Blog – Page 10 – Robin Houghton

audio/ 17/10/2020

New podcast, plus new updated ‘Guide to getting published in UK poetry mags’

Eeek!

I’m trying to fight a sense of overwhelm at the moment even though it’s all good things that are overwhelming me. Keeping my weekly work commitments going and doing all the reading and cogitating required for my course, which this term is a whistle-stop tour of the English Lit canon (week 3: Virgil & Ovid, Week 4: Chaucer and Dante, etc), plus thinking up a topic for my first essay. Finishing up the updated version of my 2018 ‘Guide’ – see below – I KNOW, why do that now? But there you are, it’s done. And of course the Planet Poetry podcast (see below) about to launch on the apparently auspicious date of October 21. Help!

Recent reading

Although I have the latest issues of Poetry, The Poetry Review and The Frogmore Papers to read, sadly they have been scarcely opened. At the moment I’m tackling Chaucer’s ‘The House of Fame’ – now that’s a great title! – my first bit of Middle English untangling since school, where I think we spent an entire year reading just the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Then there’s Dante’s De Vulgari Eloquentia which I need to be ‘ready to discuss’ on Monday morning. Gawds.

Before the madness really set in I did enjoy Rachel Long‘s My Darling from the Lions (Picador), which is up for the Forward Prize I think. I struggled a bit with Shine, Darling (Oxford Road Books) by Ella Frears, also up for the Forwards and now also on the TS Eliot shortlist, so maybe I should give it another go. Lovely to see Sasha Dugdale on that list too – I haven’t read her latest collection but I really enjoyed Joy (Carcanet 2017).

Updated ‘Guide to getting published in UK Poetry Magazines’

It’s been two years since the first edition, which sold out rather quickly, so I felt the time was right for an update. If you didn’t buy it the first time, or missed out, now’s your chance.

If you do have the 2018 book and are wondering whether its worth getting the new one, I can tell you that much of the content is the same, BUT

I’ve consulted more magazine editors and have included their insights
I’ve updated and expanded the magazine profiles (some have gone, others are in) and the resources section
The layout and organisation is (I think) improved and clearer

The cover price is £6 including UK postage – see this page for all the info about what’s in it, and to buy. Publication date is November 1st but you can preorder now.

If you’d like it sent to an address outside the UK, or would like to order more than one copy, do drop me a line first and I can confirm what the postage will be. Many thanks.

The Podcast!

It’s here… well, the trailer is up, Episode One to follow very soon… Planet Poetry is a wee project from myself and Telltale poet pal Peter Kenny. We’re on a learning curve figuring out stuff like ‘why does Robin sound like she recorded this in the bathroom’ and ‘what the heck is that whining sound and how to we nix it’. But the main thing is, we’ve managed to pin down some fascinating poets for a chat, and that plus Peter’s and my musings on things poetical means we’re hoping each episode is an entertaining 40 mins or so. I hope you are enticed to have the odd listen, or even subscribe!

It’s a bit frightening, putting our voices out there, but we’re having fun doing it (so far!)

Blog/ 24/09/2020

Into the serious reading, plus a podcast brewing

In the last few weeks I’ve been gearing up to the start of my course at York. The logistics are all up in the air, not surprisingly given the many variables and with you-know-what going on. Next week is Week 1, and yesterday I received a swathe of information about changed timetables, reading lists, induction activities etc. I’m still holding back from booking train tickets and accommodation, as we’re told the timetable could still change again at any time. So that’s a bit nerve-wracking. The staff at York are doing a brilliant job pulling together all these courses, communicating with everyone and preparing for an influx of students. All the same, I was a bit dismayed to find all my core seminars have been moved from Wednesday to Monday morning, which means travelling on Sunday, a nightmare with all the engineering works, plus more expensive to stay over on Sunday. Ho hum. I’m still feeling very excited and grateful to be doing it at all.

Luckily I’d started on the reading list back in August, in an attempt to get on the front foot as I have a feeling it’s going to be a heavy intellectual load once weekly seminars begin. So among other things I’ve been reading Virgil’s Aeneid, various essays by Eliot, Walcott, Heaney et al, a wonderful ‘selected’ by Maureen McLane (a poet new to me) and large chunks of the Cambridge Companion to Virgil. Not to mention the real tome-extraordinaire, Don Paterson’s The Poem. Eeek. Stephen Yenser in The Yale Review described it as ‘sometimes baffling, sometimes maddening’, so at least I know its not just me. I have absolutely no idea what Don’s talking about a good deal of the time, but he’s very entertaining, and the sections I’m able to follow are invariably fascinating, so I’m still enjoying it.

I’ve also started reading Derek Walcott’s Omeros, to get into the Epic mood, also because I’ve never really read any Walcott, and it’s proving a good place to start. Here’s an extract on the Poetry Foundation website.

Meanwhile Peter Kenny and I have been beavering away on our forthcoming podcast. We decided to get enough material for several episodes before launching. This is a good thing in that we won’t be panicking a week after launch about having to work like crazy to get episode 2 ( and 3) up. But of course you do think ‘oh we could do such-and-such better’ after the first episode is done. Then again, everything I’ve read about podcasting says that you shouldn’t keep putting off launching, or editing ad infinitum because it’s not perfect. Luckily I have Peter to remind me that it won’t sound like BBC Radio 4 so stop worrying. A few rough edges is all part of the charm and quirkiness. I hope so! We’re interviewing some really interesting poets and editors and so we’re really pleased with the content. Even though we’re both sick to death of listening to our own voices when editing. We haven’t yet got a name for the podcast but as soon as we do, I’ll let you know 🙂

Blog/ 10/09/202009/09/2020

Our National Poetry Library could be axed – please sign the petition

This is no exaggeration. There doesn’t to be much hope for the National Poetry Library on London’s Southbank, since the Chief Exec is apparently determined to move the library out of the building “in order to monetise more of the Southbank Centre’s space”.

First of all, anyone who’s ever visited the Poetry Library knows it’s hardly taking up much space, nor is it in a prime location, tucked away up on the fifth floor of the Royal Festival Hall at the end of a large empty area.

More to the point, the Arts Council has guaranteed an annual grant of more than £18 million for the Southbank Centre every year until 2022, 1.5% of which is for the library (£275,400). This funding is close to the CEO’s annual salary and bonus for the 2018-19 financial year (which is in the published accounts online).

In my book, demanding that the Library justify its presence on a purely monetary basis is capitalism at its most gross and destructive. Should a library make a profit? And a poetry library at that?

The Poetry Library was created by the Arts Council in 1953 and entrusted to the Southbank Centre in 1988 on the basis it was to run as a ‘living collection’ with ‘professional stewardship’. It is a unique resource and whether or not we are members or regular users of it we would all be the poorer were it to be lost.

If you’d like to help then please join me in signing the petition. I don’t generally use this blog for grandstanding, but this is something I really can’t ignore.

Blog/ 09/09/2020

On the updated spreadsheet of poetry mags submissions windows

I need a short title for this spreadsheet-thingy. Maybe an acronym… then again maybe not. Anyhoo, if you’re on my mailing list then a few days ago you should have received the latest version of the UK & Irish Poetry Magazines Submissions Windows. If you’re not on the list, you can sign up here and you’ll receive the latest version by return.

Going from the large number of new subscribers in the last few days, it seems some lovely people have been circulating news of it to their students, course cohorts and poet friends. Thank you! And thanks also for the messages of support. I’m glad it’s useful. The document started out as something I was doing for myself, then I thought why not share it. Having promised to update it quarterly, I confess it has become quite a job, so it’s gratifying to hear that people appreciate it.

Meanwhile I’m thinking about updating and reprinting ‘A guide to getting published in UK poetry magazines’. It’s been two years since the first edition and it sold out rather quickly. I was planning to do it again, but various other things have been on my mind lately! I still stand by the majority of the content – certainly the insights from the magazine editors are all still good and valid, but some things could do with updating and expanding, such as the section of featured magazines. I may also include some ‘case studies’ from poets who are willing to be featured, talking about their experiences with submissions.

Meanwhile, it’s back to my pre-course reading… going ‘back to school’ is very exciting, if a bit daunting. I have to keep telling myself you can do this…

Last week we were in North Yorkshire, funnily enough, although nothing to do with my forthcoming course at York. It was a cold week (despite the sunshine in some of these photos) but it’s a beautiful part of the country. Here are a few pics.

Blog/ 17/08/202019/08/2020

Exciting times

There I was, thinking of applying to do an MA in Creative Writing, when I realised that wasn’t quite what I wanted. Five or six years ago perhaps, it would have been right. But the more I thought about a course centred around a weekly writing workshop, the more my heart sank a little.

I began delving into the detail of my chosen course, and my second-choice too: was there enough reading and studying of other poets’ work, as well as writing? Was I really going to be immersed in poetry from a range of periods, or was the focus on contemporary? Was I going to have to take classes in novel writing, drama or other types of creative writing in which I have no interest? What was/were the experience, specialisations & interests of the tutors? What were research students working on? Was there much/any potential for crossover into the rest of the English department, or opportunity to take contextual modules?

Then I discovered an MA in Poetry and Poetics at York University. No other British university appears to offer such a thing. The more I read about it, the more I felt it was for me. Taking a part-time course at a Uni that’s 300 miles away isn’t a cheap option but it’s doable. When I was looking at Creative Writing, I did consider a distance-learning option elsewhere, but York doesn’t offer that on this particular MA, and actually when I realised that ‘distance learning’ means email and online text-based chat, without any face-to face-video seminars, I wasn’t so keen anyway.

So, the York course was the way to go, and I’m delighted to say I’ve been offered a place. I absolutely know this is going to be a real stimulus to my own writing, as well as being enjoyable in its own right. Now I’ve got a month or so to get my head around it, start organising travel/accommodation and so forth. At least I’ll have plenty of four-hour train journeys to do all that reading!

Blog/ 05/08/202005/08/2020

Advice to a poet, and a curious birthday thing

Q: Who are these poets and what do they (almost) have in common?

poets-born-on-29Oct

(Answers below…)

Advice lines

Recently I came across this delightful and very relevant piece on the Poetry Ireland website:

Advice to a Poet – words of wisdom from Maurice Harmon, critic, biographer, editor, literary historian and poet.

Even the title has an authoritative feel! But this is no harangue. When I read it I’m picturing a kind but firm teacher, one who challenges but encourages at the same time. So many good thinking points (‘All forms of laziness are fatal in poetry’ ….’You must, and will, find your own way of saying’ … ‘Poetry is above all a way of telling the truth’…’Does it make a difference?’) I don’t know about you but I have to read essays like this on a regular basis, to remind myself what the hell I’m supposed to be doing, because it is so, so easy to stray down those lazy byways or lose sight of the reasons I’m trying to write poetry.

Advice comes in many forms of course and sometimes poets don’t even know they’re giving it. One of the things I like about Rattle magazine is the regular poet interview at the back, and I’m just at the section of the Eavan Boland Sourcebook where we get to read interviews with her. There are always gems to be found in these chats, I think; there’s something both voyeuristic and educational about hearing what a poet has to say about their working methods, inspirations and general thoughts about what gives.

On a somewhat drier note, in the spirit of starting my ‘literary education’ from the beginning, I’m also reading Aristotle’s Poetics, translated by Anthony Kenny (Oxford World’s Classics edition 2013), although I’ve learned quite quickly that it’s actually about tragedy and ‘the epic’ rather than lyric poetry, which doesn’t get a look in. Aristotle rather slyly suggests early on that he’s going to come to ‘comedy’ in due course. And then he doesn’t. What a tease.

Calling all poets with late-October birthdays

I’m fast approaching a ‘landmark’ birthday, and I’m reminded that I share it (the date, not the year) with fine poet Sarah Howe (above right). So just for fun I got researching poet birthdays to see who else is in this 29th October club. According to his family at the time, John Keats was born on October 29th, although official records list it as 31st. Killjoys! Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke only just missed out – she was born on 27th October, as was Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath. So, if you, or any poets you know of, were born on October 29th (or let’s say 2 days either side, although that’s not quite the ticket) do let me know and we’ll sort out a club logo or secret handshake or something. (When handshakes are allowed again, of course.)

audio/ 26/07/202027/07/2020

Current reading and other news

Current reading … and a parrot

Camilla’s Bookshop is open again in Eastbourne after an arson attack, and I can report that the parrot is still alive and greeting you as you enter, and the stacks of books are as tightly packed as ever – in fact even more so! Here’s how the poetry section looked before (multiply this ten or even twenty times over and you get a good picture of the shop as a whole!

Now, the stacks on the floor are about 4 foot tall and it’s impossible to bend down and get one’s head into a position to see what’s actually in the stack…however I managed to find two books of interest on the upper shelves. One is John Donne, The Complete English Poems (Penguin Classics) and the other is The Eavan Boland Sourcebook (Carcanet) which I’ve started and already it’s fascinating. Eavan Boland is a poet I’d only heard of but not read, but when she died earlier this year there was such an outpouring of grief from the poetry community that I decided I needed to seek her out.

In addition to this I’m near the end of a lovely book by Jean Sprackland, a memoir in which she retraces her steps through the graveyards and cemeteries she’s known over the years.

Feature on the Frogmore blog

And speaking of The Frogmore Papers, here’s a lovely post on their blog about the sad demise of listings mag Viva Lewes. The April issue was due to feature four of the members of the Needlewriters Collective (Jeremy Page, Charlotte Gann, Janet Sutherland and myself) but it never went to print. But the feature is reproduced here, like a sort of echo of what almost happened.

‘Ellipsis’ on Radio Reverb

Another lovely thing: fine poet and Brighton Reverb Radio presenter Jackie Wills featured one of my poems on the Reverb Literature Hour the other week. It was such a treat to hear her read the poem; I don’t think I’ve heard anyone read a poem of mine before. And her analysis of it was wonderful. I was very touched. With Jackie’s permission I’m posting it here:

Blog/ 12/07/2020

Those tips from Don Paterson again…

I was doing a bit of editing yesterday and looked back on some of the notes I’d made from various workshops, and then I remember this blog post from 2012. Yes, nearly 8 years ago, a heck of a long time in politics but a few seconds in poetics. Anyway, I thought I’d reblog it, as it still made me think (and laugh):

A Few Tips from Don Paterson

Blog/ 10/07/2020

A couple of found antique mini-books

As you may know, I’m fond of a mini-book, mini poetry books in particular, and I came across these recently among my memorabilia. They’re two little leather-bound books of poetry, ‘Moments with Shakespeare’ and Gems from Shelley’.

They’re both dated 1909, one says it’s from ‘Jack’. One of my parents (I think my Dad) did have an uncle Jack. In fact his daughter who we knew as ‘cousin Joan’ did appear in a poem of mine once. When Joan died some of her effects came to him and then through him to Mum and then to me.

So maybe these booklets belonged to Joan’s mother. I like to think of them being carried around in a concealed pocket, to be brought out for a moment or two of reflection now and then.

Angst/ 30/06/2020

On a literary education (or lack of), dealing with the social media hate-storms, etc

Is it the end of June already? I wonder how you’re getting on. Well, I hope. If you need a shot of positivity, I find Wee Granny still helps…

Reading matter

Recently arrived in the post: two anthologies and issue #3 of Finished Creatures magazine. Finished Creatures was having not one but two online launches, so I thought it would be good to have a read of it beforehand and was looking forward to hearing some of the poems in particular … but did I make a note of the launch times?? I had it firmly in my mind that they were in July, but I’ve just checked the invitation email only to find they were last Thursday and Sunday, so I missed them. DUH! How %@**&! annoying. All I can blame it on is Lockdown Head – that thing whereby you only have two things to do all week and you still forget. Or is that just me??

The anthologies were Poetry & All That Jazz which Barry Smith publishes each year – its contributors are generally poets who have a connection to the Chichester poetry events that Barry organises, although anyone is welcome to submit something. There are many familiar names here, some of whom also feature in Frogmore Press Poetry South East 2020 anthology, a collection selected by the press’s editor Jeremy Page. It’s ten years since the last Poetry South East, which happened just before I started writing seriously and submitting poems to magazines. So it’s a great privilege to make this one. According to the cover blurb the Poetry South East anthologies represent ‘a comprehensive survey of poetic activity in the region in the first decades of the 21st century’. I certainly discovered some favourites old and new, including Janet Sutherland’s ‘Hangman’s Acre’, Robert Hamberger’s ‘Sleeping with uncertainty’, Stephen Bone’s ‘Inventory’ and John O’Donoghue’s ‘His Plane’.

I know it sounds unlikely, but actually I’m motoring through Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (Bennett & Royle, Pearson 2005), as part of my self-education (see below). It’s a lot more interesting than it sounds!

Submissions latest

Another rejection from Ambit, on what I think may have been my fifth attempt over eight years, so I think I can safely say my work ain’t a good fit there – oh well, onwards! Then two poems accepted by Prole, which is always good news. So that’s cleared the decks, which means I need to get some more poems out this week.

Thoughts about what next

I’ve been thinking off and on for a few years about what’s going to push my writing on. I’ve thought about finding a mentor, but I’m not sure that’s it. Something that’s been nagging away at me, even though I try not to let it, is that a respected editor who I paid to critique a manuscript, when I’d asked if he would mentor me further, replied that it would be a steep upward curve for me as I have ‘no literary education’. It’s true I have a haphazard approach to reading. If I’m asked to write a review, or judge a poetry competition, I do feel a bit of a fraud (and no it’s not just ‘imposter syndrome’). As writing buddies, I have the Hastings Stanza, a supportive and talented group. I’ve always longed for something else as well, but not been able to define it.

Part of me doesn’t want to go down the Creative Writing MA route, having spoken to people who have. It’s also a huge luxury and not one (especially given the current financial climate) I’m sure I can afford to take. But the prospect of being given directed reading and focus, together with sustained critiquing that develops my writing and helps me situate it in relation to the ‘canon’, is tempting. Interestingly I nearly enrolled for a Creative Writing MA twenty years ago, when I came back from the US and wanted a fresh start. But my head ruled my heart and I took a Digital Media MA instead, which I don’t regret as it set me up for a new career. But it makes me a bit rueful all the same. So, all of this is a longwinded way of saying I’ve decided after all to apply for that CW MA, and see what happens. I’ll let you know how it turns out!

On trying to stay informed without going down the social media hate-drain

There’s so much bitterness expressed via social media these days, which is unsurprising I suppose, given what the world is going through, and social media is basically seen by many people as their only opportunity to make their opinions heard. Trouble is, we don’t all need or want to be hearing them, especially as the repetition encouraged by ‘sharing’ quickly turns into an endless storm of hate.

I’ve noticed a few people recently announcing their withdrawal from social channels. I took myself off Facebook some years ago and don’t regret it for a moment. I’m not planning to come off Twitter as I still find it entertaining and useful, plus it’s my only regular social media presence these days. I’m proud to be one of its very early adopters and feel a responsibility to keep on using it as it was intended. But oh my, it can be depressing on Twitter these days. I manage my presence there by muting certain people, unfollowing others, encouraging and supporting good (ie social!) behaviour, continuing to share or create what I feel to be informative and/or entertaining things where possible, staying curious and feeling delight when I come across someone new and interesting to follow. Meanwhile I get the news from The Guardian and The Times online, and never, never, never watch any TV news.

Other stuff I’ve been up to

I’m still practising my handmade notelets/notebooks. Here are a couple. The cover of the dotty one is made from a Sainsbury’s bottle gift bag!

The garden continues to provide work and endless fascination. I love the strange and curious shapes the courgettes are putting out…

And the small white turnips which are new this year, plus strawberries (when we can get them before the snails etc):

Category: Blog