November 2022 – Robin Houghton

Self-sabotage, womansplaining and other poetry joys

I should be preparing for a recording session this afternoon, for a Planet Poetry episode that’s going out on Thursday, but I’m feeling a bit guilty about neglecting this blog. So herewith a quick update. Subheadings are here to help you skip forward (or skip it all if you so wish!)

Reasons/excuses for not writing much poetry right now

Mid-November and everything’s kicking off as regards Christmas – I mean for those of us involved in concerts. I’m personally only singing in one, but my choir-director husband is full on with more ensembles and gigs than I can keep up with. In his wake, here I am helping out by creating posters & programmes, placing adverts, liaising with concert organisers and ticket selling outlets, managing ticket sales and worrying about things like whether the heating will be working at the venue and have I got someone’s up-to-date biog, have I got the right date and time on the posters, managing the music hire and allocation for The Lewes Singers and making sure we have enough tea, coffee and gluten-free biscuits for our rehearsals. Etcetera. I’m also knee-deep in executor stuff, trying to sell my sister’s two properties & dealing with buyers pulling out, estate agents/managing agents/solicitors and endless questions to answer and forms to fill in. Not a great time to be selling a flat, or two. But hey. I’m alive. I’m healthy. Neither my home nor my livelihood is on the line, so it ain’t really stressful, just time consuming. Then again, I’m such a self-saboteur that I’m probably secretly quite happy not to have too much writing time on my hands.

Recent and forthcoming poetry gigs

On Sunday I was at the Eastbourne Poetry Cafe to hear Karen Smith give a reading – Karen is a class act I have to say, she lit up the room. I think I first met Karen on a New Writing South course, then she had a collection Schist published by Smith Doorstop, and that set her on her way. There’s a very nice interview with Karen here. It was also great to meet Christopher Horton and hear him read, someone I’ve not come across before.

I’m looking forward to hearing my Hastings Stanza pal Antony Mair at Needlewriters in Lewes this coming Thursday. Another classy poet who always gives engaging and entertaining readings.

At least I am writing a BIT…

Bill Greenwell’s online workshop has forced me to come up with some new poems, hurray! I will try to send something out this month. I have a few poems ‘out there’, some of which are due back soon I think, so that will be an added impetus. I may even try sending a pamphlet submission to Broken Sleep before that deadline passes.

and reading…

There’s always reading to be done to prepare for Planet Poetry interviews. I read somewhere recently that writing poetry reviews (the traditional kind, for poetry mags) is a good discipline as it makes you really read closely and engage with poetry collections. I have to say that interviewing a poet on a podcast takes all that and then some – thinking up relevant questions to ask, talking with the poet about your reading/understanding of their work, suggesting which poems they read and commenting in a way that listeners may find interesting… it’s not easy, and I often curse myself for sounding like an idiot, a sycophant or a ‘womansplainer’, sometimes all three in the same episode. It’s all good fun though!

Art/ 01/11/2022

A holiday and a vintage submissions spreadsheet

On a holiday

Just back from a short trip to the Netherlands where the weather was spectacularly mild and dry for late October. I can’t recall ever being at the seaside in just a T shirt and jeans on my birthday! And what a seaside.

From the pier at Scheveringen, a big popular resort with miles of gorgeous sandy beach

It was my first visit to the Netherlands (I don’t really count the trips to Hilversum and occasional foray into Amsterdam when I worked for Nike) and I loved the vibe where we stayed in The Hague and the small nearby towns of Delft and Leiden.

a community bookswap — A community bookswap

We couldn’t resist climbing the 300-plus steps to the top of the tower in Delft. Fab views.

View from the tower of the New Church at Delft

And in The Hague, the museums we visited were intimate affairs and not too crowded. I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy the Mauritshuis with its rooms of Rembrandts and Vermeers, but to my surprise I discovered a love of Dutch 17th century portraits, and particularly the still life paintings…

Still Life by Simon Luttichuys — Still Life with Chinese Lidded Jar, Hazelnuts and Orange, Simon Luttichuys (1610 – 1661)

And the Escher museum was fascinating. I only know him for his famous woodcuts and etchings of ‘impossible’ views, but there was so much more to see.

View down into St Peter's in Rome by MC Escher — View down into St Peter’s in Rome by MC Escher

I came home thinking about so many things – the sea (it has a special resonance for the Dutch), unusual viewpoints, shared public spaces (people, trams, bikes… it seems to all work smoothly whereas in this country we have to put up endless barriers, physical and psychological), and how to be still and look closely.

On poetry submissions and record-keeping

A recent sign-up to my mailing list is Shaun Belcher, a plenty-published poet who is just getting back into the subs game – and look what he sent me:

It’s a couple of pages from his poetry submissions record-keeping, back in the early 1990s! He gave me permission to share it with you. Some of the journals listed here are still in existence, some not. Look at the comments, some are pretty funny. Shaun tells me he had an acceptance rate of around 30% – not bad! I think keeping a record of where you send work and what the response is (if any – note the “over a year and no reply – written off”!) is so useful as well as motivational. Thanks, Shaun.

On online workshopping

It’s week 4 of Bill Greenwell’s online workshop and I think I’m just settling in. Everyone there knows one another, and are familiar with the set-up. The first week went well, I jumped in and read everyone’s poems and commented on them all, although there’s no requirement to do so. But I like to be sociable and not appear stand-offish.

But by week 2 I was already feeling overwhelmed – so many poems to read and comment on, and trying to produce a new poem each week was weighing heavy on me. However, I seem to have now set my own pace. I try to read other people’s poems, but not if they’ve already had loads of comments. I sometimes add my comments but I don’t feel bad if I don’t.

Although I could just bring an old unpublished poem for workshopping each week (goodness knows I have a ton) I’ve set myself the task of only bringing new work, as a way of getting myself to write more. Having been away last week, yesterday I allowed myself a bit of leeway and posted an old poem that needs reviving. But overall, the course is proving to be very good for me.

Month: November 2022