Notes from the frozen north # 2

It will be obvious to anyone who has spent time in Scotland, particularly around Glasgow, that the country is short of names. Many men seem to be called Jimmy and many women Hen. This lack of names clearly affects Scottish writers too. Five Leaves has five Scottish writers on its list, or coming onto its list. One is J. David Simons. That is is name but if it was just David Simons the J. would have to be added to avoid confusion with the slightly better known American writer David Simons. Russel McLean became Russel D McLean to prevent confusion with someone similar. And we now have Michael Malone from Ayr joining us, his first crime novel will be out in 2012. Unfortunately there is already a crime writer called Michael Malone so he, ie our one, will become Michael J Malone. So that's 60% of our Scottish writers needing to use an initial due to this acute name shortage. Something needs to be done. Michael Malone though will have some problems as he is already a published poet sans J. So there is now Michael Malone the crime writer, Michael Malone the poet and Michael J Malone the crime writer. Surely some enterprising literature programmer should put them all on the same bill, for an evening with Michael Malones.

Broyges*

Never known to avoid a grudge, we'd like to remind Gilad Atzmon (see 6 November) that the second coming of Jazz Jews on radio is tonight at 10.00pm UK time, with listen again facility if he misses it. Here's the programme we are talking about: http://www.ukjazzradio.com/MikeGerber.html.
* a wonderful Yiddish word describing the situation whereby a second cousin is still upset because he wasn't invited to a wedding 23 years ago.

Notes from the frozen north # 1

God, Edinburgh is cold*. But the Scottish Poetry Library, Helena Nelson and a warm and generous audience was a great setting for the last of John Lucas' launch readings for Next Year Will Be Better. Mindful that the subtitle of his book is A memoir of England in the 1950s, he read from the only Scottish section of the book. This comprised a well observed note about visiting Dumfrieshire in the 1950s when he and an English friend were about the only people who stood for the National Anthem (then common practice in England) to find that some people shouted at them to sit down while others pelted the screen with orange peel and the like. A moment of discovery that not all Britons were royalists.
As well as launching John's book, we were launching a book published by him at Shoestring, a collection by Helena Nelson (publisher at Happenstance), Plot and Counterplot. The two readers worked very well together. I was pleased to see other Scottish publishers in the audience, as well as someone from STANZA, the St Andrews poetry festival - but then Helena has a big following in Scotland. It was nice to share some of that, and to bring her some of John Lucas' Scottish fan club.
*It got colder, wandering around later trying to find where First (the inappropriately named bus group) had moved the bus stop for travelling on to Hawick, then colder still in an unheated rattler of a bus for two and a quarter hours under blue lighting like that used in dodgy pub toilets to discourage junkies shooting up. The news from Hawick? The local football team has lost every match it has played this season, the Hawick rugby club is bottom of its league, the local Council is trying to get volunteers to cut the grass in local parks and there's a murder on the front page of the local paper. For this I paid First £6.30 to get there and £6.30 more to get to Carlisle the next day...

Zeynep's story

The four people reading Where the Wild Things Are comprise Zeynep, Fatih and Kebire Hasbudak and Brian Simons. The year is 1985 and the picture is from Zeynep: that really happened to me, published by the All London Teachers against Racism and Fascism (those were the days). The book is a collection of drawings and photographs and the autobiographical story of Zeynep who, the next year was deported with her family to a country she had never seen before where her parents became unemployed and she had to learn a new language. Her whole school tried to stop the deportation but failed. The book was really important in her home area of Hackney and beyond in showing the child's view of being deported, a child in this case that was born and lived for ten years in London. I lost my copy of the book years ago and bought another for £1 in the second hand section at Housmans last week.
25 years on Zeynep and Fatih both live in Britain again; Brian is now Boruch and has changed his jeans and sweater for Chassidic garb. We've just brought out a new edition of The Golem of Old Prague, illustrated by Boruch and written by Michael Rosen, one of those thanked in Zeynep's book.
The Home Office minister responsible for deporting Zeynep and her family was David Waddington, later Governor of Bermuda, and last seen on the political stage inserting a supposedly free speech clause in the section of the Public Order Act outlawing acts of homophobic hatred. He has been a member of the Conservative Party since he was at Oxford University.

Lack of money doesn't talk, it swears

Five Leaves receives some money from the Arts Council through the Grants for the Arts scheme. Not a lot but enough to publish books that are not very commercial, not a lot but enough to publish some material in translation, not a lot but enough to take on some new writers from time to time. Not a lot but enough to be able to employ 1.4 people; to be the biggest account for a small printer which in these times may need that account to ensure that five workers are kept in employment; to be the second biggest account for a small typesetting firm that would struggle to survive without our account. Though our distributor would survive without us, our sales year after year do contribute to their success. Our involvement with Lowdham Book Festival has helped the local bookshop to grow from being a hobby bookshop to one employing five or six women. I can't do the sums but every public pound invested pays off in the private sector. This is elementary economics but is lost on our current Government, whose hostility to the public sector will have a huge impact on the private sector.

Five Leaves' support from the Arts Council is not at risk, as far as I know, as it is lottery funded but Government cuts have ensured that many of the previous "Regularly Funded Organisations", including publishers, will close over the next few years. They will generally be much bigger organisations than Five Leaves, with a resulting much bigger knock on effect on the private sector.

These arguments have been rehearsed time and time again so nothing I say is new but needs said again and again and again.

I want to support my local bookshop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf6I3g2l12M

Eat my shorts

Good news that Nottingham's Jon McGregor has been short-listed for the BBC Short Story Award, along with David Constantine, Sarah Hall, Helen Oyeyemi and Aminatta Forna. All the stories will be read out on the Beeb over the next week with the winner being announced on Front Row on 29 November. There's £15,000 at stake, plus the kudos. Our enterprising colleagues at Comma Press are publishing an anthology of the short stories on 25th November, and you can order it at and find more details on http://www.commapress.co.uk/?section=books&page=bbcnationalshortstoryaward.
Completists might want to check out Jon's two short stories published by Five Leaves, "The First Punch" which appears in Sunday Night and Monday Morning: new fiction from Nottingham, edited by James Urquhart, and "Close", which appears in The Sea of Azov, edited by Anne Joseph. Find them via www.fiveleaves.co.uk.
Jon's Facebook announcement said "I may not be the best short story writer in the UK, but I am in the top five." If that seems familiar, think Brian Clough.