Getting by in Tligolian: an interview with Roppotucha Greenberg

Today we are celebrating publication of Getting by in Tligolian – a clever and beguiling novel in flash about life, love, language and time, by Roppotucha Greenberg. Laura Besley, flash fiction writer and author of 100neHundred, caught up with Roppotucha to ask about her writing process:

Roppotucha Greenberg and Laura Besley

Laura: Firstly, congratulations on the publication of Getting by in Tligolian – it’s a fantastic novella! Often, while I’m reading – whether it be a novel, novella or one of the various forms of short fiction – I find myself wondering what sparked the story. Was there a moment or a character or an image or something entirely different that led you to write Getting by in Tligolian?

Roppotucha: Thank you so much. Yes, it was the image of that city: those huge glass enclosures, the traffic, and the narrow streets with tired looking shops, and the river. The giant as well. His presence was almost instantly apparent in my imagination.

Laura: There are various strands to this novella, one of which use ‘language’. In the story, ‘Appendix’, the main character states: ‘I tried to learn Tligolian so many times and forgot it just as many.’ Did you purposefully use language, or the lack of language, to disorientate her and set her up as ‘an outsider’?

Roppotucha: I think she would be an outsider regardless of the language. Apart from the physical fact of immigration, her chronic naiveté both protects her and isolates her from the world. Through learning Tligolian, which is not necessary for communication in Tligol, she attempts to ground herself in the world. Language learning makes things seem simple, especially in the beginning when one talks of girls eating apples and your mother being a teacher and things like that. Of course, this does not work, because language turns into layers of forgetting, while its difficult tenses wrap around her and make her confusion grow.

Laura: The main character describes Tligol, the fictional city in which the novella is set, as ‘so beautiful, I convinced myself that I was in charge of the perfect expression of its beauty.’ Do you feel the city functions as a character within the novella and if so, how did you go about conjuring that feeling?

Roppotucha: Thank you for citing this line. In a way Jenny spends the whole book chasing the city, trying to express its beauty, learn its language, find its giant, take the trains to all its time layers. The city is a character. Like other places in real life, it is alive and wonderful, but it also evades easy capture. One comes near, but only just near enough, and being in the midst of the thing you want to capture complicates matters.

Laura: Another aspect of the novella is ‘time’. Did you layer in that complexity through multiple versions and/or edits, or was that aspect of the novella clear in your mind from the outset?

Roppotucha: That was something that became apparent very soon, in one of the early drafts. Time- travelling trains are an inherent part of the city. Though other aspects of the city became apparent earlier – the way its spaces are not quite stable, for example, or the way living people get recorded as ‘reflections’.

Laura: All of the chapters are short, some only a few lines. Was this a conscious choice? What is the effect of this on the reader? And what benefits do you feel you gain as a writer by learning to write/writing concisely?

Roppotucha: Yes, this was a conscious choice, but it was motivated by the needs of the story. I think novella in flash is a genre that works well for fragmented narratives and stories that work with negative space – in the sense that narrative gaps are part of the story. Without giving away too much, I feel that the form of the text works well with its ending…

Getting by in Tligolian by Roppotucha Greenberg is out today! Read the first chapter now and buy a copy from our webshop.

Roppotucha Greenberg has lived in Russia, Israel and now Ireland; she speaks three languages fluently and has tried to learn six more. She has previously published a flash and micro-fiction collection Zglevians on the Move (TwistiT Press, 2019) and three silly-but-wise doodle books for humans, Creatures Give Advice (2019) , Creatures Give Advice Again and it’s warmer now (2019) and Creatures Set Forth (2020) and Cooking with Humans (2022). Arachne Press has published Roppotucha’s stories in Solstice Shorts Festival anthologies Noon, and Time and Tide.

Laura Besley is the author of 100neHundred and The Almost Mothers. She has been widely published in online journals, print journals and anthologies, including Best Small Fictions (2021). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, twice nominated for Best Micro Fiction and she has been listed by TSS Publishing as one of the top 50 British and Irish Flash Fiction writers. She is an editor with Flash Fiction Magazine and a Creative Writing MA student at the University of Leicester. Having lived in the Netherlands, Germany and Hong Kong, she now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea.

100neHundred is available from our webshop in paperback and audiobook. Listen to a story below.

 

Embracing the Fire: a guest blog from Marina Sánchez, contributor to Menopause the Anthology

Marina SanchezIt’s been a while since, my face and neck going an incandescent shade of crimson, I felt the need to strip down to my cotton lacy vest (mmm, yes, natural fibres) in the middle of a supermarket, whatever the season, and press my body as much as I could against the fridge sections of dairy, milk and meat. As a veggie that was awkward, but cooling down was essential. Once the wild fires had passed, I’d cover up again until the next time….

 

I naively started off thinking it would be a ‘mini pause’. My health was good, and I’d tried to take care of myself all my life.
Ah, surprise!

I remember the stats that one out of four women experiences nothing (like a friend who couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about), two have a range of average symptoms and one has extreme symptoms.
I soon found myself in the ranks of the latter.

The menopause is undoubtedly an intensely individual experience that should be honoured and supported whatever the woman’s choices are to best manage this transition.
Me, I went with it and read Dr Christiane Northrup’s work and Lesley Kenton’s – anything I could find about what was happening and how to manage it. I also learnt what herbal remedies my ancestors used, and took them.
I felt I was shedding the accumulated weight of years of worries, expectations and conditioning.
I danced 5 Rhythms weekly with devotion and exercised as often as I could, my body enjoyed it, why not?
I kept writing, even though I was a full-time carer of a very special daughter with complex needs, herself going through adolescence. Why does nature do that: two women going through profound changes in the same household?
And one of the poems I wrote then waited until Cherry gave it a home in the wonderful Menopause anthology.

I am proud to be included alongside the work of so many women’s voices, whose experiences enrich the overdue conversation we need to have about the menopause.
We need to go beyond the narrative of becoming invisible – unless a woman wishes that for herself, then I respect her choice.
But there are as many ways of stepping into our non-reproductive years as each woman is unique.
Let’s question the medicalised narrative of women’s health at every stage.
Let’s share our experiences and break the taboo, the silence, the shame.
Let’s support those women who are approaching the threshold to feel more confident stepping into this rich territory, which is an integral part of being a woman, as it has been for as long as we have been on earth.
Let’s relegate the questionable and freely spouted narrative of this youth-obsessed Western culture of older women being sad and past it.

Whatever your unique life experiences, if you are willing to share, we are all the richer for learning about them, as we understand more about ourselves and each other.
If not, I totally respect your need for privacy.

I say these are traditionally our wisdom years and we need to reclaim them.
I say for some women, our best years are yet to come.
If you are approaching this powerful time, I am welcoming you in.
If you have already experienced it, I honour you.

Marina Sánchez has a poem Wild Fires in Menopause: the Anthology

We have events on 6/10/23 1pm Online, 14/10/23 5.30pm Brixton Village Studios, 18/10/23 7pm online, 25/10/23 7.30pm Juno Books Sheffield, and more to come… ALL DETAILS

Marina is an award-winning poet and translator, widely published in literary journals. She is of Indigenous Mexican & Spanish origins, living in London. Her poems have been placed in national and international competitions and then anthologised. Her first pamphlet Dragon Child (Acumen, 2014), was Book of the Month in the poetry kit website. Her poems have been included in Un Nuevo Sol, the first UK Latinx anthology (flipped eye, 2019). Her second pamphlet Mexica Mix was one of the winners of the 2020 Verve competition.

The Change – Representation Matters

Author Ginger Strivelli tells us about what motivated her to write her story, The Change, for Menopause: the Anthology.

As a writer, I have always tried to show marginalised groups in my stories. I have often included characters of various colours, sizes, ages, and abilities. I have always been ‘plus sized’ and dislike the lack of flattering representation of larger women in advertising media and entertainment industry media. I think, as they say, that representation matters.

As the mother of six grown children, three of whom are autistic, I’ve often worked autistic charters into my writing. Having become physically disabled with limited mobility myself recently, I’ve also included wheelchair users and others with physical limitations in several stories. I like to show all these diverse characters in positive and accurate ways.

I have found my stories about able-bodied young men are accepted and published at greater percentages than my stories with a female lead character. My stories featuring characters who are disabled seem to bring about an even lower acceptance rate.

Though not a minority nor a disability, older women are nonetheless rarely focused on in any forms of media. It is, alas, similar to how underrepresented disabled characters and characters of colour are in movies, television, advertisements, and books. I write many stories where the lead role is that of an older woman being as amazing as we older women often are.

I was thrilled to have the chance to write a story focused on a menopausal aged woman in my favourite Science Fiction genre, where sadly, women of my age are even more left out than they are in other genres.

I was so pleased with how the story turned out. I was aiming to cover the subject with humour and accurate information on menopause and the changes it brings about in women’s bodies and in their lives. I hope it not only entertains the readers but educates them on what to look forward to when they go through the change…or when the women they love go through it. I used that ‘look forward to’ phrase there on purpose, as way too many fear and mourn the changes we go through in menopause, rather than celebrating our new cronehood stage of life and all the magical, helpful, and creative energy that it brings to us, and through us, to those around us.

I am thrilled that my story, The Change, is included in the upcoming Menopause: The Anthology.

Ginger Strivelli

Ginger Strivelli is an artist and writer from North Carolina. She has written for Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, Circle Magazine, Third Flatiron, Autism Parenting Magazine, Silver Blade, Cabinet of Heed Literary Journal, The New Accelerator, various other magazines and several anthologies. She loves to travel the world and make arts and crafts. She considers herself a storyteller entertaining and educating through her writing.

We have events on 6/10/23 1pm Online, 14/10/23 5.30pm Brixton Village Studios, 18/10/23 7pm online, 25/10/23 7.30pm Juno Books Sheffield, and more to come… ALL DETAILS

news from our authors and friends

An occasional drop in with what our writing friends are up to, because they happen to tell us.

David Turnbull (as obsessed with time as we are) is running some poetry walks around Waterloo for National Poetry Day next month details and booking

Ruth Bradshaw is running a nature writing workshop in Deptford TOMORROW. It includes an opportunity to explore some of the local wildlife as well as do a bit of writing. details & booking


Clare Starling has won the Frosted Fire First Pamphlet Award and her pamphlet is due out soon preorder here.

 

 

 

 

In Conversation with A.J Akoto: The Creature Poems

In the final instalment of our video interviews with poet A.J Akoto, A.J tells us more about the animal symbolism which appears in Unmothered, her powerful debut collection – out now! 

In Conversation with A.J Akoto: Poems about the Body

Have you got a copy of Unmothered? Some of the poems in the collection consider  the body, and particularly a woman’s relationship to her physicality. Poet A.J Akoto spoke to us about why she wanted to explore the shrinking that women so often go through:

Delicacy

You do not have to be a delicacy.
You do not have to be tasty.
You do not have to submit
your body into feminine frailty.
You do not have to ruin your digestion
in an attempt to be digestible.

Your mind can be full
of ice-white rage;
you do not have to be kind.
You do not have to yield
to the pressure to forgive.
Forgiveness does not make you good
and goodness does not require it.

You do not have to exhibit grace,
not in anything.
You do not have to make yourself
a morsel,
not for anyone.

Buy Unmothered direct from Arachne Press

or come to the next event: Thursday 20th July 7.30 at Afrori Books in Brighton. Tickets via Afrori

In Conversation with A.J Akoto: Myth (2)

To celebrate forthcoming publication of Unmothered by A.J Akoto, we caught up with A.J to talk about every aspect of her debut collection, from the inspiration behind it, to her use of myth, and the complexities and challenges of writing about your own life.

A.J delves deeper into the mythological influences of Unmothered in today’s video, examining the layers of classical, societal and familial myth that the collection draws upon.

What myths, then,
am I making?

Pre-order your copy of Unmothered now or book to join us at an event:

In Conversation with A.J Akoto: Getting Personal

To celebrate forthcoming publication of Unmothered by A.J Akoto, we caught up with A.J to talk about every aspect of her debut collection, from the inspiration behind it, to her use of myth, and the complexities and challenges of writing about your own life.

A.J and Cherry Potts talk about the intimacy of Unmothered, the vulnerability of writers who draw on autobiography, and the differences between poetry and prose when writing about your own experiences.

Pre-order your copy of Unmothered now or book to join us at an event:

In Conversation with A.J Akoto: Myth

To celebrate forthcoming publication of Unmothered by A.J Akoto, we caught up with A.J to talk about every aspect of her debut collection, from the inspiration behind it, to her use of myth, and the complexities and challenges of writing about your own life.

Here A.J tells us more about the mythological inspiration behind Unmothered, including the fierce women from myth who appear in the collection as icons of unapologetic female agency and justified anger.

Gorgon 

Certain things should be approached
side-on, with a darting gaze,
as you look at a bright goddess
from the corner of your eye.

My mother is a figure ablaze
at the edge of sight; I cannot bear her
head on. I need a sickled blade.
I need a shield, mirror-bright.

Pre-order your copy of Unmothered now or book to join us at an event:

In Conversation with A.J Akoto: Creatrix

To celebrate forthcoming publication of Unmothered by A.J Akoto, we caught up with A.J to talk about every aspect of her debut collection, from the inspiration behind it, to her use of myth, and the complexities and challenges of writing about your own life.

In this week’s video, A.J reads ‘Creatrix’, the opening poem from Unmothered, and speaks to Cherry Potts about the significance with which we imbue motherhood, and how our mothers shape us.

Creatrix

Mothers, first creators,
try to shape us in their own image,
or what they wish they were.

Feel the dip
of finger marks, moulding
muscle and bone like clay.

Our bodies belong not to us
but to the women who

grew us
fed us
know us

enough to end us with a word.

What terror and awe.
And after all, aren’t men
afraid of God?

Pre-order your copy of Unmothered now or book to join us at an event: