Holocaust by Anne Ryan-Thomas

Grey surrounds me, somehow filtrating into my stomach and exiting as nausea. I am lost. I rest a minute, leaning against the nearest surface which absorbs the chaos from my head and body. I pull myself off and tackle the ground ahead which resembling corrugated iron now rewires my stomach to my feet as they ebb and flow along.

I'm alone yet walk alongside other confused and disoriented people. Most of us wander around in silence although one bedraggled looking woman shouts out for someone called Eva, maybe her daughter. No-one stops to help.

We walk mainly parallel to each other like chess pawns, imagining the multitude of ways the enemy can strike. A cylinder accidentally shoots at me as I turn a corner but misses as I retrace my last step. The man catches his intended target.

I've lost all my family in here. Dispersed. Will I find them again amongst these walls? I must do, we came here together and must leave together.

The clouds break, I see a distant haze of blue gradually getting stronger.

The pounding in my ears keeps in time with that of my heart and feet and the nausea slightly subsides. The grey remains in the form of structures which cast regular, almost regimented shadows. Light follows shadow, then light again. Patterns: I grasp their safety. Youths huddle in twos and threes, gaining their safety from togetherness. Shutting the rest of the world out: they forget where they are.

The air is suddenly still. I stop. The ground remains uneven beneath. I find a level patch and place myself firmly. I catch my breath. The sky is completely clear now, so near to feel it's breeze again yet still too far. I carry on, desperate to find the others. Hushed voices and even children's laughter echo around but none of them are theirs.

I see trees ahead; the breeze suddenly feels stronger. The shadows becoming shorter. I stop. Straight ahead I can see a gap. My hands tremble as I realise I could get out here. I need to locate my family but also need to get away from this place. I reach the gap.

I see them straight ahead, they have found this exit also. They sit on a low grey plinth eating ice cream and laughing. They have saved one for me but it has melted. I place myself back in reality: Holocaust Memorial. Berlin. August 2013.

Our member's books available on Amazon

One of our members, Michael Hill, now has some books available to download from Amazon for Kindle.

Death in a Bus Shelter is a detective mystery surrounding a young girl’s murder which explores the detective’s relationship with the murder victim.

Thoughts of a Poet is a collection of poems touching on various aspects of Michael’s life.

Check them out here and here if you want to purchase a copy.  

Nice November

For this month's session, three of our members brought some items which kick-started the group's imagination and inspired them to write poems and stories. These items were collected from India, the Philippines and the UK. They include:

~ a figurine of the Taj Mahal
~ a real peacock feather
~ a figurine of an Indian goddess
~ a booklet of Tagalog instructions of how to pray with a Rosary
~ a bottle of eucalyptus-scented oil
~ an oyster shell
~ a charm bracelet from the 1940s
~ a piece of broken pottery found in a beach
~ and some horse brasses

Our members came up with different and interesting drafts. We had a poem about a potter, a poem about letting go and moving on, an interesting piece about a man who goes to church to 'cleanse' himself, a piece about the beauty of a peacock, and many more.

We definitely had a great time writing and we hope to post some of our finished works here soon. Watch out for that! :-)

Launching kulikohli.co.uk!

Our member Kuli Kohli is riding high following the success of her debut collection, Rag Doll. This week, she has launched her website, packed full of information about her life and writing.

Kuli’s life has been full of challenge and adventure in equal measure, and her work reflects this dichotomy thoughtfully. Now there’s one central place to learn about all things Kuli!

We’re very proud to have Kuli as a regular and leading member of Blakenhall Writers, and wish her all the best in her continued success.

Why not take a peek at her website and learn more about this inspiring woman?

The lovely Kuli - picture courtesy of Kuli Kohli

Offa's Press Poetry Day

On Saturday 11th October, three of our members - Kuli, Roma and Cherry - attended a poetry workshop and walking day run by West Midlands-based publisher, Offa's Press.

We set off up the A5 for Pant, a village just outside of Oswestry in Shopshire. Unfortunately there was a broken bridge after we’d turned off the main road, so we had to take a short diversion across the border to Wales! But we were only in Wales for a few yards before we saw the ‘Welcome to England’ sign again!

We arrived at Pant village hall and made ourselves comfortable over tea and biscuits. Once all were present and accounted for, we began the first workshop. The theme of the day was ‘work.’

First, we examined poetry about different aspects of work, by such poets as Seamus Heaney and Maya Angelou. They ranged from paid work to housework and used work in different ways. We then did an exercise discussing our best and worst jobs, and knuckled down to write some poetry about work. It was interesting to hear the kinds of jobs people had done throughout their lives.

The threat of rain had cleared so we set off for a walk over nearby Llanymynech Rocks. We wound our way up the hillside, meeting some new personalities along the way!

On the ascent

New friends

Llanymynech Rocks is the site of some old lime kilns, where fertiliser was created by burning limestone quarried from the rock face. We passed by the kilns and the pits before heading up to see the quarry area. There is a lot of remaining evidence of the work which once took place there, including intact railway tracks and metal figures of the workers.

Metal statue of a worker

We settled down for lunch by the large, stripy rock face, where we were joined by some woolly friends! They stole the show as we all marvelled at their black fleeces and friendly demeanour. They live on a nearby farm and are let into the reserve to eat tough plants during winter, allowing wildflowers to flourish in the spring.

Picnic time!

Sheep scaling the dramatic rocks

After lunch we made our way back down the hill, ruminating on the industry which once bloomed there and how it affected the whole community. We arrived back at the village hall for our second workshop of the day, writing poetry which reflected the signs of work we had examined during the walk. It started to rain just as we got inside – what good timing!

There was a brief interlude before we were all due to meet at the local pub for our evening meal, and the three of us were invited my the manager of Offa’s Press, Simon Fletcher, to have a tea and cake break at his house, which was just down the road! We had a pleasant time discussing the day, Offa’s Press and writing in general, as well as admiring all of the artefacts Simon has collected over the years!

We met in the local pub and had a relaxed evening meal, before each having the chance to perform our poetry. Some people performed poetry they’d written during the day, and some had brought poems they’d already written on the theme of ‘work.’

Our girls enjoying the pub meal

For the finale of the evening, we were joined by Offa’s Press poet Dave Reeves, who entertained us with melodic renditions of his West Mids-dialect poetry, accompanied by his harmonica and squeeze-box!

As the night drew to a close we said our goodbyes and set off back through the darkness and fog of the winding Shropshire lanes! Roma entertained us with ghost stories as we laughed about the highs of the day.

All three of us had a wonderful day, and highly recommend going along when Offa’s Press set up their spring workshop.

Blakenhall Writers Autumn News

We have plenty of things going on in autumn so make sure you’re up to date by checking through this post!

September 6^th – Kuli and Cherry appeared at the Stafford Arts Festival, reading their poetry in St Chad’s Church Stafford. The event was organised by the Staffordshire Poet Laureate, and Kuli was invited to do further readings as a result of the great reception her poems received.

October 11^th – We will NOT be having a session in October. This is due to Roma, Kuli and Cherry being at the Offa’s Press Writing Day. We discussed our options at the September meeting and decided this was what we wanted to do. We’ll see you in November! If you want to head along to the Offa’s Press Writing Day with us, check out the details here.

October 14^th – Roma will be reading at Wolverhampton City Voices in the Lych Gate Tavern, 7:30pm, £2.50 on the door. Let’s turn up and support her!

November 8^th – We will be back on schedule with a session on Poetry & Prose techniques. Come along to Blakenhall Healthy Living Centre at 11:00 – 13:00.

Other news!

We will be starting conversations soon about putting together a Blakenhall Writers anthology in the early part of 2015. We will need some funding to put towards this, so any ideas you have, please let us know! Start having a think about what you might want included in the anthology, and we will start discussion in the next few months.

We also want to hear from you about your writing plans. We’ll be tailoring next year’s schedule to what people want to develop, so start thinking about why you write and what your goals are, ready for when we have those conversations.

Take care everyone, and see you in November!

Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest news :)

September 13th Session & September Writing Task

In September we had a very special session. We’d spent the preceding month reading pieces of each other’s work which we needed help and support on to improve. We’d made notes on each person’s work and came together to share our thoughts.

We’d noted down things we liked about the pieces, and things which could be improved, done differently, or just tweaked. We made sure that nobody was critical of each other’s work and just made constructive comments.

It was a very useful exercise and it was great to see what kind of projects the group work on outside of our meetings. Usually when we meet up we do a writing exercise, and sometimes we share what we’ve worked on the following month, but we don’t always get a feel of everyone’s writing style through these exercises.

Letting other people read and feed back on your work is really valuable. It gives you an idea of how an audience might respond to your writing. Your readers can also suggest new ideas which you may not have thought of, or let you know of new techniques which can improve the overall feel of your work. But you’re not obliged to make any changes they suggest – just consider everything objectively and use your discretion to make your own changes.

Feeding back on someone else’s work can be difficult, especially if you want to offer suggestions but don’t want to offend them. Make sure that any suggestions you make are backed up by a good explanation – changes should improve the audience’s experience of the piece, so make a link between this and your advice. Try to look for the potential in a piece, and focus on the good as well as the constructive - give them a platform to build on.

I hope everyone managed to take away some considerations for their work. For September’s writing task, try to make some edits to your work based on the feedback you’ve received from the group.

Not everyone could make the September session, so where possible we will email you your feedback, otherwise we will let you have it in our next session, to take away and mull over.

There are lots of changes over the next few months, so keep an eye on Facebook and Twitter to make sure you’re in the loop!

August 9th Session & August Writing Task

We had a bit of a different session this month – instead of meeting in our usual place, we met up at Wolverhampton Art Gallery to try and inspire some writing from the artwork!

This technique is known as Ekphrasis, which is one art form responding to another. It’s a good technique for practicing idea development, as you already have a starting point.

We looked round the gallery, which has all sorts of artwork, from medieval paintings, to Victorian art, to sculpture, to modern art.

A good starting point is to ask yourself questions about the art:

•       What happened to this piece before it ended up in the gallery?
•       What are the people in the piece feeling or thinking?
•       What does this remind me of?
•       What were the people in this piece doing before, during or after this painting?
•       Where in the world has this artefact come from?
•       Who used to own or use this piece?
•       Who are all the different people involved in this piece (subjects, artist, owner etc), and what are their perspectives on the piece?



New Wire Across The Somme - Brian Yale





Looking Towards Ypres - Brian Yale



Whisper of Spring - Sara Page





The Lady of Shalott - Henry Darvall





A Japanese Book purchased by Wolverhampton Art School in the 1800s



Job: Man of Wood - Lancelot Bryan

Stained Glass display in the gallery

The Apothesis of Penelope Boothby - Henry Fuseli

Thanks to Wolverhampton Art Gallery for letting us take photos of these brilliant pieces. The writing task for August is to see if you can develop a poem or short story from one of the pieces of art you saw in the gallery.

If you didn't manage to come along to the session, why not visit the gallery in your own time? It's free to enter and conveniently in the centre of Wolverhampton. Alternatively, use another piece of art you're familiar with to try and inspire some writing, or even use the pictures in this article.

Can't wait to see what you come up with!

July 12th Session & July Writing Task

During our July session, Kuli and Nirmal talked us through the basics of life writing.

Life writing means writing about a real person or events, and falls broadly into two categories:

Autobiographical – writing about yourself

Biographical – writing about someone else

It doesn't have to be their whole life, as poems and short stories can be (auto)biographical. The point is that it's a real person and not a character the writer has made up.  

We examined some of the reasons which people might want to write about real events or people, such as:

-          Bringing a new, previously unknown perspective to events/a person

-          Telling the 'real' story of someone's life

-          Approaching someone's life with increased objectivity or subjectivity

-          Catharsis – a releasing mechanism

-          Helping others in a similar situation

-          Educating people on what it is like to live a certain way

-          Entertainment, if the life/events have been particularly funny or unusual

-          Leaving behind a record for future generations

-          Money or making a living.

And we discussed how the purpose of writing in this way will shape the writing.

Then we looked at autobiography in more detail.

As you are writing about yourself in autobiography, you have to remember that even though you know yourself well, the reader doesn’t! That means you have to treat yourself as a character. You don’t have to make anything up like you would if you were creating a character, but you do have to remember some of the key lessons we learned in our June session about effective characters.

-          Write about yourself heading for a goal

-          Be consistent in writing your reactions to situations

Also remember to write about yourself in a true-to-life way. You can leave things out, but don’t make things up about yourself or it won’t be genuine!

And don’t forget that even though this is autobiography, it still needs to be interesting for a reader, so make sure you give the writing the same attention you would a story – lots of description and creative word choices.

We then had a taster of biographical writing by doing an exercise where we wrote down a few sentences about a few people we know if real life to describe them to the group.

Biography is a lot different from autobiography because when writing about yourself you have the benefit of knowing what your feelings and thoughts are and how you react to situations. When writing about someone else, you need to know them very well. There are three main types of biography:

-          Writing about someone who you know well e.g. your mother

-          Writing about a living person who you will need to interview or spend time with to get to know

-          Writing about a dead person, who you will have to research using other texts and records

There are some similarities to autobiography though - there are some considerations we need to make:

-          Representing people fairly and realistically, not offending them, and not making things up (don't want any libel or slander cases!)

-          Keeping it interesting, as above - making sure there's progression, a storyline and description to keep the reader's interest. Keep the people involved consistent - you must know how they would have reacted to certain situations.

To practice the skills we’d discussed, we practiced writing our own obituaries! It sounds a bit morbid but is a really good way of listing all your achievements and notable points of your life. Some were a little more – ahem – optimistic than others but it was great practice.

We looked at how life writing has been used throughout the ages from the ancient times to the development of film technology, as people are always interested in stories about real people!

We also looked at some common components which influence  life writing:

·         a concern for ‘truth telling’

·         memory – insight into past, present, future

·         place

·         revelation and concealment – no life can be fully recounted

·         privileged ideas and perspectives

·         context – historical, political and cultural

·         mixture of fact and fiction

·         voice – sense of person

·         variety of text types: letters, newspaper articles, photographs etc

·         allusions to religion, art and literature

·         writing and reflection to understand connections between past, present and future

·         relationships – insight into connections between past, present and future

All of these need to be considered when starting an autobiographical piece, especially if you are planning on writing an autobiography/biography of a whole life, or life to date. Once you’ve identified them, this will give you the guidelines which you will write the story within. 

Writing Task:

This month’s writing task is a little different to usual. As next month we’re visiting the Wolverhampton Art Gallery to produce responses to the artwork there, we won’t be able to share any pieces of work.

However, in September we’re having a detailed feedback session, so please send either up to 500 words of prose, or up to 6 poems to Cherry, who will circulate these to the group. We will spend a month reading them and compiling feedback which will be shared when we meet in September.

June 14th Session & June Writing Task

For our June session, Roma talked to us about how to create effective characters in our writing, and the benefits of doing so.

She posed us some questions to get us started thinking about a character:

-          Where does your character live/where are they from?

-          How old is your character?

-          What are your character’s mannerisms?

-          What does your character look like?

-          What does your character do for a living?

-          How does your character deal with conflict and change?

-          What is your character’s goal or motivation in this story or a particular scene?

It’s important to bear these in mind when writing as it will influence how you write your character. If your character follows behavioural patterns in accordance with the traits you’ve given them, they will come across more believable.

e.g. a character’s age will usually indicate their maturity level and wisdom which will influence how they react to certain situations.

We then had an exercise to write about one of the above questions in detail to bring our character to life.

Then we did an exercise to create a detailed personality for a character. We each took a piece of paper with 12 lines and wrote the name and age of the character at the top. Then we passed it on to the next person who answered the next question and so on…

1. To whom does your character turn to for advice?
2. Write one word that your character would use to describe themselves.
3. Write one word other people would use to describe them.
4. Write about a frightening situation or moment from their childhood.
5. What is their best trait?
6. What is the first thing other people notice about them?
7. Describe an incident they’d rather forget.
8. Who is their best friend?
9. How do they express anger?
10. What is their weakness?
11. What is their relationship with food/body image?
12. What music do they like?

We ended up with some quite eccentric characters this way! Not everybody looked at the previous answers to line up a believable character but it was good fun to see how people’s minds worked together to create a character from nothing more than a name and age.

Next we looked at how to create villainous characters! We explored 3 examples – Voldemort from the Harry Potter series, Mr Hyde from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, and Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. We discussed what made them effective villains.

-          Credibility – most villains are powerful, which allows them to cause problems for the protagonist, and also means they often have followers or minions to help with their evil deeds.

-          Believable motivation/goals – there must be a reason the character has decided to act in this way. What are their goals – power? Wealth? Revenge?

However, antagonists aren’t always ‘bad guys’. Sometimes they’re just opposing viewpoints to the protagonist. From their point of view, YOUR protagonist is THEIR antagonist.  A back story explaining their motivation and goals can make them more likeable, if you don’t want them to come across too villainous.

With this in mind, we created a brief back story for one of the following characters:

Ruby – a young socialite who seduces men for money

James – a teenage bully in a local school

Mark – a corporate boss who9 disrespects his workers and never show gratitude

Agnes – a mistress who is bitter and spiteful to her lover’s wife

This helped us to remember that antagonists are characters too, and that they should also have believable goals and characteristics, just like ‘good’ characters. Otherwise they will be one-dimensional and clichéd.

Thanks Roma for a very useful session!

Can you create a piece of writing using a character you’ve built up using these techniques? Bring it with you next session to share with the group.

Join us next month to learn about Life Writing, led by Kuli and Nirmal.

And don’t forget Kuli’s booklet, Rag Doll, is still available to order. J

Introducing 'Rag Doll' by Kuli Kohli

We are very proud to share with you the news that one of our members, Kuli Kohli, is introducing her new booklet, ‘Rag Doll.’ The booklet is a tantalising mix of poetry and prose, examining how it feels being an Asian woman living with cerebral palsy.

Kuli has a great track record of publication across a variety of magazines, anthologies and websites, and now brings some of her finest pieces together for this touching and provocative booklet.

 "Kuli Kohli’s poetry has come out of a long process of finding her voice and understanding her life and its imposed limits. She writes fluently in a variety of styles and forms and tells us a great deal about what it’s like to be an Asian woman with disabilities in modern Britain. It is by turns moving and funny. She should be an inspiration to us all." Simon Fletcher - Poet and publisher

 "Lovely poems to move the heart and mind with a rainbow of emotions." Surjit Dhami - Meditation Teacher and Consultant Editor of Universal Target Magazine

To order a copy of this fantastic piece for £3.95, please get in contact via Facebook or Twitter, or leave a comment below.