Rachel Trezise

Happy New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:17:00 +0000

Well, 2010 is almost upon us and promises as ever to be a busy one for me.

First up is The Silent Village exhibition at Ffotogallery in which contemporary artists, namely myself, Peter Finnemore and Paolo Ventura offer our response to 'The Silent Village', Humphrey Jenning's film which is both a reconstruction of a Nazi atrocity in the Second World War and an evocation of Welsh life in the early 1940s.
I have written a short story called 'A Child Called Lidice,' that will accompany the visual art. You will also be able to listen to it read on headphones in the gallery space. The exhibition opens on January 15 and closes February 27th.

For more information visit: www.ffotogallery.org

Secondly, 'Loose Connections,' a novella I've written for the Accent Press Quick Reads series, will be published on March 4th to celebrate World Reading Day. The 96 page book tells the story of Mother-of-two Rosemary, a woman under pressure. With two difficult teenaged children, a distant husband and a busy job, the stress is mounting. The loss of her internet connection pushes her over the edge. After waiting a month and two failed attempts to fix the problem, a third repair man arrives. When he too says he can't get her back online, his incompetence forces Rosemary to take drastic action. The repair man realises that Rosemary is not as naive as she first appears. She is a woman with a secret and is capable of causing him harm. Loose Connections may now be pre-ordered from Amazon for only �1.99!

Of course, my second novel 'Sixteen Shades of Crazy,' will also be published this year by the excellent new HarperCollins imprint Blue Door. The book will be officially launched in May, at the Hay Festival but can also be pre-ordered from Amazon now. After five years in the making I cannot tell you how excited I am to see this baby hit the shelves.

'Went out, got pissed. Same shit, different day.' Aberalaw, a tiny South Wales valley village where nobody ever arrives and nobody ever leaves. The new police chief has declared war on recreational drugs, resulting in an eighteen-month drought. The party-loving wives and girlfriends of local punk band, The Boobs, are getting desperate, both for drugs and thrills: Ellie, factory girl with dreams of a better life in New York; Rhiannon, hairdresser with a taste for violence and designer clothes and Sian, unappreciated, obsessive compulsive mother of three. Into their lives, enter the languid dark stranger, Johnny: Englishman, drug dealer and shameless seducer. In the space of just a few months, three women's lives will be changed forever.'

Finally, as part of the Glynneath: Big Read 10 campaign, the public have been invited to vote for their favourite Welsh book, in both English and Welsh languages, from a short list of 10 titles. My rockumentary Dial M for Merthyr has been shortlisted. If you've read and enjoyed the book please show your support by clicking on the link below and voting for it. The result of the vote will be announced shortly after the closing date of 12 February 2010.

cymunedau09communities.cllc.org.uk/27197?rc=27197

And Happy New Year! xx

Meet at the Gate

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:47:00 +0000

So, I was interviewed recently by the lovely Fflur Dafydd for Canongate's 'Meet at the Gate' series of authors interviewing authors. You can read the original here:

www.meetatthegate.com

Or read the transcript below. News of new releases and events coming soon.

FD: Let's start perhaps with the obvious question. You were the inaugural winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize, the biggest financial prize in the world for a single work (�60,000); a prize only open to writers under 30. When the announcement was made, it was evident you weren't expecting it at all! Am I right in saying that this prize changed the course of your writing career? Tell us about some of the exciting things that have happened to you since then.

RT: I certainly wasn't expecting it. Being Welsh, and therefore paranoid and extraordinarily self-doubting, I was sure I was the token Welsh contender, there only because the Dylan Thomas Prize was based in Wales. That alone would have been enough to change my career. For the first time ever my work was being reviewed in The Times and The Independent, and being read for the first time, I'm quite sure, on the other side of the Severn Bridge. Actually winning it was completely bizarre. Accepting the title came with a residency at the University of Texas in Austin. Sitting down and discussing my work, until that point obviously all set in Wales, with students who grew up in the USA, but who identified with it, was a totally exhilarating experience. It took a lot of that Welsh paranoia away and gave me the confidence to start believing in myself simply as a 'writer' rather than a 'Welsh writer'. I spent a month in the States at that time and married my fianc� in Vegas, so it changed my personal life too.

FD: Another surprise perhaps was the fact that your book, Fresh Apples, which is a short story collection, managed to see off stiff competition from several novels. Do you think that in many ways the short story collection allows the writers to show the breadth and depth of their vision, and perhaps to show their versatility, even more so than a novel?

RT: Well a novel and a short-story are two very different art forms. I always like to say that a novel is a bonfire whereas a short story is a firework. For me, it takes at least two years to write a novel so it's a little like dragging bits of wood and debris from here there and everywhere and building it into a structure that will burn for quite some time in order to keep your reader interested, and obviously that takes an amount of patience and effort. A short story however is a short, sharp, shock. It's quick and you can write it quickly but it has to be brilliant from beginning to end or you'll lose your reader immediately. If the Catherine Wheel doesn't light first time, everyone looks away. In terms of presenting your abilities, a whole collection of fireworks is much more effective than one long bonfire, because you're presenting a substantial range of characters and scenarios, themes, ideas and settings. The second winner of the prize was a short story collection too, The Boat by Nam Le, so I guess that sort of proves the theory, but short stories shouldn't just be seen as a way for young people to communicate their talent. I think short story writing is a real skill and I can't wait to get started on a new collection now that I'm over 30 and hopefully won't be constantly referred to as a 'young writer' any more.

FD: I use your short stories a lot in my creative writing classes at Swansea University, and these are the kinds of stories that make undergraduates wake up from their morning coma and actually listen. I think one of the reasons for this is because of the unique combination of the dark subject matter and the startling, lively nature of the language in your stories, which often pulsates on the page and gives us arrestingly original descriptions. Is this an intentional contrast in your work; the often despondent nature of your characters versus the vibrant nature of the language that surrounds them?

RT: I was reading one of the stories to a group of disadvantaged sixteen-year-olds at Bridgend College very recently and as soon as I finished it, one of the girls at the back sat up and said, 'Oh my God! I thought some boring old bitch was going to come in here and go on and on about something totally shit, but I really liked that.' It's pretty much the best review I've ever had because to impress someone who doesn't ordinarily read literature is much more satisfying than impressing someone who does. Another girl asked me if I was rich and when I told her about The Dylan Thomas Prize purse, she said, 'I don't want to be a footballer's wife anymore. I want to be a writer.' I thought she was joking but as I was leaving the lecturer told me that the girl spends her evenings hanging around Ninian Park football ground. The contrast between the dark subject matter and the bright language isn't intentional at all. It's a very naive feature of my work, or perhaps I should say organic. The characters and plots are amalgamations of people and things I knew growing up in the Rhondda Valley. I was dragged up, pretty much, and was dirt poor, and knew all about desperation in every sense of the word, so that was my life experience and that's what I draw on for inspiration, but I've always loved words and reading and song lyrics, so at an early age I learned to become very inventive with language and learned to use it evocatively. It's a sort of happy accident that I naturally manage to blend those two facets together.

FD: You recently visited the wonderful European Short Story Festival in Croatia. Can you tell us a little about your experiences there? How important do you think it is to have such a festival, and what did you as a writer gain from it?

RT: The Croatian short story festival was the third and best short story festival I've attended. I also previously did The Frank O'Connor Festival in Cork, and the Wroclaw Festival in Poland. Being a writer I spend a lot of time sitting in front of a keyboard and thrashing ideas around in my own head, so sometimes just popping into the local for a drink can be a bit of a culture shock. It's always wonderful to spend time with other writers, especially writers from other countries and cultures and as a writer it's always important to travel to other countries, and so doing both at the same time is always good for the soul. I discovered an Israeli writer called Alex Epstein who has yet to be published in English, but whose short stories are utterly sublime, and made me feel privileged to be sitting in the audience listening. It's so inspiring. Unfortunately for me, I feel like I've read the stories in Fresh Apples to death which is why I'm so keen to start work on a second collection.

FD: Do you feel that each published work contributes something to your technique when writing the next? Your next published work will be a novel. Did Fresh Apples or Dial M for Merthyr (your non-fiction) teach you anything about writing in the meantime, which you then passed on to your latest novel?

RT: Each piece of work published or otherwise absolutely contributes to my technique when I sit down to write the next. Fresh Apples in particular taught me a lot about story writing. My first novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl was to a large extent autobiographical so there was no plot or planning involved, it was just a matter of extending or limiting the truth. To a certain degree, all fiction is like that; I sometimes say that writing is editing the truth. But the short stories taught me to manipulate themes, work with metaphors, and create completely fictional characters by fusing aspects of many different people together. I experimented for the first time with different ages and sexes so I learned to use a variety of voices which I realise now is essential for a writer of fiction, but that was a big stumbling block for me between the publication of the first and second book. Like actors who can't watch themselves on screen, I find it very difficult to read my first novel because there are so many improvements I could make now. Every book is a learning curve and Fresh Apples was a steep one. That's what makes writing exciting. You are constantly trying to better yourself.

FD: Can you tell us a little bit about the content of your next novel Sixteen Shades of Crazy? Does it connect to your other works? Do you feel that this is an important milestone in your journey as a writer?

RT: Sixteen Shades of Crazy is a novel about an English drug-dealer who arrives in a small Welsh village amidst a six month drug drought. To the young people in this very insular and downtrodden area, he is the epitome of exoticism. He is also a shameless womaniser who quickly sets about seducing the women of the village. The story is told in three voices, those of three young women who over the course of a year fall in love with him, and whose lives are changed irrevocably because of him. The story obviously involves narcotics, which connects with many of my short stories, in fact the novel is based very loosely on one of my short stories, but it is mostly a cautionary tale about the dangers of obsession and the confines of community. It is definitely an important milestone in my career because it's my first proper full length work of fiction. It's been five years in the making because I had to keep putting it down to work on other things, the commission to write Dial M for Merthyr for example, so I'll be very happy to see it finally published in May next year. It's also a big two fingers in the face of one particular London agent, who after reading the plot summary seven years ago, told me to put it in a drawer and forget about it.

FD: Your new publisher for this novel is Blue Door, a new imprint of Harper Collins. As Welsh writers I think we always feel a little bit displaced or disorientated when our readership expands or when a bigger publisher takes an interest in us! Has this been your experience in moving from a smaller publisher to a much bigger one? And do you feel that writing about Wales to a global audience is important? Do you see yourself as carrying any cultural responsibility as a Welsh writer, or is the 'Welsh writer' tag sometimes a burden?

RT: Luckily much of my work has already been translated and In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl and Fresh Apples were particularly successful in Australia and New Zealand, so after reading a few rave reviews in The Sydney Herald, (I think the publishers hid the bad ones), moving from an independent publisher to a major doesn't seem to be the huge leap it would have been otherwise. I'm really excited about it because as a writer I think it's natural to want to reach the biggest audience possible. Blue Door is a small imprint. It only publishes twelve titles a year and I have a very good relationship with my publisher. Yet it has the full marketing power of HarperCollins behind it, so it is the best of both worlds. There's no guarantee that the book will be successful. Obviously the print run is enormous compared to what I'm used to but I'm looking forward to giving it a shot. What is very strange is having Leonard Cohen and Prince Charles as label mates. I couldn't have dreamt that one up. Wales as a nation is unfortunately quite inward-looking, which makes us very bad at presenting our talents to the outside world, which is a terrible shame, so I do think writing about Wales to a global audience is enormously important. While I've always tried to give my writing a proper sense of place, I've always been very careful not to alienate non-Welsh readers. Scottish and Irish writers are able to garner a global audience so why can't we? The village in Sixteen Shades of Crazy for example, could be a village anywhere in the world. The human condition always transcends nationality, so I do find the 'Welsh writer' tag a burden. All tags are burdens to writers. I think my responsibility as a writer lies in exploring as many different cultures as possible, rather than limiting my horizons. When you live in Wales there is a tendency to forget that it's a very small country. When you live in the UK there is a tendency to forget that it's a very small island.

FD: You've achieved quite a lot in a short time as a writer. Do you have books inside you that you're perhaps not ready to write yet, but would like to have a go at in the future?

RT: Of course I have many ideas in my head and I'm just waiting for them to trickle out. I'd prefer to call them ideas because they may well become plays or poems. I've already done some preliminary work on my next novel which is set in America. It's a love story between and told by an unlikely couple; a former prostitute from North Carolina and a young Jewish man from a Hasidic community in Brooklyn, New York. I know that on paper it sounds as though I'm just trying to write the most controversial novel imaginable but it's actually a very tender tale about love being able to conquer the tribulations caused by dysfunctional upbringings. Obviously, having spent most of my life in Wales, my knowledge about Hasidic communities, and prostitution for that matter, is very limited so I'm off to New York next year to do a substantial amount of research. Since studying Irish history and politics at Limerick University I've always wanted to write something about the Troubles, probably a novel and not politically charged in any way, just an account of how it effected and continues to effect the average family in Northern Ireland. And obviously being Welsh, and of Cornish descent, my history is steeped in mining, so at some point I'd like to write the antidote to 'How Green Is My Valley;' all very big ideas that will take decades probably to implement. So please don't expect too much, too soon.

Rachel Trezise on Patrick Jones

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:56:00 +0000

A feature on poet and dramatist Patrick Jones, taken from New Welsh Review 79 (Spring 2008)

My affiliation with Patrick Jones began seven years ago, on an October evening in Treorchy Library, at the launch of my first book. Patrick's own book, Fuse, a collection of plays and poetry, was being published by the same company the following year and he came to say a few words about how In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl was bound to appeal to teenagers in the valleys, to get them reading, and hopefully in time, writing. I was enormously grateful that an established writer would come and advocate my work in that way because I was anything but established; a shy, anonymous Rhondda girl, turning scarlet as she read her first published paragraph to a few friends, family members and, unbeknownst to me at the time, Ron Berry's eldest daughter. Being a lifelong Manic Street Preachers fan, what I was most excited about was the fact that Patrick was bass player Nicky Wire's elder brother, and I spent the preceding week clinging to the vain hope that Patrick would bring Nicky to the launch. To my mind, The Manic Street Preachers and Patrick Jones were inseparable entities. Patrick was the band member who wasn't a band member, a sleeping partner: His voice had been immortalised on the bands debut Generation Terrorists album, reading snippets of his poetry over the introductions to Love's Sweet Exile and Crucifix Kiss. The tag line in the chorus from Motorcycle Emptiness had originally belonged to him, as had the album title Everything Must Go. But throughout the past seven years I've had many opportunities to watch Patrick perform his poetry live on stage, including a performance in a tiny cafeteria in the Bowery in New York, a few weeks after 9/11. His poetry erupts from him, a torrent of frenzied emotion, spilling out like magma. His work is powerful, memorable and immensely affecting. Very quickly I came to realise that he is very much his own man, and very much his own writer.

Patrick grew up listening to Canadian blues inspired heavy metal band, Rush, and describes himself as 'an old rocker.' As a child and a young teenager, he never read books and like me, was influenced by the lyrics of rock songs, the only form of culture available to him. He wasn't one of these kids, he says, who knew they wanted to be a writer by the age of fourteen. In fact, literature didn't make an appearance until he became interested in politics whilst studying Sociology at Swansea University. He began writing poetry in 1986, six years before Generation Terrorists was released. At least one of his most well known poems, The Eloquence in the Screaming was written during this period. Nicky Wire explains in the foreword to Fuse that he didn't realise his brother had become a poet until they were travelling home from a gig supporting The Levellers in Salisbury Arts Centre in 1990. "... Patrick, who had come along for moral support, began reciting, or better, ranting, a poem. Suddenly everything made sense, alienation felt comforting, the poem was 'the eloquence in the screaming' which still inspires me, the moment crystallised, froze and stayed with me ever since."

That is proof enough that Patrick doesn't write simply because his younger brother is in a band, which is what he claimed everybody thought, when I asked if I could interview him. (When I did get around to interviewing him, his first words, whilst standing at the till in the Chapter Arts Centre caf� waiting for tea and coffee, were, 'They [The New Welsh Review] couldn?t get the Manics, so they've opted for me instead?' Clearly anxious about public perception to his connection with the band.)

What Patrick and the Manic Street Preachers do have in common, obviously, is a background in the same area, the former mining town of Blackwood in the south Wales valleys. And their work therefore often encompasses the same themes; the demise of mining under Thatcher and the rise of consumerism. Empty adolescences spent in the ailing Gwent Valleys; 'Culture, alienation, boredom and despair.' The Manics' first three studio albums, on which Richey Edwards was the predominant lyricist, as well as the subsequent five, to varying degrees, are political manifestoes questioning racism, apathy, sexism, consumerism and war. Patrick's poetry and drama does much of the same. From The Eloquence in the Screaming, the poem that inspired Nicky Wire:

the belt the greed the maggot the money magic seed
of destruction and defraction
into us it comes
replacing our sad eloquence with the obscene apathy of
?have a nice day it could be you forget it all in an instant he was
killed by friendly fire of collateral damage and business relations?
a language of distraction
smothering the screaming with the businessed smile the teacher's
pen and the credit sale

The other attribute which both artists share is a burning desire to inspire and enable young and/or disadvantaged people to become artists, or at least to think about the world surrounding them. Much of Patrick's work has involved young writing groups and adult literacy classes in his community. When the local pit closed and the unemployed miners were told to retrain, part of their retraining concerned learning how to type. Having spent their lives doing hard physical labour, their fingers were too thick to use standard keyboards. Patrick initiated a weekly poetry class, giving them a means to vent their frustration. The Manic Street Preachers are renown for decorating their record sleeves with quotes from poets, philosophers and politicians in an attempt to alert their fans to the work of other thinkers. In fact, on that October evening in 2000 when I told Patrick I was a Manics fan, he asked me if those quotes had had anything to do with my becoming a novelist. They sent me out in search of the writing of Valerie Solanos and Sylvia Plath, which was at least a start. Patrick seemed overjoyed when I admitted this. 'I'll tell my brother,' he said. 'I'll lend him your book.'

A year earlier, following the premiere of Everything Must Go, a journalist had asked Patrick why he'd written the play, and he answered, 'Libraries gave us power,' echoing the famous first line of The Manics' Design for Life. 'Language is the best tool we have for articulating rage. I've got a lot of rage at what Wales has become. Richey had it too.' So the point it seems, in the existence of both Patrick and the Manics' work, is exactly that, the picking up of the pen, doing something to oppose the status quo, which is what The Eloquence in the Screaming is actually about:

BUT
between the billboard masturbation
across highways of metallic isolation
there
there lives the deafening screaming of you me us
wiping out the diseased pages of apathy
that bleed our eloquence

And as Patrick himself describes Generation Terrorists in a very early album review: '?we are conditioned to an oblivious mass, into a catatonic dead life of false desires and created needs, we are force taught to hate, be greedy, cheat and follow some false dream, the candle needed the flame and MSP lit the dying wick of all our secret revolutions?' Raging creatively against the Tory/New Labour machine is a kind of socialism in action, the closest to socialism we can now hope to get. As Patrick and Aneurin Bevan have said, 'the verb is more important than the noun.'

But that is where the similarities between Patrick Jones and The Manic Street Preachers end. Having been influenced by music so early on, Patrick has always been interested in using music to enhance literature. Commemoration and Amnesia from 1999 is a recorded collection of his poetry, set against music written and recorded around his words, by various artists including members of The Super Furry Animals and Catatonia. The music is a welcome second dimension that softens the often harsh content of the stanza, and which, along with Patrick's gentle voice lulls the listener into a position of calm, leaving them open-lugged and taking note. But this ploy would be utterly useless if Patrick's poetry was not superbly crafted and thoroughly engaging to start with. Nowhere is this more apparent than on Scalpel & Heart, where Ashley Cooke's placid guitar and Alison Gillies' delighting cello accompany Patrick as he talks of his child's five tiny fingers growing, making the juxtaposing conclusion of the poem appear even more severe:

So how can I tell you
That fingers pull a trigger
That hands make a fist smash jaws
Push buttons

What Commemoration and Amnesia adroitly demonstrates, is that Patrick's work has never been reliant on music, but that a large section of the audience he would like to attract are. He has never wanted to be a musician, despite having had a few guitar lessons much earlier on. 'Songs have a way of capturing a moment in time,' he says, 'an instant which relates to a certain period. But poetry and drama can transcend eras. Encapsulate whole stories, people's lives.'

Everything Must Go, perhaps Patrick's most well known work, a play dealing with drugs, unemployment, crime, self-mutilation and alienation in the Gwent Valley is interspersed with songs and lyrics from Catatonia, the Stereophonics and principally, The Manic Street Preachers. It is a revenge tragedy in which main character, A, avenges his father's sacking at the local Japanese manufacturing plant by shooting his father's former boss with a gun his grandfather used in the Spanish Civil War. Scenes often begin with a Manic Street Preachers song, and one character is so detached, he only communicates in song lyrics. The play was first performed in February 1999 at the Sherman Theatre before touring in early 2000. At that time, Welsh pop music was hugely successful throughout Britain. The 'Cool Cymru' phenomenon filled the pages of Melody Maker and the New Musical Express with photographs of Kelly Jones and Cerys Matthews flying the Welsh flag. Q Magazine, the most respected of the music publications even released a Welsh issue celebrating St David's Day. To all intents and purposes, Wales looked from the outside like a culturally identifiable nation, teeming with confidence. In fact in the south Wales valleys, the opposite still was true. In Caerphilly, where the play was set, the unemployment rate was 8.1%, and 29% of the population had no educational qualifications. The whole play seems to be an attempt to fill in the blanks between the lyrics, informing the audience that Wales was in fact still crippled by the departure of the mining industry and the low pay and anodyne employment of the fly-by-night Japanese factories; a reaction to the success of Welsh music, which Patrick says is true. This from the narrator at the beginning:

how green is my valley how grey is the sky - ooh lovely love - fucking daffodils dancing in the spring sun - fucking new deal employers fucking leeks and rugged scrum halves up to their bollocks in mud shouting numbers in the rain - the pubs puking souls out out out on Saturday nights the the the fucking joyriders burning the hillsides - the temazes stuck on tongues - the sulpher glow of orange lamps - the sound of factories at dawn - the karaoke queens in cymmer - green hills - choirs - male of course - come on taste it feel it come on down - lissen to this choir - cunts - lissen Welcome to your fears welcome to your dreams welcome to the welsh tourist board?s translation clinic - welcome to the real nuts and fucking bolts welcome to the burning eyes the torn torsos the gaping wounds - the - history - pistory - piss story - welcome welcome - to the psychiatric hospital we all live in...

Amazingly, at the time, none of the reviews from journalists based outside Wales pick up on what Patrick was trying to say, except maybe Toby O'Connor Morse, who, writing for The Independent, said, 'Everything must Go is not a feel good play... There are times when [it's] less Cool Cymru and more Whinging Wales. Either this play is a decade too late in its description of the Welsh zeitgeist, or the crust of newfound Cambrian confidence is still tremulously thin.' The other reviews only concern themselves with the Manic Street Preachers link, sometimes comparing Patrick and Nicky's styles, like Robin Bresnark of the Melody Maker who said, "Everything Must Go makes The Holy Bible look like 'Janet and John.'" And what of the critics who accuse him of being too dark? Patrick shrugs. 'Nobody likes it when you hold a mirror up to society and reflect what's really going on, do they?'

Much more recently, his latest play Sing to Me, commissioned and presented by Gwent Theatre in October 2006 to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the writing of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, explores Nationalism and identity. 'Nationalism is a subject I'm very interested in,' Patrick says, 'because who decides when it's wrong or it's right? We find the patriotism of Iran offensive, but nobody objects to Scottish people wearing kilts.' The song is analysed by three GCSE students who are writing an essay about it, including Dafydd, a xenophobic Welsh speaker and Rena, an Eastern European immigrant. 'Writing about a National Anthem gave me an opportunity to explore nationalism and make people think about it. Personally, I don't think much of National Anthems. I hope Evan James was being sincere when he said he wrote it for the love of his country not for the hate of another.' It is an example of how Patrick shrewdly uses music to examine longstanding social wrongs.

As for the professional blessing and curse that is being Nicky Wire's brother, Patrick says, 'It's weird. I was interviewing some old age pensioners recently at an old people's home, doing some research for a forthcoming project, and an eighty year old woman said, "So you're one of those Manic Street's, are you?" There really isn't any getting away from it. And I haven't ruled out writing something involving The Manics again. Nicky and I have been trying to write something together for a few years. But we're both very different writers. I think The Manics material should be much more politically charged at the moment. They have an audience and they could do a lot of good with that. But they won't listen to me. I can't write for Nicky. Just like Nicky can't write for me.'

Patrick is currently listening to Elect the Dead, the leftist Iraq war inspired solo album of Serj Tankian, front man of metal band System of A Down.

Stephanie Parker

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:27:00 +0000

I've noticed that over the past two days many people have found this website whilst searching for news about the death of Stephanie Parker. She's mentioned earlier in this blog because she played the lead role of Katie Davies in my Radio 4 play 'Lemon Meringue Pie' last year.

Tragically, the 22 yr old actress was found dead near Pontypridd early on Saturday morning. I had been overwhelmed by Stephanie's talent since first seeing her in the BBC Wales drama 'Belonging,' and wrote my first ever pieces of drama with her in mind. Although she never appeared in 'I Sing of A Maiden,' I was overjoyed when the producer at Radio 4 cast Stephanie in my first full length radio play. Obviously she did a tremendous job, and I always imagined that I'd write for her again in the future. No doubt she would have had a fabulous career and I am utterly shocked and saddened by her untimely death.

No Sleep Til Brooklyn, the Italian Job and some wisdom from Springsteen

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 13:05:00 +0000

So, apart from nabbing a free tattoo from Preston's Inc, (he is my brother), and managing to save my whole back catalogue from the recycling dump, (another story for another time), most of my January has been subjugated by insomnia. For some reason, early in the New Year, my body clock went into reverse, and I spent a whole three weeks thinking I was probably going to go out like Heath Ledger - 'I don't care if I never wake up, I just need to go to sleep, and I don't care how many Temazi's it takes to get me there.' The predicament wasn't helped by my wholly incompetent GP, who attempted to deal with the problem by prescribing me a course of stimulant-based anti-depressives. (I must be a glutton for punishment: when I visited him four years ago with earache and he asked me what the problem was, I said, 'It feels like there's something sharp in my ear.' So he looked into my ear-canal with a magnifier and said, 'No, there's nothing sharp in your ear.') At the risk of talking too soon, I seem to have forced my body clock back into its natural routine with the aid of a few boring novels, a case of red wine, and one or ten Moscow Mules.

I'm going to be in Italy next month to promote Giostre, puzzle e altre storie, the Italian translation of Fresh Apples. The official dates for presentations are as follows:

February 12th, 5.30pm, Casa della Musica, Via dei Capitelli, 3 Trieste
February 14th, 5.30pm, Libreria Archivi del 9000, Via Montevideo, 9, 20144 Milano

The book is published by Biet, http://beitcasaeditrice.wordpress.com, and here's a really cool cartoon by Marco Petrella. www.marcopetrella.it

In the meantime Ned i akvariet og op igen, the Danish translation of In and Out of The Goldfish Bowl seems to be doing exceptionally well, snatching five star reviews form MetroXpress, Cosmopolitan, Woman, Sirene and KIWI. www.forlagetaronsen.dk/

Since I've promised to 'drink a few' with the fabulous Willy Vlautin at this year's Laugharne Weekender, (I'll be reading with my Dylan Thomas Prize successor, Nam Le on Saturday afternoon, 4th April, Venue TBC), I thought I'd dip into an Observer Music Magazine interview with one of our mutual hero's, the Boss. And as somebody who is constantly hindered by my own past, or at least the continuous effort to let it go, ('Learn to let go. That is the key to happiness,' says Billy Connolly), I was comforted by this gem from Springsteen:

'There is no part of yourself that you leave behind; it can't be done. You can't remove any part of yourself, you can only manage the different parts of yourself. There's a car, it's filled with people. The 12-year-old kid's in the back. So's the 22-year-old. So is the 40-year-old. So is the 50-year-old guy that's done pretty well, so's the 40-year-old guy that likes to screw up. So's the 30-year-old guy that wants to get his hands on his wheel and put the pedal to the metal, and drive you into a tree.'

Anyway, I finished writing the new novel, Sixteen Shades of Crazy, late last year and I'm finally busy editing and polishing the damn thing. If everything goes to plan, and it very rarely does, I'll be delivering it to my new publishers in early spring. Say hello if you see me out and about in Prague next weekend, where I'll be doing a bit of research for a forthcoming project, but don't be weird, like that stalker who tracked me down in Poland. (Joke. Sort of). And finally it seems as though everything is going to be OK because there's a real human being in the White House.

Rx

Radio Drama on BBC Wales

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:57:00 +0000

For anyone who missed 'Lemon Meringue Pie' on Radio 4 last year, there's another chance to hear it, along with a few other plays by Welsh writers that were originally transmitted on Radio 4. Dates as follows:

Sunday 18th Janyary 2009, 9pm - Pavement Stars by Gillian Clarke & Catrin Clarke

Sunday 25th January 2009, 9pm - Operation Charlie by Rhys Lloyd

Sunday 1st February 2009, 9pm - Away Day by DJ Britton

Sunday 8th February 2009, 9pm - The Confessions by Charlotte Greig

Sunday 15th February 2009, 9pm - Lemon Meringue Pie by Rachel Trezise

BBC Radio Wales:93 - 104 FM 657 & 882 MWDigital

Satellite: Sky - 0117 Freesat - 715 Freeview - 719 Cable - 931

Human Writes

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:50:00 +0000

I was recently commissioned to write a short story, along with a few other writers, by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. It's purpose is to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Obviously I am proud to be one of the writers who contributed to this project as human rights are very high on my professional and personal agenda. Here is a note from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and a link to the published stories.

Welsh authors mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Everyone loves a good story. That's why we have teamed up with some of Wales' best writers to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

We asked authors such as Rachel Trezise, John Sam Jones and Nia Williams to write short stories that show how they feel human rights are important to people's everyday lives in Wales. We are delighted with what they have come up with. There is something for everyone in the collection, no matter what your age or interests.

The Commission aims to mark the 60th anniversary of the Declaration by encouraging the public to understand and celebrate human rights and the values that underpin them, namely fairness, dignity and respect.

We hope these stories get you thinking and talking about human rights.

Happy reading!

To read the stories, please go to our website:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/Wales/campaigns/humanwrites/Pages/variationSiteDefault.aspx

Lemon Meringue Pie

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:10:00 +0000

At 2:15pm on Wednesday 3rd September, you'll be able to listen to my play 'Lemon Meringue Pie'. Tune to BBC Radio 4 (94.3 FM) or listen online:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4

(You'll be able to listen online for up to seven days afterwards).

Rachel Trezise's play is set in a Welsh valley. Katie Davies is 16 and in love, or possibly lust. Her mother would have a fit if she found out the identity of her suitor, but Mrs Davies has a secret all of her own. Here's what the Observer had to say when they made it Radio Choice: 'a painfully convincing story of accidental pregnancy with Welsh teenager Katie taking multiple tests in the naive belief that the first one was wrong because it was cheap. Dovetailed with Katie's trauma is that of her mother, who in her own quiet way is just as desperate.' (Stephanie Billen)

Katie ...... Stephanie Parker
Ryan ...... Liam Harries
Bronwen Davies ...... Sara McGaughey
Tudor Davies ...... Morgan Hopkin
Callum ...... Michael Aubin
Luke ...... Matthew Aubrey
Schoolteacher ...... Rhys Jennings
Hospital Receptionist ...... Megan Roberts
Art Teacher ...... Elin Phillips
Nurse/Receptionist ...... Amy Morgan

Directed by Kate McAll.

Jack on Radio 4

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:58:00 +0000

One of my short stories, 'Jack,' based on the original 'I Sing of A Maiden' monologues will be broadcast on Radio 4 at 3.30pm on Monday, July 14th, read by Pobol y Cwm actress Shelley Rees.

The story is part of a series entitled 'Urban Welsh' that runs until July 18th. Writers include Bridget Keehan and Tristan Hughes. Actors include Ruth Jones and Matthew Rhys. The producer is Kate McAll who is also producing my forthcoming full length play 'The Lemon Meringue.'

The Eagerly Awaited Novel

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:03:00 +0000

Finally I'm pleased to announce that I have signed to Harper Collins, and my novel in progress which goes under the working title of 'Sixteen Shades of Crazy' will be published in Spring 2010. The book is the first signing to a brand new commercial literary imprint, Blue Door, created by former Transworld supremo Patrick Janson-Smith. (I like to think of it as the literary equivalent of the Stereophonics signing to Richard Branson's V2).

From the Bookseller: 'Sixteen Shades of Crazy by Dylan Thomas prize winner Rachel Trezise, will be published in early 2010. Blue Door paid a five-figure sum to Broo Doherty at Wade & Doherty for UK and Commonwealth rights. Janson-Smith said that the 'tremendously witty' book would examine the underbelly of society in Cardiff. 'This will do for Cardiff what Trainspotting did for Edinburgh,' he said. 'There will be a bit of drugs, a bit of sex and a bit of drinking?good underbelly stuff.'

Stuff that's going down - spring 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:11:00 +0000

I say spring, what I mean is some kind of climate-change fuelled ice-age. Anyway, it being Easter Monday, and me having nothing better to do, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about what has and will be happening over the next couple of months.

If you haven't already got hold of the Spring 2008 edition of the New Welsh Review (No.79), go and get it now. Aside from some of the beautiful photographs by Maciej Dakowicz and excerpts of work (including a bit of Tristan Hughes' forthcoming novel and Charlotte Greig's memoir) it's got me interviewing Patrick Jones, and a lovely exploration by Sarah Morse into music in new writing from Wales, cannily titled 'She Sings of a(n Iron) Maiden.' Some of the books she concentrates on include Dial M for Merthyr, Fresh Apples and Clare Potter's 'Spilling Histories.' www.thenewwelshreview.com

My first novel 'In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl' is currently being translated into Danish by the excellent Forlaget Aronsen who published Aeblesmag (Fresh Apples) last year. It's also about to be published by Text Publishing in Australia and New Zealand, who also did a thoroughly fantastic job with their version of Fresh Apples last year.
www.forlagetaronsen.dk
www.textpublishing.com.au

At the end of May 'The Empty Page: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth,' will be published by Serpent's Tail. Edited by Peter Wild, who also masterminded last year's brilliant 'Perveted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall,' it includes shorts by Emily Maguire, Kevin Sampsell, Matt Thorne, and me, and you can pre-order it now from Amazon.

'A ghost makes a friend. Ulla Shooks is testifying, ladies and gentlemen, countering the wicked with the godly. The powers-that-be are trying to kick in Nikki's door as she, like, struggles against the shackles of conformity? Melissa gets high and dreams of an oblivion that won't make the E! Channel news. Patty Hearst is watching the apocalypse on TV. All this and more is waiting for you in The Empty Page: Fiction inspired by Sonic Youth.'

Finally, it's going to give me great pleasure to take a break from my play and novel writing duties to perform at the Laugharne Weekend 28th-30th March 2008. Other performers will include Patti Smith, DBC Pierre, Lionel Shriver, Niall Griffiths and Will Self. My first play (co-written with Charlotte Greig) will be showing at the Millennium Hall at 7pm on Friday 28th, and I will be reading from Dial M for Merthyr, at 3.30pm on Sunday 30th at the Rugby Club, along with Helen Walsh. Apparently all tickets are sold or close to selling out, but you shouldn't let that stop you. If last year was anything to go by (I managed to meet Nick Kent, sit feet away from Pat McCabe as he read from 'The Butcher Boy', and get eyed up by Rhys Ifans, I think), a good time will be had by all.

www.thelaugharneweekend.com

In the meantime, I'm off for a spin in my new Ford Puma. See you soon.

Mr & Mrs Writer

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 16:29:00 +0000

(From a feature published in The Western Mail on November 24th 2007)

Last weekend, award winning Welsh novelist Rachel Trezise had a dream come true when she got to meet her rock star husband - sorry, hero. Only this time, she didn't have to win a kids' competition to do so, she says.

Eight years ago, one year before my debut novel was published, I was sitting in my brother's passenger seat, in a car park in Stroud, while he bought parts for his motorbike.

It was a regular fortnightly journey.

He wanted company and usually I had nothing better to do. When he was in the shop, I sat outside, smoking his Benson & Hedges until I turned dizzy.

I'd been there for almost an hour, watching raindrops whipping on the windscreen when I opened the glove box and found a Mars Bar he'd bought at the Cardiff Gate garage.

On the wrapper were details of a competition the company was running, something about collecting five tokens and writing a small paragraph on why you deserved your dreams to come true, for the grand prize of having your dreams made true.

Aware that it was designed for eleven year olds with terminal illnesses, but twenty-one and bored as hell, I tried to deduce what my big dream was, and it was obvious; to meet Kelly Jones. Five minutes with the front man of the Stereophonics and he was bound to fall for my inimitable charm. We'd get married, I'd get published, everything would fall into place.

The band's debut album, Word Gets Around, had been released two years earlier, a life affirming collection of songs about growing up in the big mental hospital that is the south Wales valleys. I empathised with every lyric, not to mention the whole handsome spectacle of a pretty man strumming the life out of a cherry red Gibson SG. A little later came their second contribution, Performance & Cocktails, about the world they witnessed from a tour bus window, out of the Cynon Valley and into the world.

I was an Erasmus student living in Ireland, meeting people from Europe and America, and listening to it continually.

Our lives were cycling in tandem, Kelly up ahead, splashed across the pages of the music press, me behind, still unpublished, still unknown, but eternally hopeful. Together, we could have been a Welsh uber-couple, a writing partnership. We could have run the world. The extent of my obsession sent me home to the Rhondda where I bought five more chocolate bars and wrote and posted the little paragraph. To no avail.

A few months later I met my husband, and immediately knew that he would eventually become my husband. It was a bit of a predicament, trying to work out where my so far unrequited relationship with Kelly Jones was going to fit in.

When the new beau asked me where we should go on our first date, I answered with a fairly unrepentant 'Cwmaman.'

I'd decided, in my then usual neurotic fashion, to personally go looking for Kelly Jones. There was only a mountain between us after all. If I couldn't find him, I?d marry the beau. So on a Monday night in January 2000, we sat in a pub called the Boncyff, near Kelly's parental home, underneath a plaque which said 'Millionaire's Corner,' erected in honour of the local lottery winners.

I stared at the door all night, waiting for fate to deliver my jackpot. And nobody came. Fast forward seven years, three books and two literary prizes, and I have married my boyfriend, but he has always lived with a threat hanging over his head; my constant belief that I would one day catch up with Mr Jones, because if my life has taught me anything, it is that when you arm yourself with as much ambition and determination as I have, dreams do have a funny habit of coming true, with or without Mars Bar wrappers.

When you want something enough, the whole world conspires in helping you to get it. In the summer I met a man called Martin Davies, designer of Red Dragonhood street wear. He asked me to model a T-shirt because Charlotte Church had pulled out. I said yes. I liked the T-shirt. I like all his T-shirts.

He arrived at my house one day with a bag full of them. After the photographs were taken, he told me, with no knowledge of my Kelly Jones fixation, that Richard from the Stereophonics was also a Red Dragonhood model, that they lived in the same neighbourhood, that they were good friends.

'As a thank you,' he said, 'I'll introduce you to the band.' That's how I came to be standing next to Kelly Jones this week in an after-show party for the Pull The Pin World Tour, celebrating their sixth studio album, my husband standing cautiously in close proximity, everything fallen neatly into place.
'If you?re on your fourth book now,' Kelly says, 'You're catching up with us.' More than he'll ever know.

No Sleep Til Wroclaw

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:49:00 +0000

Wroclaw, pronounced something like 'Rozzlafft' is Poland's fourth largest city on the south west side, close to the Czech border. After leaving home at 1am on Thursday, I arrived there at around 6pm. At 7pm I stood in a dark theatre on the other side of Rynek and read a short story. The whole audience was squinting at me. Half way through the story I realised it was because they were reading the Polish translation on a large screen behind me. How do you translate 'Fear and poo and death, bach,' into Polish, I wonder? When I finished, moderate applause and a cheque for 280 Euros. Unfortunately, Poland still deals in Zloty's so I used a beer token to buy a pint of Heineken. I hadn't eaten for a day, hadn't slept for two, and it totally wiped me out. I went to bed having learned three Polish words - 'Alkohole' - Booze, 'Woda' - Water and, 'Wodka' - Vodka, of course.

Next day I woke at 4pm and went for a walk along Kielbasnicza, the main shopping bar and restaurant area. I'd made the mistake of wearing heels, and the ground was cobbled, so I was tiptoeing precariously and looking down, when I heard somebody crooning Oscar Hammerstein's 'Some Enchanted Evening.' I recognised the voice. In June I'd been sitting in Waterstones in Abergavenny signing copies of 'Dial M for Merthyr,' when the manager started cursing the street entertainer outside. 'He can't even sing,' he said. I looked up. It was him, the busker, standing in front of a bank, covered in dirt, bellowing into the hail, in Wroclaw. Go figure.

The Box Isn't Utterly Evil

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:53:00 +0000

I don't usually watch much television. It rots your brain, doesn't it? I've got one though. A 42" flat screen HD ready effort which dominates the living room. (My husband tricked me into buying it with my Dylan Thomas prize winnings by unplugging the speakers on our seventeen year old Sony and telling me the sound was knackered. Bad news: I only use TV to play Rock Guitar Hero II and listen to the Kerrang channel from the bathroom.) Anyway, during an unusually long bout of flu, two weeks and still counting, I've been watching quite a lot. And I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't impressed.

I watched 'It's A Free World,' Ken Loach's first film for television in six years; a drama about the exploitation of EU immigrant workers. Ken Loach, if you didn't already know it, is one of the best things in the film world; motivated by politics, class and otherwise, who makes deeply humanistic works devoid of propaganda; unassuming and unpretentious, didactic and conscientious - everything that as a writer I aspire to. Here he decided to give voice to a gang master. No, not a misogynistic middle aged fat cat but an entrepreneurial single mother with a retired shop steward dad. How wonderful to witness such a startling slice of social realism at a time when seemingly three quarters of the population are engrossed in Pop Idol (or whatever it's called) and TV audiences need clich� and stereotype in order to save them having to think.

The other thing I saw was the adaptation of Alexander Masters' best-selling book 'Stuart - A Life Backwards.' I'd never read the book so I didn't really know what to expect. It turned out to be an admirably delicate piece of television with a vastly generous performance by Tom Hardy as protagonist Stuart Shorter. He was a homeless man who tried to behead his next door neighbour and held his wife and son hostage with a knife before trying to set fire to his house whilst still inside it. He was also sexually abused at the age of nine by his older brother, sexually abused by a care worker at the children's home he begged to go into and was suffering from a literally crippling form of muscular dystrophy. As somebody remarked on the myspace bulletin board immediately afterwards, 'selfish and judgemental people should be forced to watch it.' Homelessness is a subject close to my heart because I've spent some time sleeping on cardboard in the doorways of various cities. Next month I'm going to be the guest speaker at the annual general meeting of The Wallich, a homeless charity whose aim is to help and support the most vulnerable of homeless people; people whom other agencies are unwilling or unable to help. There are many reasons why people become homeless and usually they're complicated and not easily solved. Rarely they're because the person in question is inherently lazy, and yet I still hear very stupid people telling Big Issue sellers to 'get a job.'

Homelessness is a social problem that many people choose to edit out of their consciousness. Stuart is the kind of person many people like to edit out of their consciousness and with it, books about people like him. So the image of the writer running into a bookshop and replacing copies of Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code,' with 'Stuart - A Life Backwards,' is a suitable one which played out towards the end of the programme. (I do this with my own books every time I go into a bookshop, most writer's do. Once, a sales assistant in Llantrisant Borders caught me throwing copies of 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,' into a cavity behind a bookcase. By the way, will everyone stop asking me if I read Harry Potter? Do I look like someone who gives a shit about magicians who go to boarding school?) Most of the criticism I received for 'Fresh Apples,' and the title story in particular, was from people who didn't want to believe that Matt, the sixteen year old protagonist, would consider having sex with a thirteen year old girl with cerebral palsy in order to appease his more sexually experienced peers, or that he'd use the word 'fuck.' One person, a former schoolteacher from Hertfordshire, told me that I was typecasting the teenagers of the Rhondda by putting expletives into their mouths. God help whoever his students were.

The Rhondda Valley is an economical wasteland, rendered ugly by the arrival of industry and left crushed by its untimely departure. I'm not as interested in the coal mines or the politics surrounding them, as I am in the people who are affected by those things. My work is about the trial, tribulations and survival instincts of the ordinary working class people who still live there. As someone who was born and brought up in the area it is unnatural for me to patronise or typecast my characters. I know that when the chips are down, life isn't really as simple as good and evil. People will do their very best to survive in all kinds of difficult situations and my job is to help readers understand their journeys and their locale, rather than demean characters, or area, for the sake of a good story. And when you look at life that closely, fairies and happy endings are few and far between. But I don't believe it's a negative thing to examine the darker side of life. What's far more negative is to pretend things like homelessness and rape and people who say 'fuck' do not really exist. I am absolutely delighted that a group of television executives decided to show 'Stuart - A Life Backwards,' at 9pm on a Sunday night, even if he did throw himself under a train in the end. The box isn't fundamentally evil after all, it seems.

Shame then about 'The Secret Diary of A Call Girl' in which Billie Piper plays posh working girl Belle De Jour. Whilst trying to explain the reason for her career choice, she says 'I know you won't believe me, but I enjoy the sex.' Dead right I don't believe you. I mean, I enjoy sex. Most people enjoy sex. But most people wouldn't if they were doing it with a stranger solely for the sake of funding a crack addiction or paying the flipping rent. If Billie Piper was playing a street hooker who gave blow-jobs to put new track marks in her arm, audiences would be outraged, but she doesn't, does she? She calls her madam her 'agent,' talks with a nice accent, and enjoys the sex, which seems to mean it's alright. She's got a lovely wardrobe too. I can hear the cash registers at Agent Provocateur ringing as I type. Maybe some sixteen year old in Hertfordshire is asking her mummy if she'd be able to study prostitution at Oxbridge, or maybe it's another kind of sixteen year old who's thinking the sale of her body might actually be acceptable now, the kind who can't afford to go to University, the kind who's mother is nowhere to be found.

www.thewallich.com

The Pram in the Hall

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 18:33:00 +0000

It was in 1938 that Cyril Connolly said There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall. And he was a man. So what if you're an artist and a woman, and you're newly married and you're fast approaching thirty and your husband's ten years older than you? Bank holidays and Christmases always make me think of children. Bank holidays and Christmases are the only time I miss not having any. For people with no children, Bank holidays and Christmases are just excuses to go on three day benders.

Great, you might think, but it's not actually. Being quite an imaginative person, I can find an excuse to go on a three day bender any time of the year, and on Bank holiday weekends and the run up to Christmas, pubs are always full of amateur drinkers who become obnoxious and/or violent after two pints of lager and vomit on their shoes after three. What I really want to do with my state approved time off is cook good food and read stories to the kids.

Of course, there are no kids, because I've spent the past ten years of my life worrying about my precious career. I'm not remotely sorry about this. I've never wanted children. I've had a very straightforward attitude towards reproduction since I was a child myself. The world is over-populated and there are millions of orphanages bursting with unwanted offspring. Where's the sense in making more?

Then suddenly you're twenty eight and your body clock just started ticking. Your husband starts designing an extension with a room called 'The Nursery,' in it. He puts a new set of railings around the patio, surreptitiously or unconsciously childproofing your abode. Your mother-in-law starts showing you the cute little outfits she's bought for your niece and you respond by saying, 'Awwww!' Increasingly, you start to fantasise about the beautiful, bright, humanitarian progeny you and your husband are capable of creating. (I think my husband was responsible for the origin of this, when he said, 'we have to have kids because the world is so full of pricks we need some good people to counterbalance them.') Finally, you find yourself listening to Radio 4 on a crisp Christmas morning, suffering from a biblical hangover, trying to entice the cat into playing with the wind-up plastic mouse that came in her cat-stocking and you think; this isn't really enough.

However, being an artist, I'm not sure if it's fair to the kids to have them. My friend Clare Potter has a poem in her debut collection called 'A Pram in the Hall.' I have not stroked my belly/imagined you in sun slats/kicking in my extended arms/I've worried where I'll put you when I write/I can't clear space for your arrival/imagine that smell they talk of/the joy I'm supposed to feel/ I can't see your little feet/the, apparently, button nose, only blank panicky pages. Precisely what I'm worrying about, even before I've given up on contraception. It seems wholly implausible that I'll be able to have a child in the next two years. I'm half way through my fourth book, in the middle of marketing campaigns for the European and Australian translations of my second, in the middle of recording the audio version of my third and will be spending the best part of 2008 in America, without my husband, researching my fifth. Where would a baby go?

Tabloidesque stories about celebrities who have it all only confuse matters. Look at Kate Moss being a successful mother whilst still living a completely unaffected life, i.e. snorting a few fat lines of coke now and again and singing backing vocals for her on/off boyfriend's band. That's not possible without live-in nanny's, and if you're going to rise to the challenge of having children, who really wants a nanny? (After I won the Dylan Thomas Prize I seriously considered hiring a cleaner. That idea lasted all of three minutes, ruined by an image of myself frantically tidying up before the cleaner arrived, in case s/he thought I was lazy.)

The other thing which is telling me to stall, just a little longer, is the book I'm currently reading. It's called 'They F*** You Up,' a case study by psychologist Oliver James on how the way we are cared for in the first six years of our lives has a crucial effect on the adults we become. That Philip Larkin poem, 'This Be the Verse,' opens the book. 'Man hands on misery to man/It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can/And don't have any kids yourself.' I've always really liked that poem.

I'm reading the book because I'm trying to work out which neuroses I can blame on my parentage and which ones I can blame solely on myself. Proof enough, I think, that I'm not mentally stable enough to have children yet. Very Liberal in most areas of my life and lifestyle, I have severely Conservative views on the rearing of children: I'm absolutely certain, for instance, that if I had a fifteen year old who owned a gun, and had just used it to murder an eleven year old, I'd know about it, and would have reported it, but I never would have a fifteen year old who was a gun owner or a murderer because I would have brought them up to have respect for human life, at least. Which begs another question; when, then?

Another writer friend, Charlotte Greig, whose debut novel about an unplanned pregnancy was published recently, said in last weekend's Western Mail, 'It's just as na�ve to think you can plan everything, as it is to think you don't have to plan anything.' There is no right time to have a baby; it'll turn your life upside down whatever age you are, and that maybe a good thing. There's an addiction to overcome first; smoking. The smoking ban has only succeeded in making me even more stubborn, because I'm no State bullied quitter. But long before the ban I'd promised my lungs untainted oxygen before I hit 30. Got a feeling the fags will be with me until the 11th hour though. And perhaps then I can pack in the contraceptives as well.

Clare E Potter Spilling Histories (Cinnamon Press, 2006)
Oliver James They F*** You Up (Bloomsbury, 2007)
Charlotte Greig A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy (Serpent's Tail, 2007)