New writing BLOOD Guest Editor JULIE MYERSON introduces her pick of poetry and prose on the theme of blood ASK any single writer to pick their ‘top 12’ pieces of prose and poetry from 400-odd submissions and you’re asking for trouble. What I happen to like - what excites, flusters and unnerves me - won’t always be, in fact is deeply unlikely to be, what excites and flusters someone else. Indeed, just by using that word ‘flusters’ (the first that honestly sprang to mind) I give myself away, don’t I? I like to be startled, upset and unsettled by writing. Just as I like to be unsettled as a reader, so too (I now realise) I like to do it as a writer. A journalist on meeting me for the first time and finding me such a sunny bunny, asked me why my novels were all ‘so dark’? Why, she wondered, did this Clapham mother of three, with her nice man and four cats and friendly, brightly-coloured, scuffed-up house, write so much about bad sex, early death, lost children and terminal, gut-wrenching sadness? I thought hard about it - the question had honestly never really occurred to me (I was still so bloody grateful to be published at all) - and I said I thought I tended to write about the things that frightened me. The journalist seemed satisfied with this - well, it had a nice therapeutic ring to it - but the more I thought about it, the truer it seemed. I’d hate to think that I write for ‘therapy’ - a ludicrously self-indulgent idea - but I do know that, by allowing myself to explore in fiction the worst things I can possibly imagine (betraying someone whilst pregnant with their child, losing a limb, having my babies die) I somehow manage to remain sane. For the complete essay, and for Julie's full selection of poetry and prose on the theme of blood, read issue 9 • Subscribe! Read a short story chosen by Julie Myerson: Salt and blood by Penny Simpson For more on JULIE MYERSON, go to www.contemporarywriters.com
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