My birthday hangs around blue Monday like the last fruit on the tree, apples clinging to bare branches by the roadside. And I've often felt grim in January and February, although much less so since a friend lent me a sun lamp a few years back and I realised that was the solution - get outside on sunny days, be in the daylight.
It's easier now I'm semi-retired. I can go out when I like, more or less. And every Thursday I have a trip to Haywards Heath where I run a reading group for young people in Chalkhill.
This work has been essential income, but also essential to how I think about writing. Stuck in bed with a cold and cough for a couple of days, I took some time to try and find more material to read these young people. I want uplifting stories and poems. I want writing that takes them away from the dark rectangle in their palms they've grown up with, that awful tunnel of judgment, misery and despair, from criticism and pettiness, from bullying.
Uplifting. It should be easy, surely? And yet I'll be half way through a story and it turns, or the language changes and the 'fucks' and 'fucking' comes in. I'm no prude, I don't mind it too much, but I can't read it aloud to young teenagers. It's not allowed.
There are few short stories for teenagers, I've realised, that allow them to escape. Publishers seem to think teenagers need to read about bullying, abuse, suicide, self-harm, sex, dysfunctional families, harm to animals, you name it. I'm sounding old fashioned. But there's a difference between acknowledging problems exist and picking at scabs.
An example: Becoming Dinah by Kit de Waal. I read extracts from this new novel for teenagers and it is gripping. This is fantastic writing by a woman who knows what she's doing. I wish she wrote short stories, but I'll go with this. Michael Morpurgo, David Almond, Malorie Blackman....
When I asked on Facebook I wasn't sure if people got what I was asking for. Uplifting? Why? And what is uplifting? It's hard to define. Here are some of the short stories I've read which I felt went some way towards expressing an insight I was looking for, into whatever we mean by happiness or contentment, a moment with our spirits rather than being trapped in the dark glass rectangle of a contract with gossip and damage.
Tove Jansson stories -including The magic forest and Snow
The Enchanted Morning by Malachi Whittaker
Half of What Atlee Rouse knows about horses by Brett Anthony Johnson
Writ and Last by Ali Smith
A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
Moths of the New World by Audrey Niffenegger
The Toilet by Gcina Mhlope
Boy in a Ford by Hugh Atkinson
May Malone by David Almond
The carpet with the big pink roses on it by Maeve Brennan
Through the tunnel by Doris Lessing
A weight problem by Elspeth Davie
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| by Tove Jansson |
It's easier now I'm semi-retired. I can go out when I like, more or less. And every Thursday I have a trip to Haywards Heath where I run a reading group for young people in Chalkhill.
 |
| Tove Jansson |
Uplifting. It should be easy, surely? And yet I'll be half way through a story and it turns, or the language changes and the 'fucks' and 'fucking' comes in. I'm no prude, I don't mind it too much, but I can't read it aloud to young teenagers. It's not allowed.
 |
| A contract with gossip |
There are few short stories for teenagers, I've realised, that allow them to escape. Publishers seem to think teenagers need to read about bullying, abuse, suicide, self-harm, sex, dysfunctional families, harm to animals, you name it. I'm sounding old fashioned. But there's a difference between acknowledging problems exist and picking at scabs.
 |
| Ali Smith |
An example: Becoming Dinah by Kit de Waal. I read extracts from this new novel for teenagers and it is gripping. This is fantastic writing by a woman who knows what she's doing. I wish she wrote short stories, but I'll go with this. Michael Morpurgo, David Almond, Malorie Blackman....
When I asked on Facebook I wasn't sure if people got what I was asking for. Uplifting? Why? And what is uplifting? It's hard to define. Here are some of the short stories I've read which I felt went some way towards expressing an insight I was looking for, into whatever we mean by happiness or contentment, a moment with our spirits rather than being trapped in the dark glass rectangle of a contract with gossip and damage.
 |
| Gcina Mhlope |
 |
| Elspeth Davie |
Tove Jansson stories -including The magic forest and Snow
The Enchanted Morning by Malachi Whittaker
Half of What Atlee Rouse knows about horses by Brett Anthony Johnson
Writ and Last by Ali Smith
A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
Moths of the New World by Audrey Niffenegger
The Toilet by Gcina Mhlope
Boy in a Ford by Hugh Atkinson
May Malone by David Almond
The carpet with the big pink roses on it by Maeve Brennan
Through the tunnel by Doris Lessing
A weight problem by Elspeth Davie
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