The Road To Hell?

So many good intentions about writing more here, and here we are Friday and it's almost been a week... But I must must tell you about the wonderful reading at our local library on Wednesday night with Jackie Kay who is quite without doubt one of my favourite poets, authors, women, lesbians, human beings EVER. She read a number of extracts from her Memoir Red Dust Road, in which she goes to Nigeria to meet her birth father for the first time in her forties, having tracked him down (easily) on Google. She performs with humour and tenderness, with energy and impact. She makes you laugh even while you feel keenly the pain or poignancy of the moment - her father is a religious fanatic and sees her, his illegitimate daughter, as tainted, sullied by a sin from which he has long ago been cleansed. She makes his praying and dancing, his exhortations for her to accept Jesus into marvellous theatre, whilst never letting us lose touch with the hurt, the disappointment, the sheer emotional intensity of this encounter. And she reads chillingly the section where a young fascist aims racist abuse at her on a London tube platform, and then hits her (white) friend who tries to intervene. Jackie asks a business man with briefcase and raincoat if he isn't going to do something and he replies No, we support them. Her willingness to be so open about this very personally painful incident (in which she ended up feeling guilty about her friend's injury) in order to expose and explore the horrifying mystery of racism is brave, moving, enlightening. She also read a few poems (more would have been wondrous, but she gave her all so no complaining), and answered many audience questions with great attention, thoughtfulness and clarity. She's also incredibly funny, very warm, down to earth and utterly inspiring to me as a writer, about how one can use one's life experience as material for writing, memoir or poetry, the delicacy of judgement involved in negotiating relationships with living friends and family when writing about them, the personal and creative importance of the process. OK, I could go on, but I can't, because now I am sleep-deprived at the end of a long week, and having got up at six with only a few hours sleep in the bank to go and teach my medical students. Which went well, I'm happy to say and let us hope I will sleep in future weeks as this is very hard on the body and mind. Fortunately I only teach in the morning, and the crash only comes in the afternoon - about now in fact!! The Point about Jackie Kay though, is the inspiration. And this Sunday there's an event in town called Not For The Faint Hearted, billed as

the writing workshop that will put you on the spot... You have no choice - you have to write poems or short stories for a set amount of time and you HAVE TO perform them... Yes, we're scared too. Who knows what will happen? It's an exercise in writing with adrenaline and driving out those pesky inner whining critics for an evening.

What do you think readers? It is currently my intention to go.