Tag Archives: creative writing

My Porridge & Cream read… Ian Gouge #books #writerslife

Today I’m delighted to welcome poet and novelist Ian Gouge.  His ‘Porridge & Cream’ read is EM Forster’s A Passage to India.

“My ‘Porridge & Cream’ novel is perhaps an unfashionable choice: EM Forster’s A Passage to India. I first read the novel in 1976 when, having dropped out of school two years earlier, I enrolled at a sixth-form college to study A Levels before going on to take English at university. A Passage to India was one of the set texts, and – along with Auden and Yeats – responsible for kindling my love of literature.

Ian Gouge

Ian’s copy of ‘A Passage to India’ by EM Forster

“I don’t re-read it that often, although I have done so this year – and, to be frank, was a little shocked by how dated it now seems. But for me it’s one of those books (like Heart of Darkness, which ran the Forster a close second!) where it is probably enough to know that it’s there should I ever need it. Perhaps my attachment to it is more about memory than anything. The images of the caves, a fantastic passage about wasps and heaven, the way Forster makes the landscape and environment resonate with the characters’ emotions – yes, it’s all of that, of course, but probably more important is the part it played in launching me on my literary journey.”

Ian Gouge

‘A Passage to India’ by EM Forster – Penguin current edition

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Ian’s Bio
Ian has been writing since he was five-years-old, and can still just about remember his first story! He enjoys both poetry and fiction and finds working at both genres simultaneously keeps them fresh. He always has at least two projects on the go. When he discovered indie publishing around eight years ago it was like finding his voice all over again. Since then he has not only published his back catalogue but has been particularly prolific in the last three years. He now has his own publishing label – Coverstory Books – and has branched out into publishing work by other writers.

Ian’s links
Author hub
Writing blog & website
Coverstory Books

Ian’s latest book
Ian GougeA Pattern of Sorts explores the difficulty we often encounter when trying to reconcile our memories of events with what actually happened. In the almost inevitable mis-match, our mind plays tricks on us, and what we have recently learned and how we have recently lived, gets in the way and colours the past. Pressed to recall his own life, the challenge of juggling myth and reality is dangerously fraught for Luke – especially given the story of his remarkable emotional high, and the catastrophe which followed it.
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What is a ‘Porridge & Cream’ book? It’s the book you turn to when you need a familiar read, when you are tired, ill, or out-of-sorts, where you know the story and love it. Where reading it is like slipping on your oldest, scruffiest slippers after walking for miles. Where does the name ‘Porridge & Cream’ come from? Cat Deerborn is a character in Susan Hill’s ‘Simon Serrailler’ detective series. Cat is a hard-worked GP, a widow with two children and she struggles from day-to-day. One night, after a particularly difficult day, she needs something familiar to read. From her bookshelf she selects Love in A Cold Climate’ by Nancy Mitford. Do you have a favourite read which you return to again and again? If so, please send me a message.

Discover the ‘Porridge & Cream’ books of these authors:-
Lev D Lewis’s choice is ‘Rogue Male’ by Geoffrey Household
Rob V Biggs chooses ‘Wind in the Willows’ by Kenneth Grahame
Heller with a Gun by Louis L’Amour is chosen by Simon Fairfax

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Why does writer & poet Ian Gouge re-read EM Forster’s A PASSAGE TO INDIA? #books https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4SY via @SandraDanby

My Porridge & Cream read… Amanda Huggins @troutiemcfish #shortstories

Today I’m delighted to welcome short story writer Amanda Huggins. Her ‘Porridge & Cream’ read is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

“There was strong competition for my Porridge and Cream choice, and I’d just like to mention two of the worthy runners-up, both of which I return to time and time again. The wonderful Jane Eyre needs no introduction or explanation, and has been in my top ten since I was a teenager. Another contender was The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, which I’ve loved since first reading it in the 1980s. A beautifully written story of a life lost to duty; unsentimental and utterly heartbreaking. But my final choice has to be The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, one of the all-time bestselling – and most translated – books ever published.

“I own a signed copy of The Remains of the Day as well as a Folio hardback, and I also have two copies of Jane Eyre – though sadly neither of them are signed! But I have to confess to owning a rather extravagant seven copies of The Little Prince. In my defence, they’re all in different languages – however, as I’m only fluent in English, it’s a pretty poor defence!”

Amanda Huggins

Amanda’s seven copies of The Little Prince

“For those unfamiliar with The Little Prince, the narrator is a pilot who has crashed in the desert. A young boy – nicknamed ‘the little prince’ – appears unexpectedly out of nowhere, and while the pilot repairs his plane, the prince describes his tiny home planet – asteroid B612 – complete with volcanoes and baobab trees, and recounts the tales of his travels to other planets. It draws on de Saint-Exupéry’s own experiences as a pilot in the Sahara, as well as including a character (the vain rose) based on his wife, Consuelo. With great wisdom and poignancy, and accompanied by his own beautiful illustrations, de Saint-Exupéry teaches us about friendship, loneliness, love and loss, about human frailties and greed. The beauty and sadness of the prince’s encounter with the fox always leaves me in tears, and includes one of my favourite lines: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Amanda HugginsBUY THE BOOK

Amanda’s Bio
Amanda Huggins is the award-winning author of the short story collection, Separated From the Sea (Retreat West Books), which received a Special Mention at the 2019 Saboteur Awards. Her second collection, Scratched Enamel Heart, contains the Costa prize-winning story, ‘Red’, and was launched on 27th May. She has also published a flash fiction collection, Brightly Coloured Horses (Chapeltown Books), and a poetry collection, The Collective Nouns for Birds (Maytree Press). As well as winning third prize in the 2018 Costa Short Story Award, she has been placed and listed in Fish, Bridport, Bath, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Award and the Colm Toibin International Short Story Award. Her travel writing has also won several awards, notably the BGTW New Travel Writer of the Year in 2014. Her first novella, All Our Squandered Beauty, will be published in 2021 by Victorina Press.

Amanda grew up on the North Yorkshire coast, moved to London in the 1990s, and now lives in West Yorkshire.

Amanda’s links
Blog 
Twitter

Amanda’s latest book
Amanda HugginsA lonely woman spends a perfect night with a stranger, yet is their connection enough to make her realise life is worth living? Maya, a refugee, wears a bracelet strung with charms that are a lifeline to her past; when the past catches up with her, she has a difficult decision to make. Rowe’s life on the Yorkshire coast is already mapped out for him, but when there is an accident at the steelworks he knows he has to flee from an intolerable future. In the Costa prize-winning ‘Red’, Mollie is desperate to leave Oakridge Farm and her abusive stepfather, to walk free with the stray dog she has named Hal. These are stories filled with yearning and hope, the search for connection and the longing to escape. They transport the reader from India to Japan, from mid-west America to the north-east coast of England, from New York to London. Battered, bruised, jaded or jilted, the human heart somehow endures.
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What is a ‘Porridge & Cream’ book? It’s the book you turn to when you need a familiar read, when you are tired, ill, or out-of-sorts, where you know the story and love it. Where reading it is like slipping on your oldest, scruffiest slippers after walking for miles. Where does the name ‘Porridge & Cream’ come from? Cat Deerborn is a character in Susan Hill’s ‘Simon Serrailler’ detective series. Cat is a hard-worked GP, a widow with two children and she struggles from day-to-day. One night, after a particularly difficult day, she needs something familiar to read. From her bookshelf she selects ‘Love in A Cold Climate’ by Nancy Mitford. Do you have a favourite read which you return to again and again? If so, please send me a message.

Discover the ‘Porridge & Cream’ books of these authors:-
Ivy Logan’s choice is ‘Reckless’ by Cornelia Funke
Lev D Lewis chooses ‘Rogue Male’ by Geoffrey Household
Wise Children by Angela Carter is chosen by Catherine Hokin

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Why does short story author @troutiemcfish re-read THE LITTLE PRINCE by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry #books https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4CR via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 122… ‘The Heart’s Invisible Furies’ #amwriting #FirstPara

‘Long before we discovered that he had fathered two children by two different women, one in Drimoleague and one in Clonakilty, Father James Monroe stood on the altar of the Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, in the parish of Goleen, West Cork, and denounced my mother as a whore.’
‘The Heart’s Invisible Furies’ by John Boyne John BoyneBUY THE BOOK

Try one of these 1st paras & discover a new author:-
‘The Garden of Evening Mists’ by Tan Twan Eng 
‘The Children Act’ by Ian McEwan
‘Couples’ by John Updike

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
THE HEART’S INVISIBLE FURIES by @john_boyne #books https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Jk via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Staying Afloat’ by @SueWilsea #shortstories

Sue WilseaStaying Afloat, the first anthology of short stories by Hull-based writer Sue Wilsea, has as its sub-text her experience teaching English in schools, colleges, prisons, libraries and community centres and this breathes life into her stories. She writes about lost children, bereaved children, struggling parents and struggling teachers with sincerity and a touch of humour.

I’ve chosen three of the 19 stories in Staying Afloat. You can read more of Wilsea’s stories in her second anthology, Raw Materials.

‘Shapes. Colours’ is the story of Stephen who loves his teacher Miss Anderson dearly but avoids her gaze every morning when she points to the thermometer chart and asks how everyone is feeling today. Stephen has a Worry that started “as just a tiny spider of anxiety, scuttling around in his head at night when he couldn’t sleep.” To avoid attention in class, Stephen usually chooses yellow or orange rather than a dark colour.

In ‘Two Ophelias and Me’, first published in QWF magazine, an unnamed narrator thinks of two friends, Lin and Lyndsey, who jumped off the Humber Bridge. “I like to think of their hair and clothes streaming out like twin Ophelias (the three of us went to see Hamlet once. I thought I wouldn’t understand a word and actually I didn’t, but it was brilliant all the same) as they drift down deep, deep onto the riverbed.”

‘Lost’ is a heart breaking story about loss and memory. It starts “I’d lost my mother and was therefore in somewhat of a tizz.” When her mother is not in her room at her care home or wandering around the garden, Alice takes to the streets to check her mother’s haunts. It is a short, poignant story with an unexpected ending.

The settings for Wilsea’s tales are primarily the North of England and East Yorkshire, her characters including a vicar who discovers his true vocation in his forties; and a schoolteacher whose mischievous and disruptive pupil uncannily echoes her own son. ‘Paper Flowers’ won a BBC radio competition and was read on air by Judi Dench.

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Read more about Sue Wilsea’s writing here.

If you like this, try these:-
‘The Story’ ed. Victoria Hislop
‘Odds Against’ ed. Bruce Willis
‘The Milk of Female Kindness’ ed. Kasia James

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
STAYING AFLOAT by @SueWilsea #shortstories https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3gu via @SandraDanby

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A poem to read in the bath… ‘Woods etc.’ by Alice Oswald #poetry

The first time I read a poem by Alice Oswald I was deep in the countryside; in my imagination. She took me away from the bookshop where I stood in front of the poetry shelf, running my fingers along the slim spines, waiting to be tempted, to stand in a woodland deserted of people. It says something about my own need for nature that her words drew me in so effortlessly.

Alice Oswald

Alice Oswald [photo Pako Mera]

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Footfall, which is a means so steady
And in small sections wanders through the mind
Unnoticed, because it beats constantly,
Sweeping together the loose tacks of sound

I remember walking once into increasing
Woods, my hearing like a widening wound.
First your voice and then the rustling ceasing.
The last glow of rain dead in the ground’

Alice Oswald

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Read these other excerpts, and perhaps find a new poet to love:-
‘After a row’ by Tom Pickard
‘Poems’ by Ruth Stone
‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Woods etc.’ by Alice Oswald https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3g8 via @SandraDanby

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Serious’ by James Fenton #poetry

I picked up Selected Poems by James Fenton [below] in 2015] in my local library, drawn by the cover illustration; the colours, the corn cobs. I flicked through, and this was the poem that caught my eye. It is about love and hope and the fear of future regret. James Fenton

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Awake, alert,
Suddenly serious in love,
You’re a surprise.
I’ve known you long enough –
Now I can hardly meet your eyes.

It’s not that I’m
Embarrassed or ashamed.
You’ve changed the rules
The way I’d hoped they’d change
Before I thought: hopes are for fools.’

James Fenton

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Read these other excerpts, and perhaps find a new poet to love:-
‘Because I could not stop for Death’ by Emily Dickinson
‘Name’ by Carol Ann Duffy
‘Not Waving but Drowning’ by Stevie Smith

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Serious’ by James Fenton https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3g2 via @SandraDanby

A poem to read in the bath… ‘May-Day Song for North Oxford’

John Betjeman is an English poet so identified with his times and interests. Born in 1906, his family ran a firm in the East End of London making furniture and household items distinctive to Victorians. Betjeman remained fascinated by Victoriana, its architecture, English nature and society, and this is evident in his poetry. He was a founding member of the Victorian Society, and became Poet Laureate in 1972. In his introduction to his collection Slick But Not Streamlined, published in 1947, he wrote of himself ‘so at home with the provincial gaslit towns, the seaside lodgings, the bicycle, the harmonium.’

John Betjeman

Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984)

I read ‘May-Day Song for North Oxford’ on a freezing cold February morning, in a public library in West London. It was the sort of day on which you doubt you will ever be warm again. In a few words, I forgot my surroundings and was with Betjeman on a spring day.

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Belbroughton Road is bonny, and pinkly bursts the spray
Of prunus and forsythia across the public way,
For a full spring-tide of blossom seethed and departed hence,
Leaving land-locked pools of jonquils by sunny garden fence.

And a constant sound of flushing runneth from windows where
The toothbrush too is airing in this new North Oxford air
From Summerfields to Lynam’s, the thirsty tarmac dries,
And a Cherwell mist dissolveth on elm-discovering skies.’

John Betjeman

 

‘Collected Poems’ by John Betjeman [UK: John Murray]

Read these other excerpts, and perhaps find a new poet to love:-
‘The Unthinkable’ by Simon Armitage
‘Happiness’ by Stephen Dunn
‘The Death of the Hat’ by Billy Collins

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘May-Day Song for North Oxford’ by John Betjeman https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3fX via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 114… ‘Agnes Grey’ #amwriting #FirstPara

Anne Bronte“All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut. Whether this be the case with my history or not, I am hardly competent to judge. I sometimes think it might prove useful to some, and entertaining to others; but the world may judge for itself. Shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years, and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture; and will candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate friend.”
‘Agnes Grey’ by Anne Bronte 
Amazon

Try one of these 1st paras & discover a new author:-
‘Affinity’ by Sarah Waters
‘In Cold Blood’ by Truman Capote
‘Family Album’ by Penelope Lively

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
AGNES GREY by Anne Bronte #books via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2xM

Great Opening Paragraph 113… ‘A Good Man in Africa’ #amwriting #FirstPara

William Boyd“‘Good man,’ said Dalmire, gratefully accepting the gin Morgan Leafy offered him. ‘Oh good man.’ He presents his eager male friendship life a gift, thought Morgan; he’s like a dog who wants me to throw him a stick for him to chase. If he had a tail he’d be wagging it.”
‘A Good Man in Africa’ by William Boyd 
Amazon

Try one of these 1st paras & discover a new author:-
‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ by Helen Fielding
‘Super-Cannes’ by JG Ballard
‘Middlesex’ by Jeffrey Eugenides

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A GOOD MAN IN AFRICA by William Boyd #books via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2si

A poem to read in the bath… ‘A thousand years, you said’

Written in 8th century Japan, this poem speaks of the longing of love shadowed by impending death, and it is as relevant today as it was then. I discovered this poem in The Picador Book of Funeral Poems, and then stumbled on it again in an old paperback on my bookshelf, The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse. It was written by Lady Heguri in mid-late eighth century. No details are known of her, except that her poems are addressed to Yakamochi.

‘A thousand years, you said,
As our two hearts melted.
I look at the hand you held
And the ache is too hard to bear.’

 

‘The Picador Book of Funeral Poems’ ed. by Don Paterson
Amazon UK

Read these other excerpts, and perhaps find a new poet to love:-
‘Runaways’ by Daniela Nunnari
‘Winter Song’ by Wilfred Owen
‘The Cinnamon Peeler’ by Michael Ondaatje

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘A thousand years, you said’ by Lady Heguri https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3dS via @SandraDanby