All You Need Is Love: Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love is published today.

I was young in 1967, probably a lot younger than I realized. I was moved by the so-called Summer Of Love but I'm sure I can't have understood the half of it. I felt it though and some of those feelings must have made it into my novel, Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love. I suspect a small part of me is there, hidden somewhere between those pages hoping not to be discovered now that the book is published and Stephen Dearsley, formerly "my" Stephen Dearsley, is out there with you all or with any of you that decide to read about him and his momentous young man's summer.

I might know Stephen a lot better than I know the moody young man in the photograph at the top of this blog. Who I was then or, maybe, who I was trying to be then in the Summer of 1967 may have to remain a mystery to me as well as to the rest of you. I do remember though that even then I wanted one day to write a novel and to get it published as a paperback. That was very clear to me, as The Beatles sang that summer about love, it was easy. Young ambitions are not the mountains they look like from a distance. Those youthful summer days were for dreaming dreams. It would all be fine, it was easy. Well nothing's quite that easy and a lot of years have passed before that sultry summer dream came true.

I remember the ambition just as I remember a song from that year - both were vivid, thrilling and, yes, I guess, erotic dreams and both, I was sure, would come true. It was easy.

The song, of course, was all You Need Is Love by The Beatles, first performed on the first ever simultaneous live international television relay on the 25th June 1967 to an estimated audience of 400 million people. It was, naturally, the answer. Love really was all you needed if everyone agreed to go along with that thought or so it seemed that day.  I was excited, maybe even more than that,  to be there as a witness to a moment of revelation. Then came the new Beatles album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and, for me at least, life was never to be quite the same again.

The Beatles, 25th June 1967

It wasn't, as we all found out, that easy after all, love or people agreeing that love was all you needed, but it turned enough of us on at that time to make a difference. It wasn't just the music but the whole counter-cultural shift that those records revealed to my innocently voracious eyes and ears. Even though The Beatles split up, became disillusioned, some of them died, were even murdered and the others grew old, I still can't listen to that song of songs without the same thrill of optimism and the spirit of delight that awoke in me then and has never fully died.

When I think of Stephen Dearsley, I often say 'poor Stephen' and hope that he forgives me for all I have done to him. If you do decide to read my novel, be kind to him and try to think well of those idealists and dreamers who once thought achieving the sublime was easy.






It was a sublime moment too this afternoon when I first laid hands on a copy of my book. There's no other feeling like this one.

I have three new Fibonacci poems published today, 30th October - my brain haemorrhage anniversary.

The latest issue of The Fib Review, Issue #16,  is posted online today and, sorry to brag, it includes three of my Fibonacci poems continuing my unbroken run in this poetry journal since I submitted my very first Fibonacci poem four years ago in Issue #5.

It's great to celebrate the new issue today, 30th October, which, otherwise, would be just the fifth anniversary of my brain haemorrhage - better known in this house as Haemorrhage Day. Actually, my recovery has been so complete that I hardly even remember it these days. Now though, I do need to say thanks to whatever powers, including the British National Health Service, allowed me to carry on with my life. Thanks!

The long recovering period from that sudden brain injury, a substantial haemorrhage to my left frontal lobe,  allowed me to develop my poetry writing and, sometimes, I  wonder if the haemorrhage actually inspired me to write poetry in the first place. It was during the early days of recovery that I also caught the Fibonacci bug.

If you don't know about Fibonacci poetry then read the explanation in the photo-shot of the new edition of The Fib Review above. It's all about making syllables or words comply into a strict arithmetical code without losing their poetic purpose. I love the form and I feel honoured to have so many of my poems included in what must be the leading publisher of this unique style of poetry.

If you want to read the poems here's the link:

http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/index.html

The Fib Review is now downloadable so you can keep them on your computer if you wish and browse all the other poems at your leisure. You can access all of mine in the Writer Archive section.

Those of you who can access the virtual online world, Second Life (it's free and easy to join from anywhere in the world) you can also go to my virtual Fibonacci exhibition, Brief Encounters where forty of my Fibs line the walls along with some of my photography. http://maps.secondlife.com/ - it was in Second Life, while still recovering from brain damage that I first encountered Fibonacci poetry thanks to the editor of The Fib Review who also happens to  run workshops in short form poetry in the virtual world. I loved the idea  from the start but would never have predicted that I would have kept writing them.

How knows, you might even get hooked on the style yourself.

The virtual exhibition continues until January so, if you can, go and take a look. Once you've entered the world head for Book Island, an extraordinary literary community where everything and everyone is dedicated to writing.

Second Life, poetry, the Fib Review, all of these things I celebrate today on my fifth year of borrowed time. Actually my cup overfloweth, as they say, for tomorrow sees the publication of my first novel, Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love. I'm a lucky guy.

My novel is off to the printers today - Stephen Dearsley is leaving home.

I think it's only normal for me to feel excited today because my novel is off to the printers ready for its release next week on 31 October. I've enjoyed each stage of writing my book, Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love, but there is something special about the feeling today that it is all done and beyond any temptation to rewrite. It is also a strangely emotional moment, the final stage before poor Stephen leaves the safety of his author's and publisher's  protection before facing his fate out there in the world. I hope people will be kind to him, poor guy. It feels like he's leaving home.

I now have the exciting moment to look forward to when my novel is finally there in my hand - completed, printed and giving off that wonderful aroma unique to new books. I first dreamt of that moment as a child.

Second Life: a writer's life in a virtual world.

Believe it or not, blog-readers, there is still a lot of prejudice around concerning on-line networks and so-called virtual worlds. We are not far enough away from the 20th Century yet for some people to see that there is no great difference between communication media - for good or for ill. The tabloid print press, every now and then, run a story about how this marriage broke up because of a relationship formed in the virtual world of Second Life or that a child became hooked on war games or someone else found some other on-line addiction. Well, we humans fail, fall and get addicted to almost anything and, if the sensational world revolution that is the web has to get the blame then, blame too, newspapers, films, television, the telephone, letter-writing, conversations at the supermarket check-out, anything where human speaks to human. I am thinking in particular about Second Life today because I have some experience of this international network of strangely animated avatars who can speak freely to fellow humans in any country in the world because it is free in all senses of that word. These people, because behind each avatar is an individual human being, can explore wherever their imaginations lead them. I am a fan of communication, freedom and the imagination and I discovered that in Second Life, all of these things are in abundance.

For me, it's a very creative place with a lively literary world where, like last night, you can put on an exhibition of poetry and people come to it from all over the World. I run a gallery in a place called Book Island and often hold other poetry events at a village known as Written Word and have done since my brain haemorrhage of nearly five years ago when going out at all would have been impossible. In both places, it is quite difficult to find a philistine or a modern art cynic and last night, at the opening of my exhibition, the conversation was about poetic form and writing styles with people coming to explore the world of Fibonacci Poetry without any prejudices or preconceptions.

In this virtual world, we have to make everything ourselves, or get help from clever friends - that is how my gallery, Wolfanatolia was born. I then had a space to fill with 40 of my Fibonacci poems along with some of my photographs which, I hoped, were complimentary to the poetic themes. These little arithmetically conceived poems take concentration from reader and writer alike so I was thrilled to find such an intent and appreciative audience for these little Minimalist pieces that I have put together into a sequence when previously they have had to stand alone - mostly individually published in succeeding issues of that pioneering journal, the Fib Review. Here is a link if you'd like to read some of my work and also Fibonacci poems by many other poets from a round the world:

www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/

I had never read them as a sequence out-loud before and didn't know if they were going to work as performance pieces. Second Life, not for the first time, gave me the chance to find out.

In the audience there were people from Hawaii, India, Singapore, California, South Carolina, Tennessee,  New York City,  London, Manchester, Wales, Lisbon and Paris. I was there too without having to leave my hometown of Lewes in the UK.

We were all linked up visually and aurally by the amazingly clear telecommunication that is Second Life. An international conference call with a difference perhaps and absolutely free. It is in moments like this that I feel hopeful about our planet Earth. Moments when we don't have to worry about presidents, dictators and generals or even the sneers from that great army, the silent majority of reactionaries.





I think my Fibonacci Sequence, Brief Encounters, worked as spoken word - I hope it did, the audience thought so anyway. They stayed for the excellent live music provided by my friend Brendan Shoreland,  singer-songwriter, a Yorkshireman from Plymouth,  who also finds inspiration in virtual worlds. People even stayed  afterwards to walk round the exhibition.

I am not alone in finding inspiration in the technology that allows like-minded people anywhere in the world to share ideas and creative endeavours,  I met Adele Ward, the future publisher of my novel, Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love, at just such an event as last night. She is one of the pioneers of bringing  and developing literature in virtual worlds. I have grown as a writer since visiting this place and see it now as yet another inspiring part of my always interesting life.

So don't laugh when you hear people talk about virtual worlds because you might just be missing something. You might even be wrong. OK, then, laugh if you want to, sometimes it's safer that way.

1967 and all that.

I've been having a bit of a sort in my computer files and found some of my old research photographs for my novel, Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love, published on the 31 October - yay!
As you can probably tell the book is based in that vivid year 1967 and these photographs sum up some of the moods that I was trying to capture.

My computer clear-out has failed of course because I really can't delete these even though the text of the novel is now about to go off to the printers and I shall have to live with it as it is. As Pontius Pilate said, what I have written I have written.

I was a teenage schoolboy in 1967 but I knew that I was experiencing the dawning of something exciting and, probably, life-changing and I couldn't wait to get on with it. I was, I think, a little jealous of those, just ahead of me,  like the young man below, who could get out there,  on the road to what I assumed would be that difficult word 'freedom'. I don't know the people in these photographs but then again I do.

I could see them all around me and read about them too even in my edition of Wordsworth's The Prelude (1805)


OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!

For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood 

Upon our side, we who were strong in love! 

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, 

But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times, 

In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways 

Of custom, law, and statute, took at once 

The attraction of a country in romance!

Wordsworth was writing about the French Revolution but his words rang true for me when, not entirely wrongly, I felt that we too were on the edge of a glorious revolution.

Since then, of course, the so-called Summer Of Love has been much maligned or, worse, trivialised. Whatever its legacy, it was a thrilling moment in time - one which I attempted to write about with some trepidation.

I don't know where I was, quite literally, when this photograph was taken. Presumably, judging by the length of my hair, it was a couple of years later after I had moved on from those idealistic schooldays when I used to listen to the excitingly new Beatles' Sgt Pepper Pepper album and dream the dream.

Wherever that was, whatever I was on and whoever I was with, I think I must have got the message.

Writing the body: poetry and painting - an inspiring combination.

Yesterday, celebrating the completion of the final edit of my about to be published novel,  I spent the day at the Mosaic Rooms, an art gallery in Kensington, London. Being a Monday, it was closed to the public so a group of us had the place to ourselves for the new exhibition, Equinox, Between Beirut and London, the first solo show in the UK, by the young  France-based Kurdish Syrian artist, Lawand al-Attar,  known simply as Lawand.

Lawand at work

His work is passionate, uncomfortable at times and deeply human. Even if the exhibition, Equinox, isn't directly related to the terrible situation in Syria today, it is certainly influenced by the conditions in Lawand's native country. Ghostly stumbling figures with decimated bodies, appear or disappear in a varporously insecure landscape. I and a number of fellow poets were at the gallery for a poetry workshop where we would write poems inspired, influenced or even repelled by these vivid paintings.

The much lauded French-Welsh poet Pascale Petit led the workshop, Writing The Body,  guiding us gently towards three precisely-timed poetry writing sessions during the day where we were all produced three poems each, all remarkably different and all created in the intense atmosphere created by Laward's work and Pascale's subtle pushing. It was truly both inspiring and exposing.

Pascale Petit

I shall let my three pieces ferment at the back of my mind for a few days before looking at them again but, however they turn out, this experience encouraged me to take some new directions in my writing, looking for new sources of inspiration.

Pascale Petit was commissioned to write a set of poems based around a series of Lawand's drawings also a part of this exhibition at the Mosaic Rooms - the art book, Effigies, a collaboration between Petit and Lawand,  is published this week and will be available at the launch at the gallery this Saturday at noon. The exhibition runs until 29th November and is well worth a visit even if you don't want to attempt writing a poem about your reactions to the work. You don't have to, obviously, but why not have a go. For further details here's a link:

http://www.mosaicrooms.org/lawand/

Lawand at the Mosaic Rooms

In spending such a luxuriously long time with these paintings in such a peaceful and uncluttered atmosphere, I was not only writing poetry but also learning to truly look at Lawand's art and to absorb its power. I shall have awakened eyes the next time I visit an art gallery. It was an added pleasure getting the chance to meet the charmingly diffident Lawand al-Attar as well as working with the quietly radiant poet Pascale Petit. We accomplished in a single day and I hope to incorporate ways of thinking and looking learned from both artists in my future work - inadequate as that might be.

I think I'm allowed a few moments of quiet celebration now that my novel is about to go off to the printers.

It was the weekend when I actually believed that my novel really is going to be published and that it is going to be happening almost immediately now. Well, actually 31st October but that's no time away. The text has now been agreed and it will soon be off to the printers. I've even made it into the papers! I did this interview for the Sussex newspaper, The Argus last week and it came out on Saturday.  Take a look - it felt very strange reading about myself in the newspaper.

http://www.theargus.co.uk/magazine/celebratingsussex/10724508.Second_chance/?ref=rss

It's almost enough to make a guy come out with corny remarks about this being a lifetime's ambition coming true. Well, it's true. Do I believe it? Well, actually, not fully. I'm amazed and I shall endeavour to enjoy these next weeks knowing that nothing could be quite as exciting again

Menuhin and Me and Menuhin's Children

Yehudi Menuhin filming Menuhin's Children, September 1998

Yesterday I wrote about my Fibonacci elegy poem about the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin and how it will be published, probably next March, by Every Day Poets. A few people asked me about the photograph that I put up on yesterday's blog. It showed a memorable moment in my television career when I was producing a series of masterclass shows with Yehudi Menuhin for Granada Television.

The photograph is framed and hangs on the wall in my study and I enjoy having it there to remind me not just of my affection for Yehudi Menuhin but also as a record of that moment when one of the greatest violinists in the World played his violin just for me. We were talking about what he should play to illustrate a particular point and, with his typical modesty,  he asked my opinion as if it could possibly be as valid as his.

Yehudi Menuhin rehearsing for Celebration Masterclass, 1990

During that week that we worked together in, I think, 1990, we struck up a rapport and talked of other ways in which we could work together in the future. It was one of those conversations that led to the idea of a television documentary recording a possible project where we would select a group of children for him to teach from scratch. We developed the idea to include a British state school where music was not a specialist subject and where there was no violin teacher. Bearing in mind, the splendid Granada series 7 Up, we also decided to choose children aged 7 and to see if music really could make a difference to their lives. It took eight years to convince a broadcaster to go with this idea but eventually I got the BBC to commission it in 1998. Sadly, this was after our first generation of seven year olds had grown too old for the experiment but we started again and  found a school in Guildford, Surrey and proceeded, with the expert guidance of the Russian violin professor Natalia Boyarsky, who had experience of choosing potential violinists in the then Soviet Union and who was now, and still is, a teacher at the Yehudi Menuhin School in England. There was much scepticism from school teachers and parents alike but the chance was too good to turn down the opportunity to be taught by such a distinguished musician. Yehudi was thrilled and we planned a schedule where he could come to the school once a month for a year to teach the twelve selected seven year olds. Filming started in September 1998 and, from the start, I knew that the results would be delightful and, yes, an important experiment in the value of music in schools.

Yehudi Menuhin shows Menuhin's Children round the Yehudi Menuhin School, 1999

I will always be sad that the many delays in getting this project going on British television took so long because after just six months, I had a phone call telling me that Yehudi had died quite unexpectedly in a Berlin hospital. We finished the film without him but to the plan he had agreed and, luckily, with the distinguished violinist Rosemary Furniss taking his role as principal teacher. The documentary, Menuhin's Children, co-produced with EuroArts-Primetime,  was screened on BBC2 the following year and subsequently all around the World.  Those seven-year olds are now twenty-one years old but sadly, British broadcasters turned down ideas of following the children's progress.

I Googled Menuhin's Chldren this morning to see if there were any records of this programme and I found this on Utube, a promotional clip made, I think, by the facilities company that hired us the film crew and editor. I was grateful to see some of those shots again and hope that the documentary proper might reach the screens again as a memorial to a great musician and a wonderful experiment.

As for those twelve "Menuhin's Children" - they were great kids and I wish them all well in their adult lives. I hope too that they sometimes think about the gentle musician who taught them from his heart.

My fiftieth published poem celebrates the life of Yehudi Menuhin

Yehudi and Me

I heard over the weekend that my Fibonacci elegy poem, Yehudi Menuhin, is to be published by Every Day Poets - it will probably come out next March on the fifteenth anniversary of the great violinist's death. More of that later. In my television days I worked a number of times with Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999) and we struck up a kind of friendship so I'm very happy that my elegy for the great man takes me to the magic number of fifty published poems. I'm pleased too that this news arrives on the fourth anniversary of my first published poetry and just before the fifth anniversary of the first poem I wrote (since I was a schoolboy). It is still a new medium for me and it's great to have discovered a new challenge. Even if no one publishes the stuff, even if no one likes it,  it has given me tremendous pleasure learning how to write it

It is an exciting time right now as I'm getting ready for the publication of my first novel, Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love - it is published on 31 October and I can now say, hand on heart, that I am genuinely very excited about it. I'm half way through the second draft of a new novel too and hope to finish it by Christmas.

I hope that I will still find enough time for poetry writing as I'm still learning how to do it. Maybe you never quite get there with poetry (or any other writing for that matter) - that's what makes it so absorbing.