Month: December 2022

Festive reading and giving

The concerts are over – Sunday’s Lewes Singers event was a major thrill, and it was lovely and amazing to see Claire Booker there – of all my local poet friends, none has ever been interested in coming to hear beautiful choral singing, so Claire is a real one-off!

As the year closes out I’m reminding myself all the good things – as well as the music, there’s Planet Poetry which has just has just signed off for a wee break, although we’re back in January with Peter interviewing Mimi Khalvati. I’m really looking forward to it, especially as Peter and Mimi knew each other back in the day.

On the reading front, I’m strolling at quite a leisurely pace through a novel (yes I do read them sometimes!) called Drive your plow over the bones of the dead by Polish author Olga Tokarczuk. It’s quirky, and although there are a couple of (so far) unsolved murders, it’s hardly a page-turner. But however it turns out, it’s worth reading for the title alone. This book was a ‘secret Santa’ gift from my lovely friend Fiona at a recent get-together. We’ve been friends since nursery school – how precious is that?

In the post yesterday came the long-awaited new edition of The Dark Horse. The front cover somewhat dauntingly announces it’s a ‘Festschrift for Douglas Dunn – Poems, Affections and Close Readings’, teamed with ‘MacDiarmid at 100’. Despite my initial reservations I soon found myself enjoying very much the various recollections and essays about both of these (clearly eminent, but in different ways) poets. I’ve already been persuaded to order a copy of Dunn’s Elegies. And already I’ve spotted some lovely poems by Christopher Reid and Marco Fazzini, the former’s ‘Breaking or Losing’ I read to my (non-poet) husband who found it very moving. I like the way The Dark Horse is both a serious magazine and also warm and real – heavyweight contributions abound, but it’s never overly academic or esoteric.

Now, Live Canon do a huge amount for poetry. I know I’m a tad biased, as they published my pamphlet Why? And other Questions.  But even before then I was always admiring of their outreach work and their use of actors to bring live readings of classic poetry to a wider audience. During the pandemic they staged weekly readings via Zoom which attracted big audiences, with director Helen Eastman always creating such a warm and easy-going atmosphere.

As well as running regular competitions for adults, Live Canon also has an annual poetry competition for children. Considering the state of poetry in British schools (mostly non-existent, or taught to a tin-eared syllabus), opportunities such as these are crucial to help bring younger generations to a love of reading and writing poetry. Outside of the Poetry Society, I don’t know of any other organisation doing this much for children’s poetry on a national scale. You can probably guess where this is going. Live Canon are fundraising for their Children’s Poetry Competition and every little bit they can raise will help towards the costs of promoting the competition in schools, staging winners’ readings, producing the prize-winning anthology, paying judges etc. If you feel moved to give something you can so so here, where there’s more about the competition. I was also impressed with some of the comments of donors, about how it has given children the confidence to write and persevere with poetry.

So dear readers, I wish you a very Happy Christmas to you and yours, and if you can get to listen to (or better still, sing) any live carols this year I can highly recommend it! xx

 

 

 

Subs, pods and mags

It’s been a busy couple of weeks but I’ve allowed myself time off to decorate the Christmas tree, which is always a joy. Next job: Christmas cards (yes, we still enjoy sending – and receiving – them! One analogue tradition I can’t bring myself to give up…)

I did manage to get a pamphlet submission together in time to send to Broken Sleep. Who knows if it’s going to be up Aaron Kent’s strasse. I enjoyed compiling it though – 20 – 25 poems is a sweet collection length in my mind.  Meanwhile I’ve been geed up by a couple of acceptances this week, one from Mark Antony Owen’s After... due to go live in January, an elphrastic poem I wrote inspired by a painting by David Hockney from his ‘The Arrival of Spring, Normandy 2020’ (see above).  Elsewhere I’ve still got around a dozen poems that have been out for between 3 and 7 months. The Christmas/New Year break is traditionally a time for rejections to come trickling in, as editors attack the slush pile after too many mince pies. So let’s see.

Bill Greenwell’s workshop turned out to be a bit of a ‘curate’s egg’ for me…  it generated half a dozen new poems, at least three of which have legs. Bill’s feedback was very useful indeed; he has such a depth of experience and insight. On the other hand I didn’t actually finish the 9 weeks, sloping off under pressure of work and other distractions after 6. And to be honest I was overwhelmed with all the poems and comments being posted and just couldn’t keep up. I don’t think the online workshop format is for me (yes, I know I’ve said this before –  but do I ever learn?)

So Peter and I managed to get the latest episode of Planet Poetry edited and up last Thursday, featuring Peter’s interview with Sarah Barnsley on her first full collection The Thoughts. It’s an excellent book, in fact it’s one of my recommendations in the forthcoming edition of Poetry News. The poddy is going well. Now all we need are <unsubtle-hint> a few kind donations to help us pay the costs of the recording and hosting platforms! </unsubtle-hint> We were especially chuffed to hear that Kim Moore (who we interviewed in our Season 3 opener recently) won the Forward Prize! We bask in the reflected glory! Our Christmas episode is coming up on December 15th, featuring my interview with Matthew Stewart plus party hats, carols and bloopers. Don’t miss it!!

Meanwhile I’ve just sent out the updated spreadsheet of poetry magazine windows, and although I’ve lost patience with a few of the mags that seem to be permanently closed and/or never updated, there are some interesting additions. Even one journal that’s finally open for poetry after I took it off the list some time ago because it was never open and didn’t respond to queries. Perhaps poetry mags never die, they just pass out for a while (to nick a line from Prole).

So it’s wall-to-wall concerts at the moment. Choirs seem to be tackling an interesting range of material this year, which means I don’t have to sit though any renditions of ‘For unto WUSS a child is born’.  In fact I’m just off to Brighton again to hear one of Nick’s choirs perform. Yes, even a rail replacement bus service doesn’t put me off. It must be love!