Month: January 2016

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Roundup: five popular posts from the last year

screenshot of this blog

One of the fascinating things about blog stats is seeing which posts take off over time and just seem to keep attracting visits. It doesn’t always coincide with the effort it took to write the bloomin’ thing, nor my own expectations!

Looking at 2015, here are five of the most popular posts, in case you missed them and/or just FYI.

  1. Of all the reviews I’ve written, this short review of Stephen Bone’s pamphlet In the Cinema just keeps bringing in the eyeballs. It was actually published in December 2014, but still outdid almost everything else in 2015.
  2. It’s lovely in the midlands… as evidenced by the sheer number of peeps reading my Leicestershire Regional Focus (a feature I’m planning to resurrect, by the way.)
  3. Poetry titles – what the $@*!? It seems to be a perennial topic of discussion, seeing the number of visits this piece continues to get – The Naming Game
  4. I didn’t think this was going to be controversial, but I actually got a bit of flak for this one – Should poems be read from memory? (I was only asking!)
  5. Gone but not forgotten … these were my post-event thoughts after a visit to the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. May a phoenix rise from the ashes!

 

Angst/

The Reading List, winding up

I'm nobody, who are you?

First: general ‘how I’m feeling’ stuff, feel free to skip down if you’re short of time

Apologies for the silence these last few days. The usual self-employed person’s dilemma of feeling like rubbish and simultaneously wanting to stay on top of work and not let people down.

Yesterday I had to leave early from John McCullough’s poetry workshop at New Writing South, for fear of irritating everyone with my endless coughing. Once home, I went to bed for two hours. And being a fast day was good, especially the no-alcohol bit. So the upshot is that I’m feeling much improved today (but not well enough to go to choir rehearsal tonight.)

The Reading List

My mini-review series ‘The Reading List’ has come to an end. It was just SO 2015! There are plenty of excellent other blogs featuring reviews, and looking at the stats for this site I could see that the initial interest in mine had levelled out. However, I’d like to assure you I’m still reading, and now and then I may well be moved to blog about individual poetry collections.

What I’ve enjoyed lately: Mark Doty’s Deep Lane, full of pathos, warmth and even farce – there’s a lovely tale of the narrator locking himself out of his house not once, but twice, and having to clamber through the window ‘which makes me think / this was what it was like to be born: / awkward, too big for the passageway…’ (‘Spent’).

I’m meandering my way through Mark Ford’s essays on poets, as gathered in This Dialogue of One (Eyewear). They are thought provoking, well researched and accessible (but not so ‘accessible’ that I don’t feel I’m being educated!) For example, this morning I read about the controversy surrounding the interpretation of Emily Dickinson’s work and how her editors disagreed about how it should be presented – as pure manuscript, or as ‘visual productions’. It made me think about her poems quite differently. If she’d been around today I think she would have wholeheartedly embraced everything from graffiti to video and sculpture in the course of expressing herself. Probably not a performance poet though, given her reserve. But a kindred spirit to Banksy, perhaps?

News of poetry rejections, submissions etc

Last week I spent a few days going over the poems I’ve been gathering for a next pamphlet. I haven’t entered the Poetry Business pamphlet comp for a few years now (since my over-confident days!), because I feel it’s the ‘big one’ as regards pamphlet comps, and the odds of winning are low. Also, I don’t feel I’ve had a strong enough submission, the time hasn’t been right, etc. But a funny thing happened as I was reading and ordering this latest group: they seemed quite good. So I thought I’d just do it, and enter. I ruthlessly ditched a couple that seemed weaker, although I like them. I’d also resurrected a poem that first saw light of day in The Interpreter’s House about 4 years ago, but that I’d been working on to improve since. In the end I had 21 poems. I wasn’t sure about the title, but I never am. Anyway, it’s sent now. Never to be thought about again, until I can try it somewhere else!

Are you currently sending out pamphlet submissions? What’s your feeling about them? I once heard a poet talking about how she wouldn’t send out her MS unless she’d first paid a professional poet to edit it. Is that usual? I just kind of naively thought you put it together yourself, did your best to order the poems, eliminate any stupid errors, and … send. And if someone liked it, you then worked with the publisher/editor to hone things up. Do share your own experience of this, I’d love to know.

Meanwhile I received yet another rejection last night, to add to the one last week. Talking about kicking a sick poet when she’s down. Still, not quite as bad as getting a £100 speeding fine three days before Christmas – Top of the Season to you, DVLA! Still, as regards the rejections (I prefer ‘DECLINED’ as a folder name) I console myself with the fact that several of the re*****d poems had been out so long I’ve since revised (and hopefully improved) them. We shall see, when I try them elsewhere. On the good news front, Charles Johnson of Obsessed with Pipework has found space for my 2 poems in the February issue, so I won’t have to wait until May to see them in print and settled down.

And MORE good news – Telltale Press has at last been accepted by the Poetry Library as a legitimate press, which means we will have a listing on their website and that all our forthcoming pamphlets will be available there. Another small but significant sign of recognition, and gratefully received.

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Ronnie-O Oh Oh!

If you’ve been at a reading I’ve given you may have heard the snooker poem… it’s a bit of fun, my homage to snooker genius Ronnie O’Sullivan. I’m not sure what it adds to the ‘after Christopher Smart’ oevre, but I hope there’s entertainment value to it. It helps to know a wee bit about Ronnie, and about snooker (147 is the maximum you can score, by potting all 15 red balls, the black 15 times, and then all the colours in order.)

At the weekend I was watching Ronnie playing in the Masters and was overcome by the need to get the poem down on video. I’d had a glass of wine at the time and couldn’t recite the whole thing in one take, and the lighting and editing are a bit rough but HEY – it gets better as it goes along, so hang in there… maybe I’ll re-do it more slickly one of these days!

Angst/

Post-TS Eliot Prize post, and a tale of two gaffes

TS Eliot Prize shortlisted poets 2016

The first two and a half weeks of January have been a bit of a poetry whirl (in the sense of lots of events) and although I’m now happy I’m a bit exhausted, not to mention in need of a reality-check catchup with, er, work stuff.

Last week was the excitement of the T S Eliot Prize readings (and a rather cold car journey there and back since the heating packed up.) Some excellent readings and a super atmosphere – I won’t review it here but there are plenty of interesting accounts of the evening, and photos – for example on Peter Kenny’s blog and Hilaire’s blog.

Don Paterson at the TS Eliot Prize readings

Then the very next day I hauled my smart-ish self up to London again, this time to the V & A for the T S Eliot prize giving ceremony. I won’t lie to you, this was daunting. I looked around and knew virtually nobody, at least, nobody who would greet me as someone they knew. Even the lovely folks from the Poetry Society, who I thought did know me, were a bit vague when I said hello in the queue to get in, and didn’t give off the ‘come chat to us’ vibe. I was very grateful to Anne-Marie Fyfe, who I did approach and who greeted me warmly by name. (It always impresses me when people who encounter hundreds of people every week are able to remember names of those they’ve maybe only met once or twice, with apparent ease. I’ve seen Anne-Marie do this at the Troubadour and it’s awe-inspiring. ) Anne-Marie reassured me that many of the folks in the room were friends, family and publishers of the shortlisted poets, and therefore unlikely to be familiar anyway. Nonetheless it was a strange feeling to be so at sea among what was undoubtedly a poetry circle to which I don’t have (and probably never will have) the key.

Confession time: I managed to snatch a few photos, and was standing next to Don Paterson (help!) when the winner was announced, hoping to look nonchalant and like someone who wasn’t a gatecrasher. Actually I was thrilled it was Sarah Howe, for several reasons –

  1. I absolutely loved Loop of Jade
  2. she seems such a nice person, and
  3. it saved me from the embarrassment of turning to DP and giving him a big hug. I still managed to babble something to him but I think it was brief and unmemorable, so only a minor gaffe. Phew!

sarah howe wins TS Eliot prize 2016

Meanwhile, back in the safety of my familiar milieu…  Telltale Press had a snack-fuelled AGM last week at Peter’s house and now have plans for the rest of the year and beyond. I’m very grateful to be a part of such a supportive and enthusiastic group of poets. Hurrah!

And latest submissions news is that I decided rather hurriedly to throw out some poems to competitions. One of them was too hurried – after paying £5 to enter the Magma comp, like an idiot I found 3 typos and at least two other things I needed to improve. What’s the matter with me? Could I not have been a bit more careful? So that’s £5 wasted. ACK! Meanwhile, no new or acceptances or declines. So business as usual for now! Now back to work.

 

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Three small press poetry competition deadlines coming up

Poetry comps

Ah! Poetry competitions. Love ’em, hate ’em? It helps when you win something occasionally, admit it. Sadly, the stats are against us, but would we have it any other way? Who wants to be a winner if everyone else is too?

And on the subject of probability, I just read that the British state lottery, or Lotto, increased the number of balls from 49 to 59 three months ago. More balls! More chances to win!? Er, no. In fact it lengthened the odds of winning the jackpot from 14 million to one to 45 million to one. Which means anyone entering is 3,750 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to win the big one. What a swizz! Not that I’m bothered, because I don’t play. No sirree! I put my hard earned spare change into POETRY COMPETITIONS. Then again, of course I’m very grateful that others do play the Lotto, because they’re helping to fund the arts, heritage, sport and numerous other projects that our taxes no longer support.

The fact is that many small publishers run comps in order to stay alive, and while there are punters willing to enter them, why not? Personally, all I ask from competition organisers is they spend an equal amount of time publicising the winners as they do persuading people to enter. It seems only fair, yet it’s not always what happens. For my own part, I do enter comps, but only when I think I’ve got a competition-style poem that’s ready. The fees do add up, and after a while I feel a bit guilty about it. Then again I’ve had a bit of luck with comps in the past, for which I’m very grateful. Hence the love-hate-can’t decide attitude.

Anyway, I wanted to give a shout out to to three esteemed small poetry magazines and their current competitions, just in case you weren’t aware of them. It’s tough going when there are other, bigger or more established comps happening at the same time.

If you have a competition-winning poem or three in your knapsack, please consider sliding them their way.

The Interpreter’s House 2015 Poetry Competition
Closing: January 30th 2016
Judge: Jonathan Edwards
Prize money: £500 / £150 / £100
plus Seven Highly Commended
Entry Fee: £4 for single poems, £10 for three

Prole Laureate (who wouldn’t want a title like that?)
Closing:  January 31st 2016
Judge: Kate O’Shea
Prize money: £200, 2 x runner up prizes of £50
Entry fee: £3 for first entry, £2 for any subsequent entries

Brittle Star poetry competition
Closing:  1st March 2016
Judges: George Szirtes & Jacqueline Gabbitas
Prize money: £250, £50, £25
Entry fee: 1st poem £4.50 then £3.50 for any subsequent entries

Someone’s got to win, and it could be you – or better still, me – tee hee. Good luck!

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January – ugh! Thank goodness for poetry events…

Royal Festival Hall

As the wind howls outside and the next five-day block of rain chunters towards our heads, I’m feeling very grateful for some poetry relief this dark month.

Last Thursday we got things going at the Poetry Cafe in London, for the first Telltale Press & Friends reading of 2016. It was super to hear Faber poet Jack Underwood perform a set that included poems from his collection Happiness which I loved reading, plus some great new material. He is so original and interesting, as well as being a thoroughly nice chap. And two other thoroughly nice chaps also read – Telltale’s own Peter Kenny and Siegfried Baber. Great to see Sieg settling into a lovely reading style. (I got some nice footage of PK and Jack on my new teensy video cam, and I can see myself getting a lot of mileage from it this year.) Our fourth reader was Kitty Coles, who’s very widely published but relatively undiscovered. A talent worth looking out for – you’ve probably already seen her work in various magazines.

Then this coming Thursday it’s the first Needlewriters event of the year, in my old home town of Lewes, featuring the lovely, talented and hard-working poet Clare Best, debuting yet another of her many projects, this time a collaboration with David Pullan. Really looking forward to that. Also on the bill is Tara Gould, and in the second half a tribute to the late Irving Weinman. Irving was a founder member of the Needlewriters and was working on his eighth novel when he died aged 78 in October.

Tomorrow of course is the Big One – the TS Eliot Prize readings at London’s South Bank. It gets more glittery and sold out every year. Can’t wait to see and hear the mighty DP, whose 40 Sonnets has just won the Costa poetry prize, and my newest hero Sarah Howe reading from the wonderful Loop of Jade (here’s my short review.)

Peter Kenny and I have second row seats this year, so we’ll be up close and personal with the poets reading. Not as up close as I’ll be the following evening though, at the award ceremony. Oh yes, Robin shall go to the ball!

 

 

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Some inspirational writing & poetry sites to enjoy in 2016

Awesome literary websites

Happy New Year, and welcome to the rest of your life. May it be a long, healthy and happy one.

Had a nice Christmas? Glad it’s over now? It’s OK to answer ‘yes’ to both, by the way.

I’m in a contemplative mood. It’s great to look out of the window and see just one car parked on the street where most days of the year they are nose-to-tail. It’s great to feel a great relaxing downpull like one of those huge blow-up Santas deflating.

Let’s look forward, not back. I thought I’d share a few of the blogs & online resources I’ve been enjoying, some of them old favourites and others relatively recent finds.

These are all sites I go back to regularly for insights, inspiration, learning and entertainment.

If you enjoy this post, please share it with your social media contacts and writer friends. These are excellent sites and many run on nothing much more than love and a prayer. Many thanks.

Literary Hub

I subscribe to the LitHub Daily, a brief email with one-line links to thought-provoking articles on sundry (brilliant) websites. So I guess you’d call Literary Hub an aggregator site of curated material. Like the other sites I mention here it’s much more than just a load of links – the true value of this type of site lies in the quality of the curation and presentation of content, the design and ordering of material to give the reader a seamless and exciting way in and through.

Their description: Literary Hub is an organizing principle in the service of literary culture, a single, trusted, daily source for all the news, ideas and richness of contemporary literary life.

Sample post: The Unheralded Monk who Turned his Small Town into a Center of Publishing – Martin Luther, Revolutionary Disruptor and Start-up Success Story

Transatlantic Poetry

Once a month, live poetry reading podcasts which you can then access afterwards at any time. Usually one US poet and one UK, reading from the intimacy of their sitting room. There are a number of different hosts doing the introductions, including Anglo-American poet Robert Peake and Timothy Green, editor of Rattle (my current US magazine du choix). A simple idea, well executed.

Their description: Transatlantic Poetry is a global poetry movement bringing some of the most exciting poets from the US, UK, Europe and beyond together for live online readings and conversations.

Sample podcast: Danez Smith and Liz Berry, September 2015

Divedapper

I came across this site quite recently – transcriptions of interviews with poets by Kaveh Akbar, the brains behind Divedapper (yes, it’s actually a bird – you have to visit the site to find out more.) Kaveh has a nice way of bringing out the candour in his subjects. I suppose the poets are all or mostly US-based, as I wasn’t familiar with most of the names, so that’s interesting too as an interview often makes me want to read more of a poet’s work.

Official site description: a new project devoted exclusively to featuring interviews with major voices in contemporary poetry. It has no affiliation with any institution, academic or literary or otherwise.

Sample post: Interview with Sharon Olds– ‘I write as much crap as anyone.’

Poetry Foundation

I know, I know – a longstanding (nay, towering) figure on the poetry scene, but impossible to leave out. There’s so much on this site that’s good, it’s easy to forget and think of it as ‘just’ the website for Poetry magazine. Listen to iconic poets reading their work, browse poems by title, poet, even season…read articles, find teaching resources (if that’s what you’re looking for) and explore the Foundation’s many initiatives.

Their description: The Poetry Foundation is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience.

Sample: Winter poems

Jacket2

I’ve hardly scratched the surface of this rich site, but I’ve enjoyed listening to some of their podcasts in which poets gather for close readings of featured work, or interview poets and ‘poetry people’.  There are reviews, features and in-depth essays … it looks like an awesome resource.

Their description: Jacket2 offers commentary on modern and contemporary poetry and poetics. We publish articles, reviews, interviews, discussions and collaborative responses, archival documents, podcasts, and descriptions of poetry symposia and projects.

Sample podcast: Roundtable analysis of James Schuyler’s poem ‘February’, featuring the poet reading his work.

Entropy

It’s tough to describe this site adequately, plus it’s new to me to I’m only finding out as I go along. Its range is wide – from poetry to games. All I can say is DO take a look.

Their description: CCM-Entropy is the result of newly merged Civil Coping Mechanisms and Entropy, an independent literature community and portal that includes CCM: publisher & promoter of kick-ass independent literature, Entropy: a magazine and community of contributors that publishes diverse literary and non-literary content, and Enclave: a community blog that exists as an open and central space for contributors representing different literary communities, corners, and aesthetics to express themselves openly, urgently.

Sample post: Dear Blank Space: A Literacy Narrative by Jennifer S Cheng

Brain Pickings

Oh I know I’ve talked about this site before, but it continues to deliver wonderful content so I’ll say it again – it’s an amazing compendium of fine writing, insights, stories and inspiration, masterminded by Maria Popova. Subscribe to the ‘free weekly interestingness digest’ and you won’t be disappointed.

Site description by Maria: Brain Pickings is my one-woman labor of love — a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why. Mostly, it’s a record of my own becoming as a person — intellectually, creatively, spiritually — and an inquiry into how to live and what it means to lead a good life. Founded in 2006 as a weekly email that went out to seven friends and eventually brought online, the site was included in the Library of Congress permanent web archive in 2012.

Sample post:  Ursula K. Le Guin on the Sacredness of Public Libraries