Robin Houghton

Blog/ 27/01/201829/01/2018

Poetry competitions now open – to enter, or not?

I’ve noticed there are a number of poetry competitions about to close – January seems to be a competition battleground.

I’ve talked about the issue of poetry competitions before – and there are some fascinating comments here from both experienced compers and others who absolutely hate the whole poetry competition scene.

So who (if anyone) wins the battle of the comps? Would you, can you enter them all? Or pick and choose? Or not at all?

I can go months without entering a competition – usually because I haven’t got anything to offer. But when I think about it, there are other factors involved. As always, I’m interested to know if you agree or disagree…

First question – do I have anything?

I know it’s often debated as to whether there’s such a thing as a ‘competition’ poem. Based on my entirely subjective experience of competitions, I tend to think there is. A competition poem has to stand alone. So anything conceived as part of a sequence, or needing the context of other poems, in my mind anyway, is not a contender. A poem may be extremely competent, highly skillful, charming, original, appealing to a magazine editor for whatever reason, but that doesn’t mean it will ever win a competition. Winning poems are usually neither very short nor very long, unless that’s part of the criteria (for example the Magma Editor’s Prize – sorry, that one just closed). The question to ask is, why would this poem stand out? For example, do the title and the first line earn their chops? If there’s a theme, do I have a sufficiently original angle? Basically – do I have any ‘competition’ poems in hand, and if not, is there any realistic prospect of my writing one before the deadline? If not, the process ends here. If yes, or maybe …

What’s the status of this particular competition?

I admit I look at this before I look at prize money. There are some ‘blue riband’ competitions that take precedence over others simply because of the good they can do a poet’s reputation. These ‘reputation points’ can count for a lot in the future when you’re trying to reach an audience, sell your first pamphlet or get readings. You might think you have more chance of being struck by lightning than winning the National, but even to make the longlist of the National is noteworthy. It’s the same reason that people add ‘Commended in the Bridport’ to their CVs but may leave out the fact they came first in a much smaller or local competition.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve no issue with smaller competitions (see my comments below), and the prize money doesn’t have to be stellar to make it worthwhile entering, but if the deadline is the same time as, say, the Troubadour, I know which one I’d rather send my best competition poem.

Is it for a cause I want to support?

If it’s a competition run by a magazine I particularly want to support, a cause I feel strongly about or a project promoted by a friend, AND if there are other circumstances that convince me I have a good chance (such as who’s judging it) then I might give it a punt, regardless of what I say in the next section.

On the other hand, if I’ve seen that an organisation is great at publicity and whipping up entries, but slow to publicise the results and poor at promoting the winners, that turns me off. It’s very sad if competition organisers don’t appear to be proud of their winners, and make at least as much noise after the competition as they did before. If all you get is a cheque in the post, or maybe an invitation to the prize reading (with travel at your expense – presenting an awkward dilemma if they don’t tell you beforehand whether you’ve even won anything) then it can leave a bad taste in your mouth.

What’s the prize money and the entry fee?

This is where I start to sound a bit mercenary. I can’t justify a huge budget for competitions. ‘Only invest what you are prepared to lose’, as they say. Although yes I know ‘serious’ compers enter a lot of competitions on the grounds of the more you enter, the higher your chances of winning something – I can’t comment on that as anything to do with mathematical probability is not my forte. But if it costs £5 to enter a competition and the first prize is £150, I’m afraid for me that’s just not attractive. (And yes, I have seen this.)

I absolutely agree with paying judges a fair fee for their considerable time, expertise and everything else involved. And competitions are often a major source of funding for small magazines and organisations. They take a lot of work to put on, I don’t doubt it. But in order to attract both a good volume of entries and enough of a decent quality, there needs to be a fair correlation between the entry fee and the prize money. It doesn’t have to be £10,000 either – there are many ways to add value to the actual prize money, and you see this more and more – special prizes for local writers, additional prizes in kind for winners, such as publication in an anthology, magazine subscriptions, books, mentoring, even champagne (more of this, please!) All of which help promote the organisers and/or are obtainable from sponsors rather than having to be paid for out of entry fees.

So – how much am I prepared to pay for what’s on offer to winners?

Who’s the judge?

I do think that doing some background on the judge, especially if you don’t know their work at all, is basic due diligence. I’m not saying it pays to write something in the style of that judge, or about a topic you know they write about. In fact, that’s probably a rubbish idea. I can also say from experience that the same judge can give you first prize in one competition and nothing in another, so it’s also pointless telling yourself ooh! she really liked my last comp entry! That means I’ve got a good chance! (Ditto if they have been your tutor/liked a poem a wrote on an Arvon/ said hello to you at the T S Eliots).

Aren’t judges always saying they like to be surprised? Or to read something they could/would never have written themselves? Nevertheless I have more than once decided not to enter a comp on the grounds that I really didn’t think anything I could write would excite that particular judge. Sometimes you just know.

What are the odds?

Oh dear. The laws of probability again. Many competitions make it known how many entries they get – especially if it’s more than last year. You may think it’s not worth entering if yours is only one of 8,000 poems in contention, when in a smaller competition you may only be up against 300 or fewer. However, some competitions feature prizes for not just 1st, 2nd and 3rd, but also Highly Commended and Commended. They may even publish a Shortlist and a Longlist, both of which (if the organisers are good at publicity) can win you ‘reputation’ points. And it can be encouraging too – hey, you got somewhere! So the chances of getting somewhere might be better in a larger competition, rather than nowhere in a smaller one.

Another factor to consider is the quality of the entries. The bigger the prize money, the cheaper the entry fee and the better and more widespread the publicity, the greater the proportion of poems that have zero chance of winning, thus pushing your lovingly-written ditty further up the pile. I’m not sure this has been scientifically proven, but I have a strong feeling about it.

Enter now! Perhaps!

Of course, luck always plays a part. That’s part of the thrill, isn’t it? And maybe (unlike me) you have plenty of poems to go round. But I still think a certain amount of selection, before handing over the good stuff, isn’t such a bad idea.

If you’re feeling like the gods are shining on you, then here are three suggestions for where to put your money this week:

The Interpreter’s House Poetry Competition, closes January 31st. Judge Zaffar Kunial, prizes: £500, £150, £100, plus publication in the magazine. Entry fee £4 or 3 for £10

Prole Laureate Competition, closes January 31st. Judge Kate Garrett, prizes £200 and 2 x £50, plus publication in the magazine and on the website. Entry fee £3 for the first entry, £2 after that.

The Plough Poetry Prize, closes January 31st. Judge Michael Symmons Roberts, prizes £1000, £500, £250 in each of 2 categories (open – up to 40 lines, short poem – up to 10 lines). Entry fee £5

There are more! See the Poetry Library’s listing.

Addendum – I’ve just seen this excellent post from Angela T Carr, on the very same topic, written a few days ago – it must be something in the air! Angela regularly posts competition calls on her blog, and her insights are well worth having.

Blog/ 22/01/2018

The new pamphlet is here | launch details

Exciting times. My third pamphlet (counting ‘Foot Wear‘ as one) All the Relevant Gods is here. A box of copies arrived last week, so now I have to go about emptying it!

There are reviews to solicit, copies to send out, readings to secure – I already have readings confirmed for Needlewriters Lewes in April, plus Reading and Cheltenham in 2019. I’m hoping to have some more in 2018 but it’s amazing how far ahead reading slots get booked. I ought to know this – at Needlewriters we’re booked up to 2020.

And of course the launch evening – which is shaping up into something fabulous. My far-too-modest poet friend Stephen Bone also has a new pamphlet out, Plainsong, from Indigo Dreams, so we’re having a joint launch party in Eastbourne at the suitably funky Printers Playhouse.

We’ve invited two horribly talented poets as our guest readers, and they’re probably going to show us up, but hey! At least in my dotage I’ll be able to tell people I shared the stage with fine poets Antony Mair and Sarah Barnsley…

Here’s the launch invitation, featuring a Titan Arum, a huge smelly flower about which Stephen writes most lustily!

If you’re anywhere nearby, do come join the party and let us entertain you!

Blog/ 20/01/2018

TS Eliot readings, Needlewriters, some crazy January stuff

TS Eliot Prize readings 2018 - Royal Festival Hall

Hardly seems like a week ago that Peter Kenny and I dared travel to London’s Southbank for the annual T S Eliot Prize readings. Eschewing the very unreliable train service, I elected to drive, as I’ve done for the past few years, only to find the M23 (the main road to London from these parts) closed halfway up, enforcing a 45 minute crawl around the outskirts of Gatwick airport. Interesting fact: in 1833 it was possible to travel from London to Brighton in 3 hours 40 minutes. Last week it took about 3 hours by car.

Anyway, thankfully I had the pleasure of Peter’s company and we arrived 15 minutes before the readings began – not really long enough for the traditional schmoozing, poet-spotting and generally mwah-mwah-ing, but not a disaster. Sharing our row were the lovely Peter Raynard of Proletarian Poetry and Rishi Dastidar who seems to have been everywhere you looked last year, not least of all thanks to his debut Nine Arches collection Ticker-Tape which has been racking up some great reviews. Then how strange is this – who should we be sitting next to me but Maria Isakova-Bennett and Michael Brown, the editors of Coast to Coast to Coast who I met in Liverpool just a few weeks ago. Small world!

The readings this year didn’t excite me a great deal, I admit, and I regret not being able to go to Katy Evans-Bush‘s excellent pre-event reading day this year, in which she goes through all the shortlisted books and we read excerpts and discuss. When I’ve been to this in past years it has really enhanced my enjoyment of the readings.

Having said that, standing out for me were Tara Bergin, Caroline Bird and Ocean Vuong. All three of them grabbed my attention and kept it, albeit in quite different ways. I wasn’t surprised to hear that Ocean Vuong was the winner, given that his collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds has already been phenomenally successful. His reading was extraordinary – he’s a slight figure on the stage, but there’s a huge intensity about him that makes you lean forward in your seat so as not to miss a single word. (Interesting fact: T S Eliot wouldn’t have been eligible for the T S Eliot prize, as his books weren’t long enough.)

On Thursday it was the quarterly Needlewriters event in Lewes, in which three writers read from their work. I was drawn into poems on the theme of snow by Robert Seatter and couldn’t resist buying his book just out from Two Rivers Press, entitled (oddly enough) ‘The Book of Snow’ – as much for the look of it – the beautiful combination of words and graphics – as for the poems themselves – I admit – but then I am a bit superficial like that. Can’t wait to read it. The evening was bitter-sweet though – founder member and ‘head girl’ Clare Best is moving to Suffolk in a month or so, so this was her last Needlewriters (as one of the organisers, but I’m sure we’ll entice her back for the occasional visit.) Very sad indeed to see her go, although it’s wonderful and exciting transition for her.

Meanwhile I’m struggling a bit with a new computer (new software to learn, endless passwords to re-enter, various versions of files to consolidate ) which means my submissions spreadsheet is in disarray, so I must sort that out. I’ve also got a pamphlet launch to promote (see next post) and two choir concerts also to promote (and learn the music for) taking place a few days after the pamphlet launch. I’ve also recently started volunteering at Brownies, and have promised to teach the girls a song to sing for ‘Thinking Day’ – which happens to be the same day as my pamphlet launch – I’m going to make it all work somehow! Please wish me luck…

Blog/ 09/01/2018

Giveaway winner PLUS 2 tickets for the TS Eliots at bargain price

Coast to Coast to Coast issue 2 number 55

It seems to be the thing at the moment when it comes to ‘picking a name out of the hat’ to make a wee film of it. I can see this is a nice idea (both to allay any suspicions of fixing, and also to present a friendly face), so I did consider it. But in the end I decided it was a bit over the top in the case of my impromptu prize draw, in which there weren’t many names, and also it’s just a little thing between us, isn’t it?

So without further drum-rolling I’ll just come out with it and say the lucky winner is Hilaire – last in the hat, first out, it seems – so Hilaire, DM me your address and I’ll get Coast to Coast to Coast issue 2, number 55 to you in the post. Thank you to everyone who expressed an interest, and for all your comments & banter here on the blog.

Filing, writing, launching

Happy New Year by the way – this January is unusually busy for me, having had a short break last week in Seville (lovely city, and thrilling to experience warmer weather and longer/light evenings, even if only for a few days).

But enough of the ‘poor me’ stuff! I’m currently navigating my way around a new computer which I felt was overdue, the old one being ten years old. A big part of the switchover is re-filing poetry files and folders, amalgamating from both desktop and laptop, which are frankly in disarray. No wonder my sending out is all awry at the moment. I’m also learning how to use the new software I’ve bought to replace the now out-of-my-price-range Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Ugh!

Well in the pipeline now is the launch event for my Cinnamon pamphlet All the Relevant Gods on Feb 22nd – very excited about this, so I’ll write a separate post shortly. I’ve started another ‘poem a day’ exercise this month to kick some thought into new writing. And when I’ve got some end-of-year stats about 2017 submissions I’ll give you an update.

Two tickets for the T S Eliot Prize readings for sale

On Sunday is the annual T S Eliot Prize readings jamboree, and I’ll be going with Telltale pal and co-conspirator Peter Kenny. I do have two spare tickets if you’re thinking of coming but don’t have a ticket yet – they’re good seats, and only £13.50 as I got the early bird price. If you’re interested, let me know asap as I’ll be trying to flog them on Twitter very soon.

Angst/ 29/12/2017

End of year thoughts, links & thank yous

This is my wrap-up post for 2017 – I’ve enjoyed other people’s posts but have been increasingly wondering whether I’ve anything else to add or anything different to say. But that of course is one of the downsides of blogging/social media and the like – the angst of wondering if is one actually saying anything of any value to anyone, or just adding to the morass of mediocrity that was once quaintly called the ‘information superhighway’.

So while the marketer in me is demanding a ‘top ten’ this or ‘best of’ that, I’d just like to highlight a few things that have caught my attention lately, plus a bit of news and some general thank yous & thoughts.

Some interesting year-end posts & debates

My favourite ‘New Year Resolutions’ post has been this from Nathaniel Tower – 10 writing resolutions actually worth keeping – I love Nathaniel’s straight talking and he’s right on the money here as ever. His ‘Juggling Writer’ is one of my favourite blogs, and his How to Write a Blog Post that Will Generate Millions of Pageviews and Thousands of Shares gave me the best laugh-out-loud moment of the year.

Allison K Williams comes up with this thoughtful piece on the Brevity blog, urging writers to congratulate themselves on the last year’s achievements, and setting realistic goals for 2018.

It was fascinating to read this recent thread on Twitter, begun by poet Phillip B Williams who asks whether social media encourages too much ‘bigging up’ of our poet friends rather than engaging in meaningful critique of the work, a question which unsurprisingly gets a very lively response.

I do like the way that people are using Twitter more often for these kinds of extended debates – proof that plenty of us are actually still willing to engage rather than throw flames.

On a thoroughly positive note, writer Annette Gendler each year creates an ‘Artists’ and Writers’ Notebook’ (let’s not get started on where I’ve placed the apostrophes here!) I’ve already printed off a copy and will be using some quiet moments over the weekend to fill it in. I like the way it focuses your thinking by asking you to list your various projects, wishes, how you’re going to prioritise and tackle them, that sort of thing – but in ways that encourage specific, rather than general answers. If like me you feel you always have things on the go but can’t follow through on everything, it’s helpful for understanding what you can do, what needs more research … and that it’s OK to shelve things and come back to them. You can download the 15-page workbook for free if you sign up Annette’s monthly newsletter.

Some thank yous

I was very touched to have been listed once more in Matthew Stewart’s end of year poetry blog round-upon Rogue Strands, together with a good range of blogs both familiar to me and not so much. I commend the list to you. I do think ‘poetry blogging’ now covers a wide spectrum, from the academic and review-led to the practice/writing technique-focused and then the more diaristic or personal like mine. I always find it fascinating how different poets approach blogging.

A recent heart-stopping moment for me was to read Rishi Dastidar’s review of a poem of mine published in The Rialto in the autumn. I’ve never had anyone publicly critique a poem in such detail, and for it to be on the Rialto blog and see it promoted across Twitter was very exciting for someone like me on the lower echelons of the poet-o-sphere. Whenever I find myself envious of ‘big name’ poets I should remember this feeling. Because as long as one is flying well below the radar of the ‘serious’ poetry world, one can bask in friendly reviews (cf Phillip Williams’s point earlier). If you hit the big time the knives are well and truly out – and the reviews get tougher to handle, not to mention the general sense of ‘you can say what you like now she’s public property’. Look at how they went for Sarah Howe when she won the T S Eliot Prize. Being down here amongst the unknowns is definitely a safe place to be!

I was going to start listing all the people who’ve helped and supported me and my writing this year, but it’s a killer of a task because there are so many I want to name and I’d be terrified of missing anyone off the list. I love you all and just hope you know who you are. I’m also as grateful as always to you (yes YOU) for reading, commenting and sharing my blog posts. Happy New Year – here’s to us all, and to a fulfilling, creative and happy 2018.

*I’m away next week, but I’ll be giving away that copy of ‘Coast to Coast to Coast’ the week after…

Blog/ 21/12/2017

Launch of ‘Coast to Coast to Coast’ issue 2

I’m back from an (almost) flying trip to Liverpool, a city about 300 miles north of where I live, for a five minute poetry reading – crazy or what? Except I wasn’t the only ‘poetry tourist’ there, and no wonder, as we were there for the launch of no ordinary magazine.

Edited by Maria Isakova Bennett and Michael Brown, ‘Coast to Coast to Coast’ is a handmade journal and every one is unique. I’ve opened it up in the above photo so you can see the cover – Maria designs and creates the covers from tissue, tiny pieces of card, silk and tulle-type fabric and ribbon – each is hand-stitched and assembled. The cover theme for this issue is wintery and cool – the inner pages are printed on complementary paper (white with the whiter covers, cream for the creamer colour schemes). The whole look is so delicate and ethereal you almost don’t want to handle it! Having made my little ‘Foot Wear’ pamphlet (a lot fewer pages and with a printed cover) and knowing the time it took, I can only boggle at the labour that’s gone into the making of these journals (150 copies!)

A bit of Liverpool love

I want to digress here for a moment – first of all to say how much fun the journey was. Travelling by Virgin Pendolino train was What Train Travel Should Be Like. Down here on the South coast we endure Southern Rail: constant cancellations, delays, replacement buses every weekend, slow, uncomfortable journeys in ancient and filthy carriages, expensive and utterly unreliable. So getting on a train that leaves and arrives ON TIME, is quiet, clean and FAST… and, thanks to Advance ticket fares, cheap… I’d simply forgotten any of this was possible!

And Liverpool? There’s such an energy to the place. Its history is on show everywhere.

From inside the Liver Building in Liverpool — Looking out at the Ice Fair from inside the Liver Building

We stayed in the Ropewalks part of town which is basically warehouses mostly converted to flats, hotels, clubs, bars and yet more bars.

liverpool-ropewalks — Um, not actually where we stayed…

Liverpudlians take their entertainment (and shopping) seriously I think. Then there’s the Albert Dock, transformed beyond recognition since the 1980s and now home to the Tate Liverpool, the Maritime Museum and the striking Museum of Liverpool, which reminded me of the Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI Centre for Contemporary Arts in Rome – separated at birth?

Museum of Liverpool and Maxxi Rome — Museum of Liverpool and (bottom right) MAXXI Rome – some similarity, surely?

padlocks by the side of the Mersey in Liverpool — ‘Love locks’ on the chain fence by the side of the Mersey

Back to the launch …

Within the same complex as the Museum of Liverpool is the Open Eye Gallery, a gallery of contemporary photography where the launch for ‘Coast to Coast to Coast’ took place on Tuesday evening. Writer-in-residence Pauline Rowe, who also has a poem in the magazine, co-hosted the event and introduced the current exhibition which we were invited to browse.

It was wonderful to hear readings from poets I knew of but had never met, and some I didn’t know of. I had a great chat with Charles Lauder Jr, and finally got to meet the great Fogginzo himself, John Foggin – naturally I was quick to remind him how he pipped me out of five hundred quid in the Plough competition a couple of years ago, but hey!

robin houghton & johnfoggin — Robin meets the great Fogginzo

I was sorry not to talk with Michael Brown, Maria’s co-editor, who I’ve since discovered with a little research is a fine poet (Roy Marshall has a good interview with him here on his blog) but perhaps our paths will cross again.

With so much good stuff in the magazine it’s hard to pick out the highlights. I loved David Coldwell’s ‘Winter’s Indifference’ and Martin Bewick’s ‘Ways’. In the magazine I enjoyed moving contributions from Suzannah V. Evans and Pippa Little, as well as a funny prose poem from Paul Stephenson. Maria and Michael were thrilled to have had a submission from John Glenday, testament to how well the first edition of the magazine had been received, no doubt. His poem opens the magazine and Maria read it on the night.

Giveaway

So that was my great pre-Christmas adventure. My copy of the magazine is number 15, but I also bought number 55 which is equally beautiful, and I’d like to give it to one of my blog readers. If you’d like to have it, let me know in the comments and I’ll put all names into a hat and draw a winner. The only criterion I ask for is that you’ve posted a comment here over the last year, or that you’ve let me know in some other way that you read the blog. You know who you are! I’ll be doing the draw in a week or so.

Coast to Coast to Coast issue 2 — This beautiful magazine (on the right) could be yours!

Blog/ 16/12/2017

Poems for a Christmas concert

I was recently asked to select some readings to go in between the movements of a choral piece. The piece is Bob Chilcott’s On Christmas Night. In it, Chilcott sets a number of carols in a sequence, telling the Christmas story from the fall of Adam and Eve (yes, it hadn’t occurred to me that it starts there – Nativity Plays usually skip straight to the shepherds in the fields) – to the birth of Jesus.

I’ll come clean now – it was my husband who asked me, on behalf of the East Sussex Community Choir which he conducts. The project interested me, so even though I knew there wouldn’t be any payment on this occasion (!) I was happy to take it on.

The score suggests which readings would be suitable, but that others may be substituted. Now, I’ve been to plenty of concerts (especially at Christmas) where there are readings in between the music. Almost without exception they are either the standard Bible readings of ‘lessons and carols’ (such as the one that’s broadcast each year from King’s College Cambridge), or they are ‘light’ – passages from Dickens or ‘The night before Christmas’ by Clement Clark Moore, amusing Christmas-themed stories or anecdotes. Or else it’s Eliot’s Journey of the Magi.

I wasn’t interested in doing the ‘same old’, so I set out to find poems or texts that were by living/contemporary writers. I wanted secular, not sacred – words that would complement the religious story being told by the choir, and invite contemplation of the wider spiritual context – themes of wonder, joy, love, birth, death and the cycle of nature.

I topped and tailed with two extracts from A C Grayling‘s extraordinary The Good Book, a kind of secular Bible and a fascinating compilation of thousands of texts by philosophers, teachers, prophets, leaders, literary figures and writers. So, alongside the carol about Adam eating the apple and falling from grace, we are reminded how a tree bears both flowers and fruit, and its fruit is knowledge, which teaches the good gardener how to understand the world. The closing extract is a short passage about the nature of wisdom, which parallels the Biblical story of the ‘wise men’.

For the rest of the readings I chose poems:

Janet Sutherland‘s ‘line’ from her collection Hangman’s Acre takes us into a wintry but beautiful landscape where geese ‘carve a soundless line’, where ‘simple shapes’ and ‘muffled earth’ set a scene of waiting and anticipation, before ‘the line sets out alone’. There is both apprehension and wonder in this – to navigate a path (through life?) with ‘no compass no margin’ and yet not to hesitate, but to simply wait for the moment. For me, this approximates to the journey facing Mary, and indeed Christ after her – they face up to the unknown because they have no choice – they have faith and they accept.

‘Prayer’ by Carol Ann Duffy is a favourite of mine, and I knew that it would be familiar to at least some of the audience. For me it examines self-doubt, sadness, possibly even grief, in a way that uplifts by showing us the hope and love present when we open our ears to the quotidian sounds around us. Life goes on, children practise their piano scales, we cope with bad days – all this and more expressed in a sonnet which concludes with an extract from the Shipping Forecast, an enduring and recognisable ritual not unlike daily prayers and ‘Latin chants’. And as with ‘line’, there are musical references in ‘Prayer’ which felt appropriate for this context.

When it came to the nativity, I wanted a poem to express all the wonder, hope, and love felt by a parent at the birth of a child. ‘William’ by Jack Underwood (from his collection Happiness) is a creative, exuberant and highly original love poem to a new baby, from his father. Starting from the point of what he is familiar with, the speaker then finds himself at a loss when faced with ‘your fine melon head, your innocent daring-to-be’ – completely ‘uncooked’ at the newness and intensity of his feelings – ‘I can feel my socks being on’ – pure joy and a lot of fun.

The final poem I chose was the wonderful song-like ‘A short story of falling’ by Alice Oswald from her collection Falling Awake. It takes the audience back to the theme of birth, lifecycles, regeneration and the wonder of nature. The title also plays on the idea of the Biblical ‘fall’ with which we began. There is so much beauty in this poem – the summer shower that ‘steals the light and hides it in a flower’ and the narrator wanting to know how to ‘balance/ the weight of hope against the light of patience’. Like a song, we reach the end and feel we are ready to being again – ‘the story of the falling rain / that rises to the light and falls again’.

I can’t say yet whether all this will work or not, as the concert is this evening in Lewes! The reader will be a member of the choir who’s also an actor – in rehearsal he delivered the poems with sensitivity and clarity. I haven’t asked for the poems to be printed in the programme as I didn’t want to risk breaching any copyright, so it’s all in the reading. All the poems are credited though, and I hope it may encourage some people to seek out the books in which they appear. Not everyone will be that interested, but at least it gets contemporary writing in front of a general audience.

So no ‘jolly old Saint Nick’ or Tiny Tim or the ghost of Christmas past for the audience tonight, but more challenging fare! Let’s do it!

Blog/ 01/12/201701/12/2017

Updated – UK poetry mags submissions info

Things move quickly in the magazine world so I thought I would update my spreadsheet quarterly.

This is the list of UK poetry magazines with live links to the submissions pages, details of submissions windows and general guidelines as published on their websites. As ever, I can’t claim it’s fully comprehensive, so feel free to let me know in the comments about any omissions or errors.

I’ll be emailing the updated list to everyone who requested the first version (August). If you didn’t see that, but would like a copy of this one, please drop me an email (robin at robinhoughtonpoetry.co.uk).

What’s new in this updated version:

~~eight~~ ten more journals added
twenty-three journals with updated information
~~eight~~ nine journals with windows open NOW but closing soon

Time to get some poems out?? I know I need to!

Blog/ 19/11/2017

Loose Muse & other news

Sorry about the title of this post – no, wait – never apologise! As I wrote it I was thinking ‘Hugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grump’ – aka the fireman in Trumpton. I’ve probably got the names a bit wrong but that’s how I remember chanting them as a child. An early poetic influence..?

So – to Loose Muse – I had an invitation to read some months ago from Sue Wrinch, who runs the monthly group Loose Muse at the Discovery Centre (aka the Library) in Winchester. I’m always excited to be asked to read, although I admit I was daunted when Sue said it would be alongside the mighty Sasha Dugdale. Sasha is a poet, playwright, translator and editor who is, I’ll be the first to admit, in an entirely different league from me. Among her many achievements: her long poem ‘Joy’ won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2016 and is the title poem of her new collection from Carcanet.

I loved Sasha’s reading of an extract from ‘Joy’, which is written in the voice of Catherine Blake, who was wife to William. The poem is both riveting and moving, formally inventive and not without humour. Sasha read sensitively throughout, and I was much relieved to find her a very warm person and not the slightest bit grand. Unfortunately she had to leave early to catch a train but not before we exchanged a few words and I managed to get a photo.

I was reasonably pleased with how my reading went and I think I finished a bit early – but I’d always rather do that that go on too long. Most exciting to sell a few pamphlets – including the first three copies of Foot Wear!

Loose Muse is a well-supported event and I was struck by the fact that the open mic was clearly a key part of the evening. Sue kept things moving but there was a definite sense that every reader was important, not just the ‘feature’ readers. Those who read appeared comfortable and seemed to trust their audience – the overall effect was one of a reading and writing group rather than the kind of ‘free for all’ car crash craziness that often seems to occur at open mics. Sue even does a full write up of each event – you can read last Monday’s one here. All in all a generous and hard working host. I’m very grateful to Sue for the invitation.

And in Other News … Jeremy Page has very kindly accepted a new poem for The Frogmore Papers. Fab news, especially as it was one that came out of the lovely Jackie Wills workshop day when I was suffering from some sort of age-related migraine. Joy indeed!

Meanwhile, at Telltale Press we are putting together an anthology to come out in the Spring, with contributions from our many ‘Friends of Telltale’. It’s at a very exciting stage, at which we start to discuss and order the poems. Now I need to finish my own contribution – ack!

Blog/ 15/11/201715/11/2017

Foot Wear – a handmade mini-pamphlet

So there I was with a handful of poems from my ill-fated ‘Business Class’ collection that couldn’t find a home. What to do? I started thinking about the themes: workplace tensions, multicultural office environments, illicit relationships, anomie…and shoes! Why hadn’t I thought of it before? I was working in the sports shoe industry. And I realised shoes have been a theme in my life – from doodling enormous platform boots all over my rough book at school, to my first job in a shoe shop, to persuading my bosses at Nike that netball was a viable sport and players needed netball shoes.

I picked over what I had, chose a few unpublished poems and adapted a couple that had been published, added in a few new shoe-themed poems, and the little collection made a good narrative arc.

Shoes are made by hand, so why not the pamphlet?

I wanted this to be a small collection of poem ‘vignettes’, semi-autobiographical, related to my life in shoes, in limited edition. I wanted each poem to be accompanied by a photo. I also wanted to make the pamphlets by hand, as much as possible – not hand written and not handmade paper (would be nice, but very expensive) – but hand-bound and finished. The point is that the trainers we wear are by and large handmade – from the pattern cutting to the stitching, dyeing, glueing and finishing – by hundreds of assembly-line workers in the far east, and it’s skilled work. The least I could do, to pay homage to that process, was to make the pamphlets myself.

A bit of info for stationery geeks

My plan was to print the inner pages on my office printer. I was excited to find A5 paper for sale online, and I ordered it in 170gsm, a bit heavier than normal printer paper. I thought perhaps there’d be less chance of a printer jam and the heavier weight would look classier. I hadn’t really considered the thickness of the finished article. But with only twenty pages it turned out fine in the end. Similarly, I had the covers printed in 380 mic pulp, which turned out quite thick – but I don’t regret it. I had no trouble folding the pages in the end because I had a lovely bit of kit called a bone folder.

A noob at numbering

The first challenge was to print the pages in the right order, with the correct back-to-back pagination. This proved harder than I thought and I wasted quite a few sheets of paper in my frustration!

Anyway I succeeded in making a mockup, glued together, which became my blueprint. There then followed the sloooow process of printing the pages. Ten at a time invariably meant a misfeed of the paper, which when it was side two being printed meant reprinting all over again both sides. Ugh.

Meanwhile I created a cover design using a photo of the tongue label from my trainers and a background image suggesting a cardboard box. This I had printed at an online printers.

Adventures in book binding

I was looking forward to binding the pamphlets. I bought a ‘bookbinding starter pack’ from a wonderful shop based in the Orkneys called the Vintage Paper Company, and followed their instructions for how to make the simplest of bindings.

That was it! Or so I thought… I realised then that the pages protruded outside the cover. They would need trimming. After trying unsuccessfully to trim a thickness of 5 sheets using a blade, I realised I’d have to do it singly.

In the end I got quite good at it, although there were a few rough edges I thought that was fine – all part of the quirkiness/individuality of each pamphlet.

Ta da!

The final product is lovely, if I say so myself! I’ve only made ten so far, and there’s going to be a limit of fifty. My plan is to sell them at readings.

In fact I made my first sales on Monday evening in Winchester – more about that in the next post!

Author: Robin Houghton