One of the things I love about blogging is being able to rediscover my thoughts: being able to look back on a whole year of writing just by scrolling back through my posts. Perhaps the most revealing is looking at where I was a year ago, and comparing it to where I am now.
So often, it feels like we’re not making progress. At least that’s how it is for me, and I’m sure for so many other people out there, writers and otherwise. When you’re living life on it’s day-to-day basis, it can be hard to see the larger changes taking place – even when you’re having a good year, which 2017 has definitely been for me.
Looking back on my end-of-year update at the end of 2016, things have definitely changed. I’ve now been working mostly freelance for two full years. At the end of year 1, I was wrestling with the idea of being an ’emerging’ writer, and wondering when a writer gets to say they’ve ’emerged’. I may still be classed as an ’emerging writer’ for the purposes of funding bids / applications etc, but if the process of becoming a writer is like a chick being born, then this year I’ve definitely hatched.
Poetry:
This year, I’ve published a pamphlet. Breaking the Surface came out in June 2017, published by Flipped Eye. I ended up having a plethora of launches (one in the Engine Bay at Eden Arts, a joint launch with Pauline Yarwood, and a launch with open mic night at Cakes & Ale in Carlisle). After so many years of working towards a debut pamphlet, it feels slightly weird to finally have it out in the open, but a wonderful kind of weird – especially as I’m now (very slowly) working towards a full collection.
It’s also been a year of prizes. There’s a theory among poets that prizes come in threes. I think one must have snuk in under the radar, though, because this year I’ve had some sort of success in four separate awards: I was lucky enough to win the Jane Martin Poetry Prize and the Ware Poetry Prize, to come second in the Tannahill International Poetry Prize, and to be shortlisted for the Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize – all within a couple of months of each other! I guess things really do happen all at once.
Perhaps my achievement of the year is getting a word in the Oxford English Dictionary. As part of the Free The Word project, connected with this year’s National Poetry Day celebrations, I was commissioned by BBC local radio to write a poem based on a Cumbrian dialect word. Naturally, I decided to write about twining (moaning / complaining) – a word in such common parlance up here that I never actually realised was dialect until I went to university, and suddenly realised nobody had a clue what I was talking about. I was then filmed performing the poem; you can read / watch it here.
On top of that, I’ve also been involved in a few festivals this year.
In March, I was the in-house blogger for StAnza International Poetry Festival – a festival I’ve volunteered at for the past few years, and always one of the first things in my new diary each year. Especially this year, as I’ll be reading at the festival in March 2018!
Skip forward a few months, and I helped create a guerrilla poetry event for Kendal Poetry Festival. Working with Dove Cottage Young Poets, we created postcard poems, which we then handed out in Kendal on market day. My particular highlights of that event were the woman who told me she’d had a terrible morning so I’d just made her day, the man who quoted William Henry Davies to me, and the armed policeman putting a poem inside his jacket so he could ‘carry it next to his heart’.
I also created a guerrilla poetry project for Lakes Alive festival: this time, a Poetry Cairn. One of the things that never fails to bring me joy about poetry is the way it can bring people together. For the project, people were encouraged to think about what poetry meant to them, and to write the answer on a stone, which we gradually built into a cairn. The best part of the project, however, was the conversation this request inevitably sparked, with people reciting poetry to me, talking shyly about their own writing, or just musing on what poetry was.
Just a week later, I was at Rheged in Penrith, hosting an Adult Youth Club for C-Art Festival, featuring the wonderful Loud Poets collective, and Edinburgh-based band Ekobirds. There was poetry and music, naturally. But like any good youth club, we also had crayons, plastecine and a quiz.
And speaking of youth…
This year I’ve delivered a number of workshops in schools. I’m still working with my wonderful group at St Patrick’s School, through the Wordsworth Trust. It’s such a rare privelege to keep returning to the same group over an extended period of time, getting to see them develop and grow, both as children but also in their writing. They’re a fantastic group, who never cease to surprise and impress me with their words and ideas.
But I’ve also delivered some hugely enjoyable one-off workshops, such as workshops for National Poetry Day (also with the Wordsworth Trust), and a number of workshops for New Writing North, which led to a couple of showcase events and an anthology of the students’ work.
Phew! Talk about a busy year – and it hasn’t all been about poetry…
Fiction:
At the end of 2016, I started writing fiction. On the off-chance that my prose-writing wasn’t ridiculous, I submitted the first 1000 words of a novel to WriteNow: Penguin Random House’s new mentoring scheme. And, just before Christmas last year, I heard I’d been accepted onto the Manchester Insight Day. Apparently around 3000 people applied for WriteNow in its first year, and this meant that I was in the top 150. That alone gave me the confidence boost I needed to actually continue writing the novel, and to believe that the idea I could write fiction wasn’t such a crazy one after all.
Since the Insight Day in February, it’s all been a little bit of a whirlwind, to be honest. Over the month or so that followed, I heard that, from the insight day, I’d been shortlisted for the year-long mentoring scheme run by Penguin Random House. After a nerve-wracking phone interview (in which the PRH fire alarm went off and my interview had to be paused while everyone evacuated the building), I learned that I’d made it through. Out of the original 3000, twelve of us were selected to take part in a year-long mentoring programme.
Since then, I’ve drafted and redrafted (and redrafted and redrafted) the novel. I’ve had some hugely beneficial feedback meetings with my editor, and am currently about to embark on Draft 7.
I’ve been to a wonderful meet-up weekend, and spent time with the other mentored writers, who are all lovely. I also had a wonderful day at the Newcastle Insight Day, where I was asked to give a talk to 50 shortlisted writers for the next round of the mentoring scheme – including friend & fellow Cumbrian poet Polly Atkin, who has since been accepted on Year 2 of WriteNow. Go Cumbria! (If you fancy it, you can read the talk I gave here.)
And most recently (just in the past week, in fact), I’ve got an agent. I’m super excited to be represented by Lucy Luck, at Conville + Walsh (part of Curtis Brown). Such a great early Christmas present!
Theatre:
As if poetry & fiction weren’t enough, this has also been a pretty theatre-heavy year.
In 2017, I achieved my long-standing ambition of taking a show to Edinburgh Fringe. I worked with my friend & composer Stephen Hyde to rewrite the show we created in 2015 (then called Yesterday), to create a very different production: The Inevitable Quiet of the Crash.
The Inevitable Quiet of the Crash played throughout the Fringe at C Royale: a new C Venues-run location on George St. We had a fantastic team (thanks, FoxTale Productions!) and a wonderfully talented cast & band. So no wonder we got some good reviews!
It’s also been an amazing year for travel. Aside from spending the best part of August in Edinburgh (a city I love and could always spend more time in), I’ve also been to Cambodia and Vietnam, and then to Iceland with the wonderful Jessi Rich.
The Year in Pictures:
Katie Hale 