Interviewing Banana – as seen on Authors on Show.

Interviewing Banana. Not a combination of words that occur often in the English language. Not just any old Banana, though. Bear with me; all will be revealed. Well, not all. There are photographs, compromising photographs, but they’re staying well away from public gaze, for now. Some images are bets left to the imagination…

I don’t just write novels where unpleasant people commit unpleasant acts.  I also write poetry. Very occasionally and never for public viewing. That’s either shyness or an acknowledgement that my poetry isn’t very good – and I’ve never been considered shy!

I appreciate poetry, good poetry, very much. The manner in which words are placed on a page can have an effect far beyond the words themselves. Some talented people have the gift of expressing emotions, reaching out to a reader and allowing them to share their personal feelings or observations.

In the last year I ‘discovered’ a new poet. A woman who made me laugh out loud, reduced me to the brink of tears, enriched my soul. A rare gift.

It’s not just the poetry either; I felt drawn to this woman for her insight into life and ability to express her feelings in a manner that made me say, ‘yes, that’s right.’

She has lived abroad, like me, has returned, like me. Common ground.  She’s also Welsh and named Michele but calls herself ‘Banana’ – ah well!

Welsh poets, female Welsh poets, are an endangered species. There’s a National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke and a Welsh Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, but they’re hard to find.

Michele and her husband are publishers – as Endaxi Press they’ve published some of my favourite authors with more to come and also have a property rental website – Letalife – with a vast range of properties for rent. If you are looking for a property to rent, go there. If you want to rent out a property, or you’re a letting agent – it’s free to advertise.

Here’s a link to Endaxi Press

Here’s a link to Banana’s Rental Website.

Questions for my Favourite Poet.

Q. What are you working on now? Any particular projects occupying your time?

A. It is April which means National Poetry Month for the US and Canada.  I joined the community at Writers Digest Poetic Asides in 2009 during Poetry Month and I’ve tried to take part each April ever since.  It’s quite a challenge but well worth it to meet up with my friends on Robert Lee Brewer’s blog (the seemingly tireless almost super-hero who runs Poetic Asides and gives the prompts each day on the challenges) and read their poetry. I’ve learned so much from them and gained confidence and inspiration thanks to the generous sharing spirit of nurturing that prevails there.

At the same time I’m working on finishing my Green alternative poetry book – this one is a bit different from the first three in that I am lucky to have plenty of lovely photographs to display along with the poetry, most are from Tom the SeaSideMan who is hugely talented and one of my blog pals. I’ve settled on the poems for The Red book but not the pictures yet and I’m starting to mark up which poems are likely contenders for the last two poetry books – the orange and purple.  After that I think I might stop with the poetry for a while.  I keep saying I’m going to give it up – but I think after the seven books are done I might retire my poetry hat for a while.

I’ve seen examples of Tom the SeaSideMan’s work in the past. As you say, he’s very talented.

Q. Can you remember when you first knew you wanted to write ‘stuff’ for other people to read?

A. I was about two years old, cringe-makingly pompous and known to family and neighbours as ‘the Professor’ or ‘Bossy Boots’ and when asked I would tell anyone, that I wanted to be an author when I grew up – like Agatha Christie, but I expected I would have to work in a library or office before my books became best-sellers.

Q. Tell me about school / education / life before the emergence of ‘Banana’

A. I first went to school aged 2 at a Catholic primary school where I got caned for not paying attention to my ‘sums’. I was there until the age of 5 when I graduated to the local Infant School and then stayed in the state system with my younger brothers. I was a swot in the days when being a swot wasn’t any bad thing.  Most people will remember me from Infants and Junior school as the speccy girl who kept reading in class under her desk lid.  Eventually one teacher made me clear out all the books and comics from my desk and put them in a large cardboard box at the front of the class and there were enough for the entire class to borrow when they finished their work.  I was allowed to read openly in class after which was a relief because I was starting to get a flat bit on the back of my head where the desk lid had been pressing down on it while I was reading.

In comp my favourite lesson was English – I used to love our language lessons especially essays.  I always tried to find the obscurest way to interpret the set titles and prompts so that I would come up with something totally unexpected.  I was a perfectionist and if I got less than eight out of ten I was seriously depressed and eight was only just a passable mark in my own mind.  I always shot for nine/nine and a half.  It is a complete mystery as to how I managed to have any friends at school as I must have been completely unbearable, but I had a best friend and was always in the ‘inner circle’ despite my geekiness, being fat and definitely the odd one out.

I was fairly fearless in those days.  In Form Two, a copy of Confessions of a Window Cleaner was being circulated and it got confiscated by the teacher who called the headmaster in.  He told us that he would give it back if someone came and admitted to being its owner.  That break I went straight to the head’s office and claimed ownership.  So I was fearless and a fibber – but I was against censorship in those days and if people wanted to read a book I didn’t see why they shouldn’t do so.  The head was a bit surprised – up until then he had seen me as a ‘goody two-shoes’ and his twin brother worked with my mother at a different school where she was head of religious studies.  I think he was so floored that I wasn’t embarrassed (it helped that I hadn’t read it at that point) to claim it that he couldn’t think of anything much to say other than, “Oh well, as long as you don’t think it’s literature.”  I was the school book worm so he couldn’t lecture me about not reading ‘good’ books as I’d worked my way through the school library and most of the way through the village one by then already, plus having read all my mother’s extensive collection of classics, sci-fi, horror, fantasy, crime and historical romances.  In Form Three I moved to the main comp where the lower comps ‘fed’ to.  I met my first boyfriend who was a prefect in the lower sixth and who was to become my first husband when I reached 19.  So upper comp was fairly uneventful and mainly devoted to getting good exam results and gaining a thorough knowledge of practical sex.

I went to the Welsh National School of Medicine – Dental School, Polytechic of Wales, University College Cardiff, and Southampton University and the University of Glamorgan before finally deciding maybe I’d spent enough time sitting in lectures.  I worked as a programmer/analyst and temped as a word processor operator, taught Maths, Science and Computing for a while, then became an internet entrepreneur.

Q. Also, when did ‘Banana’ arrive on the scene, and why?

A. Years and years ago I joined a forum and needed a nickname.  Banana was the first thing that popped into my head and it stuck.  I’ve been some sort of banana online ever since.  It feels more like me than my given name now.

Q. Like me, you bid a fond farewell to the land of your birth, and later returned. Any details appreciated. I know most of the reasons for returning, but not what prompted your departure in the first place. As much detail as you’re comfortable with.

A. I will post a few poems – I think they tell the story fairly well.

Neighbour from Hell.

I have a neighbour who shouts at me

He isn’t very kind

He’s done a lot of nasty things

I think he’s lost his mind.

He watches when I leave the house

Puts nails down for my tires

He talks to people about my family

Tells them we’re all liars.

So I bought a thing or two

Put them up with glee

And the next time he swore and threatened

He was on CCTV!

The police had to take action

They couldn’t walk away

They gave him a fixed penalty notice

And he had to pay.

But it’s still a nuisance

I’m still feeling sad

As long as I live next door

To someone who is bad.

But it could be so much worse

Think of this instead

At least I only live next door

He lives inside his head!!

Here Today Gone Tomorrow

Here and now,

The magpie swoops, the blackbird gathers

Dried grass from the new mown lawn,

While enemies circle,

Coughing from lungs poisoned by evil

Under a promise-filled blue sky.

The sea calls,

Gulls sing in pain, the clouds wincing

To hear their heart-torn noise.

Yet still we struggle,

Fighting the endless insanities

Under siege but never giving in.

To sail away,

To wander free,

To leave the filthiness behind.

Lost in clean purity.

Small in the bigness.

Oblivious and empty

Of all that defiles.

Waiting for a peace

And quiet

That will take us in and swallow us whole.

Forever.

Holiday Home.

All packed up and ready to go

waiting for the taxi

to start our first family holiday

abroad.

We’d been to Disneyland Paris once

but that didn’t really count.

It  wasn’t ‘proper’ France

and we went by train

so it didn’t feel like ‘foreign’ at all.

But this was real ‘abroad’

we were going on a plane

flying hundreds of miles

to land where they didn’t even

use the same alphabet.

We  were all a little bit scared.

I of flying, my child of strange

food and strange new vegetables.

He was wary enough of familiar ones,

and my husband was worried about driving

on unfamiliar roads,

into unfamiliar territory.

To cut a long story short,

we found that ‘home’

a place we had been seeking

all our lives,

by moving to different parts of the

country we were born into,

had been found by accident,

the moment we stepped from

the plane,

thinking we were on holiday,

when really we’d at last arrived

‘home’.

Finding Home

Subtle as breath, cirrus gentle…

Whispering softness with gossamer steel

Waking memories long forgotten,

Rock in blood and sea soul found.

More than mother, father, children

Deeper than friendship stronger than love

Inexorable instinct denial negated

Gut recognition – this is home ground.

The space around the island.

On a mirror in a bowl
tiny island made of moss
plastic swan so serene,
reflected in the surface gloss
on our table in a kitchen
built to someone else’s taste –
nearly all our pictures hanging
some went missing in our haste
to move from a bigger island
to an island green and small
and different though those islands are
they both sit on a giant ball
also like an island
orbiting in space.
Island on island
and island on island
a place for every island
and each island in its place.

No Smoking Please!

We’re feeling sick
it’s making us cough
the smell is really horrible
and it won’t wash off!

Everything is black because of it
this really is no joke,
The fire’s bad enough
but even worse is this damn smoke!

Change of states.

She stands with hands on ample hips
a smile upon her rosy lips.
At sight of her my poor heart skips.

Not long ago I thought her friend,
not best, no that I won’t pretend
but comfortable, make do and mend.

How things have changed for us of late!
Her name out loud alters my state
I cannot eat I’m losing weight.

I look at her implacable,
her motives are uncrackable.
Her face – entirely smackable.

Mare Serenitatis.

On the edge of the sea today I stood

and cried

salt water everywhere around and more

inside

squeezing from my tear ducts however hard

I tried

to stop the tears from coming so I could

just hide…

and they poured and I wept and the sea just kept

on coming and going,

coming and going,

coming and going.

And I am here,

while there is the sea

and always will be;

deep and wide.

So things didn’t turn out the way we’d hoped – but we had a brilliant adventure and most of it was wonderful, just the last bit sucked.  We’re having a new adventure now starting from scratch which is a bit like being very young again only without the energy LOL

Q. I can relate to the excitement of starting from scratch, even more to the lack of energy! A nitty-gritty writer’s question now. Computer, laptop, or longhand? Which is it?

A. Computer – every time.  I don’t think I know how to do hand-writing any more.  I started using an Amstrad word-processor in the 1980’s, before that I’d been using an Olivetti typewriter.  My first typewriter was when I was about six or eight – a mustard yellow Petite Typewriter.  So when ‘proper’ computers with all-singing all-dancing WP packages came along I was in seventh heaven.  I’ve got my lovely Apple iMac now – wonderful because I can use it as a dressing-table mirror as well as a computer thanks to its shiny black screen.

Q. Do you find writing the easiest and best form of expression?  Are you a talker too?

A. I’m more of a talker than the Pope is Catholic.  I am always making a noise, talking or singing or humming under my breath.  The only time I shut up is when I’m tippy-tapping away at my keyboard – but even then I’m making a percussive noise.  I even dream music sound-tracks to my dreams and nightmares.  Probably why I can come up with ok poems now and then, on the monkeys and infinite typewriters principle.  I talk when I can’t write and write when I can’t talk, and sing when I’m not doing the other two.

Q. ‘I talk when I can’t write and write when I can’t talk, and sing when I’m not doing the other two’ is such an evocative description – thanks for that!

Where do the poems come from? Do they just pop up or have to be dragged forth, kicking and screaming?

A. There’s always a tune going on.  Sometimes they have words and sometimes I write them down.  I just listen for them and there they are.  Sometimes the words need some tidying up – a bit of trimming and rearranging, but so far they just show up for work when required.

Q. Who is your favourite poet and is your style in any way similar to theirs?

A. I can’t say I have a favourite poet.  I have favourite poems.  Abou ben Adhem by James Leigh Hunt is my number one poem ever.  Great supernatural story with a kick in it that always gives me a lump in my throat.  If I could write anything remotely as good as that poem I would be delirious.  I don’t want to have a style – I try to write each poem as a unique one of a kind.  I expect I do have some identifying features and I am inspired by poets past and present, but I hope, more in a general way.  I have written a few homages/parodies, The Uncertainty of the Poet by Wendy Cope had to be parodied – given its banana-centric subject and I give a nod to poems by other poets such as Dylan Thomas and Robert Frost, although I have a love-hate relationship with Dylan Thomas for various reasons.

I applaud your choice of favourite poem. As someone with a head crammed full of useless facts, I am able to report that James Leigh Hunt was the inspiration for the character of Skimpole in Dicken’s Bleak House. Learnt many years ago, dormant until now – isn’t memory fascinating? Your readership. Do you think that far ahead when sending a poem out into the world?

A. I am always talking to someone when I write.  If there wasn’t someone to listen I am not sure I would bother.  I used to write songs, at heart I am a thwarted singer-songwriter but because I had no audience I stopped.  The ache of not being heard was too hard to live with.  There is no fun in throwing a pebble into the sea if it makes no splash or ripple.

Q. Be honest, what do you consider to be the best thing you’ve ever written and what makes it special?

A. Going by number of comments from the Poetic Asides Forum this poem I wrote today for the Poem a Day Challenge – Day 10 – write a ‘Never Again’ poem.

Never again.

I will not buy another boat

or make a casserole of goat
or just not own an overcoat
or live where I don’t have the vote.

I will not get too close too soon,
sleep vulnerable beneath the moon
with windows open during June
or sing a certain soft sweet tune.

I will not trust the way I did,
I’ll keep that sealed beneath a lid;
along with snorkelling, finding squid,
swimming care-free like a kid.

I‘d like to say, “Never again,
will I experience grief or pain
or cry like boring, dull, grey rain.”
I know the hope of that is vain.

I’d like to think I could let go
of wanting things I’ve lost but no
the thought of them is like a train
I missed and cannot catch again.

And as I watch it disappear
I find I’m gripped by nameless fear
which fills all spaces with its grain
leaving no room for “Never again.”

But the one I am proudest of is this next one because it is true and there is nothing about it I would want to change and when I read it I can forget I wrote it and just enjoy it.  It makes me feel excited and ready for anything when I read it :

Bright Sparks.

I love the way fireworks burst and send

into the air sparks of bright colours,

so bright they print onto my retinas

and I can still see them with my eyes closed.

I love how no darkness is so dark

it cannot be illuminated -

nowhere an idea cannot visit,

blaze and having done so imprint itself.

I love that in us all is the power of explosion

just waiting for that one shared pure idea.

Q. Any wise advice for an aspiring poet?

I’ve got a poem for that too:

The older poet shares wisdom with his youthful acolytes.

One way to write a poem

and to make it rhyme

is to think ahead to the end

of each and every line.

Pick the word that terminates

and make each sentence fit

then hammer them into subservience

to make some sense of it.

I’ve read a few -too many-

that Yoda-like mangle their words

to make the rhyme

but most of the time

it turns out quite absurd.

So that’s one way to write a poem

though possibly not the best tack,

but any way’s a good way

if it keeps you off my back

Q. How much of ‘you’ makes it into your writing?

A. More than I like to admit.

Q. My favourite question now. What are the last three books you read?  Any comments?

A. The last one I read all the way through was by PG Wodehouse – Full Moon. I re-read snippets from about four or five books every day because I never go to the loo without something to read and I’m never there long enough to get properly ‘stuck-in’ so to speak so I keep books I know well in there and re-read my favourite bits. I read Full Moon in bed.

The last two books I read all the way through before that were Songs from the Other Side of the Wall by Dan Holloway and coincidentally (and not as a suck-up) Murder in August by Jared Conway.  All three very different books but with things in common, very real people in them(I know the PG Wodehouse Blandings lot are extremely odd and supposed to be cartoony but I always find them completely real while I am in their world) busy in engaging stories, living in worlds you can taste, smell and feel.  I also like that they all have endings that make me feel comfortable with the world.

Q. Interesting! P G Wodehouse is a personal favourite of mine too. Dan Holloway, whom we’ve both met separately, is a massively talented writer. As for that book by Jared Conway – it’s now entitled Heat and even the poor author’s name has changed to Jake Barton. You’re one of the few people I know who actually read it. Most of the sadly deluded people who profess themselves ‘fans’ of my writing shy away from Heat as it’s much milder in tone than my other books.

Q. What’s a typical working day? When and where do you write?

A. ‘What’s a typical working day?’  I don’t know, you tell me. I don’t think I’ve ever had a typical day, working or otherwise.  Every day is different.  I get up when I feel like it, or when I can’t sleep, whichever it is that day, then what happens after that is variable.  I eventually fall asleep at some point and then the next day the same vague pattern repeats.

The bits in between are anybody’s guess.  Cooking, pulling hairs out of my chin and writing poetry seem to be the most predictable events.  I always write sitting at my computer, which currently lives in a weeny alcove in our bedroom.

Q. Best answer, ever! What else fuels your life away from the keyboard?

A. Husband, son, occasionally popping to Oxford to take part in wonderful events where I try to blend in by pretending to be an intellectual – but I don’t think I’m fooling anyone – and cooking and eating and sleeping. Nearly everything that makes me enthused or provokes me to go out and about originates from what our pal Sheena calls ‘the people who live in my computer.”  However I do like going for walks and luckily we’ve had some great weather lately so I can get my ‘fix’ of the sea, although I haven’t thrown myself into it yet.  I will have to, I can’t go for this many months without being immersed in salt water, I’m in need of its preservative properties.

Q. Is there a particular question you’d have liked to be asked? If so, how would you answer that question?

Q. “Would you like me to transfer the millions I have in a Swiss bank account into your name?”

A. “Yes, please – that would do nicely.”

Yeah, right! Two questions I ask everyone coming up now.

Q. If you were writing a book about your life, what would the title be?

A. It would have to be called: When do we get to the boring part?

Q. What are three things most people don’t know about you?

A. I’m a man.

I’m a man who used to be a hedgehog.

I’m a man who used to be a hedgehog who taught himself how to juggle with water balloons after a disastrous skiing accident.

Q. Hmm! What would you like to be if you had absolutely free choice?

A. Bloody, stinking rich.

Q. I’ve thought for quite a while there’s a book in you. I’d read it. Any plans in that direction?

A. Here’s chapter one of my novel One Piece at a Time.

http://one-piece-at-a-time.blog.co.uk

It is a work in progress and will need heavy editing, I think I will probably end up changing the title as well, but if I don’t get it finished and ‘out there’ I will be very cross.  I’m hoping to get knuckled down to it soon.  I’m about halfway through it so far.

Q. Fascinating. Tell us about your venture into the murky world of publishing. How did it come about, how’s it doing, what’s next on the agenda?

A. Well having been involved in a new business before, this one seems to be following our usual pattern at this stage in the proceedings.  Not making a profit, not making a loss.  No regrets so far, lots learned and quietly confident of the future.

The main book I’m excited about coming out right now is Saturdays are Gold by Pierre Van Rooyen. (image attached)  I loved this book when I read it under its original title Little Girl in a Fig Tree and it is the main reason we decided to set up as publishers rather than me just self-publish my poetry.  I had dreams of getting the chance to publish this book.  Every reader I’ve given it to, no matter what generation they were, has loved it.  It has universal appeal with a timeless quality that all the classics have.

This isn’t just a good book measured on whether it fits a genre well – it is a great book in the same ball-park as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and To Kill a Mockingbird.

I could see children being given this as a set book for English Lit exams and actually enjoying it. It would make a great film.  I know because I’ve seen it in my head.  Panoramic shots of the South African bush, two children hand in hand, swelling music in the right places, 3D effects.  It would be a box-office hit!  But in the meantime we have the book – Saturdays are Gold – soon to be released and probably a rare chance to buy a piece of what will be literary history in the making.  Am I being over-enthusiastic? Nah!  This is one of the books that belongs on everybody’s book shelf because if they haven’t read it they’ve missed out on something wonderful.  One day it will give someone a lovely opportunity to say, “Oh yes, Saturdays are Gold, I read it when it first came out and I knew immediately it would be huge,” with the smug casual nonchalance of true one-upmanship.  I’m looking forward to that :

http://www.endaxipress.com/?P=20

I’m a huge fan of Pierre’s book. As with other writers in your ‘stable’ – Raven Dane, Annabelle Page for instance – you’ve picked writers who understand the specific demands of their genre and have the ability to enrich the reader’s experience through their work.

I wish you the very best of luck with all your ventures and thank you so much for agreeing to be my latest victim.