Written by Annie posted by Rob
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| Jean-Yves Yffiniac |
News
Linda was sorry to report that her novel had not been
short-listed for the Marie Claire First Novel Competition. She is heading off
to the Bloomsbury Writing Festival next week with a friend and will not doubt
have plenty of advice for us on her return.
Rob has written the first 1,800 words of his new novel and
had given a talk in Hagley to a group of 20.
Izzy had turned down a feature in a well-known daily paper
in order to keep her daughters’ anonymities. Good progress is being made with
her ebook.
Tony reported on the Sunday Times Short Story Award and the
Commonwealth Story Award. He has plans to enter both.
I (Annie) am planning on going to a second writing group on
a Saturday. This group has a children’s book focus and is held in Birmingham.
Chris arrived late from work and so did not really relay his
news or maybe I missed it as I fetched him a slice of lemon cheesecake.
We read Tony’s piece, ‘A Tribute to Jean-Yves Yffiniac’. It
was the tale of a serious nonsense poet who was struggling to be taken
seriously. The story took a very unusual form, in that it was a posthumous article
about his work, written by his friend. The piece contained several pieces of
poetry. Tony collapsed into fits of giggles while he was reading. And that gave
many of us the clue that we had been looking for. While reading the piece
through at home many of us had rushed to Google to check the authenticity of
the poet.
I must admit that I was a Googler and also found the piece
highly entertaining. Izzy found the story very believable. Rob was in awe and
thought the piece was annoyingly clever and like me, he had Googled!
‘Authoritative and well-written,’ was how Linda described it. Chris felt it
struck a chord with the struggling and unrecognised writer. It was a mixture of
fun and tragedy but with a bleak ending.
Tony admitted to penning the poems many years
ago and that is what I think caused the descent into giggles as we discussed
desperately Googling an obscure French serious nonsense poet. Was Jean-Yves
Yffiniac a misunderstood genius or an alcoholic without talent? Discuss. 