Notes for this talk: I’ve been invited to talk about my creative writing practice in relation to the Weird. Whilst I am writing creatively in my role as a curator at Talbot Rice Gallery, I taken this as an opportunity to look backwards at the writing that populates my blog the Lagoon. I’d suggest that…
THE EQUINE EVENT – synopsis
Set one year after a strange event leads all the men in the world to start behaving like horses, The Equine Event follows two women as they adjust to profoundly altered circumstances. With the hierarchies and restrictions of the patriarchal world giving way, it is time for former friends, Nina and Jessica, to discover the…
Another’s Estate
Even the definition of a neutral word like person seems eerily tied to some kind of malevolence against women. Abigail froze the first time she read the dictionary’s example of it used in a sentence, which announces that ‘the porter was the last person to see her prior to her disappearance.’ It was impossible to…
0001
Premise: People do not have such a good sense of balance. The record shop had just been refurbished. Gone were the bulky padded shelves of the 1990s – IN were slick tensile-foam board shelves. TFB shelving had been introduced in most high street shops over 2 years ago to a considerably boisterous reception; groups of…
Two’s a Shake, Three’s a Wank
Given the rarity of my blog posts at present (something to do with the position of the moon) I had hoped to write something that might stimulate the intelligence. But content has a habit of finding you, not the other way around. So, I am compelled to write about a short text written in marker…
Stories for the Children of a Strange World: Insects
Originally posted on The Lagoon:
The following short story is the first chapter of a book called ‘Stories for the Children of a Strange World’. The book is planned to have short stories, such at this, alternate with with a broader narrative told in second person that links them all together. It’s an ambitious book…
(whelm)
Falling from the sky the whiteness claims its kingdom The colour of death bites And from it emerge the biting spirits: bears and wolves. Orange is the colour of the earth The fire that keeps us warm It is the colour of the berries and pumpkins we eat. (Place whiteness over a fire and it…
The droll of a bell
It is like the sound of a bell, droll. Serious in intention but then permeating through a deep set of undulations that tickle, just a little bit. Bells can be used in emergencies. Church bells ringing to bring a town to order, alarm bells, phone bells. Sometimes it is bad being droll in an emergency….
I once dreamt I had a surface
Here comes And. Or there goes And, depending where you stand. Assuming you stand. My phone will tell me if And has a gender today. And is part of a minority who usually choose to identify as male. Blip. There we go, and his phone will have alerted him to the fact I am simply ‘If’. Like…
Gold Mountain
Paul has just finished recounting a story that he thought he remembered the novelist Will Self telling a journalist about an analogy, purportedly suggested by James Joyce. “The root of creativity is the combination of existing ideas. Take gold for example. It is a valuable metal, but it is a common concept. Most people feel…
Whilst Turning to Bone
Long-listed for the TSS Quartery 2000 prize. She remembered the look on people’s faces when she had said that she didn’t understand what the protest was about. The flags made it obvious, didn’t they? The marching flute bands, the uniforms? This was a group of people who felt that their culture was being threatened…
My real life invisibility story!
Now You See Me | Daily Post You have a secret superpower: the ability to appear and disappear at will. When and where will you use this new superpower? Tell us a story. I’m weary of representations of the world. Adverts that convince you that cars that can drive you out of harms way…
The Lagoon 