Author: Robin Houghton

Angst/

A chilled start to the year

January 15th and I’m just getting round to my first post of the year, something that would have concerned me a bit in the past but for the new decade I’m surprisingly chilled. A new decade. Hmmm. Is it me, or has it passed rather under the radar this year? I think I remember the start of the 80s in terms of pop music if nothing else. “Pop go the seventies!” You have to put that into context: there were only 3 TV channels in those days, no web, no TV on demand, no mobile phones etc etc. So Who Was Number One in the Hit Parade was pretty key. BUT I have no time for all those click-bait/lazy media articles about how ‘boring’ the Olde Days were. I’m probably preaching to the converted, so moving on…

Currently reading

I have a lovely pile of books to read and so far I’ve absolutely loved Hubert Moore’s The Feeding Station (Shoestring Press) which I’ve reviewed for an upcoming issue of The Frogmore Papers. Moore is a good example of a poet who’s been writing for some time and isn’t part of the social media merry-go-round, nor the champing-at-the-bit-for-readings crowd. I’m sorry to say I’d not heard of him, because this collection is wonderful. I feel quite inspired, and certainly will be seeking out more by him.

Another poet I’ve finally got around to reading properly is David Borrott. David was one of the standout poets on a course I did at Ty Newydd back in 2013. His pamphlet Porthole was a Laureate’s Choice (Smith Doorstop) in 2015 and I can see why. The pamphlet is wide-ranging in subject matter and very accomplished. Nothing predictable about it, very enjoyable.

My subscription to Stand magazine is drawing to a close so I’ll be moving onto another publication shortly, in line with my ‘subscription rotation’ policy. I’ve really enjoyed my year with Stand, it’s quite different and I’ve discovered names I’ve not read before, for example in this issue (Volume 17/4) Natalie Linh Bolderston and Iain Twiddy.

I’m about halfway through Robert Hamberger’s Blue Wallpaper (Waterloo Press) and enjoying it immensely, which is probably why I’m taking my time over it. For me his work still feels vastly underrated. There is so much to love in his poetry. Robert is also quiet and modest, qualities that I can’t help but find endearing. All I can say is, seek him out. The works speaks for itself.

Back in the summer I decided to read Dante’s Divine Comedy, in a Penguin parallel edition with the original Italian and Robert Kirkpatrick’s translation. Many decades ago I was an eighteen-year-old ingenue in Rome, arriving by train and taking up an au pair job while speaking no Italian. My host family were kind enough to enrol me in the Dante Alighieri School to learn the language. This was my first encounter with Dante, and I’m ashamed to say it took me all this time to decide to actually read his most famous work. It would have happened sooner if I hadn’t changed course at University and ditched Italian literature. So – I galloped through Hell (Inferno), then spent around two months in Purgatory. There was so much to process. When I reached the end, I felt I needed to re-read the introduction. But now I’ve just started Paradiso – although I’m still only on the introduction, which is itself daunting. Interestingly, Nick is conducting a performance of ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ in Brighton in March, which is basically a story about a soul’s journey after death through Purgatory and beyond. So we’re been comparing notes over dinner: is there actually a Lake in Purgatory, or two rivers (as Dante describes)? Is it possible to be regaled by Demons trying to lure you to Hell once you’re in Purgatory (Gerontius) or are you impervious to that? (Dante) I have to remind myself now and then that this is all pretty much theoretical.

Currently writing, and a resolve for 2020

One reason I haven’t been blogging much lately as that I’ve been writing, which is of course an excellent thing. Several new poems in the pipeline plus I’ve been creating a skeleton for a collection, complete with ideas and poem titles on card which I move around and play games with. The new work is putting flesh on the skeleton.

This year I’ve decided not to enter any competitions, a decision that was reinforced when I received a recent email exhorting me to enter a particular competition which appears to have raised its entry fee considerably, while the prize money seems spectacularly unspectacular. Harrumph! My magazine subscriptons and submissions will carry on though.

My competition ban (in terms of pamphlet or book comps) may have to be relaxed if my collection plans progress well… but I’m trying not to succumb. Definitely no single poem comps though!

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My 2019 submissions: successes & fails | poetry blog

One of the things about statistics is you can present them is whatever light you wish: draw attention to this rather than that, show a percentage of X rather than Y because it looks more impressive, leave stuff out willy-nilly because most of your audience won’t know what it is you’re not declaring. Pick up any newspaper to see how the same raw data gets worked over by different editorial hands until red is actually blue, or vice versa.

So on that note, here are my fulsome and unbiased (?) stats regarding the past year in poetry submissions. A bit of throat-clearing first of all though.

The caveats

Despite keeping (I thought) detailed records, it was tricky to determine exactly how many different poems I sent out, across magazines and competitions, particularly as a few of them changed titles through the year. I then wanted to say how many in total went out to magazines and how many to competitions, and how many were ‘successful’ (not always easy to define) –  although some went to both, others were rejected at first then found a home somewhere else. Ugh!

Then there are the percentages… is the ‘success rate’ the number of poems accepted by magazines as a percentage of all poems sent to magazines, or of all different/unique poems sent? (The latter generally looks better!)

Let’s cut to the numbers

Total number different (unique) poems submitted this year: 39

Magazines: 29 different poems sent to magazines, some sent out more than once so 34 sent in total, of which 23 were declined and 11 accepted by 5 print magazines and one online. If my workings-out are correct this means 32% of submissions were accepted.

Competitions (individual poems): total of 13 poems (10 unique plus 3 of those included in the ‘sent to magazines’ count) submitted 23 times to 13 competitions, of which 1 was longlisted, one ‘highly commended’ (both of these were published in anthologies) and 1 shortlisted. Success rate = depends on your criteria. It’s basically zero, but you could say, well 13% of total competition entries got somewhere. But number of winning or placed = 0.

Competitions (pamphlet): 2 pamphlets submitted to 4 competitions of which 1 was a winner, 1 declined and 2 no contact (when the organisers don’t bother to tell the entrants they haven’t won, or even that the winners have been announced) Success rate= 25%

Of the 39 different poems sent out, alongside the 11 in magazines and the 2 published in competition anthologies, another 6 appeared in my Live Canon pamphlet published November. So 19 out of 39 found homes (49%).

That leaves me with twenty left to play with at the moment, including that one that was shortlisted in the Bridport (but not named, so still eligible for magazines). Incidentally, that poem had already come nowhere in two other much smaller competitions. I’ve also got six poems currently out and a fair amount of new work in the pipeline but not yet sent out.

How it compares to previous years

I keep changing my reporting, so year on year comparisons aren’t always helpful. 2018 was a thin year (4 poems in print magazines, 4 in anthologies. But I did have a pamphlet published -maybe I was too busy doing readings and whatnot. I feel like I was still writing, but just not sending much out.  Plus it was a great summer, so I basically spend six months gardening. 2017 was better – 10 poems in print magazines, 3 online and 1 in a good anthology.

I realise these this doesn’t look like a big output. When work comes back I don’t tend to send it straight out again, although I know that works for some people. I typically mull on things for ages. This perhaps works against me when (occasionally) an editor says something like ‘please send something else’. Because invariably I don’t have anything else remotely suitable for some time, and by the time I do send something else they’ve forgotten me anyway.

What’s currently in the bag?

At the moment, on the spreadsheet below the 6 that are ‘CURRENTLY OUT’, I have a number of other categories:

‘TO WORK ON’ (meaning I thought they were finished but they’ve been turned down at least once.) – 3

‘NOT OUT’ (poems that have passed through the ‘TO WORK ON’ category, or that I’ve sent out and reworked numerous times, I think they have merit but can’t bring myself to send them out again… yet) – 9

‘PROBABLY RUBBISH’ (poems I’m slightly embarrassed about but haven’t quite given up on yet.  Some of these go back years. I think of it as Poem Purgatory – every now and then I open one up to have another look. They must have something, otherwise they wouldn’t even be on the spreadsheet. Some of my favourite titles are languishing here. Poems do occasionally go from being ‘PROBABLY RUBBISH’ to ‘NOT OUT’ and then get published in fancy mags. But progress is usually in the other direction) – 21

The current and newest work-in-progress don’t appear on the spreadsheet; that only happens when I first send something out. I also ought to mention that a good few poems go from being rejected straight to the ‘declined’ sheet without even making the ‘PROBABLY RUBBISH’ category. The only chance they have of being revived is if/when I browse through folders of old poems and might spot signs of life.

What about the finances?

UGH. I’m sorry to admit that in 2019 I’ve spent £95 on individual poem competition entries and £84 on pamphlet competitions. his was all possible because of the ‘How to submit to poetry magazines’ booklet that I wrote and published end of last year – I told myself I’d use the profit from that on poetry fees and magazine subscriptions this year. But most of it’s gone now, and with competition winnings at zero pounds I just have to think of those entry fees as donations.

A few New Year resolutions

I’ve decided that in 2020 I won’t be entering any competitions. None where you pay an entry fee, anyway. I generally spend around £75 a year on magazine subscriptions, and I’ll carry on doing this as they are the lifeblood of the poetry world. You always have something in your hand to show for a subscription, and many magazines are real works of art. I’m going to send more poems to magazines. I also want to give more time to writing generally, without trying to whip up ‘competition poems’. Maybe I can pull together a full collection. Or just write more poems on the themes I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. I’m leaving it open and not putting pressure on myself. But no comps for at least a year is my goal.

I know that some poets don’t enter comps at all, often because they find the idea of a ‘poetry competition’ completely at odds with the creativity of writing. I’m not sure that’s me. But I do think comps have an addictive quality (“I’ll just enter one more competition and this could be the Big One!”), and breaking the habit (for me at least) requires a complete break. Let’s see if I can stick to it.

 

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Ah! The business of poetry blogging

Oh no!

It’s been a few weeks since my last post, and yet Matthew Stewart has still generously kept me on his list of ‘Best UK Poetry Blogs of 2019’. Matthew observes that 2019 was ‘far from being a vintage year’ for blogging, and his suggestions of why this might be are interesting: keeping a blog going can be a chore at times, once you stop it’s hard to get going again, sometimes you can’t help wondering if you’re writing into a vacuum.

I’d rather be bog-snorkelling  bragging  blogging

In some ways, writing this blog is no more of a chore than writing actual poems, in that I prefer not to force either of them, but to let them happen when the inclination hits me. Having said that, I know it’s not good to leave a blog hanging for too long. I do from time to time give myself a goal, such as ‘write a blog post a week’ or ‘start a poem a day for a month’. I haven’t done either of those for a while, but I’ve been gee’d on by others lately. Heather Walker has been blogging every day recently and it’s been fascinating to read. Josephine Corcoran shared recently that she’d written twenty new poems. Lordy! That’s probably my annual output. And Mat Riches has been blogging every week for some time, AND he sent out 161 poems this year – BLIMEY.

Coming soon – the stats of shame

Actually Mat’s post reminded me that my annual roundup of subs/rejections/acceptances is due. I doubt I’ll be offering any natty graphs. Somewhat a visual feels like it might be a detail too far. But hey! Let’s see…

I do know that even if I’m not blogging, I’m reading other people’s blogs. They come at my inbox every Monday morning and I never cease to be amazed at how much thought, energy, creativity and generosity goes into blogs. And with the boot on the other foot, I’m eternally grateful to my readers, aka YOU, for taking the time to read this.

Current reading list

My poetry books-to-read pile currently includes the Winter issues of Rattle and The Moth, Clarissa Aykroyd’s Island of Towers (Broken Sleep Books), Hubert Moore’s The Feeding Station (Shoestring) which I’m reviewing for The Frogmore Papers, Katie Griffiths’ My Shrink Is Pregnant (one of my fellow Live Canon Pamphleteers) and Robert Hamberger’s Blue Wallpaper (Waterloo). Recently I received a copy of Sarah Windebank’s super first collection, Memories of a Swedish Grandmother (Myriad Editions). I was lucky enough to get a review copy, and wrote a short testimonial for the book.

And so this is Christmas…

I only got 6 out of 18 in the Guardian’s Christmas Number Ones quiz – although I think it was a swizz as there were only one or two questions about the seventies! Come on, Christmas was invented in the 70s! Can you do better??

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December at last! And the submissions list update…

So, I made it to December without a drop of alcohol passing my lips! I hope you are impressed, because I am.

Today I’ve been updating the spreadsheet of Poetry Magazine Submissions Windows, hoping to email it out today but now it looks like tomorrow. I’ve had to drag my website into 2019 in various ways and that plus visiting all the magazines’ sites and figuring out if they are actually open for submissions or not has rather exhausted me. But I’m enjoying my first sip of wine in a month. Can you tell?

Actually if you have any poems on the theme of ‘mystery’ and if you’re quick you could still submit to Popshot, whose window closes tomorrow at 9am (before the list is due to go out) – go on! In fact, why am I not sending them something right now, instead of writing this blog post??

In other news, I’ve finally added a ‘shop’ to my website, which means if any lovely person wishes to buy any of my pamphlets, including the new one from Live Canon, they can do so on my website – who knew!?

PS a quick shout out for Heather Walker’s blog – she’s been posting (pretty much) every day in November and I’ve enjoyed it a lot. It was down to her that I not only decided to go see the Antony Gormley exhibition at the Royal Academy, but decided to re-join as a Friend. There’s something very meditative about reading a daily blog. It kind of lets you in on the rhythm of a person’s life. From the blogger’s point of view you don’t have to do worry about whether it’s interesting enough, because writing something every day is interesting in itself. And for the reader, following the day-to-day of another person’s life feels somehow reassuring.

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To London, for poetry &

I seem to be up in London a fair bit this month. Last week was my first trip to the Troubadour in a while, and despite late trains meaning I arrived late, and then having to leave soon after ten or risk not getting home, I was very glad I went. It was the regular ‘what we should have said’ session, with improvisation/semi improv from Stephen Sexton, Greta Stoddart, Richard Douglas Pennant, Stuart Silver and musician Peter Foggitt. I had been initially attracted by Stephen Sexton’s name, as I really enjoyed his collection If All the World and Love were Young (Penguin) – and although I enjoyed all the readings I was most taken with Greta Stoddart. She has a real charisma and an enviable ability to hold an audience.

Greta Stoddart

Then last night I was at the newly-opened Boulevard Theatre in London’s Soho, where Live Canon had taken over the bar for the launch of four new pamphlets, one of which is mine. The other poets (Tania Hershman, Miranda Peake and Katie Griffiths) gave brilliant readings and I felt very privileged to be a part of it all.

Helen Eastman, who runs Live Canon, is always astonishing – a one-woman powerhouse who manages several large-scale projects at a time as well as a family. I’ll have what she’s having! Not only that but she gives the most generous introductions you could ever imagine. I don’t know about my fellow pamphleteers but I felt like Poet Royalty for the night.

Katie Griffiths, Tania Hershman, Miranda Peake, Robin Houghton
The four pamphleteers: Katie Griffiths, Tania Hershman, Miranda Peake, Robin Houghton

I’d been a bit sad during the day, I think partly because all the poet friends I had invited either lived too far away or were unwell or already committed to another launch on the same night. So it was wonderful that my good (non-poet) friend Lucy was there, and then I realised there were many friendly poet faces in the audience: Joolz Sparkes, Jill Abram, Heather Walker, Fiona Larkin, Cheryl Moskowitz and Susannah Hart to name a few.

I’ll have signed copies of the pamphlet for sale here on the website very soon. I’m just getting my shop in order!

Next up I’ll be reading a couple of quickies at the Rogue Strands event on Thursday  and it’s in aid of the Trussell Trust alongside a swathe of fine poets – hope to see you there.

And by the way, hard to believe I know but it’s not actually all poetry in London! In order to get the cheapie tickets yesterday I travelled in a bit earlier, and took the opportunity to go and hear Evensong at St Michael’s Cornhill – one of those fantastic city churches that people walk past all the time without realising they’re there. St Michael’s has a choir of ten who sound professional or at least semi-professional, and a huge organ. I go to Evensongs for the music, but it’s also a meditative experience which I highly recommend, even for atheists. Yesterday I heard some fine music by William Byrd, a Catholic who (thanks to the patronage of Elizabeth I) managed to compose music for both Catholics (covertly) and Anglicans (publicly), at a time when Catholic priests were hung drawn and quartered for their faith. An extraordinary man who lived through extraordinary times.

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Recent reading

I’ve got into a rhythm of reading a Canto of Dante’s Purgatory each night before falling asleep, sometimes I get through the chapter commentary & notes too, sometimes not. If I’m too tired to finish the Canto I have to start it again the next day. Purgatorio is a more complex read than Inferno. There are just as many references to people and politics of the time, requiring explanation, but it seems to me there’s more characterisation and symbolism to get one’s head around, not to mention the philosophical wondering it’s sent me on.

Alongside this I’ve had a number of poetry collections on the go recently. Perhaps I’m getting more reading done this month because I’m not drinking alcohol? I can’t really see the connection, but I’m struggling to notice any other benefits to Dry November except the feeling of smug satisfaction that I can do it, if I put my mind to it. I hope I’m not jinxing it by making that claim when there are twelve days to go. Anyway, I wish I could commune with my internal organs and ask them if they’re feeling detoxified or rejuvenated.

Getting to the point (I know! finally!), here’s a roundup…

Each Other by Clare Best

Clare Best, Each Other (Waterloo Press £12)

I always make sure I settle down with a nice glass of wine cup of tea before delving into a new collection from Clare, because I know I’ll be reading it in one go. She manages to write with such punch, and yet it’s so elegantly understated. The second half of the book is the title sequence, charting a relationship from courtship to old age. Somehow Clare gets to the (sometimes heartbreaking) bottom of the subject with both grace and humour. The first section contains some beautiful, quite personal poems honouring family ties, love and loss. ‘In February’ is especially moving – ‘You’re introduced to angels […] look, they welcome you with song and wine/ as I would, darling. But I must stay behind.’

A Second Whisper by Lynne Hjelmgaard

Lynne Hjelmgaard, A Second Whisper (Seren, £9.99)

Another new release, from another poet friend (disclosure!) In reading many of these poems I feel I’m being invited into a very private space in which the poet mourns the loss of her husband and the subsequent journey that takes her into another loving relationship which also ends in that partner’s death. If that sounds morbid then it’s not – there is more celebration than sadness here, and the reader is left with a strong sense of love, gratitude and hope. Like Clare Best, Lynne has a connection with nature that permeates her explorations of human relationships. ‘Planted on either side of the garden / they slowly inch their way closer/until finally (a century or two later)/ the fir leans into its beloved palm.’ (‘Three Tree Poem’).

Head On by Clare Shaw

Clare Shaw, Head On (Bloodaxe 2012, £8.95)

The book’s blurb tells us we’re in for ‘interweaving themes of personal and political conflict’ and indeed you’re straight into this from the first poem, the powerful ‘I do not believe in silence’, with its repeated ‘because..’ and the turn from ‘I do not believe..’ into the positive: ‘I believe in the heart and its beat / and its bleep and the dance of the trace / on the screen…’ This rhythmic quality is a kind of drumbeat that drives the whole collection. The subject matter is often raw – injustices, dementia, rape, miscarriage – but it also bursts with passion and pure love:

‘How love must, at all costs,

be answered. We have answered
and so have a million before us
and each of their names is a vow.

So now I can tell you, quite simply
you are the house I will live in’

(‘Vow’)

Something that surprised me was the number of dactyls, particularly from the poem ‘A withered brown flower takes on a new colour’ (title dactylic in itself) to the end of the book. There was something about putting these poems back-to-back that meant the metre became a stumbling block in my reading of them. Still a wow of a book though.

The main reason I ordered Head On was because Clare’s one of the tutors at Kim Moore’s Poetry Carousel that I’m going to next month. Similarly, I’ve ordered books by David Tait and Malika Booker, to get at least a feel for their work. So more on those collections in another post.

Angst/

A dry month in Purgatory and book launch imminent

Day Four of No-booze-vember and I’m thinking of making an advent calendar to count down the days to when I’m allowed a glass of wine.  Last year it all made sense – nothing much happening in November, Christmas to look forward to…I certainly wouldn’t want to do this in January, the most dreary of months and impossible to get through without AT LEAST the odd hot toddy.

But this year November is alight with events: my first concert with a new choir, a friend’s birthday ceilidh, two book launches (one of which is my own – hell’s teeth can a girl not have a drink at her own launch?), a meal out with an American work-friend I haven’t seen in 7 or 8 years, a night at the Troubadour AND a reading in London with a host of starry poet-names. What was I thinking?

I’m trying to see it as a creative experiment-slash-meditative opportunity. It’s a happy coincidence that I’ve finished Dante’s Inferno and have moved on to Purgatorio, which is surprisingly, well, surprising. According to Dante (and I’ve only got as far as the introduction, so not yet immersed in the poetry) Purgatory is where most of us go when we die, to think about how we’ve lived our lives and how we might do better. The idea is that if we take responsibility for and (importantly) are penitent about this, then there’s a chance we’ll get to heaven. It does involve a bit of pain and much patience but compared to Hell (or living through this Brexit debacle) it’s not all that bad really. There’s no guarantee if or when you get to move on – some poor sods have been there for a thousand years – but the hope is always that when you get out it’ll be an upward not a downward move. So not drinking this month feels like a small kind of penance. Not that I imagine it’s anywhere near enough for all the bad behaviour I could be charged with when the time comes.

Meanwhile things are gearing up for the Live Canon pamphlet launch which is scheduled for Monday 25th November, at the Boulevard Theatre Bar in Soho – fancy! It used to be the Raymond Revue Bar apparently, so I just hope my poems are seedy enough to do justice to the place’s heritage. Still not sure what the title of the pamph will be, but a lot can happen in three weeks (I hope!) I’m looking forward to meeting & reading alongside fellow launchees Miranda Peake, Tania Hershman and Katie Griffiths, and toasting all of us with a glass of sparkling water…

A few bits and bobs on the submissions front – one poem on the Bridport shortlist (which is a lot longer than it sounds), two poems accepted for Stand magazine, although they may only want one of them as the other is in the forthcoming pamphlet, and one for The Moth, very exciting for me as I feel they are seriously good magazines and it’ll be a first appearance for me in both. And actually the poem that The Moth have taken is one that I’ve been trying with for ages – I started it six years ago, and it was in my ‘Business Class’ pamphlet (the one that nobody wanted as a collection). It’s had 12 iterations over the years and I’ve tried it on any number of journals. Then earlier this year I asked Catherine Smith for advice on a pamphlet submission and I was wailing about this one. She spotted the potential issues right away and suggested a bit of re-ordering, and as a result it’s now good enough for The Moth. This isn’t the first time Catherine has helped me on poems that aren’t quite ‘there’.  She’s the real deal, for sure.

On the other hand I wish I could say I had a bunch of poems out at the moment but I haven’t started anything new in weeks. Several poems in for competitions (actually pretty much the same poems in different comps) and of course you never know. Can you imagine winning the National and then having to withdraw the poem because it was commended in the Waltham Forest comp? TEE HEE. Not that I’m dissing the WT AT ALL (results not out yet!) but I know that Paul McGrane (being involved in both comps) would blow the whistle on such a thing, and *AHEM* quite rightly!

Getting back to reality, I’m fortunate to be going to Cumbria in December for Kim Moore’s Poetry Carousel, so four days on a poetry roundabout and I should have a few proto-poems in the pipeline (not if I don’t kick THAT sort of alliteration in the teeth though). The other Carousel tutors are Malika Booker, David Tait and (gulp) Clare Shaw (the subject of this mildly inappropriate post last year) … it’s gonna be hot stuff.

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A birthday post and on magazines

poetry wall

Ooh. Lots of interesting discussion & comment around my last post. Thank you to everyone who engaged! (Feels a bit of a sham/shame to use that 21st century term but you know what I mean: commented, shared, liked/disliked etc).

Meanwhile, on another blog (when I update it that is) I’m telling the story of our new sheds. Yes, plural! I’m talking about the replacement structure for two sheds, a tool shed and and ‘summerhouse’ which we inherited, and loved, but which ultimately wasn’t really doing the job we needed of it. To cut a long story short, the old tool shed and summerhouse have been relocated 150 yards up to the communal garden, and they look perfectly at home up there. Meanwhile to replace them we’ve had built for us a wooden structure which incorporates two ‘rooms’ – a tool shed (yeah OK a ‘mancave’) and a potting shed/half greenhouse/she-shed. It’s exciting, but it’s more for garden stuff than anything else.

I can’t rival anything like Abegail Morley’s iconic Poetry Shed, alas, BUT I couldn’t help but insert a poetry element: a wall of poems! I’ve often wailed about the number of poetry magazines I have and how they take up an inordinate amount of space on the bookshelves. SO how about tearing out a bunch of poems from various mags, and use them to paper a wall in the ‘pottery’ (as we’re calling it – don’t ask!)? First of all I thought I’d look for ‘garden’ or outdoor-related poems. But it expanded to other topics too – basically poems I just liked and wanted to be able to read and enjoy anytime I’m pottering in my pottery! Also, we do have two very small grandchildren, and part of my vision is to welcome them into the pottery as they get older, to do some gardening fun and get them interested in gardening (the older one is already getting into it) – so how about poetry too??

So out came the mags – I started with the earliest and worked from there – so actually ended up with a lot of poems from 2010 – 2017 and maybe not many more recent, but hey. I took out all the Rattles, Agendas, Proles, Frogmore Papers, Poetry Reviews, Poetry, Rialtos, Tears in the Fence, Obsessed with Pipework and so forth, got out a sharp knife and started excising…

And a funny thing happened. (I should use that as the title for this post, in true Clickbait style!) I read. And read, and realised I’d either not  read these magazines properly or it was so long ago I’d forgotten all the great poems. I took several days over it, but really enjoyed the process, because I discovered/rediscovered some wonderful poems. (In the comments on my last post, Claire Booker noted that many poets don’t actually read the magazines in which their poems appear, or even subscribe to... and I had a twinge of guilt when I read that. I thought I had read these magazines but clearly a cursory lookie didn’t really cut it.)

So I ended up with more poems than I needed to paper the wall. Plus a few air bubbles that I tried to ‘mend’, some more successfully than others. I was careful to place poems with ‘swearage’ (a term I’ve learned from a poet friend – although autocorrect wants to change it to ‘sewerage’ – how appropriate!) further up the wall so that four-year-olds don’t read it and do the classic “nana what does X$%!@ mean?” The photo shows it in progress, I’ve since finished but need to varnish the wall to protect it a bit from the vagaries of shed-dom (damp, condensation etc). I may be putting a mirror on the wall, so I tried to place my faves on the outer fringes so they’re not hidden. A confession: I included 3 of my own poems, although more for fun – I like the idea of someone who maybe doesn’t know I write poetry ‘happening’ on them – ha ha.

PS:  Today is my birthday. In the 1980s I would have bought you all a cream cake. Honestly. Today I just say I hope you have a lovely, lovely day, and let’s all go outside, take a deep breath, and thank whoever or whatever you’d like for being alive. XX

Angst/

Let’s talk about failures…

There’s something that happens more and more on Twitter that makes me feel slightly queasy. But I also hesitate to say this, because it might not go down well. It’s the habit of (as soon as the results of a competition are out) dashing off a tweet to the effect of: ‘Congratulations to all the winners [of Comp Name]! Amazed and humbled to see my poem [on the shortlist/among the Commendeds]!’

There’s nothing wrong with saying ‘well done’ to other poets, surely? So by griping about it, does that make me a sore loser/ grumpy person /antisocial member of the poetry community? Possibly all of those, but I hope not. My queasiness comes from observing what looks like an exaggerated pleasure in others’ successes on the part of the tweeter, whilst at the same time sneaking in the fact that he/she was commended/shortlisted or whatever, thereby starting yet another chain of ‘Congratulations!’ tweets etc. I try not to go on about my distaste for ‘humblebragging’, but this new trend of congratulating ‘all the winners’ (presumably including a number of poets completely unknown to the tweeter) seems to be humblebragging by any other name. It appears to be widespread, and it feels like a relatively new phenomenon.

You may be thinking ‘well if she doesn’t like it, she can always unfollow/mute’. True. And sometimes I actually do, but I prefer not to, as the ‘offending’ tweets are frequently made by people whose tweets I generally enjoy and want to hear from. As I said, it’s so widespread it’s become normal everyday behaviour. But the queasiness continues. Why do I feel this way? Am I really the only one?

Recently, as a response to someone announcing that to be on a shortlist they felt like ‘a winner’, I asked them if it wouldn’t feel even better to actually be the winner. The reply was that ‘I find it easier to be happy for other people’s successes’ – now I may be reading this wrongly but the implication was ‘…than my own’. This was from someone who’s had plenty of successes.

Is the world really so full of altruistic people who truly, genuinely, find more pleasure in the success of others than in their own? Or are they reluctant to admit it on social media, for whatever reason – fear of looking big-headed, or of people not liking them, or just a preference to go along with the cheerleading norms, or even a worry that to celebrate ones own success means to put others down…I do hope the last one isn’t the case, because I think it’s mistaken.

Look at this way: if we stopped congratulating ourselves at making a longest/shortlist/commended, and only invited or offered congratulations to those placed 1st, 2nd or 3rd, then the vast majority of us would not be winners. At the moment it looks like literally everyone is winning something, and that’s very disheartening to those poets who never get anywhere in competitions. (I find it disheartening myself, and I do sometimes get somewhere. And however pleased I may be with a shortlisting, I am always disappointed not to have won.) It can also look like a coterie of winning poets continuously congratulating each other.

I read another comment recently, in which someone apparently was so upset not to get ‘on a list’ that they felt they may give up and stop writing. The responses to this were concerned and supportive, with someone else pointing out that ‘you have to remember that no-one talks about their failures on social media, only their successes.’ But can we reasonably expect people to remember this? Was this person feeling that way due to his/her tweetstream giving the impression that the whole world was on the bloody list except them?

It’s been said plenty of times before. Social media (and the internet long before social media) is a goldfish bowl of performative behaviour. I think those of us who spend a lot of time on it have a responsibility to remember that. There was a time when out-and-out self-promotion seemed to take over Facebook and Twitter (which was a big reason why I left Facebook some years ago). The rule of ‘Twitizenship’ now seems to be: only promote one’s own successes if at the same time you shout about everyone/anyone else’s.

And failures? Someone once said they hated the way some people filled up Facebook with their bad news, which no-one wants to be dragged down by. And yet, whenever I talk about my many poetry rejections on this blog, it gets the most positive comments. It would certainly be refreshing to see the odd ‘for the tenth year running I came nowhere in the Bridport’ on Twitter. But who wants to be accused of sour grapes?

I just wish we could a) talk more realistically (and more often) about the fact that the vast majority of poems don’t win prizes, as this may help us all to put things in perspective, b) worry a little less about keeping up a saintly/sanitised appearance on social media, and c) put the brakes on the ‘congratulations’ circulars: by all means send a DM, but no-one needs to be congratulated publicly/anonymously on Twitter for being on a shortlist, in my humble opinion. Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Am I just being grumpy?

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Competition season! Be afraid. Plus the odd launch

Those Darn Comps

Love ’em or loath ’em, but some of us just can’t stop ourselves entering. “Is there a competition season?” someone once asked me and I feel as if there is, and it’s now – not sure why except that the National always closes on October 31st, this year a particularly loaded date, sadly. Plus the results of the Bridport out soon.

If you keep up with Angela T Carr’s comps and submissions blog posts then you’ll already know this, but just a reminder:

National Poetry Competition (a misnomer actually – it’s International, as the list of prize winners generally confirms) – closing date 31st October, judges Mona Arshi, Helen Mort and Maurice Riordan. First prize £5,000 but tons of kudos and visibility to anyone making the ‘commendeds’. Even reaching the ‘long list’ is pretty good. First entry £7, Poetry Society members get a FREE second poem. Enter here and lashings of good luck to you.

Also don’t forget the Troubadour Poetry Prize, closing on 21st October. £5 to enter and £2000 first prize, with the very interesting combo of Kathryn Maris and Pat Boran judging this year. I predict there’ll be one grandaddy of a pile of paper in the Maris-Riordan household come November.

Launches, readings

This evening it’s the Needlewriters in Lewes with readings by poets Clare Best, Robert Hamberger and Anna Reckin, alongside prose writer Martin Nathan. I’ll be the host, which is always fun. Do come if you’re able.

This Sunday I’m off up to Greenwich, my old manor, for the Live Canon readings & competition results (for which we’re all being kept cruelly on tenterhooks, having made the ‘long list’ – I’m assuming I haven’t won since I haven’t had the call to say ‘you are coming, aren’t you…?’ But it will be a fun-filled afternoon I’m certain, and every one’s a winner baby (NOT! – whoever thought up that stupid phrase!) Anyway, I’m looking forward to hearing the Live Canon ensemble perform the winning poems, it’s an amazing experience.

November is shaping up well – my new pamphlet launch is scheduled for 25th and (same week) I’m reading for Rogue Strands in London on 28th – more to come on both. I’m also hoping to get to Lynne Hjelmgaard’s launch of A Second Whisper (Seren) on Monday 11th.

Meanwhile I’m getting close to the end of Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary – I’ve been slowing down as we approach the second World War, I almost can’t bear to read her thoughts on it all – and am also in the ‘Rotten Pockets’ of Hell c/o Signor Dante Alighieri. No wonder I’ve been having such weird dreams lately.