Literature as Play

As far as I can make out there is only one rule to the game of literature that we can say with any degree of certainty. That rule is play.

Play consists of saying much without really saying anything. It is not the job of poetry to clarify. Poetry should suggest and ambiguate. To play with words, to juggle with concepts and ideas is the business of the poet. And freedom is the condition necessary for this kind of activity to flourish.

This is not to say that literature can’t have a message. Only that the message be conveyed in a way that isn’t direct or obvious. And that that message not be the only message.

All good literature is an interplay of light and dark.

Play is omnipresent in our language, in the way we communicate on a daily basis. We don’t always talk in a clear, transparent way. We suggest, allude and insinuate. They say this notion of play is at the heart of our Post-Modern society and culture, but the truth is it has been with us since the beginning of language and certainly since the beginning of literature.

Probably the best examples of literary play are in dramatic works, hence the name ‘play’. The best plays are those that don’t have a direct message. This is the difference between literature and propaganda. It is fascinating to witness how the drama works itself out. The dramatic work of Samuel Beckett is probably the best example of pure play there is. Waiting for Godot is an astonishing achievement of pure dramatic play: a play without any message at all.

Why is drama the best literary form for playing in? It is because drama mimics our own everyday speech. Our monologues and dialogues. And, as we have already pointed out, play is inherent in our language and the way we communicate. It is part of the human condition and the human condition is every poet’s concern.

There are rules to every game. These rules change over time. All except that one essential governing principle: to play. Once you start playing, you are on the road to making good poetry.

A Serious Business: Advice for Budding Poets

Every now and then I write poems.

I used to write a lot of them when I was a younger man. Many young people do. I was lucky enough to find a friend who read them and encouraged me. Someone whose opinion, as a writer, I respected. I renewed my efforts a few years ago, when I joined a writer’s group and found, again, a friend who reads the work and encourages and supports me. This is a piece of advice I would like to give to budding poets: if you are serious about it, don’t be shy. Find readers and ask for feedback. Especially people who love poetry and maybe write it themselves. As a writer, you must expose yourself. Get used to it!

It also helps if you are a music lover. Poetry has rhythms and sounds that make it musical. These rhythms and sounds are almost completely instinctual and intuitive. Or at least they are for me. Pater said, ‘all art aspires to the condition of music’ and I believe that poetry is the art that is closest to it. When I was first writing poems I would listen to music or just have it on in the background. Somehow, it got me into the right place. Try it! It worked for me and it might work for you.

Another piece of advice I would offer is don’t be afraid to go to the edge. By this, I mean you must obsess over every line, every word until you get it right. It is a form of madness. It’s like having your mind in a washing machine: your thoughts are spinning round and round and round until you are close to getting it right. Of course, you will never be 100% happy with it, so know when to stop too.

Another piece of advice that most poets would give you is to read as much poetry as you can. It’s the only way to learn. If you don’t like to read serious poetry, if you don’t enjoy the works of great poets then don’t even try. Maybe you are only writing for yourself – nothing wrong with that. But if you have literary aspirations you must immerse yourself in poetry. It is a serious business. As Seamus Heaney said, poetry can’t change the world but it can change how people understand the world.

My final piece of advice would be to work hard at getting your poetry out there. Don’t just sit there waiting for something to happen. Enter competitions, submit to journals and magazines, go to workshops and events, make friends and contacts and, of course, submit to publishers. No excuses. There is always something you can be doing to get your poems read and heard.

I wouldn’t call myself a poet but enough people have liked my poems on this blog to prompt me to write something about it. I hope this post will help anyone thinking of taking up the pen. If you have the talent, the luck and you work hard enough it will happen. It requires some patience but it will happen.

Know Thyself: The Autobiographical Nature of Writing

Someone once said that all writing is autobiographical. I tend to agree with this. When we write, in any field, what else do we have to go on but our own knowledge and experience of the world? What else can you put into your writing other than yourself? No matter how hard you try to keep it remote from your own experience, all you are ever doing is writing about yourself. It’s inescapable.

This might seem negative and limiting but, looked at in the right way, it is actually liberating. Writing is often seen as therapeutic because it makes us more aware of feelings and thoughts that were buried or half buried in the sub conscious. If you dig hard enough you will get to this layer. Greater self-awareness can only be a positive thing in your life as it leads to a better understanding of your wants and needs. It helps us to see where we are going wrong and puts us on the road to a happier, more full life. The ancient Greeks knew this. One of their favourite sayings was, simply, ‘know thyself’.

An awareness of the autobiographical nature of writing leads us to an appreciation of how important it is for writers to seek out new experiences and gain fresh knowledge and understanding. The more experience you have the better for your writing. This doesn’t necessarily mean travelling around the globe or joining the French Foreign Legion. One of the things that sets a writer apart from the rest of society is a greater capacity for thought and feeling and a heightened sensitivity to the world so that he/she will get more out of an experience than a ‘normal’ person would. This is why Franz Kafka was able to write such great literature – the richness of his inner life allowed it. And there are many other writers that fall into this category. By inner life I mean thoughts, feelings but also, of course, imagination. Imagination is another power that is uniquely yours. It is a treasure trove for any writer or any person who wants to live a fuller life. Of course, there are also writers who have lived apparently full lives – men of action such as Ernest Hemingway, and this also contributes to great writing. The lesson is never to give up the quest for fresh knowledge and new experiences and become a more powerful writer through greater self-awareness. Self-awareness will give your writing more layers and depth. It gives you more command over what you are writing and this can only be a good thing. So, if you are writing just for therapy or you are aiming for something more literary or both, don’t be afraid of what you learn about yourself. Make it work for you both in your life and in your writing.

Why You Should Read Alan Moore!

Hello all! Apologies for neglecting the site for so long. It’s been a busy year for me. In fact, it’s been one of the busiest and best years of my life so far. I’m aware that it’s not been the best of years for the world in general, what with Brexit, Donald Trump’s election to the Whitehouse and so many greats dying on us. After Trump’s victory, it occurred to me: what would Alan Moore make of what’s happening in the world today?

If you don’t know Alan Moore, you should! He’s one of the greatest writers of popular fiction in the world today. He writes comic books. Intelligent comic books. Real intelligent comic books. You might have heard of the graphic novel, Watchmen? Yes, he’s the guy who wrote it. Anyway, after Trump’s election Moore came to mind. He is outspoken and extremely articulate, and these qualities, together with the man’s great intelligence, make me want to defer to him. Politically he’s an anarchist. He despises racism. These things are evident in his writing. But I won’t try to guess what Alan Moore would say about the state of the world today. What I would like to do is talk a bit about his comic books.

Why do I enjoy reading Alan Moore’s comics so much? I’ve already mentioned their intelligence. Watchmen brought a new level of realism, especially psychological realism, to comic books but at the same time it is incredibly well structured. People often compare it to Citizen Kane but it is also like Joyce’s Ulysses. Much of Moore’s work is obsessed with form and is densely allusive, just like Joyce’s masterpiece. Watchmen is like one great mechanical watch: everything is connected. It is a true masterpiece of popular literature.

In most of Moore’s work there is a sense of something going on in the background. Something hard to grasp. Again, like Joyce. Such is his intelligence. But he also knows how to tell a story, how to entertain, how to take us on a journey. My favourite aspect of Moore’s art is his dialogue. His command of dialogue puts him almost into a league of his own as far as comics go. The only other writer to come close to him is Neil Gaiman. Moore’s characters are very articulate but also very real. They are not just mouth pieces for his personal views. The dialogue is just so fresh. It is always so fresh! When I open an Alan Moore comic book it’s like opening a door to let fresh air come in. As mentioned earlier, Moore’s political views can be easily discerned in his work. He is adamant that art should have a message. That it should be involved in the world, not set apart from it as pure escapism. And yet his characters are so real and convincing. He doesn’t allow his work to become propaganda. In this sense, he is a true artist.

Another quality is that he never repeats himself. Repetition is the enemy of true art. The artist should always be breaking through – finding different things to say and different ways to say them. Moore constantly plays around and experiments with the comic book medium. And yet you don’t have to know this to enjoy his stories. Again, there is that sense of something going on in the background. Something that will be grasped only if you read the book more than once.

Finally, Moore’s ability to entertain us is second to none. He doesn’t shy away from extremes of human behaviour, from violence and horror. There is no taboo which has been left unbroken in Moore’s work. He knows what we want and he gives it to us but he also knows what we need and he gives us that too.

Even if you’ve never picked up a comic book in your entire life you should check out Alan Moore. His importance as a writer of popular fiction is undeniable. Try Watchmen or Promethea or From Hell and experience some of his magic. You’re in good hands with Alan Moore.

Writing The Chronicles of Dan Lee O’Brien

The Chronicles of Dan Lee O’Brien was written over a period of four to five months in 2015. It is fair to say that it flowed out of me. Reading it now I’d say the best quality is the dialogue. It seems to capture the rhythms of speech successfully as well as facilitating the discussion of ideas. One of my favourite creators is the film maker Quentin Tarantino. His dialogue is, above all, lucid and intelligent and I’ve tried to emulate that in the Chronicles. However, the writer I am most indebted to is undoubtedly Neil Gaiman. The whole idea of putting gods into a modern context comes from him, especially the Sandman comic and his novel, American Gods.

When writing the book my overall aim was to play with the Irish myths. To make them more fun and accessible. I also wanted to use them to talk about the power of the imagination which is, perhaps, the dominant theme of the stories. I tried to keep the stories clever and humorous and ensure they have a broad appeal. My favourite story is probably Gungnir, as the concept of the story is clever but it also has a strong autobiographical element, so it is close to me.

The character Dan Lee O’Brien came about as I wanted to create a protagonist or anti-hero who was both old fashioned and cool: a pipe smoking, bike riding old man who is a magician and investigator of the supernatural. He is like an older, more laid back John Constantine. I also tried to put in strong female characters, both goddesses and humans. This seems to have paid off as most of the positive feedback I have gotten has come from women.

I also wanted to give people things to think about e.g. the need for imagination to bring about social change, the power of music and the idea of being haunted by ghosts of the past. I tried to put a lot of ideas into the mix to create something complex and multi-faceted.

All books are a journey. I hope those who choose to take the journey with me will find it both entertaining and stimulating.

 

Reflections on the Imagination

For this writer the hardest part of creating is coming up with ideas. Imaginative ideas. It takes up so much mental energy that I have little left for the writing part. But when my energy is restored I find that putting words on paper and giving shape to my thoughts and ideas is a lot easier than that initial imagining. I usually lie down on my bed for the initial imagining stage and it is by far the hardest work you can do whilst lying down on your back. A line from Yeats’ Adam’s Curse comes to mind:

…and yet

Be thought an idler by the noisey set

Of bankers, school masters and clergy men.

The ancient myth about the birth of Athena is typical Greek brilliance, an insight into the nature of the imagination. The myth goes that Athena just popped out of Zeus’ head, suddenly, from out of nowhere. The imagination comes, seemingly, from out of nowhere and therefore it is a mystery on a par with music and wine. That the myth refers to the imagination is perhaps confirmed by the role given to Athena in Homer’s Odyssey. She gives Odysseus ideas for getting out of trouble and getting back to his home on Ithaca. She is like a personification of the imagination. In the poem she is often referred to as ‘the goddess of the flashing eyes’. What could be a better metaphor for the imagination, for the inner eye?

So the imagination is hard work and it is mysterious. All I can add to this is that it is stressful. It seems to come about by mental chafing in the same way that fire is started by rubbing wood against wood. We can bring in another myth here. The myth of Prometheus, who gave the gift of fire to man and was punished for it. Is fire another metaphor for the imagination? For the imagination in all its power and mystery must be the greatest gift that man possesses. All original thought comes from the initial spark of the imagination. Every invention, every great work of art is the offspring of the imagination. All civilisation and progress owes a debt to the imagination.

So the next time you are dreaming with your eyes open, remember that you are not an idler. Or if you are an idler then it is an important idleness. You are partaking in an activity which has lifted humanity to its very summits. You are partaking in something divine. For the writer who must come up with an original idea it is hard work but once it happens and the words begin to cascade and flow no writer will deny that it is worth it.