Month: June 2016

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Some poetry readings etc in next two weeks…

Eastbourne beach from south cliff

Just a quick shout out for some poetry readings & events coming up in the next couple of weeks … we’re always being told how people turn to poetry in times of trouble, so perhaps we need to start promoting poetry readings as an antidote to brexit woes. I already foresee a tranche of poems on brexit-related themes starting to appear in magazines from the autumn… But let’s not wish the summer away. I’m trying to see the sunshine through those dark trees.

Anyway, starting with this evening, 29th June – I’m pleased and proud to have been invited by Abegail Morley to be a guest reader at the launch of her Nine Arches collection, The Skin Diary, alongside Jeremy Page and Mara Bergman. It’s taking place at The Pitcher & Piano in Tunbridge Wells at 7pm – free entry!

Tomorrow evening 30th June I’m in Eastbourne talking to the New Eastbourne Writers about best ways to use Twitter, and hopefully launching the follow up to my ‘How to Use Twitter’ ebook. (I know, not a reading as such but a writers’ event. If you happen to be based in this area and are looking for a writers’ group to join then do come along.)

Next Thursday 7th June at 7pm it’s Telltale Press & Friends at the Poetry Cafe in London – readers are Sarah Barnsley, Siegfried Baber, NEW Telltale poet Jess Mookherjee – more on her very soon – and special guest John McCullough who will be reading from his new collection Spacecraft (Penned in the Margins). These events are always fantastic so do come and meet the Telltales if you can.

On Friday 8th July at 7.45pm at The Writers’ Place in Brighton I’m excited to be reading at ‘New Writing South presents’ alongside Michaela Ridgway and Akila Richards. Tickets are £6 and there’s also an open mic.

And then on Saturday 9th July at 6pm I’ll be joining fellow members of the Hastings Poetry Stanza in the The Bookkeeper bookshop in St Leonards, for an eight-hander reading billed as ‘Beside the Seaside’. It’s part of the St Leonards Festival, the poetry elements of which have been co-ordinated by our intrepid and resourceful leader, Antony Mair.

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What I’ve been reading… Kei Miller’s ‘Cartographer’

The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion

At the library I recently picked up Kei Miller’s The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion (Carcanet 2014), and it proved to be one of those books you start reading and can’t put down till you get to the end.

I’ve folded back so many corners of pages, to mark the poems I loved. At the heart of the book is a dialogue between a foreign cartographer intent on making a precise map of Jamaica (‘what I do is science’), and a ‘rastaman’ who explains the impossibility of it and distrusts the reasons for it –

the mapmaker’s work is to make visible
all them things that shoulda never exist in the first place
like the conquests of pirates, like borders,
like the viral spread of governments

(‘ii. in which the rastaman disagrees’)

The voices of the protagonists reveal the clash not just of cultures but of ways of seeing and thinking about our existence. Interwoven throughout are the stories behind place-names, the characters and history that has shaped the island, answers to the map-maker’s questions. A white mistress who ordered the road to her property be ‘laid in its serpentine way’ so that she never had to look at her black neighbour’s property which was bigger than her husband’s. A house given a fancy French name ‘Chateau Vert’ becomes corrupted to Shotover, and how the story now goes that the owner’s job was to shoot at runaway slaves, which shows that ‘when victims live long enough they get their say in history’ (‘Place Name, Shotover’).

The cartographer moves from his position of objectivity to wondering about Zion that the rastaman speaks of, and the question ‘how does one map a place / that is not quite a place?/ How does one draw / towards the heart?’ (xxi.)

So many of the poems are beautifully self-contained and yet part of the whole. I had so many “DAMN! I WISH I’D WRITTEN THAT” moments. Wonderful lyricism and clever, clever use of language, rhythm and rhyme…

…a hymn then
not to birds but to words
which themselves feel
like feather and wing

and light, as if it were
on the delicacy of
such sweet syllables
that flocks take flight.

(‘Hymn to the Birds’)

I can see why this book won the Forward Prize for best first collection in 2014. If you’ve read it, tell me if you agree. If not, you should be able to get it in your local library (at the moment that is, until all the money is pulled entirely from public services, and libraries, museums, art galleries, parks, free healthcare and free anything all become things of the past.) I started writing this post as a way of taking my mind off how sad and angry I’m feeling today, and how ashamed I am of my country, and how sad I am to feel so ashamed. But I couldn’t stop it all welling up at the end. Sorry.

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Tears in the Fence: a no-tears rejection

Tears in the Fence

A few months ago I sent some poems to David Caddy at Tears in the Fence. Although he didn’t take any of them for the magazine, his reply was prompt and very civilised, so much so that it didn’t feel like a standard rejection. Polite, interested, business-like, a suggestion that I send again, not a hint of condescension.

Yes, he invited me to buy a copy of the magazine (or subscribe), but not in such a way that I was felt under pressure, or even scolded in some way. I had read a copy of the magazine, know some people who’ve been published there, and have a reasonable idea of its style. I don’t think my work I was a hundred miles away.

What happened was that I did indeed subscribe, and the Spring issue was soon through my letterbox. It’s small but dense, and one of those mags that pulls you in for a big read rather than inviting a flick-through. Perhaps one of the nicest surprises is that there are many names I’m not familiar with. One that stood out for me was Cherry Smyth, with her poem ‘Connemara Swim Diary, August 2015’. The biog in the back of the mag, and a subsequent dig, tells me that Cherry has published three poetry collections and a novel. Great to have her on my radar.

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‘The future of poetry’ – Coffee House Poetry at the Troubadour

Troubadour Coffee House Poetry 6-6-16

So, to the Troubadour last night for poetry, discussions about poetry and the big bad world of digital – a ‘colloquy’ of five poets from diverse backgrounds. In the first half we had readings from Carrie Etter, Hannah Lowe, Gregory Leadbetter and Richard Price, and in the second they formed a round table chaired by C J Dallat.

I’ve not been to a Troubadour colloquy before – it wasn’t as packed as the themed nights can be, but then again it was up against several other events including the launch across town of Luke Kennard’s Cain (Penned in the Margins).

The format was a good balance – very different poets, none of whom I’d heard read before (except Hannah Lowe, but I’m not sure if I’d seen her live or on video). I particularly enjoyed Carrie’s short but electrically charged set. When I said hello to her in the interval it turned out she reads this blog (thanks, Carrie!) …it was also a pleasure to meet Richard Price and to thank him for recently selecting my poem ‘The Houses are Coming’ for Poetry News (yeah, just thought I’d get that in – I’m learning!)

So what’s the future of poetry, in a time when the internet and technology such as print-on-demand put publication in the reach of just about anyone?

There was some agreement that print publication still carries more kudos than online, with Cahal Dallat even suggesting that magazines have gotten so big and so numerous that maybe they’re just publishing everything they’re sent, with no sense of gatekeeping. (Although I wonder if he hasn’t had to go through the magazines submissions process recently?!)

Richard Price bemoaned the fact that digital just isn’t fulfilling its potential yet, and that as a creative person he wants to do more stuff differently. It’s true that just replicating online what print does perfectly well does seem to be the slightly disappointing standard at the moment.

Cahal then brought up the idea of links within digital text (or lack of). I have to agree with him, but sadly the positioning of links within (for example) news stories was hijacked a while back by advertisers who thought it was a jolly way to insert more ‘information’ (ie ads) in a piece. It did remind me of a project I did for my Digital Media MA sixteen years ago, which was an alternative website for The Royal Pavilion in which internal hyperlinking allowed the viewer to explore the building and its history in a non-linear fashion. Typical media degree stuff and probably not commercial. But maybe I need to get my poetry thinking cap on and be more creative in this way. Then again I’m sure it’s already happening and that digital creativity has gone way beyond throwing in a bit of video or animation. Someone did mention hyperreality but let’s not go down the whole Baudrillard road now although this is quite an entertaining video if you’re curious (but do not watch if you are of a nervous disposition!)

One thing I was burning to say but missed my chance (and then went off the boil) was that I don’t think it’s helpful to characterise young people as ‘digital natives’ and somehow innately tech-capable, which was suggested at one point. The flip side of this theory is that anyone who didn’t grow up with mobiles and touch screens is incapable of getting their heads around anything digital. I know from my work with people my age and thereabouts (sometimes a lot younger) that there is a ton of defeatism when it comes to tech. Completely intelligent and utterly capable people throw up their hands when it comes to mobile phones, computers not doing what they expect or any mention of Snapchat. But kids! They can do it their sleep! Oh yeah?

Actually, I’ve heard my husband say MANY times how surprised he is that his sixth form students can be clueless when it comes to technology – they lack basic digital skills such as how to search for information online or how to assess what they do find. They don’t know how things work. At all. But what young people have is a lack of fear. They don’t fear tech and they don’t fear gadgets, and they don’t fear the consequences of messing about with tech. They have the attitude ‘I don’t know how to do this but I’ll fiddle around until I find a way’ – something that is as rare as rare can be in your average over-40-year-old. I really think that fear is the key inhibitor to our full exploitation of new technologies, not age. Please can we pass this idea on, and thereby liberate us oldsters once and for all from the shackles of ‘we’re not digital natives so it’s harder for us’ ? Thanks.

Oh dear, not having taken notes last night I seem to have turned this post around into a bit of a rant rather than recording faithfully what the panel came up with… sorry.  But it was genuinely stimulating and the audience was lively. Great stuff.

Big thanks as ever to Anne-Marie Fyfe for organising these Coffee House Poetry nights, they are gems.

A shame that Southern Rail are still keeping up their go-slow, which meant I didn’t get to my bed before 1am. The price to pay for living by the sea…

 

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Some poetry magazine submissions windows now open

windows-scales-weights

For behold! Some windows are now opening, namely…

Agenda – opens today, June 1st – with the promise of a 12 week turnaround time. Submit by email only.

Bare Fiction – submit now for Issue 8, deadline 10th July.

Popshot – is announcing its theme for the next issue tomorrow (June 2nd)

Long Poem Magazine – opens today for the whole of June.

The Interpreter’s House – open for the month of June. Submit by email or post.

Good luck, and don’t forget to check the guidelines as they vary from magazine to magazine.

Most editors suggest you read the mags first before submitting (not unreasonably!) Although it can get expensive you could always take out subscriptions on a rota basis, which is what I do – subscribe to, say, 3 mags per year but change to 3 different ones when the subscription period is up. It seems a fair way of spreading around limited funds and also gives you a good overview of the different styles of magazine. It also exposes you to poets and (reviews of) collections you might not otherwise encounter.