Tag Archives: flash fiction

Speak Easy (2)

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Speak Easy was formed at Stretford’s Sip Club by Dave Hartley in August 2015 as a spoken word open mic before the team of Andy N, Amanda Nicholson and Steve Smythe joined forces to take it over at the end of 2017. The night moved to Chorlton Cum Hardy’s Dulcimer Bar in August 2020 and has carried on being a welcoming, supportive, friendly and encouraging night since welcome to both experienced and newcomers with all acts given equal opportunity to perform with everybody who reads being headliners.

(See the end of the post for details and links to social media for Speak Easy, Andy N, Amanda Nicholson.)

Andy N

Andy N is the author of 8 full length poetry collections including ‘Return to Kemptown’ and ‘The End of Summer’ and co-runs Chorlton Cum Hardy’s always welcoming Spoken Word Open mic night ‘Speak Easy’. He runs / co-runs Podcasts such as Spoken Label, Cloaked in the Shadows and Storytime with Andy & Amanda and does ambient music under the name of Ocean in a Bottle.

Three x Winter Haiku

Walking in darkness
your front door briefly lights up
in the heavy rain. 
*
Ripping out the trees
lighting hit the forest hard
flooding the river
*
Sleeping in winter
the trees hibernate alone
awaiting for Spring. 

*

Amanda Nicholson


Amanda Nicholson is an author, poet, podcast co-host and copywriter. She has written several books as Amanda Steel, including Ghost of Me. Amanda’s poetry has been broadcast on BBC Radio Manchester. She Has a Creative Writing MA, and has had articles published by Jericho Writers, Reader’s Digest UK, Ask.com, and Authors Publish.

Do All These Labels Make Me Look Fat?
 
Like blank sticky labels pressed to my skin
I write on some myself
While people scribble their own words
Over time, the ink fades on some
and others fall off
The one labelled daughter is half peeled off now
Older labels remain stuck fast
But buried by new labels
So people rarely see
Unless they get close enough
And there is always room for more
Some are like tattoos
Only more painful
And others wash away easily

Links
Speak Easy:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/speakeasymanchester
Twitter: https://twitter.com/speakspokenword
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/speakeasypoetryspokenword/
Recordings of Night: https://andyn.bandcamp.com/

Andy N Poet:
His blog: http://onewriterandhispc.blogspot.com/
His books can be found on Amazon etc.
Ocean in a Bottle is at: oceaninabottle.bandcamp.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andynstorytellerpoet
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aen1mpo
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andynpoet/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andynwriter

Amanda Nicholson

Her blog is: https://amandasteelwriter.wordpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmandaSteelWriter
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Amanda_S_Writer
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandasteel37/

Speak Easy (Stephen Smythe)

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It’s a pleasure to introduce Stephen Smythe. He has been involved with Speak Easy since it started (at the SIP Club in Stretford) and that’s where we met. The SIP Club closed during the lockdown and Speak Easy then moved online. I was able to take part from my caravan in The Netherlands, along with poets and writers from London and the US and elsewhere.


Stephen Smythe is a Manchester writer who achieved an MA in Creative Writing from Salford University, in 2018. He was shortlisted in the Bridport Prize, Flash Fiction category, in 2017, and was also longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, in 2018. He won The Bangor Literary Journal FORTY WORDS Competition, in 2022, and was placed third in the Strands International Flash Fiction Competition, in 2021, for his 1000-word story.


His book of forty x forty word stories published by Red Ceilings Press is due out later this year.


Here are two prize winners to give you a taste…

KLEPTO


Bridget took stuff from her work colleagues after they’d gone home. Pens, post-it pads, sweets, even family photos. People suspected her, but couldn’t prove anything. When the company introduced hot desking, Bridget became confused and sometimes stole from herself.

(Winner of the Bangor Literary Journal FORTY WORDS Competition, 2022)

COLD CALL


‘Wait!’ Dad yelled down the phone.
He put his specs on. ‘That’s better, I can hear you now.’
He listened intently, frowned deeply, then hung up.
‘A conservatory?’ He snorted. ‘Your mother would kill me– if she were alive.’

(Second place in the Bangor Literary Journal FORTY WORDS Competition, 2019)

Links to 1000-word stories


Love Your Neighbour


The Fourth P (weebly.com)


Al Pacino of the Welsh Valleys (weebly.com)

Granny (weebly.com)

Poetry
Sommelier 2020 – Janus Literary

Still Life with Octopus

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Photo credit: Grace Gelder

It is a great pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet Tania Hershman. I met Tania a few years ago when I attended a series of workshops she gave on flash fiction. She is a generous, inspiring tutor. I have chosen four different poems from her new collection.

Tania Hershman’s second poetry collection, Still Life with Octopus, was published by Nine Arches Press in July 2022, and her debut novel, Go On, a hybrid “fictional-memoir-in-collage” will be published by Broken Sleep Books on 17 November 2022. Her poetry pamphlet, How High Did She Fly, was joint winner of Live Canon’s 2019 Poetry Pamphlet Competition and her hybrid particle-physics-inspired book ‘and what if we were all allowed to disappear’ was published by Guillemot Press in March 2020.

Tania is also the author of a poetry collection, a poetry chapbook and three short story collections, and co-author of Writing Short Stories: A Writers’ & Artists’ Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014). She is co-creator of the @OnThisDayShe Twitter account, co-author of the On This Day She book (John Blake, 2021), and has a PhD in creative writing inspired by particle physics. As writer-in-residence for Arvon for Autumn 22-Winter 23, Tania has curated a programme of readings, workshops and talks, both online and in person. Find out more at http://www.taniahershman.com

Still Life With Octopus (II)

I only asked her once to climb inside a jar for me. (Before we met, I’d watched all the videos of those experiments.) She sighed but did it, said I could screw the lid, released herself easily. You could become any shape you want, I said. She said nothing. One arm sent itself out to switch the kettle on. While she made us tea, I put the jar back in the cupboard, feeling that slight ache from too much sitting in my hip bones, my lower back, where fixed part meets fixed part of me.

Standardized Patient*

Today I am your
lower back pain. Listen,
I have all the details, will
not veer

from the script. Tomorrow
I will be your cancer
of the kidneys. Next week,

I may be your
one-legged skier (I know,
I know). Whose pain
is this?

*Standardized patient simulation lets medical students practice on people trained to play patients.

And then God

sends someone else’s
Jewish grandmother
to stop me

with a question about birds
I can’t answer. She says – as if
this is her river – I’ve never

seen you here before,
then presses for my
exact address. Instead

of the usual, Such a nice
girl, no husband?, she asks,
No dog? I don’t know why

I tell her then
that I’m a poet, but
the gleam in her eyes

warns me this
is the point
to leave, the unasked

dancing on the path
between us: Will you
make a poem out of me?

Middle of the Night

Night asks me
to wake up. What?
I say. Night whispers
darkly, something
about cats coming in
and out, a baby five
doors down. You
want company? I ask.
Night nods. I get up

and we make tea. Too
early, the cat mutters
as we pass. Night
and I get back
into bed. I’m fine
now, Night says.

Cover design: Ben Rothery

Note: Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life (William Collins, 2017).

Seven ways of dealing with rejection

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This year I have been sending far more poems out and so it follows logically that more will be rejected. Of course, more will be accepted by magazines and successful in competitions. That’s all about “hit rates”. So far this year, ten poems have been published or accepted for publication – anthologies, magazines, competition anthologies.

But the rejections sting. The other day there was a terse two-line email from a magazine: Not what we’re looking for at the moment. Contrast that with the editors of Strix. The magazine was nominated for the prestigious Saboteur award: more sales, more submissions. They went to the trouble of sending separate emails to the people whose work had been shortlisted for issue 4. From 926 pieces submitted, 44 were shortlisted. I had made it that far and it was good to know.

Reframe

Before I retrained as a psychotherapist, I worked in various consultancies. A rejection was always reframed as getting closer to an acceptance. We needed reminding that a day of paid work typically went with two or three days of unpaid work: marketing, PR, admin, training and development, travelling, etc.

My poems are “tied up” when they are out with editors and competition judges and “free” when they’ve not been chosen.

Keep things moving and don’t fret

I have a simple Word table with poems in alphabetical order, a To Do list with details of magazines and their submission windows, and a list of magazines that are new to me. I also have an A4 folder that holds competition leaflets in plastic wallets, organised according to deadlines.

As soon as I know that a poem is “free”, I make the decision as to where it will go next. I aim to send it out within one or two days. Many submissions now are by email or the Submittable portal, so it’s easy.

Yes, I allow myself a bit of a moan in my diary, but that’s in a separate room from where I write.

Persistence

All the research on what makes for successful Sales people quote the P-word. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance clocked up 121 rejections and Chicken Soup for the Soul was rejected 144 times. The American poet William Stafford wrote a poem a day for many years. Apparently, he had a hit rate of 1 : 7, so that’s a poem a week.

Compare yourself with yourself, not with others

Many years ago I read some very interesting NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) research. Modelling has always been at the heart of NLP. What is that successful people do? What are their attitudes, values, beliefs? What do they say to themselves?

This research looked at sportspeople who had been seriously injured (during practice, performance, or outside of their sport, e.g. traffic accident). The group examined were those who after their operations, stay in hospital, rehabilitation, etc. were stronger and fitter than before the accident. They did two things: they took it a day at a time and they compared themselves with themselves, not with others.

Keep your successes within reach, within sight.

Especially for those of us who’re the “responsible workaholic” type with a perfectionist streak, it’s natural to focus on what’s missing, what’s not right. Successful poems used to get deleted from that Word table to make sure they weren’t accidentally sent out again. Now I have them on top of the table, in bold print. A great reminder.

I also have an A4 folder with letters and emails from editors and competition organisers, certificates. My own work is on a shelf in a bookcase in the room where I write. The picture is of a competition certificate. It was one of my earliest successes (1988) and I was thrilled to receive it. I framed it and put it on the hall wall, at the bottom of the stairs.

Games Certificate

Eggs in baskets

I’ve started writing and sending out flash fiction and I greatly enjoy blogging. Since closing my practice I have more time for and energy for writing and for sending the work out in the world, but I was becoming too attached to the outcome. It’s good for me to not have all the eggs in one basket.

Zen and the Art of Submitting Poetry

Rejection does not make you a bad poet.
Acceptance does not make you a good one.
Therefore, neither should trouble you.

Chase after fame, however, and you put your life
into the hands of others:
They will tip you between hope and despair.

Aim, then, to be aimless.
Seek neither publication, nor acclaim:
Submit without submitting.

The poem is by Cameron Self and it’s on the Literary Norfolk site.

Flash, I love you!

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Here are 34 extremely short stories in an anthology of flash fiction published by Paper Swans Press. My submissions didn’t cut the mustard: they were prose poems in disguise and didn’t have that important story arc.

cover flash fiction

I’ve made a handful of resolutions.  One of these is to write more short stories and get into writing flash fiction. Many years ago I had some success with short stories: published in anthologies and broadcast.  I got a cheque from the BBC for £5, that’s £1 per minute broadcast for Diving at Calypso Bay.  I’m a total novice at flash fiction and will study the form closely.  That’s after I’ve submitted some poems to issue 3 of Strix…