Angst – Page 5 – Robin Houghton

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

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 …

Angst/ 25/09/2016

To travel hopefully…

..as a teenager I remember being set this title as the subject of an essay competition, and I charged off on what I thought would surely be the winning entry. Sadly it was not – but then again if I’d known the rest of the phrase was ‘…is better than to arrive’ it would at least have given a me clue. Ah, those heady days before the internet, when we had to ask people things, or look things up in the library!

I’m never quite sure about the idea of going on holiday in order to recharge the batteries, or coming back thoroughly relaxed. I tend to come back dog tired. Which is what happened this weekend, arriving home late on Friday after driving several hundred miles that day; on Saturday I had to sleep most of the afternoon.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to go away and feel unleashed from day-to-day concerns back home. I’m very grateful to have done such a thing. A friend said to me recently she’d never had a holiday of longer than two weeks. When I was working in the US, nobody took two weeks off (mainly for fear of your desk not being there when you returned.)

I never did do the ‘travelling’ thing when I was younger but I did have the luxury of a month-long vacation in South America after leaving one job and before I was due to start at the next one. The combination of both knowing and not knowing what I was coming back to – a job, yes, but a new job in a new country – combined with a certain amount of experience (being in my thirties) gave the trip a really feeling of a break. Something did break inside me, but in a good way, like an opening up.

So this time I’m back from more than three weeks away, when each day brought its own challenges (linguistic, cultural, logistical). Did I take a notebook? Not really, because I struggle to write longhand. But I took my laptop, and wrote both a diary (‘first we did this, then we did that’) and a kind of thoughts & feelings-journal. I can imagine referring to both, should I end up writing about any of it. But will I? The usual counterweights in my head never seem to take a vacation. Not another poem about the beauty of an Italian garden (yawn) …. or nobody who’s only visited a place once has anything meaningful to say about it … etc. But who knows.

Angst/ 29/08/2016

Individual poems v collections – still on the learning curve

Putting together a collection of poems is proving to be harder than I ever expected. For a while now I’ve had a number of poems on a theme, which originally I dared to call ‘a pamphlet.’ I tried it on a few pamphlet comps: a couple of long-listings came of it, but basically nothing much.

So I looked very hard at the poems. Some were definitely stronger than others. Some I ditched entirely, some I took to workshops, some I worked on, and continue to do so. I sent them out as individual poems to a few places and it took a while but eventually a few of them have now been taken by magazines. But no-one has taken more than one, even though I’m now sending several as a ‘sequence’, or at least calling them ‘part of a sequence.’ I still believe very strongly in the sequence (or pamphlet, if that’s how it ends up) and perhaps I have more poems to write which may find their way in. But only a few of them ‘stand alone’ out of context. On the other hand, if I cut some poems and settle for a sequence, little else that I’ve written sits logically with it to make even a pamphlet. I feel like I have a lot of individual poems, but they have nothing in common with each other.

Showing groups of poems to various people in recent months has been difficult and nerve-wracking – feedback is mixed, and I feel knocked back, much more so than the feeling you get when a magazine submission is rejected, which I’m quite used to now. I’m very grateful for the feedback, especially if it’s offered as a favour, but asking someone to critique a collection of poems is very different from workshopping an individual poem. I find it impossible to link general comments to what’s not working in specific poems. I’ve also finally come to the conclusion that I struggle with written criticism, particularly if I’ve not actually met the person. You have no chance to interrogate the issue, get to the bottom of it – no dialogue, no chance to say ‘oh yes I see what you mean, so this doesn’t work because….if I do this, then…’ This has been an issue for me when I’ve taken part in online courses, for example.

I’ve thought for a long time what I need is a mentor, but as a poet friend pointed out to me recently, that may just be a cop-out. No-one has the magic answer to all this, or can tell me ‘what to do’ – or rather, they can, but is there ever ‘right’ advice? I need to work more on my writing, read more closely, and figure it out for myself.

I suppose I am learning though – for example, I’m learning which poems I feel strongly about, and which I can let go. Also, by looking endlessly at ways of ordering or re-ordering poems, and looking for possible links, I’ve actually identified a Key Poem – one which I used to think was nothing special, almost lightweight, fun in performance but no big deal. It’s a poem I’ve always struggled to explain to people but I can see now that it introduces overarching themes, and although it was OK as a standalone poem it can contribute more, has more to say, as part of a sequence.

I’m very interested to hear how others have tackled these kinds of issues, and any ideas of how to move forward, what’s worked for you. Do share, if you feel able to. Thanks.

Angst/ 22/07/2016

Stuff I wasn’t going to talk about here

I think blogging is like all kinds of writing in that one has ebbs and flows – of ideas, of energy, of motivation.

If I were to take my own advice I’d be sure to blog at least once a week in order not to lose readers or to keep my blog coming up in searches. I’d be making sure my posts were subtly laced with key words, I’d be finding my own spin on topical issues, always finishing blog posts with calls to action to encourage comments, always including AT LEAST one external link in every post. Actually that last one is a ‘rule’ I do think is important, because what are blogs if not part of the great linked-up thing that is the blogosphere & its grandad the internet? (Unless of course you are the phenomenon that is Seth Godin.)

As it is, I’m pretty relaxed about all that. My relationship with the online world has mellowed since those heady late-nineties when even eating and sleeping seemed an inconvenient distraction from being on the computer. And every now and then you get a wake up call that puts just about everything into perspective.

If I’ve temporarily gone off the boil with blogging recently it’s partly the fact that it’s The Summer, which as fellow Brits know is short lived and to be enjoyed while it’s here. It’s also the first summer in our new home, with the novelty of a garden which needs weeding, nurturing, planning and sitting out in. Then the EU Referendum delivered the biggest shock I’ve experienced in my lifetime, and I worry more about the future now. I’ve also had breast cancer. I say that in the past tense, as I’ve been reassured by all the wonderful people who treated me that the rogue cells have gone. Only when I knew the prognosis did I start telling some people, on an individual basis, but not everyone. I didn’t want to make it a thing of it on social media or on my blog, I didn’t want a stream of sympathy or advice or sad face emojis, however well meant. Oddly, (given the ‘confessional’ nature of this blog at times) that wasn’t for me. A very good friend said her approach to breast cancer was to treat it as ‘a minor inconvenience’. Luckily for her, and for me too, it turned out to be exactly that. Onwards.

Angst/ 24/06/2016

What I’ve been reading… Kei Miller’s ‘Cartographer’

At the library I recently picked up Kei Miller’s The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion (Carcanet 2014), and it proved to be one of those books you start reading and can’t put down till you get to the end.

I’ve folded back so many corners of pages, to mark the poems I loved. At the heart of the book is a dialogue between a foreign cartographer intent on making a precise map of Jamaica (‘what I do is science’), and a ‘rastaman’ who explains the impossibility of it and distrusts the reasons for it –

the mapmaker’s work is to make visible
all them things that shoulda never exist in the first place
like the conquests of pirates, like borders,
like the viral spread of governments

(‘ii. in which the rastaman disagrees’)

The voices of the protagonists reveal the clash not just of cultures but of ways of seeing and thinking about our existence. Interwoven throughout are the stories behind place-names, the characters and history that has shaped the island, answers to the map-maker’s questions. A white mistress who ordered the road to her property be ‘laid in its serpentine way’ so that she never had to look at her black neighbour’s property which was bigger than her husband’s. A house given a fancy French name ‘Chateau Vert’ becomes corrupted to Shotover, and how the story now goes that the owner’s job was to shoot at runaway slaves, which shows that ‘when victims live long enough they get their say in history’ (‘Place Name, Shotover’).

The cartographer moves from his position of objectivity to wondering about Zion that the rastaman speaks of, and the question ‘how does one map a place / that is not quite a place?/ How does one draw / towards the heart?’ (xxi.)

So many of the poems are beautifully self-contained and yet part of the whole. I had so many “DAMN! I WISH I’D WRITTEN THAT” moments. Wonderful lyricism and clever, clever use of language, rhythm and rhyme…

…a hymn then
not to birds but to words
which themselves feel
like feather and wing

and light, as if it were
on the delicacy of
such sweet syllables
that flocks take flight.

(‘Hymn to the Birds’)

I can see why this book won the Forward Prize for best first collection in 2014. If you’ve read it, tell me if you agree. If not, you should be able to get it in your local library (at the moment that is, until all the money is pulled entirely from public services, and libraries, museums, art galleries, parks, free healthcare and free anything all become things of the past.) I started writing this post as a way of taking my mind off how sad and angry I’m feeling today, and how ashamed I am of my country, and how sad I am to feel so ashamed. But I couldn’t stop it all welling up at the end. Sorry.

Angst/ 27/05/2016

Thank you, Dr Upadhayay

I was one of those lucky people who enjoyed school, and whose English teachers (and I will name them, by way of a belated thank you – Dr Upadhayay and Mr Jennings) believed I had some writing ability and encouraged it. But I couldn’t see what they saw and thought it was utterly ridiculous to have any kind of creative writing ambition. Looking back on this in my forties I was ashamed of how I’d refused their encouragement, and (perhaps by way of atonement) decided I would try to find out if I did have any talent for poetry.

So I set myself a deadline – get a poem published in a ‘serious’ poetry journal before my fiftieth birthday, or … or what? Stop writing? Stop submitting? Keep writing ‘for pleasure’ and always wonder if any of it was any good? Get to my old age and feel bitter for not having really tested myself? I don’t know – but I made the deadline (just!) so I never had to find out. If it had all gone pear-shaped I like to think I would have just set a new deadline, and not ‘settled’, but who knows?

I guess I’m not one of those people who has to write, like having to scratch an itch. The world would still turn for me even if I never wrote another poem. But I get great satisfaction from doing something well. In fact, anything I do I want and expect to do well. I know I’m setting myself up for disappointment. I know it’s not fashionable, wanting to excel, especially at something creative. “It’s all subjective! We shouldn’t set store on the judgements of other people!” OK, but there are standards on which many people agree, and I don’t see the point in pretending there are not. If there are standards, I want to at least reach them. Then there’s the school of thought that says you should only write for yourself, and if you admit to wanting the affirmation that being published or winning a prize can bring, then you are a bit sad and probably not especially talented. I understand that viewpoint, but it is in itself judgemental.

Getting a single, unremarkable poem published in respected poetry magazine was important to me. I needed that one thing because it provided the motivation to get me going, to start me off – which is of course the bit that requires the most effort (I’m thinking rocket launches here).

Then a funny thing happened. After the honeymoon period of getting some poems into magazines, winning a few things and thinking I was going to conquer the poetry world, I’m now more realistic, and I’m strangely OK with that. I have goals, but they’re reasonably modest and they feel attainable. Writing poetry is part of my life, but I’m no longer on a one-track mission. I’m enjoying all the other aspects of ‘taking poetry seriously’ – being inspired by people I meet and work with through poetry, other people’s writing and all the great poetry I’ve yet to discover. I still have goals and I set myself deadlines, but they’re not all-or-nothing. Or to return to the rocket analogy, I haven’t reached the moon and maybe never will but I’m comfortably in orbit.

Importantly I also feel I’m delivering on the promise my teachers saw. I wish I could tell them how I still remember and appreciate the push they gave me, and although I couldn’t act on it then because I was too timid and immature, I’m doing something about it now.

Angst/ 24/03/2016

The rejections behind poem acceptances

Apparently I’m well known for broadcasting my rejections, but that’s no reason not to tell of the acceptances. Just when I was thinking I’d lost my way (the second half of 2015 was particularly bleak in terms of one rejection after another) some poems have come good. Specifically: a poem forthcoming in Poetry News, another in The Interpreter’s House and three in Bare Fiction, in which I’ve never made an appearance so I’m particularly encouraged by that. Two of the five were ‘problem children’, as you can see from the stats below.

I have a relatively new-found interest – looking at the drafts/rejection history of a poem once it’s accepted to see it I can learn anything from it. I love being able to write poetry on the computer. I save all drafts, or rather I save a draft the last time I work on it during a day. So generally I save one draft per day max. Otherwise ‘version control’ would be pretty much out of control. But I find I do go sometimes back to old drafts, and it can be a great help in moving the poem forwards years later. Looking at historic drafts, scrawled across with the workings-out of poets before the word processor, I wonder how they managed to see clearly where the poem was going – all those pen and ink changes, then typing (or writing) it out again, only to find the line breaks or form just looks wrong.

Details, details

Here are the timelines for each of the forthcoming poems – (they’re not in the same order as above):

Poem A – written April 2015, 4 drafts, 1 previous rejection
Poem B – written June – October 2015, 2 drafts, 2 previous rejections
Poem C – written Jan 2013 – Jan 2016, 19 drafts, 5 title changes, at least 6 previous rejections (I am so pleased to see ~~the back of this~~ this one find a home!)
Poem D – written Jan 2014 – March 2016, 8 drafts, 2 previous rejections
Poem E – written November 2015 – March 2016, 5 versions, 1 previous rejection

Interesting that there’s really no pattern to all this, but I think it does show that the ‘bottom drawer’ thing is useful – at least a couple of these poems had been put away for some months before I got them out and worked on them again. Of course, there are plenty of others in the bottom drawer and who knows if any of them will come to anything. But the process is fun, isn’t it? Just as long as SOME of them find homes eventually.

One thing I’ve noticed is that (if one can believe the hype!) submissions to magazines seem to be ever increasing, and magazine editors are under more pressure than ever. In this climate, congratulations are due to those editors who manage expectations and communicate well about where they are in the process. I hope, for their sake, that giving Facebook or website updates reduces the number of email enquiries from individuals. I certainly feel that the submissions turnaround times are at least as good as they always were, despite the rising tide of submissions.

Rejections (actually I prefer ‘Failed Submissions’)

On the thanks but no thanks front, in the last couple of months I’ve seen 5 poems sink without trace in competitions and 9 poems rejected by magazines. Ah well.

I now have nothing outstanding – eek! Must get something out!

Angst/ 02/03/2016

Today’s poetry world – where do we all fit in?

This is a guest post by Ann Perrin. Ann and I both attend a fortnightly poetry course in which we are introduced to poets, movements and styles, with the aim of improving our writing. The sessions also include writing exercises and about once a term each poet gets a chance to workshop a couple of poems with the group. The group started out with about 15 participants but it’s usually around 10. I’ve known Ann for a while, mainly from meeting her at poetry events in Brighton or at the Troubadour in London. She’s a great supporter of workshops, readings and open mics.

Our poetry course has an online forum, but it doesn’t get used very much. So when Ann posted this heartfelt piece I asked if I could reproduce it here. I think she brings up some interesting, if thorny questions: about writing poetry for a particular audience (or not), about ‘legitimacy’ in the poetry world, on competition (and competitions), even the uses of workshopping one’s work with relative strangers.

Ann asked these questions to the others in the group – but she’s happy with my opening it up and asking the lovely readers of this blog. Do please let us have your comments!

Over to Ann:

After our recent class in which I workshopped two poems with the group, I started thinking about potential audiences and who they might they be. I was also thinking how difficult it was to decide what to bring to the group. New work that I really felt unsure about which seemed a bit of a risk, or something I was a lot more sure about, had shown to a fellow poet, taken to a workshop or written on a much earlier course – after all, it was to be scrutinised by people who I really don’t know. Does anyone else think about such issues?

I also think about how one might fit into the modern poetry world. Do you write to be acceptable to a particular group, or poetry magazine? Do you look at pamphlets and ask yourself ‘might this or that editor be interested in my work?’ It seems to me in recent years poetry like other forms of creative writing has become a very competitive industry.

Do you go in for competitions? I’ve entered a few, sometimes at considerable expense. I was longlisted in two big ones in 2013 (isn’t everyone?) and managed to win a small local one. But recently I watched a person I know actually winning a pamphlet competition just as the publisher (who was due to publish the winner) was going out of business. So now I’ve decided to save my money!

I tend to subscribe to Charles Causley’s idea that poetry is ‘for everyone not just for the chosen few’. When I started to write poetry it was just for family and friends. More recently however, I sometimes I blog them, or even podcast a few and/or publish the odd leaflet to put into a local café. I have even self published a collection. However, even though I had some mentoring for this, I know this doesn’t make my book acceptable in the legitimate poetry world.

I was interested to learn this week that one of the big competitions has decided to accept poems that have been previously published on a blog. This feels like a welcome development and perhaps things like blogs, self publishing, video/film poems and so on may become the way to go in the future.

‘Real Poet’ luggage tag by Zazzle.

Category: Angst