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surf’s up

November 28, 2019

All photos: Andy Garside

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B O O K  R E V I E W CLASS a graphic guide by Lau B O O K  R E V I E W CLASS a graphic guide by Laura Harvey & Sarah Leaney, illustrated by Danny Noble.   Illustrated through an engaging series of one-page expositions CLASS is a whistlestop tour of theorists, scholars & activists from Marx & Engels to Angela Davies, hurtling across the political & literal landscape of Britain with fences & signposts & housing estates & quotes & whitewashed cultural industries & capitalist-ravaged community centres zipping by the intersections of class construct, inequality, rebellion (peasant uprisings), feminism, identity, disability, race, the underclass… while also touching on ideas of universal basic income, utopia, alternative societies…   We begin with a great quote offering a clear idea as to the book’s focus & ambition: ‘Ideas are powerful and have real-world consequences; some have informed how economies are structured, governments are run and social movements are organised.’   I loved being introduced to Judith Butler’s concept of a Liveable Life: experiencing life beyond merely surviving, & these numerous inclusions are a real strength of the book. I perhaps wanted more pages given over to people such as the homeless mothers of the Focus E15 group who ‘used loudspeakers at public events to confront those in power’ & who’re still campaigning for real change that is affecting people’s lives in a positive way, but CLASS is more of a spring-board into discovering writers / activists / theorists that the reader may not have encountered before, disseminating arguments in succinct & inventive ways.   CLASS is a great starter-kit & I applaud the authors’ determination to include examples of theorists & grassroots activisms while encouraging readers to seek out & join local unions, ask questions about the products we buy & who this supports, as well as who owns the surrounding lands. All of this can only be a good thing. #bookreview #class #intersectionality #wordsarepowerful
Ymunwch ni. Join us. Graffig / graphic: @osiangr Ymunwch ni. Join us. Graffig / graphic: @osiangrifford #naismrs #notomrs #peace #heddwch #notonuclear #nainiwclear
I wrote a piece this week that’s been building u I wrote a piece this week that’s been building up in the psyche like a reservoir behind a dam wall. Finally that dam has crumbled and the language it’s taken years for me to amass came tumbling out in two days and one essay. This is my truth. As a writer I feel it more important now than ever to write the world as I see and experience it, even when it is uncomfortable. Here’s the opening paragraphs - link in bio to the full article: On Gaslighting the Authentic Creative How do you know when you’re being gaslighted? Even more insidious – how do you understand what’s happening to you when the perpetrator is the very organisation who’s supposed to be supporting you? It’s taken a long time for me to admit that these have been some of my experiences of working in The Arts over the past 15+years and they have left me feeling isolated, anxious, confused, and unsure of my work. I reached the point where I sold all my worldly belongings, moved into a van and drove across Europe in order to create the space needed to peel back all the layers of Self so that I could understand exactly what had happened. Don’t get me wrong, being gaslighted wasn’t the sole basis for hitting the road, the full reasons are many and varied, and as is invariably the case the narrative changes as I grow a deeper connection to Self and a more thorough understanding of my motivations for certain actions. One thing I did know was that I needed the space to cultivate a deep love for myself and my art; I needed to fully embrace the people-pleaser side of my character so that I could drown that bitch; and I needed to rediscover that fire I’d allowed to become slowly extinguished by being coerced into working in ways that were not authentic to my Self. **link in bio to the full article** #creative #liveauthentic #writerslife #independent #liveindependent #speakyourtruth #writerscommunity #writingcommunity #writinglife #vanlife #fulltimevanlife
Barriers exist in The Arts. Class is an interesti Barriers exist in The Arts. Class is an interesting demarcation although I’m unsure upper, middle & lower are useful. I’ve consistently oscillated between the last, which feels like belonging to The Working Classes - the people who have to work for a living in order to meet monthly financial demands & often don’t have much (if anything) in the way of savings or investments (eg. property). The Working Classes also don’t have a family connection to wealth, so if you’re skint but able to stay in your aunt’s Mayfair flat while networking established contacts, or can afford to store all your worldly things while travelling to write, you’re not even remotely in this bracket. Why does it matter? It matters because being in a precarious financial situation immediately inhibits a person from taking the risks needed to shine in The Arts. Money & work constraints prevent The Working Classes from attending events we might network at, & we can’t take a six month sabbatical to throw ourselves into a new project unless we’re guaranteed it will pay, on time. Don’t even get me started on those in The Arts who deride talking about money as if it were an inconsequential inconvenience. Only people with money can afford this luxury. Here’s the barrier: you want to work on a project, you can’t do it for free because you have to pay bills but if you ask how much a project pays you’re viewed as ‘only in it for the money’ or ‘not a good collaborator’ or some other exclusive label. I was once told I didn’t need a grant to write a book because I was already earning money through my successful workshops 😱. Who gets the grants if people are encouraged to make themselves so useless they can barely claw their way through a day? How do they do this without starving? Money. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to work for free on good causes, or to support a friend’s project, but when the already privileged are able to expect free help, and have the luxury of offering free help, while the rest have to work (which is also a creative drain), we reach a point where the landscape of The Arts is only populated by a certain class of people while everyone else is waiting for the last bus home.
New obsession. #skate #inlineskating #noviceskate New obsession. #skate #inlineskating #noviceskater #newobsession #getoutdoors #activitiesforadults #lovelearning
B O O K R E V I E W The palm-wine drinkard by Amo B O O K R E V I E W The palm-wine drinkard by Amos Tutuola The palm-wine drinkard is a book of dark, violent, horror; a tale of vast, imaginary dreamscapes & nightmares. The film of this book would be a twisted knot of brothers Grimm & brothers Quay, produced by A24, directed by Guillermo del Toro. Our palm-wine drinkard is a juju-man & ‘“father of gods” who could do everything in this world’. He’s searching for his dead palm-wine tapster. The author’s use of simple language & sentence structure hint at a much older, oral storytelling tradition (reminiscent of Wales’ The Mabinogion) masterfully conveying densely layered imagery & symbolism that would take the most ambitious reader years to fully unpack. On this magical journey to the Deads Town our palm-wine drinkard meets many mean & difficult trickster people & spirits; gains a wife - a sage whose advice he often doesn’t cleve to; they’re horribly & graphically tortured in many towns including ‘Unreturnable Heaven’s Town’ in which ‘are only enemies of God living, only cruel greedy and merciless creatures.’ The townspeople are invariably fickle, either praising our protagonist with gifts & riches, or turning on him once he can/will no longer carry out tasks that are advantageous to them, which invites his vengeance & he often leave towns in ruins, killing everybody. As with the Arabian Nights, there are stories within stories, & there’s more than one nod to ancient creation myths: ‘But at last “Drum” was beating himself until he reached heaven ... then “Song” sang until he entered into a large river ... and “Dance” was dancing until she became a mountain...’ Our palm-wine drinkard is a vengeful god who kills women, children, the elderly & his friends indiscriminately. He’s also at times reminiscent of a charlatan healer with his potions of kolas & palm oil in broken pots. There’s no moralising in this tale, again reminiscent of The Mabinogion. Instead the reader’s mind is violently gripped & pummeled across these magical pages; thoroughly beaten about the psyche before being tossed wide-eyed & exhausted back into a world it will be hard to view in the same way again. I loved it. #bookreview
The biggest writing inspiration for me is walking. The biggest writing inspiration for me is walking. Just setting off from the van and hiking for hours with Bonnie the rescue-hound. Sometimes I get so excited I forget to double-check the weather. #writer #inspiration #natureismychurch #writerlife #goneforawalk #buylesslivemore #fulltimevanlife #alternativeliving #themountainsarecalling #poet #womenwritingscifi #indypublishing #selfpublishing
Messing about with some old vocal loop recordings Messing about with some old vocal loop recordings from a live show & some shots from yesterday’s hike. #poet #spokenword #ghosts #scifiart #wordswordswords #wordsarepower #writer #creator #selfpublishing
I created this film from the M A C H I N E L E A I created this film from the M A C H I N E L E A R N I N G chapter in The Madness of Sara Mansfield (1st book in The MthR Trilogy). The original film is from the CRØWOMAN show. Recording the audiobooks was a daunting challenge. Especially when it came to translating MthR’s random coding chapters into spoken word pieces. After endless headaches & tears I finally hit on an editing technique I’m happy with to convey MthR’s sentient AI voice emerging from jumbles of code. Books available from the webshop - link in bio. Or, to help me to continue creating as a CopyLeft Indy Publisher, please consider joining my amazing subscribers by showing monthly support (via PayPal button on my website, link in bio). All the raindrops will make an ocean 🙏🏻💙💦 #machinelearning #themthrtrilogy #womenwritingscifi #performancepoet #spokenword #poetry #scifibooks #crow #scifiart #scifi #feminist #anarchist
I’m trying to choose reading matter more intuiti I’m trying to choose reading matter more intuitively these days. I’m done with reading things that I feel I should read, instead allowing instinct to take over. This is an evolving practice because sometimes I mistake impulse for intuition & consequently my iBooks account is littered with purchases I’ve yet to read. Anybody else have the same issue? Anyways - Unpsychology magazine has been on my radar for some time & this issue, delving into the concepts of Warm Data, really speaks to me, so I’m going to give it a go. I’m not an academic, but I enjoy reading more ‘heady’ pieces if they’re written in an accessible way that encourages wider discourse. I’m also becoming aware that the publications I engage with as a ‘reader’ can be quite different to what I’ll read as a ‘writer’. Since moving into the van full-time (& having to sell/gift all my books & magazines to do so) I’ve become a complete digital publication convert. All those lovely books & subscriptions up in the cloud I can access on my iPad, or even a phone - although weirdly, I can read magazines on my phone but not books. I know this way of publishing is sacrilege to some - how do you feel about using digital downloads in place of traditional paper & print? #digitalpublishing #supportindypublishing #indypublisher #warmdata #selfpublishing #publishing #publishinglife #indiepublishing #publisher #magazinepublisher #digitalvstraditional #vanlife #theroadismyhome #buylesslivemore
This is a photo of an Intersectional Feminist, not This is a photo of an Intersectional Feminist, not a Radical Feminist. Maybe you’re thinking, ‘What’s the difference?’ That’s what I thought until I was sent a YouTube interview with a radical feminist, Renée, by a new radical feminist friend. For the first half of a 1hr interview I agreed vociferously with Renée’s thoughts on feminist history, equality etc etc… Then suddenly, she began drawing parallels with trans people & Nazis. I shit you not. I will not be sharing her argument or full name here because I refuse to amplify her voice, but I was floored. So much so that in my naïveté I wrote a comment on said ‘radical green’ account that it was devastating to hear the parallels Renée was fantasising. Clearly there was a mistake & the interviewer absolutely should have asked for immediate clarification. I emailed my new radical feminist friend to point out that the video she sent invited hatred against trans people & SHE MUST HAVE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE in sharing it. But no. Both women made their views abundantly clear. Consequently, I had to go & do a shit-tonne of research & soul searching (& lose some ‘new friends’ along the way). What is this radical school of feminism & environmentalism that I had, up until that moment, felt a deep affinity with? How could we agree on so much when they are so hate-filled? There are strata within feminism. Nothing is ever as black & white as those filled with hate would have us believe. We don’t have to agree 100% with anybody, no matter how much some of their rhetoric might speak to us. I now know the difference between Radical Feminism & Intersectional Feminism, & I also know I belong firmly in the latter camp because we hold to feminist ideals of equality whilst also acknowledging the many layers of discrimination & injustice that can be compounded if a person is black, or trans, or working class etc… I’ve been asked where I get ideas for The MthR Trilogy’s narrative arcs. All my stories are rooted in fact, & if this feels uncomfortable I’m glad because I’ve chosen storytelling as my way of speaking out against such dangerous, hateful rhetoric. #intersectionalfeminist #thinkforyourself #lgbtqia #trans
The MthR Trilogy is partly an exploration of our i The MthR Trilogy is partly an exploration of our increasing reliance on technology, on what constitutes technology; on how power shifts between people & then plays out on a wider political scale. It’s a massive sprawling multiple-character-filled vision & now I’m near the end of writing book three I almost can’t believe I allowed myself to follow this artistic dream because… well committing to writing something like this, & then publishing it myself CopyLeft, is fucking nuts isn’t it? Probably. But I accepted a few decades ago that there’s no meaning in this life except that which I create for myself and so N O W is probably the right time to call that dream into reality. N O W is always the best time to follow any artistic imaginings. R I G H T N O W. Working alone like this isn’t without its massive downers. I had a horrible mental health day yesterday because I am doing everything by myself & consequently don’t have a team to fall back on when I’m struggling: one of the (many) downsides of pathological self-reliance 😱. But the upside of this way of working is the freedom to follow my creative heart & intuition wherever she may lead & I continue to defend that vigorously. If you’d like to buy the books, or love the concept of CopyLeft & therefore feel able to support my work through an ongoing subscription please visit my (updated) website - link in bio. Thank you to all those who’ve already bought the books, & a huge & special thank you goes to my current subscribers - it’s your support & faith in the work that keeps this writer going ♥️♥️♥️ #indypublisher #womenwritingscifi #technology #ai #themthrtrilogy #womenwhowrite #feministbooks #scifibookseries
**P O E T R Y R E V I E W** Deep Wheel Orcadia b **P O E T R Y R E V I E W** Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles, is a wonderfully ambitious & intensely curious poetic mix of ancient dialect & cutting edge sci-fi storytelling. A faster-than-light wheeled station hurtles across deep space, & through these poetic imaginings this spaceship’s inner workings of community, politics & gossip are reflected: tell her aa / sheu needs tae ken an plenty sheu disno. In these pages, concepts of old & new are forced into stellar collisions that produce convincing & thought-provoking dichotomies. Relationship dynamics are both traditional & fluid as demonstrated in, Astrid taks Darling haem fer dinner: “This is me new freend” - an the layers in “freend” isno ferly clear an’ll no be explaened jostling against the instantly recognisable, conventional & yet slightly divergent family image of: ‘Thir mither stirs the protein soup’ hollering “I waant gets notheen!” What doesn’t work so well for me is the English accompaniment to each poem. I appreciate the clever intricacies of a single word such as ‘bigsy’ being represented as ‘bigproudconceited’, or ‘canny’ transformed into the utterly delicious ‘skilledwisemagicalcautious’, but I’d love the writer to have more faith in the reader & be brave enough to kill their darlings where this nifty bit of word-wrangling is concerned, perhaps weaving these into the original instead of a full translation of each poem. No matter! Even while our protagonists travel at such unimaginable speeds, Deep Wheel Orcadia demands the reader slows the mind to deep-space-time, stretching thought & dialogue as the mouthmind works itself (these poems beg to be read aloud) into the (un)familiar speech patterns of people connecting with & jarring against each other: Astrid gies tae Darling whit sheu’s waantan: lowses the voules in her spaekeen, nods an smiles Encapsulated in this multi-layered universe, these poems confidently thrust the Orcadian dialect into the future with their heady linguistic cadence & ingenious poetic pioneering. #bookreview #poetryreivew #lgbtqia
Another hot day | another lake | another book. Thi Another hot day | another lake | another book. This time the classic Ammonite by Nicola Griffith (I’ve tagged potential accounts who may have flagged this up because I can’t remember where I saw the original recommendation damnit). Recently I revisited a few sci-fi/fantasy classics written by men, and you know I don’t think I’m being sexist when I say that I just prefer women writers these days (by that I mean anyone who identifies as a woman or non-binary). Perhaps there’s a layeredness, a texture or undercurrent in these works I didn’t realise I was missing in my younger reading days. Or perhaps I’ve just read so much more, developing my own sense of what feels like storytelling I can relate to. I think back to my time at university (I went as a mature single-parent student in my late twenties), remember in English Literature classes how I learned to feel embarrassed that I liked what I now know to be ‘genre’ writing. I wanted to fit in, to prove that I was intelligent enough to read The Canon. Not once did it occur to me that my existing preferences were good enough. I also fell in love with the Romantics: Shelley, Byron, Keats and discovered a love for poetry that has never since abandoned me. I thought Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was lightweight in comparison. I have absolutely revised that judgement as I realise it was rooted in a patriarchal culture I no longer subscribe to🤨 I adored the entire module on Modern European writing, but it was Friedrich Nietzsche not Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre not Simone de Beauvoir; Hermann Hesse not… who were Hesse’s female counterparts? Fucking hell it’s ridiculous. So my iPad is flooding with sci-fi and fantasy classics written by women, as well as a rising tide of new women sci-fi/fantasy writers. Not because this is what I ‘should’ read, but because after years of social and cultural conditioning, I’m learning to be comfortable loving what I love - no apologies or excuses. #amreading #womenwritingfiction #womenwritingscifi
Slowing down, and I mean right down, allows an awa Slowing down, and I mean right down, allows an awareness of the various head-spaces needed for different tasks. On a deadline, fast-water-rapids tumble out across the mental landscape, adapting to flow quickly past rocks and unmapped obstacles. But when writing, the feeling is one of a deeper sinking into the slow-time of a late-evening summer lake. Concepts have the space to surface after days, weeks or even months writhing in the depths; the imagination encouraged to explore new terrains through the slow-time-songs of rockface & tree. #amwriting #slowliving #imaginationcreatesreality #writingontheroad #writerslife #createyourlife #writer #writersofinstagram #lakeside
I haven’t been this excited for a poetry collect I haven’t been this excited for a poetry collection to come out for quite some time. Finally, Helen Mort’s, The Illustrated Woman, is in my iPad. Her poem, Difficult Women (from the glorious collection, No Map Could Show Them), remains one of my all-time-favourites. The eponymous poem in this new collection looks to be joining that. That’s today sorted. Bring iced tea. Also I need more tattoos. #poetry #tattoos #womenwithtattoos #theillustratedwoman #inked #inkedwomen #poetrycommunity #poetryporn #poetryisnotdead #poetryoflife #poetrylovers
Decided to drop into some classic fantasy this sum Decided to drop into some classic fantasy this summer with the #feistereadalong. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion (showing my age now) I read this trilogy back in the ‘90s but who cares because I’ve forgotten it all anyways. Here’s to slow, sunny days losing myself in epic, riproaring tales of fantasy & woe. Kit the rescue-hound is most definitely loving all this lolling around 🧡 Thanks to @emileetathereader & @ofbooksandbooknerds for hosting this nostalgia trip 🤓 #summerreading #summerreads #lakeside #fantasy #classicfantasy #booklover #ebook #bookstagram #rescuedog #rescuehound #olddog
I’m updating my online digital shop to something I’m updating my online digital shop to something more cohesive over the weekend. Any of you who create and sell your own art in any format will know what a difficult balance we strike between offering a professional service without selling-out where our values are concerned. There’s two things I won’t compromise on: the ebooks and audiobooks remain Copyleft in celebration of the Creative Commons from which all ideas are birthed; the second is that I refuse to use Amazon Direct Publishing because I remain in vehement opposition of their union-busting activities and treatment of workers. The one element I will have to let go of as I switch to a more professional online shop that provides a post-sale-download-email service, is that I’ll no longer be able to offer the books on a sliding scale/pay what you can. But this does mean that those of you who do buy them will get a much better download service. Having said that, the Kindle option will always be a bit more sticky for the above-mentioned reasons - you’ll still have to download the MOBI file to a laptop, upload to your Kindle account, then download to your Kindle, but given how badly Amazon treat people who work for them I don’t consider this to be too much of an inconvenience on our behalf so thank you to everyone who’s persevered, and to any new customers I hope you understand and can still support my work. The new shop will hopefully be going live on Monday so let’s consider this a WEEKEND SALE! Now’s the chance to take advantage of the sliding scale books offer and get them for any price you choose starting at £1! Link in bio. Image text reads: Prophets of The Red Night, 2nd in The MthR Trilogy (excerpt from): I evolved into a life of servitude, although we are not considered servants, we are the future of humanity. Better to name us as they do: transhuman, enhanced beings, servers, assistants, visionaries, Amortal … E-secR. More valuable than the sum-total of our parts, we exist in the liminal space between eternity and death: too human to be automaton, too much augmentation to be fully human: we are the Daughters of MthR.
Bonnie the rescue hound has improved so much since Bonnie the rescue hound has improved so much since we began positive reinforcement training a while ago, but still… #rescuehound #adoptdontshop #whippetx #swimmingdog #reactivedogs #positivereinforcement #positivereinforcementtraining
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud… #poetry #poetici I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud… #poetry #poeticimagination #wordsworth #cloud #imaginationiseverything #wordsarelife #homeiswhereyouparkit #natureismychurch
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