November 2015 – Robin Houghton

Blog/ 29/11/2015

A Bonanza, a Finale and a look ahead to 2016

It’s been a busy week, still catching up, but I wanted to post a recap of things before we’re into the pre-Christmas week when events seem to accelerate.

Last Monday I was I privileged to be a member of the Brighton team (especially considering I now live in Eastbourne) at a Stanza Bonanza with Kent & Sussex Stanza at the Poetry Cafe. Bonanzas are the regular readings organised by Paul McGrane of the Poetry Society. They give Stanza members a chance to read at the iconic venue and meet/socialise with other Stanza poets. Always great fun, and this one was a corker. Poet friends Jill Munro and Jess Mookherjee were on the opposing team and it was lovely to hear them read, and Brighton definitely brought out the big guns – Peter Kenny, Tony Gill, Andie Davidson, Susan Evans and Marek Urbanowicz.

Thursday saw the launch reading of Clare Best’s poem ‘Cell’ which has been produced beautifully by the The Frogmore Press in a fold-out pamphlet alongside striking artwork by Michaela Ridgway. Michaela organises and generally hosts the Pighog poetry nights at the Redroaster in Brighton, but on this occasion she handed over the MC responsibility to Daisy Behagg, who did a fine job. The audience was very well behaved – not sure if that was a concession to Daisy, or just that the season finale drew a particularly high quality audience! Also on the bill were Tom Chivers of Penned in the Margins, and Stephen Payne who I seem to run into regularly at readings around the south and who was in the audience for my reading at Words & Ears last month, which was a lovely surprise. Michaela is super multi-talented, by the way – poet, artist and someone who makes things happen, on top of a big day job. Props. It was an excellent evening and I felt really energised and inspired by the poetry I heard. Here are some pics from the night:

Daisy Behagg at Pighog poetry night in Brighton — Daisy Behagg

Tom Chivers at Pighog poetry night in Brighton — Tom Chivers

Michaela Ridgway & Clare Best at Pighog poetry night in Brighton — Michaela Ridgway & Clare Best

Then on Friday we finally had our Telltale Press & Friends January reading all confirmed – to be held at the Poetry Cafe on Thursday 7th January, with special guest poet Jack Underwood. I’ve been a big fan of Jack’s work for a while and enjoyed his ‘putting together a pamphlet’ course at the Poetry School a couple of years ago. I loved his collection Happiness too, so I’m of course very happy that he’s reading with us alongside Telltales Siegfried Baber & Peter Kenny, and Kitty Coles. I often see Kitty’s work in magazines and heard her read at the launch of South magazine last month, so I was very pleased she agreed to join us for this event. If you’re within striking distance of London do come along – it’s free! A warm Telltale welcome awaits.

Blog/ 22/11/2015

A poetry anthology comes to life via Facebook

Look what arrived today – my copies of the lovely new anthology from Beautiful Dragons (mastermind: Rebecca Bilkau), My Dear Watson. It’s a celebration of the 118 elements on the periodic table. Each poem takes one of it the elements as its inspiration, and 118 poets have contributed. Poets were sourced and Rebecca organised the whole project via Facebook.

Social media platforms elicit strong feelings. Not so long ago it was the internet itself. In 2001 you could say “I hate the internet/I don’t DO the internet” and you’d find plenty of folks agreeing with you. Now it’s kind of unusual since the internet is difficult to avoid. These days it’s social media. “I hate Twitter/I don’t do Facebook.” All fine, and I’m not suggesting in ten years everybody will be ‘doing’ Facebook and/or Twitter. But in 50 years everyone will be using similar (and hopefully much improved) tools because communication methods are constantly changing. Remember: the first people to have telephones in their homes also ran the gauntlet of ‘Are you Mad? What on earth is the POINT of it?’ And that was only 100 years ago.

I personally feel privileged and very lucky to be one of the first generation to experience both the pre-internet and the early internet era. It’s real history and we’re living through it. The tools we currently have are not perfect by any means. Remember: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter etc etc all started in some guy’s bedroom. Nobody knows the rules because we’re figuring them out as we go along. But the tools are what we (humans) make them, and when things go wrong, or the tools are abused or used for bad ends, it’s not down to evil computers or that dreadful ‘social media’, it’s down to evil people.

Anyway, what got me going on that strand of thought was actually that I wanted to celebrate, for once, the wonderful things we humans can do with the tools available. The contributors to ‘My Dear Watson’ are a community only in that we all heard about it on Facebook and responded. (OK, some of the poets had already contributed to previous anthologies). Poems were submitted, and virtually all correspondence was carried out on Facebook. Even Rebecca notes that ‘not one of them (the contributors) knows all of the others’. I’m not saying this is a unique achievement but it’s a fine example of how a crowd-sourced project (the herding of 118 poets is no mean thing) can generate its own community, and it was facilitated via a social platform. Nothing special about Facebook, although as free, web-based platforms go it’s pretty suitable for this kind of collaboration.

So brava, Rebecca, and thank you.

And let’s try not to fall back on easy statements like “I hate ovens!” just because we haven’t yet produced the perfect souffle.

Blog/ 17/11/2015

The Reading List week 10: Glück, Paterson, Crowther

Crowther- Paterson-Gluck - The Reading LIst

These pocket-sized reviews have been getting a bit long lately and that’s not good, because I start thinking “do I have time to write a 1,500 word post today?” and tend to put it off. So here goes, this is me trying to cut back on the waffle. A couple of paragraphs, a taster… then over to you.

Faithful and Virtuous Night – Louise Glück (Carcanet 2014)

I picked this up at the Poetry Book Fair as part of my drive to read more US poetry, and Glück’s name has since come up twice. Firstly at John McCullough’s course at New Writing South, and secondly at Aldeburgh last week where Tony Hoagland suggested her career has paralleled that of Sharon Olds, but with Glück enjoying the imprimatur of the US poetry establishment while Olds has been the more ‘accessible’ and popular.

Faithful and Virtuous Night is unlike anything I’ve read before, except perhaps D M Thomas’s The White Hotel, a strange and disturbing book where the reader is pulled into an unreliable and dreamlike narrative and left without a handhold. The first poem, ‘Parable’, hints that we may about to be going on a journey, or maybe not. The narrator and his/her companions appear to go through various trials – extreme weather, endless discussions. ‘…we had changed although / we never moved..’ The poems that follow are intriguing – I wanted to keep reading, not just because I wanted to decode the secrets but also because of the storytelling – it brought to mind A Thousand and One Nights…. night, what happens at night, what happens in the shadows of the mind – just when we think we’ve got somewhere we find ourselves still and square one. The narrator has questions and the reader has them too.

A number of poems read as a someone recalling childhood memories but always half in the dark – either literally or metaphorically. The older brother comes in and out of the narrative, as does an aunt, and the dead parents. The narrator retells the fine details of dreams, episodes that may have actually happened, and stories much in the style of Aesop’s Fables. Glück often writes in a flat, unemotional tone but the sense of wonder and mystery is never far off:

I soon found myself
at my narrow table; to my right
the remains of a small meal.

Language was filling my head, wild exhilaration
alternated with profound despair –

But if the essence of time is change,
how can anything become nothing?

(‘The Story of a Day’)

Favourite poem: ‘The Sword in the Stone’.

40 Sonnets – Don Paterson (Faber, 2015)

There are reviews aplenty of this one, shortlisted for the T S Eliot prize this year, but I’ve resisted them even though they may have helped me with some of the poems in this collection.

I wasn’t really expecting 40 Shakespearean sonnets from DP. But the majority of these poems are fourteen lines long, many of them do employ traditional end-rhyme and conventional layouts and quite of few of them are celebratory, if not out-and-out love poems. Sorry if I’m sounding a bit bogged down with technicalities but any book with such a title invites it. But … To The Poems:

I confess I took a while to get into the book. A cluster of existential openers held me back a little on first reading, as did some of the poems for or about people I’m not familiar with left me. That feeling of being at a glamorous or intellectual get-together and not quite being in the know. TV character ‘House’ and Tony Blair get the ironic treatment (the latter somewhat less sympathetically – ‘They are your dead, who still rose to the birds / the day we filled the booths and made the cross, / before you’d forced them howling to their knees / to suffer your attentions. Spare us. Please.’ (‘The Big Listener’). Frustration with bureaucracy (‘To Dundee City Council’, ‘An Incarnation’) rubs along with humour, allegory and experimental pieces such as ‘Seance’ and ‘The Version’. With two poems referencing Francesca Woodman, I gave in to curiosity and looked her up.

The final sonnet (they’re not numbered, although once again the book title made me want to know where I was in the sequence) is for me one of the most beautiful, the discovery and uncovering of an old roundabout by a father and his sons, who after much effort get it moving again

‘ … Our hands still burning
we lay and looked up at a sky so clear
there was nothing in the world to prove our turning
but our light heads, and the wind’s lung.’

Favourite poem: ‘The Roundabout’

Of course in my mind the sainted DP can do no wrong. So I hope you appreciate the effort I’ve made to not gush. I’ll save that for after I see him reading next month – ha!

Incense – Claire Crowther, (Flarestack 2010)

There is so much about this pamphlet that’s clever. I have poem-title envy in spades – ‘This Poem Must Take Clothes Off’, ‘Over is Almost All of Lover’, are just two examples. The sequence consists of 23 poems all of which are fatras – ‘a medieval form consisting of eleven lines and an introductory couplet composed of the first and last lines of the poem.’ We’re also learn on the back cover that the form is associated with ‘nonsense poems’. This, together with the information that Crowther worked for many years as a journalist in the weight management industry, is the key to enjoying the collection. The sense and nonsense of fat, the stories told about it, its vilification, the full physical, emotional and psychological weight of it, is all explored. ‘Even academics / believe fat-calories / are laid down / as fat without / the brain / knowing.’ (‘Fataboo’). ‘Size is my name. / It’s stated on the tiny labels in my clothes. / I want to change it.’ (‘Check, Check, Check the Even Number.’)

Body image and identity are subjects close to my heart and I wanted to love this pamphlet. Although technically and intellectually I found it very satisfying, the poems didn’t move me beyond a sense of sadness and recognition. I think I wanted more anger, or less coolness, less detachment. I wanted to be incensed. The control and precision of the writing, although no doubt deliberate and referencing the fight for control over the enemy ‘fat’, left me a little flat. Nevertheless, Crowther is a fine poet whose work I enjoy, and reading ‘Incense’ has made me want to seek out more recent stuff.

Favourite poem: ‘Say No and Skip It’

Angst/ 09/11/2015

Aldeburgh Poetry Festival de-brief

And so the inevitable Aldeburgh Poetry Festival blog post. You’ve probably read a post or two on the subject already, or at least seen the Facebook/Twitter storm of “wasn’t it amazing?” sound bites, in-jokes about poets posing as penises – (I know! Too much alliteration) – and jolly pictures of poets sipping pints. (SORRY, am doing it again.) This is quite long, but there are subheads for the skimmers!

Three lessons for newbies

It was the first time I’d been, and clearly had a lot to learn. Still, when speaking to other ‘virgins’ I found some common themes: firstly, it’s easy to book too many sessions. I’d underestimated how exhausting it would be to go from one session to another and not schedule time for eating, chatting, walking or just sitting quietly. As it was, I certainly missed a few things I had booked for, but I don’t regret it – I had a better time for it. Secondly, be prepared for no phone signal the entire weekend. I saw a few people managing to make calls and had phone network-envy. Some were able to text. But me? Nothing. I hadn’t realised how stressy it would make me when I couldn’t talk to my husband on Friday. But thankfully there was internet, so we spoke via Skype. Thirdly, it’s important to pace yourself – not just in the number and timing of sessions, but also in the ‘meet and greet’ aspect of what is an intensely social event.

On ‘networking’

OK, so not everyone was at Aldeburgh. Hilaire wrote a lovely post about what she was planning to do while the tweet-heads were trying to get #APF15 trending. But in the crucible of Snape Maltings it was heady stuff. And for the ambitious and ballsy, there were plenty of people worth cosying-up to.

Poets and networking don’t always sit happily together. It was fascinating to see how a few people went about it. I think you need to be single-minded and thick-skinned to do it properly. But do I do it myself? I acknowledge there’s a bit of the ‘networker’ in me but although I tinker at it I’m not really confident enough to consistently pull it off. There’s the added stress of course that, unlike in business, networking has a reputation for being loathsome. To get away with it, I think it really has to be done subtly, accompanied by lashings of charm and good humour. The only trouble is, you might start believing you’re not networking, just being charming and good humoured. And that’s when it becomes loathsome.

On the first day I was pleased I hadn’t come alone as it seemed a little overwhelming. But being there with poet friends Charlotte Gann and Clare Best was brilliant, as was seeing so many familiar faces: the Brighton and Lewes contingent was impressive. I couldn’t help looking out for people I knew, or thought I might know via social media, and wondering whether to introduce myself or not. There were poets I knew (of) but not to speak to, and plenty I didn’t know at all. One of the great things was that the poet-presenters mingled and came to other people’s sessions, so there wasn’t a huge gulf between us and them. By day three I got the impression that everyone was more relaxed, me included. It seemed much easier to say a quick ‘thanks – enjoyed your session’ or ‘hello, are you so-and-so… just wanted to say hello’.

The ‘Aldeburgh’ bit

Aldeburgh is a wild place, especially in November. It didn’t stop a few poets (almost) skinny-dipping on Saturday morning while I was just about hauling myself out of bed. The weather wasn’t nice and the land around Snape Maltings (where most of the activity took place) was boggy, but staying on Aldeburgh seafront was quite magical. And the rain did clear up. This was the view from our house this morning before we left.

The town is centred on one long High Street parallel to the coastline, its houses are colourful and quirky but this is a strange, end-of-the-world sort of place which seems to teeter on the edge of the North Sea. It’s well-heeled: ‘Chelsea by the Sea’ was how a poet friend described it to me. The town is famously where Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears lived, worked, held court, founded a music festival and created a huge heartland of music for much of the mid-twentieth century.

The poetry festival used to take place here – but the story goes that some of the venues lost their health & safety credentials and the festival needed to expand in order to get the funding it needed. So everyone decamped to Snape Maltings 5 miles inland. There’s no doubt the various auditoria and the facilities there are fabulous. Some poetry festival events still happen in Aldeburgh but travelling to and fro during the day isn’t ideal, and if you don’t have a car you’re dependent on bus times.

The ‘poetry’ bit

The weekend consisted of readings, craft talks, lectures, discussions, close readings and critique sessions/masterclasses. There was plenty of variety and a few free sessions (although I never made it to those, they were mostly 15 mins of a poet talking on a topic or on a poem he/she liked.) For me, the craft talks were where I learnt the most: Zaffar Kunial on line endings, Kei Miller on ‘the image that doesn’t quite close’, Kim Addonizio on turns.

The main readings were on the long side – three poets each reading for half an hour with an interval between the second and third. On Friday evening I loved Helen Mort and Kei Miller. But after the break I was already tired (up at 7, five hours driving, three hours of poetry sessions). Like much of the audience, I was perplexed by the third poet who read, seemingly from a 1970s timewarp and determinedly ignoring the audience for his entire set. I struggled to stay awake. Still, it proved a talking point until 1am and for the rest of the weekend. Maybe the programming was designed to challenge us!

I went to a lovely short reading on Saturday by Michael McCarthy and Christine Webb, two poets with fine pedigrees who I’d never encountered before. Fifteen minutes each was the perfect format, and in an intimate venue. Similarly, a ‘New Voices’ reading gave us the opportunity of hearing four relatively new poets over the course of an hour.

There was something for everyone. At Tony Hoagland’s talk on Sharon Olds, one poet turned to me, indicated the empty seats and said ‘I thought EVERYONE would be here for this!’ To be fair, it did fill up more. Then afterwards as I made my way to the cafe I encountered another lovely poet who informed me of her great joy in NOT attending a talk on Sharon Olds. Tee hee.

Over the whole weekend I discovered all kinds of poets, poems and collections I didn’t know and hadn’t read, international in scope, and that was one of the standout features for me.

The boxes issue

I struggle a bit with the Poetry Trust stage sets – piles of cardboard boxes with ‘Words’ printed on them. First of all, in the Britten Studio, the courses of bricks weren’t aligned properly. Everyone knows “the universal rule allowing for brickwork to be stable under even modest loads is that perpends should not vertically align in any two successive courses.” (Wikipedia) This wall was about to topple. Secondly, the boxes were clearly empty. So the overall message was ’empty words, ungrounded and easy to knock down.’ Is that a good image for poetry? Remember now – I had hours and hours to stare at those boxes.

But seriously

I’m a complete newbie to the festival but it was clear talking to people who have attended many times or been involved in one way or another that it is under threat, in terms of lack of funding, and it’s by no means certain the festival will be able continue. This, plus the fact that Creative Director of sixteen years Dean Parkin is stepping down, is very sad. 2015 was the first year of Ellen McAteer‘s Directorship and it was also very sad that she was unable to be there, for personal reasons. The Poetry Trust does a fine job on a shoestring. There were one or two aspects of the festival that got me a bit grumpy but I came away as impressed and as satisfied as all the fans on Twitter. So I hope finance can be found. I would go again – probably not next year though. Unless I win some money. It gets expensive.

Winners, honourable mentions etc

Zaffar Kunial – I can’t wait to get his pamphlet. A fabulous craft talk and a star reading. This guy’s the real deal.

Kei Miller – everyone fell in love with him. The question is, does his twinkly smile remind me more of John Travolta or David Essex?

Kim Addonizio – never mind the 1980s Madonna thing, I want her as my mentor. Besides, I love Madge.

The seating in the Britten Studio – proof that good ergonomic design simply works.

Tony Hoagland – another breath-of-fresh-air American whose reading was sharp, funny, poignant and moving.

A spontaneous Saturday pub lunch – I hope we weren’t too loud … Five Women Poets Get Lairy as Locals Flee

Poet friends Clare and Charlotte, my sorority house pals and the perfect travel companions. Here’s to wine, peanut butter sandwiches, chocolate and ibuprofen!

Blog/ 03/11/2015

What I’ve been up to, and look ahead to Aldeburgh

Just a quick update and a look ahead to the weekend …

I was excited to see the T S Eliot Prize shortlist, especially as it included the excellent debut collection from Sarah Howe – Loop of Jade – which I mini-reviewed on this blog a short while ago. I’ve already signed up for Katy Evans-Bush‘s excellent preview day when we look at all the shortlisted collections as curated by Katy. I went this a couple of years ago and it really enhanced my enjoyment of the readings night. Recommended! I’ve also bought a couple of the books on the list – Mark Doty’s Deep Lane and Don Paterson’s 40 Sonnets. I’m trying not to read any reviews of the books before I talk about them on the The Reading List, in case they influence me, and I’m trying so hard to learn how to review/critique.

Speaking of DP – I’ve booked to go hear him and Liz Berry read at The Print Room on 15th December…actually off the back of hearing Liz read on the podcast Transatlantic Poetry – definitely worth a browse, there’s a wonderful archive of poetry reading there.

Meanwhile I’m three sessions in to New Writing South’s ‘Advanced Poetry’ course with John McCullough and it’s really warming up. With a large number of students I suppose it always takes a while to settle down. But John’s enthusiasm and support is great. He’s giving us a crash course in poets many of us are unfamiliar with and it’s very exciting. I’m keeping notes on all the writing prompts and tips he gives us in the hope they will be useful to dip into. He’s also suggested we create an ‘anthology’ of poems that we like – in magazines, on the web, etc – type them each out and save them in a ring binder under categories that will help us refer to them later, for inspiration. It sounds a bit analogue but I thought this was a fine idea – I so often read a poem in a mag, think ‘ooh this is good’ then have trouble recalling who wrote it or where I saw it – duh! Mind you, these days one needs to be careful not to fall into the ‘I must have subconsciously been influenced by XYZ and yes my own poem came out pretty much word-for-word the same but it was all an innocent mistake!’

Last week we had a whistle-stop tour of rellie-visiting and on the way we stopped at Bradford upon Avon for Dawn Gorman‘s excellent Words & Ears event. What a privilege to be invited to read there – so many good poets in the room, and a lovely atmosphere. Thank you to everyone who came and also to those who bought pamphlets – I think this was my best reading in terms of sales!

Now I’m looking forward to the official launch of Sarah Barnsley’s debut pamphlet The Fire Station next Thursday 12th November at Goldsmiths in London. The Telltale Press massive is, well, massively excited about it, so do come along if you’re able.

And now to Aldeburgh! It’s my first visit to the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and I think it’s going to be a wonderful weekend. I’m sharing a ‘sorority house’ with poet friends Clare Best and Charlotte Gann on the bracing Aldeburgh seafront. If you’re coming too, please say hello if our paths cross!

Month: November 2015