Robin Houghton

Angst/ 27/11/2020

– and + and so it goes

A teeny bit of a moan

How’s things with you? Well, I hope. During the first lockdown I was happy to enjoy the garden and revel in the novelty of it all. I trusted (more or less) what we were being told. I admit I’m feeling a bit ground down by it all now.

I’ve just deleted an entire paragraph I wrote here, as I deemed it too negative. All the planning and hoping is what keeps me going I think, but it feels exhausting trying to stay glass-half-full while under what feels like the constant attack of glass-half-empty people. I don’t want to add to the negativity with my own angst, so let’s move on.

So now the positive

My booklet on getting published in UK poetry mags is selling even better than the first edition – wowsers! And THANK YOU for buying it, telling your friends/students/social media contacts all about it.

Planet Poetry, the podcast I co-host with Peter Kenny, is generating some lovely comments. Thank you for that too! Working with Peter on the podcast has been one of the things keeping me positive.

There’s so much I’m enjoying about the course I’m doing, not least of all how it’s opening my eyes to so much great poetry and ideas about poetry that I’d never have encountered otherwise. My bookshelf is bulging. There’s enough reading there to keep me going for the rest of my life, I think.

We’re still planning on having a scaled-down Lewes Singers Christmas concert: venues and singers booked, music distributed. It’ll be intimate. But OH HOW MUCH Nick and I want it to happen, even if we’re only singing to ourselves and a handful of friends and family.

Right, I’m off to a Zoom seminar on the poetics of Don Paterson and Ben Lerner (whose novel 10:04 I absolutely loved.)

Have a good weekend, and here’s to the free life that we took so much for granted. May it return.

Blog/ 03/11/2020

So no fireworks this week then? Hmmm

What a week. That election (can’t bring myself to watch). Another lockdown starts. Planet Poetry Episode 2 coming up. And I’ve just turned 60.

Planet Poetry

Peter Kenny and I were thrilled and touched by the feedback on our podcast first episode. Episode 2 goes live on Thursday, when I’m interviewing Clare Shaw (yeah, baby!) and Peter meets editor of Channel magazine Elizabeth Murtough.

Meanwhile we’re having an editorial meetup tomorrow in Lewes, the day before what would have been Bonfire Night but is now the day before lockdown. The Bonfire Boys and Girls have been told by their societies not to congregate or let off any ‘rookies’, but I can imagine the pubs will still be a tad busy. What are we thinking of? It should make a colourful recording.

Search for Planet Poetry wherever you subscribe to podcasts, or you can listen to episodes here after they are live.

The York MA

I’ve handed in my first assignment! Not that it carries any marks, it’s just a chance for them to make sure we can put one word in front of another, know how NOT to plagiarise and NOT to being a sentence with ‘and’. And I hope I’ve passed.

Whether I’ll make it to another ‘face to face’ seminar this term is anyone’s guess, but it’s looking unlikely. Ah well. More zooming.

Submissions, writing etc

Bad news! I’ve nothing out to mags at the moment. But I do have a dozen or so poems that have been rejected numerous times this year, so I ought to go back to them really, but I’m enjoying reading and writing about real poets at the moment, too much really, to bear looking at my own attempts, but that’s OK. It’ll happen.

Actually I had a poem in The Frogmore Papers recently, and I’ve two poems forthcoming in Prole next month I think, all of which I’m very grateful for, so I shouldn’t be moaning anyway.

The updated ‘Guide’

It’s out! My updated version of ‘A Guide to Getting Published in UK Poetry Magazines’ is here and I’ve sent out the pre-orders. Can I tempt you to a copy? Or someone you know? What else are we doing to do during lockdown except write and send out our poems? It’s a mere £6 including UK postage (£1 extra to send to the EU and £2 extra to North America).

Comps news

No, I’m not reneging on my vow to NOT enter single-poem comps this year. I did waver a bit when it came to the National Poetry Comp deadline, but as someone said on Twitter, having made the long list last year I rather feel lightning won’t strike twice (unless you’re Ian Duhig of course, who actually WON it twice). But that shouldn’t stop you, of course! I’ve been asked to promote the Cafe Writers Competition which closes 30th November (1st prize £1,000) and there are a plethora of magazines with their windows wide open this month, but more about that in a forthcoming post.

Blog/ 22/10/2020

Planet Poetry takes off

A quick time out from poring over Virgil…

The first episode of Planet Poetry is launching this afternoon, stand back! We’re starting with a big hitter – Pascale Petit gives a fascinating interview about her collection Tiger Girl (shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection – results this weekend!) and the themes in her work.

Peter and I would have loved to meet today for a self-congratulatory launch PINT (or is it a PIE?) but that will have to wait for now.

PP is now listed in the main directories so it should be available wherever you get your podcasts. Or just have a listen on our Buzzsprout site – the trailer gives you an idea. Exciting times!

OK, back to the Underworld…

audio/ 17/10/2020

New podcast, plus new updated ‘Guide to getting published in UK poetry mags’

Eeek!

I’m trying to fight a sense of overwhelm at the moment even though it’s all good things that are overwhelming me. Keeping my weekly work commitments going and doing all the reading and cogitating required for my course, which this term is a whistle-stop tour of the English Lit canon (week 3: Virgil & Ovid, Week 4: Chaucer and Dante, etc), plus thinking up a topic for my first essay. Finishing up the updated version of my 2018 ‘Guide’ – see below – I KNOW, why do that now? But there you are, it’s done. And of course the Planet Poetry podcast (see below) about to launch on the apparently auspicious date of October 21. Help!

Recent reading

Although I have the latest issues of Poetry, The Poetry Review and The Frogmore Papers to read, sadly they have been scarcely opened. At the moment I’m tackling Chaucer’s ‘The House of Fame’ – now that’s a great title! – my first bit of Middle English untangling since school, where I think we spent an entire year reading just the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Then there’s Dante’s De Vulgari Eloquentia which I need to be ‘ready to discuss’ on Monday morning. Gawds.

Before the madness really set in I did enjoy Rachel Long‘s My Darling from the Lions (Picador), which is up for the Forward Prize I think. I struggled a bit with Shine, Darling (Oxford Road Books) by Ella Frears, also up for the Forwards and now also on the TS Eliot shortlist, so maybe I should give it another go. Lovely to see Sasha Dugdale on that list too – I haven’t read her latest collection but I really enjoyed Joy (Carcanet 2017).

Updated ‘Guide to getting published in UK Poetry Magazines’

It’s been two years since the first edition, which sold out rather quickly, so I felt the time was right for an update. If you didn’t buy it the first time, or missed out, now’s your chance.

If you do have the 2018 book and are wondering whether its worth getting the new one, I can tell you that much of the content is the same, BUT

I’ve consulted more magazine editors and have included their insights
I’ve updated and expanded the magazine profiles (some have gone, others are in) and the resources section
The layout and organisation is (I think) improved and clearer

The cover price is £6 including UK postage – see this page for all the info about what’s in it, and to buy. Publication date is November 1st but you can preorder now.

If you’d like it sent to an address outside the UK, or would like to order more than one copy, do drop me a line first and I can confirm what the postage will be. Many thanks.

The Podcast!

It’s here… well, the trailer is up, Episode One to follow very soon… Planet Poetry is a wee project from myself and Telltale poet pal Peter Kenny. We’re on a learning curve figuring out stuff like ‘why does Robin sound like she recorded this in the bathroom’ and ‘what the heck is that whining sound and how to we nix it’. But the main thing is, we’ve managed to pin down some fascinating poets for a chat, and that plus Peter’s and my musings on things poetical means we’re hoping each episode is an entertaining 40 mins or so. I hope you are enticed to have the odd listen, or even subscribe!

It’s a bit frightening, putting our voices out there, but we’re having fun doing it (so far!)

Blog/ 24/09/2020

Into the serious reading, plus a podcast brewing

In the last few weeks I’ve been gearing up to the start of my course at York. The logistics are all up in the air, not surprisingly given the many variables and with you-know-what going on. Next week is Week 1, and yesterday I received a swathe of information about changed timetables, reading lists, induction activities etc. I’m still holding back from booking train tickets and accommodation, as we’re told the timetable could still change again at any time. So that’s a bit nerve-wracking. The staff at York are doing a brilliant job pulling together all these courses, communicating with everyone and preparing for an influx of students. All the same, I was a bit dismayed to find all my core seminars have been moved from Wednesday to Monday morning, which means travelling on Sunday, a nightmare with all the engineering works, plus more expensive to stay over on Sunday. Ho hum. I’m still feeling very excited and grateful to be doing it at all.

Luckily I’d started on the reading list back in August, in an attempt to get on the front foot as I have a feeling it’s going to be a heavy intellectual load once weekly seminars begin. So among other things I’ve been reading Virgil’s Aeneid, various essays by Eliot, Walcott, Heaney et al, a wonderful ‘selected’ by Maureen McLane (a poet new to me) and large chunks of the Cambridge Companion to Virgil. Not to mention the real tome-extraordinaire, Don Paterson’s The Poem. Eeek. Stephen Yenser in The Yale Review described it as ‘sometimes baffling, sometimes maddening’, so at least I know its not just me. I have absolutely no idea what Don’s talking about a good deal of the time, but he’s very entertaining, and the sections I’m able to follow are invariably fascinating, so I’m still enjoying it.

I’ve also started reading Derek Walcott’s Omeros, to get into the Epic mood, also because I’ve never really read any Walcott, and it’s proving a good place to start. Here’s an extract on the Poetry Foundation website.

Meanwhile Peter Kenny and I have been beavering away on our forthcoming podcast. We decided to get enough material for several episodes before launching. This is a good thing in that we won’t be panicking a week after launch about having to work like crazy to get episode 2 ( and 3) up. But of course you do think ‘oh we could do such-and-such better’ after the first episode is done. Then again, everything I’ve read about podcasting says that you shouldn’t keep putting off launching, or editing ad infinitum because it’s not perfect. Luckily I have Peter to remind me that it won’t sound like BBC Radio 4 so stop worrying. A few rough edges is all part of the charm and quirkiness. I hope so! We’re interviewing some really interesting poets and editors and so we’re really pleased with the content. Even though we’re both sick to death of listening to our own voices when editing. We haven’t yet got a name for the podcast but as soon as we do, I’ll let you know 🙂

Blog/ 10/09/202009/09/2020

Our National Poetry Library could be axed – please sign the petition

This is no exaggeration. There doesn’t to be much hope for the National Poetry Library on London’s Southbank, since the Chief Exec is apparently determined to move the library out of the building “in order to monetise more of the Southbank Centre’s space”.

First of all, anyone who’s ever visited the Poetry Library knows it’s hardly taking up much space, nor is it in a prime location, tucked away up on the fifth floor of the Royal Festival Hall at the end of a large empty area.

More to the point, the Arts Council has guaranteed an annual grant of more than £18 million for the Southbank Centre every year until 2022, 1.5% of which is for the library (£275,400). This funding is close to the CEO’s annual salary and bonus for the 2018-19 financial year (which is in the published accounts online).

In my book, demanding that the Library justify its presence on a purely monetary basis is capitalism at its most gross and destructive. Should a library make a profit? And a poetry library at that?

The Poetry Library was created by the Arts Council in 1953 and entrusted to the Southbank Centre in 1988 on the basis it was to run as a ‘living collection’ with ‘professional stewardship’. It is a unique resource and whether or not we are members or regular users of it we would all be the poorer were it to be lost.

If you’d like to help then please join me in signing the petition. I don’t generally use this blog for grandstanding, but this is something I really can’t ignore.

Blog/ 09/09/2020

On the updated spreadsheet of poetry mags submissions windows

I need a short title for this spreadsheet-thingy. Maybe an acronym… then again maybe not. Anyhoo, if you’re on my mailing list then a few days ago you should have received the latest version of the UK & Irish Poetry Magazines Submissions Windows. If you’re not on the list, you can sign up here and you’ll receive the latest version by return.

Going from the large number of new subscribers in the last few days, it seems some lovely people have been circulating news of it to their students, course cohorts and poet friends. Thank you! And thanks also for the messages of support. I’m glad it’s useful. The document started out as something I was doing for myself, then I thought why not share it. Having promised to update it quarterly, I confess it has become quite a job, so it’s gratifying to hear that people appreciate it.

Meanwhile I’m thinking about updating and reprinting ‘A guide to getting published in UK poetry magazines’. It’s been two years since the first edition and it sold out rather quickly. I was planning to do it again, but various other things have been on my mind lately! I still stand by the majority of the content – certainly the insights from the magazine editors are all still good and valid, but some things could do with updating and expanding, such as the section of featured magazines. I may also include some ‘case studies’ from poets who are willing to be featured, talking about their experiences with submissions.

Meanwhile, it’s back to my pre-course reading… going ‘back to school’ is very exciting, if a bit daunting. I have to keep telling myself you can do this…

Last week we were in North Yorkshire, funnily enough, although nothing to do with my forthcoming course at York. It was a cold week (despite the sunshine in some of these photos) but it’s a beautiful part of the country. Here are a few pics.

Blog/ 17/08/202019/08/2020

Exciting times

There I was, thinking of applying to do an MA in Creative Writing, when I realised that wasn’t quite what I wanted. Five or six years ago perhaps, it would have been right. But the more I thought about a course centred around a weekly writing workshop, the more my heart sank a little.

I began delving into the detail of my chosen course, and my second-choice too: was there enough reading and studying of other poets’ work, as well as writing? Was I really going to be immersed in poetry from a range of periods, or was the focus on contemporary? Was I going to have to take classes in novel writing, drama or other types of creative writing in which I have no interest? What was/were the experience, specialisations & interests of the tutors? What were research students working on? Was there much/any potential for crossover into the rest of the English department, or opportunity to take contextual modules?

Then I discovered an MA in Poetry and Poetics at York University. No other British university appears to offer such a thing. The more I read about it, the more I felt it was for me. Taking a part-time course at a Uni that’s 300 miles away isn’t a cheap option but it’s doable. When I was looking at Creative Writing, I did consider a distance-learning option elsewhere, but York doesn’t offer that on this particular MA, and actually when I realised that ‘distance learning’ means email and online text-based chat, without any face-to face-video seminars, I wasn’t so keen anyway.

So, the York course was the way to go, and I’m delighted to say I’ve been offered a place. I absolutely know this is going to be a real stimulus to my own writing, as well as being enjoyable in its own right. Now I’ve got a month or so to get my head around it, start organising travel/accommodation and so forth. At least I’ll have plenty of four-hour train journeys to do all that reading!

Blog/ 05/08/202005/08/2020

Advice to a poet, and a curious birthday thing

Q: Who are these poets and what do they (almost) have in common?

poets-born-on-29Oct

(Answers below…)

Advice lines

Recently I came across this delightful and very relevant piece on the Poetry Ireland website:

Advice to a Poet – words of wisdom from Maurice Harmon, critic, biographer, editor, literary historian and poet.

Even the title has an authoritative feel! But this is no harangue. When I read it I’m picturing a kind but firm teacher, one who challenges but encourages at the same time. So many good thinking points (‘All forms of laziness are fatal in poetry’ ….’You must, and will, find your own way of saying’ … ‘Poetry is above all a way of telling the truth’…’Does it make a difference?’) I don’t know about you but I have to read essays like this on a regular basis, to remind myself what the hell I’m supposed to be doing, because it is so, so easy to stray down those lazy byways or lose sight of the reasons I’m trying to write poetry.

Advice comes in many forms of course and sometimes poets don’t even know they’re giving it. One of the things I like about Rattle magazine is the regular poet interview at the back, and I’m just at the section of the Eavan Boland Sourcebook where we get to read interviews with her. There are always gems to be found in these chats, I think; there’s something both voyeuristic and educational about hearing what a poet has to say about their working methods, inspirations and general thoughts about what gives.

On a somewhat drier note, in the spirit of starting my ‘literary education’ from the beginning, I’m also reading Aristotle’s Poetics, translated by Anthony Kenny (Oxford World’s Classics edition 2013), although I’ve learned quite quickly that it’s actually about tragedy and ‘the epic’ rather than lyric poetry, which doesn’t get a look in. Aristotle rather slyly suggests early on that he’s going to come to ‘comedy’ in due course. And then he doesn’t. What a tease.

Calling all poets with late-October birthdays

I’m fast approaching a ‘landmark’ birthday, and I’m reminded that I share it (the date, not the year) with fine poet Sarah Howe (above right). So just for fun I got researching poet birthdays to see who else is in this 29th October club. According to his family at the time, John Keats was born on October 29th, although official records list it as 31st. Killjoys! Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke only just missed out – she was born on 27th October, as was Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath. So, if you, or any poets you know of, were born on October 29th (or let’s say 2 days either side, although that’s not quite the ticket) do let me know and we’ll sort out a club logo or secret handshake or something. (When handshakes are allowed again, of course.)

audio/ 26/07/202027/07/2020

Current reading and other news

Current reading … and a parrot

Camilla’s Bookshop is open again in Eastbourne after an arson attack, and I can report that the parrot is still alive and greeting you as you enter, and the stacks of books are as tightly packed as ever – in fact even more so! Here’s how the poetry section looked before (multiply this ten or even twenty times over and you get a good picture of the shop as a whole!

Now, the stacks on the floor are about 4 foot tall and it’s impossible to bend down and get one’s head into a position to see what’s actually in the stack…however I managed to find two books of interest on the upper shelves. One is John Donne, The Complete English Poems (Penguin Classics) and the other is The Eavan Boland Sourcebook (Carcanet) which I’ve started and already it’s fascinating. Eavan Boland is a poet I’d only heard of but not read, but when she died earlier this year there was such an outpouring of grief from the poetry community that I decided I needed to seek her out.

In addition to this I’m near the end of a lovely book by Jean Sprackland, a memoir in which she retraces her steps through the graveyards and cemeteries she’s known over the years.

Feature on the Frogmore blog

And speaking of The Frogmore Papers, here’s a lovely post on their blog about the sad demise of listings mag Viva Lewes. The April issue was due to feature four of the members of the Needlewriters Collective (Jeremy Page, Charlotte Gann, Janet Sutherland and myself) but it never went to print. But the feature is reproduced here, like a sort of echo of what almost happened.

‘Ellipsis’ on Radio Reverb

Another lovely thing: fine poet and Brighton Reverb Radio presenter Jackie Wills featured one of my poems on the Reverb Literature Hour the other week. It was such a treat to hear her read the poem; I don’t think I’ve heard anyone read a poem of mine before. And her analysis of it was wonderful. I was very touched. With Jackie’s permission I’m posting it here:

Author: Robin Houghton