away and went back to my desk, where I found Arto.

“Who is that guy?” I asked him.

“Long story. To make it short, he was here as a construction foreman when they built this place, and he asked to remain behind as the janitor. Then when he got too old for that, he was in the ward for a while, but when he lost his eyesight, he turned cranky. He began to ‘see’ friends of his walking the courtyard, and talked to them, and it freaked out the other old folks.”

Arto sipped his steaming coffee. “So, after a while they put him with the demented ones, but he’s not really one of them, and then Mother Superior remembered his old apartment was free since the new janitor didn’t move here from his farm. So, we installed the bolt on the door and put him there.”

“Is he a risk to someone?”

“To himself, at least. He’s been trying to get out of his place of late, so watch that door. Once the nurses left the bolt latch open, and they caught him when he was trying to get to the balcony.”

I happened to take the meals to Frans a few times, and gradually got to talking with him. He didn’t seem a threat to anyone, including himself. Once I remained after he’d eaten, and as he leaned back, I asked him point blank: “Who will pick you up, Frans?”

“Forsman, Koskela, Wetterstrand, Aaltonen, Oksanen, Lehesmäki and Ojala.”

“Would you like to tell the whole story?”

“Depends… whether you have time and can take it.”

“I think so.”

The old man stood up and clasped his hands behind his back. As he went to the window whose blinds were closed as always, he peered out as if he saw something. “Yes, that’s Koskela out there…”

I began to think he was mad after all.

“It’s fifty years next week since Lehesmäki died. I caused him to die, just as I caused the deaths of all of them.”

“You killed seven people? Surely you’d be in jail instead of an old folks’ home?”

“Think back. What happened in the Spring of 1918?”

“The Civil War?”

“Ah. You didn’t sleep in history class, well done. I didn’t want to have anything to do with the war. All I wanted was to run my business as usual, but my workers got the Red Flu and started to work for the revolution.”

I leaned back in my chair. “And then?”

“I would have been just fine even if they’d joined the Communists as long as they turned in at the workshop every morning. Koskela was such a fine mechanic. He did the best detailed work. And Lehesmäki could have wrought the Sun from copper. Ojala then, you could give him a bar of steel and he could turn out anything you ever wanted, anything… almost without tools. All in all, we supplied Tampella’s train engine works with many of the crucial parts. They paid well, and I paid my boys well.”

“So what happened?”

“The front reached Tampere. The Reds dug in and the Whites encircled them. My boys steered clear of trouble until that goddamn agitator showed up and converted them. He made them join the Red cause. And not just that. He made them break into my office and break open the safe, and run away with the money. That must have been the reason for his visit in the first place, to get the money and buy more arms.” He waved as if there was someone in the window.

After he’d settled in the armchair, I couldn’t wait for more. “And then?”

“I got mad. I was so furious I swore I’d get them, and my money. I took my grievance to the White commander, and he said, ‘We’ll get all of them soon, you just wait.’ But I couldn’t wait. I went out and went from home to home, and heard they had indeed joined the Reds in the besieged city with their newly-bought rifles. And then I went out myself.”

He rubbed his unseeing eyes with tired hands, then looked at me. “I’m tired. Can we do this some other time?”

“Of course. Sorry to have exhausted you,” I said, and left the old man alone.

“Hey! Arto! Have you ever spoken with Frans about the Civil War?” I asked Arto when I met him in the canteen.

“No. I’ve never spoken much with him. Come to think of it, no one has. He must be fond of you.” Arto paid for his coffee and pastry. “Just don’t take everything at face value. He’s a little, well… you know.”

I didn’t agree with him. To me, Frans had come across as just a tired old man with something on his heart, and I was dead keen on finding out what.

The next evening, Nurse Sari was only too happy when I took the tray she was taking to Frans. “I’ll take it to him, no need for you to go down,” I said, and got a most enticing smile as thanks. By this time, I’d already found just how much I liked Sari’s smile, and was going to ask her out as soon as I mustered up my courage. But now I had the reason to go and open the locks to Frans’s apartment once again.

He was already seated at the table, and I let him eat in peace. When he dabbed his dry lips with the napkin, I asked him, “So… what happened next?”

He leaned back and looked at me, and I felt that same shiver at the milky eyes. “Then it turned bad. It was March 28^th, and the Whites were attacking Kalevankangas, where the Reds were dug in by the church. Losses were terrible on both sides… blood flowed from the churchyard on down across roads. I was there myself, and was horrified by the ferocity of the battle. Still, what happened during the night was, my workers got second thoughts and tried to escape in the dark.”

I poured him coffee from a little jug and put the sugar close to his hand. He picked up three lumps and then moved his spoon in a circular motion. “You know, it’s fifty years ago, and even now, every day, I wish to God I hadn’t acted the way I had.”

My hands were sweaty with anticipation, and I rubbed them on my thighs. “So what did you do?”

“I happened to be at the command post when they brought my boys in. They were in a bad way, a couple were wounded and none had eaten for a couple of days. Nonetheless, when I saw them, my hatred flowed over, and when Nordström, the White commandant, asked me what I wanted to do with them, I just said, ‘Kill them all.’”

I shivered.

“I could have saved them. I knew Nordström well, and I could have claimed their skills were essential for the war effort. But I didn’t.

“And in the first light they laid them against the wall of a barn and shot them. I watched and felt I’d been avenged when the last shot rang out and Wetterstrand fell in a heap on the snow. But that wasn’t the worst.” Frans finished his coffee and motioned for more.

“What was that then?” I filled up his cup.

“They let them lie there for the day, and only in dusk went to take them to the temporary morgue. I went to help, and we picked up the stiffened corpses of my workers and threw them on the sled. When we lifted Wetterstrand, he wasn’t dead. His lungs had been punctured, but he was alive. Looking into his eyes I realized what I’d done, and when he talked to me, I was filled with remorse.”

“He spoke? What did he say to you?”

“He said, ‘One day, we will pick you up, just like you pick us up now.’”

“Did he die then?”

“No, we took him to the field hospital. I discarded his red sleeve badge and stuck a fir bough in his hat to pass him off as a White so they’d treat him. He didn’t say anything. He never spoke anymore, not even before he died after a few months.”

He dabbed his lips again. “It’s fifty years from that now. Small wonder then I saw him today on the courtyard.”

I collected his plate and cup and took the tray. “See you tomorrow,” I said, and rushed out. When I heard the lock click shut in the door, I felt somewhat better, but I wished I hadn’t asked him to tell his story. I slid the lock bolt on and tapped it against the door, then left. Seeing Arto reading a magazine at his desk was such a relief.

He looked at me. “You must have seen a ghost. Get some coffee so the colour will return to that ashen face,” he said and poured me a cup from a thermos.

“Just spent some time with Frans. His story is starting to get to me.”

“I did try to tell you he’s finally flipping and we’ll soon have the apartment free for someone.”

At that moment, Five Eyes went off. Top two, bottom two, all five, cycle twice. Third floor, dementia ward, orderlies and doctor needed. I was quicker than Arto to roger the call, and I ran to the main lobby and up the stairs, and then down the corridor. Doctor Mennander appeared at the top of the other stairs at the end of the corridor, and we met at the desk by the ward door.

“Well? What’s the problem?” Mennander asked me.

“I responded to Five Eyes – but there’s no one here?” I said. The nurse of the ward came out and asked us to be quiet, and when we asked what the trouble was, she said there was no trouble. She hadn’t pushed the buttons, and there was nothing for us to clear up. “Damn these electronic systems,” Mennander said. “I was just about to leave for the day.” He walked away,  grumbling as he went.

I shrugged and left too, and the nurse went to her tasks. When I met Arto downstairs, I said, “The system crashes apparently. No one rang the alarm.”

Arto said, “That’d be a first. It’s been on for three and a half years and not a single false alarm so far.”

The evening went fine, and the next couple of nights too, and then I had my first night on my own. I felt ready for it. I was happy to see Sari was on her shift too, at the bed ward, not far from me. I might just pop out at some point for some chitchat and watch the Five Eyes from her place.

I did the rounds, and watched the rain set in outside. I closed all doors that led out of the building. It was a long walk to go and check all eleven doors, but I didn’t have to go out. Just as I was at the far end corner of the third wing, checking on a maintenance door, Five Eyes went on. I checked the flashes. Bed ward, all orderlies, emergency.

I took the stairs to the second floor and was at the bed ward door in record time. I yanked the door open and was face to face with a very surprised Sari. “Oh! You scared me. Why are you here?”

Sari absolutely refused to admit having hit the Five Eyes alarm button. “You must have been mistaken. The alarm didn’t blink or sound here at all. See? It’s right there, I could see it all the time.”

But I had seen all three of the devices blink along the corridor, and had heard the sound of the buzzer echoing in the hallway. I didn’t want to press the issue and make Sari worried, so I made some small talk and soon had her promising to go out rowing with me, come Sunday. We couldn’t stay together for long – we did have work to do, so we parted.

At my desk again, I decided to go double-check the doors. This time I started from the entrance by the janitor apartment. I yanked the handle and found everything okay. Just as I was about to leave, I saw the bolt on Frans’ door was slid open. I closed it again and at the same time heard Frans trying to open the lock from his side. He pushed the door against the bolt a couple of times, then let the lock click shut and shuffled away from the door.

I stood there breathing fast and shallow. Why was the bolt open? Surely he couldn’t have opened it from his side. I double-checked the bolt was locked and went to my desk, but pouring coffee wasn’t that easy with shaking hands. When nothing else happened during the night, I could sign the duty sheet with relative confidence and go for a fitful day of sleeping.

The next evening I took Frans his meal. Once again I let him finish his meal in silence, then asked him, “What happened after the last one died?”

He put his fingers into his fluffy white mop of hair and tried to create order out of chaos, then gave up. “Realism set in. In my hatred and fury, I forgot these men were the best metalworkers anywhere north of Germany. So, having wilfully discarded my only source of revenue, I went bankrupt in short order. I had to think of something else to do, and I sold my works and left Tampere for good. I didn’t want to stay in any case; the memory of what happened was too strong for me to stay. So I became an itinerant construction manager, building whatever I could find. This is the last job I had.”

Before I could ask another question, he went on. “And now, it’s about time for me to finish this job too. I’ve seen all seven of them here.”

The hair on my neck stood up. “Like, where?”

He went to the window. “If you could see what I see, you’d take a look at the courtyard.” I sneaked up to him and opened the ever-closed Venetian blind, but could see nothing but the well-raked sandy courtyard bathed in the gentle evening light.

“No one there,” I said.

He worked his face slowly into a smile. “See the picture on the wall?”

I looked to the nearest wall on which was a framed photograph. “Are these your workers?”

“That’s them. I’m on the right with the bowler hat. It’s 1916 and all is well. Now when I look out of the window, I see them in the same order, left to right. They’re wearing the same clothes. And I still have my bowler hat on the hat rack,” he said and went back to sit in his armchair. “It’s waiting for the time they pick me up.”

I collected his tray and left without a word. Triple-checking the lock made me feel marginally better, but I was so happy I was not on night shift, not just now.

My turn came three nights later. It was one of those nights with just me and the night nurses. Sari was on too, two floors above me. I had not slept too well of late, so I was tired right off the bat. Coffee, dark as Venezuelan nights, had some effect, but I must have dozed off. I dreamed vague dreams of times I couldn’t identify, and people I didn’t know, but I was awakened by a volley of shots.

I fell off my chair I had balanced against the wall, then understood it wasn’t shots. It was 02.15, and Five Eyes was buzzing in two tones and flashing its mean red eyes. I was to get to the third floor, acute medical ward. This time, the elevator was faster. Once I got there, I saw no one, but out of the corner of my eye, I sensed something moving by the balcony doors. It was like a shadow, but with substance.

I rushed to the door and ripped it open, and entered the balcony. It was empty, but as it was my first time there, I noticed what a view it offered out to the well-raked sandy courtyard below. I held on to the railing, trying to see if someone could have been inside the glazed door and then gone somewhere from the balcony, but could not find a route.

And then Five Eyes went just about mad. Returning to the corridor, I stared at the lights and listened to the buzzes and could not make any codes out of it. What was the oddest thing – only the device closest to me was on. I could see the others down the hallway were dead. As I watched, it did a sort of countdown from five to one, then went black too. I was sweating by this time, wondering what the hell was going on.

I remembered I had not done the rounds but once, and to calm myself down, I went on the route, trying to whistle to myself. I thought River Kwai felt appropriate, but the nasty echo made me cut it. The first locks and doors were fine, but then I got to the bolted door of Frans.

The bolt was missing. Someone had bent the restricting piece of three millimeter steel so as to remove the steel bolt altogether. There were no signs of the use of force; the lock frame had been bent back as if it’d always been flat. And, worse, the door was open. I rushed in and checked the small rooms of the apartment, but Frans was nowhere to be found.

As if it weren’t bad enough, Five Eyes came alive once more. Bottom two, bottom three, all five. One tone. Trouble at the main entrance. I ran up the stairs and entered the lobby, but since I could not see anyone there, I went out to the courtyard.

I felt a wind pass by me, a gust I thought, but this had more volume than a regular gust. And the leaves of the ashes didn’t move – they always flutter with the faintest of breezes, but not now. Then I felt it again, and twice more, almost being bumped by wind. I must be ready for the basket-weaving ward, I thought, but then I chanced to look up.

Frans was at the balcony. He was wearing a trench coat and boots, and his bowler hat was firmly planted on his head. He stood by the railing and held it with both hands.

“Frans! Don’t jump!” I tried to scream, but my voice only came out as a theatrical whisper.

“Of course I won’t jump,” he answered in stoic fashion. “That’d be stupid. But the time has come, and my workmen have arrived to pick me up, so I must bid you farewell.” He was still grabbing the railing with his knobby fists. I saw his trench coat move, again as if by wind, but when it flew open to either side of his wiry body, I understood it was no wind.

Fourteen invisible hands began to tear at his trench coat. Then I saw his trousers move, as if someone pinched the pant legs and pulled his legs back and off the balcony. He was soon in a horizontal posture, hands on the railing still, but when I saw his fingers twisted free of the black metal railing one by one, I moved back, watching and not believing what I saw.

Frans was indeed picked up, and when he had to let go of the railing, he grabbed his bowler hat with both hands. He moved out into the air in front of the balcony, carried by the hands visible only by the creases they made in the fabric of his coat. Majestically and silently, bar the incessant sound of wind that was no wind, he floated out to the courtyard, a full thirty meters from the building.

And then, he was dropped. The hands holding him ceased to exist, and he began to fall. It took him less than three seconds to hit the ground, and he met the earth with just a thump. He moved once, as if to straighten himself from the heap in which he landed, but then moved no more. I rushed to him and turned his head to see his face, but he said nothing. A smile, no, the ghost of a smile appeared on his lips, and then he died.

I looked around to see if there was anyone to help. I saw Sari on the balcony, and I put my hand to my ear mimicking a telephone. She understood and went to call the police. I kneeled beside Frans to wait. It took only fifteen minutes for them to arrive.

The cops had the good sense to keep the sirens of the Volvo Amazon silent, but they did brake hard, sending gravel flying all over the yard. The first to emerge could have been the granddad of the Keystone Kops, but the driver looked as if this was his first assignment ever. “Wilska, Lieutenant, and Officer Jormakka. What’s this? Suicide?” the old man asked.

I explained that Frans had been thrown off the balcony and he’d landed here. Lieutenant Wilska looked in the direction I pointed. “That balcony? You’re joking. That’s a good thirty meters. He couldn’t have been thrown here. Besides, who threw him off it?”

I took a deep breath and explained what had happened, and made sure I included every twist of the tale. Officer Jormakka took notes, but by the time I explained how the invisible hands had lifted Frans’s feet off the balcony, he took his pen off the pad and looked at me as one looks at a lunatic. Wilska took his pipe out of his pocket, and knocked the ashes off against his shoe.

“Guess what, son? This is my last week in the Force. Forty-four years of petty crime, drunks beating each other up, traffic offences and the occasional murder, but I’ve never, ever heard such an idiotic story. But that’s not the point. The point is, I retire next Monday. I’ll be damned if I start to investigate this as anything else but suicide, even if the body is found here, thirty meters from where he should have landed.” He refilled the pipe with aggravated movements, then lit it. It took four matches.

“And I’ll be fucked if I go to the Captain to explain to him that ghosts carried this man from the balcony and dropped him to his death. Jormakka, take the legs, and you, boy, you take the arms. Carry him over to where he would land if he jumped off the balcony.”

I tried to protest, but to no avail. Jormakka picked up Frans’ legs and motioned for me to grab the hands. Lieutenant Wilska measured a spot five meters from the main door. “Drop him here, in a heap, just as you had him there. Then, Jormakka, you go and get the camera, and document the suicide scene. I need a statement from you, kid. Anybody else saw this happen?”

I glanced at the balcony where Sari was peeking over the railing. I moved my head to signal her to go. She faded away. “No.”

“That’s good. So, you were the only person who saw this elderly and demented gentleman climb the railing and leap to his death? Write it down, Jormakka.”

“No. I told you what I saw.”

“This is what we will write. Having then met the ground at a high speed, the said gentleman died at… 02.45? That’s half an hour from now?”

“The time is right but nothing else is.”

“See if I care. Jormakka will type it up when we get back to the station. I’ll send the mortuary for the body. You will now go and grab that rake, and make everything hunky-dory both here and there where you sat. Understood?”

I was about to protest, but then I realized my position; it’d be the summer orderly’s word against the Police Lieutenant of forty-plus years. Fat chance. I went to pick up the rake and cleaned up the impact site, thus hiding all the signs of the demise of Frans the Janitor. For forty more years, the sound of the rake on the ground stayed with me and kept me awake at night.

***

I married Sari in about a year’s time, partly because I liked the way she understood me that night. I told her what happened, and she believed me, but we let people believe Frans had leaped to his death, depressed after losing his sight. We bought a summerhouse on an island on Lake Keurusselkä and stayed there for thirty-two summers. Reading the local paper every summer, we saw Lieutenant Wilska died in 1986. I have no information of Officer Jormakka, but he’s kept his silence, I am quite sure.

And now I am alone, after Sari died a year ago. I think it is time to let the good folks of Keuruu hear what really happened at the Keuruu Municipal Home for the Elderly. Frans the Janitor deserves it, and so do his workers. So, I will now print this and seal it in an envelope, and hope for the best.

All that remains to be seen is, how open is the mind of the Editor-in-Chief of the Keuruu Christmas magazine.

On Monday we told you about Alex Herod’s amazing project as part of the arts project (in)xclusion, taking place for 24 hours from 6pm on February 25th at the Patrick Studios in Leeds. Today we get to put some questions to Adam Young, one of the people behin the event.

(in)xclusion looks at and challenges issues of exclusion in all shapes and sizes and as such is something we’re very interested in seeing succeed. If you’re anywhere near Leeds during the 24 hours it’s running, please go along and take part and help make it the vibrant, joyous, and provocative event it deserves to be.

DH: A couple of years ago I put on a show called Open-armed and Outcast (http://yearzerowriters.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/open-armed-embrace/) that I wanted to look at and celebrate the concept of outsiderdom. The problem I came up against immediately and continually was that by celebrating the outsider I felt I was involved in my own act of exclusion. Would I be right in saying the title, (in)xclusion acknowledges that ambiguity?

AY: Don’t shy away from the big questions Dan!

I am by no means an authority on Tech but I will try answer your question(s) with my own concerns.

I am concerned that you assume all humankind would benefit from technology or that all humankind wants it.

For the last nine years,  the London Teenage Poetry SLAM project has provided an annual exchange program for deserving and underprivileged young poets.  Chicagoan poets, educators and students opened their arms to those London poets, and over seven days of workshops, visits to local schools, performances and late-night conversations, we’ve built an international poetry community.  The week is often seen as life changing.

One British poet described the exchange in Chicago: “That week I experienced how powerful poetry is; how it can bring all kinds of people together in the most unexpected places. I went out a new and nervous writer, and came back a poet.”

This year, for the Olympic year and 10th year of this powerful collaborative experience,  we want to make it happen again with a twist by having the Chicago area poets go London. We’re aiming to bring four young poets ages 18-24 and one chaperone across the Atlantic for a week of writing, learning, teaching and international exchange.

AND THEY NEED YOUR HELP TO RAISE THE AIRFARE. GO HERE FOR DETAILS OF HOW YOU CAN HELP MAKE THIS HAPPEN.

LOUDER THAN A BOMB is a film about passion, competition, teamwork, and trust. It’s about the joy of being young, and the pain of growing up. It’s about speaking out, making noise, and finding your voice.

It also just happens to be about poetry.

Every year, more than six hundred teenagers from over sixty Chicago area schools gather for the world’s largest youth poetry slam, a competition known as “Louder Than a Bomb”. Founded in 2001, Louder Than a Bomb is the only event of its kind in the country—a youth poetry slam built from the beginning around teams. Rather than emphasize individual poets and performances, the structure of Louder Than a Bomb demands that kids work collaboratively with their peers, presenting, critiquing, and rewriting their pieces. To succeed, teams have to create an environment of mutual trust and support. For many kids, being a part of such an environment—in an academic context—is life-changing.

LOUDER THAN A BOMB chronicles the stereotype-confounding stories of four teams as they prepare for and compete in the 2008 event. By turns hopeful and heartbreaking, the film captures the tempestuous lives of these unforgettable kids, exploring the ways writing shapes their world, and vice versa. This is not “high school poetry” as we often think of it. This is language as a joyful release, irrepressibly talented teenagers obsessed with making words dance. How and why they do it—and the community they create along the way—is the story at the heart of this inspiring film.

And we are basically trying to get them over here as part of a slam exchange project which we have to self fund as we don’t have any gov funding!

They will be performing all over London and at the UK’s biggest ever Youth Slam – Shake The Dust – as well as performing at an event to showcase the transformative effects of Spoken Word In Education! which we’re hoping will help us get spoken word into the national curriculum over here!

Volunteers will be donating their time to make this happen, and poets and teachers will be welcoming us in their homes to keep costs to a minimum. However, to ensure the trip happens, we need to cover the cost of the airfare.

—

If the poets get here, they will be here from July 1-4, and we at eight cuts will be following their progress with interest and I very much hope getting involved i some way to help on the ground. Thank you for listening.

For the best part of two years I’ve avidly followed Elizabeth Baines‘ superb Fiction Bitch blog, which takes a highly intelligent look at just about all the issues in writing and publishing I’m interested in. I’ve also been aware and rather in awe of her literary talents, with books like The Birth Machine and Balancing on the Edge of the World.

So when I knew I was going to be doing a show in Manchester I was both desperate to see if she’d be willing to be involved and nervous in one of those meeting-your-heroes kind of ways.

The long and the short is that she said yes (here she is, above), gave a fabulous reading from her story Condensed Metaphysics, and even agreed to answer my rambling questions about pretty much everything under the literary sun. Her insightful answers are here.

EB: That’s hard to answer. For me each has its particular satisfactions, and different forms can be wedded to different states of mind, I find. Feeling extrovert and ironic and tough is great for writing plays – for the detachment and muscularity the form itself demands, and also in order to think practically about what’s possible for actors, technicians etc. And, after the isolation of the desk, it’s great to get out there and work with others on productions. And I’ll never lose my sense of the magic of theatre! On the other hand, I also love the introspection and singularity of vision that prose allows, and the immersion of the process. Then again, I’m torn between short stories and novels. I love the comfort blanket of a novel – the way it takes you over and cocoons you, a world you can escape to for months at a time – and the freedom to explore complexity. When I emerge from one I can feel irritated by the restrictions of the short story. But then I’ll rediscover those short-story satisfactions of concentrated language and vision, the world viewed through a tiny vivid-making lens.

DH: In which medium do you think the most exciting things are happening at the moment?

EB: That’s such a huge question! Well, obviously the commercialisation of the industry has had a hugely detrimental effect on the health of literary fiction, and I don’t really see things changing very soon with regard to the mainstream houses. On the other hand, the rise of independent presses in reaction to this – presses like And Other Stories – is perhaps a matter for hope. As for ebooks – I’m really not sure. In theory you can imagine a scenario where ebooks come to the rescue of straitened publishing houses, but it’s difficult to see how when Amazon have monopolised the market and pushed the prices so low.

DH: And finally, in which direction are you turning next?

EB: I’m in the middle of writing a new series of short stories, and I’m talking with a radio drama producer about possible future projects.

DH: Thank you so much!

EB: Thanks to you, Dan!

Alex Herod is the deputy editor of the amazing website For Books’ Sake. She’s also an incredibly talented writer/artist as those of you at our Manchester gig will attest. And now she’s about to embark on a fascinating project as part of the (in)xclusion project, a 24 hour event over February 25th-26th at the Patrick Studios in Leeds (more of which later this week). The project wants to take a close look at what exclusion means, and Alex will be inviting people to write on her body for a whole day, raising all kinds of questions which it has been my pleasure to ask her about. If you’re anywhere near Leeds, please go along.

DH: You must be so excited…

And nervous…

 If I may digress a little before (I promise) getting back on track. Graphemes. One of the things I’ve often talked to Marc Nash about is the point at which meaning breaks down (or is built up). Just how far do we have to divide the “stuff” of language before it becomes meaningless? Does even that become meaningless, or is it even more meaningful simply to make a senseless mark because everything is focused on the act of making a mark itself an all the political connotations behind that. So, back on track – does any of that chime with what you are doing?

AH: Yes, it does. For a number of reasons (and I might digress a little too here!)…

I think one word in the right context can convey as much as a thousand. That’s the beauty of language. Not that we shouldn’t strive for complexity, just that there is a purity in basic elements. The tiny component parts get overlooked in favour of the big communicative, ‘I’m saying something’ whole. But without them, there’d be no meaning in the first place, so maybe all the rest – the structure, the combinations – aren’t necessary after all. The vital, raw materials are there, and we can make with them whatever we want, but why should we make anything at all when we can play with them just as they are: raw. I’m fascinated by language and word play and looking at different ways the ‘stuff’ becomes meaningful. I think that whatever is done to language, people will find their own patterns and meaning regardless of how much it is built up, divided and rearranged or broken down.

BUT, despite all I just said, I chose the title ‘Grapheme’ for this piece because the whole is important in this case. Each individual contributor to the work (each person who writes on me over the course of the 24hours) has the power to change the meaning but the ‘meaning’ only exists when the individual units combine – it’s an inclusive art work that will transform over time, but I won’t know what has been written until the 24 hours is over and the text can be viewed as a whole.

In terms of senseless marks, I’m not sure if it’s possible to make them. Making a mark that doesn’t make sense for a political or other reason acknowledges what mark or action would make sense in that situation. To take a stand you have to be aware to some degree of what you are taking a stand against. Perhaps. Take the Dadaists – they rejected convention and rigidity, instead creating irrational, nonsensical works. But the irrationality was deliberate, the movement political – challenging cultural and aesthetic norms, protesting against war – and the influence far-reaching. What they created did have meaning, radical meaning; through ripping up the rule book, the senseless made sense… and round and round we go!

If all goes to plan, this will be the first in a series of live art/performance works, each exploring aspects of semantics and shared narratives; looking at proxemics and measurable distances in interactions between people, how punctuation could be performed, speech and vocalised signs (working title, Phoneme, o’ course!)… I’m looking forward to getting my geek on with some digging and research at which point I’ll probably agree and disagree with all that I have written here many times over.

How many different meanings does exclusion have for you?

Feeling alone in a room full of people

Feeling detached from your own thoughts and actions

Being told you don’t know

Being told you can’t

Pressing up against glass, peering through

Pressure to conform

A whisper drowned out by roars

Having no words at all

… and …

On a personal, social and political level, ‘exclusion’ is an incredibly powerful word. That’s what initially drew me to (in)Xclusion as an event, the celebration of the Outsider, the sense of belonging with those that don’t belong, positivity instead of negativity. There’s tremendous power in that.

Backtracking, the act of writing – marking – has a lot of connotations of possession, even aggression. You are inviting people to write on your body. What exactly’s the power dynamic going on there?

I am inviting people to write on my body, to mark and transform me in what is a fairly intimate act, but I’m inviting them to share in something bigger and to reflect on what they’ve seen, how they feel and what exclusion means to them. On both sides, it’s quite an exposing thing to do. Of course, I realise that people might not want to write on me (or I might just end up with a gigantic comedy penis scrawled on my face…) which does shift the power away from me. That’s one reason I wanted to do this piece and developed it in response to the (in)Xclusion mission statement – I will be naked in every sense (nude, without sight, without a pen), and excluded from what is happening around me. I am interested to see how that feels over the duration of the 24hours. I write, and feel at home writing; I feel connected when I’m able to interact with people, see them; and I often create work alone. So to be in a position where I can’t see what’s being written on me, I am reliant on other people’s writing and engagement with the work and I’m not able to look into their eyes, reach out and connect, I am stepping far outside my comfort zone – which I hope will encourage people to do the same. I have experienced performances and art works where the artist has asked the audience to give a lot, expose themselves, to essentially create the work, but given very little in return. That’s curatorship. And it’s arrogant in my opinion. It’s all well and good waxing lyrical about what people will get from participating, but why should anyone take risks or challenge themselves if you’re not willing to?

I want to create an intimate experience where boundaries are crossed and moments are shared. I think the acts of writing and being written on are incredibly beautiful and empowering for both the scribe and the inscribed. It can be cathartic, enabling, uncomfortable, erotic – something that has the potential to be so raw and so unpredictable means the power dynamic is hard to pin down. Which is what excites me about this piece.

To expand, do you feel as though you are injecting your own subjectivity into something that would be happening anyway? Is this a reaction to violence, to society’s gaze/possession of you, or is it rather a question of making yourself visible?

Eesh. I think there’s a whole other blog post – or twelve – in considering society’s gaze, the body as [art] object, violence. The short(er) answer would be that I am taking ownership of my own body and creating a live experience exploring insecurities, signifiers, means of expression and individual reactions; exploring those things within boundaries that I am setting. So yes, in a sense, there’s subversion afoot! You will mark me because I have given you the tools to do so, here is my body as I choose to present it, your individual action changes in meaning as part of a collective experience, etc.

Hmm. More than those things though, Grapheme is about connection. About the smaller pieces of a puzzle coming together: collective creation and expression.

It is about visibility, not of me so much as of the words of anyone (everyone) who takes part, of the other performances in the space, of the event, of the myriad meanings of exclusion. That might sound trite – “I just wanna do some good, man” – but this is a sincere piece. I do hope I learn from it, I hope people find a connection or take the opportunity, I hope it serves as a document of the event… I’ve never been one for too-cool-for-school nonchalance, and have little patience with people who plump for irony over passion and enthusiasm and curiosity. So there, I’ve said it. Sincerely.

What issues has this project made you face?

The nudity is a fairly big challenge for me. I’ve never performed fully naked before (stop sniggering at the back, I mean in public) and I’m not sure how that’s going to feel. I am not fully comfortable in my own skin, so really this piece could go either way – I could be traumatised by the whole thing and hide in a box forever more, or it might make me fearless… It’s not that I’m ashamed to be naked or worried what people will think of how I look, more the fact that I sometimes just don’t feel as if I fully inhabit my body, so to have to be present and aware of it for such a long period of time with little to distract me is daunting.

What do you want your “writers” to come away with?

A feeling of being part of something.

Do you have any preconceptions about what ways the “writers” may feel excluded?

If not one person writes on me, then that in itself will be pretty interesting! Some people might not be comfortable with the physical contact, the proximity, or indeed having other people read their words once they’ve moved on. Some people might decide it’s not their cup of tea. Other people might feel the whole thing is just a bit wanky and feel excluded by my presumption that their innermost feelings would make Good Art. To be honest, I’m trying not to think too much about that as I don’t want to end up tailoring the piece to manipulate the outcome too much.  I can only make decisions on how I present it, how it’s received is out of my hands.

Which of those questions makes you feel the most uncomfortable?

The question about violence, about the gaze and possession. I’m not sure I know how to respond to it or how to decipher, navigate and articulate the many things it makes me feel. I don’t know if I ever will. I’ll get back to you on that extra blog post if I do!

What do you think would make you feel most uncomfortable full stop?

Only being able to communicate vocally.

Anyone who was at our Three Minute Theatre gig will almost certainly have Sian S Rathore’s remarkable performance still ringing in their ears. I can’t remember seeing a poet get a response like it.

It’s an absolute pleasure to be able to showcase her poem I’M SO JACKED, but also to talk to her about the poem, her art, and the rather one-sided way mental health can be portrayed in the arts (I’M SO JACKED  is subtitled “an Ode to Mania”)

You can find Sian on twitter here, and tumbling here. She also writes for Huffington Post and is a short fiction editor at Metazen.

DH: You capture the ecstasy of hypomania perfectly. Do you think too much writing about mental health focuses wholly on the negative?

SR: I find writing about mental health has the potential to be facetious on both sides. Sometimes mental health writing can be very much poetry by the mentally ill, for the mentally ill, and whilst when you’re a writer and you’re struggling with some mental health problem it is very important and indeed cathartic to exorcise those demons through poetry, it can often become the absolute focus of what you write about, and as a person living with bipolar disorder myself, there are only so many poems about living with bipolar disorder that I can possibly hear, both from myself and the poetry community. I think I do believe that a lot of writing about mental health can focus too heavily on the negative. I want to stress that using language in this way is cathartic and indeed therapeutic, but it is true that you rarely hear poetry about the positive sides of mental health problems. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist – but in my instance, I was discussing hypomania and the absolute feeling of elation that hypomania brings about. Of course, I didn’t add a footnote to “I’m SO JACKED” that mentions the inevitable spiral into full-blown mania, the hallucinations, the extreme irritability, the delusions and the danger you put yourself in, nor did I write a stanza on the inevitable crash. Sometimes in periods of ill health you can feel as if you are walking with angels, and I wanted to discuss that in that particular poem.

I’m SO JACKED (an Ode to Mania)

I’m so jacked I listen to Marilyn Manson and I don’t even give a SHIT about that
I’m so jacked my basal metabolic rate is TEN THOUSAND CALORIES A SECOND.
I haven’t measured that, but I DON’T NEED TO. I JUST KNOW.
I’m so jacked it took my wisdom teeth FIVE FUCKING MINUTES to completely get through
THIS is how FUCKING JACKED I am.
I’m so jacked that Marilyn Manson has started to listen to me.
I’m so jacked that some guy broke down in his car and connected the jump leads to my FUCKING HEART
And that guy broke the sound barrier in his Reliant Robin SOME FUCKING MOMENTS LATER.

I’m so FUCKING HIGHBROW.
I’m more highbrow than FRASIER KRANE
I’m more highbrow than ROSS FROM FRIENDS
I’m so FUCKING HIGHBROW that when I watch Mastermind I AVERAGE A 55% PASS RATE
And DON’T even get me FUCKING STARTED on University FUCKING Challenge.

I’m so jacked I painted a picture and Van Gogh came back from the dead
Saw it
And FUCKING KILLED HIMSELF AGAIN. THAT’S how BEAUTIFUL it was and
I’M NOT EVEN A PAINTER.
I’m so jacked that when I wrote this poem Lord Byron came back from the dead
JUST to have SEX with me.
And when he did he said:
SWEET
FUCKING
JESUS
THAT WAS THE BEST LAY I EVER HAD
AND YOU GIVE BETTER HEAD THAN EVEN MY SISTER
And then he died again
THAT’S RIGHT
I FUCKED LORD BYRON TO DEATH.

I’m so jacked that I’m not even hungry yet
I’m so jacked that I’m the hungriest I’ve ever been
I’m so jacked that when I look at the clock the arms spin
Madly out of control
Which can only mean that I CONTROL TIME ITSELF.
I’m so jacked that Doctor Who went back to 2005 when I was 16 and said:
HEY BABE.
COME BACK TO THE FORTIES WITH ME.
And I said:
FUCK SAKE “DOCTOR” YOU HAVE ALL OF TIME AND SPACE, WHY IS IT ALWAYS THE FORTIES WITH YOU

I’m so jacked I do all of my thinking in the nude
I’m so jacked I invented a potion that makes me prettier by the day
But I choose to remain average
Because I AM A WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE.
I’m so jacked that I make love with the lights on
FULL FUCKING BEAM
I’m so jacked that I’m not done with you yet
You disgustingly HANDSOME bastard
I’m so jacked that you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me
I’m so jacked that you have to call me SUN WARRIOR
THAT’S MY NAME NOW
I’m so jacked that P Diddy wakes up in the morning
FEELING LIKE ME.
I’m so jacked that since I started writing this I just got married five times
Indiscriminately
To five of my readers

I’m so jacked that I shoplift from Aldi exclusively
I over pay everywhere else

I’m so jacked I haven’t even written this poem yet
I’m so jacked that I just wrote every single poem ever
I’m so jacked that I read THE WHOLE OF THE INTERNET
And when I did I was like “Whatever, this is dumb”

I’m so jacked that tonight before bed I’m going to
WIND THE FUCK DOWN with a RADOX BATH
But tomorrow I’ll wake up feeling EVEN MORE JACKED
I’m so jacked

That whenever I submit to magazines they
Publish TWO of my poems:
One you’re MEANT to read and one you’re
NOT EVEN MEANT TO LOOK AT
If you do, you LOSE THE GAME I just invented

HAHAHA YOU MORON
(ironically it is the better poem)

I’m so jacked I don’t even know what a poem is
But this is my meagre offering
And tomorrow you will all wake up saying
I’M SO JACKED
And angels will descend from heaven and you will kick them in the face for me
And you’ll spend all day like some BRILLIANT machine like me
And your eyes will suddenly see in 360 degree panorama
And your miserable life might finally be happy
This is how jacked I made you
Because this is how JACKED I AM

AND YOU’RE
FUCKING
WELCOME.

Wouldn’t you just know it. You wait forever for an exciting interactive novel to come along, and two arrive in your inbox at once. It’s something I’ve been interested in since I wrote The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes on a Facebook group, so I’m delighted to introduce two projects,Winston Emerson’s The Object and Josh Martin’s Run at Plot Hinge.

The two books are very different. Run is a thriller – a Harlan Coben-type everyman-in-peril story, absolutely tailor-made for cliffhanger-sparked interaction. In this case, as the project’s title, Plot Hinge, suggests, moments of choice come at crucial points. Only it’s not the audience who’s interacting with the story – it’s random events in the world – a bit like John Grisham meets The Dice Man. Here’s how Josh explains it – “at the end of each chapter the plot is left at a cliff hanger with the story able to go in a couple different directions. I then tell the readers something like: ‘If it’s a cloudy night in Toronto next Tuesday, then the guards won’t spot Jimmy trying to escape. But if it’s a clear night, Jimmy will be spotted and brought back to prison.’ I then write the following week’s chapter based on the outcome of that event.” This overcomes one of the real problems with interactive novels – getting people to interact! Reders are remarkably passive – even those brought up on the Fighting Fantasy books. So I’m particularly excited by how this will pan out.

Winston Emerson, on the other hand, is offering readers the chance to interact with the story at infrequent intervals (season finales as it were). He’s also creating an immersive atmosphere with music and art to get readers into the world of the story. And as a writer of exquisite literary fiction, although this has elements of SF, I’ll be very interested to see what kind of a world he creates. Here’s what Winston said when I asked him a few questions

eReaders.  Hands down.  The Kindle and Nook have opened the door for self-publishing to be free and efficient for writers.  When Season One of The Object concludes, we plan to self-publish it as an illustrated novel and make it available both in digital and print form.  I’ve just broken into the self-publishing world with my novel The Drought, and a small collection of short works entitled The End of the Party: Three Stories and a Poem, both of which are now available on the Amazon Kindle.  For anyone interested in reading The Object, you can get an idea of my writing style by checking out either of these two books:

Tonight’s Panorama tackled the subject of cyber bullying and, inevitably, it wasn’t long before “cyber bullying” was trending on twitter. Some very interesting comments could be found, but one persistent meme still seems to pervade this discussion: that the answer to cyber bullying is to log off. And not just in the sense of that being practical advice (I’m not sure it is), but in the sense that the possibility of logging off means there’s no such thing as cyber bullying. It’s something I’ve heard said o a regular basis for years, along with equally inane comments about expecting rough and tumble on the internet.

This isn’t a long article. I just what to raise what seem to me to be obvious points. I welcome considered deate and further discussion.  

1. Victims of bullying need places where they can feel safe. That is the single top priority in combatting bullying – increasing the number of safe spaces for the bullied – spaces where they can talk, where they can just hang out and know that they are safe. The “just log off” answer decreases the safe spaces people have.

2. Furthermore, in decreasing the number of safe spaces, “logging off” damages/punishes the victims of cyber bullying whilst the perpetrators effectively get to plant their flag in their ill-gotten territory. What kind of approach is that?

3. Consider some physical world analogies. Aren’t these all unacceptable forms of behaviour any civilized society should be trying to eliminate? Your neighbours chant racist abuse at you day in day out. Wait, that’s OK, it’s not a problem – you can always move house. You are taunted about your sexuality at work every day. Not a problem, you can get another job, or just get benefits – stop copmplaining. Authorities, the state itself even, make it impossible for you to go to work or live in a neighbourhood. Don’t go running to the UN, just find some other country to take you. You see how ridiculous it would be to say any of those. But isn’t that exactly what you’re saying when you say there’s no such thing as cyber bullying, or that people should “just log off”?

4. Logging off is essentially the same as putting your fingers in your ears and going la-la-la – you know, that way of dealing with things you were told was not the way to go when you were a kid. There was a reason you were told that. Logging off doesn’t make your bullies go away. They’re still there, and what they say is still reaching its tentacles into what people hear about you. More to the point, they’re still there to do the same to other people. We don’t let terrorists or kidnappers simply havce the ground because they act despicably. For the very good reason that we’re taught not to give in to bullies – how does the fact this takes place in cyberspace affect that principle?

Yes, there *is* the very serious question of practical, individual advice – and it may well be best for a person to unhook from the internet for a while – though in many cases the internet as well as being the source of the bullying will be the source of many of the strongest supports that individual has, so it’s always a complex thing. In addition to rigorous, and enforced, anti-bullying controls, I think we each have a responsibility, when we are feeling strong, to step in, in individual cases, in upholding the general principle that bullying is never OK, and in helping to create more and more safe places where people can go to talk and find the support networks they need.

Check out:

Family Lives

and its constituent parts for excellent practical help.

I’ve had the chance to swap e-mails with Anna since then and talk about, among other things, the gender imbalance of live poetry, and confessional writing. Take a moment to have a look at her website, and her award-winning poem here, and then I’ll hand you over to Anna.I’m going to lift her words pretty much unedited because I found them so inspiring. And the overlaps between what she does and what we do here are so many you’ll see why I was completely won over. I very very much hope to be announcing her on an eight cuts line up soon.

And once you’ve been as enthused by her as I was, you can head over to my other blog – the one that supports YouTube – and watch some readings.

On live poetry and creative writing courses

I finished my MA in Creative Writing in 2009, it was very academic which I was not prepared for at all but I adored being taught by the wonderful Vona Groake and reading more poetry than I had ever read in my life and this is when I was directed to start tuning my poems for sound. However at times I felt my work, which is often short and confessional was undervalued and to some extent I felt stifled, and that the course did not value live literature unless it was by ”proper published poets” reading from a lectern.

[she expands this last comment very tellingly]

”proper published poets reading from a lectern” were derided if they were female and confessional, we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to go to live readings given by Jackie Kay and Elaine Feinstein (the latter with whom we had a workshop which I found helpful) and everyone enthused about on the night when the wine flowed and then when we were in the class discussing their work, they were torn to pieces for not being proper poetry or being simplistic.

[you can find some incredible confessional poetry of Anna's in the Rift Cuts pdf downloadable here]

I have always used writing as a way to process my emotions, particularly grief, this is mentioned in my ars poetica in one of the books you have. Simply put, when my spoken voice fails me, I write. It has saved my life many times over. I have always described my notebook as the friend who is never bored of me. I am passionate about the power of poetry and other writing to inform others and heal, as mentioned I have in the past worked with adults with mental health issues facilitating writing workshops. I run workshops periodically up here and love helping others edit their work. I really enjoy helping other people find their voice and write unexpected work. I also like incorporating reading and working with or from other poets work in workshops as in taking a writers view of poetry rather than an english literature view. I find this approach is more open to anyone. I would still describe myself as a confessional poet even though that has fallen far from fashion.

On live poetry, women and Stirred

I started Stirred with co host Becca Audra Smith in October 2010 because I wanted a poetry night that tipped the balance somewhat I still find even in Manchester but even more so when I go around the country that some events are very much male dominated, especially open mics and this can be intimidating to women and sensitive men and really I wanted to create a feminist space without excluding men. I also wanted a night that did not share with music as I in my experience it can create a hostile atmosphere with music fans resenting the poets and heckling/talking over them. Stirred has grown and we last year did specials for Not Part Of and Chorlton arts festival and people have got into the concept of it, as in we have two female guests and one male and anyone can do the open mic as long as its feminist friendly but we like men to do women focused and/or poetry by a woman they admire. Stirred is named from a line from Carol Ann Duffy’s Oppenheim’s cup and saucer ”far from the laughter of men our secret life stirred.” The wonderful thing is lots of guests and open micers sharing women’s poetry, especially in a time when fewer people have the opportunity to study poetry. We like to think it has a supportive and generous atmosphere for both the guests and people new to performing.

On the process of writing

[One of the great things about Anna's website is that she takes you through the process she goes through to arrive at a finshed poem. She explains] I think it can be unfair to people to pretend a poem flies to your pen via a mystical muse (of course sometimes something just comes out) I believe in editing and interrogating your poems.

(everyone’s links to follow tomorrow!)

Where to start? I don’t know but I’ll try to do it briefly. For years now I’ve wanted to do a show north of Birmingham and having finally got the chance, the lovely people at For Books’ Sake suggested I might want to consider Three Minute Theatre at Afflecks as a venue.

In what seemed like a mix of fate and extraordinarity, John and Gina, the lovely people behind this marvel of a venue, not only said yes but welcomed us with open arms, so much that when I turned up to meet them for the first time on the afternoon of the gig they felt like old friends.

I’ll be devoting a whole piece to this place, but for now I’ll just say that it’s a dream venue – a perfect underground lair with its urban art tables, electric guitar wall-hangings and leather sofa on stage; yet with top notch professional sound and lighting. I think everyone agreed we couldn’t have had a better setting for what turned out to be a remarkable night. And their ginger wine and lemonade became an instant cult hit.

Venue was just the first problem I had to face putting this together. There was the little matter of a line-up. New Libertines gigs have lots of performers. I didn’t know lots of performers in Manchester. I did know a few, however, who were in the vicinity. But Laura Jarratt, Rachel Genn, Elizabeth Baines and Michael Stewart all fall into that category of “way more talented and successful than me.”

Nonetheless, when I did the cheeky thing and asked them they all said yes. And the wonderful poet Paul Askew agreed to come from Oxford. But five writers don’t make a show. Yet again, For Books’ Sake came to my help. Not only are they the best thing on the web. They’re pretty much up there in real life as the tippest toppest people you could meet.

With their help I found three more stunning acts to round out our programme: Claire Robertson, Sarah-Clare Conlon, and Sian Rathore. And then it kept going – the people behind Manchester’s top spoken word night Bad Language all pitched in for open mic (thanks again to FBS!). eight cuts favourite Neil Schiller turned out to be available to read. It was getting overwhelming.

There was also the date question. Rather, there wasn’t. I had one date free. January 23rd. A Monday. The only piece of advice everyone shared with me was to avoid Mondays. Mondays are promotion hell. Super. But Monday it was, and with Veronika von Volkova’s amazing poster in place, I was ready.

But I had no idea what to expect.

What we ended up with was the most receptive, friendly crowd (of around 50-60 at its peak) I can remember. Not only did they take everyone to heart and genuinely seem to enjoy it all (or, at least, the ginger wine), they were remarkably generous with their applause and their laughter – reacting in just the right way in just the right places to

Rachel Genn’s painfully acute observations in The Cure, even oohing painfully at the appropriate junctures of Laura Jarratt’s heartbreaking Skin Deep.

And if Paul Askew’s The Crow had sides properly splitting, nothing could have prepared anyone for the reaction to Sian Rathore’s mesmerising, machine-gun hypomanic piece of messianism “I’m so jacked.”

I can’t remember the last time I heard a response like that to poetry.

Talking of Paul’s Crow, it quickly became clear that there was something of a bird theme to the night (I felt I should take everyone out for KFC afterwards). We had Michael Stewart, author of Not the Booker winning King Crow pairing up with Paul, Elizabeth Baines, author of Too Many Magpies, and the open mic gave us pigeons, starlings, and chopped chicken.

But the night was more than Sian’s brilliant but unsettling humour, Paul’s glorious absurdism, Laura’s porcelain-delicate emotions, and Rachel’s achingly painful observations.

Michael Stewart’s exquisitely-crafted Couples poems untangled relationships with the deftness and care of a scientist unravelling starnds of DNA.

Elizabeth Baines gave us a remarkable piece of what could best be described as gentle observational nihilism as meaning’s attempts to push above the parapets of the practicalities of life are repeatedly crushed.

Claire Robertson’s performative storytelling took us on a remarkable all-sensory journey as she integrated the pages of a scroll, props, the collective consciousness and her own body to reflect upon the cycles and fulness of life in the Year of the Dragon. It was an all-encompassing tour de force that immersed us in a collective dream.

Sarah-Clare Conlon edits Quickies: the night’s best-selling book – a collection of delicious filth. And her flashes featuring sex toys and uniforms disrobed were a heady mix of subtle, sensuous and smut, pitch-perfectly delivered.

And the open mic was a box of treats stuffed to brimming. Neil Schiller kicked off with beautiful, haunting prose read to perfection.

For Books’ Sake Alex Herod gave some gorgeously poignant observation.

Bad Language‘s trilogy of Dan Carpenter,

David Hartley and

Fat Roland offered respectively Batteries, which felt like a 21st century take on Bright Lights, Big City in more senses than just being in the 2nd person, and was a serendipitous counterpoint to Metropolis, which had been showing on the screen behind the stage before we started; The Supermarket exploded, a series of post-consumerist satirical microfictions; and Bigger Than This, a quietly heartbreaking piece of nostalgia.

Ben of the Green proffered an extraordinary piece of what he later described as 4% Dada which featured a digeridoo rendition of Inspector Gadget. Just for starters.

And Anna Percy left the audience stunned with three pieces that probably resonated most with what I’ve been trying to achieve in recent work. The quiet brutality and emotional depth of her poems was deeply affecting.

Afterwards there was time for much chatterage, plenty more ginger wine and lemonade, and reconvention at The Castle, Bad Language’s monthly home.