Session number 5, 14/12/2022

Posted on: 3 February 2023 by Saul Leslie in Creative Writing group

The Belvedere welcomed us with a warm fireplace. Christmas is coming soon, and so half of this session’s readings were quasi-festive...

Paddy Brennan read a piece entitled “First Shift”, set in an unspecified hotel as a newly recruited team member navigates the dynamics of hospitality. The drudgery of the work undertaken is described in great detail, the precise folding of napkins, the uncorking of champagne bottles. These close-up moments are charged with dramatic importance, mirroring well the subtle surface tensions between the recruit and his new colleagues: Look at how much more skilled she is at uncorking the champagne! See how steep the learning curve will be for the narrator as he embarks on this new profession. As with his previous readings, Paddy offers an insight into the incremental developments of the narrator’s psychology, and the disjunct between the huge efforts we put into cultivating the skill to appear to put in very little effort. This is perhaps summed up by the Italian word, ‘sprezzatura’.

A new recruit to our Creative Writing session, Hollie, took the bold and impressive step and read a short, overtly Christmas-themed piece entitled “I Turned My Face Away”. It is set in the familiar surroundings of Liverpool during the festive period, with references to mulled wine and the German Market by St. George’s Hall. The narrator’s preference for CAMRA pubs (of which The Belvedere is a celebrated member) and the choice of Guinness over mulled wine left the audience wanting to know why, and in the feedback it was suggested that the piece would benefit from a description of the comparative tastes of both drinks. There were many narrative avenues which Hollie pointed the audience down, and in the feedback she was encouraged to lead us further. We toasted Hollie’s contribution and look forward to the next round.

I read a fragment of a semi-fictional account of a young man working in a supermarket leading up to the Christmas period. “A Working Title I Want to Change” dealt with themes of waste, fatigue, and the peculiar bureaucracies which emerge in high street retail. Sure enough, the words ‘Orwellian’ and even ‘Kafka-esque’ were provided in feedback. It was suggested that the self-critical, hyper-self-aware voice didn’t need the analytical footnotes alongside the main text, that these could be absorbed into the narrative.

Marta Zanucco concluded the session with a reading of a story she has reworked throughout the last year. “Things That Happened Overnight”, narrates the aftermath of a brief but intimate relationship. The prose was very sensory, the imagery visceral, haptic, and sticky, and there was a number of gothic elements which lead to the suggestion that if Marta was to expand it, Edgar Allen Poe’s The House of Usher might be a useful scaffolding.