Month: January 2013

Angst/

Submissions, the monstrous poet-ego, etc

to change art destroy ego

Yesterday was one of those days when I felt I should have been working (ie paid work), but instead was faffing about with several poems all of which were nearly there or in the I’m not sure about these but I can’t stare at them any longer and I must just get them out pile.

As a consequence I sent three out to a publication I’ve not approached before, and sent one in to a competition. I really ought to make a note of all the odd £3, £5 or £10 fees, magazine subscriptions etc so that one day I can say “right! That’s £2,500 £5,000 I’ve spent so far on poetry, so now all I have to do to get it back is win the Bridport Prize.”

Then I reviewed what I had out, and for how long, and was interested to see that the end of each month seems to be when I get stuff out. One magazine has had my poems for three months or so, so it would be nice to hear from them. Other things are unlikely to emerge unscathed from the pipeline any time soon. I have a couple of pieces forthcoming but I’d like more ‘in the bank’. Does that sound ridiculous, like it’s all about the numbers or something? Probably. The monstrous poet-ego in me – perhaps if I’m honest about it it will be less monstrous. My other preoccupation now is that I have no theme, no voice. How on earth can I talk about getting a pamphlet together when all the poems are so random? Plus the more poetry I read the less sure I am about my own abilities to write the stuff.

Yikes. I started this post feeling pretty good about it all, so not sure what happened there! Anyway, good luck with the submissions game if you’re playing it too. I’ll let you know about any acceptances or rejections.

Oh – I almost forgot, South magazine published its latest ‘poets in the next edition’ list, and my name wasn’t on it. So I guess that counts as a passive rejection – rejection by non-inclusion – is that easier to take than the thin SAE on the mat? Actually I’ve decided not to submit there again – no, not because of sour grapes (I’ve had something in there in the past) but because I’m not sure my stuff is right for them. So perhaps that means I am getting a feel for my voice?

Poet's Tips/

Notes from Mimi Khalvati workshop

workshop notes 26-1-13

workshop notes 26-1-13

Yesterday was the first of our monthly workshops with Mimi Khaltvati this year, and as usual I came away with plenty of new insights and reminders. Here are some of the things Mimi said which I jotted down, as usual I’ve tried to stick to ‘universal’ comments rather than those to do with specific poems. Hope you find it useful.

On form/shaping/editing: Test out different forms, don’t just plump for the first way you’ve written something, which may be a bunch of uneven-length stanzas. Is that really the best you can do? It can make a huge difference – for example triplets can be more musical, lighter than big blocks of ten lines or whatever.

On villanelles – they need “strenuous thought”. You have to think backwards. You need to have arrived at a transformation in the last two lines, their meaning needs to have changed even though the words haven’t.

On consistency of register – if you use contractions (I’m, he’s etc) sometimes but not always, that will seems wrong. Beware mixing up idiomatic and archaic phrases, especially if it’s done to fit a certain metre or rhyme scheme.

On rhyme – ‘if you choose the wrong word to rhyme then everything goes wrong!’

On specific references to things the reader may or may not be familiar with: “it’s courteous as a writer to assume the reader is one step ahead of you. It also makes for better writing.”

On developing a critical faculty – ask of other people’s writing (as a precursor to asking it of your own) ‘what is missing? what more could be done?’ “A fierce critical faculty is a wondrous gift.” Be prepared to think in larger terms rather than just tweaking.

On beautiful language – it’s not enough to just write beautifully. Too much beauty can be soporific. (Mimi admitted literally falling asleep at a reading by a prominent poet – I couldn’t possibly say who – because it was all too lovely “the melody, the evenness of the waves…”). So how can you break up it up? You need a counterpoint. Look at what you’ve written and move things about if necessary – a strong start to a line can serve as a stake, a prop holding things up. You may naturally write beautifully – but your best strength can also be your weakness.

On tricky links – you can make ‘leaps’ (I took this to mean the idea of moving between seemingly unrelated images or meanings) – leaps are good – but they need to be ‘clear leaps’. If something is in the way, confusing things, you need to get rid of that, clear the way.

On developing a ‘forensic’ eye for syntax – check for missing subjects or verbs that change tense, confused constructions, missing commas etc due to long sentences with sub-clauses over several stanzas. (For me, this is a bit like writing HTML – every time you open a bracket or start a new ‘declaration’ you have to close it, even if it’s hundreds of lines later, with all kinds of embedded instructions in between. If you get something wrong the whole thing falls apart.  But it’s so satisfying when you find the missing inverted commas or bracket!)

Angst/

Needlewriters poets & that pesky CW MA

At the library of memories - Maria Jastrzebska

At the library of memories - Maria Jastrzebska

Wonderful evening at the Needlewriters in Lewes last night, with Maria Jastrzebska and Andrea Samuelson reading their poetry.

Both read very movingly. Maria’s new collection ‘At the Library of Memories’ is just out from Waterloo Press, and Maria gave it an intriguing introduction by saying the memories were not only hers, but those of her relatives and possibly even ours. This morning I opened the book at random and read and extraordinary poem called Telling Tales. No surprise then to read in in the credits that this particular piece was a prizewinner in the Troubadour competition a couple of years ago.

Sort-of disclosure: I have the great privilege of being in a Mimi Khalvati workshopping group with Maria (as well as a number of other very accomplished poets) and I have to say that as well as being a talented poet she is also an insightful and supportive and member of the group. Lucky moi.

I wasn’t familiar with Andrea Samuelson‘s work but it was a pleasure to meet her and hear her read from her new book ‘Cradle Song’, on the subject of the life of her Swedish great-grandmother and the similarities in their experiences.

Two poet friends let on that Andrea had done the same MA Creative Writing course just before them, and her work had been held up as a ‘model’. Ooer! I wonder if she knows?

On the subject of a Creative Writing MA, I am yet again looking at course descriptions and dreaming of applying to somewhere like Royal Holloway, commuting to London twice a week for heady tutorials with Andrew Motion or Jo Shapcott… what’s the matter with me? I haven’t got £6k in my pocket and I’m supposed to be earning money, not spending it on luxuries like this!  Plus, I seem to be forgetting that there’s the small matter of applying and getting accepted.

Talk me out of it, someone!

Serendipity/

View from the top

Tee Dobinson & Robin Houghton at the Gherkin

Tee Dobinson & Robin Houghton at the Gherkin

Yesterday I had the pleasure of re-connecting with a former colleague and friend from my Nike days. I recruited Tee Dobinson as a Nike Fitness Athlete in around 1993, one of a team of 6 or so top fitness instructors/presenters to be ambassadors for the brand. We had a lot of fun and a few adventures!

If anyone embodies the ‘just do it’ Nike attitude then it’s Tee – she’s one of the most tenacious, determined and hard working people I know, but with a warmth and generosity not usually associated with ambition. She’s achieved so much it’s frightening! One of the many hats she now wears is that of the ‘Gherkin Guru’ – she’s the London Gherkin’s resident expert, on hand to intrigue and entertain visitors with her encyclopaedic knowledge of the building. So of course we met at the Gherkin, in the club on the 38th floor. The photo was taken on the top floor, the 39th, where the views over London are fantastic.

What is it about views from tall buildings? And London especially – I find all the little churches tucked in between huge office blocks very poignant, the glimpses of grey river snaking in and out, and after dark the winding roads of red tail-lights (“like jewellery!” said Tee) are just beautiful.

Books/

Lovely example from Ted Hughes’ letters

Letters of Ted Hughes edited by Christopher Reid

Letters of Ted Hughes edited by Christopher Reid

It is now 1974. At least, that’s how far I have got with Ted Hughes’ letters, through which I’m getting a stronger impression of him than I think I’ve ever got from another source. Perhaps that’s not surprising, as he valued his privacy. And in the letters, there’s a clear sense of his growing frustration at how journalists, commentators and Plath biographers were representing his life.

Weird to think that in 1974 (or thereabouts) I was slouching my way through Dr Upadhayay’s English lessons, reading ‘View of a Pig’ and not even giving a thought to who the poet was, assuming he was long dead rather than a man of forty-something very much in the land of the living and with a daughter the same age as me.

As you might expect in the book there are letters to friends, publishers, other writers and family, sometimes talking (or not talking) about the same events. From about 1971 these included letters to his children. In a particularly charming one of November 1973 Hughes wrote to his daughter Frieda at boarding school, giving her advice for an English project she’s clearly asked him about. It’s a wonderful letter, bursting with life, full of detailed advice, fun and enthusiasm. He tells her firstly to seek out a copy of PLUTARCH’S LIVES (his capitals, and underlined three times): “While telling about Antony, Plutarch tells all about Cleopatra. You must read that. It’s quite short. In the same book, there’s also a life of Julius Caesar, but in that Plutarch gives only a couple of paragraphs to Cleopatra. But you must read those 2 paragraphs.”

Then there are his tips for writing up her material as a play or screenplay: “break up the story into scenes. As many as you like. You can write the scenes as you like – as you go along – in any order – you can fit them together at the end. If you write it as a film you can add bits all over the place. Describe lilies on the Nile. Caesar shooting a hippopotamus etc.” By the time I’d finished this letter I was ready to go find ‘Plutarch’s Lives’ and write a play myself. It all sounded so brilliant.

Readings/

Ten Voice Stanza tonight…

open mic poetry reading

It’s been a few months in the planning, so Jo and I are hoping we’ve thought of everything – ha ha!

If you’re in the area, do come along to Ten Voice Stanza – doors 7.30, starting at 8pm, ten members of Brighton Poetry Stanza reading their work, plus open mic opportunities. It’s at the Redroaster Coffee House on St James’s St in Brighton, an established poetry venue and very friendly.

Other members of the group who aren’t reading (there isn’t time for more than ten) will be helping out on the door, selling pamphlets etc, so it’s been a real team effort. I do hope we get a good turnout – I have a feeling it may be packed. Hope so! It will give everyone a buzz.

At the T S Eliot prize readings on Sunday Jacob Polley said ‘the last poetry reading I gave I was on between the choir singers and the cake raffle’. Poetry audiences are nearly always small. So the prospect of an audience is a fine thing (although 2,000 people in the Festival Hall might make one a tad wobbly). Fingers crossed!

Workshopping/

How to tackle the “What does it mean?” question

Puzzled

Puzzled

“Poems need room for the imagination to engage” says Roselle Angwin in a interesting blog post on creating ambiguity in a poem, not telling the whole story.

So here’s a problem I have, and I can’t be the only one! When I take a poem to a workshopping group I really don’t like explaining. Anything. I just don’t think it’s relevant. So if I’m asked straight away “what does this mean?’ I want to say ‘what do you think it means?’ Letting people decide, or hearing people discuss amongst themselves can be very revealing about where the problems are. Not in the sense of ‘oh no, they’ve got it all wrong, I need to change that so that my meaning is clear.’ Because if I do that, there’s no ‘work’ left for the reader. And anyway, I love it when people put their own take on a piece. It means they’ve engaged with it.

But how to tackle the ‘what does it mean” question? Sometimes people get a bit tetchy if I refuse to provide answers. And if I say ‘I prefer not to explain’ it all sounds rather pompous. Or if I do find myself explaining, I get all defensive and then annoyed that I’m coming across as not wanting criticism, which of course I do, but I think this ‘need to find the meaning’ gets in the way of really looking closely at the thing.

There are plenty of poems I can’t make sense of, especially on a first reading. If there’s a specific word or phrase I don’t understand, I may comment that this tripped me up, or ask if it’s important that the reader understands it.. By asking “is this important?” you are prompting the poet to question it in her mind. Personally, that’s the kind of feedback I find helpful – comments that make me really interrogate what I’ve written. What do you think? Do you agree? I know it’s not easy to give feedback – I find it really hard myself – so am I being unreasonable? Should I be grateful for any kind of feedback?

Books/

T S Eliot shortlisted poetry collections – reviews

t s eliot prize collections 2012

t s eliot prize collections 2012

I confess haven’t read all the collections shortlisted for this year’s T S Eliot Prize. But I’ve trawled for informative reviews of each, in order to at least have an idea and also in anticipation of hearing all the poets read on Sunday evening at the Festival Hall. So here we go.

Sean Borodale Bee Journal  (Jonathan Cape) (Bees seem to be a hot topic at the moment. Does their essential yet potentially doomed role in the ecosystem give them extra poetic power?)  Giles Pitts’ review in Varsity makes me think I would enjoy this collection.

‘10th February: Dismantling the Comb’, for example, is a deeply moving account of bereavement, the poet shining light into the comb’s cells in a fruitless search for life: ‘It’s like the grain of a moon, a spoon-back of pale no one, / just the pail of an egg’s dry opal empty of hunger’.

Gillian Clarke Ice (Carcanet) – Stevie Davies in the Independent calls it ‘partly pastoral elegy, partly georgic’ and offers this assessment. 

In 1947, news of the ice-girl’s end aroused in the prescient young Gillian a sense of “her china inkwell emptied of its words,/ the groove for her pen like a shallow grave”.

Julia Copus The World’s Two Smallest Humans  (Faber & Faber) – reviewed in the Guardian by Kate Kellaway, who calls it a ‘remarkable collection’. She focuses in particular on the poem ‘Ghost’ which is printed in full at the end of the review, noting that the poet “avoids the first person and keeps a tight rein on emotion.”

SImon Armitage The Death of King Arthur  (Faber & Faber) – a gallant Kate Kellaway tackles this tome despiteadmitting initial reluctance (“When I studied Anglo-Saxon at university, I remember complaining that whenever I wasn’t sure of a word, it turned out to mean “spear”.”) She concedes, however, that Armitage “has a miraculous ability to make the past fresh, moving and urgent, not allowing legend to create distance.”  Personally I’m not sure how much I’d relish all those bloody battles, but perhaps I need to keep an open mind – if I’ve got the stomach for Julia Copus’s IVF poems then I can face anything. (For some reason, poems about pregnancy and childbirth make me queasy.)

Paul Farley The Dark Film (Picador) – despite Nicholas Pierpan’s excoriating review in Tower Poetry (is this the guy who critiqued my work both times I submitted stuff for the Poetry Society’s ‘Prescription’ service? I recognise the style!) I am interested to read this collection, if only to see if there’s more to it than Pierpan fancies. (For example, ‘Saturday Irons’ he dismisses with  “Are the final two lines tongue-in-cheek, or just bathetic? I honestly can’t tell; they don’t work either way.”)

Jorie Graham P L A C E (Carcanet) – is this is the front-runner, having already won the Forward Prize? Here’s Sean O’Brien’s review in the Guardian. Funnily enough I only heard of Jorie Graham recently, when I asked poet friend Lynne about American poetry, in which she’s pretty much steeped. Must explore.

Kathleen Jamie – The Overhaul  (Picador) – I was googling this to find a review and got sidetracked by a wonderful interview on the Scottish Review of Books. I like the sound of Kathleen Jamie, she comes across a bit like Don Paterson, all dry and matter-of-fact what’s-the-fuss-all-about. Must be a scottish thang. Anyway, here’s Maria Johnston’s review in the Guardian of what sounds like a fine collection.

Sharon Olds Stag’s Leap (Jonathan Cape) – my poet friend Charlotte lent me a copy of this to read a couple of months ago and there was something terrifyingly gripping about it – the story of a marriage break up in painful, masochistic detail. It gave me bad dreams – I suppose it played on my greatest nightmare, which would be to lose the love and fidelity of my husband. But here’s a wonderful video interview / profile on the PBS website where Sharon reads from the book and talks about her writing and her life. There’s a sympathy, acceptance and calmness about her that I nearly missed in the reading of Stag’s Leap.

Jacob Polley The Havocs (Picador) – so I click on the Guardian’s review of this collection and there’s a photo of a beekeeper – wtf! Anyway, Ben Wilkinson finds much to admire:

Tripping through assorted rhythms, sonnets, end-rhymed quatrains and the looping lines of its centrepiece, it is as formally vibrant as the luminous letters that adorn its cover….The Havocs may be an uneven collection that sometimes finds Polley treading water, but a handful of its poems are so moving and memorable you might just forgive him.

Deryn Rees-Jones Burying the Wren (Seren) – Carl Griffin in the Wales Arts Review suggests that this collection on ‘recollections and grief’ has its ‘fair share of poems that should have been buried with the wren’. Nevertheless he finds ‘ingenious images’ as well as ‘snatches of comedy and joy’ in her writing.

Mags & Blogs/

January’s off to a great start

T S Eliot

Happy New Year!

I’m particularly upbeat about 2013 – already there are lots of positive things going on in both work and play (not sure where poetry sits on that spectrum but I’m doing my best to blue the edges, little by little.)

On New Year’s Eve I had an email from Helen Ivory to say she was accepting my poem ‘Left’ (which Mimi Khalvati had described as ‘bonkers’!) for Ink, Sweat & Tears so that should appear around March time.

And New Writing South have showed interest in a workshop proposal I sent them, which is very exciting, so more on that as it develops.

I’m looking forward to the TS Eliot prize readings at the Festival Hall on Sunday 13th. I first went to this event last year with several poet friends and really enjoyed it. Very buzzy and a brilliant opportunity to hear all ten shortlisted poets reading from their work.

Meanwhile, Brighton’s very own Ten Voice Stanza is only two weeks away – yikes! I hope we can pull in a good audience. It should be a lot of fun with a good range of poets reading, so I do hope so. You can read all about it (and RSVP) on Facebook or here for the Facebook refuseniks. If you’re anywhere near Brighton, please come (and tell all your friends!)