Wednesday 23 October 2013

Late Arrivals, Lemon Cheesecake and Monty Python?



Written by Annie posted by Rob
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.