My poetry collection published today!

So happy to officially become a Nine Arches Press poet, with my first book of poems, Terms and Conditions - out today! Here's my 'Happiness' poem - more about the book here.

More on permission - to go straight ahead and follow diversions

Four years ago, I wrote a blog post for Writers & Artists on the subject of "permission" - a very important word to me, in writing and in life. I've just written a new post for W&A, a follow-up, talking about the new permissions I needed to move from short story writing into poetry, something that scared and daunted me! An excerpt:

This year sees the publication not just of my third short story collection, but also my first poetry collection. POETRY. When we last met, I was not a poet. Don’t tell anyone, but I didn't like poetry. I didn't understand it, I liked my words to stretch from one margin to the other. Line breaks? Why would anyone want to do that? How do you read them? What is a line? Where are my sentences?
So, how did I get from that to complete adoration of the line break, an insatiable appetite for reading poetry, and even to calling myself a poet?

Very slowly. And with many shots of permission along the way.

Permission to write poetry came differently from short story permission. I had always been writing prose (I never called it “prose” until I started hanging out with poets, for goodness’ sake!). I read stories as a child, so I knew roughly what one should look like on the page. After a few years, though, I needed permission to take myself seriously as a writer – and then the largest permission injection to propel me to my next stage: taking risks in my writing, experimenting...

Read the full article here:  Permission To Go Straight Ahead and Follow Diversions

June TaniaReads

Hello! In the run-up to the publication of my debut poetry collection, Terms and Conditions (see the gorgeous cover on the left, by artist Hollie Chastain), I'm delighted to read you four new poems from the book - and to give you details about my launch events in Manchester (July 27th) and London (July 31st), do head to my website to find out more. Here is this month's audio - happy listening!

Book launches in the North & South!

Please do come and celebrate my books with me at one of my launch parties in July, in Manchester or in London, where I'm immensely delighted to be joined by some truly amazing special guests as part of a cross-genre celebration - of poetry, short stories, novels and non-fiction!

July 27th - Book Launch & Cross Genre Celebration, together with Jo Bell and Kate Feld, at Waterstones Deansgate, Manchester. More details here.

July 31st - Book Launch & Cross Genre Celebration, together with Jacqueline Saphra, Melissa Harrison and Zoe Gilbert, at Waterstones Gower Street, London. More details here.

Today is publication day for my new book, Some Of Us Glow More Than Others, that rather handsome looking devil above, published by the excellent Unthank Books! There are more details about the book here - including links to some of the stories and where you can get your hands on one (or electronic hands). Thanks so much to my wonderful agent, Kate Johnson, without whom this would not be happening. I am dazed and grateful!

I also wanted to thank the amazing, tireless literary magazine editors and small presses who first published many of these stories - they are the lifeblood of the short story community and they give writers both joy and, vitally, the permission to keep on doing this thing we do. So, thank you: Ambit magazine, Bare Fiction, The Binnacle, Butcher's Dog, Catapult, Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, Edgeways anthology (Spread the Word), The Fiction Desk, Five Dials, kill author, Comma Press, The Lonely Crowd, Metazen, National Flash Fiction Day,  Nature Futures, New Flash Fiction Review, New Scientist, Out of Place (Spineless Wonders), Prose Poem Project, Red Room anthology (Unthank), r.kv.r.y., ROOM magazine, Salt Book of New Writing, Schemers Anthology, Synaesthesia magazine, STILL anthology (Negative Press), the Stinging Fly, Stories for Homes anthology, Timber journal, Wales Arts Review, Words with Jam, and World Literature Today.

Over on Twitter, I did a thread with #TenThingsAboutMyBook, and I thought I'd post it here too, in case you're curious:

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 1. The cover's glowing jellyfish refer to the discovery of green fluorescent protein which revolutionised mol biology!

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 2. 'God Glows' was written at Hawthornden Castle - my nun sits looking out over the valley near Rossyln Chapel.

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 3. 'Octopus's Garden' was inspired by a @FT profile of a woman who works as a diver for the Paris city council.

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 4. 'War Games' was begun during an Arvon workshop run by my co-tutor, @adammarek, on plotting (which I never do!)

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 5. 'And What If All Your Blood Ran Cold' was inspired by a @newscientist article about a brand new medical procedure.

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 6.'A Shower of Curates' - first published in Red Room - has the first lines from all of the Brontes' novels in it.

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 7. 'Empty But For Darwin' was inspired by a @BBCRadio4 programme about a person whose job is to paint chess pieces.

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 8. 'Experimentation' was the 1st story I wrote while I was writer-in-res in a @BristolUni biochem lab. It's FICTION :)

#TenThingsAboutMyBook' 9. The Plan' was inspired by a @newscientist article about the pitfalls of Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory.

#TenThingsAboutMyBook and finally, 10: I never thought I'd get an agent & I NEVER dreamed I'd have a THIRD short story collection. #DeepJoy

TaniaReads - April

 

Hello! This month I'm reading you a short story from my new collection, published next week by Unthank Books! Pop over to my website to find out more. Launch events coming soon!

So, here is my audio recording, I hope you enjoy it. (If you'd like to read the text of the the short story, it is online here, and the poem is here). Have a lovely rest of the month!
Best wishes,
Tania
www.taniahershman.com

"Truth" & Science on The Verb

I was one of the guests on the wonderful Radio 3 programme about language and literature, The Verb, which aired last night - they commissioned me to write a new story using "found scientific language" to fit with the programme's theme of "truth" - alongside Simon Armitage on truth and poetry, Jude Rogers on truth and pop music (there's a Spandau Ballet theme!) and Richard Gameson on truth and medieval scribes! You can listen to us discussing it all here - it's available til May 20th, I believe!

Coming May 2nd from Unthank Books. My third collection. Never would have believed it. Farrah Jarral, doctor and broadcaster, says this about the stories (warning: may scare you!):

This beguiling collection of writing defies categorisation and is unlike anything I've ever read before. Some Of Us Glow More Than Others is like a 21st century Edgar Allen Poe meets Margaret Atwood, with a sprinkling of Ursula Le Guin. The bright and sometimes eerie thread of science runs through it, reminding us of our fundamentally biological nature, and illuminating the boundaries between us and technology. Hershman's masterful, crystal clear hand weaves together satire, poetry, ethical commentary and science fiction into a tender, faintly dystopian treatment of the human condition. Science is Hershman's muse, but Some Of Us Glow More Than Others is never sterile, and teems with the possibilities that she invites the reader to consider. Her lyrical vignettes and fragments of intriguing stories leave the reader wondering: is this the future, or an imaginative counterfactual past / a reimagination of what could have been? She reframes the familiar by tweaking small details to create unexpected and unsettling scenes that stay with you for hours, from quotidian domesticity to complex human relationships. Her lucid prose sparkles with the most evocative words science has to offer. It's almost as if Philip Larkin rewrote Black Mirror. Science and art, genetics, religion, ecology and the animal world all come together in this extraordinary collection. I found myself constantly surprised by Hershman's deft storytelling, perfectly captured details, and the way she drew my attention to the alien things of everyday life. Hershman navigates the complex relationship between the modern scientific world, and the soft, living creatures subject to it, with tenderness, elegance, and wit. Whether chemistry and poetry or genetics and sexuality, Hershman infuses science into her stories with a lightness of touch and great tenderness. I will be re-reading it - and not just once.

TaniaReads February

I managed to record the February edition of TaniaReads just before the end of the month! Here it is below - sign up here to get it in your Inbox every month...

Hello! Apologies for the delay in sending out this recording, I had a very heavy cold, the hazards of audio recordings! Above is the cover for my forthcoming poetry collection, which will be published by Nine Arches in July. This month I'm reading you a poem from this book, and a longer short story from my forthcoming story collection. Here's the audio recording, I hope you enjoy it! (If you'd like to read the text of the poem, it's here, and the short story is online here.)



See you next month!
Best wishes,
Tania

www.taniahershman.com

Terms & Conditions... coming soon!

I am so in love with my cover - what do you think?? The artwork is by Hollie Chastain, and inside you will find my debut poetry collection, coming from Nine Arches Press in July... 

Tania Reads

I just sent out the first of my monthly 'Tania Reads' audio recordings of me reading poems and stories from my two collections, coming out later this year. Here's this month's, do sign up here to get it straight to your Inbox!

Alice Oswald on Writing, Rhythm, Unlabels

It's been a very long time since I've been moved to post about an interview with a writer or poet, but this video interview (and reading) by poet Alice Oswald - whose new collection, Falling Awake, just won the Costa Prize for Poetry - is utterly wonderful and inspiring, I think, to those who write prose as well as poetry, especially her thoughts on rhythm and on length. Here are a few quotes I posted on Twitter:

As soon as you say that you do one thing, you end up wanting to do something else

A poem could be a..sonnet until the last minute when I just find it's too polite & suddenly I'll smash it

A short poem has to last as long as a long poem. That's what I love. It has to be infinite in the same way

If you haven't ever seen her read, the first 30 minutes are a joy, less of a reading than, as the interviewer says, some sort of invocation. And then there's a Q&A. I went out after watching this and have been thinking about what she said about her own poems and her writing - and rhythms. She says: "The stronger your rhythms, the more disturbing things you see...You can navigate around your own brain by means of rhythm". This speaks to me because I have tended to write my own poems aloud - they are both a bit song-like, to me, and also a completely physical experience. I always read my short stories aloud too, but getting them on the page happens first. Rhythm is always important to me, and I will be thinking for a while about what Oswald has said about rhythm and my brain - and perhaps rhythm and the reader/listener's brain!

I feel she has also has given me a shot of permission - something I will always need as a writer but especially as a quite new poet - in terms of the legitimacy of the short poem. I love short poems, but wondered (perhaps an echo of the battle I had to fight over flash fiction and its place in the world) that they seem unsubstantial. Yet look at this short poem I just read in the New Yorker, which is sublime, and would you want more? It's about allowing me - and perhaps you? - to say what I need to say in as many words as I feel I need to say it.

I also like what Oswald says about not wanting to be called a "nature poet", which she very very often is.

"I think it's important not to sit too comfortably in a category, and that's why I get annoyed when people call me a nature poet. I mean, it's so tempting to be a nature poet. Then you know what you are writing about, you know what you think, you just do it and roll it out. For me, it's important not to know what kind of a poet I am, and each time I write... could be a science fiction poem. It hasn't yet been, but it could be!" 

This gives me another shot of permission on the road I have been travelling for a while now, of not labelling anything I am writing - poem, flash fiction, prose, story, non-fiction... I like her twist about how tempting it would be to feel comfortable under one label! But do we want to be comfortable? I don't think that's where the real work gets done. What do you think?

Here's the full video - enjoy!

Monthly audio poem or short story - or both!

In the run-up to the publication in mid-2017 of my new short story and poetry collections (oh my!), I'm going to be making a new recording every month of me reading one of my poems or short stories (sometimes both!). If you'd like to receive these directly into your Inbox, sign up here, and I will be reading to you from January...!

Arvon Starting To Write Course Aug 2017

I am really excited about co-tutoring on an Arvon 'Starting to Write' course for the first time, in August 2017! The three 5-day residential Arvon writing courses I went on over 10 years were quite literally life-changing, and it is a privilege to now be able to, I hope, pass some of that on. I had a great time tutoring Arvon's first flash fiction course this year, with the inimitable Dave Swann.

Next year, why not come and join me and my amazing co-tutor, Jo Bell, a great friend of mine, fantastic poet and teacher, at the wonderful Totleigh Barton in Devon - with our special guest, Inua Ellams, who is hard to describe because what doesn't he do? It doesn't matter what you write or want to write, it's about words in whatever shape they come! We will work hard, but we will also laugh, a lot. And eat clotted cream. It's Devon.

Here's a little more about the course, and we will have some news soon about funding we are organising to assist those who wouldn't normally be able to come on one of these courses...

. STARTING TO WRITE

Jump-start your word-machine

GENRE: Starting to Write
Aug 14th - Aug 19th 2017
Totleigh Barton

Starting to write fiction, poetry or other forms raises questions: Write what? How to write? Why write at all? There are no rules, no simple answers, but during our week together we will write, read, talk and imagine, leaving you with tools to discover how your own peculiar and unique word-machine works, as well as new pieces and ideas to propel you forward.

More details on how to apply here >>

If you're looking for a seasonal gift for the writer - or would-be writer - in your life, you might like a copy of Writing Short Stories: A Writers and Artists Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014), which I co-authored with the excellent Courttia Newland, and which includes short pieces from a number of fantastic short story writers in the middle, ideas for how to get your writing going and lists of our favourite short stories for more inspiration! You can get a signed copy from me here if you'd like (please do let me know in the message to the seller who to sign it to), with free postage in the UK. I am happy to post abroad too!

New Science-Inspired Story on Radio 4 This Sunday

It's been one of the greatest thrills of my writing life, having my short stories read on the radio. This is how it all started for me, my first "published" short story was actually a broadcast, in 2003, on the Afternoon Reading on Radio 4. There have been quite a few more since then, and I have written especially for radio a number of times - and now I have a brand new story on Radio 4 this Sunday night, Aug 28th, which for the first time they have allowed me to read! It's produced by the excellent Jeremy Osborne for Sweet Talk Productions. It's called "There's No-One In The Lab But Mice", and you can hear it live at 7.45pm and it will be available on Listen Again for 28 days after that, I believe. I hope you enjoy it, I had a lot of fun writing it!

The Enemies Project South West - Performance

There's this wonderful thing happening, The Enemies Project, where pairs of poets collaborate and then perform, all around the south-west of England, set up by Steven J Fowler and Camilla Nelson.

I was thrilled when Holly Corfield-Carr asked me to collaborate with her, and we will be performing our piece (which is still in progress) at the event in Bruton, Somerset, this Sunday night - do come along if you're near! Free entry, but booking is essential. Here's all the info:

Closely read

It as an honour and a gift to be so closely read, by anyone, and then to have these readers (often writers themselves) share their thoughts. I'm fortunate to have had this experience twice in the past few weeks, first by Neil Elder, author of the poetry pamphlet Codes of Conduct and my fellow Sabotage Awards shortlistee (congratulations, Neil!) on his blog, Neil Elder Poetry, where he responds to my poem, Life Just Swallows You Up: "I’m laughing, then thinking and feeling, and then admiring. I’ve read ‘Life Just Swallows You Up’ and I immediately want to re-read".

The second, also around a poem from my chapbook, is the excellent Proletarian Poetry: Poetry of Working Class Lives. Peter Raynard asked if he could reprint my Conversations With A Taxi Driver, Falmouth, and he talks about what the poem raised for him: "This is a fascinating short poem because it leaves a lot to the imagination, allowing us to drift with our thoughts the same way a taxi driver must do when waiting on their next fare." 

Thank you, Neil and Peter, I hope I can pass on the favour of such close reading!

Kissing, Climbing and An Aubergine

So, it's been a record week for me in terms of publications, with two poems and a flash story published in different places online, which, between them, cover kissing, climbing and aubergines. (see below). It's a wonderful, miraculous thing, being chosen by an editor and put between (virtual or actual) covers. And being able to share the links online is also joyous, especially when friends and strangers choose to get in touch with kind words.

But it's also surreal - all the more so in this turbulent year, and in particular in these few weeks of turmoil and uncertainty here in the UK, which haven't ended yet and may not for a long long time. I often find the disconnect between tragedies around the world and good news in my writing life hard to navigate. (As I thought about this blog post I was going to say "tragedies in the real world", but then again, I am a writer, and my writing is real, it is my real world too.) I feel guilty for celebrating these personal things.

As I was thinking about this, I realised that when I'm in despair, I turn to books, to poems, to short stories, novels, science writing. They help me. And when I read some of the comments people have made about my writing, I think, I am perhaps adding to that well, and they might be useful for one other person. I don't think my writing is some kind of panacea for the world's ills (apart from to me when I write it), but it's what I have to offer. I'm not particularly good at anything else, so this is what I've got. And I love celebrating other people's publications, so am trying to persuade myself that it's okay to every now and then be the one that other people are celebrating!

So, with delight, a little ambivalence, enormous gratitude to the editors of The Pickled Body, the Wales Arts Review, and Anthony Wilson (whose Lifesaving Poems blog is such an inspiration to me, I can't quite believe I am now one of them) -  and with encouragement to go and read everything else they publish, here are the links to my 3 new works:

Kiss The First in The Pickled Body (final poem)
Fire and Granite in Wales Arts Review
By Any Other Name, one of Anthony Wilson's Lifesaving Poems

Nature Poem: How To Be Here

So, I recently received my first poetry commission - to write a nature poem inspired by a particular location on the Bristol-Bath Nature Trail for the Festival of Nature! I've never written a site-specific poem before, and my first attempt was a little cynical and not so much about nature. Luckily, my second attempt seemed more suitable - and here I am reading it!



Click here to find out more about the Poetry Trail and the other poems