Being a Man Writing About Women’s Books

Diane Shipley asked us last week whether we would consider spending a year reading only books by women. The Year of Reading Women project has become a huge talking point, yet the Vida statistics show that in the accustomed snafu little progress has been made in balancing the media’s gendered coverage of the literary world.

(the book I’m currently getting excited about – Roz Morris’ literary dystopia, lifeform three)

For me, it is this that represents the real challenge – the representation of books by women in places like this rather than the actual reading of them. Putting the focus onto reading seems like a rather handy arrogation of responsibility on the media’s part.

I very much believe that where we find discursive barriers we should make ourselves into bulldozers. I have always tried, as a literary organiser and promoter, to create shows and programmes that go beyond the gender-imbalanced norms. On the other hand, the Vida statistics show not only the lack of representation of women’s books, but the lack of women in the media doing the writing about those books.

So, as a male commentator, I feel a natural conflict. Is it my place to write about books by women? Or is it my place to insist I am removed from public spaces and my place taken by a female commentator? I am very aware of the difficult position of “ally” in modern intersectional thought on diversity in all areas (and I’m extremely grateful to the author Christina Springer for sharing this great article. My own experience of being “on the receiving end” of allies comes in the sphere of mental health where I frequently come across organisations box-ticking their engagement duties by enlisting spokespeople to explain things on behalf of those of us who have mental health disabilities. I feel the bristle as they open their mouths and utter something that bears no relation at all to my experience yet leaves everyone seemingly contented that I have been duly “represented” with the result that I’m silenced twice over – by my “ally” and by the fact that their intervention means the space for further discourse is now closed. So I know that whenever I open my keyboard to tap out words on the matter of women in literature I am, at least in some part, not ameliorating but becoming part of the problem.

(the last book I read that I loved, Desecration by Joanna Penn)

So do I stay silent, or do I speak, or do I just shimmy round the subject and stick to the safer ground of writing about the things I’m expected to write about? The last of these is a non-starter. Experience tells me it’s a simple matter of taste that I prefer books written by women. It would be strange to write about books and omit so many those I love best in the spheres I write about most – the poetry of Vanessa Kisuule, Claire Trevien and Adelle Stripe, the literary fiction of Banana Yoshimoto and Elfriede Jelinek, the self-published surrealities of Lucy Furlong, Penny Goring, and Anna Fennel Hughes, the inspirational blogs and books of Viv Tuffnell, everything to do with the wonderful website For Books’ Sake.

(the brilliant poet, Claire Trevien, with whom I’ll be performing at this year’s Chipping Norton Literary Festival)

What I have done hitherto has been simply to reflect my tastes in my commentaries. I have promoted works I truly believe in by writers I love. I have talked about those works that provide taking off points for the themes and questions that matter to me. I have put on shows featuring performers whose words and style I love.

But Diane’s post has foregrounded a feeling that was always there, an inkling nudging me annoyingly in the shoulder going “oi, oi” and shrugging an “oh you know” every time I dare to shout “What?!” The feeling that I’m doing something political, and that it doesn’t always leave my mouth tasting of honey.

I have always known that what I speak about is political. It’s a choice. A choice made in a highly charged context of cultural discourse. It couldn’t not be political. And yet I have always sided myself loudly and overtly with those marginalised by mental health issues and let that whisper me sweet reassurances that I was doing it OK because mental health disability is an outsiderdom I’m firmly inside.

It’s comforting to construct these narratives for ourselves. If we close our eyes and listen to them (a telling metaphor in all its resonances) we can almost pretend intersectionality doesn’t exist. And yet it does. I am spoken for by those who silence my disability, and yet when I do speak I do so as a white male. When I write about women’s writing, I speak for them as those I resent speak for me. I can no longer pretend to myself that I’m just doing “good politics” and neatly avoiding “bad politics.”

So what’s the answer? I’m sure many readers will be wondering “what, you mean there’s a question?” Questions of intersectionality and allyship usually raise those responses. And they make the first part of my answer simple – if, next time an article like this appears, more people are at least aware that there’s a problem when men write well-meaningly about women and fewer people shrug “what problem?” then I’ll have done something right.

(Anna Percy, the brilliant poet who co-runs with Rebecca Audra Smith and Sara Ellis Stirred Poetry, Manchester’s fabulous night of pro-women inclusive spoken word)

The real answer, I think, is that just as it is impossible to speak unpolitically so it is impossible to speak from a position that is beyond reproach. We all speak from a privileged position of some kind. Our words will always exert power over someone, muffle the voice of someone. So the answer is not silence, or we would all be silenced. And the answer is not good intentions. Good intentions neither affect power networks nor the impact of our words. As much of an answer as I can give is to be as aware as possible of where we stand in these incalculably complex networks, to make way wherever possible for those voices our own voice silences, to acknowledge those voices that have shaped our own, and to create channels where we can for those voices to speak and be heard. Most of all I think the answer is for us not to believe we have the answer but to listen and learn to have the many possible answers spoken by those in a position to give.

I welcome any suggestions as to further answers to the issues raised. I also welcome any women writers whose works would interest readers of this blog to talk about them here.

Manifesto

I have been a fan of manifestos for a long time. I had one here for a long time, and I have one over at eight cuts gallery. The past year I have been thinking and writing more and more about the importance of being clear what you stand for as a writer, and last week emphasised the importance of being able to express that in a single sentence, a crie de coeur. That is not a manifesto, nor is a longer, more thought out and controlled piece of prose such as a mission statement.

(Vanessa Kisuule)

I was brought back to the importance of manifestos specifically by Vanessa Kisuule’s recent and excellent Malleable Personal Manifesto. As well as being excellent reading in itself, the title perfectly illustrates what is special about manifestos. They are not for everyone – though unlike a mission statement which tends to be wholly personal, they can define movements, umbrellas, common aims and means – and they can change over time. The same way your sentence to create by captures a horizon, a fixed path by which to walk,  manifestos capture moments, urgencies, lacks, desires, failings in the cultural fabric and voices gasping for air.

All of which makes the presentation of a manifesto problematic. Whilst a mission statement is a fully syntactic explication of a position, and a crie de coeur a declarative, what for should a manifesto take? Should there be space for both of these styles? Does that leave the manifesto as a strange hybrid rather than a thing in itself? Does it, more to the point, miss the malleability and personality Vanessa alludes to? An alternative is the pledge, whereby a series of declaratives is given syntactic fullness through the prefix “I shall”/”I aspire to”… whilst at the same time eliding into the declarative to give you a fulls ense of purpose. The expanded pledge would then explicate the declarations, the pledges, explaining why each is important, and how it is to be enacted. That makes the conveyance of an underlying philosophy clearer. At the same time, clarifying the underlying philosophy may not be the purpose of a manifesto, whose ad hoc, even ad hominem, status may require it simply to hold together as a woven fabric that finds its rationale in its coherence and its being acted out, whilst the philosophy remains implicit, feeding itself through action into the actor’s consciousness. Or again, it may simply be the environmentally specific outworking of the crie de coeur, and the evolvomg manifestos a guide therefore to the changing conditions in whch an artist finds themselves over time, though this must be used in turn to question the artist’s own susceptibility to change, so that artist and manifesto-history become a pair of hermeneutic mirrors held each to the other?

The hive mind of Facebook offered some interesting insights. What came through clearest was the idea of exaggeration, the notion that a manifesto should be overreaching, whereas a mission statement should be realistic. I am a great believer in the importance of aspiring to the impossible, so this is an appealing distinction. On the other hand the whiff of Nietzsche, of the overweening ego and the forceful injection of the artist into discourse through posturing rather than their work makes me nervous. The manifesto as brand, mask, costume, whatever is a notion at once resonant of the times and deeply unattractive. Vanessa, with whom we began, iterates her discomfort with prescription at every turn, preferring to speak of reflactions and ponderings, and that is a manifesto, as oit were, for the making of manifestos, with which I am much more comfortable. Identity is a concept that is less of the zeitgeist in art than brand, but one that is more organic and which allows the manifesto to contribute its part to an organic whole whose deep structure is provided always by the work.

It feels like these musings are full of questions, and very few answers. Maybe that’s how it should be. Manifestos are yours to make, and make them I would encourage you to do. A certain amount of introspection about your work is a good thing, but not too much. For me a manifesto should look outward too. It should be an invitation, a leaving of the door open and a statement to the world that you will not join it on its terms but will define your own, and that you cordially invite others to join you as fellow travellers whilst you recognise that their association is loose and voluntary and not an arrogation of their own autonomy.

Tomorrow, the results of all these musings. In the meanwhile, tell me your manifesto, or your favourite manifestos, or why you think they are simply abstract posturing.

Night of Celebration Proves The Media’s Woeful Coverage of the Literary Underground is Cheating Readers

As over a hundred members of the UK’s literary underground celebrated their finest in a heaving London basement, the extent of the gap between a key part of the literary landscape that is not just vibrant, colourful and engaged but immensely talented and the public portrayal of literature in Britain today was both evident and increasingly hard to justify.

The Saboteur Awards, hosted by Sabotage Reviews and compered jointly by its founder Claire Trévien and co-editors James Webster and Richard Watson, celebrate “the ephemeral” in literature. What that means in practice is spoken word, and poetry, novellas, mixed media collections, and anthologies that are both self-published and produced on a shoestring by small presses who each, like species of Alpine plants thriving in a solitary rugged nook, perfectly exploit a tiny niche. Yet this is not a tiny, isolated fringe engaged in lovable amateurism, nor one confined to the Shoreditch surroundings of the night’s venue. Among the winners were Overheard, an anthology of oral storytelling from Salt, and Estuary, an art and poetry book whose editor had flown in from Luxembourg for the event. And the winners had been decided from shortlists on which votes had been cast in their thousands. The UK literary underground has a reach that is both geographically and numerically wide, and reaches its tentacles up into the underbelly of the mainstream.

As always, passion was at the heart of the evening, and a crowd that witnessed bravura performances from winners that ranged from Tim Wells, long-time champion of switched on working class rhyme, to surrealist hipster darling Luke Kennard and lyrical firebrand Vanessa Kisuule will wake up with one hell of a collective sore throat. But, heedless of Oscar Wilde’s warnings of the dangers of passion, the clearest thing of all is just how substantial, rich, and nuanced is the talent that produces it. And how, contrary to comment-fuelled gossip, this is a scene that will seek out and welcome not “its own” whatever that might be but genuine talent. It is a scene as happy to award a publisher as mainstream as Salt with Best Fiction Anthology, and to recognise an event as high profile as Poetry Parnassus, which finished runner-up in Best One-Off Poetry Event, as it is to award Best Regular Spoken Word Show to the dearly loved Bang Said The Gun.

Standouts amongst the talent went to the three top poetry awards. Charlotte Newman’s Selected Poems, published as part of a beautifully-branded series in pocket-sized format by Annexe Books, won Best Poetry Collection for its richly-referenced and lyrical social realism. In Bloodwork, her elevation of the forgotten to the sublime (in a manner reminiscent of Goddard’s Hail Mary, a film she plays with in a bravura opening poem redolent with sadness and French cinema) runs seamlessly from Bible to Fairytale whilst never letting her playfulness run away from her message:

“this Sodom’s lot’s a Deuteronomy of infra-

Red. That said the wife

Shall prick her finger on a spinning wheel and meet

The beat behind the bloodlust”

The blend of social realism and lyricality reached its peak in Martin Figura’s The Vineyard Boys, a beautifully told tale of teenage aimlessness in the mould of Shane meadows at his finest, from Whistle, winner Best Show. But the dazzling highlight of the night was Best Spoken Word Performer Vanessa Kisuule’s Even Now, a brutal poem about the cowardice of hiding in crowds. What makes Kisuule, whom I have found myself calling the most exciting writer in the UK twice already this year and now a third time, so special is that her impassioned personable delivery draws you effortlessly into places you would never otherwise go. Like a Beatrice she leads you through a post-apocalyptic landscape of the postcolonial and socially broken, gently but knowledgeable pointing out each tiny at of devastation on the way, and never shying away, as in this poem, from turning the harshest critical light of all on herself.

Relevant is a word that is often used disparagingly of the underground. As is engaging. But here was a night filled with both in a way that was neither self-absorbed nor shallow, but driven by the twin desire for genuine change and artistic excellence. And that elevates much of the work on show to the level of genuine importance. The winner of Best One-Off Event, pipping Poetry Parnassus, was a wonderful example of this. Shake the Dust is a project that united the literary community in bringing poetry to Britain’s youth. Yes, out of an awareness of its social importance. Yes, in a way that engaged and conscientised participants. But more than that, in a way that not only polished unique hidden voices until they sang, and then set them singing together as illustrated in the beautiful collaboration we witnessed between Slambassador champion Charlotte Higgins and Barbican Young Poet Kareem Parkins-Brown. And Best Poetry Anthology went to English PEN backed project Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot, a project that united poets behind a very different political project, and whose acceptance speech had the audience reciting a poem written for the anthology by Ali Smith and translated into Russian.

The venue, The Book Club in Leonard Street, also hosted a book fair for the night, and here again the diversity, quality, and devotion to both quality and the needs of the audience were in evidence everywhere. There were longstanding publishers who have gained critical acclaim, such as champions of experimental poetry Penned in the Margins, who won Best Innovative Publisher. And there were newcomers who have found and brilliantly pursued their niche, such as Burning Eye Books, who have started publishing the UK’s finest performance poets and 79 rat press who bring the conceptual and confessional aesthetic of the art world to poetry. From the pocket books of Annexe to the exquisite blend of 50s look and Teenies content of Carmina Masoliver these are presses whose ambition is not one of scale but of delivering the very best of what they want to an audience they value deeply.

This may sound like an apology piece – the literary underground isn’t what its critics say, it’s better than that. In a way, that’s inevitable. But I hope it also contains an apology for those apologetics, because every single piece of talent on show at the Saboteur Awards had no case to make for its inclusion there, or in the larger public consciousness, other than its own excellence. I can only hope it isn’t another year, or that it doesn’t take another event like Kate Tempest winning the Ted Hughes Prize, before the media are talking again about the glorious, diverse, rich and inspiring world of spoken word, self-publishing and small presses.