This week as well as recording my newsletter, you can hear me reading my short story, Mille and Bird. To my friend who recently fell on the ice and broke her wrist, if you’re reading or listening - I know you love short stories. Of course you’ve read this before, but I hope it bears repeating and get well soon.
For some days, now, I've been deep in the landscape of my childhood, both in my writing, and in my collage work.
I grew up on the watery Somerset Levels, in a small town called Highbridge, which sat on the edge of an estuary that fed into the Bristol Channel. About a mile and a half away, was Burnham-on-Sea, where I went to school, and where my grandmother lived. It was our version of the seaside.
Burnham-on-Sea, has a long stretch of sandy beach and the highest rise and fall of any tide in Europe. This means that for long periods when the tide is out, all you can see are acres of brown mud. It's dangerous to swim at low tide, and there are warning flags, but most years that I remember, a visitor, a stranger to the town, not heeding the warnings or the red flags, drowned in the treacherous currents.
This landscape is the backdrop for my first novel, The Sweet Track. Working on creative memoir, as I have been, has inevitably led me back to this novel, and also to my short stories.
I started writing short stories when I gave up working with my then London agent, having decided against pursuing the rollercoaster of publication. Ironically turning my back on the world of publishing, was to provide me with recognition and success in the form of, Millie and Bird, which won the inaugural Costa Short Story award. Millie and Bird, has subsequently been published in, Love, Loss, and the Lives of Women,100 Great Short Stories, chosen by Victoria Hislop. It’s a big volume, with an astounding array of women writers between its pages, from Alice Munro, to Edna O'Brien. Millie and Bird, is sandwiched between Emma Donahue and Katherine Mansfield. At times it’s still hard to believe that I found a place in such company.
The story has its origins in a poetry course that I took with the acclaimed poet, Gillian Allnutt, who in one of the workshops presented us with the image of a young girl in school uniform with a bird on her shoulder, painted by the artist, Barbara Skingle. The girl doesn’t look like me, but she reminded me of me. I wrote a number of poems in responding to the image . One day, at home, I began to write what I thought would be another poem, but taking on a life of its own, quickly became the short story. It was one of those stories that fell onto the page. Of course it needed editing, but from the beginning it felt to me as if I’d written something authentic and special.
I think one of the reasons it works is that it touches on a truth of my growing up. I didn't have a sister called Millie who had a bird, or a mother who was a drunk, or a next-door neighbour called Jonty Angel, but I did know what it was to grow up as a vulnerable young girl with a sibling to protect.
I’ve seen Millie and Bird, published in magazines and books. I’ve heard other people read my story but I've never read it aloud myself, so I’m going to take that opportunity now.
If you'd like to read Millie and Bird, rather than hear me read it - here it is with illustrations.
If you'd like to read more of my short stories, you can find them here, on the Linen Press website, in my collection, this One, Wild Place
As always, thanks for reading.
Avril x