Author: Robin Houghton

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Stop the GDPR madness! Small poetry presses & arts organisations please read

This isn’t the usual subject for my blog. I try not to mix (marketing) business with (poetry) pleasure. But as the emails about GDPR intensify I’ve decided I have to say something – in the hope that it might prevent even one small, underfunded, hardworking, non-profit poetry press or community writers’ group from the suicidal step of unsubscribing its entire email list.

We’ve all been getting them – the emails telling us that in order to comply with the new GDPR regulations, we MUST re-subscribe to their list, or else they WON’T BE ABLE TO CONTACT US EVER AGAIN after May 25th.

I have no idea where this advice originated, but it has spread like a bad joke, to the point of madness.

My first thought on receiving an email like this is ‘why do they think can’t they contact me after that date, when I already signed up for their emails, or paid my subscription, or regularly attend their events?’ The second is ‘why am I being punished for not going along with their mistaken belief in what the GDPR is all about?’

When it’s an organisation I’m fond of, or feel sorry for, or if I’m just in an altruistic mood, I reply – telling them they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, offering links to the information they should read, offering my advice – always with the caveat that I’m no lawyer, but I do speak with nearly 20 years’ experience of working in email marketing. Sometimes I am thanked, sometimes I’m told ‘you’re probably right but we’re not sure if we’re compliant and we only do it for love and don’t have 17 million quid to pay the fine’, or words to that effect, I’ve even received the icily defensive “well we’re just a teeny weeny non-profit run by volunteers but you are obviously much more up on it than us!”

It’s very sad that so many completely well-meaning people, who would never dream of knowingly spamming anyone, are panicked by the well-publicised “fines of up to £17.5 million” – to the point of potentially ruining their entire enterprise (please read – or jump – to the end for the last word on this). The deluge of emails has resulted in ‘consent fatigue’ – the current re-subscribe rate is averaging 10%. At this rate, mailing lists (the lifeblood of many arts organisations) will be decimated. Even if you have a high quality list consisting of engaged, loyal supporters, you’re looking at probably losing half of them. This has implications not just for the marketing of books, magazines, courses and events, but for issues such as funding too – size matters when it comes to ‘how many people do you reach on a regular basis’- type questions.

Plus, it’s not advisable to just copy what others are doing. Rebecca Cooney has this sensible advice at The Third Sector:

“If you rush to write to all of your supporters, saying you’re moving to consent and if they don’t respond they’ll never hear from you again, you really can’t go back on that[…]so the phrasing and the wording that you use is really, really important.”

There is only one point of authority on the GDPR, and that is the ICO (the Office of the Information Commissioner.) If you have been compliant with current rules on email communications (Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations of 2003, anyone?) then the permission you obtained under those regs still holds good under GDPR. The new regulations require higher levels of transparency, lawfulness and fairness when dealing with people’s data. This wider context seems to have been lost on many people.

Here’s Toni Vitale, from law firm Winckworth Sherwood, quoted in The Guardian a few days ago: (my emphases)

“Businesses are not required to automatically ‘repaper’ or refresh all existing 1998 Act consents in preparation for the GDPR,” Vitale said. “The first question to ask is: which of the six legal grounds under the GDPR should you rely on to process personal data? Consent is only one ground.”

Vitale goes on to suggest that the process of emailing people to ask for their permission may even be illegal, since it suggests you don’t actually have permission to send that email. (See the cautionary tale at the end of this post.)

One of the other legal grounds you may rely on to process data is ‘legitimate interest’. Here’s Ben Rapp on the Rappidly blog:

“Most processing of data for the purposes of sending out marketing emails would be justified under Article 6.1f  – it’s in your legitimate interest to do it, and you believe that that interest outweighs the consumer’s right to privacy. Which, if we’re just talking about a name, an email address and their prior browsing and purchasing history from you, is probably true. You need to write that justification down, and show it to the natural person if they ask for it – or to the ICO, if they ask for it.”

And Todd at the Spaghetti marketing agency blog:

“…you can pretty much apply it [legitimate interest] to your marketing and business to suit you as long as you’re transparent about what you send and why and then how you store the data; and you’ve conducted a balancing test to make sure your legitimate interest doesn’t outweigh the individual’s.”

None of this means you don’t need to ask people’s permission to email them – it just demonstrates that if you already have that permission and want to be absolutely compliant with the new regs then stop asking people to re-subscribe to your list and instead look at your data collection and processing systems, at how easy it is for people to leave your list, at whether you tell them what data you store and what you used it for.

Anyone with an email list who’s unsure what to do then a good place to start is the ICO’s Lawful Basis Interactive Guidance Tool.

And the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) have produced this free PDF document on ‘Consent and Legitimate Interests’.

There are also some very good examples of how to do it. Here are two I’ve received. I have highlighted in red the sentences that illustrate what I’m talking about. The first is from Live Canon:

To all our followers,

As you’ll be aware, new mailing list/data protection laws (GDPR) come into effect imminently. We have been reviewing how we use our mailing list, and how we store the data to make sure we are fully compliant.

We wanted to reassure you that we only hold email addresses on our mailing list; these are not cross-referenced to names, addresses or any other data. All of our mailings (including this one) have an unsubscribe button at the bottom; this allows you to unsubscribe from the mailing list immediately at any point.

We hope you will continue to follow our mailing list and receive news of what Live Canon are up to…

And another, in an email from Write & Shine:

A note on GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation comes into effect on 25 May. We’ve updated all our processes to ensure we adhere to the new law. As you’ve opted in to the Write & Shine mailing list in the past there’s nothing you need to do, but please update your subscription preferences and read our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe from the newsletter anytime by clicking the link in the email footer or by contacting us at hello@write-and-shine.com.

And finally here’s something else to think about. What would it take to get that £17.5 million pound fine? First of all, someone on your mailing list has to complain to the ICO. The chances of this happening is in itself pretty low when you think about it. “Dear Information Commissioner, I got an email from the Poetry Goodguys to tell me about a workshop they’re running at Bromley Library costing £20 and I don’t know how they got hold of my email although it might have been at the Poetry Book Fair.” Then if they’re having a quiet day, who knows, the ICO might investigate. They might find that Poetry Goodguys have emailed 137 people whose emails they obtained at various poetry events and they wrote them all down longhand in a notebook and added them to their list of poets who might be interested in courses, without a double-opt-in and most of them without actual names, just email addresses. Are they going to fine them 17.5 million quid? Are they going to fine them at all? Are they even going to investigate the complaint, in these days of under-resourcing and bigger-fish-to-fry?

OK then, how about this cautionary tale, as reported in The Register:

An investigation by the ICO found that Exeter-based airline Flybe had “deliberately sent more than 3.3 million emails to people who had told them they didn’t want to receive marketing emails from the firm”.

Those emails ironically were asking customers to update their marketing preferences, including whether they wanted to receive emails like the ones Flybe had just sent, and offered customers the chance to be “entered into a prize draw” for contributing.

Flybe ostensibly sent the email to ensure that its data on customers was held in compliance with the GDPR but landed a a £70,000 monetary penalty notice from the ICO for breaking the Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations (PECR) while attempting to do so.

Laugh? I nearly cried. And note the amount – £70,000. For a firm the size of FlyBe sending 3.3 million emails. That were asking people to re-subscribe to their mailing list. I rest my case.

 

 

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From Picasso to Garsdale: news roundup

Taking a leaf out of Peter Kenny’s book, here are seven items from the imaginary newsdesk at Kenny Houghton Towers (sorry Peter – but as Picasso said – possibly – ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal.’)

  1. Picasso is as good as any place to start, having just visited the Tate Modern exhibition featuring work from a year in his life (1932). For once, a major London exhibition that wasn’t ruined by too many visitors (at least, on the day we went). There were two major takeaways for me: firstly, Picasso was prolific. Unbelievably so. For example on Christmas Day 1931 we’re told that ‘after the festivities’ he finished a painting he’d been working on for a week (a long time for him) AND THEN knocked off another big canvas. Secondly, he shot from the hip – first drafts for him were usually the finished article. That’s not to say he didn’t make changes – you can clearly see lines painted out (but often still visible). A bit like my maths teacher at school used to say – show your workings out, you can cross stuff out but don’t erase anything because it could actually be correct. I like that idea – it could actually be correct – as if Picasso didn’t mind anyone seeing what he’d originally drawn, because it allows for multiple and even valid readings. Very interesting to think about in terms of writing and workshopping, and it plays to my liking for (and experimentation with) erasures. PS the image featured here is of a Picasso print that I bought at the Tate – ‘Woman with flower writing’ – destined for the bedroom so I hope Nick will like it. The Tate has a very good framed print ordering system, with free delivery if you spend more than £50.
  2. Two more welcome reviews/mentions of All the Relevant Gods – one by eminent lit blogger & Guardian journalist Billy Mills on Elliptical Movements, and another by Martin Malone forthcoming in The Interpreter’s House. (He tells me it was written in a lighthouse, no less).
  3. Telltale Press launched its latest (and final) publication, the TRUTHS anthology, at a warm and well-attended event in Lewes. I know I would say this, but I think it’s a fine collection with contributions from poets both new and established. Blog post and photos here. I haven’t quite got around to putting it with a sales button on the website, but in the meantime copies may be ordered from Peter Kenny. A snip at £8 plus postage.
  4. Needlewriters Lewes are running a special day of events on Thursday 14th June as part of the South Downs Poetry Festival – a ‘poetry surgeries’ session in the afternoon followed by an Open Mic and then our regular quarterly readings. The ‘poetry surgeries’ are actually a brilliant opportunity to pick the brains of not one but two of our finest poetry magazine editors (Jeremy Page of the Frogmore Papers and Kay Syrad of Envoi) plus fine poets Janet Sutherland and Charlotte Gann. And all for just a tenner (or £12 for the whole afternoon and evening). I was hoping to be helping with the organisation on the day but I double-booked myself – bizarrely it took me several weeks to realise this, having been involved in brainstorming the event & preparing the publicity, and THEN realising I was going to be at the Garsdale Retreat that week – DUH.
  5. Two more poetry events on my radar – Abegail Morley is one of the organisers of the Tunbridge Wells Poetry Festival on 15th and 16th June which features various events including workshops and readings – more info here.  This is also during my Garsdale week so I won’t be able to check it out but it looks very good. And before that, on May 31st in Brighton, Pighog night features Annie Freud and Pam Thompson, with Michaela Ridgway compering. Definitely looking forward to that.
  6. A lovely thing – a friend asked if I would write a poem for her nephew, for a ‘big’ birthday. Now this friend has bought my pamphlets and knows my style, so I had no hesitation in saying yes, because I knew she wasn’t after something funny and rhyming. (Not that I couldn’t do that but… it didn’t particularly appeal.) I spent a morning with her, listening to her talking about the nephew, how their lives had intersected, looking at photos. And just when I was starting to wonder how I would tackle this she said one thing that stuck in my head. And that’s really it, isn’t it? That one thing that makes a poem, in this case one idea or image that somehow in a moment lets the receiver know what’s in the giver’s heart…. without sounding schmalzy or sentimental. I really enjoyed the project and was very relieved when my friend said she loved it.
  7. And so in four weeks’ time I’ll be off to Garsdale – a residential with Ian Duhig and guest poet Hannah Lowe, on the subject of ‘nothing is useless’. I’m not sure if this means ‘nothing you’ve experienced in your life is useless’ or more ‘all those old drafts and poems you’re really embarrassed about may still be useful’. Either way, I can’t wait.
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Poems coming out, new anthology, currently reading etc

Intro/bit of a rant etc (skip this if you’d rather go straight to The Poetry stuff)

Where has the month gone? (Rhetorical question.) Why am I being besieged by companies/organisations telling me I must re-subscribe to their emails? (Non-rhetorical question, although I think I know the answer – *some people* are spreading panic about new legislation and the country is alive with the sound of knees jerking.) A small rant: there used to be an acronym in Ye Olde Internet Dayes: RTFM. I’m too polite to say what that stands for but you can always Google it. My point is, if you read the ICO website and the text of the new GDPR then you will know IF you need to ask for re-confirmation of consent. Or NOT. Meanwhile I’m almost looking forward to not getting all those emails I used to enjoy getting.

In the last few weeks I’ve been suffering with back and arm problems which meant I had to limit my time on the computer. It’s all to do with posture, and related to the RSI I’ve had for nearly two decades. Nothing life-threatening, just annoying, and coinciding with the painstaking job of typesetting and formatting TRUTHS, the new Telltale Press Anthology (see below) not to mention endless need for posters and programmes for various concerts, workshops, recitals and assorted music-related ephemera. And five weeks of having work done on our garden. But HEY I am back on the comp (taking lots of breaks), the garden is finished, we have a new granddaughter (who I think is going to be a fine poetry critic), everyone is well and life is good!

bad poem, good poem

Needlewriters

I had a blast reading at Needlewriters earlier in the month, and we’re currently planning our June 14th event which will be a South Downs Poetry Festival Special. That means that as well as our regular evening of readings, there’ll be an open mic to kick off the evening, and in the afternoon five of us will be offering poetry ‘surgeries’ (not as queasy as it sounds) to which we hope lots of lovely poets and aspiring poets will flock. More on that another time.

Launch of TRUTHS: a Telltale Press Anthology

Yes, it’s finally here – or it will be – (long story) – next Wednesday 25th April, 7.30pm, upstairs at the John Harvey Tavern in Lewes… a dozen or so of the contributors will be reading their poems on the theme of truth/truths, and much over-excitement will be had by all, especially those of us mad enough to have a) suggested it and b) put it together. Once more the excellent Hannah Clare has created a cracking cover. It’s a stonker of a collection, but of course I would say that. You’ll just have to buy a copy to find out! The technicalities of producing TRUTHS has revealed to me another truth: I have so much to learn about print publishing. There were issues. But I am confident it will be good. Come and see! Free entry. Here’s the Facebook event page.

Coupla poems coming out here and there, plus pamphlet reviews

A few months ago I was wondering why I had nothing ‘forthcoming’ until it occurred to me I just wasn’t sending poems out. Duh. For some reason I’ve had a spate of sending to competitions rather than magazines, and being met with the sound of silence. But I’m slowly getting back on track. There’s one poem coming out in the next Interpreter’s House, which will be Martin Malone‘s last as editor, so I’m hoping there’ll be a launch somewhere that I can get to. Rumour has it that Martin is currently residing in a lighthouse on Shetland, clearly on a mission to move as far north as possible. So we’ll see.

Then a welcome surprise yesterday – a letter from Ann Sansom to say they’d like two of the poems I sent them for The North. I’ve only ever had one poem in The North and it’s been years since I’ve sent anything there as I’d convinced myself my stuff wasn’t for them. So I guess it’s always worth trying again.

Meanwhile I’d like to thank both Emma Lee writing on her blog, and Pam Thompson in London Grip for their thoughtful reviews of All the Relevant Gods, and Abegail Morley for this super mention at The Poetry Shed.

Currently / recently reading

A random selection… the March edition of Poetry and the Spring edition of The Poetry Review, in which I particularly enjoyed poems by Hannah Lowe, Ruth McIlroy and Rebecca Goss. Still to read the essays and reviews. Mary Ruefle’s The Most of It, a prose collection, although the stories (stories? somewhere between short stories and flash fiction) feel more like poems. I’m getting a lot of inspiration from this book.  Also the Spring edition of Rattle, in which I thought I’d read two poems by Sharon Olds, which I loved, but they’re not there. So where did I see these two poems? I thought it was in a recently-arrived mag. But can’t track them down. Do you know?

Stephen Bone‘s Plainsong (Indigo Dreams) is still on the ‘current’ pile – meaning I can’t resist dipping back into it (double-dipping?) before putting it on the shelf, and after a mention by Abigail Morley recently of Robin Robertson I’ve also got out my copy of Hill of Doors for a re-read and it’s paying off.

Peter Raynard is currently on tour promoting his collection Precarious, and it’s one of those books I hesitate to use the word ‘enjoyed’ about as I rather felt I’d been pulled along by my hair to arrive slightly scathed at the end. It’s breathless stuff – the language comes at you with force, a fire hydrant of feelings. There’s a great deal of humour, especially in the poems towards the end, but the overall effect on me was unsettling – ‘exposing us all to unending rounds of worry’ (‘They always come out fighting’).

Look what Ann Perrin pressed into my hand the other day – a copy of her lovely illustrated booklet The hole in the wall, produced by none other than the Dry Stone Walling Association, completely charming and one I will look forward to reading to the granddaughters when they’re a little older.

ann perrin - the hole in the wall

I also recently enjoyed Finishing Lines (Rack Press) by Ian Harrow, a very short pamphlet about illness, with a happy ending; ‘Come, Spring, make the difference.’ (‘Entreaty’). Yes indeed. I’m about to step outside and see for myself.

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Readings, and a Garsdale (re)treat booked

The Garsdale Retreat

Well the submissions list was popular… I hope you managed to get some poems out before some of the deadlines. I’ve got a few things out now. Although sorry to report that YET AGAIN I didn’t win the National. Oh well! I’m hoping to be at the award ceremony on Wednesday (if my RSVP wasn’t too late) so at least I’ll experience the vicarious excitement of it all.

Off the back of my pamphlet launch I’ve got a few readings sorted. The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society had a last minute cancellation so they slotted me in to read last week alongside Canadian poet Miranda Pearson. I really enjoyed the evening – good venue, good vibe, good size audience and wonderfully attentive – and I got the biggest laugh I’ve ever had for the pamphlet’s title poem. I know that shouldn’t be the criterion for a successful poetry reading, but it’s always fun when people laugh – maybe I should have set my sights on standup. Er, but then again, probably not!

Robin Houghton with Miranda Pearson at the Kent & Sussex march 18
With Miranda Pearson at the Kent & Sussex in Tunbridge Wells

After Easter I’ll be reading in Lewes at the Needlewriters, alongside Nicholas Royle and Jonathan Totman. I’m a member of the Needlewriters collective so it’s home turf for me – which actually makes it a bit nerve-wracking. Not to mention my worrying about a number of poets in the audience having heard all my stuff before. I just have to remind myself that people are unlikely to remember, so I must treat it all as fresh. Never apologise!

Guess who’s going to Garsdale

Now for the big treat – I’ve booked in to a residential week at the Garsdale Retreat in June, with Ian Duhig and Hannah Lowe as the visiting guest. I’m a big admirer of Ian’s work and just know it’s going to be a fab week. I know after my experience at Ty Newydd a few years ago I wondered if I’d ever do another residential. Although that particular experience was amazing and a real boost for my writing, nonetheless I found it exhausting – there just weren’t enough hours in the day to do all the homework, no time to go out and take a walk, so many participants and quite a combative atmosphere, and the dreaded cooking/washing up duties. I’m someone who needs time and space to think, and lots of sleep. So having to get up at 6 to get work done in time for a morning seminar, after a late night the night before (compulsory activities every evening), was a bit much for me.

So… when I found the Garsdale Retreat (I think it was after I’d done a search on Ian Duhig, who I was hoping to ask for a blurb for the Telltale anthology – more on that in a minute) – two things in particular jumped off the screen at me: NO cooking or washing up (in fact the food all sounds excellent) and HALF the number of participants you get on a typical residential. Not only that, but the schedule looks about right in terms of group activity and tutor contact, with a good balance of free time. And it’s in a beautiful part of the country. So now I’m planning with military precision to get hold of Advance train tickets. It’s all very exciting and I feel very lucky to be able to go.

Coming soon! TRUTHS: A Telltale Press Anthology

Something that’s been taking up a lot of my time lately has been the forthcoming Telltale anthology, Truths – it’s been a labour of love though, so I’m not complaining. And working with Sarah Barnsley on editing has made me realise how mediocre I am at proofing – I can’t believe how many ‘straight vs curly’ quote marks and ‘hyphens vs en-dashes’ she spotted and I missed – ha ha! Seriously, Sarah is the queen of all this, and that’s on top of being an insightful and sensitive editor. My job has mostly been to fiddle around in Affinity Designer and stress about fonts and gutters.

A brief aside here – I’d like to offer an (unpaid) endorsement for this Affinity software. When I bought a new computer I needed to replace my Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, but they’re now only available on subscription (each costs more than £200 a year!) So I did some research and found Affinity, who make alternative software called Photo and Designer, with a third, Publisher, due out soon. Each program costs under £50 to buy outright, there are tons of tutorials on the website and the company is British. I’ve been using both programs very successfully and have even found Designer to be more intuitive than Illustrator. It has been a learning curve with Photo, but I’m SO pleased with the results and certainly for my needs I don’t feel the software is an any way inferior to the Adobe equivalents. End of advert!

So the Telltale Press anthology will be going to print this coming week, and the launch is on April 25 in Lewes.  Do come if you’re able – there will be a stellar list of readers. Contributors to the anthology are poets who have read with us at ‘Telltale Press & Friends’ since 2014, as well as a number of others who have supported us in the project. It feels to me like a really strong collection (OK, I would say that, wouldn’t I), and with its theme of ‘truth’, rather timely – it’s been fascinating to see how poets have interpreted the theme.

Editing the Telltale Press anthology
Typesetting hell?

 

 

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UPDATED – UK poetry magazines submissions list

window at chichester station

It’s that time again – time to update my PDF list of UK poetry magazines submissions windows, with live links to their submissions guidelines pages.

A couple of publications came off the list – Algebra of Owls has closed, and Tender seems to have been dormant for over nine months, so I took it off.

I’ll be emailing the updated list to everyone who requested previous versions. If you’re not on the mailing list but would like a copy of this one, please drop me an email (robin at robinhoughtonpoetry.co.uk).

What else is new in this version:

  1. twenty-five journals with updated information (highlighted in red)
  2. thirty-eight journals are OPEN for submissions now (some closing very soon though)
  3. a couple of journals will be opening soon – and some windows only open for as little as a week!

Good luck with those submissions.

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CIB: the distraction economy, empty living rooms & a toe-dip into poetry and polemic

analog sea review

I’ve shortened ‘Currently Influenced By…’ to CIB in the titles of these posts, because there are ‘rules’ about optimum length of blog posts titles and only a small percentage of people will read past the first couple of words, etc etc. It’s one of the symptoms of the Age of Attention, and what Aldous Huxley called our ‘almost infinite appetite for distractions.’

Pay attention now

Being distracted by technology used to be something we’d joke about – how poems never quite got written because we spent too long watching cute kitten videos. I still sometimes have to actually say under my breath the things I pick up my phone to do – check weather, check train times to London – otherwise I get sucked into reading and responding to emails, or a ‘quick’ look at the news, or a review of the photos I took yesterday to share with Nick – ‘oh look at this one!’

But reading James Williams‘s piece in the RSA Journal was a sharp reminder of where we’re going with technology, and it’s worse than you think. Williams is design ethicist and a former Google strategist, as well as co-founder of Time Well Spent, a campaigning organisation aiming to ‘realign technology with humanity’s best interests’:

In the sort term, the externalities of the digital attention economical distract us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, they can distract us from living the lives we want to live, […] a primary effect of digital technologies is to undermine the operation and even the development of the human will.

Williams talks persuasively about this – how the ‘petty media environment defined by impulsiveness and zero-sum competition for our attention’ has created fertile ground for the success of Donald Trump, for example, and how technology has ‘crowded out opportunities for reflection and replaced leisure with entertainment.’

(As I read this I thought of a recent ‘Homes for Sale’ supplement in the local paper, and its photos of interiors designed to ease the sale. When I saw a photo of what appeared to be a vast living room containing nothing but a black TV on the wall and a sofa, I felt sad – even though there may be many interpretations of such a scenario – perhaps the person or people living here spend all their time at work or going for long walks or political protest marches or caring for their old mum. Maybe they never lived there. Or maybe they’re in the process of moving out. But the picture still made me feel sad.)

Steer for the deep waters only

A recent poetry mail shot contained a flyer for a new publication called The Analog Sea Review (an offline journal) – you may have seen it. Their manifesto:

Analog Sea is a small community of writers and artists wishing to maintain contemplative life in the digital age. […] We aim to spark conversations between those who find artistic expression, philosophical enquiry, and reverence for nature critical counterweights to the racket and fragmentation of modern life.

They don’t have a website nor an email address.

Technology. Attention. Distraction. What’s it doing to us?

These are big issues for me, having spent many years absorbed in and fascinated by the internet and online behaviour. Online enriched my life, especially in the early days (late twentieth/early twenty-first century) and I believed the good would outbalance the bad, but it’s not looking that way now.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that I gave up using Facebook in January 2017, initially for a month, as I was starting to feel an overwhelming sense of anxiety every time I opened it up. I haven’t gone back, and don’t regret the decision. Today on Cheryl Capaldo Traynor’s blog I read about her own trials with Facebook, when people who she believes to be her friends spread inflammatory material. She documents her difficulty in deciding how to deal with this. But leaving Facebook, with everything she enjoys about it, isn’t an option –  ‘I’ve done enough cutting off my nose to spite my face in my lifetime.’

I’ve recently written a piece for Poetry News about social media and the ‘health’ of poetry, canvassing the opinions of a range of poets, which was in itself fascinating. It hasn’t been signed off yet, so I don’t know if or when it will appear, but I can tell you it was hard to cover everything I wanted to in 800 words, so I sense there will be more about it, not least of all on this blog.

I don’t really ‘do’ political poetry. Or do I?

I suppose it’s all got me thinking more about how the politics of technology and online behaviour intersect, and  I can feel it oozing out in the form of poetry. Or at the point of oozing. I’ve been reading Peter Raynard’s new collection Precarious, and have been a bit overcome by its hugeness, it’s a tsunami of a collection where image piles upon image upon image as if all the injustices experienced over many years have been compressed and expressed with an intensity that’s relentless. (I realise that’s not a complete review, and not all the poems in the book fit that description, but more on this in another post.)

With this in mind I’ve recently found my way to some interesting US poetry publishers championing social and political causes, via Twitter. For example, the Rise Up Review and Glass Poetry Press… more on THIS in another post as well.

Which reminds me. My list of poetry magazine submissions windows is due an update, and I may start to add some US journals to the list. I feel my attention being split. Must focus.

 

 

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Pamphlet launch night

Launch of poetry pamphlets at Printers Playhouse Eastbourne

Stephen Bone and I had a blast last Thursday launching our pamphlets in Eastbourne, at the brilliant Printers Playhouse. The audience was a sea of fantastic poet friends, non-poet friends and supportive other-halves… we had excellent guest readings from our good friends Sarah Barnsley and Antony Mair, and what else can I say except massive thankyous to everyone who came, read, listened and bought.

If you couldn’t make it but would like to buy a signed copy of All the Relevant Gods, you can do so through this link – please just put your name and address in the ‘note to seller’ – and thank you!

Antony Mair at the launch of All the Relevant Gods
Antony Mair
Sarah Barnsley at the launch of All the Relevant Gods
Sarah Barnsley
Stephen Bone at the launch of Plainsong
Stephen Bone reads from his new pamphlet ‘Plainsong’ from Indigo Dreams

 

Robin Houghton at the launch of All the Relevant Gods
I think I was having a bit too much fun at this point!
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Busy busy… pamphlet launch, Telltale Anthology latest

The Swan Theatre, Stratford

It seems to be a busy time of year, both for poetry and for music. I’ve been busy promoting our Lewes Singers concerts this coming weekend in Eastbourne and Ringmer, as well as learning the music of course… it took an hour this morning to sort out the seating plans, making sure tall people weren’t in front of short people and no singer was next to anyone singing the same voice part – ugh!

This afternoon I was happy to spend four hours making up ten more copies of Foot Wear. The first 20 copies are sold so now I have another ten. I’m making no more than 50 in all. Based on today, it takes 24 minutes to make each pamphlet – printing, folding, trimming and binding. (Of course that’s after the actual writing of the poems, finding/choosing the illustrations, doing the layout and typesetting… oh well, it’s a labour of love!) Then I put them under some heavy books overnight to flatten them, before numbering each one ready for selling – in this case at my pamphlet launch on Thursday – oh! Haven’t I mentioned that??

With two days to go I’m a bit nervous, not having decided for certain what to read, or my introductions. When I’ve finished writing this post I’ll be onto it, I promise. And practising tomorrow. Stephen Bone is my lovely co-host and co-launchee. Stephen’s Indigo Dreams pamphlet ‘Plainsong’ is fabulous, and it’s his poem about a Titan Arum that gave the launch flyer its phallic illustration – currently blown up (sorry!) to A3 and proudly sitting in the window of the Eastbourne Tourist Information Centre – I’m expecting letters of disgust next week in the Herald.

Our guest readers are Antony Mair, a fine poet teetering on the edge of some well-deserved recognition, and fellow Telltaler Sarah Barnsley, also frighteningly talented and due some serious poetry success. It’s going to be a fantastic night. I just need to decide what to read and what to wear!

Other things taking me away from blogging lately: a wedding anniversary trip to Stratford to see ‘Twelfth Night’ (in the presence of HRH Prince Charles, although he was accommodated very discreetly – a future king has to go the theatre now and then, y’know) and ‘Imperium’ at the Swan (photo above). Great fun but lessons learned about what seats to book in the future. Anticipation of Spring (please, are we nearly there yet?) and plans for the garden. Other writing and work-related stuff.

Meanwhile Hastings Stanza has been a boon as regards workshopping and poet camaraderie and I’ve got quite a few new poems on the go at the moment. So once this week’s events are over I’ll be back to the editing. Which reminds me, our Telltale Anthology is well under way, I have the first round of amends to do on the proofs, but we’re on track for a late April launch. This is shaping up into an amazing collection with some first class contributions. More about it soon.

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Opportunity to have a hand-stitched pamphlet of your poems

I promised Maria Isakova-Bennett I would mention this to you – Maria is the creator of the beautiful Coast to Coast to Coast magazine I’ve featured here recently. Well, she and co-editor Michael Brown are offering a great opportunity to one lucky poet – the chance to have their small collection published as a handmade, handstitched artifact.

You do need to hurry though – the closing date is February 10th. Good luck!

Coast to Coast to Coast handmade poetry pamphlet competition

Angst/

Currently influenced by…Whitman, the sea & being unproductive

The sea, itself!

This is the first of a new series of posts inspired by Anthony Wilson’s fascinating ‘notebook’ posts, in which he shares phrases, thoughts, links to things that have struck him as interesting, that have got him thinking and/or writing.  Anthony’s posts are full of brief, throw-em out there lines and ideas, thinking points that jab you, that surprise – very much notebook-like, sometimes almost poems in themselves. This is my version – more verbose, perhaps, but with (I hope) the same sort of flavour – a window into who and what’s currently got me thinking (or feeling) over the last month.

Walt Whitman and the sea

I’m currently learning Vaughan Williams ‘A Sea Symphony’ with one of my choirs, the words for which are taken from Walt Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’. Somehow the combination of the words and the music have really got under my skin. I’ve sung a lot of choral works but have rarely felt the emotion of a piece as I’m singing (as opposed to making sure I come in in the right place on the right note). I think only Britten’s ‘War Requiem’ has ever affected me quite this way.

The Sea Symphony has made me want to seek out more of the poems in ‘Leaves of Grass’ and find out more about Whitman, who I admit has only ever been ‘a famous American poet’ to me. Here are the opening lines of the symphony:

Behold! the sea itself!
And on its limitless, heaving breast, the ships:
See! where their white sails, bellying in the wind, speckle the green and blue!
See! thy steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of port!
See! dusky and undulating, their long pennants of smoke!

And look at this recent recording of the piece on YouTube – I challenge you not to be moved by the first three and a half minutes:

 

Ocean liners at the V & A

Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony was completed in 1909, and it’s funny how so many iconic pieces of music with sea themes were composed around that period (pre-first world war). The second half of the piece isn’t really about the sea at all, but Whitman’s use of it as a metaphor for life, the universe and everything.

When I read in Design Week that the Victoria & Albert Museum is launching (oh ha ha) a new exhibition on the subject of the golden age of ocean liners, it seemed perfectly timed. Ocean liners! I want to see this! Perhaps I need to organise an outing for members of the choir!

Economics for all – animated video

I won’t milk the ‘being all at sea’ metaphors here but on the subject of (AHEM) the British economy and its current prospects, I couldn’t help be drawn to this short vid in which economist Ha-Joon Chang explains why economics is for everyone. The RSA hold regular public-access talks on a wide range of subjects affecting society, civil life, culture and education. They’re all available to view online if you can’t make it to London in person.

Some of the talks have been turned into animated shorts aimed at encapsulating the main points in a succinct, graphic and often humorous way. As someone who goes bleary-eyed at the combative, points-scoring speeches of our elected ministers, this was both informative and though-provoking.

Celebrating ‘doing nothing’

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Medium, but it’s a kind of open forum for the posting of (mostly) interesting opinion pieces. It’s kind of a blog platform, in that you can open an account, complete a profile, starting posting whatever you want, gather followers and follow other people’s posts. A very clean and simple interface where words are valued at least as much as visuals, it’s mostly a platform for creative tech/future thinking/society/personal development. In my limited experience of it, it feels a little like a safe haven for the Twitter early adopters and the ensuing intelligent discussion.

A couple of pieces caught my imagination recently – ‘I am not a productive person’ by Jon Westenberg, in which he argues that “I don’t want to define myself by my level of constructive output, because the number of things I tick off a to-do list is not a proxy for a personality.” As someone who needs time to mull things over, and which to onlookers can seem like time-wasting or doing nothing (a quality that never sat happily with my corporate employers), this short article really spoke to me.

A bit of personal growth

More in the ‘self-help’ camp but containing a couple of interesting nuggets is this piece by Benjamin P Hardy – with the unpromising title of ‘How to change your life in 30 days’. Hardy talks about what often happens when you achieve success at something: the success may be down to something you’ve done that was different, or more innovative, or it involved pushing yourself, taking risks etc – but instead of carrying on with those behaviours, you start playing safe – which means avoiding taking risks, no longer innovating, staying in your comfort zone. And in effect you slip backwards – even if only in your own mind – it’s like a loss of confidence. You’re trying to maintain your position but it feels a lot harder – like treading water in the sea rather than swimming, you’re letting the sea carry you wherever it wants – hey! see what I did there? A little sea-metaphor popped into my head!

Anyway, it did make me confront a tendency I see in myself – having ‘cracked’ something, for example getting a poem into a magazine I’ve been trying for ages, I then worry about sending anything there again, in case it’s never as good as the ‘magic’ poem. Or let’s say I have some success in a competition. I then convince myself that it would be awful to enter the same competition and get nowhere, or that it would be safer to enter small competitions because then if I’d have a better chance of getting somewhere, or if got nowhere it wouldn’t matter because it was a small competition – you see how stupid the whole thing gets? And the sum total of all this is that if I’m not careful I let the stupidity dictate what I write or prevent me from just thinking about the excitement of trying new things and taking a few risks.  So I hereby pledge to do less of this, and thanks Benjamin P for the kick up the backside.