The Letters Page

Correspondence from readers of THE LETTERS PAGE, a literary journal in letters edited by Jon McGregor and published by the University of Nottingham's School of English. Join the conversation at www.theletterspage.ac.uk. We'd love to hear from you.

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Max Porter, our Bath correspondent, in conversation with The Letters Page

(Illustration: Natasha Nayee)

The arrival of Max Porter’s letter for The Letters Page, Vol 3, was one of the highlights of our editorial year, featuring as it did a correspondence with John Berger and an enthusiastic endorsement of fraternal hugs. We caught up with him again recently, and asked him to tell us about his new book; he told us about much more besides. 

Words by Kyle Brown, MA student in Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham. Illustration by Natasha Nayee, BA student in English at the University of Nottingham and Artist-in-Residence with The Letters Page.

‘Sorry for any typos, I was writing while being shouted at by small children,’ Max Porter tells me, via email, shortly after sending a charitably detailed response to my interview questions, with, I must note, no typos. 

He immediately strikes me as intelligent, passionate, and modest, especially regarding his 2015 breakthrough debut novel, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, for which he received the International Dylan Thomas Prize and The Sunday Times/PFD Young Writer of the Year Award, as well as being short-listed for The Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize. The novel tells a story of grief and recovery, following the character of Dad – a Ted Hughes scholar in mourning – his two sons, and Crow, who appears one day to offer his own unique brand of therapy, combining a Mary Poppins-like job description with several other literary devices: ‘[Crow is] kids’ books and joke books and fables and all the good stuff smashed together, and up he flies.’ Like Crow, the form and structure of Porter’s book is also an amalgamation of fable, family drama, poem, folklore, and much more, combining traditional storytelling with contemporary approaches to form in literature. Porter describes the novel as ‘a love letter to the hybrid form.’ 

There is also something particularly English about the book. Perhaps the relationship between Dad and his sons, the latter based on himself and his brother, and his own sons. Perhaps it is Dad’s introverted nature in handling sensitive issues. Or perhaps it is Crow: foul-mouthed, nanny, healer, trickster, demon-slayer, baby-sitter, crow, with his glib but highly caring attachment to Dad and his sons. Crow is by-and-large, one of the most interesting characters I have ever read. However, Porter merely agrees that the book is English: ‘painfully so, I think.’ 

Born in 1981, in High Wycombe, Max Porter lived and worked in London for many years, before moving to Bath with his wife and three children. His introduction into the literary world was not traditional. He studied a bachelor’s degree in Art History at Courtauld Institute of Art, London, which he called, ‘a very strange place,’ and remarked that he wasn’t especially happy at this time. This changed once he started his master’s degree, in Psychoanalysis and Feminism: ‘I wrote about a very Crow-like performance artist called Paul McCarthy, and that was a brilliant year. My mind was blown time and time again by some of the books I found in that library.’ 

Perhaps this was the moment of birth for Porter’s love of books and literature, as although it wasn’t until his mid-thirties that Grief is the Thing with Feathers was published, he has spent his career around books and literature, holding more behind-the-scenes roles. Initially, working in a bookshop, opening two branches of Daunt Books in London. ‘I loved it. Bookselling is wonderful. I met great people and read a lot. I read insane amounts.’ 

After ‘doing some reading for publishers’ and ‘sitting on a few panels about translated literature,’ he applied for the role of editorial director for Granta Books and Portobello Books, joining the team in 2012. ‘They took a punt on me,’ he tells me, adding, ‘Bookselling is good training for publishing. Both jobs are about the hand-sell.’ 

It was during this time that the foundations for his first novel began to take form. He would write poems and bits of prose, create drawings and music – both of which he says are part of his creative process and influential to him. ‘I was always writing, but with no serious intent. I’d started a few fables, some short pieces about siblings and memory. Doing it for love, and for fun. When I landed on the structure for Grief, I knew it was something I was taking more seriously, something I’d probably want to show people.’ He developed the smaller ideas into longer work, while working during the days and being a parent the rest of the time: ‘This was all in the evenings, after work, and when the kids were in bed; sort of a secret project.’ He tells me he didn’t think about it being published while he was writing; how to a large degree it was still for the love and enjoyment of the craft, as well as a calming distraction from his more editorial work. 

After publication, the book had almost instant success, which Porter took in what I imagine to be his usual cool and considered manner: ‘Praise is tricky, and not always good to listen to. You have to take it with a pinch of salt. Just as you would hostility.’ 

In addition to its initial success, the novel was adapted for theatre in 2018 by Irish playwright, Enda Walsh, (Once, 2012 – after the 2007 award-winning film; Lazarus, 2016 – music and lyrics by David Bowie) for the London theatre company, Complicité, and starring Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders, The Dark Knight Trilogy) as Dad. 

‘I loved Enda’s adaptation. He just used the text as it is, which was very flattering. And he made some lovely and profoundly well-thought-through decisions about how to portray Dad and Crow. It was a very interesting experience for me. They welcomed me in, they used my ideas, we played and fiddled with the piece and I think the result is amazing. Different to the book but singing the same song.’ 

2018 also brought the announcement of his second novel as well as the end to his stint at Granta and Portobello Books, stating, ‘It’s become too much for me, hence my leaving this year. It’s very hard to focus, to dig deep and grow as a writer, when you’re juggling dozens of other people’s books, and the thousands of accompanying emails.’ But the writer still has great affection for the publishing world, telling of his appreciation for the ‘joy of being in the middle of it all,’ aiding writings, seeing the entire process through; covers, bindings, the finishes. ‘The day to day making of books, I’ll miss that.’ 

Porter’s second novel, Lanny, is an extension of his debut’s love letter to the hybrid form. ‘It’s got some characteristics in common with Grief; a mythic character, short sections, some prose poetry, conventional narrative removed/redacted, etc. but it’s got much more of a story, and some pace, even some plot!’ 

Set in a small village sixty miles outside London, the novel tells the tale of an urban legend told by the local school children, known as ‘Dead Papa Toothwort,’ and his mysterious interest in the mischievous and enchanting boy of a family new to the village. 

If Grief is the Thing with Feathers addresses, well, grief, Lanny proposes a balm to perhaps one of the aptest of issues, our contemporary political angst. ‘We’ve all been run by maniacs. Time trundles on, and none of us survive it.’ It is in this subject that Porter’s timely binding of the historic and the contemporary finds its perfect companion - ‘I’m obsessed with the past.’ Having a great appreciation for the radical Olde English poets, the fables, the great dramas, and folklore; Porter believes that, as an individual and a society, we can’t have any healthy forward progression until we have learnt to properly appreciate what has come before us. ‘In folklore we find our richest, most radical heritage, and our best nature.’ 

So, what does the future hold for Max Porter? I doubt he will go without interests to stimulate his creativity, and knowing his career history, his love of literature and literary publishing could lead him down any number of paths. ‘I guess I’ll be working in and around publishing in some form. I’m keen to do more literacy and outreach. I’m sitting on boards and that sort of thing, so, I’ll see how the new book goes and play it by ear.’ Needless to say, I believe this author has a fruitful future ahead of him, and I am excited to see where his ambitious, form and genre merging ideas, so rich in emotion and life, will lead him next.

Max Porter’s letter appears in The Letters Page, Vol 3, which is still just about available to purchase here.

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Making zines at Dizzy Ink

The Letters Page goes on a field trip. Lizzie Alblas, a student on the MA in Creative Writing and a member of The Letters Page editorial team gives her account of making Zines at Dizzy Ink:

Last week we attended a workshop at the wonderful Dizzy Ink studios in Nottingham, above the affiliated Pop Press shop on St. James Street.

A pervasive November chill caused many to stay in their coats, or, in my case, to use a scarf as a makeshift shawl (which, combined with my exclaiming 'I have a vision!' while designing a zine, makes me think I must have looked like some sort of dishevelled pseudo-mystic). The studio was lined with old publications and fantastic prints, from the political to the typographic...

...including this brilliant David Bowie tribute:

(which made me wonder whether Bowie as an icon is even more prevalent now we live in a "post-Bowie world" (historians will call it that, trust me). It certainly prompted me to listen to Starman and the Let's Dance album version of Cat People (Putting Out Fire) (a.k.a. the best version) on the bus home, so a special thank you to the studio for the provocation).  Within the studio, jazz and new wave music permeated the air, creating an ambience I can only describe as 'stereotypically-artsy-but-nevertheless-lovely'. We were invited to examine some zines created from one sheet of A3 paper, folded into a book following this method:

We made a mock up of this structure and then designed our own zine in pairs, using content relating to our university module and the affiliated publication, The Letters Page. As our zines were being printed using a risograph, which only printed one or two colours at a time, we were to use two colours that when scanned, combined, and printed together, would create a third colour in any areas of overlap. The finished product looked like this:

We were then introduced to the process of Adana Press and metal letter block printing, allowing us to label envelopes for our zines. We selected our fonts and individual letters, laid them out in a metal frame (called a chase), and padded out the blocks with wooden "furniture" and leading to maintain a pressure (directed by several tightened quoins) that would keep everything in place.

Once the chase was situated in the Adana, we inked our letters using a roller mechanism, secured our envelope onto the platen, and levered this into position, pressing it against the letters. 

And here is the finished product!

If you ever get the chance to try out these techniques, I highly recommend it! Dizzy Ink run workshops that are definitely worth your time - you should check them out!

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No One Leaves This Town Dehydrated

One of our special guests at the launch party was Sarah Dale, a Nottingham-based writer who read us her letter about urine. Cleo Asabre-Holt, an MA Creative Writing student and member of our editorial team, was suitably impressed:

After reading Sarah Dales’ ‘No One Leave This Town Dehydrated’, we want to advise, in case you didn’t already know, that The Letters Page certainly isn’t a publication reserved for traditional or conservative letter writing. We love receiving submissions that are original and really catch our eye, so please: get creative, get experimental, and don’t be shy!

Submitted on bright yellow paper, and including a urine chart offering a range of colours from ‘tepid yellow’ down to ‘alarmingly brown’, Sarah’s unabashed ‘Letter to anyone who has suffered from a urinary tract infection’ certainly made us laugh as well as wince with recognition.

Opening boldly with sentences like, ‘Riding a hired bike with a monumentally unforgiving saddle for 25 miles, whilst menopausal, turns out to be something of a health risk’ and, ‘For some unlucky souls, no amount of water or avoiding everything enjoyable (cycling, wine, coffee, sugar, sex…) stops infection’, this candid and witty recounting can be found in The Letters Page Vol.2 (available to buy here.)

‘No One Leaves This Town Dehydrated’ also made us consider the range of topics that could be explored if you’re keen to submit to us. Sarah clearly thought about a personal experience that is fairly common, and therefore accessible to many an individual. Sarah’s skilful achievement of humour, while tackling potentially unpalatable subject matter is a real triumph. This also makes for a memorable voice... and, as much as we enjoy the more classic letter, the comedic elements of Sarah’s piece offers important light relief to the collection.

Sarah’s non self-conscious recital on the topic of cystitis lead to ripples of laughter in our little office, so it is both a privilege and a comfort to publish words that so freely and amusingly capture the pain of contracting a UTI while holidaying in The French Alps! We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

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SEND MORE LETTERS

We were sent a great package in the post recently: the first issue of Open Letters, a zine published by the group of the same name who also run a series of live events and a podcast. Leila Craven, a student on the MA in Creative Writing and a member of the Letters Page editorial team, took a closer look:

Not only did Open Letters send us a copy of Issue #1 itself - a set of letters folded neatly into a decorated envelope with a smart belly-band - but also a handful of goodies for us to get excited over, including a tote bag and some pins. Everyone loves a tote bag.

Reading the zine is a deeply tactile experience. It was bizarre to see ink and pencil scratches reproduced on paper, in print, and in original handwriting. Sifting through the correspondence that composes the zine turns up letters of every colour and style that readers can run their fingers over without worrying about smudging or fading. There are a lot of interesting textures to discover – some glossy paper, some recycled, all done up in a soft brown envelope.

One particular letter that stood out was about a narrator who had been cheated on by someone they loved. Their thoughts were scattered and could be read in any order, and were interspersed with images. In one corner was the incriminating letter the narrator’s lover received. It felt like reading someone’s train of thought. Another, addressed to ‘Isaac’, had beautiful handwriting flowing down the page. There is no way of telling whether these pieces are fiction or nonfiction, as Open Letters’ website proudly proclaims.

If you love The Letters Page, you will undoubtedly be a fan of Open Letters. They send out their collections of intensely anecdotal stories right to your door and provide a unique reading experience that is neither truly fact nor story. Of course, Open Letters is not just a zine. They also run live events on request and can be reached via their email, [email protected], to organise events locally. The dimly-lit stages on cosy nights are just as much a part of the Open Letters spirit as its publication. Look out for future events, and order their first issue, here.

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A day with Joe Dunthorne

We had a rather special guest at our launch party the other week. Naomi Meeuwsen, a student on the MA in Creative Writing and a member of the ever-growing Letters Page editorial team, introduces him:

Joe Dunthorne is a Welsh novelist, poet and journalist. He has published two novels, Submarine, which was adapted for a film directed by Richard Ayoade, and Wild Abandon. His third novel, The Adulterants, will be published in 2018.

At the launch party for The Letters Page, Vol 2. Joe introduced the audience to his letter from the issue, ‘Delete These Excess Letters’. In this letter, Joe only used words containing the vowel ‘e’. This constrained way of writing is influenced by George Perec, a writer who published a novel in 1969 which only contained words with the vowel ‘e’. In Joe’s letter, whilst writing about an imprisoned character, he also uses the same constraints.  

Earlier in the day, Joe also joined us at The University of Nottingham for afternoon tea, where he talked about his experiences as a writer, his new novel and the piece he had written for The Letters Page. Joe talked about the idea that pieces which make use of only a single vowel have their own personalities: ‘u’ poems tend to be violent and scary, ‘a’ poems tend to be a little sexual, ‘o’ poems are druggy, ‘i’ poems are self involved, and ‘e’ poems often turn out a little religious. This was perhaps more of an insight into Joe’s psyche than objective linguistic analysis...

During his talk, Joe also gave some helpful advice to hopeful writers. Starting with a blank page can be quite daunting, so sometimes it is helpful to abide to certain rules. A specific form of poetry, such as a sonnet or a villanelle, is something that can kick-start your writing process. He also says it is important to save your good ideas in a folder, if they were part of a project that did not work out, so that the good things don’t die with the bad.

Joe also spoke about the ‘choose your own adventure’ stories that were popular in the past. His first experiences with reading were with these kind of stories, and he has since produced some of his own You can read one of these ‘choose your own adventure’ story here.

And of course you can read Joe’s letter in The Letters Page, Vol 2, copies of which are still available for purchase from Book Ex Machina.

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The Letters Page Vol.2 Launch 

Continuing our celebration of the printed object, The Letters Page, Vol 2, comes packaged in a limited edition slip-case-cum-mailing-package. We’re very proud of the way it has turned out: in a recent review, Paddy Cash of London Magazine wrote that ‘Vol. 2 is an immaculately presented and edited book,’ and we’re not going to argue with that. You can read his review here.

To celebrate the launch of this handsome book we threw a party at Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham. We invited some of the contributors to read their letters and the audience were treated to performances from Sarah Dale, Matthew Welton and Joe Dunthorne. We were pretty pleased with the way the whole thing turned out and we thought we’d share some photos with you from the event.

Perhaps you made it along yourself, but if you didn’t and you’d like to hear about the next one in plenty of time you should probably sign up here.

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Kit Caless is a writer and editor from Hackney Downs. He is co-founder and editor of Influx Press, a small independent publisher of fiction and non-fiction from the margins of culture. He is also a regular contributor to VICE and the author of ‘Spoon’s Carpets: An Appreciation.’ (Vintage / Square Peg, 2016)

Rachael Smart, an MA student of Creative Writing at The University of Nottingham spoke to him about his writing on behalf of The Letters Page.

Published last year, Kit Caless’ ‘Spoons Carpets: An Appreciation’ is a catalogue of more than 80 J.D Wetherspoon’s carpets. This fascinating book straddles the terrain between fiction and non-fiction, featuring photos of each unique floor tapestry, its location and local history. Whether that carpet is bohemian, retro, regal or plain old ugly, all the well-trodden histories underfoot are drawn out by Caless’ incisive research. Thankfully, this epic project wasn’t a solitary pub crawl and once Caless had established his aptly named blog, ‘Wetherspoon’s Carpets’, in 2015, boozers nationwide soon got uploading foot selfies featuring Wetherspoon’s carpets.

‘Who Knows the Origin of Anything?’ in The Letters Page (Vol. 2) is a series of emails addressed to somebody who replicated Caless’ Wetherspoon’s Carpet blog on Instagram. Caless captures all the absurdities of ownership within the muddy realm of digital publishing with wry wit. It is written in a passive-aggressive style that Patrick Cash at The London Review describes as ‘Vice-like humorous, tragic, and vaguely existential.’  Despite its humour, the correspondence serves as a timely reminder that the grim realities of plagiarism are never too far off in the digital landscape. I start by asking Caless what he thinks about plagiarism in relation to social media:

‘The difficult thing about the plagiarising of my Wetherspoon's Carpet blog,’ he says, ‘is that I'm essentially just compiling pictures of other people's art, nothing more, nothing less. I'm using other people's designs and even other people's photos to create a blog, so what leg do I have to stand on when complaining about using other people's creations? That was the funny thing about it, I was getting mad that someone else had copied my idea of compiling someone else's photographs of someone else’s designs.

There’s a certain inevitability to digital publishing because of its immediacy - once the words are out there the consequences can be both rewarding and damning. ‘You can copy and plagiarise immediately online,’ Caless says, ‘and there are plenty of instances of people's tweets being nicked and tweeted by a bigger account. It's much harder to keep on top of. Many social media accounts have been set up with the same idea as mine: collecting photos of Wetherspoon's Carpets. You can also get an idea out rapidly. I set the Wetherspoon's Carpet blog up within weeks of discovering the unique qualities of the Spoon's tapestry, so I didn't spend years working on something in secret only for someone else to pip me to the post, which is a good thing. Everything on social media is time stamped - so I knew the dates other Spoon's Carpet accounts had been set up on, and coincidentally, nearly all of them were initiated the day after a big feature in the Guardian about my blog.’

Caless is renowned for ‘Spoons Carpets’ but he’s also supportive of new and emerging writers. Not only does he publish writers at Influx Press, but he co-founded and edits literary e-zine, LossLit, with writer Aki Schilz. The project, based on articulating notions of loss, has a collaborative social media write which trends monthly on Twitter due to its wide-reach and participation.

‘I love LossLit,’ he says. ‘It started as a joke, genuinely. I’d written a short story which had just been published by The Bohemyth and it was a very sad story about the death of a lover. Aki told me I was writing 'loss literature'. Then, later that evening on Twitter she wrote a sad poem and I tagged it #losslit and off it went. It was a bit of banter between us and we did some mock #losslit. But then, somewhere, it turned serious and we actually got creative with our 140 character stories / poems.  The wonderful (and awful) thing about Twitter is that it's a completely open forum. So people who were following mine and Aki's account that evening also joined in, and tagged the tweets with the #losslit hashtag. We all stayed up until 2, 3am doing it. Aki and I then decided to make it a monthly thing, and three years later here we are. It's a pleasure to curate and be part of.’

Seeing as Caless is a hallowed expert on floor tapestries, I ask him to talk me through his very own bespoke designed Spoon’s rug. ‘The essence of a Spoon's Carpet,’ he tells me, ‘is that it must represent the local area of the pub, or the person the pub is named after. So let's pretend the local area is 'my brain'. The main colour would be an Arsenal red for starters. Then you'd have the DNA helixes of all 9 Wu Tang Clan members weaving across the wove. Then in repeating squares of three you'd have the cityscapes of London, Mumbai and Buenos Aires respectively. Finally, at the edge of the carpet, (before it meets any wooden flooring) I'd have the hem of the Kent coast line running from Dover to Margate. Jheeze, it would be magnificent / repulsive.’

* (delete as applicable). 

You can read Kit Caless’ letter ‘Who Knows the Origin of Anything?’ in our handsome print edition of The Letters Page, Vol 2, which can be purchased from Book Ex Machina here.

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The Letters Page, Vol.2 is now available for purchase and we think you’ll be delighted with it. In fact, we’re a little bit in love with it ourselves. Published by Book Ex Machina, Vol.2 comes in its own vintage manila box with button and string tie fastening, and even boasts a duck egg blue LP stamp pattern inside the cover. Its design bears all the hallmarks of any worthy letter with its air mail stripes and inky stamps and its theme ‘Copy, Influence and Plagiarism’ is playfully reinforced by coloured ‘cut and paste’ collages on each title page. Vol.2 includes work by Joe Dunthorne, Darren Chetty, Nicole Flattery and others.

A flavour of the work inside includes Andrew McMillan’s ‘We’re All Plagiarists of Each Other’, a letter that explores with beauty the ways in which we become blueprints of our parents and identifies how language we use routinely has been laid down by others. Sarah Dale’s wry dispatch from France ‘No-one leaves this town dehydrated’ gives considered thought to Count John-Charles de Laizer’s kidney stones, UTI’s and all shades of yellow.

Copy, Influence and Plagiarism couldn’t be more topical in light of multiple cases of plagiarism which have outraged the poetry community in recent years. This week, The Guardian featured an interview with poet and academic, Ira Lightman who is renowned for his commitment and dogged research in to outing poets who ‘lift’ work in a bid to put a stop to it. The article reported that Canada’s former poet laureate, Pierre Des Ruisseaux, who died in January 2016 has been under speculation for plagiarising Maya Angelou’s work, and that after scrupulous investigation, Lightman had unearthed others too including lines from Tupac Shakur and Dylan Thomas’ poems. 

Plagiarism has long been a murky issue of controversy in the creative landscape and perhaps unsurprisingly there has been some backlash to Lightman’s findings. Some claim intertextuality as a defence; that those he has exposed as plagiarists may have forgotten to attribute their sources or taken inadequate notes when adopting an intertextual approach. It’s an implausible argument though: intertextuality isn’t taking other people’s work and passing it off as your own. A writer’s work is an artefact in a long search to find an authentic voice and poet Helen Ivory summarised the essence of it really well when she said: ‘Poetry is not just words on a page, it is an outward manifestation of, and search for, self and how we feel about the world and everything in it.’ (The Guardian, Alison Flood, 22nd May, 2013) 

The Letters Page, Vol. 2 will launch on October 5th 2017 so do save the date and venue details will follow. We hope you enjoy this edition and we’ll look forward to your feedback.

You can order The Letters Page, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 from Ex Book Machina here. 

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Hollie McNish at Inspire Poetry Festival

The Letters Page went to the leafy suburbs of West Bridgford on 12th July to hear Hollie McNish read from Nobody Told Me: Poetry and Parenthood (Blackfriars, 2016) and her new collection Plum (Picador, 2017) as part of Nottingham’s Inspire Poetry Festival.

Hollie McNish is widely considered to be one of the most important poets of the new generation and renowned for her sharp poetry on the realities of parenting. She won the Ted Hughes poetry award in 2017 and ‘Embarassed’, her poem about the Western stigmas of public breastfeeding went viral on Youtube; capturing thousands of mother’s frustrations on infant feeding. McNish’s huge online presence and following is partly due to her reassuring honesty: she speaks boldly and loudly about feminist issues from how to raise girls healthily through to the absurd representation of women on billboards. She is consistent in unearthing topics that society tries to close down such as menstruation and vaginas, and does so with verve and wit.  

In person, Hollie McNish is fresh, funny and unassuming. There was a full house at West Bridgford library where McNish performed a selection of her work covering pregnancy, sex and motherhood, and fittingly hosted in the children’s corner amongst primary-coloured stools and ‘Beginning to Read’ titles. When she reads, her poems are introduced by intensely personal anecdotes from her own life and she often interrupts a poem with ad-hoc comments. It is this frank, instantaneous sense of interaction which makes the audience feel like Hollie’s confidantes and it’s easy to see why so many identify with her insightful work on parenting.

Two stand out poems were ‘Voldemort’ and ‘Language Learning.’ ‘Voldemort’ is about society’s discomfort with naming a girl’s vagina in the same way Harry Potter’s heinous villain was rarely referred to by name, hence the title. The absurdity of society’s avoidance to use the right anatomical name gets increasingly funnier as McNish breathlessly lists around sixty slang names, including ‘lulabelle’ ‘kipper’ and ‘tiddlypop.’

There’s a deep sense of the confessional when McNish performs because she is so willing to talk about what many are reluctant to. In ‘Language Learning’, desire turns her ‘to jelly and ice cream’, a child-like image that contrasts sharply with her lusty French accent when she says: ‘Pour te deshabiller, te sucer / But in English I would never say strip or suck’, and again, she nails that tendency people have of not naming the awkward things, not saying what ‘it’ is, ‘it’ being sex.

‘Plum’ is memoir, a sort of scrapbook of poetry from early childhood to adulthood and switches with ease between a much younger Hollie and grown-up Hollie today. That early adolescent defiance is juxtaposed against a mother’s weighty responsibility and a sense of growing up is clearly mapped across the journals which emerge in the reading.

In an interview with the Guardian earlier this year, McNish said that being categorised as a ‘performance poet’ can be somewhat derogatory, a label she resists: ‘Sometimes when I hear myself and other people I know described in that way, I think if you’re going to call that other person a poet you should call me a poet.’ There’s no denying that McNish’s work is very accessible, particularly for newcomers to the poetry landscape because her content is very relatable and that use of humour brings easy identification in a way that abstract poetry simply doesn’t. 

McNish’s use of colloquial language combined with regular rhyme and half-rhyme gives a solid poetic form that makes for relaxed reading and listening. There was much hard laughter and affirmative head nodding from the audience as McNish joked about everything from post-birth sex to bodies ravaged by pregnancy in a comedic style far removed from more traditional and staid literary performances. If you like your poetry honest, funny and a bit risqué, you can’t go far wrong with Hollie McNish.

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Forward Prizes 2017

This years Forward Prize nominees were announced on the 12th of June and surprisingly for The Letters Page (see blog post here about contributors winning prizes) we don’t have any former contributors amongst the shortlist, but hey there’s always next year. Often dubbed as the Oscars of the poetry world (maybe we just made that up), the 21st of September promises to be a night of outstanding poetry readings to a rapt crowd of listeners. And controversy. Controversy seems to have dogged these awards in the last couple of years. Last year’s Forward Prize winners for best collection, the Felix Dennis prize for best first collection and the Forward prize for best single poem were Vahni Capildeo, Tiphanie Yanique and Sasha Dugdale respectively. There appeared to be an unfounded cynical suggestion from a columnist in Private Eye that there may have been some favouritism from one of the judges, comments which quite frankly don’t warrant us reproducing them here. However, in an encouraging trend 2016 marked the second year in a row with an all female podium of winners, with 2015 seeing Claudia Rankine, Mona Arshi and Claire Harman take the titles that year.

Maybe the Forward Prizes suggests there is some evidence of some change afoot but sometimes this sort of change is not enough when you consider there is still a disparity between the amount of female published poets to male ones and when you consider the lack of POC still not being published in poetry circles. But this is a problem that appears to go far wider than just what is being published and what prizes are being won - there is also a problem with the books themselves not being reviewed - a problem highlighted by Dave Coates in a recently presented paper: The State of Poetry Criticism at a recent poetry symposium. Perhaps it is incumbent on all of us as readers, writers, publishers, and reviewers to challenge the lack of inclusivity in publishing. So with that in mind we’d just like to remind you that The Letters Page is open for submissions and we would like to encourage ALL writers to submit (more details here), we truly would love to hear from previously unpublished writers, writers of colour, from the LGBTQI+ community and writers with disabilities. So get writing, pen to paper, paper in envelope, stamp upon envelope - we cannot wait to read whatever you would like to send to us.

Oh and poems, we always want more poems.

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Baileys Prize: Naomi Alderman

The Letters Page would like to congratulate Naomi Alderman, one of our former contributors, on winning the 2017 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction for her novel The Power. (2016, Penguin) The first science fiction novel to win this prize, Alderman’s thriller reimagines a world in which women and girls can electrocute men with one touch, and explores complex issues of religion, censorship and gender through an experimental narrative. The chair of judges, Tessa Ross, described it as ‘bold, accessible and beautifully written’, fiction that has ‘urgency and resonance’ and predicted the novel to be ‘a classic of the future.’

Due to its reversal of patriarchy, The Power has been coined by some as a dystopian novel but in a recent interview with The Stylist Alderman objected to this, claiming that ‘It’s only a dystopia for the men…nothing happens to a man in this book that is not happening right now to a woman somewhere in the world. If my novel is a dystopia then we are living in a dystopia right now.’ It is this refreshing acknowledgement of gender parity at an everyday grassroots level that gives The Power such leverage.

Alderman seeks to illuminate issues of inequality that have become so normalized they are invisible and the FT concluded in their book review that, ‘By gleefully replacing the protocols of one gender with another, Alderman has created a thrilling narrative stuffed with provocative scenarios and thought experiments.’ Turning patriarchy on its head, the novel makes stereotypes visible by subverting unfair distributions of power and control. Overall, Alderman says that at the heart of the novel is the overriding question of power which seeks to explore ‘who has it, how do you get it, what does it do to you when you’ve got it? And when you wield the power, how long will it be before the power wields you?’

This isn’t Alderman’s first significant prize for fiction. Ten years ago she won the 2006 Orange award for new writers with her debut novel, Disobedience, the story of two friends who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community in London, a poignant narrative that considers spiritual expectations and the collision between religion and modernity. This was followed up by the publication of The Lessons (2010, Penguin) and The Liars’ Gospel (2012, Penguin). In addition to her literary talent, Alderman is also a computer games designer and regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 4, and has presented many documentaries. She was the lead writer for the alternate reality game Perplex City and co-created top-selling smartphone fitness game Zombies Run which has now been downloaded more than 3 million times. She is also Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

If you haven’t read The Power yet we won’t spoil it for you but we urge you to get yourself a copy sharpish. We close with a quote from Alderman’s acceptance speech at the Baileys prize-giving in which she declared that, ‘...the power of other women has been more vital to me than electricity.’  

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Write Letters With Love

Photo Credit: Museum of Broken Relationships.

At a time when it feels like the world could do with a little more affection, The Letters Page has been giving the traditional love letter some consideration. Whilst frank sentimentality can be off-putting for some, love letters still remain a bold, pure expression of affection that never goes out of style.

Readers who have received love letters will know how transporting it is to trawl through old keepsakes and indulge in courtship reminiscences. It is deeply evocative to hold paper folded by hands which once held yours, to imagine a loved one’s voice speaking the very words they scribbled across the page. It’s not just the heady rush of nostalgia that emerges from re-reading old letters that makes them so special but also that they provide a fascinating insight into former relationships, and the person who sent them. Love letters are symbolic possessions which serve as reminders of dead relationships, the debris, a paper catalogue of loss or hurt or joy or even sacred artefacts of a love withstanding.  

Whilst The Letters Page values letters in terms of literary content, we also appreciate the letter itself as a physical object and recognise it as a stand-alone piece of art. We were, therefore, enthralled when we learned about art exhibition The Museum of Broken Relationships based in Los Angeles and Croatia. Coined as ‘a museum about you, about us, about the ways we love and lose’, this powerful collection of heartbreak exhibits everyday objects along with each object’s story or betrayal or loss. One exhibit features a box of acoustic guitar strings with the cutting caption: ‘A birthday present symbolising our relationship. No strings attached.’ Other exhibits include handwritten love letters, chopped-off dreadlocks, a dinosaur piñata, a woman’s tibial screw and even an empty toothpaste tube donated with a touching plea for contact: "So if you ever see this, and recognize it is me, give me a call. I want to know that you’re well." Reassuringly, the museum for broken hearts is consistently open for anonymous donations so instead of torching your old love letters you might well find a display shelf for them here.

The Letters Page really appreciates a well-crafted love letter. We think this punchy extract penned by Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor when she decided to end their relationship displays an intimate yet rarely seen humour that is so often characteristic in private correspondence:

‘God's eye may be on the sparrow but my eye will always be on you. Never forget your strange virtues. Never forget that underneath that veneer of raucous language is a remarkable and puritanical LADY.  (June 25th, 1973 in Shaun Usher’s ‘Letters of Note’, Canongate, 2013)

Our closing note is from composer John Cage in a letter to his husband, Merce Cunningham, which captures poignantly the immeasurable intensity of love and serves as a reminder to write letters from the heart: ‘pardon the intrusion: but when in september will you be back? i would like to measure my breath in relation to the air between us.’ (The Selected Letters of John Cage, Wesleyan Press, 2016)

If you decide to write a love letter to either a real or fictitious recipient, The Letters Page would be thrilled to receive it. We are currently open for submissions for Volume 3. For examples of the sort of letters we like please see the archive of issues 1-7 here and follow this link for full submission guidelines.

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Submissions, Archives and Stationery Advice

In digital times, letter-writing is the oldest literary tradition and an art form that The Letters Page is passionate about conserving. Despite the quick-fire efficiency of keyboard communication, sending a letter has a personal connection that modern technology simply cannot replicate. Nothing beats opening envelopes and handling cool paper leaves folded with care. There’s a certain intimacy in knowing that a letter was once in the sender’s hands and is now in another’s. There’s also the origin of the coloured stamps and the post-office’s inky date that marks a time already past, and the stationery that gives off little clues about the writer’s personality not to mention the literary content inside. 

Forgive us the momentary nostalgia but The Letters Page is currently seeking submissions for Volume 3 and we want your letters. We particularly welcome letters from underrepresented voices such as previously unpublished writers, BAME writers, LGBT writers and writers beyond the UK and North America. For examples of the sort of letters we like please see the archive of issues 1-7 here and follow this link for full submission guidelines.

The Letters Page values all our submissions so we are also thrilled that the letters we receive are now being held in The University of Nottingham’s Manuscripts and Special Collections archive at Kings Meadow Campus. The University Library is committed to ensuring that manuscripts and collections retain their original state – there are 3 million records in over 600 collections in their archives including The D.H Lawrence Collection - so you can relax in the knowledge that our epistles are in reputable literary company. Manuscripts and Special Collections is open to both researchers and the general public for viewing at no cost. They only ask that visitors make an appointment in advance as this ensures that the material requested for viewing is available on arrival. If poring over scholarly papers and epistolary literature is your thing, we urge you to contact King’s Meadow Campus for a visit because it’s a memorable sensory experience which also provides an incomparable window into the past. 

Whilst we’re on the subject of archives and letters, we’d like to share some of J. Willis Westlake’s 19th Century pointers on epistolary etiquette from his guide How to Write Letters. (1876)

·        Never write a private letter on foolscap paper: to do so is awkward, clumsy, and generally inexcusable. If compelled to use it, for want of any other, an apology should be offered.

·        Gentlemen may use either white or buff envelopes in writing to each other; but it is not allowable to send a buff envelope to a lady, nor do ladies use that kind at all.

·        Both paper and envelopes should be of fine quality. Coarse paper, coarse language, coarse thoughts, — all coarse things seem to be associated.

On that charming if somewhat dated cautionary note, we’ll leave you to get out the Basildon Bond and a Bic to write us a letter on your own modern terms, of course, and we really look forward to receiving it.

To arrange a visit to University of Nottingham’s Manuscripts and Special Collections, Kings Meadows Campus, Lenton Lane, Nottingham, NG7 2NR, you can telephone [phone] or email [email protected].

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An Interview with Xu Xi - Issue 1 Contributor

Xu Xi is the author of eleven books, most recently That Man in Our Lives (2016) and Interruptions (2016).  Forthcoming titles include – a memoir An Elegy for HK (Penguin, 2017), a short fiction collection Insignificance (Signal 8 Press, 2018) and an essay collection This Fish is Fowl (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2019-20). She co-directs Authors at Large. She spoke to Creative Writing Student, Wentao Zhang, on behalf of The University of Nottingham about her writing.

Xu Xi’s fiction explores what it means to be transnational with a rare clarity. Fresh and cosmopolitan, her work is informed on matters of identity, geopolitics and culture, and her characters voyage from the intimate to far-flung places. Her work has global recognition, largely due to her unique insights on living in Hong Kong and further afield which break with restrictive stereotypes, and in 2000 she was coined as ‘a pioneer writer in English from Asia’ by The New York Times. ‘To me,’ she told The LA Review, ‘being “authentic” in terms of culture, language, or nation is highly problematic, because that presumes there is an absolute standard that defines what being, say, “Chinese” is.’ Xu Xi’s personal experience of some of the trappings of identity give rise to nuanced work.

A former Indonesian national, Xu Xi was born and raised in Hong Kong, and later became a U.S. citizen. She writes in English but her fiction is stippled with Cantonese-speaking scenes and phrases. ‘It’s natural to merge linguistics,’ she says. ‘I’ve always joked that ESL and CSL (English and Cantonese as second languages) are my mother tongue, as neither are my parent’s first languages. But they are two of Hong Kong’s official languages and Chinglish (Chinese English) in Hong Kong is common.’ Her readers are intrigued by the translation process and she explains it’s more literal than one might assume: ‘For example, she says, ‘there’s a saying in Cantonese “你闷到我抽筋 (You bore me so much)”, and I directly translate it into “You bore me into a muscle cramp.” Although there is no such an expression in English, English native speakers know what I mean. It makes sense to them.’  

With international themes embedded in her literature, it’s no surprise that Xu Xi has a taste for travel. Hong Kong, the USA, France, Greece, the UK and Norway are just some of the places globetrotting has taken her to. ‘The truth behind much of my travel is that I didn’t really like living in Hong Kong. As a child, I always wanted to leave but with family there it’s not been easy to put the city behind me entirely,’ she admits. ‘I much prefer living in the U.S. and still do. Some of my travel has been due to work.’ Prior to writing full-time, Xu’s career was corporate marketing management, mostly for major multinational companies including Dow Jones (The Asian Wall Street Journal) and Federal Express. She has also taught Creative Writing at universities internationally.  

On the subject of travel, I ask Xu Xi to share an enlightening experience from when she was on the road. ‘In Thessaloniki, I met a young boy who took me to his shanty home where I met his mother and sister. They were desperately poor. He had probably never seen a Chinese person before and was naturally curious. What was most surprising was when he told me he was 17, but in size he resembled a 12-year-old at most. Malnourishment of course. It made me appreciate how lucky I am. They were delighted to have me as a visitor, gave me food and drink, and then he walked me back to the main road where we met. It was a startling moment, one to reflect on, and something that could only have happened to a traveller.’

Xu Xi’s most recent novel, That Man in Our Lives, (C and R Press, 2016) is based on a man’s disappearance and tells with wit and mystery the impact his absence wreaks on those left behind. Metafictional in style, it has been highly received and The Asian American Literary Review describe it as ‘a novel which celebrates the pleasure of movement, of lawless mixing of language and register, and of reinvention.’ With Xu Xi’s memoir An Elegy for HK also due to be published by Penguin, it looks set to be another productive year.

You can download Xu Xi’s letter ‘Hong Kong’ (Issue 1, Autumn 2013) from our archives here.  

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For Mother’s Day

The high street was in full pink mode with floral bouquets and ribbon-tied chocolates on display in preparation for Mother’s Day last Sunday. Some feel the commercialisation of Mother’s Day muddies its true sentiments but there’s no denying how special it feels to celebrate our mothers, whether present or gone, wherever they are and whoever they may be, and to reflect on maternal bonds, blood or not. It’s a day of memories and making them, of giving thanks, to touch base if you’re fortunate enough or to reminisce, and be vocal about all things motherly.  

Of course, Mother’s Day wasn’t always about pinkification and elaborate indulgences. It used to have more humble roots; originating in the 17th Century where a gift was usually a token gesture of homemade simnel cake or some hand-picked flowers. Villagers went ‘a-mothering’ on Laetare Sunday when they returned to their ‘mother’ church for worship and then relaxed at home with family. There’s something really wholesome thinking about such pared-down simplicity in comparison with today’s showy commerce. Imagine pinching a few spring daffodils off a grass verge instead of reserving a table in a heaving restaurant and being freed up to put the value on time spent.

Over the years, the founding ‘Mother of Mother’s Day’, Anna Jarvis, (1864-1948) became disconcerted with sales of greeting cards and flowers which she described as ‘a poor excuse for the letter you are too lazy to write.’ You know, whilst we’re partial to artisan chocolates, we think she might have been onto something there. What better occasion is there to pen a letter for than Mother’s Day? It only takes paper and ink. Ok, and a bit of drafting, and admittedly a proportion of care and thought. Perhaps a stamp. But what a sincere gesture and a keepsake that withstands the test of time.

Whatever you did on Sunday, we hope it was full of lovely things and we’ll leave you with this tender extract from a letter written by former contributor, S.E Craythorne: (The Letters Page Vol 1):

‘I love my daughters. I have always loved them. That, I know, is a blessing. I have my history. My dark horrid history of too much sad. But they are happiness. Inside and out.’

You can read the full letter in our handsome print edition of The Letters Page Vol 1, which can be purchased from Book Ex Machina. 

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An interview with Benjamin Myers - Issue 4 & 7 Contributor

Benjamin Myers is a writer and journalist from Durham. His writing has appeared in the New Statesman, the Guardian, New Scientist, The Quietus, and others. His novel Beastings (2014) won the Portico Prize for Literature and the Northern Writers' Award. His new novel, The Gallows Pole, is forthcoming with Blue Moose Books in May 2017.

Jessica Beasley, an MA student of Creative Writing at The University of Nottingham spoke to him about his writing on behalf of The Letters Page.

Literature and music have always gone hand in hand for Benjamin Myers. His journey in music journalism started as a staff writer at Melody Maker, the UK’s former leading weekly pop and rock music newspaper. Over the last fifteen years he has also scripted music documentaries, written several best-selling music biographies and co-owned an independent record label, Captains of Industry. With music so integral to Myers’ life, it’s little wonder that it’s been a dominant feature in his fiction:

‘I love music,’ he admits, ‘but unlike a lot of people I know it is the not the be-all and end-all for me. I’m probably more intrigued by the people who make the music – those rare unique characters. An example would be someone like Iggy Pop, whose approach to life, his physicality and his body of written and recorded work, though very patchy, is incomparable. I’d say I’m definitely more obsessed by writing fiction and poetry.’

There is a merging of fiction and post-punk culture in his novel, Richard (2010) which tells a fictional version of what happened to Richey Edwards, the guitarist and co-lyricist of The Manic Street Preachers who walked out of a London hotel in 1995 and disappeared. The Quietus said of it: ‘Offstage, alone and out of sight, Richard is fully imagined…descriptions of the landscape are so fresh you can smell the moss.’ Vividly told in first and second person narrative, the novel combines autobiography and fiction in a series of chronological flashbacks to convey the imagined circumstances of Richey’s vanishing.

‘It was inspired by the great Norwegian novel, Hunger, by Knut Hamsun, published in 1890, in which a young man has a breakdown by way of a series of manic episodes. My initial idea was to attempt a modern re-write, but at the same time I was also discussing Richey Edwards with my (now) wife, who is an even bigger music fan than I am – what happened to him, when and why - and the two strands of thought seemed to coalesce.’

While he still has a hand in the music industry, Benjamin has seen a natural departure from music journalism over time and I explored why:

‘Writing about music is a skilled discipline,’ he explains; ‘there are tight deadlines, very restricted word counts and a basic assumption that you should have some degree of understanding of your subject. But there is also a sense of disposability there – of words being cast out, read and then discarded. This was especially true during the heyday of print media, which has slowly been declining for years. I felt like I had other stories I wanted to tell, away from a music world that sometimes feels like it is locked into a cycle of repetition, of trends ebbing and flowing.’

Myers upcoming novel, The Gallows Pole, has been hotly tipped as fiction to look out for in 2017 by Alex Preston at the Guardian who describes it as ‘a windswept, brutal tale of eighteenth-century Yorkshire told in starkly beautiful prose.’ ‘The narrative,’ Myers explains, ‘is based on historical events concerning a murderous 18th century gang of forgers called the Cragg Vale Coiners. Comprised of weavers and land-workers, they operated round where I live in the Upper Calder Valley. Their enterprise nearly destroyed the local economy and ended in deaths… It’s one of the great lesser-known stories of English history.’ With the lens on hidden lives it promises to open up issues often driven underground. The novel has been commended ahead of its release with a Roger Deakin Award and is coined as a ‘tough tight novel that refuses to be ignored.’

You can download Benjamin Myers letter, Mytholmroyd, (Issue 7, Winter 2015) here: www.theletterspage.ac.uk/documents/archive/issue-seven-for-screen.pdf

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International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day is on March 8th. Our newest member of the editorial team, Rachael Smart, considers the role writers have played in the feminist movement.

International Women’s Day couldn’t come at a more welcome time. When anti-women agendas have inflamed social climates of disbelief and deep unrest in America, and the UK following Trump’s inauguration, today’s event offers up a necessary and lively forum for women’s debate.

Its theme this year, ‘Women in the Changing World of Work,’ aims to realise a ‘Planet 50-50 by 2030’ in an urgent call for action to accelerate gender parity. Social representations suggest the gender gap is closing but the reality is similar to that maddening playground game, Grandmother’s Footsteps, where once women are caught moving they get sent back to the start.

So what needs to change for women in writing? Debbie Taylor, founder of Mslexia ‘the magazine for women who write’ recently reviewed some 20 years of statistics on gender imbalance in the literary industry. She recommends that anonymous submissions, more women judges, encouraging women’s submissions and challenging how masculine aesthetics bias standards of excellence would make a pretty good start.

The formerly singular, ‘Woman’s Day’ began in radical ways with Charlotte Perkins Gilman addressing women’s domestic disadvantages at a New York conference of socialists in 1909. Whilst today’s event will chart measurable ways forward in women’s industry, it’s much less about starting revolutions now with its ‘change starts small’ philosophy and the lens is on empowerment, and dare we say it, fun.

All this talk of women got us thinking, and in keeping with the celebratory spirit we’ve been reflecting on former contributors to The Letters Page, women who are #bold for change.

In celebration of women’s art and performance at London’s Southbank Centre from 7-12th March WOW – Women of the World Festival will champion gender equality. Karen McLeod, former contributor to The Letters Page (Issue 5, Spring 2015) will be performing with award-winning literary salon Polari in a collaborative event which celebrates writing by LGBT women.

McLeod is probably best known for her debut novel In Search of the Missing Eyelash, a startling narrative about a lonely woman who stalks her former lover. She is also a talented performance artist who created the tragicomic alter-ego Barbara Brownskirt, a poet McLeod defines as a ‘manifestation of bitterness, anger, lesbian cliché, railing against her lot through poetry. She might be rubbish, but she doesn't know it.’ Obsessed with Dame Judi Dench, Brownskirt wears a brown skirt, sensible shoes and bungee-cord hooded cagoule for her self-appointed post as Writer in Residence at the 197 bus stop, Croydon Road, Penge where she reads godawful poetry to passersby.

Joanna Walsh (The Letters Page, Vol 1) founded the phenomenally successful Twitter hashtag #readwomen, an initiative signposting readers to women’s lesser known works. To mark the event last year, she recommended a compelling list of female writers in translation including Lina Wolff’s bizarrely witty yet rarely heard of ‘Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs.’

Walsh’s approach to feminism is invigorating. In a piece for the Guardian she argued for the much neglected political importance of having fun and found amongst the handmade witty placards, the diverse groups merging in a bid for political solidarity at the London women’s march in January that enjoyment was there to be had. Fun, she says, whilst temporary and the sort of gratification that gets interpreted as uncouth and cheap, can also be a fiery act of defiance. In times of austerity, Walsh argues, the conditions for happiness are stripped and laughter is sometimes all the poor are left with and therefore fun, ‘is ripe for our use.’ Whatever you’re doing for International Women’s Day, whether it be making a dent in that woman’s novel gathering dust or making a much bigger statement, Walsh reminds us that ‘having a laugh can smash down walls’, so in the same spirit, make sure you have fun. Previous issues of The Letters Page can be downloaded here.  Our handsome print edition, The Letters Page, Vol 1, can be purchased from Book Ex Machina.