Well, my first article for the New Welsh Review has been approved and published.
Have a read: http://www.newwelshreview.com/article.php?id=1086
It makes sense it would be horror. I guess all the teasing I endured in high school about my “bloodthirsty nature” paid off.
Let you in on a secret? I’m not really that bloodthirsty. I just see the genre as a medium for honesty when it comes to storytelling. And the good tales of gore and guts, the “classics”, often have their roots firmly in a literary history, either as a direct theatrical adaption or an altered visual interpretation of the original text.
I mean, you realise The Godfather has its roots in King Lear, right?
I remember Alan Moore being interviewed, saying that how in good science fiction “You’re not talking about the future, you’re talking about the present”.
Which is usually what’s appealed to me about the genre, or at the very least, about the contemporary feel to the genre; Harry Potter’s living as a human, unaware of his situation in the wider ‘ordinary’ world, Elena Michaels knows what she is, but initially wants nothing to do with her werewolf side, desperate to live as a normal person, while Aaron Boone is desperate to escape social reality for Midian, and the monsters that he feels greater kinship for than actual citizens of the world.
The last example comes from Clive Barker’s excellent Cabal, remade to the classic movie ‘Nightbreed’.
I’m rereading it right now, primarily as emotional research for the idea I’m cultivating for my dissertation next April, both in Barker’s style and his eye for presenting outsiders to the greater world.
Gotta go now, back to poetry homework. Imagist poetry. Oh joy.
Poetry to me, is like tap dancing to Connie in ‘A Chorus Line’.
“Sorry, tap’s not my strong point” she admits, breathlessly running through the drills.
To which Larry, the set lead, gives her a sceptical look, down his considerable nose.
“Uh-huh, I see that” he says, grinning.
Still got to do it, though.
*gets up to go and lace up her tap shoes*
Vida's Crucible 