Postcard from Mljet

Grug Muse sent WLE a postcard from her residency in Mljet, as part of the Ulysses' Shelter residency programme.

Dear WLE,

Writing this sitting on a pebble beach, on one of the northernmost peninsulas on the island of Mljet. The sea is calm, and there is not a soul to be seen, except for the occasional fisherman's boat puttering across the bay. It feels very far removed from the chaos on the mainland- borders closing, cities entering lock-down, hospitals quaking under the strain of the covid-19 pandemic. I am going home soon, but spending a week here as the guest of Sandorf and the National Park, as a part of the Ulysses Shelter program through Literature Across Frontiers, co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union and Arts Council of Wales, has been an experience I am deeply grateful for.

Hope you are all safe and well,

Grug x

Postcard from India

Rachel Trezise sent WLE a postcard from her visit to India.

Postcard reads:

The view from a window at Humayyun’s Tomb where I visited following a Carnegie India event organised by Literature Across Frontiers at the Verdica Scholars programme for women in New Delhi. Later I attended the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters in Trivandrum, Kerala, where I read with novelist and playwright, Hannah Vincent and short story writer, Helen McClory. When in the future I think of India my enduring memory will be of a long hot day at Kovalam Beach discussing the works of Roald Dahl and Astrid Lindgren with writers from Latvia and Georgia while the street vendors traipsed along the promenade below, hawking textiles and coconuts.

Postcard from Cairo

Welsh author Lloyd Markham launched his novel Bad Ideas / Chemicals in Arabic translation at the Cairo Book Fair on 26th January. His visit was organised by Al Arabi Publishing in cooperation with Literature Across Frontiers, with support from Arts Council Wales. The novel had been selected to our Bookcase in Autumn 2017.

Here is the postcard he sent to WLE:

How did this photo happen? Well let’s start at the beginning.

Late 2017 I threw together an outfit for the Bad Ideas\Chemicals re-launch event (yes – re-launch – like myself my literary child was a late bloomer who needed a second crack to get things right). The outfit was loosely based on what the protagonist of the book Cassandra Fish wears throughout the duration of the story and was comprised chiefly of a “space man” costume purchased from The Joke Shop opposite Cardiff Castle and a custom badge designed by my friend Jenna.

The outfit was intended as a one-off gag for a one-off event, but the photos from that event turned out rather good and were among some of the only high res pictures of me I had – so I ended up sending them out a lot when organisations would ask for Author Photos.

This led to Sherif from Al-Arabi – who had seen the photos – requesting that I bring the costume with me to Cairo for the launch of the Arabic translation of Bad Ideas\Chemicals. I didn’t want to disappoint our hosts so I agreed – thinking I would wear it just for my seminar and then get changed into something more comfy and practical.

Instead immediately afterwards lots of people came forward to speak to me about the costume and the book and I ended up doing a marathon of interviews all while wearing it – culminating in an interview for an Egyptian TV channel that produced the accompanying photo which I will treasure forever.

I feel it captures the essence of the relationship I have to my creative work – Gleeful amateurism. Cheerful disbelief that I am getting away with any of this. Self-effacement disguising self-aggrandisement, disguising self-effacement, and so on. An air of narrowly ducked calamity – like stepping on a rake only for it to miss your nose and there is also a tenner stuck to the handle (but with bubblegum so it’s bit gross peeling it off). And – of course – teeth-shattering levels of tonal dissonance – in this silly photo I am discussing a book that deals with suicide, substance addiction, and domestic abuse – heavy subjects presented by twenty quids worth of silly orange.

There is a lot of discussion in creative spaces about Imposter Syndrome and I believe I may suffer from a variant which I will term ‘Secret Alien Huckster Syndrome.’ At events like this I often feel like I am engaged in a Coen Brothers style farce-conspiracy where my goal is to convince everyone that situations like what is happening in this photo are in fact completely sensible and I am actually a normal Good Words Boy™ who should be listened to and taken seriously. Take me to your leader, etc.

At any rate at least the protagonist of my next book doesn’t spend the whole story in a bikini. I’m not in good shape at the moment.

Badum-tish!

Thank you Cairo.