Some of These Things Really Happened
I entered a chapbook competition in the summer. Sadly, I didn’t win (and congratulations to the person who did), but I thought it would be fun to show you some of the poems. Below is the synopsis I wrote for the competition entry, and in the link at the bottom, I’ve included a handful of the poems I curated for the chapbook.
‘How honest is it possible to be, when you’re recalling an incident from your childhood? How much of that recollection is enhanced, polished, maybe even distorted by versions of the same story told by members of your family, your friends, your own imagination?
In this chapbook, Dave Kurley may be the narrator describing something that really happened to him as a kid. He could be retelling a tale he heard about someone he went to school with. Perhaps he’s writing a poetic narrative with an imaginary protagonist to explore an actual occurrence in his past, and maybe make sense of it.
Maybe.
Is he being honest? As George Burns said in his memoir The Third Time Around (1980) ‘…you’ve got to be honest … if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.’ Come to think of it, was it George Burns who originally said that, or was it Celeste Holm? Or Groucho Marx? Or maybe even with a slight adjustment, replacing honesty with sincerity, Bob Monkhouse?
Maybe. The tale grows with the telling.
Was Dave Kurley’s grandmother genuinely unbeatable at every kind of game? When he watched the Channel 4 film Good and Bad at Games (1983) back in the day, did he identify strongly with Anton Lesser’s character, even though he never went to public school? And what of Ben’s sandcastle revenge? The whole school mocking Julie Bagshaw in the Sports Hall?
Did any of these things really happen?’
Click on Some Of These Things Really Happened and you’ll find links to half a dozen poems in this imaginary chapbook, one of which (Drooly Backwash) was published in Krill Zine and, as a short story, was longlisted in the Sheffield Authors Short Story Competition a couple of years ago. Anyhow, enough bloggage. Have a read. Let me know what you think.