While Michael Standen had occasionally written short stories during his career, with Months and Other Stories he set out to produce a sequence or calendar of twelve stories, one for each month of the year. Actually written at the rate of one a month during a single year, the stories range over the entire twentieth century, the September story being set in 1905 while the February story takes place in 1990. Michael Standen explained the genesis in his foreword:
On a hint from a friend and with no Duc de Berry to bankroll the project, grew the simple idea of writing each month over a year a short story set in that month. Deadlines were not so much the calendar as being the calendar itself. That year of 1989-90 became as long with the task as a small room enlarges itself when you paint it. A sustaining feature of the project was its simplicity; Chaucer's self-inflicted scheme in the Canterbury Tales was more ambitious but no less daft. And as the year wore on, the possibility that there were links of a sort, however subterranean, encouraged me, and about half way through a grander recognition came. This could be my testimony to the century, my testament — no blockbuster but a little scruffy tessellated pavement, there perhaps to be discovered when the block bust.
Each of the stories for the twelve months is headed with a drawing by Peter Standen. After Months, there are four Other Stories completing the book.
Months & Other Stories costs £7.95 and was published in 1994.
ISBN: 978-1-873226-12-4
Michael Standen was born near London in 1937. He attended schools in Essex and Nottingham before being conscripted into the army. After National Service and three years at Cambridge, he began teaching in Further and Adult Education, spending most of his career with the Workers' Educational Association, becoming District Secretary of the Northern District then based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. After retiring from paid employment he remained living in Durham City with his wife, the zoologist Dr Valerie Standen, where he was active with Colpitts Poetry, who stage regular high-quality poetry readings. He died from a heart attack on 1 June 2008.
At the same time as working for the WEA, he was writing: he published his first novel, Start Somewhere, in 1965 and since then William Heinemann have brought out three more of his novels: A Sane and Able Man, Stick-man and The Dreamland Tree. A novel for younger readers, Over the Wet Lawn, was published by OUP in 1977.
Michael Standen was also one of the editors of Other Poetry, published three times a year and now (mid 2008) on its thirty-forth issue. ‘We believe there are many good poems which may not conform to current trends, and we want to see these poems brought into daylight.’
At Flambard Press we remember this remarkable man, known universally as Mick. His empire, he used to say when he was WEA District Secretary, stretched from sea to sea. As teacher, writer, encourager and scourge of pompous bureaucracies, Mick will be remembered with love and affection by many, many people; from sea to sea, and well beyond.
We have set up a page with a longer tribute to Mick, from Flambard and many others.
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