Wednesday, December 14, 2011

"Assent" magazine, published by the university of Derby has just published a review of "Variations on Painting a Room", written by the Reviews Editor, Julia Gaze. It's a print magazine, so the review's not available online as yet. Ms. Gaze, like Ian Seed in his review, focuses on The Book of Random Access, and it's becoming clear to me that, at least in readers' eyes (which is what counts) that section of the book is the most significant. What's interesting to me is that it's the part of the book which I wrote most quickly - at a rate of about one prose poem every two days. I also wrote it while my mind was largely on other things, during a busy domestic and professional period of my life. I typed and wrote the poems during brief breaks at my desk at work, while sitting at the front of a class (I train IT staff), while waiting to pick my kids up from various places, and while doing the washing up, gardening and cleaning. I've discussed a similar aspect of this work elsewhere on this blog, but it still fascinates me, the creative process. Having the conscious miind distracted in some way seems almost a requirement of artistic production.

1 comment:

John B-R said...

If "first thought best thought" maybe "before-first-thought best thought" or something. Like Zen.

Anyway, congrats. And, if I were asked, to date, Random Access is your masterpiece.

No matter how fast and distracted you might have been going, it sounds exactly exactly exactly like Alan B.