Month: October 2012

Workshopping/

Poetry Day at Jo’s

Poetry day at Jo's

Poetry day at Jo's

Every now and then, poet friend Jo generously offers up her lovely, sunny top floor for a few of us to have a poetry day. On Saturday there were four of us, the smallest group we’ve had so far, but it was lovely – we all brought along whatever we are reading at the moment, or a favourite poem to share, as well as a couple of our own poems to workshop. It’s really nice to have this kind of time and space to talk poetry, find out more about what each of us is up to, is planning to do or write, what we’re getting published and where, have the odd moan (!) about this and that. I always come away energised and hopeful, and thankful for the friendship and support.

Mags & Blogs/

It’s my birthday! Hurrah! I think

Children love having birthdays. I quite enjoyed them myself until I got to about 30, then I went through a period of getting a bit grumpy about the whole birthday thing. But these days I don’t mind them at all. So far today:

Woke up with migraine that had been brewing up all night – boo

Husband presents me with a copy of Hilary Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies which I’ve been itching to read since it came out, but was waiting for the softback version – hurrah!

I have to go to work for half the day, and the office is freezing – boo

Finish with a meeting at our local friendly cafe, Pleasant Stores, and am treated to a veggie muffin – hurrah!

Jeans are feeling a bit tight and am reminded of urgency of nipping middle aged spread in the bud before I start looking like a veggie muffin – boo

Get home to find the lovely Charles Johnson at Obsessed with Pipework wants one of my poems for April 2013 issue – hurrah!

I see husband has hidden a bar of chocolate in the fridge for later – hurrah!

After popping the pink and yellow pills, migraine is now downgraded to mild headache – hurrah!

So overall a pretty good day. I might even try to write a poem.

Mags & Blogs/

Would you pay to submit your poetry to a magazine? (Poll)

Here’s a thing. Poetry presses and magazines exist on a shoestring. Sometimes half a shoestring. I’m sure we’d all love to support them by subscribing to them all, but it does get a tad expensive. So what’s the answer?

Charging for submissions seems relatively unusual in this country but it’s not in the US. The New England Review, for example, is very upfront about making a charge for submissions, but they made it sound very reasonable:

“We charge a small fee for online submissions ($3 prose, $2 poetry, $2 NER Digital). This fee, which is waived for current subscribers, helps to support New England Review in its mission to encourage literary innovation and exploration by publishing writers at all stages of their careers. It’s also not much more (and sometimes less) than what you’d pay for postage, paper, and printing. We also think you’ll appreciate the convenience of being able to upload your submission from your own computer.”

So what do you think? Should magazines move to this model, and ditch the vagaries of Royal Mail altogether? Would you agree to paying a pound, say, to submit a handful of poems to a magazine? Is it better to give your money to the poetry magazines rather than the Royal Mail?

If you’re reading this and you run a small press, what are the disadvantages of this system – your having to print out poems? Possible loss of formatting? Too much trouble to set the system up? Would a fee deter people from submitting – and possibly the ones you actually don’t want to deter?

Take the quick poll and please comment – I’m interested to know what you think.

Poet's Tips/

More Mimi tips

Here’s my round up of tips from Mimi Khalvati as recorded in my notebook on Saturday…. yours to do with as you see fit!

  • On the subject of clarity and coherence (does one need it? should one worry about it?) Similes are clearer than metaphors, if that’s what you’re aiming for. Mimi’s advice is to use similes ‘to see where you can go’ with the subject, and find the metaphors from that. Then you might want to ditch the similes. It’s a form of distillation/crystaliisation – taking your material and distilling from it the good metaphors. This is what might make it fresh, particularly if your topic is one that’s been done many times before.
  • On too much narrative – you don’t have to ‘situate’ everything. Less of a story, more intense, is what you need to make it a poem.
  • On internal rhyme – there’s nothing magic about it, it’s just English. ‘It’s impossible to write ten lines without some sort of internal rhyme’. Ouch!
  • ‘It’s terribly hard to write a simple, pure, love poem without it sounding trite.’ Pay attention to the sounds, every syllable, every vowel. Sometimes a single word will wrong-foot you. Keep testing it, reading it again and again to hear how it sounds.
  • The sensual, the intellectual, the emotional and the spiritual – which of these is to the fore in your poem? What’s the balance like? Something to consider. Intellectual (a ‘think’ poem) is more unusual, so might be fresher. Everyone focuses on imagery, so how about fresh ideas, new ways of thinking about something?
  • On titles – ‘let the title come from the opposite side of the brain to where the poem has come from’ – for example if the poem is a bit odd then resist the urge to make the title factual or explanatory. (I wasn’t quite sure about this but it was food for thought… plus I need all the help I can get with titles so I will bear this in mind.)
Workshopping/

Power pose through that next workshop!

Saturday was our monthly workshop with Mimi Khalvati (tips to come in next post!)

I had some really useful feedback from everyone on the poem I took along, but still managed to leave feeling defeated. Why? Because the quality of my observations on other people’s work just seemed completely off.  There’s no chance to backtrack or say any more once you’ve spoken, so each comment is like putting your neck on the block! I don’t suppose anyone except me noticed, but it paralysed me to the point that I felt I had nothing worth saying. I left thinking that perhaps I just knew sod-all about poetry and should stop deluding myself!

But of course these moments are sent to try us. After a day or two of despondency and talking it over with a good poet friend I’m feeling better.

I also watched this TED talk about how body language affects not only how others see us but how we feel about ourselves – and started to realise the part played by my own defeatist posture…when I should be doing this:

Power poses

Maybe this is the answer! Imagine ‘power posing’ through the next workshop, if you’re feeling a teensy bit intimidated…you know it makes sense – forget all those long silences, the crossed-legs-hugging-yourself, that hunching over poems and talking into your lap. No touching your hair as you speak or mumbling apologetically.

Sit back and pretend you’re a movie mogul. Stand up and place your hands assertively on the table! And next time you feel a moment of doubt coming on, stick those victory arms up in the air and give it a big YEEESSS!!

Victory Arms!
Photo by anricat – http://www.flickr.com/photos/31056658@N08/

 

 

Poet's Tips/

Tips from Don Paterson

Don Paterson, photo by Murgo Macleod

The Mimi Khalvati workshop notes I posted here recently went down well, so I thought I’d share with you some gems from Don Paterson. Don came down to Sussex for the Pighog Poetry Festival in 2010, and as a tea-making volunteer I was lucky enough to sit in on his masterclass. (Actually that sounds very grand – the way Don described it was ‘you can ask me questions and I’ll just talk’ – in other words, no workshopping or advice on individual work.)

Clearly the man doesn’t beat about the bush. I have to say I came away with so many great tips, and I go back to them OFTEN – I know I still commit some of the ‘sins’ mentioned here and need reminding not to do it!  So if you’re sitting comfortably, here goes:

Themes, titles, general tips

  1. The title is where you can put a clue as to what the poem is about. Once you stated that, don’t keep saying it.
  2. The beginning has to grab the reader. You might actually start halfway thru the poem, so that the reader can’t tell immediately what it’s about, but wants to read on to find out.
  3. Don’t make the poem too obscure though – sometimes you have to state what might seem obvious to you.
  4. If your beginning is predictable then the reader will be one step ahead of you – BORING.
  5. Don’t start at the beginning with an exposition – first this, then that, then the conclusion – boring!
  6. Look at how the great poets do it. Frost, Hughes, Heaney. Then look at your own work, and figure out the shortfall – what’s the difference? How can you bridge it? (If anyone has the answer to this one let me know!!)
  7. Don’t write about hackneyed themes – rainbows etc – there’s nothing new to say – similarly, ‘cool’ things that happen to you – leave them alone! Poetic, beautiful, heart-wrenching things – the poetry is in them, you can’t create another poetic layer, it will be crass.
  8. Focus on ONE thing – write about ONE thing – it’s a common error to cram too much into a poem.
  9. Often the one great idea/line you start with ends up being the bit you scratch.

Language

  1. Cut out the unnecessary modifiers.
  2. Only use rhyme if it’s necessary, if it’s integral to the piece – don’t add it on. Same other stylistic things – they must be integral, or not be there.
  3. English is hard to rhyme, so consider half rhymes, or even just focusing on a few related (linguistically) sounds – eg cook, cod, recoup, dog, buddha.
  4. Pattern the consonants – think about where they are made in the mouth and be aware of grouping them, eg voiced/unvoiced or fricatives or stopped consonants.
  5. Use short words and long vowels – lengthen and emphasise the vowels, avoid too many schwas, eg words like repetitive or communicative don’t work well
  6. Make your words sing, the line must sound good

And while we’re on the subject of DP, this video of him in some windswept location reading ‘Rain’ is one of my favourites:

Submissions/

How’s your filing? And what’s in a (folder) name?

Open Lever Arch File

Here’s a pressing question – what sort of filing system do you favour?

Open Lever Arch File

I love my lever arch files, with their colour-coded dividers and lovingly decided section names. But if you leave the filing for a while the ‘unclassified’ section at the front becomes unwieldy, and it’s impossible to find anything. But (for me) at least the process of weeding, filing and sorting paper has a certain satisfaction.

And now to the computer. The very nature of computer filing (the ease with which you can change folder and file names, not to mention the ease with which you can create new iterations of files – or overwrite them – and the limitless capacity of folders) should make it all a doddle. At least you don’t have to grab the tippex or cut up white labels to stick over section names if you change your mind, or buy new lever arch files.

But for some reason I find the ease of computer filing also creates a increased burden of decision-making. I started with a reasonably rational file name: ‘Poetry’. Then a few subfolder names suggested themselves: ‘working on’, ‘magazines’ (which of course needs the sub-subfolder name ‘correspondance’), the hopeful ‘submitted no reply yet’, the victorious ‘published-forthcoming’ and the sad “failed submissions’. (There’s also ‘archive’ which is mostly rubbish which I just can’t bring myself to delete, with the subfolder ‘may be worth re-working’.. and other folders which probably need deleting or consolidating.)

Now, I’m aware that although I choose to call my sad folder ‘failed submissions’, others may use the blunt phrase ‘rejected’. But I deliberately avoid that. I know that I will never look at any folder called ‘rejected’, whereas ‘failed submissions’ seems like a objective, rational sort of category – one woman’s failure is another’s opportunity, etc. And ‘rejected’ just gives too much power to the rejector, in my mind. Having had a few ‘failed submissions’ find their way into the ‘published-forthcoming’ folder, I feel justified in these semantic decisions.

What do you think? Care to share your filing system? Is it important what we call folders?

 

Books/

Readings, launches, and the Carmen Rollers

Readers at the Frogmore anthology launch in Lewes
As we were reading: Jeremy Page, Julia O’Brien, Robin Houghton

 

Lots of excitement in the past week. First of all, National Poetry Day and the launch of the Frogmore Press anthology Poems from the Old Hill on Thursday evening. It was standing room only as we’d all brought family and friends to cheer us on. It was fab to see some of my non-poet friends there, just hoping they enjoyed it and went away to tell everyone how great poetry readings are.

Big thank you to Charlotte for capturing some pics of some of us reading. We did look up occasionally, promise! Actually there’s some video footage too, which I may just post here if I can get my nerve up.

One non-poet friend got in a muddle about the date and venue and turned up a day late – but at least she went to Ieko on the High Street so in instead of us she got the lovely Catherine Smith reading from her new collection Otherwhere. Not so bad, eh? I just hope she didn’t accost Catherine and say “but I thought Robin Houghton was reading?” Tee hee.

And THEN on Sunday evening I was persuaded along to the monthly open mic event at the Baltica cafe by my stand-up performance poet friend Louise Taylor, neither of us quite knowing what to expect. But Louise being such a pro she had her material at the ready and performed two VERY funny classics of hers (the second by popular request, poor L being a tad hungover from her birthday party the night before.)

Halfway through the evening (not just poetry but also various acoustic musical acts) about a hundred people piled in, and it turned out to be none other than singing friend Polly with her entire family (including her 90-year old mother) fresh from a four-hour operatic marathon at the Duke of York’s in Brighton. A number of them formed themselves up as members of two close-harmony groups, the Carmen Rollers and the Old Spice Boys, and sang a couple of numbers. Grand entertainment. And what a nice evening – all those people turning out to perform for each other, rather than staying in and watching Downton Abbey. Love it!