Robin Houghton

Blog/ 16/01/201716/01/2017

TS Eliot Prize – workshop & readings

Katy Evans-Bush‘s TS Eliot shortlist workshop is fast becoming an institution. Now in its sixth year, it’s a fine precursor to the Prize readings which take place the following day, and the prize giving itself the day after that.

The format is straightforward – Katy reads the ten shortlisted books, chooses from them a number of poems to discuss, and invites poets along to the Poetry School in Lambeth for a day to mull them over. I’ve been to one of these workshops once before and had a wonderful time. This time I had to confess I hadn’t read any of the collections, but in a way that’s part of the excitement – to be introduced to them by someone like Katy. Not only does she offer her thoughts and insights into the works, and invite us all into the discussion, but she also brings to the table her formidable background as a writer, reader and and literary critic. Plus the odd bit of insider gossip, of course.

The TS Eliot Prize is probably the highest profile UK poetry prize and that’s not just because the winner gets £20,000. The annual prize readings are a popular draw. I was fortunate to be there at the South Bank last night. The result will be announced tonight – I won’t be at the award ceremony this year (no invitation!? Boo! – although that didn’t stop me going last year!)

Anyway, here’s a quick round-up of the books, a note or two from the workshop and what I thought of the readings. It’s in the order that they read last night. I can’t presume to review any of the collections, but I’ve included links to interesting reviews of each of them, should you want to find out more. Oh, and a few pics at the end.

Bernard O’Donoghue, The Seasons of Cullen Church (Faber)

In an interesting mix of shortlisted poets, O’Donoghue represents the old guard, if you like – experienced, a Whitbread Prize winner, Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, writing the sort of assured, Heaney-esque lyric poetry one expects to see on the TSE shortlist. In the time-pressured vipers’ nest of the workshop room the few poems we looked at got short shrift, but to be fair it was near the end of the day and we needed cake.

Bernard’s reading suffered a little from some first-half technical sound issues, plus over-long introductions/explanations. Here’s Paddy Kehoe’s review of The Seasons of Cullen Church.

Ruby Robinson, Every Little Sound (Liverpool University Press)

Born in 1985, Ruby Robinson is clearly this year’s newcomer wild card (but not to be dismissed -look what happened last year). It’s a slim collection of little more than 30 poems, in a very small format (pamphlet sized) and even smaller typeface. This book was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, so clearly is a standout. In our workshop, various aspects of the sample poems came under attack (errors in grammar, inexplicable line endings).. could envy have been getting the better of us? Surely not!

At the readings, Ruby stood her ground very successfully and if she was nervous she made a good job of keeping it under control.

Martyn Crucefix reviews Every Little Sound here.

Katharine Towers, The Remedies (Picador)

A collection of mostly short poems, with a section devoted to the Bach Flower Remedies, in which Towers personifies each flower with the qualities it purports to cure. These were clever and entertaining, but workshoppers identified a tendency to sail dangerously close to whimsy.

Katharine came across as a little nervous in the reading. Much as I admire brevity when it comes to introductions, as a member of the audience I found myself feeling supremely uninvolved. It’s a tricky balance.

Here’s a review of The Remedies by Kate Kellaway in The Guardian.

J O Morgan, Interference Pattern (Cape)

In the workshop, none of us knew anything much about J O Morgan, but Katy filled us in on his previous publications and helped us into Interference Pattern, which doesn’t follow any traditional path. There are no titles, and although there are section markers it’s not clear if the sections are meant to be read as individual pieces. There are some recurring threads but it’s not all narrative. ‘Voices jostling… like radio interference’ was how Katy described it. I was intrigued by the idea of it not being ‘one poem’ but then again clearly meant to be taken as a whole.

I travelled up to London with poet friend Charlotte Gann and by the time we arrived I’d been won over by her enthusiasm for J O Morgan. The reading he gave was mesmerising – all without a script, and with an intensity of presence that gripped me utterly. Slightly scary too – which probably helps if you want to keep people’s attention!

Here’s what Kate Kellaway had to say about Interference Pattern.

At the start of the second half of readings, host Ian McMillan announced that a few people had complained that they couldn’t hear people clearly enough – thank god it wasn’t just me then! And the second half sound was noticeably better.

Vahni Capildeo, Measures of Expatriation (Picador)

One of the big guns – this book has already won the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection, and it’s clearly a big read. It’s in seven sections and is packed with not just poetry but dense passages of prose. It deals with displacement, leaving, distance, language, identity and many of such topics that are absolutely of the moment. ‘Complex and multifaceted but readable’. One of the workshoppers said she was halfway through and although she thought she’d find it heavy going it absolutely wasn’t.

Last night Vahni was first to read after the break, as a few audience members finished their ice creams and beers. It could have been a challenge but she was confident reader, friendly and fun. My brain struggled however to connect to what she was reading, I felt I’d come to it too ‘cold’ to really get a handle on it. I often find that though, and I also felt it when we read sections of the book in the workshop – I’d rather have the space and clarity of reading it on my own off the page, with time to look up references I don’t understand, that kind of thing.

Read Amanda Merritt’s review of Measures of Expatriation.

Ian Duhig, The Blind Roadmaker (Picador)

Is there anyone who doesn’t love Ian Duhig? He’s such a great combination – a man of the people who’s absolutely grounded in the real world, local communities and politically engaged, generous and humble, but also fiercely intelligent with a masterful grasp of history, the classics and poetry in all forms. AND FUNNY TOO. Yikes! That’s my impression anyway.

It took me a while to adjust to Duhig’s accent in his reading and I wanted him to take the poems more slowly, so we could savour and enjoy. By this point my neighbour was already suggesting that us Southerners were woefully unrepresented – come on, Sarf London! Don’t leave it to Kate Tempest!

Read a review of The Blind Roadmaker by Jeremy Noel-Tod.

Rachael Boast, Void Studies (Picador)

The premise of Void Studies is Rimbaud’s idea of writing series of poems as ‘pure music’ with no discernible message being communicated. He never did it, so here’s Rachael Boast’s version. You have to let the poems ‘wash over you … like listening to Debussy’ was Katy’s explanation. Basically French symbolist poetry, but in English. The poems we looked at struck me as having lovely ethereal language & imagery. Mostly in couplets, short. My kind of poetry, one might think.

Boast has a strong voice, a real pleasure to listen too, although perhaps it was the nature of the poems that they did indeed start to wash over me, without leaving any strong impression.

Here’s John Field’s review of Void Studies, only one of the ten reviews he wrote on the shortlisted books which inexplicably never made it onto the TSE Foundation website, which is a great shame. John is a fine reviewer as evidenced on by his blog Poor Rude Lines, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to have linked to his reviews and help publicise them. Ah well.

Denise Riley, Say Something Back (Picador)

The ‘beating heart of the book’, said Katy, is the central sequence ‘A Part Song’ on the theme of a mother’s grieving for her dead son. We read the whole sequence round the room as part of the workshop and it was certainly moving. ‘A stupendous book’ was Katy’s pronouncement, and Riley was ‘a poet’s poet with a fine reputation.’ Katy pointed out that she’d come a long way, from being last published by Reality Street (‘Reality Street! Not even Shearsman!’) to Picador – a big leap, well deserved though. Indeed at the end of the day most people in the room felt this could be the winner.

The best word I can use to describe Denise Riley’s reading is ‘defiant’ – there was a strength of feeling in her delivery which was compelling, although I struggled with her chosen emphasis at times, and the long pauses between words. We didn’t get to hear ‘A part song’ which I was kind of hoping for.

Read Dave Coates review of Say Something Back.

Jacob Polley, Jackself (Picador)

Surely gets a prize for the most eye-catching cover, and in fact I absolutely LOVED all the Picador covers, and the size/shape of them. Full marks, Picador packaging peeps.

So here’s Jackself – a collection of poems about various Jacks of legend, phrase & fable, of childhood – Jack Sprat, Jack Frost, Jack O’Bedlam… Englishness and a sense of place (Polley’s place – the English/Scottish border country), themes of being trapped, a confrontational, unstable world. Katy says ‘You’re either with him or you’re not’.

In the workshop I was with him, I enjoyed the poems and the handling of the themes. Made me think a bit of Janet Sutherland’s Bone Monkey, or Ted Hughes’s Crow, although less dark than either of those (as far as I could tell from what I read).

Polley’s reading was the penultimate and having to go before Alice Oswald is also a pressure. I remember really enjoying his reading from The Havocs a few years ago. More self-assured now, but a little more mannered in his delivery. I still enjoyed the poems though.

I struggled to find a review of Jackself, but you might be luckier than me!

Alice Oswald, Falling Awake (Cape)

What can I say here? I loved the poems we read in the workshop, including ‘Swan’ which she then read last night. Falling Awake won the Costa prize already and Oswald is a previous winner of the TSE Prize. Her reading was magnificent, all recited from memory which I love but it wasn’t just that. She had such a presence. ‘Commanding presence’ is a cliche but it really was that.

There are loads of reviews of this book but how about this one by Pierre Antoine Zhand.

And so to the result – only a few hours to go. My metaphorical money is still on Alice Oswald, although my fellow workshoppers came down in the Denise Riley camp. With Vahni Capildeo the other in the triumvirate of ‘likely to wins’. Or how about J O Morgan as a dark horse?

TS Eliot Prize shortlisted books — The books…in no specific order

Robin Houghton & Katy Evans-Bush — Me & KEB at the end of the poetry book marathon

And on the way home, what should I pass than Pimlico Plumbers and their amazing Christmas decs – in the middle of January!

But London was as beautiful as ever at 5pm in January…

London from Lambeth Bridge 1-Jan2017 — Maybe it’s because…

Blog/ 11/01/2017

Poem a day writing exercise

This month I’m setting myself the ‘start a poem a day’ challenge. (Not ‘write’ a poem a day, as that presumes each one will be a finished first draft at least. I’ve found that starting a poem a day is a better exercise for me, as I feel freer and less pressured to get to a last line.)

Looking back on my computer I see I’ve done this four times before, the first time in 2012. A quick glance at the poems I wrote then tells me none of them came to fruition. But June 2013 was a good month, with six of the poems subsequently published (albeit over the following three years, so plenty of reworkings there!) And in January 2014 it looks like I ran out of steam after 5 days – but two of the five poems started then have since been published.

So far this month I’ve started nine poems, so I’m only two behind my ‘one a day’ goal. And I’ve bent the rules a bit, to include the working up of old drafts or ideas, so four of my nine fall into that category.

I’m enjoying the discipline, and for me it’s a good method for channelling ideas and getting them down before I forget them. I’m probably at the stage where I need to do some serious re-filing, as I haven’t sent anything out in a while and I’ve rather lost track of what I have that’s ready to send. I’ve got about ten grades of backburner. The system needs streamlining.

One very strange thing: I came across a first draft of a poem that I had no memory of at all – it meant nothing to me, I couldn’t recall what triggered it or what I was wanting to say with it. I couldn’t even make sense of it, not even the title. Then I realised I’d only written it in November 2016 (I date all my drafts). So as it was so recent, why can’t I remember it? And is it worth working on, since I don’t even know why I wrote it? Bizarre. I’m almost tempted to bin it completely in case it’s not my work. Has this ever happened to you?

Angst/ 31/12/2016

Giving up Facebook for at least a month

Today is my last day on Facebook for a while. I was inspired by Dan Blank’s recent blog post about the importance of ‘investing in white space’ in our lives: time for reflection, time to breathe. If you’ve ever craved more time for writing, reading and creating, it’s really worth a read.

I came relatively late to Facebook and have never taken to it in the way I did Twitter. And yet I find it takes me away from Twitter, because it sucks up more time. And when I open Twitter, I have a much more rounded, balanced, exciting and inspiring view of the world. There’s just something about Facebook that seems closed and self-regarding. But then I ask myself, why am I using it? Here’s my pros and cons list:

Positives

I like seeing some of the photos people post – beautiful landscapes, quirky family snaps, cute animals – but not all
I like watching some videos, but not those that make me feel I’ve just wasted two minutes of my life. Trouble is, you never know which it is to be
I like video messaging with my granddaughter and with my stepdaughter who’s travelling in Australia
I like suddenly seeing an update from someone I haven’t seen or heard from in ages
I like telling Nick about the good things I’ve seen or read, as he doesn’t use FB at all

Negatives

Time wasting (which is actually life wasting) – see point 2 above. I know I do my best creative work when I have plenty of ‘daydreaming’ time (something I always struggled to explain to past employers who perhaps didn’t see marketing as creative work). Instead of uploading photos to Facebook I could be blogging them, and if they’re not worth blogging they’re probably not worth posting.
It’s become a mindless habit – always flicking through posts on my phone when I’m idle – on the train, bus, having a cup of tea etc – when I could actually be reading something, thinking about a poem in progress, calling up a friend to ask her over for a coffee, or even doing a Sudoku (which may or may not help ward off dementia – not sure Facebook has any claims to that!)
I find the continual negotiation of the terms of Facebook ‘friendship’ an increasing psychological burden. People often behave differently online, and believe it or not it’s not usually deliberate. But it can be unsettling to see. I’ve had 20 years’ experience of dealing with life online – I recognise the many negative or unsocial behaviours, of individuals and crowds, and understand why much of it occurs. That doesn’t make it any easier to deal with – no matter how easily we brush things off, or laugh about what goes on – everything we see, read and do in a public online forum affects us. Interestingly, I don’t personally find Twitter anything like as stressful. I could explore the reasons, but that would be another university dissertation.

Getting off Facebook is a popular concern. Google it and you’ll see what I mean. This WikiHow article gives a very good overview of how and why to do it. I particularly liked this piece by a self-confessed procrastinator for whom Facebook had ‘the gravitational pull of the Death Star’.

However, leaving Facebook entirely takes some getting used to, so I’m quitting initially just for the month of January, to see how it goes. Habits take a while to break, and you need to help the process along. So I’m uninstalling FB from my phone, logging out and ‘forgetting’ my password. I’m going to encourage my rellies onto Skype, and rediscover the visual sites I love such as Pinterest and Houzz. I’ve never found Facebook interesting for news or debate, I get that from Twitter. But I’ll continue to skim the Guardian online and emails I subscribe to, such as The Brief Daily.

I mentioned in my last post that I want to create more face to face time with other writers, with friends and with family. Get out more, basically.

I’m not leaving social media altogether – I’ve been using Twitter for over ten years and although I’ve been a lazy participant of late I plan to rediscover all that I love about it, but without substituting my Facebook time with Twitter time. I can’t see that happening because I’ve always had an easy and healthy relationship with Twitter.

This isn’t about online vs ‘real life’. I still maintain that actual bona fide friendships can be made and maintained remotely – it used to happen via letters and written correspondence (remember pen friends?), it’s not a new thing. I’m giving myself time to blog, to read blogs and to connect with the people I love and respect and who inspire me online, just not on Facebook.

*cartoon by Nadia Farag

Angst/ 30/12/2016

End of year gratitude & resolutions

Is this the blogging equivalent of the Christmas round robin? If so, I confess I rather like receiving them. I honestly quite like reading about relatives of relatives I’ve never met, who’s had a baby and what they called him/her, where people have been on holiday. I even enjoy the cliches and the interminable ‘filler’ prose (‘as the days are getting shorter…’ etc) that people often resort to, as if not wanting to JUST talk about themselves. Unlike when you’re listening to wedding speeches, you’re not a captive audience, so reading the round robin can always wait until you’re comfy on the sofa with a cup of tea or glass of wine.

I covered submissions stats in my last post, so this one’s more of a round up – good stuff, bad stuff. Favourite blogs. Resolutions. Gratitude. The UK political/economic & cultural climate has been well documented elsewhere, so let’s just call that a given – a backdrop to the tiny, insignificant-in-the-scheme-of-things, day-to-day life of one person.

Two steps forward

I’ve a huge amount to be thankful for this year in particular – I’m very happy in our new home and new town, I have more time with Nick and I’ve absolutely loved summer in the garden. I’ve learnt new skills, tried new things and been to some wonderful places. I’ve made new poet friends, read some excellent collections and enjoyed many poetry readings and events, I’ve had sufficient publication success to keep my spirits up, and at least one ‘dance round the room’ moment. And I was very grateful to have made Matthew Stewart’s annual ‘best of’ poetry blog roundup, despite my blogging being a bit erratic this year.

One step back

Naturally enough there have been plenty of rejections – of individual poems, pamphlets and proposals/applications. I had cancer, and all the reassessment of mortality that it brings. Other niggly health issues. Projects on hold. The misery of train travel with no reliable service, and the plans I had to postpone or cancel because of it. A sump of procrastination.

What next?

First of all, I’m planning to reduce overwhelm. This means getting off Facebook for at least a month. I mean it. More on this shortly.

Other resolutions:

Seek out more time with other poets. Not necessarily workshopping, but going to readings and hosting ‘salons’
Try another ‘start a poem a day’ exercise for a month
Return to reading collections front to back, no ‘dipping’ – as I did when I was doing the Reading List
Create (and keep updated) my blog editorial calendar, for both this blog and my home blog
Enjoy time in the garden and by the sea
Continue to try to order poems into a collection, but listen more to the new material that’s nudging me
Make time to read more about things that excite me, but nothing to do necessarily with poetry – possible futures, art, making. I’ve already started sampling magazines from this wonderful shop in Brighton

Thank you / gratitude

I was going to post this as a list, naming everyone, but it was flawed somehow – so many people to mention, people in different categories (eg is this person a poet friend, poet blogger, editor, or all three??) and then the fear I might have missed out a name – EEK!

So, thank you to:

Readers of, commenters on, and contributors to this blog
My fellow Telltale poets
My many, much valued poet friends & supporters
All at the Hastings Stanza, at the Poetry Society, at New Writing South, at the Needlewriters
Editors and selectors who in 2016 have published me, placed my poems in competitions and/or generously offered advice and feedback, yes even the negative variety!

Plus…. thank you to:

All those tireless & generous people who run poetry events and workshops
*ditto* those who edit magazines and publish poetry
*ditto* those who write blogs
And all non-poets who come to poetry events

Blogs I love

Almost too many to list but delighting me this year as ever are Abegail Morley’s Poetry Shed, John Field’s Poor Rude Lines, Emma Lee’s blog and those by poets Hilaire, Josephine Corcoran and Jayne Stanton.

Some of my favourite blogs are not entirely (or even at all) poetry-focused, but they provide me with endless inspiration:

Jean Tubridy (Social Bridge) – here’s a recent example of Jean’s beautiful and thoughtful posts

Maria Popova (Brainpickings) – hard to know where to start with this encyclopedic site. I’ve been introduced to so many amazing writers & thinkers via her weekly emails, here’s a recent example

Dan Blank (We Grow Media) – I’ve been a huge fan of Dan’s for years. Here’s a typically inspirational piece on ‘investing in white space’ which got me deciding to avoid Facebook for a month

LitHub – more of a full-blown magazine than a blog, but its LitHub Daily is a consistently great read

And if you go in for competitions and/or are looking for new submissions opportunities, I recommend:

Angela T Carr (A Dreaming Skin) – super-generous and useful – here’s an example of her monthly competitions and submissions post

Cathy Bryant (Comps & Calls) – another extremely helpful blogger worth following – here’s an example of her monthly post featuring opportunities and deadlines

So that’s it for the round robin, folks, from a Robin who’s a bit ’rounder’ than she’d like to be right now. I feel another resolution coming on. My good wishes to you for 2017, let’s hope it’s a good one without any tears. Xx

Blog/ 23/12/2016

Quick 2016 submissions stats overview

I have a much longer ‘end of year’ post lined up but for now I thought I’d post a quick subs update for this year.

40 poems submitted to 11 magazines: 33 declined, 7 accepted (17.5%) by 5 magazines.

7 poems entered for competitions: 1 x 2nd place, 6 x ducks.

2 x poems included in anthologies (invitation/non competitive, both new poems).

2 x poems included in anthologies (competitive, both previously published poems).

3 x pamphlet submissions: 1 shortlisted (last 20), 3 declined.

Currently out: 6 to competitions, 7 to magazines (of which 7 are resubs and 5 new).

As I suspected, I’ve sent out significantly fewer poems in 2016 than in previous years. But checking back on 2015 I also see that several of the ‘declined’ or unplaced poems have subsequently been published elsewhere (6 of the 23 poems submitted to competitions and 9 of those declined by magazines).

There are many reasons for the low send rate, not just laziness (although that comes into it): illness, confidence ebbing as certain poems I was sure about have been continually rejected, and not writing enough decent new material. I’m planning to do better in 2017 though – I’ve already lined up for myself a ‘start a poem a day’ in January and am going to permit myself writing time rather than snatch it guiltily when there’s nothing else I ‘ought’ to be doing.

I’m always interested in other people’s stats – I’m aware some people send out MUCH more than me, and others who scarcely send out at all. Do use the comments box to share your own experience if you’d like to.

Oh and MERRY CHRISTMAS of course – thank you for taking the time to read this blog and I wish you joy, health & peace.

Blog/ 19/12/201618/12/2016

Recent reading: ‘Home Front’, new poetry from Bloodaxe

An interesting book came my way from Bloodaxe recently – a book of books, you might call it, or perhaps an anthology of collections. Home Front features four collections (each by a different poet, three of whom were unfamiliar to me) on the theme of war, specifically the experience of wives, lovers and mothers when their loved ones in the military are sent away to war.

Isabel Palmer‘s contribution is Atmospherics, which includes a number of the poems from her excellent Flarestack pamphlet Ground Signs which I read and enjoyed a while back. The poems here are grouped into three, the central section focusing on the period of time her son spent in Afghanistan, sandwiched between two ‘Home’ sections, before and after. As a result, Atmospherics expands on Ground Signs through the inclusion of not just more material but also more experimental forms, as in for example the lists and glossaries that make up the six-part ‘Symbols’ sequence at the start of the final section.

Isabel Palmer is from a military family, whereas Bryony Doran is not. When her son joined the army it was a surprise to learn ‘…that I’d become part of the army, another dazed parent / eating plastic packed sandwiches thrown casually on tables’ (‘Joining up’). Bulletproof is Doran’s first collection, in which she charts her own feelings of helplessness and fear for her son while he serves in Afghanistan, from wondering what her pacifist father would have made of it (‘Wormwood Scrubs’) to dealing with enquiries from well-meaning friends and trying not to be panicked by every Afghanistan-related media story. The poet ponders aspects of her son’s personality and childhood episodes, observes others who are also touched by the war and seems to be trying to make sense of her son’s choices and motivations.

On his last day he says when he gets back
he’s putting in for his motorbike test.
He sees the look on my face and laughs,
asks why I’m scared of life. (‘Rest & Relaxation’)

We later learn that ‘more soldiers have died in motorbike accidents since coming back than have died in Afghanistan’ (footnote to ‘Avoiding Traffic Accidents’). Although the poet’s son returns safely, clearly the mother isn’t undamaged by the experience. There is an edge of bitterness to ‘Tips for Parents of Returning Soldiers’ that goes beyond the ‘wtf’ irony of some of the earlier ‘found’ poems based on army-issued instructions or advice. Despite some slightly (for me) heavy-handed moments, this collection was an intriguing read next to Palmer’s.

I’m sorry not to have discovered Jehanne Dubrow before now. Stateside, her collection in Home Front, is written from the perspective of the wife of a US naval officer who’s deployed to various postings overseas. It’s also an exploration of wives-left-behind with reference particularly to Penelope in the Odyssey. Both the officer and the wife at home have their own journeys, and of course there’s the one they take together. The reader fears for the relationship even from the opening poem ‘It means the moveable stays tied’ (‘Secure for Sea’) and even on a balmy seaside evening eating chocolate – ‘ we’re kids again’ – the mood darkens –

I would like to call it death, this thing that sticks

like marshmallows inside my mouth, gritty
with a thousand sharp particulates of sea. (‘Virginia Beach’)

Through all the collections in Home Front, fear of the loved one dying is naturally a common theme. It seems to inhabit so many of Dubrow’s poems: the irony of soldiers having to play dead in an exercise (‘Swim Test’), death in dreams (‘Sea Change’) and in the sheer waiting (‘Situational Awareness’). It permeates the eroticism of poems such as ‘Instructions for Other Penelopes’ and ‘Bowl, in the Shape of a Bristol Boat’. In ‘Against War Movies’ the list of famous war films builds black comedic effect till being brought up sharp at the end –

Each movie is a training exercise
a scenario for how my husband dies.

Dubrow favours form (there are many sonnets in the collection, and a three-stanza triolet – is there a name for that?) and I loved her clever use of rhyme. So many of the poems I wanted to read out loud to really enjoy the musicality and the many subtly layered effects. The work feels like a sophisticated examination of a relationship slowly dying under the strain of separation;

… I can’t say when I reached for you
if we rustled like tissue paper, delicate

as shards, or if we slid our razored edges
back and forth, until we split apart. (‘Moving’)

The final collection in the book is Elyse Fenton‘s Clamor, first published in the US in 2010 when it (intriguingly) won the Dylan Thomas Prize, despite not having published in the UK. We learn in the biog that Fenton is the wife of a US army medic posted to Iraq.

It’s fascinating to plunge right on into another poet’s world, another poet’s take on the now familiar theme. I couldn’t help but feel a bit strung out at this point. What new? What more? But in the words of the time-honoured cliche (itself a time-honoured cliche)… I wasn’t disappointed.

Fenton’s poems are both gutsy and delicate, alive with wordplay and creative leaps. The human body features frequently in all its messy physicality, whether describing life – ‘Radha, let us touch your face, / thaw our fingers on your kindled skull, / trace the kerf of your open mouth’ (‘For Radha, Two Days Old’) – ‘your mouth and its live wetness, your tongue / & its intimate knowledge of flesh’ (‘Love in Wartime 1’) or death – As if this were not the work of shrapnel – / not the body’s wet rending, flesh/ reduced to matter – (‘Notes on Atrocity (Baghdad Aid Station)’)

All the themes we’ve encountered before are here: dreams. Waiting. Fears of the unknown. Homecomings. Same, yet different. Here’s an extract from Fenton’s ‘Your Plane Arrives from Iraq’, heavy and elegiac in the face of what should be a joyful moment, which for some reason brought to my mind Wilfred Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ and its ‘each slow dusk the drawing down of blinds’ –

… And once more
the sky’s feathered jet-stream, and once
more, the dirge and caesura of rotors

and once more the slow Morse of the plane’s
body descending. And at the end
of the longest sentence I’ve ever known

your face in the window’s fogged aperture:
stranded noun, Rorschach of stars. Beautiful thing.

‘Home front’ is published by Bloodaxe, price £12.

Blog/ 29/11/201629/11/2016

Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour

Getting to and from London from the south coast is ten times harder than it used to be these days, as the rail company (which has a monopoly) has been running an unsatisfactory service for the last however many months – actually it could be a year or more. Two-day strikes pop up every three weeks or so, and that’s on top of the already reduced timetable. Trains are regularly cancelled at the last minute, even halfway through journeys. As a result, every time the train you’re on actually leaves a station you breathe a sigh of relief that it hasn’t terminated there. Factor in the cold and dark of night, and the prospect of going anywhere by train is rather stressful. And I have a choice at least – the situation for those millions of people who have to travel by Southern Rail every day for work must be unbearable.

So it was a joy to actually make it to the Troubadour last night for Coffee-House Poetry. The second half was ‘What we should have said’, a regular feature described by Anne-Marie Fyfe in the promotional email as “three very different poets, a musician & a proverbial wit, thrust & parry with poetic, harmonic & philosophic contributions, comical, tragical, pastoral & beyond”. It was a wonderful spectacle, a really impactful way of presenting poetry, with Martina Evans (LOVED her work!), the excellent Luke Kennard, US poet Louis Jenkins and ‘What we should have said’ impresario Stuart Silver bouncing off each others’ words, linked together by Marios Takoushis’ jazzy/soulful/arthouse improvisations on the keyboard. The top-class sound management at the Troubadour cafe makes a huge difference here – it’s so noticeable how a reliable and effective sound system allows the performers and the poetry to shine, and the audience to relax and take it in.

In the first half we heard from 21 of the contributors to Live Canon’s 154 Anthology, each reading their response to a Shakespeare sonnet, and a few words about it. I was very proud to be a part of this book and the range of responses and poet voices is fascinating. The book does include ALL of Shakespeare’s sonnets, as well as the ‘response’ poems, so it makes for a very nice (ahem!) Christmas present, even for someone with no special interest in contemporary poetry.

Angst/ 24/11/2016

Poetry vs DIY, plus a few upcoming deadlines

It’s easy to lose the rhythm of blogging – I’ve been lacking the motivation lately, partly out of a feeling of ‘what is there really to say that makes a difference?’ And yet, there are always interesting things to say.

I’ve recently been admiring Josephine Corcoran’s commitment to blogging every day during November – sometimes in-depth pieces and other times brief updates or musings. It’s all interesting. Similarly, one of my all-time favourite blogs is Jean Tubridy’s Social Bridge – impossible to classify in terms of its content, and always compelling.

So what’s on my mind at the moment? Firstly, an increasing need to stay away from Facebook, TV news, the media generally. Is that an age thing – when nothing under the sun really seems new, or if it is, it often seems inconsequential? Perhaps also a ‘winter’s-coming-and-the-days-are-getting-shorter thing?

Secondly, we’re approaching our first winter in our new home and the to-do list is as long as ever. It’s such an absorbing project that sometimes I’d just rather strip down a window sill or paint a door, than put pen to paper!

And thirdly … quite a few poetry thangs coming up in terms of events, deadlines etc:

The Rialto’s first poetry pamphlet comp closes on November 30th – I did imagine I would enter, but my pamphlet offering(s) are in horrible disarray at the moment, so not good timing for me. But you should go for it! Fee is £22 (or £16 for Rialto subscribers) and Hannah Lowe will pick the winners from a shortlist of 50.

The Cinnamon Debut Poetry Collection prize also closes at the end of the month, costs £12 to enter.

Other imminent comp closings, in case you’re feeling lucky – Cafe Writers Poetry Competition, judged by Andrew McMillan with no sifters – closes November 30th. Fee is £4 per poem or £10 for three, and there’s an extra prize for the funniest poem, which makes a refreshing change!

In events news, this coming Monday 28th November I’ll be reading a poem at Anne-Marie Fyfe’s Coffee-House Poetry at The Troubadour, along with a number of other contributors to Live Canon’s 154 Anthology. The second half (main event) features Luke Kennard, Martina Evans and more. Should be a fantastic night.

It looks like there’ll be a block of Telltale poets in the audience at the T S Eliot award readings on January 15th at the Festival Hall in London. Hurrah! I always love the atmosphere at this event, and the chance to hear so many fine poets all in one sitting. Only downside is that getting home is always a MARE and who knows what skeletal service Southern Rail may be operating by then.

Oh, and I’ve given myself a deadline of the end of this month to finally finish finalising (!) the second ‘all about Twitter’ ebook, which now needs some rewrites having left it 6 months, and I need to get it out before Twitter pops its clogs.

Now, back to some paint-stripping – oh no, silly me, it’s dark … and what’s more our boiler has just packed up, so this evening I’ll be under a duvet on the sofa with a hot water bottle. Possibly rummaging through my pamphlet poems again …

Blog/ 04/11/201604/11/2016

Charlotte Gann book launch

It’s always a joy to hear poet friend Charlotte giving a reading. There’s a weight to her voice, a rootedness … it’s hard to explain what I mean. There’s no act, no funny stuff. She presents her poems simply, and they just seem to appear in the room – completely in the proper place – like great trees that have been growing for hundreds of years.

Last night was the first launch of Noir, Charlotte’s first full-length collection, published by HappenStance, and it was in her home town of Lewes. It was my home too, for fourteen years (just passing through!), and it’s still slightly weird to go back to, especially on (almost) the eve of Bonfire, its biggest day of the year. I walked down the High Street and Sarah Barnsley and I almost didn’t recognise each other in the dark as we waited to cross the road. Spookily appropriate for the book’s title. But everything about the event was the opposite of noir – a wonderful gathering of friends, family and supporters, a happy audience.

I loved hearing Charlotte’s ‘trailer’ for the book – a selection of poems from the different sections, ending with ‘Molecular Biologist’, a poem from Charlotte’s 2011 pamphlet The Long Woman, and written for her brother (who was there last night). One of the poems is written in the shape/layout of a letter, which Charlotte helpfully explained…

My phone takes terrible photos in the dark, so many thanks to Julia O’Brien, Peter Kenny and Jemma Borg for the pics.

Noir is one of those books you have to keep reading once you start…I’m not very good at reviewing friends’ work but please do read Peter Kenny’s review of Noir to get a feel for this intriguing collection. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about it.

Blog/ 27/10/201626/10/2016

Marion Tracy spills the beans

On becoming a poet in Australia, putting images in the wrong order, and John Ashbery’s baskets: in conversation with Marion Tracy.

When I asked poet friend Marion Tracy if she’d like to guest on my blog, we both had several ideas of what form it might take. We met, and chatted through it – I’ve known Marion for a while and always admired her forthrightness and ability to ‘cut to the chase’ in workshops and with poetry generally, as well as her skill as a poet. I knew whatever she wanted to share would be intriguing and different. So, we had a conversation, and here’s what came out of it. It’s a pleasure to have Marion here on the blog and I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

RH: It’s the obvious question I know, but could you tell us a bit about how you got started writing poetry?
MT: I wrote a few poems for my school magazine and also wrote poems in my teens and early twenties. I then tried to tackle writing a novel while pregnant and realised how difficult that is. Then the pram in the hall did its inevitable thing.

When I first sat down in Australia, ten years ago now, to start my first poem, I had very little idea of what trying to be a poet entailed. I had taught Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry to A Level students but I didn’t even know that there were such things as poetry magazines let alone something called ‘contemporary poetry’.

Anyway, I called the poem ‘On first sitting down with a white sheet of paper’ then I changed ‘sitting down’ to ‘staring at’ since that was more true. My mind went completely blank and I thought what on earth will I write About?

So, talk us through the ‘learning curve’…
In Australia I joined a memoir group and then a writing group which included poetry so it just really grew from there – I do like an audience! The workshop leaders in Australia were excellent – although they knew very little about English poets – it was all American poets for them. But they gave good advice. For example, I was asked about a phrase in a poem and I replied that I put it in so the reader would understand. ‘No, never do that,’ they said, ‘always write for the most understanding and clever reader that you can imagine’.

Although the urge to explain never really goes away, I now enjoy jamming two images together and just laying them down. One of my self-taught techniques is an extreme version of what’s often called ‘flow writing’ – pick the best sentence, write more, and so on. What I like to do is: write an ordinary poem, highlight only the best images, put them together in the wrong order, add in a bit more here and there – job done!

Do you keep a notebook?
These days I’m surrounded by notebooks, about twenty or so at least. They’re full of ideas for poems, sometimes based on words from TV, radio, newspapers, conversations. For example, I was at home in Oz and the ‘Antiques Road Show’ was on, and I heard a clock expert use the word ‘escapement.’ I vaguely knew it was something to do with the mechanism of time and thought about Time escaping, or someone trying to escape from Time. It was a pig to write because I decided that time would be masculine with simple rhyme and the escapee would be feminine with long prose lines. About seven years later it was published by Stand magazine (after it went off to and back from eight other magazines).

Words/phrases I’ve got queuing up now include wasps’ nest, ghosted, under the bridge, horse headed mummers, ruler of the spirits, the remembered present, butcher birds, the chorus, incognito and etc etc to the crack of doom. I collect little techniques I notice too but that’s another story.

Goodness! I feel like you’ve opened up a little window into your brain for us to peer through, what a privilege. Going back to the idea of putting images together ‘in the wrong order’ – tell us a bit more about that…

In a lecture on ‘Post Modernism and Difficult Poetry’, it was suggested we should cut our poems up, then throw them on the floor, then pick them up and keep them in the new random order. This is great fun and is surprisingly useful (as long as the ideas and phrases are all dancing around the same core) and of course I always cheat a little.

John Ashbery was mentioned at this point, and since I usually have no idea what his poems are saying or meaning I have decided that maybe, only perhaps, he has several baskets in his study labelled things like ‘random nature reference’, ‘philosophical ideas’, ‘place names’, ‘personal emotion’ and so forth. Then when he wants a poem he just picks a few from each basket and rearranges them.

It’s hard to tell if you’re being serious to be honest!

I am being serious – but as you may gather, I think it’s vital to ditch the over-solemn approach to poetry. A poem is a machine and some poets are better mechanics than others. I don’t believe in the Muse, although it’s a useful conceit (I think more about the Mood, as in, am I in it?) and I’m not keen on the idea of the poem somehow existing in the ether as the poet struggles to write it. ‘The poem wants to be…’ isn’t really helpful for me. It’s true that when the words are on the page they have a resonance beyond the poet’s intentions but ultimately it all, including the connections, comes from the poet’s brain.

It’s interesting to hear you say that – I suppose I agree with you to an extent, but perhaps the ‘Muse’ is just one way of describing the indescribable – the magic, the ‘where the hell did THAT come from’ thing.

How about sending poems out, dealing with rejections – any tips?

I wrote a lot of poems before I started sending off seriously and that was good because, like Mother Hubbard, I was able to not care too much – there was always another magazine, another poem. I treated it like the game it is – you win some, you lose some. Some magazines have a style or theme they are keen on so I sometimes would write with that in mind. But I became aware paradoxically that difference is highly valued, so if you try to fit in you will never be as good as you could be. Sometimes unusual poets have to create an audience for themselves.

OK, any final words of advice that you’d like to pass on?

Plenty, but here are a few thoughts: description does not make a poem. Anecdote does not make a poem. Description and anecdote and unusual words do not make a poem.
Hospitals, herons and hares are overused tropes (in other words, poetic clichés), also a bird flying into the blue at the end of a poem, also in fact epiphanies of all sorts, such as my final statement below…

A poem should be a wasp’s nest full of humming and resonance, words and ideas moving about randomly, crashing into each other – threatening.

Marion Tracy has two degrees in English Literature and was a lecturer in Colleges of Further Education. She lived in Australia for seven years where she started writing poetry. She is widely published in magazines and her pamphlet Giant in the Doorway (2012) was published by HappenStance Press. Marion’s first full collection Dreaming of Our Better Selves was published this year by Vanguard Editions.

Author: Robin Houghton