Month: February 2014

Books/

Friday update

It’s been a good week in many ways, but the not-so-good things first: a rejection from the London Magazine (not unexpected) and no new poetry writing done at all 🙁

Good things: the first of our Brighton Stanza small group workshopping sessions was on Monday, and although there were only three of showed up in the end (of the others one called in sick, two were delayed on the train, one got the date wrong) I took away one excellent insight (thanks to Tom Cunliffe) which I know will have far-reaching consequences for me. More good things: I sent my pamphlet off to print!! Cover reveal:

The Great Vowel Shift cover

 

I’m very pleased with the cover illustration by Hannah Clare, who I will use again for future pamphlets as I want to establish a brand look. My only reservation is whether I shouldn’t have gone for a dust jacket. I like the traditional feel of one, but if it gets detached from the booklet it does mean the booklet cover has no markings. Anyways, that’s what I’ve opted for at the moment, as I liked the look of the pamphlets by Smith Doorstop.

Next nice thing was an evening at the Redroaster in Brighton last night for Pighog poetry readings – top of the bill and clearly the big draw was fine poet John McCullough, who I always love to hear read, but sadly he had to wait until about 10pm due to open mic-ers being given too long. After the first half I was remarking how I liked the fact that the open mic had seemed relaxed and gave people more time than usual, with just 3 readers. But I didn’t realise there were about 10 more readers to go in the second half, many intent on hogging the limelight for as long as possible. It seems that saying ‘one poem’ is fair enough but you need to add ‘no more than ONE sheet of A4 paper’ too, otherwise you’ll sure as dammit get ‘Paradise Lost’.

Anyway I had a good catchup with poet Marion Tracy and very jolly to see so many familiar peeps from the Stanza group and elsewhere.

Other than that I’ve been nose to the grindstone or rather bum on seat typing, skimming my way through a myriad blogs and websites etc all in the name of this blogging book I’m working on. Around 15k words written so far and a weekend of graft to look forward to, probably on my own in the office taking hundreds of screenshots,  getting Photoshop-itis and trying not to re-use the same cheery phrases too often.

Sorry for the brief post … off to celebrate my husband’s birthday this evening so twill be nice to turn the computer OFF. Have a nice weekend 🙂

Bloggers/

‘My Writing Process’ Blog Tour

Morning! It’s time for a little blog tour… the lovely Jayne Stanton invited me to take part in the ‘My Writing Process’ tour (or ‘meme’ in internet parlance). There must have been thousands of writers already taken the tour. The idea is to answer the same four set questions, then to nominate three more writers to take up the challenge.

1) What am I working on?

I’ve recently been commissioned to write two books about blogging. The first is a kind of sister publication to ‘Blogging for Creatives’ which was published in 2012, but this time it’s Blogging for Writers. Naturally this is right up my street! But, like with the first book, there’s a heck of a lot of research to be done, experts to be contacted and images to be found, on top of the actual writing (which is the easy bit). And I now have just 8 weeks to deliver, so it’s full-on.

On the poetry front I’ve just started by own small poetry imprint, Telltale Press, mainly to publish my own short first pamphlet, but also (I hope) to do the same for other poets. Still working out the details, but my own pamphlet should be out within a few weeks. My poetry writing is a bit in the doldrums at the moment. But that’s OK, it’ll come back.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I suppose I need to answer this in regard to my commercial writing and poetry, separately. When I was writing essays at Uni many years ago, a tutor remarked ‘I like your clear, textbook style.’ That comment stayed with me and I’ve consciously tried to develop this ability over the years. As a result I’ve had a lot of success with copywriting – especially when it comes to putting the technical into plain English and empathising with the audience’s thought processes. It’s also helped me in devising and delivering training and mentoring. Let’s break it down, look at it another way, that sort of thing.

Poetry of course is another matter. If anything I have to fight against the instinct to explain, to set the scene…maybe that’s one reason why I enjoy it. Poetry feels like the ultimate challenge for a writer. Does my poetry differ from others? Probably not. Like many people, I can write competent poetry that very occasionally has a magical spark (together with a fair bit of stuff that has no merit at all). But there are so many wonderfully original and surprising poets out there, and I’ve got a long way to go before (or even if) I reach that standard. If anything I would say I probably need to let go more and not be so controlled by rational/analytic thoughts.

3) Why do I write what I do?

Commercial writing: I write about whatever interests me, but I suppose I fell into the blogging books from having been an internet marketer for so many years, since the 20th century actually! And before that I was a corporate marketer on the international rat run. I discovered the internet in 1997, learned HTML in 1998, did an MA in Digital Media in 1999 and reinvented myself as an internet bod.

Poetry: a combination of the usual things that inspire poets (life’s big questions) and a love of manipulating language. I love jigsaws, puzzles, sudoku… I enjoyed maths at school as much as English… I see poetry a little like a creative extension of all that. Like a lot of people I started writing poetry at school, but despite encouragement from lovely English teachers I was determined to think everything I wrote was crap. I still think this was probably true, but I wish I’d had the confidence of youth to at least give it a go. But it wasn’t until I was settled and contented and in my 40s that I decided to take poetry seriously. Suddenly there was a heck of a lot of reading to catch up on and it was (and still is!) a steep learning curve.

4) How does my writing process work?

I’m pretty organised. When it comes to commercial work I rely on spreadsheets, time and word count calculations, and to do lists. I enjoy filing and try to keep well on top of deadlines. I’ve never missed a deadline – I was one of those kids who even at university would always finish tasks well ahead of the due date, and I never ran out of time in exams.

With poetry, again I keep good records of submissions, but I admit I’m a bit ramshackle as regards keeping notes and writing down ideas. Many things fly away before I have a chance to nail them down. I get a bit frustrated when I do have the time to sit and write, and nothing at all worthwhile comes to mind. But again, that’s part of the challenge.

I go to workshops because I do find feedback valuable, and I don’t mind doing exercises and having writing prompts but I wouldn’t seek them out. I’ve rarely had any useful inspiration come from prompts or exercises. I have more luck if I just stop trying to write and go read instead. Reading fine poetry before going to sleep can work well for me. Part of me thinks if I read enough good stuff it will rub off on me somehow. When I do actually write something, it might go through many revisions over several months or even years before it’s published, but on the other hand I’ve had a few notable successes with pieces I’ve literally written in one sitting with very little editing. Bizarre.

Next Monday, please check out the following writers/bloggers and their answers…

Abegail Morley of The Poetry Shed
Abegail Morley’s first collection, How to Pour Madness into a Teacup was shortlisted for the Forward Prize Best First Collection. Snow Child (2011) and Eva and George: Sketches in Pen and Brush (2013) are published by Pindrop Press. She has a collection forthcoming from Eyewear Publishing and is co-founder of EKPHRASIS.

Cathy Bramley
Cathy Bramley is a writer of romantic comedy. She lives in Nottingham with her family and is a fan of Polish cherry vodka, chocolate brazils and Marian Keyes novels. Her debut, Conditional Love achieved a little ‘best-seller’ flag from Amazon and her next novel will be published in April. You can usually find her wasting time on Twitter @CathyBramley or on Facebook.

E.E.Nobbs
E.E. Nobbs (Elly) won the 2013 Doire Press International Poetry Chapbook competition. Her first book – The Invisible Girl – is hot off the press. She lives in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Mags & Blogs/

Quick writing update

This is probably displacement activity, as I should be working on the book which I have until Easter to write. Yikes! Quick update on a few things.

Poetry writing is currently going through a dry patch. I missed out on my Mimi Khalvati fix at the weekend as I was under the weather, but did have a good Stanza meeting on Monday night and the first of our ‘small group’ workshops is next week, so I’m looking forward to that. I’ve been digging around my archive of unfinished and ‘in need of work’ poems, of which there are A LOT. One or two I’ve actually managed to re-write, and as I’ve not got much out in the pipeline at the moment I sent a few things out quickly before I changed my mind.

I’m trying Ambit again … surely they can’t still be holding against me that incident at the Betsey Trotwood in 2012 …?

I had another rejection from Poetry Review … still plugging away!

A couple of new RED ALERT cautions that are currently top of mind – on Monday the redoubtable Antony Mair warned of the ‘portentous last line’ – and of course I knew exactly what he meant as I’ve been GUILTY of said practice more than once! Then today I was reading an interview with Rob Spillman, editor of US magazine Tin House, who was complaining about how too many submissions ‘lack engagement with real world issues… there’s a stunning amount of navel-gazing with tiny emotional epiphanies.’ Ouch! Be gone from my poems, o tiny emotional epiphanies!

Meanwhile, talented illustrator Hannah Clare has come up with a striking design for the cover of my pamphlet. I have a week or so before the ISBN numbers come through, which is when I can create the barcode and finish off the rest of the cover. At the moment there are 13 poems in the pamphlet but one of them I’m still not sure about, so it may end up being 12. Probably a luckier number.  All very exciting!!

And now…back to the writing that actually pays!

Pamphlets/

Publish and be damned

Telltale Press logo

Call it ‘self-publishing’ if you will, call it an unhealthy desperation, frustration or whatever –  I’m not sure exactly what my prime motivation is but it feels good to be taking charge!

Here’s what’s happened …. I have named my new poetry press. I’ve named my pamphlet. I’ve (almost) decided on the content and order, thanks to some super insightful comment and expert suggestions from an experienced poet. I have applied for my first batch of ISBN numbers. I’ve had several print quotes, and have juggled various options regarding size/format. I’ve pored over many pamphlets to see how they’ve been made, the typefaces, line height, paper weight, where the acknowledgements go, etcetera. I’ve done most of the typsetting and layout myself in Illustrator. I’ve decided what I like and don’t like in terms of cover designs, and have briefed a talented artist to come up with something beautiful.

So far I’ve really enjoyed the process and haven’t had any big problems. I realise it’s still a novelty for me. And I’m doing this as an investment, not to make money or even cover costs, although that would be nice, and not utterly impossible. So I guess the difficult thing about publishing must simply the business of money – where it comes from, how not to lose it, and how to finance the next project and stay sustainable.

My own pamphlet is being financed by moi. But in so doing, I’m getting excited at the prospect of publishing other poets. That was the point of creating a new press – to publish my own first pamphlet alongside a few other people in the same position as me, namely, those feeling ready to publish but as yet unlucky in winning a pamphlet competition (because that seems to be the only way to one’s first pamphlet). What does this mean? Am I setting myself up as a publisher? Yes and no. I see the pamphlet projects as being fairly collaborative and ‘self help’. I don’t have the experience to be an editor. And I don’t have the funds to publish endlessly out of my own pocket. So any fellow poets coming on board have to be prepared (as I am) to share the financial burden of production (although on the positive side this means sharing the sales income too.)

That said, being prepared to PAY is not the only criterion – too much like a vanity press. And I do (of course) have strong feelings about the kinds of collections I’d like to be published alongside. So there are artistic criteria, if you like. And quite a few other criteria also, the nuts and bolts of which I’m still working out. Most of all I think of a Telltale pamphlet as being a first step, maybe a springboard. It feels important to me that it’s for first pamphlets, because it gives newcomers a chance. (But will I change my mind once I’ve done one, and can’t get anyone else to publish me? Ha! We’ll see!)

The way I see it, there’s room for all kinds of publishing enterprise. This one has yet to earn its stripes. But it’s fun to try.

Bloggers/

Three more interesting blog discoveries

Greetings from the Sick Bay. I’ve been a bit quiet this last week due to a touch of flu (mostly) and the advent of one or two new projects (partly). More on the projects soon.

Meanwhile this is the latest in a series of ‘interesting poetry-related blogs I’ve recently come across’ posts. Trying to stick to a particular theme (poetry and gardening, or whatever) proved a bit hard to sustain, so here are three random blogs in no particular order.

Verbatim Poetry

I found Verbatim Poetry via a link on Facebook, I think. Put simply, it’s a blog featuring found poetry. Editors are Gabriel Smy and Marika Rose. They welcome submissions and there are some very useful guidelines on ‘How to Write a Verbatim Poem’.

I’ve not written any found poetry, but I’ve sometimes felt I’d like to put together all those station announcements about reporting suspicious bags, delays and trolley services, ending with ‘would the conductor please contact the driver’ which for some reason always makes me laugh. One day maybe.

Sheenagh Pugh's blog

Then we have Sheenagh Pugh’s blog, with the unlikely title of Good God! There’s writing on both sides of that paper. I kid you not. I was pulled in by this thoughtful piece about titles and the job they can do, but soon discovered a rich seam of well written articles.

What I like about Sheenagh’s style is that she shares her knowledge and opinions, often with examples, in an open and interested way, without either patronising her readers or going off on a rant. My only issue with this blog is that’s on LiveJournal, a Russian-owned blog platform which doesn’t appear to be very social media friendly. But the content is pure gold.

The Era of Casual Fridays

Mark Richardson teaches literary criticism and lyric poetry at a university in Kyoto, Japan. As you might expect, his blog The Era of Casual Fridays is not for the faint-hearted. Mark describes the blog as a taking the form of a commonplace book, devoted to literature and ‘with comment, often lengthy.’

Now my attention span on blogs isn’t always the greatest, so it was with trepidation that I started out on ‘What I want (as a teacher of lyric poetry)’. Using a specific poem as example (Church Monuments by George Herbert), Mark takes us on a trip from Heidegger to Hardy, from Emerson to Foucault, in an exploration of what is expected of students when it comes to literary criticism.

Now and again students ask me whether it is okay for them to offer “their own interpretation” of a poem. By which they sometimes appear to mean: “Isn’t one interpretation finally as ‘good’ as any other?” By which, on occasion, they almost certainly mean: “Do you think it is possible for me to be ‘wrong’ in what I say about a poem?” To which my reply is: “Yes, it is certainly possible to be wrong in what we say about a poem—sometimes, very wrong.”

Mark goes on to explain and defend in detail what he means by this. I found it fascinating and despite not being familiar with all the references, yes – definitely worth reading to the end.

Angst/

On Heavenly Bodies and feeling empowered

Publishling cartoon
Copyright Cartoonstock.com

A few interesting things on the go at the moment. ‘Heavenly Bodies’ which I wrote about last week is gathering momentum, and there’s talk on Facebook of having a launch in Preston, or somewhere points North, which will mean I’ll have to miss it, alas. Anyway, at least I’ve written my ‘constellation’ poem, although I think I’ll look it over a few more times before sending it off to Rebecca Irvine.

Although I’ve been a bit dry lately in terms of producing new work, one thing I’m pushing forward with is a promotional pamphlet. I’ve given this a lot of thought. The purpose is twofold – firstly to have something to send/give to people which showcases some of my (previously published) poems, and perhaps to sell at readings, and secondly to shake off the feeling of passivity that going in for endless pamphlet competitions engenders in me.

Maybe I’m too impatient, but I lost a good poet friend last year, very suddenly. Life is short, to take action is empowering, and what have I got to lose? (Apart from the cost, but at least it’s all under my control!) It’s a very small collection, and doesn’t impact on my newer unpublished work, nor does it overlap with the pamphlet submissions I’ve got out at the moment. Plus I’m really enjoying the process of learning about publishing, print and all the other mysteries!

Meanwhile, with the help of my ‘loose committee’ I’ve been working out plans for the Brighton Stanza this year, which has grown considerably and we now need separate workshopping meetings as the monthly ‘open’ meetings have become so large. There’s a vibrant and wide-ranging poetry scene in Brighton, and although one of our aims is to encourage fine writing through close reading and critiquing, many people prefer to hone their performance skills, or read and share their work without scrutiny, or simply listen, learn and gain confidence.

There’ve also been various work-related things that have taken me away from poetry the last couple of weeks (curses!) as well as music-related things, such as turning pages at recitals, co-ordinating rehearsal dates and availability of singers for choir gigs.

But in between times I’ve been enjoying Michael Symmons Roberts’ Drysalter which just seems to ‘keep giving’ as they say.