Category: Blog

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To London, for poetry &

I seem to be up in London a fair bit this month. Last week was my first trip to the Troubadour in a while, and despite late trains meaning I arrived late, and then having to leave soon after ten or risk not getting home, I was very glad I went. It was the regular ‘what we should have said’ session, with improvisation/semi improv from Stephen Sexton, Greta Stoddart, Richard Douglas Pennant, Stuart Silver and musician Peter Foggitt. I had been initially attracted by Stephen Sexton’s name, as I really enjoyed his collection If All the World and Love were Young (Penguin) – and although I enjoyed all the readings I was most taken with Greta Stoddart. She has a real charisma and an enviable ability to hold an audience.

Greta Stoddart

Then last night I was at the newly-opened Boulevard Theatre in London’s Soho, where Live Canon had taken over the bar for the launch of four new pamphlets, one of which is mine. The other poets (Tania Hershman, Miranda Peake and Katie Griffiths) gave brilliant readings and I felt very privileged to be a part of it all.

Helen Eastman, who runs Live Canon, is always astonishing – a one-woman powerhouse who manages several large-scale projects at a time as well as a family. I’ll have what she’s having! Not only that but she gives the most generous introductions you could ever imagine. I don’t know about my fellow pamphleteers but I felt like Poet Royalty for the night.

Katie Griffiths, Tania Hershman, Miranda Peake, Robin Houghton
The four pamphleteers: Katie Griffiths, Tania Hershman, Miranda Peake, Robin Houghton

I’d been a bit sad during the day, I think partly because all the poet friends I had invited either lived too far away or were unwell or already committed to another launch on the same night. So it was wonderful that my good (non-poet) friend Lucy was there, and then I realised there were many friendly poet faces in the audience: Joolz Sparkes, Jill Abram, Heather Walker, Fiona Larkin, Cheryl Moskowitz and Susannah Hart to name a few.

I’ll have signed copies of the pamphlet for sale here on the website very soon. I’m just getting my shop in order!

Next up I’ll be reading a couple of quickies at the Rogue Strands event on Thursday  and it’s in aid of the Trussell Trust alongside a swathe of fine poets – hope to see you there.

And by the way, hard to believe I know but it’s not actually all poetry in London! In order to get the cheapie tickets yesterday I travelled in a bit earlier, and took the opportunity to go and hear Evensong at St Michael’s Cornhill – one of those fantastic city churches that people walk past all the time without realising they’re there. St Michael’s has a choir of ten who sound professional or at least semi-professional, and a huge organ. I go to Evensongs for the music, but it’s also a meditative experience which I highly recommend, even for atheists. Yesterday I heard some fine music by William Byrd, a Catholic who (thanks to the patronage of Elizabeth I) managed to compose music for both Catholics (covertly) and Anglicans (publicly), at a time when Catholic priests were hung drawn and quartered for their faith. An extraordinary man who lived through extraordinary times.

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Recent reading

I’ve got into a rhythm of reading a Canto of Dante’s Purgatory each night before falling asleep, sometimes I get through the chapter commentary & notes too, sometimes not. If I’m too tired to finish the Canto I have to start it again the next day. Purgatorio is a more complex read than Inferno. There are just as many references to people and politics of the time, requiring explanation, but it seems to me there’s more characterisation and symbolism to get one’s head around, not to mention the philosophical wondering it’s sent me on.

Alongside this I’ve had a number of poetry collections on the go recently. Perhaps I’m getting more reading done this month because I’m not drinking alcohol? I can’t really see the connection, but I’m struggling to notice any other benefits to Dry November except the feeling of smug satisfaction that I can do it, if I put my mind to it. I hope I’m not jinxing it by making that claim when there are twelve days to go. Anyway, I wish I could commune with my internal organs and ask them if they’re feeling detoxified or rejuvenated.

Getting to the point (I know! finally!), here’s a roundup…

Each Other by Clare Best

Clare Best, Each Other (Waterloo Press £12)

I always make sure I settle down with a nice glass of wine cup of tea before delving into a new collection from Clare, because I know I’ll be reading it in one go. She manages to write with such punch, and yet it’s so elegantly understated. The second half of the book is the title sequence, charting a relationship from courtship to old age. Somehow Clare gets to the (sometimes heartbreaking) bottom of the subject with both grace and humour. The first section contains some beautiful, quite personal poems honouring family ties, love and loss. ‘In February’ is especially moving – ‘You’re introduced to angels […] look, they welcome you with song and wine/ as I would, darling. But I must stay behind.’

A Second Whisper by Lynne Hjelmgaard

Lynne Hjelmgaard, A Second Whisper (Seren, £9.99)

Another new release, from another poet friend (disclosure!) In reading many of these poems I feel I’m being invited into a very private space in which the poet mourns the loss of her husband and the subsequent journey that takes her into another loving relationship which also ends in that partner’s death. If that sounds morbid then it’s not – there is more celebration than sadness here, and the reader is left with a strong sense of love, gratitude and hope. Like Clare Best, Lynne has a connection with nature that permeates her explorations of human relationships. ‘Planted on either side of the garden / they slowly inch their way closer/until finally (a century or two later)/ the fir leans into its beloved palm.’ (‘Three Tree Poem’).

Head On by Clare Shaw

Clare Shaw, Head On (Bloodaxe 2012, £8.95)

The book’s blurb tells us we’re in for ‘interweaving themes of personal and political conflict’ and indeed you’re straight into this from the first poem, the powerful ‘I do not believe in silence’, with its repeated ‘because..’ and the turn from ‘I do not believe..’ into the positive: ‘I believe in the heart and its beat / and its bleep and the dance of the trace / on the screen…’ This rhythmic quality is a kind of drumbeat that drives the whole collection. The subject matter is often raw – injustices, dementia, rape, miscarriage – but it also bursts with passion and pure love:

‘How love must, at all costs,

be answered. We have answered
and so have a million before us
and each of their names is a vow.

So now I can tell you, quite simply
you are the house I will live in’

(‘Vow’)

Something that surprised me was the number of dactyls, particularly from the poem ‘A withered brown flower takes on a new colour’ (title dactylic in itself) to the end of the book. There was something about putting these poems back-to-back that meant the metre became a stumbling block in my reading of them. Still a wow of a book though.

The main reason I ordered Head On was because Clare’s one of the tutors at Kim Moore’s Poetry Carousel that I’m going to next month. Similarly, I’ve ordered books by David Tait and Malika Booker, to get at least a feel for their work. So more on those collections in another post.

Angst/

A dry month in Purgatory and book launch imminent

Day Four of No-booze-vember and I’m thinking of making an advent calendar to count down the days to when I’m allowed a glass of wine.  Last year it all made sense – nothing much happening in November, Christmas to look forward to…I certainly wouldn’t want to do this in January, the most dreary of months and impossible to get through without AT LEAST the odd hot toddy.

But this year November is alight with events: my first concert with a new choir, a friend’s birthday ceilidh, two book launches (one of which is my own – hell’s teeth can a girl not have a drink at her own launch?), a meal out with an American work-friend I haven’t seen in 7 or 8 years, a night at the Troubadour AND a reading in London with a host of starry poet-names. What was I thinking?

I’m trying to see it as a creative experiment-slash-meditative opportunity. It’s a happy coincidence that I’ve finished Dante’s Inferno and have moved on to Purgatorio, which is surprisingly, well, surprising. According to Dante (and I’ve only got as far as the introduction, so not yet immersed in the poetry) Purgatory is where most of us go when we die, to think about how we’ve lived our lives and how we might do better. The idea is that if we take responsibility for and (importantly) are penitent about this, then there’s a chance we’ll get to heaven. It does involve a bit of pain and much patience but compared to Hell (or living through this Brexit debacle) it’s not all that bad really. There’s no guarantee if or when you get to move on – some poor sods have been there for a thousand years – but the hope is always that when you get out it’ll be an upward not a downward move. So not drinking this month feels like a small kind of penance. Not that I imagine it’s anywhere near enough for all the bad behaviour I could be charged with when the time comes.

Meanwhile things are gearing up for the Live Canon pamphlet launch which is scheduled for Monday 25th November, at the Boulevard Theatre Bar in Soho – fancy! It used to be the Raymond Revue Bar apparently, so I just hope my poems are seedy enough to do justice to the place’s heritage. Still not sure what the title of the pamph will be, but a lot can happen in three weeks (I hope!) I’m looking forward to meeting & reading alongside fellow launchees Miranda Peake, Tania Hershman and Katie Griffiths, and toasting all of us with a glass of sparkling water…

A few bits and bobs on the submissions front – one poem on the Bridport shortlist (which is a lot longer than it sounds), two poems accepted for Stand magazine, although they may only want one of them as the other is in the forthcoming pamphlet, and one for The Moth, very exciting for me as I feel they are seriously good magazines and it’ll be a first appearance for me in both. And actually the poem that The Moth have taken is one that I’ve been trying with for ages – I started it six years ago, and it was in my ‘Business Class’ pamphlet (the one that nobody wanted as a collection). It’s had 12 iterations over the years and I’ve tried it on any number of journals. Then earlier this year I asked Catherine Smith for advice on a pamphlet submission and I was wailing about this one. She spotted the potential issues right away and suggested a bit of re-ordering, and as a result it’s now good enough for The Moth. This isn’t the first time Catherine has helped me on poems that aren’t quite ‘there’.  She’s the real deal, for sure.

On the other hand I wish I could say I had a bunch of poems out at the moment but I haven’t started anything new in weeks. Several poems in for competitions (actually pretty much the same poems in different comps) and of course you never know. Can you imagine winning the National and then having to withdraw the poem because it was commended in the Waltham Forest comp? TEE HEE. Not that I’m dissing the WT AT ALL (results not out yet!) but I know that Paul McGrane (being involved in both comps) would blow the whistle on such a thing, and *AHEM* quite rightly!

Getting back to reality, I’m fortunate to be going to Cumbria in December for Kim Moore’s Poetry Carousel, so four days on a poetry roundabout and I should have a few proto-poems in the pipeline (not if I don’t kick THAT sort of alliteration in the teeth though). The other Carousel tutors are Malika Booker, David Tait and (gulp) Clare Shaw (the subject of this mildly inappropriate post last year) … it’s gonna be hot stuff.

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A birthday post and on magazines

poetry wall

Ooh. Lots of interesting discussion & comment around my last post. Thank you to everyone who engaged! (Feels a bit of a sham/shame to use that 21st century term but you know what I mean: commented, shared, liked/disliked etc).

Meanwhile, on another blog (when I update it that is) I’m telling the story of our new sheds. Yes, plural! I’m talking about the replacement structure for two sheds, a tool shed and and ‘summerhouse’ which we inherited, and loved, but which ultimately wasn’t really doing the job we needed of it. To cut a long story short, the old tool shed and summerhouse have been relocated 150 yards up to the communal garden, and they look perfectly at home up there. Meanwhile to replace them we’ve had built for us a wooden structure which incorporates two ‘rooms’ – a tool shed (yeah OK a ‘mancave’) and a potting shed/half greenhouse/she-shed. It’s exciting, but it’s more for garden stuff than anything else.

I can’t rival anything like Abegail Morley’s iconic Poetry Shed, alas, BUT I couldn’t help but insert a poetry element: a wall of poems! I’ve often wailed about the number of poetry magazines I have and how they take up an inordinate amount of space on the bookshelves. SO how about tearing out a bunch of poems from various mags, and use them to paper a wall in the ‘pottery’ (as we’re calling it – don’t ask!)? First of all I thought I’d look for ‘garden’ or outdoor-related poems. But it expanded to other topics too – basically poems I just liked and wanted to be able to read and enjoy anytime I’m pottering in my pottery! Also, we do have two very small grandchildren, and part of my vision is to welcome them into the pottery as they get older, to do some gardening fun and get them interested in gardening (the older one is already getting into it) – so how about poetry too??

So out came the mags – I started with the earliest and worked from there – so actually ended up with a lot of poems from 2010 – 2017 and maybe not many more recent, but hey. I took out all the Rattles, Agendas, Proles, Frogmore Papers, Poetry Reviews, Poetry, Rialtos, Tears in the Fence, Obsessed with Pipework and so forth, got out a sharp knife and started excising…

And a funny thing happened. (I should use that as the title for this post, in true Clickbait style!) I read. And read, and realised I’d either not  read these magazines properly or it was so long ago I’d forgotten all the great poems. I took several days over it, but really enjoyed the process, because I discovered/rediscovered some wonderful poems. (In the comments on my last post, Claire Booker noted that many poets don’t actually read the magazines in which their poems appear, or even subscribe to... and I had a twinge of guilt when I read that. I thought I had read these magazines but clearly a cursory lookie didn’t really cut it.)

So I ended up with more poems than I needed to paper the wall. Plus a few air bubbles that I tried to ‘mend’, some more successfully than others. I was careful to place poems with ‘swearage’ (a term I’ve learned from a poet friend – although autocorrect wants to change it to ‘sewerage’ – how appropriate!) further up the wall so that four-year-olds don’t read it and do the classic “nana what does X$%!@ mean?” The photo shows it in progress, I’ve since finished but need to varnish the wall to protect it a bit from the vagaries of shed-dom (damp, condensation etc). I may be putting a mirror on the wall, so I tried to place my faves on the outer fringes so they’re not hidden. A confession: I included 3 of my own poems, although more for fun – I like the idea of someone who maybe doesn’t know I write poetry ‘happening’ on them – ha ha.

PS:  Today is my birthday. In the 1980s I would have bought you all a cream cake. Honestly. Today I just say I hope you have a lovely, lovely day, and let’s all go outside, take a deep breath, and thank whoever or whatever you’d like for being alive. XX

Angst/

Let’s talk about failures…

There’s something that happens more and more on Twitter that makes me feel slightly queasy. But I also hesitate to say this, because it might not go down well. It’s the habit of (as soon as the results of a competition are out) dashing off a tweet to the effect of: ‘Congratulations to all the winners [of Comp Name]! Amazed and humbled to see my poem [on the shortlist/among the Commendeds]!’

There’s nothing wrong with saying ‘well done’ to other poets, surely? So by griping about it, does that make me a sore loser/ grumpy person /antisocial member of the poetry community? Possibly all of those, but I hope not. My queasiness comes from observing what looks like an exaggerated pleasure in others’ successes on the part of the tweeter, whilst at the same time sneaking in the fact that he/she was commended/shortlisted or whatever, thereby starting yet another chain of ‘Congratulations!’ tweets etc. I try not to go on about my distaste for ‘humblebragging’, but this new trend of congratulating ‘all the winners’ (presumably including a number of poets completely unknown to the tweeter) seems to be humblebragging by any other name. It appears to be widespread, and it feels like a relatively new phenomenon.

You may be thinking ‘well if she doesn’t like it, she can always unfollow/mute’. True. And sometimes I actually do, but I prefer not to, as the ‘offending’ tweets are frequently made by people whose tweets I generally enjoy and want to hear from. As I said, it’s so widespread it’s become normal everyday behaviour. But the queasiness continues. Why do I feel this way? Am I really the only one?

Recently, as a response to someone announcing that to be on a shortlist they felt like ‘a winner’, I asked them if it wouldn’t feel even better to actually be the winner. The reply was that ‘I find it easier to be happy for other people’s successes’ – now I may be reading this wrongly but the implication was ‘…than my own’. This was from someone who’s had plenty of successes.

Is the world really so full of altruistic people who truly, genuinely, find more pleasure in the success of others than in their own? Or are they reluctant to admit it on social media, for whatever reason – fear of looking big-headed, or of people not liking them, or just a preference to go along with the cheerleading norms, or even a worry that to celebrate ones own success means to put others down…I do hope the last one isn’t the case, because I think it’s mistaken.

Look at this way: if we stopped congratulating ourselves at making a longest/shortlist/commended, and only invited or offered congratulations to those placed 1st, 2nd or 3rd, then the vast majority of us would not be winners. At the moment it looks like literally everyone is winning something, and that’s very disheartening to those poets who never get anywhere in competitions. (I find it disheartening myself, and I do sometimes get somewhere. And however pleased I may be with a shortlisting, I am always disappointed not to have won.) It can also look like a coterie of winning poets continuously congratulating each other.

I read another comment recently, in which someone apparently was so upset not to get ‘on a list’ that they felt they may give up and stop writing. The responses to this were concerned and supportive, with someone else pointing out that ‘you have to remember that no-one talks about their failures on social media, only their successes.’ But can we reasonably expect people to remember this? Was this person feeling that way due to his/her tweetstream giving the impression that the whole world was on the bloody list except them?

It’s been said plenty of times before. Social media (and the internet long before social media) is a goldfish bowl of performative behaviour. I think those of us who spend a lot of time on it have a responsibility to remember that. There was a time when out-and-out self-promotion seemed to take over Facebook and Twitter (which was a big reason why I left Facebook some years ago). The rule of ‘Twitizenship’ now seems to be: only promote one’s own successes if at the same time you shout about everyone/anyone else’s.

And failures? Someone once said they hated the way some people filled up Facebook with their bad news, which no-one wants to be dragged down by. And yet, whenever I talk about my many poetry rejections on this blog, it gets the most positive comments. It would certainly be refreshing to see the odd ‘for the tenth year running I came nowhere in the Bridport’ on Twitter. But who wants to be accused of sour grapes?

I just wish we could a) talk more realistically (and more often) about the fact that the vast majority of poems don’t win prizes, as this may help us all to put things in perspective, b) worry a little less about keeping up a saintly/sanitised appearance on social media, and c) put the brakes on the ‘congratulations’ circulars: by all means send a DM, but no-one needs to be congratulated publicly/anonymously on Twitter for being on a shortlist, in my humble opinion. Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Am I just being grumpy?

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Competition season! Be afraid. Plus the odd launch

Those Darn Comps

Love ’em or loath ’em, but some of us just can’t stop ourselves entering. “Is there a competition season?” someone once asked me and I feel as if there is, and it’s now – not sure why except that the National always closes on October 31st, this year a particularly loaded date, sadly. Plus the results of the Bridport out soon.

If you keep up with Angela T Carr’s comps and submissions blog posts then you’ll already know this, but just a reminder:

National Poetry Competition (a misnomer actually – it’s International, as the list of prize winners generally confirms) – closing date 31st October, judges Mona Arshi, Helen Mort and Maurice Riordan. First prize £5,000 but tons of kudos and visibility to anyone making the ‘commendeds’. Even reaching the ‘long list’ is pretty good. First entry £7, Poetry Society members get a FREE second poem. Enter here and lashings of good luck to you.

Also don’t forget the Troubadour Poetry Prize, closing on 21st October. £5 to enter and £2000 first prize, with the very interesting combo of Kathryn Maris and Pat Boran judging this year. I predict there’ll be one grandaddy of a pile of paper in the Maris-Riordan household come November.

Launches, readings

This evening it’s the Needlewriters in Lewes with readings by poets Clare Best, Robert Hamberger and Anna Reckin, alongside prose writer Martin Nathan. I’ll be the host, which is always fun. Do come if you’re able.

This Sunday I’m off up to Greenwich, my old manor, for the Live Canon readings & competition results (for which we’re all being kept cruelly on tenterhooks, having made the ‘long list’ – I’m assuming I haven’t won since I haven’t had the call to say ‘you are coming, aren’t you…?’ But it will be a fun-filled afternoon I’m certain, and every one’s a winner baby (NOT! – whoever thought up that stupid phrase!) Anyway, I’m looking forward to hearing the Live Canon ensemble perform the winning poems, it’s an amazing experience.

November is shaping up well – my new pamphlet launch is scheduled for 25th and (same week) I’m reading for Rogue Strands in London on 28th – more to come on both. I’m also hoping to get to Lynne Hjelmgaard’s launch of A Second Whisper (Seren) on Monday 11th.

Meanwhile I’m getting close to the end of Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary – I’ve been slowing down as we approach the second World War, I almost can’t bear to read her thoughts on it all – and am also in the ‘Rotten Pockets’ of Hell c/o Signor Dante Alighieri. No wonder I’ve been having such weird dreams lately.

 

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Dante on Brexit

I’m only at the first layer of Hell but am already enjoying the ride that is Dante’s Inferno. And it’s all feeling rather relevant despite having been written over seven hundred years ago.

In his excellent introduction Robin Kirkpatrick explains Dante’s conception of Hell, where sinners are ranked according to just how bad their crimes have been. Some readers may be surprised to see the ‘sins of the flesh’ and even murder consigned to the mid-range.

Go right down to the depths and you’ll find the ‘sins of deceit’ : corruption officials,  intellectual dishonesty, ‘rabble rousing’ and treachery.

‘For Dante, the most heinous offences that a human can commit are those which threaten to destroy the unity and cohesion of the social order,’ says Kirkpatrick. He reminds us that the Commedia was written at a time when ‘the new wilderness of mercantile capitalism began to establish itself’ and when ‘there appeared an irrigating surge of prophetic voices, declaring that too much a concentration on the here-and-now […] could only diminish the scope of human possibilities.’

Here’s the map, just in case our PM and any of his supporters would like to set their SatNav now:

Dante's Plan of Hell

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And from this cluttered desk

I admit it – I’m very nosy about other people’s workspaces. Writers and artists especially. So I loved Josephine Corcoran’s recent post about her ‘cluttered desk’ – although I thought it looked pretty good actually.

My first instinct was of course to compare it to mine, so I reached for the camera – but before tidying up. Monday is usually my day for clearing the desk and starting afresh, so this is the gritty reality of the pre-clean-up. Josphine’s desk seems to be in a lovely light, airy place, whereas mine is a darkish corner where I’m flanked by bookshelves, a chest of drawers, a tall filing cabinet and a printer. But it’s cosy though, and nobody can come up behind me 🙂

There are actually two desks. The main one with the nice big screen and the standing desk with the laptop. Here goes – with Josephine’s post still open on my screen which shows how I leapt up to take a photo!

Robin's desk

You may be wondering about some of the items here… the Brownie Badge Book (I’m a volunteer Bownie helper, so just doing a bit of record-keeping for the Unit) and the empty toilet roll (I’m learning knots at the moment and one of them calls for a tube … don’t ask!) And two pairs of glasses may seem greedy but hey. Believe it or not there is some legitimate work stuff in that pile of papers. I’ve always had a big screen desktop comp as I used to do a lot of graphics and website stuff. Although I do less of that now, I like writing at the big screen and seeing words unfold there. I don’t do any writing longhand.

As it happens, the standing desk is currently my poetry desk, and I’d like to say it’s tidier, but…

Robin's other desk

Somewhere in there is a renewal notice from the PBS, a copy of The Author, poetry collections by Stephen Sexton and Jericho Brown, a copy of Dante’s Inferno which I’m reading in English and Italian (a good way of stretching my vocabulary!) a couple of notebooks and a copy of ‘101 Things to Do in a Shed’ which is brilliant and altogether 101% distracting. All that’s missing is a half-drunk can of Diet Coke (it was too early in the morning) and Bobby, the black cat who likes to block the screen and nudge my mouse hand when I’m trying to type (like now!) In fact I think it’s time for a little yoga (Bobby likes to join in, and he does a fine Downward Dog).

So thanks Josephine for the idea. I’d love to see some more of these ‘my workspace’ posts. Like I said, I’m a tad nosy!

Angst/

Back to school, current reading & looking forward

Back. After twelve days or so away I’m feeling positively autumnal and a bit ‘back to school’ (garden looking blousy, woollies coming out the wardrobe, wondering when Masterchef starts, etc).

I haven’t got back into any new writing but that will come. Sometimes I get the feeling I’m waiting  – for inspiration maybe – for a collection of poems, rather than a poem here, a poem there – and I’m a bit annoyed with myself. I really enjoyed hearing Kei Miller read at Hastings LitFest a few weeks ago, and he surprised some us by saying that he only wrote poems when he had a book in mind, and when there’s no book in mind, there are no poems. This was refreshing in a way – I’ve never been one of those people who are disciplined to write every day (not poetry, anyway). I’ve also never been very good at using exercises or ‘free writing’ as a means of churning out (or up?) ideas into proto-poems. Thinking in ‘book’ terms appeals to me and I do it a lot – trouble is, it seems to be in parallel to writing poems; I haven’t yet tied the two together. And I need to remember that Kei Miller also writes novels, so he’s quite possibly knocking out several books in those poetry dry-times. Ha!

Current reading

The September edition of Poetry, which seems to be breaking the boundaries this month with the inclusion of graphic prose poetry, a computer program, pictures of fans and a couple of essays… intriguing.

Madeleine Wurzburger‘s pamphlet Sleeve Catching Fire at Dawn (Smith/Doorstop), a gift from Marion Tracy. The poems are written in a kind of pseudo-historical style, in that they seem to be (on the face of it) well-researched historic portraits, commentary, testimonies. But they’re witty, funny in places, and certainly interesting.

Stephen Sexton‘s first collection If All the World and Love were Young (Penguin) – what a gem of a title for starters. You’ll be reading plenty of reviews of this, watch as it comes up for various awards. I was at the prize giving ceremony for the National Poetry Competition in 2017 when this poet won it, still in his early twenties. Oh my. This book was a slow burner for me, but I’ve read nothing like it. Very subtle and original and all the more moving for it. If you get a quarter of the way through and you’ve still no idea what’s going on, trust me and stick with it! Nice piece here by Stephen in the Irish Times, on the background to the book.

Coming up, in brief

Next week two lovely poet friends, Clare Best and Robert Hamberger, are launching their new collections in Brighton and I’m hoping to go, but if not then I’ll definitely hear them read at Needlewriters in Lewes next month, for which I’ll be MC-ing which is always fun. Also next month I’ll be running a workshop for some lovely High Weald Stanza writers. Some time in November I’ll have a new pamphlet ready to launch, alongside three fine Live Canon pamphleteers. And I’ll be reading in London in November at a special night being organised by Mat Riches and Matthew Stewart.

Meanwhile I’m still deciding whether to renew my membership of the Poetry Book Society. I tend to buy poetry books at readings, or second-hand. I’m not sure how useful I find the PBS Bulletin which basically includes brief review/blurbs, long poet blogs, huge poet photos and a sample poem for each of the ‘recommendations’. Pamphlets only get a very small amount of space. Buying through the PBS doesn’t save any money (once you factor in the postage cost and cost of membership). Or should I not be looking at it in those terms?  I’d be interested to know people’s thoughts on this.

 

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Updated – UK Poetry Mags Subs Windows

It’s that time again!  I’ve updated the list of UK poetry magazines and it’s gone out to everyone who has requested it, as far as I know.

Highlights: 7 new journals added, 59 currently open for submissions (but some closing very soon) and 10 more due to be opening in the next 3 months. (And Popshot is still open until TOMORROW 9AM on the theme of ‘Chance’…)

If you thought you were on the list but didn’t receive it, or if you’d like to be on it, let me know (by email please – robin at robinhoughtonpoetry.co.uk )

I’ve already had a couple more journals recommended which will appear in the next update (December)…

From the replies I’ve had it sounds like people are getting back into writing and submitting now that the summer hols are drawing to a close (for many, anyway!) and autumn’s around the corner (oh dear, I hope I can haul myself out of this quagmire of cliches before starting any new poems…)

Happy Sunday!