Fas Spring XI.5 - Bromance

What a session! I said bromance and you said aye. Great response: thank you.

Attendees: FB, CW, AS, JW, JH, AP (all old guard - huzzah!)

Read: Bromance I & II (CW poems); A Pathetic Apathetic excerpt (JW novel); Untitled (AP short story / pitch for short); Looking For Bromance (AS comic scene)

Colin likes a challenge; so he arrived with two poems, which, he claimed, were unrelated, on the theme of philadelphia between two men. As ever, he was swift to denigrate his work, but both displayed a comfortable manipulation of language, as well as the seeds of some greater ideas. In I, he had set himself a structural rule that he had to end each stanza on a different pronoun - it was effective both for providing an internal sense to the piece, as well as drawing in the listener. (So too was the fact that each stanza began with some kind of exhortation or spoken word). Bromance II, shorter, sweeter, and over in mere moments, was a snapshot of words spoken between brethren to escape womankind. It’s the kind of thought that works particularly well in poesy. 

Another excerpt from John - this one from later in his novel where our hero has been kicked out of his home and spends his first night on the streets, meeting a homeless man, Bob, who is surprisingly kind, if a little creepy at times. It’s a great section for character development of both John’s protagonist, who thinks one thing and often does another, to humorous consequence, and Bob, who will come to play a prominent role in the narrative, we were told. As so often, we chewed over how much description was enough, and how, in fact, it was possible to get those key descriptions working without overloading a reader, nor with leaving them feeling short-changed on detail. As ever, thoughts in comments would be appreciated. 

Alli claimed to have written her piece on her phone (no harm in that - I do the same when needs must), but it was clear she had given her concept some thought. A brief scene she intended to convert for the screen was excellently executed: four boys in a pub, all after the same girl, with hilarious / disastrous consequences. As with the other things I’ve seen of Alli’s, she has an eye for telling dialogue as well as capturing something of youthful relationships swiftly and expressively. We riffed a little on how to further the tension of the piece, as well as exploring how one might shorten the scene even further to fit the constraints of converting it from a few minutes’ short story to a one page short.

Finally Adam, once again taking his lead from some of the greatest absurdist comedians and deciding to take the theme of bromance to its natural limits - homoerotic love. His scene, still incomplete, but filled with great intent, as well as some choice, thrilling details of what might go wrong when one tries to seek out the epitome of manly chat… there’s plenty to be done on the scene, of course, but Adam already had a sense of direction, and the voice of his rather self-pitying, but kindly protagonist was pleasingly engaging. I hope we see more of it in a later Fas. 

Next theme, GREEN. If you need help with ideas, hit me up. Thanks for all the support! 

Fas Fall X.5 - "you have pierced the film lid of my heart"

Close second for title: "Fuck you, aphorist!". Sorry Ian. Next time!

Attendees: FB, AS, IE, JW, DC (new member! hello!), CF (new member! hello too!)

Read: Chicken Breasts With Cheese and Ham (JW poem); And I You (IE stichomythic dialogue short); The Quarry (FB short story); The Dog in Greece (IE short story opening)

Scrawled on the back of a cardboard piece of food packaging was a sweet two stanza poem all about food and love. Let's pretend it was really about fruit and sex. It was short and sweet and pretty darn funny (see above title) and we talked a little about focusing the addressee of the poem a little more clearly. It was a great ice-breaker to start the session. Thank you JB!

And I You sees Ian further break-down conventional story-telling modes to try for something a little less formatted, and a little more fun. Two unmarked voices break into argument about ideolect which resolves in some sort of admission that the details they detest in each other are also the things they adore. We talked about Ian's choices of words that emphasised an overly posturing ideolect (whack, nigger), about how successful the piece was in representing two separate voices (some people reckoned it was an internal dualogue), and about marking out the voices more distinctly. As ever, it depends in what direction Ian wants to take his piece. As an experiment in trying to represent an argument in which the participants are so similar that they can barely be distinguished, I think we have some markedly successful results.

I brought The Quarry again. Same version as before; you all have it in your inboxes. It is always interesting to hear the directions people feel a piece should pursue. We talked even more about the character of this narrator, about the limits of his memory and what that means for how he reinterprets his diaries. Inevitably, my own diaries came up. Yes, one day I'll bring one along. And we'll laugh until my face melts off.

Then Ian throughout a bit of a blinder: the opening to a provisionally entitled The Dog In Greece. The story itself, as Ian was told it, is shocking as it is; his opening sees two characters, a couple, talking about the intensity of their feelings for each other as they drive along. As a story opening, it's compelling and fast-paced. It sees some of Ian's attention to physical detail that made the first draft of TOR so readable, while also demonstrates him trying out more attempts at realistic, engaging dialogue. Let's see the rest of it, please! 

Fas: Spring X.3 - poetry corner

Another week, another meeting. (Feb 14th)


Attendees: FB, IE, CW, JT (new member! woo!)


Discussed: The Girl Who Has Nightmares (NG submission); NYC ('85), Text (CW poems)


My friend sent in a piece of writing she'd penned at 3am, so I thought I'd bring it along to Fas and see how we handled it. It was poetry, of sorts, with an aim that it might be one day converted into song lyrics. As such, it was bound to a series of metres to get a sense of the musicality of the piece, and included not one but two separate refrains. Perhaps this was where it essentially fell down - that too many different ideas of form and rhythm were being played with and integrated into a piece that only really had one pained message. 


Where the first piece might have struggled with form and content, Colin's poems stood, quietly, unimposingly, as excellent examples of poetry working the way it should. Personally I loved them both, and I'm aware that I might wax too lyrical in their praise. But the economy of language and the choice of style and form complemented the ideas behind the two poems, and indeed heightened the sense of an idea well and simply expressed. A delight to read, a delight to dissect.


And, happily enough, Text was a little about romance, and the hope or disappointment it can cause, which left us grinning at the end of our Valentine's Day session. 

Background: Fas 4

A bit of a bumper session, this 'un. 


Attendees: FB, HH, AS, CW (new member!), MG, JL in spirit... think that was it. Maybe I'm wrong....hmm....


Discussed: The Hunt (HH); Melanie (JL); three poems (LR); Adam's funny poem (AS)


Henry's piece, The Hunt, described some cavemen of sorts hunting an elephant. It played around with narrative form and stance, and took us from a Kipling-esque benevolent narrator through to a postmodern anti-structuralist voice... It might feature in his new book, too! 


Melanie depicted, amongst other things, the ineffectual weakness of twenty-first century man in all its glory. Melanie moves in with our humble narrator, and sets about stripping him of everything, including the paternity of his child. Some people thought this was all about Melanie as a device for the prefigured womb-creature that would tear about boyfriend and girlfriend; others thought Melanie was just a bit of a bitch. Wry, funny, horrificially self-deprecating, it was a delight to read and discuss.


Lettie and Adam's poems both received a spirited response from the group. It was the first time we read something (Lettie's work) without the author there, which led to an interesting shift in response from the group. I took more of a back seat, taking notes, which meant we got all sorts of things said and discussed to a level of detail that having the author there to clear things up might not have permitted. It was, nonetheless, a worthwhile discussion and much was made of the high quality of the poetry (totally bitchin', yo). 


November '09