Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She has a novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears, and short story collection, Children’s Children, (Liberties Press), a micro-fiction collection, Postcard Stories (Emma Press), Postcard Stories 2 is forthcoming in July 2020. Her novel The Fire Starters was published by Doubleday in April 2019 and won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland in 2019. In 2018 she was the inaugural Translink/Irish Rail Roaming Writer in Residence on the Trains of Ireland.

Claire Faulkner: I was intrigued and a little bit jealous when I first found out about Jan Carson’s plan to spend a year with Agatha Christie. Jan, a writer and community arts facilitator from Belfast, decided that 2020 would be the year in which she read all the novels written by Christie in order of publication. There are 66 of them. If this wasn’t enough of a challenge, Jan decided to pen her own response to each novel in the form of a short story.

Claire caught up with Jan…

Jan, what inspired you to spend a year with Agatha Christie?

I’ve read many of Agatha Christie’s books in the past. I was around 8 and had read all the books in the children’s section of my local library when a helpful librarian led me over to crime fiction and introduced me to both Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes. I fell in love with both. They were like my gateway drugs to the world of adult fiction. I think Death in the Clouds was the first Agatha Christie I read. I’d always meant to come back and reread them all in order and with 2020 marking the 100^th anniversary of her first publication (The Mysterious Affair at Styles), now seemed like the perfect time to set myself this challenge.

Have you always been a fan? Can I ask Poirot or Marple? (I genuinely love them both, and could never pick between the two.)

Absolutely always Poirot. I grew up watching the David Suchet adaptations for ITV and I find Poirot so very familiar now, it’s like reading about someone I actually know.

What book are you up to? Are you enjoying the process of reading all the Christie novels like this?

I’m just about to begin Death on the Nile which is novel number 22. That puts me exactly one third of the way through. I thought I’d be fed up with Agatha Christie by now but I’m really enjoying watching her style and themes develop. There’s a marked difference between her writing in the first novel and the twentieth. I’ve only really noticed this whilst reading them in consecutive order. I also still get unreasonably excited each time I get to the scene in the library where all the suspects are gathered and Poirot reveals who the murderer is.

How long do you think it will take you to complete?

I plan to get the 66 novels finished by the end of November and to spend December reading Agatha Christie’s autobiography, her notebooks and the short stories.

Do you have a favourite Christie novel? I remember being completely captivated by Body in The Library when I was younger.

I regularly teach The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in my writing workshops because it’s such a fantastically good example of the unreliable narrator, so I’m very fond of that one. I also love the really creepy multiple body count novels like And Then There Were None and The ABC Murders. I tend to prefer the Poirot novels to her other works, though she was pretty fed up with her little Belgian by the time she finally managed to do away with him. There’s an amazing section in Cards on the Table which I recently read where she thoroughly lambasts Poirot under the guise of mocking her fictional crime writer, Ariadne Oliver’s signature Finnish sleuth. I love the way Agatha Christie wasn’t above laughing at her own tropes.

You’ve decided to write you own short story in response to each novel. Was this part of the original challenge for you?

I wanted some means of responding to each of the texts creatively and intended to write a short story in response to the themes raised by the books. However, I soon changed my mind as I’m not a crime fiction writer and couldn’t really see myself writing 66 micro crime stories. Instead, I’ve been selecting a single line from each novel and writing a story inspired by this line of text. Some have a crime theme. Some are magic realist. Mostly, I just let my imagination take me wherever it wanted to go.

Your responses are posted online, but also written inside the novel and left for other people to discover. I’d be thrilled if I found something like this. What sort of response have you had from people?

When the project first began I was actually able to hide the novels in public spots and leave clues in social media for people to track the books down. I had some lovely responses on social media. People were genuinely delighted to find a book and one lady even sneaked out of work to track down a novel before anyone else could get to it. Since the Covid 19 pandemic I’ve been mailing the completed novels (with short stories handwritten inside), to people who are stuck at home, self-isolating. I’ve had so many appreciative responses. I think people find writers like Agatha Christie very comforting at times like this. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ve always held to the belief that Christie most fully embodies what George Orwell refers to as a good English murder in his essay, The Decline of the English Murder. Agatha Christie’s murders are good murders. They are not without point or planning. Justice is always served. Wrongdoing rarely goes unpunished. As such, the kind of crime fiction she writes reassures the reader. It makes us feel stabilised in a world which feel a bit unpredictable and out of control at the minute. I read Agatha Christie for the same reason I watch Casualty. Because I know order will be reinstated by the time I get to the end of the book or the episode. I read Agatha Christie because she can fool me into thinking everything’s going to be ok.

Congratulations on the success of The Fire Starters. Can you tell us a little about your novel?

Thank you. The Fire Starters is a magic realist novel set in East Belfast during the summer months. It follows two fathers: Sammy, an older ex-paramilitary who has stepped away from violence when he becomes a father and is now horrified to discover that his son, Mark, is actually orchestrating the riots sweeping across the city, and Jonathan, a young GP who is seduced by a siren and left with a small baby who may or may not be as destructive as her mother. Essentially it’s a novel which explores the question of how much a parent is responsible for the actions of their child. There’s a fair amount of the fantastical interwoven into the plot, a lot of quite dark humour and plenty of background for anyone unfamiliar with the Unionist community in Northern Ireland.

Apart from Agatha Christie, are you reading anything else at the moment? Who would you recommend you our readers?

I read constantly. I read both to escape and also to learn how to be a better writer. At the minute I’m really enjoying the writings of James Baldwin. He’s such a meticulous and insightful writer; so much of what he wrote in the 50s and 60s still rings true. My favourite more recent books of the last few years have been Valeria Luiselli’s amazing The Lost Children Archives, Samanta Scweblin’s Fever Dream and Tommy Orange’s There There. All wildly different novels but very much concerned with story. I’m the sort of reader who needs a novel to have an engaging plot as well as beautifully crafted language and believable, engaging characters.

What’s your next challenge?

I’m currently editing two books. My next novel to be published by Doubleday in April 2021, (as yet to be titled) and a collection of microfiction stories to be published in July 2020. This will be my second collection of Postcard Stories published by the Emma Press. If you’d like to read a sample of Postcard Stories I’m currently writing one a day and mailing them to older isolated individuals. They’re being illustrated by small children, and the stories with accompanying images can be viewed on Instagram.

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(Photo credit: Mark Sherratt)

Wayne Holloway-Smith teaches at the University of Hertfordshire. His poems have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies. His first book-length collection, Alarum, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2017. In 2018 Wayne won the National Poetry Competition for ‘the posh mums are boxing in the square’.

Wayne, thankyou for agreeing to speak to Ink Pantry. First of all, I’d like to say thankyou for the daily emails you have been sending out during lockdown. They’ve been a real help to me, not only introducing me to other poets, but also giving me ideas for different approaches towards my own writing. What inspired you to do these? Have you been surprised by the reaction?

Hiya. No problem, it’s nice to talk.

I’m glad to hear the daily emails are helping in some way, and that they’re introducing you to interesting work. Erm, I think what inspired them was that I was seeing lots of people commenting in various ways about a loss of connection during this time, and boredom – and various anxieties manifesting in all types of ways. I have wanted to challenge myself to be more thoughtful and generous for a long while. And I guess I see this as one way of testing that.

I’m aware that I have a certain level of readership, and thought if people enjoyed the work, then maybe I should give them things to keep them occupied. I was worried that this might seem like a self-indulgent exercise too, though. I put out a gentle offer on Twitter – expecting perhaps between 5-50 takers, and was shocked to find I’m now emailing over 250 people on a daily basis. The feedback has been really amazing, actually. People have been very enthusiastic, and it’s so nice to see people posting work online that didn’t exist until a couple of hours ago. Some very good and interesting things.

Has poetry always been a part of your life?

I grew up in a house with no books at all and failed all of my GCSEs. My careers advisor ‘advised’ me to work in a factory or in the voluntary sector. I didn’t actually know that poetry existed, at that point, in a contemporary sense. When I started writing, I thought I was the UK’s first contemporary poet. Lol.

How would you describe your work?

How I think about my own work changes all the time, and is always influenced by the last thing I wrote and what I’m reading, what I’ve seen on TV, the song I’ve most recently listened to. I’m much more interested to hear how other people see it. Someone said the other day that I bleed onto the page, then mop it up. The stains that are left is the poem. I won’t tell you who. Haha. I think he/ she/ they were taking the piss.

When I read your work I find it open and personal. If I was reviewing, I’d describe your style as direct but also vulnerable, and as a reader I sense an honesty in your poems which I can connect to. Do you set out to share such vulnerability or does this naturally develop during your writing process? (I’m thinking of ‘the posh mums are boxing in the square’ which I find deeply emotional.)

I think I only want to write vulnerably, and honestly. I have no time for irony, or distancing or whatever. Other people have said it better than me, but basically conventional English is limiting, and poetry is a means through which we might find another vocabulary for our emotional experiences.

The idea and notion of identity also features in your work. The poem ‘Some Waynes’ made me question if you can ever really be one ‘identity’, or whether we are mix of every assumption or every ideal placed upon us. How do you feel the theme of identity fits within your work?

I don’t think identity is fixed. It’s an ongoing negotiation, and contingient upon your socio-economic circumstances, your friends, your background, and also, partly, pure chance. So each time I write, I’m working out, or trying to work out a bit of how I see the world and myself in relation to it at the point that I’m writing.

Can you share any details of what you’re working on currently?

Love Minus Love is coming out in July, from Bloodaxe Books. I’m excited about that. I think it might be the best thing I ever make. I’m also writing new things, feeling my way into how I might write next.

Are there any poets you are enjoying reading at the moment?

I love Natalie Shapero, Anthony Anaxagorou, CAConrad, Rachael Allen, Helen Charman, Holly Pester, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Raymond Antrobus, Terrance Hayes, Ross Gay, Paige Lewis, Rebecca Tamas, Selima Hill, Morgan Parker, Richard Siken, Jericho Brown, Jenny George. Also new writers to look out for: Arji Manuelpillai, Emma Jeremy, Katie O’Pray.

A lot of our readers are new and aspiring writers. Do you have any advice for them?

I think that the biggest thing is that there is no objective good poem, and no set way of doing things. Read the writers you love and try to learn as much from them as you can. Talk to others. And write what makes you feel energised.

Do you have a poem you can share with us?

Here’s one from my forthcoming collection.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Stay safe and well everyone.

Debz Butler runs Testify, a community organisation which organises open mic nights and writing workshops in Chester. Testify prides itself on delivering poetry without the pretension, and whether you’re a first timer or an experienced performer, everyone is welcome. We were delighted when Debz agreed to talk to us about Testify…

Have you always been interested in poetry?

Not really. I’ve always written short stories and really loved reading, but poetry wasn’t really on my radar. I thought that because I didn’t know about form, that anything I wrote could never be ‘proper’. It was only in 2016 that I gained the confidence to call what I was writing poetry.

What made you decide to share and perform your own work?

I wanted to see if what I was writing was ‘real’ poetry so decided to go to an open mic night. I went to Sale Write Out Loud and was instantly hooked. I went, not intending to perform, but got up at the very last minute and loved it. It was such a great buzz to share something so personal. It was so inspiring to hear other people perform, I think a really important trait of being a performer is learning from others. With open mic nights, sometimes you have to kiss a few frogs before you find the right supportive space for you. I was very lucky that I landed on the right one for me on my first go.

What inspires you to write?

My own life experiences mostly. I try writing what’s happening in the news but my personal feelings always end up in there. I have to do a lot of editing on my work to make sure it’s not just me ranting to the sky. In 2018, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and apart from journalling, I couldn’t write throughout my treatment. I’m only just managing to confront that experience and write about it. I think its an important lesson in giving things time.

I’ve seen you perform a few times now. I love what you do, I think my favourite at the moment is Moon Cup. But I was also very moved by some of your work about nursing. You bring a realism and share experiences in poetry which many women can relate to. How do audiences react to your work?

I’ve generally had good responses to my work, people say they can relate to it. You have to gauge your audience though, sometimes the mood in the room dictates what I perform. At Testify, I always perform first to ‘warm up the mic’ and how many people are there/how enthusiastic they are, has a big influence on what I perform.

You organise and run Testify, (when we’re all allowed out), a poetry night in Chester, which is great, by the way. I think there was definitely a need for a regular performance poetry night in the city. Can you tell us a bit about Testify and the reasons you started it?

I had found a couple of open mic nights I loved but they were predominantly in Manchester. I found Chester Poets but it is on a Thursday, when I didn’t have regular childcare. I continued to go to the Manchester nights for about a year, then during the Chester Literature Festival I got talking to the artistic director about how the Storyhouse would be the perfect venue for a regular open mic night. He told me that he’d give me the space if I ran it – and so Testify was born!

After 2 months, we outgrew the space in the Storyhouse and so moved to Hanky Panky Pancakes – our forever home.

What has been the reaction to Testify?

Overwhelmingly positive and supportive. We have a good group of regulars now who show up, as well as a constant stream of new people. Testify isn’t for everyone and that’s fine. There are other groups out there. Some people disagree with Testify’s ethos of ‘be supportive to everyone’ and say we shouldn’t applaud mediocre work. I disagree. I didn’t start the night to make people feel shit about themselves. The number one rule of Testify is ‘don’t be dick’ and if you can’t abide by that, then we aren’t for you.

Since the lockdown, Testify has moved online. You’ve been sharing ideas, poetry and prompts. Can anyone join the Testify Facebook group?

Absolutely. Even if you never have any intention of coming to a Testify night or are going to leave straight after lockdown is over, you are welcome in the group.

Do you have any advice or recommendations for new poets?

Keep reading, keep writing, keep watching. Your first work will be shit. That’s fine. Find an open mic night or writing group that suits you and stick with it. Whenever I feel blocked, being around other writers always inspires me. Always read the submission guidelines.

Who are your favourite poets? What are you reading at the moment?

Thats a hard one! My all time fave is Dominique Christina who is an American poet and slam winner. Her work always makes me cry.

Leanne Moden’s work always blows me away, as does Maz Hedgehog. Nick Degg is bloody brilliant as well. Rosie Garland is always an absolute master in performance and writing.

I don’t read a lot of poetry, I prefer to watch videos on YouTube or see people live, but David Subacchi’s latest collection, Where is Wales, is beautiful, as is, When Women Fly, by Sarah Pritchard.

Where can we find more of your work?

I have a page on the website with links to my published work.

I’ve also been featured in ‘These are the hands’, a poetry anthology featuring NHS staff. All profits are going to the COVID-19 emergency fund and people can buy a copy here.