I've offended a button. I call my talk selected
because I also talked quite personally
about various frustrations involved in
writing in trying to finish something
and trying to write something with
this I know you should even want to be
published to where I think when I
started outside I felt as though
everything that I wrote could be
published and gradually I can sort of
feel utterly humiliated by my work and
sometimes get over that and if anything. I want to start with one of my favorite tweet 
tweets I have a slightly young love/hate
relationship between but this profession
my timeline dishes up tips and advice of
the remorseless rape of writers do I
guess it's just in spirit I have this
moment and it's something that the
president keep me honest keeps me for my
tendency towards pomposity to was trying
to hold force towards you sort of
dangling to actually give you advice
that I believe is going to be helpful to
you so in place of that I tend to just
sort of um exacerbate and analyze my own
insecurities mostly which we're going to do today,
um a few years ago my editor at a
interested salt for West Division
Cambridge and he waited for books of
poetry with publishers with 101 ways to
make homes actually closing there during
poetry lists but the book has to bring
they practically twice suspended a bad
time there are various chapters that has
the least tips with things that we want
to do to preparing a manuscript of birds
were preparing kind of fight poem to
send to a journal
whenever I've sent five poems to a
journal I usually find like what about
the three that I actually like it might
Scrabble around we might scrap some
drafts file on my computer to find
another to kind of half poems just to
make it look as though I have more than
than just three I'm sending the maximum
for the magazine once without fail it's
always those two cobble poems together
just to pad out special selection about
getting it sent it occasionally I think
that we will after seven seven bits of
perpetual my salon or making submissions
every kind of turns to sort of look the readers to
respire writes directly in the eye but
says you also need to ask yourself what
you actually think you're going to get
what is it you actually want think again
if you're anything like me your reaction
that is going to be which are of course
whatever this would be reading with a book
or doing anything towards writing if I
didn't but it gave me pause when I
first read it and it was already too
late they make me think of the people
that knows people I grew up with
who started to make some headway in the
music industry sometimes actually point
up some cutting record label and
then to quit run away in horror from the
from the music scene. For reasons well if I
go into with me as if from something
toxic my asthma's disillusioned you see
the solutions of being a kind of however
minor being some public figure that need
to stand behind their work and give it to people
work for me weed and one of his best
days once obsessed where he begins
writing about Jay S Mill we promised a
philosopher you having imagined
projected forwards the successful
implementation of everything he wants us
to achieve found himself unable to write a word and completely arrested by this with
imaginary future projection its
concludes in the SAR we police ourselves
with purposes our ambitions our ideals
and success stories that lure us into
the future
continue easily become ways of not
living in the present of not being
present at the events of blackmail of
distraction ways that is of disowning or
demeaning the actual disorder of
experience. I want to suggest this
morning that poetry and fiction presents
us a unique opportunity to record and
explore and celebrate the actual
disorder experience even as they attempt
to arrange it to form of hope so that
there is the cost to that tooth or in
terms of success involve writing
publishing powerful that cost involves
asking ourselves and confronting
ourselves again again with what we really want out of it so if the answer is
adoration there may be simple ways of
going back or it maybe something we really want to wish for.
In 2010 I was interviewed by the
journal post novelist content for a
a grant that I didn't see my VI
mightest she was if you go to this day
and she was a lot better than this about
this graduate in a country our
conversation within chain smoking and
drinking patients percolator he painted
this chilling picture of his
contemporaries of other extreme he
established celebrated writers in their
60s to 80s I kind of look top of their
field having had a celebrated 
internationally eminent successful
person and all these household names
bestsellers answers and critically
acclaimed as well fortunate enough to
make a living off the creative work and
sits by the painted this image have ever
huddled around in resentful gossip
circles over the animal Nobel Prize for
Literature for this feeling feeling
slighted overlooked and neglected every
time it whirled around and they weren't
on it somehow unable to grasp how lucky
they were to be writing and publishing at all. It's an
image that really stays with me because there are
I think these kind of black holes within
all of us which although women in some
of us can definitely build even buying
adoration by success but mostly I think
we're writing in order to
Lauretta specifically to honor the
actual disorder of experience we worked
against the lack of subtlety the
degrading shorthand and reductive
pragmatism in the service of a
particular message with which we're
bombarded by language on on a daily
basis we comment through media through
politician Lincoln statements along the
lines you can't be a socialist if you
drink lattes and things like that we
kind of write to try to get to the
bottom of why something might even say
that the in politics but you didn't get
to me that is because never around a
high street in a tower city or village
fund that it contains a customer the
startups usually full of people drinking
lattes wherever it is. Transpose
disappear to make this into a structure
of Tristram Shandy but I'm gonna to go back to the age of 7 and think about my own
development as a writer and my own sort of failed attempts at writing.I always wanted to race
mine was written and my dad is a was a self employed translator and he would always
give me his old typewriter or word processor that he upgraded for tax
reasons every year she is the first one
was for this model appear at least an
adult like things have a tiny single
line of green letters saved onto these
big seventh floppy disk and then we kind
of type out looking for you like kind of
also piano I'm sorry to sit there every
evening at the age of 7 in in lieu of
developing any kind of meaningful
relationships with my peers but this
went on for most of my childhood and my youth all the way through school and most of the way
through sixth form. The majority of my sixth former's in Northerly comprehensive schools
the light industrial sound chart in the
surface of England A Levels were a kind
of ejector seat to free you from the
orbits of small-town suffocation or we would get
annoyed wherever it's exams all time and
that means circulates of the woman
holding up a piece of paper with them
they I just I just took managed you to
see and I failed kids who don't need
exams to succeed in life you just need
to dream big and get gas and it always really pissed me off, because that's fine if you have a
lot of capital you know if you haven't
had something to fall back on then
great dream dream big, otherwise you know you kind of need that study you need
that opportunity to actually escape from
from where you come from and this was
I've been thinking a lot about  this recently this
was the sort of early 90s and it was
assumed at that point that we were going
to go to university this was the first
year of things being introduced in 2000 and it was
understood that this could be pretty
much anywhere in the country wherever we
like the look off from the perspective I
should have any more than city seems
impossibly glamorous because it was
where the real football teams came from
it seems it worked
yo with Exeter and it wasn't really in
question of what you should study
there's no key officially you put any
pressure on whatsoever so you have to be
an artist that's great because it's a
Bachelor of the specs is fine courses
look at them choose some there. So lets 
that the fees were still compared from
going lower there was something to talk
to you the back seat I think an
opportunity was once afford it around
four percent of the population have
being rolled out multiplied by ten so
this was available to almost anybody who
wanted to go. So if there was
children of a great and genuine social
expansion if we somewhat took that for
granted we didn't have to look too
I feel lucky a good deal of our parents
or even all the siblings unnecessary had
the chance maybe didn't say I was family
to go to the University is the kind of
inverse about why because about that
it's rare Asian world it was around the
time that Tony Blair said 'we are all middle
class now'  with some more middle class than
others we have a very odd definition of
were middle in this country there anyway
the kids who are going to read law or
engineering where we felt being forced
to by their authoritarian parents
repeatedly.
Something that I lose sleep over now as
a lecturer in English and creative
writing is where the writer is whether i've  
made the same choice Rafi says my
thousand pounds a year as I did in the
90s anecdotally a friend of mine who
works as a secondary art
technician tells me that the phenomena
is a double our students who going to
study art foundation courses of
preparation for studying fashion
University has reduced by roughly
three-quarters over the last decade that
used to be quite a lot of hits out of a
lot of students were going to do this
and that really isn't affecting the
state's feeling some survey the teachers.
One of the arguments I feel like there
is a sort of tactical rolling back at
the moment of the expansion of the
accessibility because my hackles up is
this idea that there are too many
writers, too many poets too many novelists 
because I suppose I think wasn't this
something that we wanted when access to
studying writings was opened up its
widening so the more people the more
people become writers it comes down to
let me borders on some social rejenics 
the really things that the wrong kind of
people
during the school and sell drugs it's
really class that these being from the
wrong strategy with the vast middle
class who are now writing and we don't
ever st. Louis robberies we don't ever
say them to me athletes or sports team
you don't say there are too many
musicians we actually don't even say
that there are too many visual artists
or for instance ceramicists or glass
doctors we kind of let them get on with
it the lettuce of their qualifications
displayed innocently guilelessly proudly
after their names in provincial in the
city galleries but questioned and though
he tries to make me feel bad about the
way they seem to like to the writers in
2001 I just finished thing been a name
engine pretty writing x2 which is
straight off my English degree by taking
out a bank loan
in retrospect this was the best decision
that I've made in my life but in the year
after it felt like it had been a terrible mistake. I moved to Bristol
without having sort of job naively
thinking by resume which included
working in a secondhand bookshop putting
plates in small developer sunset by maybe
employable than the city packs bursting
planets of thousands of tons of 20 songs
it's a roughly 106 announcer job
applications to 10.20 i had one
interview for the complaints department
of orange mobile phones didn't get it
and then started paying my rent like
drawing a cash out with one credit cards
and buying Egg McMuffins with another
shinier credit the loan repayments from
my na had begun which I dealt with by
extending my current account over 2500
to 3000 pounds this one over four months
through much 12 others too full of
self-loathing to buy the right anything
to admit that I was good fully plunging
myself into the thousands of pounds of
bad debt during this time my partner
would firstly prove my in a manner I
felt like quitting which was roughly
once before I had a nervous breakdown
floored by prolonged psychotic episode
during that she pretends an actor I was
inclined to agree and between most of
all poultry 1 our monthly just like yeah
fixation is my low self-esteem I did my
best to make a bad situation worse so
somehow still found this the money to
get drunk a lot at the time
and lay awake at night
hallucinating a dark blue bottom forest
engulfing the entire box
well I was lucky enough to have
parents that are still talking to me and we
get to convert my childhood bedroom into
a good smoke ruin my pavement posters
the blue text the wall I realize this is
something of a privilege but everybody
gets to move back home after screwing up
their lives so for a while I live there
rent-free in exchange for dicing
occasional onion by founder dodging
danger entry for the County Council
paying down the debt I'd kill a snake
off of you somehow 12 20 bedrooms do
they probably know if you have done that
danger entry is impressively boring it's
worse than prayer there's very sedentary
roughly to a house statement during the
dream is yes one of the best things
about working for universities he get
chasing the tiger to pace of teaching
pace when you're marking you call this a
bachelor scripts in your hand walking
down the corridor nobody stops you also
change the desk and singing a lot of
jobs data referee also uses almost none
of your energy though which is quite a
good thing you can go days without
experiencing singing thoughts and this
builds over time to a desperation to do
with anything else at one point I
considered training as a secondary
school teacher and I'm not exaggerating
when I say I think I'd have lasted
longer in the army but it builds to a
desperation to make things, to make sense to make
something which gives you life meaning
and it might guess that's to saw myself
out and start writing again I won't
dwell on this book the world and I
wasn't playing Fifa national soccer
about his game key I went back to
writing
adding to the coursework that started
finishing the various stories like try
to start writing these weird more
sequences American programs
reading full collections by the poet own
counsel my course members fill in the
blanks and the opportunity proposes
neglected during this startup which is
really a life's work
it would stop doing that other common
After a couple of years I remember hiding in a toilet
cubicle that the young county council
office rearranging like 30 page
submissions for the young the Eric
Gregory weeks which is a young
poetry prize for poets on the thirty.
There's been a bit of a sigh, there's been a 
debate about age limits on prices
recently on on Twitter and otherwise
kind of interests but I kind of I see
the reasoning for the argument kind of
against them in that there is a sort of
intersection of various privileges that
make it more likely you've been able to
start writing younger or have not had
that tonight for some reason
and also there's clearly something of a
constant youthful of the new which i don't think is going the way things I've seen
Shane if we're honest some of the people
making this case are people in the 30s
who have chosen to do my other things
for some decades of this appointment and
outcome turning people who made some
headway when they're younger but
possibly make the headway against the
audience you know how have you said you
accused somebody by sacrificing time
they could spend do young people think I
haven't time itself as much privilege as
money but if you can find a couple of
hours and nights and you can like two
young children so it's the only time
they get to write it off the day job is
monster asleep but it's from diamonds
eleven yeah you really can find that
time it doesn't need to be that much
just like Doris Lessing so the
conditions are always impossible to find
an hour find an hour a day start
drinking slightly later
like maybe watch slightly fewer box
sets you know there is time you know if
your time to do that that there is time
to write as well and like here's a pen
there aren't quite the same values there
are to say something like scuba diving
so kinda I mean it kind of pissed me off I guess is what I'm saying 
I was against
prices that's specifically for the young
I think they do have a place when majority
of the young people can be economically  franchise and never retire
should the target of our anger really be
the foil young poets prize I think
probably not I think it's more productive
to think about to donating to what it's
like art emergency directly take
action to encourage kids from disadvantaged
backgrounds to study the arts to study
humanities or in books presses current
call for submissions from women
collaborators these are genuine
proactive initiative for the Trenton to
redress the imbalance in literature of
the women's without turning generations
against each other anyway during this
time during might sort of purgatory all
five years later entry I also started
reading at I can buy bikes nice taking
the train down to Exeter just monthly
the Art Center they're tiny black room on the second floor of the
Phoenix art centre honestly just
preparing a five minutes over the mic
slot every month with Republican
opponents it was really sustaining but
like lying if I said that having studied
writing extraordinary Charles I have
ever at withstanding for position to do
that I'm allowed size of it and how big
deal because you don't need and I make
it to be right to review weird and
offensive to suggest that you do need to
qualification to be a writer but dear
God it's a lifeline once you're trying
to do it by yourself
once it's just you a word processor and
every seminar workshop every tutorial
any piece of advice ever given comes
back to you then we use it and feed off
it. So after four years of the daytime
haven't paid off at least we
consolidated several loans and living in
this point of exit about Greek
restaurants torn to menu the one I
wanted to do is to try to get funding to
do a PhD I knew one wants to write it on
and I kind of read enough to UM
demonstrated a proposal I was making
original original contributions with
feeling I'll be of the small scrubbing
field the prose poem which celebrating
Stoker movie exists as a mystery for me
after one of the aforementioned open
liked I met the editor of small
called Strige  Books based on seven he
said he liked my work because it was
weird and also wasn't so boring that
made him want to kill himself I said my
dear wife she bore like the one who just
read and will the pamphlet together be
nice little things that hand out to
people at readings and I'm delighted by
this more than usually motivated to
spend spending it's at work with my
local cooking and my evenings writing
about the year later abox of my
complimentary copies arrives night
ripped into it excitedly this is
sideways of the color of the book view
out the latest at my function page
pamphlet having had a spine making it
technically my first full collection of
poetry rather than a chat book I called
the editor and had a conversation during
which merged that they've been some
miscommunication between him the cover
designer and the print this might
really rethink my name almost by David
but it did have a spine so it was it was
a book and you have another two hundred
books pamphlets that would basically go
bust so I was left with this son with
this first book I had not met to publish as a first collection and by one day I had a place on the
particular disk I had escaped from data entry and
my superviser was seriously annoyed by
this by this is printing error and he
felt very sensibly that I should be
building up to my first collection over
the next few years
placing the occasional poem in a journal
gradually winnowing several hundred
pages supposedly to provide fifty okay
edges of poetry that I should getting
higher than a pretty one or two hundred
with an experiment of inter-country but
I was kind of too elated to have a book
how to listen to any of this is the
place that's cool and in the event by
sheer accident it ended up being
something that worked for me in those
picked up my slugging knowledge of indie
moments I mentioned before and my second
book Parenthood brought your dope and
strength without asking those ok my
first election with Salt which is my
second book was short listed  for the four
guys in 2007
now 2007 is a really strong year for
Dainty Collections of Poetry was one
words altitude nigra there were five
very very good books on actual bits for
daily inflections I don't think I'm
gonna look in it was happy in my first
poetry and I kind of would be
that the book of suppleness penetrates I
wouldn't be here talking to you I
wouldn't really carried on publishing
anything and this isn't something that
you can plan for you don't know who the
judges of any kind always gonna be in
any given year if you did you feel like
there's nothing try to account for that
you write when you're capable of if you
were cynically try to write what you
focus on though likely
particular powerful judge I we even know
what I would look like I'm not sure it's
possible living with one of the things
to do yourself
right because it was entangled and the
26 of the the youngest votes would be
shortlisted there were seven full sheath
articles about it because if it was a
sort of logically interesting but it was
a media story there was a way if it's
business write about it this was kind of
pre social networking an early days of
Facebook and pre Twitter and before the UH the
incomparable Maria Carey where I carry point the
word haters so I was a genuinely
surprised to find that every online
article about Fulbright was upended by
between 700 and 1,000 comments of
absolute biggest range by the people
with with made up names that late and fart on
taking some pride in enjoying the
weeping sack of topples which made up
the emergent climate areas I was
thin-skinned enough to react like a
child who's just had his balloon popped my
work suddenly had the exposure of
attention leadership oh they have
dreamed of and every single one of them
wanted to kill me. I sank into a one-off
episode of women's breast injury which
was banned looking at the Internet at all
it was a useful forms of experience
to gradually going helpfully nun taking
the praise with the same sedated grace
you take the appropriate for food
practices its trick
it's not truthful you still feel every
slight family but to this day I think
one of the best affected it had a music
to this day I've never participated in a
discussion board a Facebook group or
even a comment thread about poetry
because it puts me right back at that
frame of mind like it and over and
over the decade this will be left a lot
more time to actually write in spite of
that in spite of my actually winning the
forward price later which was weird and
very disturbing it was clearly the
foundation of my career if you can call
it that it's the reason though maybe
it's the only reason I was able to carry
on publishing poetry with any kind of audience at all, the only reason I
letter ship and the only reason I was
invited to speech you could say that it
was one lucky break or good 
timing but I want to remind you that
far worse for me it was based on a
stapling accidentally went by few since
happened it was a printing error that
made my first patent in swarthy and
essentially when people ask me for
advise about how it starts but I feel
like legitimately don't have a clue you can
use cheap sports metaphors I had wanted
it enough but it's really more the case
that you are just doing it anyway you
don't really know what else to do and
you do it so quickly you know it's
largely in isolation
aware of the countless great books that
are published the signal estimates
tracer hopefully like you do some trace
other than to humidity ingress to but
it's also quite possible to turn them
into a sleeping conspiracy theorists the
day I make a fake identity cited
shitpost Unruh positive Guardian poetry
review many other poets work is propping
the tale truly of arrives right so it's
something fairly important about this arbitrary
publicity volumes an agent so the first
piece and what I have in mind a generic
words that were scored in like I'm still
looks at me now she said this was 2007
how long will it take you to UM to to
write a novel and do you think, and I said about
six months a year towards a pretty
little listening and ten years later my
first novel I only kind of select a
couple of points from that decade not
managing to write a novel during which
as ever I repeatedly decided to put my writing
together which will allow me to
mention some issues relation to in
depresses the mainstreamers of the
differences of working people work with
a lot of different kinds of things the
ransom somebody's acting to play to meet
you accessible to most people to stay
off course so just talk about a little
bit Tinsley I have four perfected
Spanish by someone they tended to get to
be glancing you reviewed occasionally
goes into but they did a lot for me
thought they can start a new design of
what someone's doing it aside from a
brief high watermark at the second book
we've got a short listing
there was this massive diminishing
returns of those I think my fourth book
which I really changed my way of
writing likely change
to protect our voice it's all about a
hundred six copies or something right it
isn't the matter doesn't matter I've
changed
we're doing two laps nobody is paying
attention off of my mom and this
wouldn't weak moment for me and it was
around the same time that some Salt
closed the poetry list as well as some
left without the poetry publisher
without much to such a write poetry with
two full-length faint novels that were
just all that that weren't me to be
written enough to justify the lack of
compelling story and in any kind of
dynamic plot to justify the bad writing
it's just not thinking about the way
that surprises land particularly for inde
depressive small presses price has
become almost too importance Tin Street
were Birmingham-based brilliant too
focused on rice based in the Midlands
launched the careers of many of
farallon's captain Flynn - okay the
other thing that happens they tend to
leave they tend to get an offer from
favor want the best for them so you let
them go but gradually you lose the
writers who are selling and pricing
disease because there's been a vibrant
scene I think in literature first when
he's 10 not to throw a bone to the same
small press more than once or twice so
we thought they make a lot from the
short listing novel and the next move on with
the lighthouse buy us more and that's
going to sell like you know the best
about 100,000 copies but then it's not
necessarily going to happen again it
kind of is a sustainable model
unfortunately can end up just getting
into some trouble it's easy to see how
that story kind of goes in history
which ends up folding which is a big
shame I think there's been some
significant publishing together it's
doubly impressive by they're giving the
stock costs of risk of taking the indie
presses are they generally finding
experimental Lee courageously truly
representative the sidelines and
marginalized is the absolute blue news
but said recently is almost as if
they're doing research new developments
for the for the next three prisons so I
know I didn't have I didn't ever
Bertrand opportune have a normal it was
it was it was any good the idea for the
transition kind of arrived in the form
just a couple of scenes it was partly
born out of severe attention about the
housing crisis that things like that it
still took me a long time together so
you get a first draft that was even
barely readable so the second reason for
failure is a committee was just
generally not being very good at writing
another especially the plot especially
the story that having to get used to
writing on that kind of scale the friend
of mine who's an artist don't likens it
to changing the size of the canvas legal
minister to painting something to the
size of the wall then you're going to
have to have a lot of kind of failing
the test you are going to have to write
full-length things that are just not
good or you get any mistake out of your
system the later can Technion enormous
emotions that you connect with me
through penalty when they were going
anywhere and you except if you have any
perspective what a work that's cool
generally that's that we've done isn't
enough engineers in a partnership they
have a bit of a spectacle because any
more than you do etcetera I'm part of
what I had to learn for myself learning
that we're getting it wrong a couple of
times it's quite have focused and in
systemic novel or to be to hold
attention for three
pages I particularly struggle with
delivering on a promising set up with
exposition they know one the following
looks like is more or less implementing
cutscene for the last quarter should we
have an important revelation
conversation by this bent called fine
three-part keep still I kept some
flexing into this think it's not that
seem to be sort of terrible over here is
that ended up we can be you've liked
into the plot and this was something
that just had to continually over and
over again like let's say this is
terrible
it's not true it's not plausible this
time it's worse than coincidental it's worse than Hardy, I really need to work on that, this was you know I
spent ages just walking up and down
hallway of my house kicking what am I
talking to the balloons up and down in
frustration of Lauren that time spent
not writing just thinking through the
same like how do i how do I get across
this kind of exposition without it being
exposition it seems almost impossible to
but it's quite clearly kind of warm
because it's lazy and untrue I guess
when when the plot point is weak / - I'm
going back to even doing here once out
of it's a real case of what we are
representing and um who I'd like to talk
more about our experiences on on an MA
in creative writing back in 2001 during
this course frequently had to share work
in progress each other feedback this is
the way that's impressive writing
workshop about halfway through the year
we admitted to each other about ten
students that some this process of
sharing work was a lot easier with
poetry than it was with prose that my
feeling on that in poetry for me the the
isolation of the specific moments
however naturalistic the aesthetic on
delivery is always really profound the
ordinary poem the black gum and Thomas's
Alice Bob is a profoundly surreal potent
the insistently reasonable voice adds to this
as to this for me sensitive why so
poetry is often about context
distance somehow even if the poem is
very personal because it risen as a poet
primitive is kind of the message there
in fiction by contrast we were student
writers found much more exposing and
uncomfortable to share to work in
progress just without exception all of
us rather do this rather than bringing
your luck and 3,000 excerpts everybody
else having met them and then the
tongues we thought why that is I think
because even in a 2,000 words short
story that's fairly concise these are
your thoughts your characters you've
invented set up punished redeemed
essentially these are your judgments on
the world and everyone in it
and it was a little painful to find out
that this was wrong it was skewed or
ignorant that it was to be told that
your metaphors needed sharpening up a
bit in the case of a poem and that's as
it should be it should be a comfortable
it should be difficult it's best to
confront this only one like I should
might well if you be in post many
minutes but I'm actually giving people
you can't say talk that representation
without thinking gender and you need a
glance at some readers statistics to see
the beam element system completely
unacceptable
it's kind of an absurd situation in
presenting you know do some talk
solitary criticism and publishing it's
my students it's really thin talking to
my students were about 80 percent women.
I'm presenting them with these kinds of
statistics it's very possible used to do
that for it he was wondering why you
suppose states that we've got and go out
and change it them all very soon
as flaw it's essentially implemented in
fact these discussions are actually
happening now is hopeful I didn't
provide media to pay attention to
beginning some redress thinking a little
more about representations would be the
main boosted waiting as a white more or
less straight learning to pass no matter
a lot of diplomats are quite lucky in
that my own dad was a good example or
they'd probably be something you would
never hesitate to intervene with his or
any incidents of harassment in Syrian
Justice with Bill Thorazine safety is
not that the liked person, he's a good person
there's sort of beside the
point because I still could eternity
like him and I when I decide not nearly
as good a human beings as he is but
nonetheless he was a strong example, but
whatever your folks are like you're
still surrounded from childhood onwards
by a kind of miasma of toxic masculinity
and a social impression to a weekly
pathetically condone minutes if anything
you have more liberty to choose your
friends to get older to any of your
scent of sermons we're not really
exposure to that kind of thing it's
awesome right some of the grimmest most
racist misogynistic or homophobic jokes I never heard remain they circulated in
primary school playground from the age
of about seven through secondary and
it's not just among friends who won't
say certainly all around as in music
videos movies president both through
pieces reinforced was in song lyrics and
I'm not even talking about the macho grandstanding it's easy comforting
to not see yourself in that but I mean
it was equally present in the kind of
whiny
my girlfriend left me existential soft
rock that always let me turn to the
favorite but maybe there's something
adolescence about that which just
means true but I was to take inspiration
wherever finally public is its greatest
subject is any but it's sort of this in
a way nice to come back to it is so far
over balance that there's something still be
made and that sense of ownership our
relationship is my material if there's
such an issue and I guess I'm saying
that the bar is set so dangerously low
it's easy to expect very little of
yourself so it's also good decent person
won't ever make a joke fake laugh tip
for basic social survival as a site like
most of the primary secondary school
jokes weren't even funny some people
telling them they were knowing who
you've seen offensively transgressive
them or they had to be delivered in
conspiratorial whisper the better you
were wary even of the transmission
attached to the fact you weren't
supposed to be talking about things like
that as an eight-year-old
it was disgusting for the teller than I
think that stays with some people that's
all I hear when I start claimed
right-wing comedian moments about
freedom speech
edgy infant was lovely when writing this
I just remember the one time
it was challenged that kind of dialogue
was judged my school was right about
year ten that appear and the
conversation the moment that we turned
to you two breasts missiles permits the
athletic who is the popular boys and
they're the most of tend to set the tone
and occasionally condescending to
include the weeds if they happen to fall
in step and another part we avoid the
alpha beta male nonsense in still
observed identify yourself against that
type because they're kind of nice guy
but of course can have catastrophic
psychological ramifications as you grow
up and what the coalescence been
platform which is blown another was
really fond of a different piece but
anyway this blonde boy you're not
believing Nate was the authority or
spoke at length from the detail about
our contemporaries breasts what they
would like and this is the thing that we
need to contribute to the conversation
while along that you may not be that guy
with him you're certified there's one I
cannot pull in Bob who was overweight
and got picked up a lot for he's the
kind of classic early nineties way
interrupted him and what's always didn't
tremble the way minded and said do you
think that's an acceptable way to talk
about women and Nate said 'what' and Bob said
'I said do you think it's OK to talk
about women like that'
and Nate said 'yes I like tits' and everyone laughed. Bob sniffed makes games
uplifting the incentive well I don't
think it's acceptable at all coming
years ago I was our festival billing
with Jabari a seeing the forests of
Washington Post
key figure in the likewise matter
movement so that he was talking about
that the n-word you can say it who
shouldn't and why it's a great reading
in discussion at one point in the Q&A
Aseem said that he wasn't interested in
what people said in their living room
that that would be insane
try to police will people say in private
his odd moves that we're talking about
the public sphere Gordon our Clues
cultural media included some half-light
cultural social networks there plenty of
hours in out idiots who seem to think
this is happening I thought policing
private spaces that were impossible but
all they're actually reacting to is
people telling them that they're wrong
opinions are wrong when they publicly
expressing disseminate them in the
public sphere
see also colonists with platforms that
reach millions star seven flow cannot
live stateless anymore and it's almost
pathological inability to recognize them
only prejudice and cruelty so very
quickly they've done them play the
victim what we're thinking about
recently is that there's something
unique about the novel in that it's
where the public and the private spheres
converge as a form it's completely
public it's published broadcast
performer for audiences but what you're
actually writing the dialogue the inner
thoughts sometimes the cuts and
humiliating thoughts of characters is
totally private
so this is kind of dramatization of the
private sphere in a public medium public
form but I'm losing sleep over whether
I should run my mouth off at all but
anything ever in poetry or prose
I think assessment turning over my head
walk duties include my every big things
which I see fraternity for a lot of
class relationships and mental health
none of them uncontroversial always
easily boss don't even advertise
something which occurred to me about the
third draft the transition it but it
needs to be pushed forwards in time that
it'll bring the exploring into sharp
relief it needs to become in a sense of
Rainier hand dystopia like most people my
age I've read
three dystopian novels in English dozens
of schools were happened Huxley although
written some exact message about
characterization um - you chose to let
me young neither God's been sinister
which is the first not appropriated in a
fictional city of had a threat where
power has been seized by the new leader
promises to improve the lives of
ordinary people the protagonist as a
famous philosopher Adam Cruz whose wife
dies the hospital move in Chapter cribs
and of institutionalism pressure to
support the party indoors their message
he refuses as part of graduating prisons
and illuminates his calling in spread
myths associated with eventually his
younger son he accidentally relevant
instead of kidnapping and if I was
trying to talk about him too good not
for my time with it no it would be
pretty good projecting forwards without
fiction now you've got to listen for
myself
totalitarian the technological and
environmental apocalypse world also my
daughter's advice in a mission drought
the transition wasn't stuck of at all it
was just hitting the vague present the in
conversations advice we felt that it
needed to be pushed forwards in order of this
sort of scheme was interventions we
wanted to make that much sense we had
bad things like slightly improved
technology self-driving cars and done
self-pleasuring bridges incremental
changes and those were one of the things
like we wanted to write that was this
sense of a sort of impossibility of sort
of setting yourself up in sort of
economic circumstances that we found
ourselves so they've talked about
earlier the kind of pattern we finished
University of graduating not really
getting worse all sorts about never
giving your parents who generously take
back in but it made me think of perhaps
the increasing the door to be mad isn't
really an option we can do you to turn
down the wallpaper conservatory bedsit
for twelve hundred month and
increasingly is going to be people in
their twenties and thirties with
demanding full-time professional careers
and what she used in which used to be
able to support a family I think that
while I was writing it's not possible to
do that on for instance the teachers
anymore recently it isn't universe the
softwar society knows less about us and
we value so housing was naturally
initiative pitch for words it's a basic
economic fact that is but food prices
inflate at the same rate as the income
to house price ratio a local Pentecost
the best part of 20 quid.I hope I can
say this without sounding stupid or
bitterly some of my best friends are
homeowners but the potential is going to
be quite a meaningful class distinction
I think the next day the next couple
decades something that really divides
people I hope that I do write something
which dramatized those conditions worsen
famously acknowledging my own sense of
entitlement privilege any tendency to
self-sabotage but also steering clear of
buzzwords like Millennials which stomach
churns I am bummed at the age of 36 when
in motion a to one man all is possible
to be as a millennial the point is 81 so
81 yeah
so I'm healing the great Nana I don't
want the aspiration learners the
transition seemed dismissive if your
dream is to make millions as I'm taking
away that's great it's dark to pretend
to not going to leave a lot of failed
take away designers the scheme solution
overlooks the fact that most of us our
partners provide as we have to be
otherwise the providers will be making
money just as any profit making were
stocking stranger someone else's loss
else's savings evaporating the bottom
line of this kind of creeping
privatization is large-scale
disenfranchisement it's an unspoken
philosophy that if you are worried about
the future of the NHS or state schooling
or welfare then you should make money
make money make money
opt out go private insulate yourself and
those who are really dearly responsible
for and watch everyone else go to hell
through safe distance and God help those
of us who are sick it become sick or
have mental health conditions what we
thinking when we chose not to become
wealthy entrepreneurs it's not the world
I want to live in not least because I
think it entrenched is the very limited
I do
who gets to write you get to impose that
one of you to control the means of
representation that means to journalism
in publishing times got something
dinners
with bloom because the ideal world
middle-class that becomes one the most
egregious lines when applied so broadly
to do what we recognize at least 85% of
us and the time for action to enforce a
private education of the term leafy
you've more than most people tending
their salaries it feels more like we're
allowing extreme economic privilege to
hide in plain sight
to masquerade as a meritocracy in terms
of those of us against each other you
have following common than a specific
coffee order who can also more must you
say that they've never drunken latte 
when latte is available from swimming
pools vending machines that need from
nuance for subtlety for Kennedy
pathologizing the images and was thrown
with us is reason enough to keep on
writing.
We've got probably 10 minutes or so
floors question who's in trouble
question trust them
Becca will take control of the
microphone to the audience.
My my - like what what the reason is for
doing splits well it's always an active
communication it always has to be a
little eyes on someone being interested
in or engaging with. I
think it's like it's that need to make
sense of your own life and doing that
yeah it's a question yeah I'm just
wondering as I saw an aspiring writer
from last year mmm University here and I
you know wake up cold sweats in the
night kind of thing in film a long way
from finding my narrative voice so what
I want to write whether his poetry short
fiction science fiction yeah all three I
do write everyday and variety up
and what would your advice be just to
sort of carry on I'll think in time or
yeah
like I think you have to be really
patient yourself living you have to I
think particularly with something like a
novel you sort of need to expect it not
to go so well the first couple of times
that you try. I think the first novel I tried
to write which ends up being about
hundred twenty thousand words and it was
sort of a story about four siblings
various sort of intersections in their
stories but it didn't hang together it
didn't have an overall story
it just wasn't it wasn't a novel
basically it was a really long piece of
writing it just didn't and then and you
have to see have to be it's that mixture
of being quite brutal with yourself for
the meeting when something isn't working
like years of what I came to be might
actually like with that one I couldn't
even fill it for short stories and there
just wasn't anything to it really
eventually walk away from it so being
working with other the same has been
very patient with with yourself it's be like
this will this will come back and every
and it is a process in the same way that
it's not similar to just rehearsing
something rehearsing an interviewer has
to play it doesn't you do if pre we do
learn I think it's so much more about
yourself but what you can bring to mind
is also it's a so you need to kind of
find a way of making the form work for
you like if you I think if you ask for
primarily a poet that you think will
actually lead to a seaman has quite
short chapters to write something but
actually I don't get bored otherwise the
readers giving it you can give it as
well and I kind of find a way of using
the thing that I'm good at in this
different form if you're trying to come
make the move from one form to another and 
just thinking there's a ton sleeping
ways that actually keep it interesting
for me so like some of the best books
recently they do sort of break rules and
sort of push it doesn't have a
comparative thrust to this difficult
book it was really exciting to see that
being as much as pieces as if there's a
physical so there aren't it doesn't
actually just one thing a novel doesn't
have to be just this particular kind of
things find, find your own
way of making it work for you and rather than slaving yourself and
insulating yourself too
long track for me prose poem is kind of
history with does the four with its
before I think only the argument my
degree I had these kind of isolated
chapters that research stood like new
about specific like study chapter on a
castle that's eternal there
was no through line there was no actual
argument of media to a model girl for an
actual thesis and this was something
that I had to kind of almost panic and
reverse-engineering the last year what
is common ask you to like identified
then couldn't rewrite it with that in
mind it's I think but I think the final
year is always this kind of horrible
experience it is where you handle
certain think you're sort of you're
almost like really really down on
yourself or really hard or soft doing
that for you when it's when you're
shaping out towards the the deadline you
are more than usually like into some
question when you've done doubt we've
done so hmm yeah totally gone yeah I
mean I think I don't say like you're
being reporting like two particular
probably actually is good enough but I
think my summers we think this is no way
the reticent the beginning this is gonna
be your kind of first investigations
within which which should you continue
in academia you'll be exploring forever
you know it's kind of so it kind of has
to be this kind of star like something
that suggests and that's and the opens
questions up that's
kind of yeah that's why she won't see
you but good luck.
Radio 4 I really enjoyed it with chicken
and but I thought it was nothing more
tedious than listening to a kind of
anti Trump poem right now if I read
one to you which is so sort of stating
the obvious there wouldn't be many
people in the world who would disagree
apart from the sort of crazy supporters
of like you know I think it would be
interesting to write about the kind of
weirds of logical knots we've tied
ourselves in over our hue Metra but it
may be writing a poem about how it's not
really possible to write a poem about
Donald Trump might make for an
interesting piece of writing but I think
it's kind of try to avoid being didactic
it's trying to avoid um sort of
preaching to people to convert an
interview poetry so soon it's going in
something obvious and using some is
using a kind of satirical technique that
goes beyond just the grotesque or just
twenty arguments it's tricky you right
now today's politically realistic
something he's expensive too quite a bit
as well
but even even within the same size
versatility and anger and it's
lieutenant seemed to cool another hour
so it's a tricky time to be writing
politically everything and I think it's
just a case of thumb I think also that
it's okay to be confused it's a get to
be like this is very off-putting and
confusing it wasn't what I kind of
dramatized that and to do it through
characters evening poem let's do it
through sort of speculation voices
the details are trying to secure that
rather than the message because the way
you can do you could just learn like
that Simon Says I wanted to write a
message on to reach me message
originally it's sort of like a work of
art has it's different they're different
impacts and different practices it can
be ambivalence I think as well this
statement yeah Lester yeah I really
enjoyed myself actually like my proposal
absolute grunge proof just um force
myself to force myself to go to my desk
at night and then I just had to not get
up until I've written a thousand words
the long empty rubbish what would be
fair give someone should getting into
account since in my puddin to the
capitalization it's my kind of a tip
much the time then it's in simplex of
drugs but I actually have some fun I
feel I can give you some reach down into
particular scenes and improvement
slightly it's pumped up a dialogue a bit
and try to try to make the contents like
a subtler included a couple of images
like white light so clean
straightforward phones as well so I tend
not to
it was a right way of not wanting to
write a kind of comics model began the
process of a new approach whatever you
like that though you write poetry when I
feel like writing poetry as well so to
get something I enjoy it's like feel
like I can make something out of the
kind of collage of different ideas and
scraps and black
and just explosion so I feel kinda like
doing a bit more with with the kind of
popularity right but I do feeling it
uses some different degrees in souvenirs
are typically sound but I feel like it
uses two parts of part on the breath
it's actually a different person
improve what other kind people work of
course across different floors feel
about that but I think just that sense
of trying to keep the open story in line
so much really just there's like I'm
saying a little bit you can find a wave
I know I need to get here I know I need
to get this Paris to do this on business
of happen and then swarm is just with
the project right in the moment I
started just making a list of my key see
so then whenever I sit down with
something like this happen.
you
