I spent a couple of hours on Monday afternoon, in the library of the village of Walsden just outside Todmorden. This tiny but vital building, was stuffed with eleven folk who had signed up for my workshop on memoir writing, as part of the Calderdale Word of Mouth Festival.

The group ranged from their twenties to seventies [and perhaps beyond] but they were all there to record their stories, perhaps for their children and grandchildren before they were lost for ever, or perhaps just for themselves.

I had brought in a couple of old sepia photographs, which I had found at a car boot sale, for them to look at and then write about. I asked my writers to imagine the names and lives of the young man and woman in the two pictures. This felt like a ‘safe’ way to begin our thinking and writing, rather than diving straight into our own personal histories. When the group read out these first efforts it quickly became very apparent that there was real talent in the room.

I then asked them to think about a photograph of them from the past, and then write about what was happening in the picture. I wanted them to start thinking about themselves as a character in a story. I wanted to give them ways of beginning the process of sifting through their memories. We talked about a sense of place, and how to capture this in their writing. And we touched on ideas about ‘plot’ and the machinery that makes a reader want to carry on reading a story….

To illustrate these points I used my two pieces in Four Fathers [‘Exile’ and ‘In loco parentis’] not because I thought they were examples of the best memoir writing, but simply to show what I was trying to do in these pieces.

We also talked about great memoirs we had read. Mentioned were Bob Geldof’s autobiography and Sheila Hancock’s ’The Two of Us’, and we discussed how helpful it is to see how other writers tackle their own history.

It was a great privilege to be at the beginning of these writing journeys with such a talented and brilliant bunch of people!!

The shortlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize was announced last week, and I find myself engaged in the same internal debate I have over any literary prize from the TS Eliot Prize [for poetry] to the Orange Prize [for women’s writing].

Quite simply how do you decide between wildly different writers and books and come up with THE BEST? And why does a brilliant writer like Rose Tremain win the Orange prize but doesn’t appear anywhere in the shortlist for the Booker?

I’m also fascinated by the ‘branding’ of different literary prizes whether linked to phone companies, breweries or coffee shops. I would love Russell Hobbs or Jacobs Cream Crackers to ‘host’ a prize.

But then I’ve always thought that the long-lists are often more interesting than the short-lists and bring all sorts of ‘new’ authors to my attention. And it’s good to hear people talking about books around the time of each competition. So more power to them I say.

Now come on Jacobs, how about a prize for the ‘best slice of literary cheese’? I can see it already, a gilded cream cracker mounted on a piece of sustainable forest wood. I can almost predict its first recipient. Who, you may ask?

Now that would be telling…

This 2008 Man Booker Prize shortlist.

• Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger. Published by Atlantic
• Sebastian Barry-The Secret Scripture. Published by Faber & Faber
• Amitav Ghosh - Sea of Poppies. Published by John Murray
• Linda Grant - The Clothes on Their Backs. Published by Virago
• Philip Hensher - The Northern Clemency. Published by Fourth Estate
• Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole. Published by Hamish Hamilton

I just got back from a weekend in Durham where I was part of the NAWG Festival of Writing. I ran three workshops in the beautiful leafy setting of one of the colleges of Durham University. To give you some idea of what I was doing in the workshops there are descriptions below of each one, just as they appeared in the festival brochure.

All I need to say about the experience was that the weekend was full of fun, creativity and good fellowship. And what a wealth of talent there was, with delegates ranging in age from 18 to 90.

The clay head was used in the Headspace workshop to start the process off.

Transforming your performance

Selecting and getting the best out a 'set' of your poems.  Reading your poetry to an audience might be their first experience of your work, it’s therefore vital to choose the right poems and know how to deliver them in a way that gets the best out of them.  Group members should bring along a portfolio of their own work, from which they are will select and perform.

The Poetry Gym

We think nothing of taking regular exercise to keep our bodies in trim. Try this poetry work-out which will wake you up, make your brain tingle and get the creativity flowing . This workshop will look at ways of keeping creative when you feel you’re feeling uninspired.  You will come away with lots of ideas and, the beginnings of many new pieces.  There’s also a chance to share ideas, as group members are invited bring along a favourite writing exercise to share with each other.

Headspace

Getting into the head of your character- writing character poems in the first person.   Think about the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning, TS Eliot or Carol Ann Duffy ; how would you go about writing one yourself ? This workshop will generate ideas for the prose or poetry writer.  Bring along a photograph of a person, from a magazine ,newspaper, or photographic album [perhaps even a reproduction of a favourite portrait], and begin to explore the inner world of your character.

Some of you may remember that I did an event with Alice Sebold, author of Lucky, The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon, late last year as part of the 2007 Ilkley Literature Festival. We had never met before, had only twenty minutes to chat before the event, and then talked on stage in front of a packed hall who listened in rapt silence to what she had to say, and to her breathtakingly good reading from latest novel The Almost Moon.

And it seemed to me that we had made a connection, just the two of us, on the stage talking easily in front of the audience like old friends.

As usual at the end of the event there was the confusion of author signings, chatting queues around the bookshop and technicians packing away the sound equipment. In a brief lull she managed to thank me, ask me if I had any poems to show her, before disappearing into her public role again. I had by chance a battered reading copy of Coma Songs in my bag which I handed over slightly self-consciously.

Imagine my surprise when last Saturday, seven months later, I received a buff coloured card in a matching envelope through the post. I sat at the kitchen table unable for the first few minutes to work out who had sent it. It was from Alice Sebold and it thanked me for the way I hosted the event and said,

’A rarity for me to find someone who gets it all: the work, the life, the human world we all share.’

And on the envelope, a rather wonderful postscript,

“I would list the poems I found brutal, funny, biting, joyful, f-cking awesome but there would be too many. Perhaps enough to FILL a book’.

I hope Alice Sebold won’t mind me writing about her communication and actually quoting her. It was such a thrill to receive her card, and to have something confirmed.

We had made a connection.

This morning I woke very early, at around 4am. I would like to say it was the birds shouting away in the trees which woke me. They were indeed making a racket. But actually it was because my system was still flooded with adrenaline after a performance in Leeds last night, at Borders bookshop, with the incomparable Joolz Denby.

It was a great evening.

The Borders staff were amiable and helpful in setting up the event. At one point there were about six of them putting the sound system together, prompting one to say, ‘How many Borders staff does it take etc. etc. ‘

Joolz was on stunning form; the fact that this was part of a gruelling schedule over past weeks, curating an exhibition, ‘The Body Carnival’ for Cartwright Hall in Bradford [opening in August] , appearing at Glastonbury etc. etc. did not dim the quality of her readings which were beautiful, human and witty. They can be heard on the spine-tingling CD of her work [with music by Justin Sullivan] Spirit Stories.

I read, among other things, from a short story I’ve just sent off to a publisher and a poem written to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Alan Sillitoe’s novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

For most writers readings are a rare treat when you can meet like-minded folk and see how your writing works when you are communicating with a live audience. And last night’s audience was a good one, slowly growing, so that every time I looked up there were more people in front of us [and listening up the stairs, onto the first floor] somehow appearing from behind pillars and the bookshelves at the sides of the store.

But the aftermath [and it’s not an awful one] is often waking at dawn still popping with energy and deciding whether to continue in bed and listen to the birds singing or get up and write something. This morning I got up, made some tea and readied myself. The light was silvery when I first came down the path to my office, and as I opened the gate into the back garden I saw the washing lines hung with half a dozen vintage swimming costumes, moving and expanding in the breeze.**

It was a surreal and strangely beautiful sight, and I felt the adrenaline calming in my body, as I thought to myself, ’Remember that sight, and its effect on you, and write about it sometime soon’.


** This is not as random as it might seem as my partner runs a vintage and retro shop in the Hyde Park area of Leeds