Category: Blog

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A few thoughts on ‘truth’

Rattle poetry magazine

One of the things I like very much about the US poetry magazine Rattle is the ‘Conversation’ at the back. It’s basically editor Timothy Green interviewing a poet, presented as a verbatim conversation, and it feels so immediate, like you’re listening in to a phone call or something, or an unedited podcast. The fact that it’s date-stamped, so you know when the chat took place, adds to its appeal. I can read it and think ‘Oh yeah, on February 18th 2018 I was doing XYZ, and these guys were having this conversation…’

I can’t really explain why I like that. It just seems to ground it in the real world. The interviews are never stilted, you can’t ‘hear’ the interviewer shuffling papers or thinking about the next question he’s going to ask. The conversation feels like a free flow. When there’s a lull or a sticky moment you sense that. But it’s never cosy or time-wasting. It’s juicy stuff. And it seems really real. Would it spoil my enjoyment if I found out it was scripted, or edited, or that it’s an amalgam of several conversations, or other interviews? Or if the interview (or even the interviewee) was fictional?

Since working on our Telltale anthology ‘Truths’ I suppose it’s heightened my awareness of what ‘truth’ in poetry means to me personally. And it’s fascinating to eavesdrop on others’ conversations on the topic.  There’s a section in the most recent Rattle Conversation with poet Stephen Dunn, in which the subject of his degenerative illness comes up. Green suggests that Dunn may not be writing about it because it’s perhaps too personal, and because his poems ‘have a genuine, authentic feel, because it’s a fictional you-but-not-you’:

Dunn:  Partly. I don’t think my life is interesting unless I make it interesting. There’s no reason anyone should care about me. the burden is on me entirely to make whatever I’m doing interesting. To me, first of all, and then to others.

Green:  So how much of a poem is you and how much is fiction?

Dunn:  More and more it’s fiction and more and more it’s about me. I think of [Wallace] Stevens again, who rarely used the personal pronoun. […] I’m always known as an honest poet, but being honest is an achievement, a matter of high technique. I let the reader know only the truths that serve the poem.

Green:  Yet there’s this strange thing where readers want to think everything is true …

Dunn:  And I want them to believe everything I write. That’s the art.

I loved this whole exchange. So many things jumped out at me with a big ‘yeeessss!’ – ‘the burden is on me to make [what I’m doing] interesting’, ‘let the reader know only the truths that serve the poem‘.

Personally I like to think the starting point for writing any poem is the thought ‘this is interesting.’ If I find it interesting, there’s a chance others might too – but not necessarily. There are subjects I find fascinating but am not yet convinced I can make interesting enough via a poem. They remain challenges to which I hope one day to rise.

There are poems I’ve written that may start off as ‘the truth’ as in ‘this really happened’. I’m sure that’s a starting point for many people’s poems. And yet what we’re really saying is ‘this is how I remember it happening’ which is often a different thing altogether.  For someone else who experienced the same thing, my memory may be a fiction. Even in the process of writing, I find myself editing the truth for reasons that ‘serve the poem’, and as a consequence I sometimes start believing my fiction to be the truth. More than once I’ve been asked something like ‘did that really happen?’ and I answer ‘yes’ instinctively. If I then think about it, I realise that’s not the truth. But I didn’t feel I was lying when I said ‘yes’. Is this normal? The re-writing of truth into fiction and the fiction becoming, in some way, the truth? In the realms of poetry it’s all pretty inconsequential. But superimposed onto the bigger world it’s a slightly worrying thought.

 

*There’s a Rattle anthology of fourteen selected ‘Conversations’ for sale here, and a sample of a conversation between Alan Fox and Jane Hirschfield from 2006.

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Recent reading: Hugh Dunkerley & Antony Mair

Poetry book covers for Hare by Hugh Dunkerley and Bestiary by Antony Mair

OK, so July wasn’t a prolific blogging month for me but I did an awful lot of gardening (well, watering), singing (in Westminster Abbey, dontcha know) and (drumroll) reading – oh yeah and bit of writing too, but more about that in another post.

I wanted to post up my thoughts on two books I recently bought at readings and have enjoyed a great deal. Hugh Dunkerley teaches creative writing at Chichester University and our paths have crossed a few times, but it was the first opportunity I had to hear him read when he came to Eastbourne Poetry Cafe earlier this month. I really enjoyed his poems and bought Hare, not a new book, but then again poetry books have a long shelflife. As luck would have it, I’d just been to the London launch of Bestiary, and Other Animals, the first full-length collection by Antony Mair. So it was interesting to read these two animal-themed collections back to back. Antony is a good poetry friend, the founder and mainstay of Hastings Stanza which has been so good for my writing, and a super-nice super-talented person. It’s very exciting to see him doing so well (another collection is in the pipeline I believe) – keep an eye out for his name.

Hare (Cinnamon, 2010) by Hugh Dunkerley

When I first picked up this collection, and seeing the cover especially, it brought to mind Ian Duhig’s The Lamas Hireling, its title poem a strange parable rooted in the myth and superstition surrounding hares. We have to wait until the end of Hare for the title poem, in which the narrator makes love to a woman who seems to be transformed during the act of coitus into the mysterious hare seen earlier ‘bounding […]/across the astonished fields.’ Myth and mystery make their play also in poems such as ‘The Guardians of the Water’ with its three strange night visitors, and ‘Discovery’ in which the shipwrecked ‘murmur dry mouthed prayers of thanks’ despite the forest ‘crowding out all thoughts of passage’.

The book is in three sections. ‘In The Darkroom’ begins with a number of poems dealing with lone characters undergoing extreme or extraordinary trials, including an abducted child, an astronaut about to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and a woman who believed she could exist on air alone, setting out a number of recurrent themes: individuals facing end of life, returning from a near-death experience, or enduring loneliness in many diverse disguises. Actual death surfaces quite often, but many of the deaths are of animals or birds. Dunkerley seems to have an eye for birds in fact – magpies, bantams, geese and swifts all come under his gaze.

The central sequence of sonnets (‘Under Cover’) deals with a doomed love affair, which at its climax resembles a ‘huge ship’ pulling out of dock as ‘wife, husband, children all slide away’. But before long the narrator is ‘wondering who she is’ and the it’s clear where things are going. Although this sequence strains against a hint of bathos, elsewhere in the collection there are poems of convincing sensuality, the most surprising of which are ‘Weasel’ and ‘Mussels’ (‘In the sink they open slyly,/ the occasional shift as one/nudges against another’). Personally I was more repelled than seduced by the image of a woman shaving her legs in the bath (‘Razor’) but it takes a brave man to write about periods (‘Cycle’) and intra-uterine insemination (‘IUI’).

A lot of lovely wordplay in this collection. Some phrases I particularly enjoyed – ‘at night the stars rustled, tugging / at you with their tiny gravities.’ (‘Fast’) ‘It made a hole in the day/ where the bird had been’ (‘Killing Geese’), the baby ‘starting suddenly / at the zoo of her own voice.’ (‘Giant Steps’), the ‘slippery sacks of nothing/that were once squid.’ (‘In a Japanese Supermarket’).

 

Bestiary, and Other Animals (Live Canon, 2018) by Antony Mair

Shortlisted for the Live Canon First Collection prize, this book is a smorgasbord of animalia. It’s not nature poetry as such but more a meditation on human nature as reflected in, sometimes personified by, the creatures within its pages.

In two sections, the first is the Bestiary of the title – an A to Z where each creature is identified solely by its first letter. There is a key at the end, but it’s more fun to try and guess. Some are much more obvious than others!

A medieval concoction designed to both entertain and moralise, a bestiary presents all kinds of opportunities for the contemporary poet, and Mair has a great deal of fun with it. Some poems are heartbreaking reminders of man’s cruelty to animals, such as the elephant ‘hating these people that taught us shame’, or a panicked turtle caught in a fishing net. There are animals-as-human-stereotypes (bulldog, cougar) and reflections on loss, ageing and coping with trauma. ‘W’ surprises with its paean to a creature universally disliked, bouncing out its funny ending.

As befits any animal-themed collection there are witty nods to Ted Hughes (for example ‘F’ and ‘P’) and some enjoyable satire, such as the poem-as-bureaucratic-report forming a sly comment on the destruction of natural habitats (‘Y’, for Yellowhammer). Mair is comfortable with form and subtle rhyme schemes, but just as happy to take risks. ‘H’ evokes a hawk in two simple lists of verbs, distilling the freedom, power and simplicity of its existence to a series of crisp actions.

Section two, ‘Other Animals’ takes the reader further into a contemplative world in which animals as portents appear in dreams, and the boundaries between human and non-human life blur and coalesce. Personal testimony (‘Coming Out’, ‘Tom’, ‘Black Dog’, ‘For Ro, in her last days’) rubs along with (usually black-ish) humour. I particularly enjoyed the moving ‘Everything will be fine’ –

[…] the day
stretched ahead like a field of slate.

A longing for somewhere else sneaked under the door –

‘The Pigeon’ begins with the dilemma of what to do with an injured bird, and ends with a burden of guilt, comparing the bird’s destiny to ‘an abandoned child in a Darfur cellar / or others whose plight I turn my back on’.

Antony Mair isn’t afraid of taking a stance and speaking out against injustice. He’s also happy to put the boot in from time to time where he sees fit. But there’s a tenderness and frankness to his work , a richness of language and reference, and attention to craft.

I felt a sense of gratitude running through the book, and of hope, even in the face of death, sadness and the worst kind of human behaviour. The animal world is cruel, but animal intuition is something we can learn from. The last words are a fitting ending (‘For Ro, in her last days’):

[…] Forget
the lingering metallic taste and look up:

as light fades the stars hang out small flags
signalling welcome in silver and indigo. Let
the horse have its head. He knows the way home.

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“Patience is the master key to every situation”

Another wonderful article from Brain Pickings, this time Rilke on ‘the lonely patience of creative work.’

Solitude and patience are essential to creative work, he says: “Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth.”

Since having a garden, and making my first steps towards growing things, I’m understanding this a lot better.

Just look at this – it’s a broccoli seed

A seed of a broccoli plant

I planted some of these last summer. Here are the seedlings, just planted out, in around July:

Broccoli seedlings

Little was I to know there are FAR too many here, because they get big…I had to pull up 5 plants in the end, and the bed still looked like this a month or two later, with plants nearly as tall as me:

The leaves were ravaged by caterpillars as we didn’t know to protect the plants from butterflies. Over the winter I really wondered if any of the plants would produce actual broccoli, or whether we might as well pull them up. They went through snow and cold and looked pretty sad, but by January there was broccoli appearing, much to my excitement:

The fruits of nature’s labour, and my own patience :

As metaphors go, it’s a good one I think. Those yellowing, rotting leaves on the ground in the penultimate photo pretty much represent the poems that died, but they didn’t prevent the good stuff from bearing fruit. And quite a lot of the ‘good stuff’ didn’t look at all good most of the time, so much so that I nearly gave up on the lot, which would have been a shame.

This year’s broccoli seedlings are growing, but I won’t say ‘I can’t wait’ for them to produce, because this time I know I can wait!

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Discovering poetry podcasts

I’ve come rather late to the podcast party, although my good friend Lucy has often sung their praises. Before my longish train journey north I decided to finally download a free podcast app (Castbox, which works well on my Samsung Galaxy S6) and then went on the search for some interesting things to take with me and listen to.

It’s been quite a revelation. I’ve never found it easy to read on the train, but putting on headphones and listening, cutting out all the stupid conversations or noises around me, and still able to watch the countryside going by, was perfect. And back home I find it’s a fine companion in the kitchen when cooking. For someone who rarely finds radio output of any interest, it’s amazing how I’ve taken to this.

My all-out favourite is the New Yorker Poetry podcast, in which a guest poet discusses someone else’s poem, then reads it, followed by conversation and a reading of one of their own poems. The host until last October was Paul Muldoon who I find perfectly suited to the medium. His voice is wonderful to listen to and the conversations he has with guests are fascinating. He’s always careful not to either talk down to the listener nor to exclude us. Each monthly edition lasts about half an hour  and they go back to 2013 so there’s a rich archive to enjoy. So far I’ve heard Andrew Motion reading Alice Oswald, Eileen Myles reading James Schuyler and Nick Laird reading Elizabeth Bishop. One funny thing is the odd advert – presumably added automatically by the software as they sometimes pop up in the middle of a sentence (but not, so far, a poem!) To be fair I’ve only noticed one or two per episode, and they’re very brief. We’re not talking commericial-radio-time-to-make-a three-course-meal-style ad breaks.

Then there’s the Poetry magazine podcast, co-hosted by Don Share and Lindsay Garbutt or other members of the editorial team. I’ve no idea why I’ve never explored this one before. When Poetry comes through the post I love the fact that you open and and you’re straight into the poems – no editorial or anything else forming a barrier between the cover art and the inside art. But I do sometimes think I’d like some sort of commentary, background or insight into the editors’ choices. The podcast description is ‘The editors go inside the pages of Poetry, talking to poets and critics, debating the issues, and sharing their poem selections with listeners.’ It’s short (under 10 minutes), frequent (weekly) and to the point. And again – great voices and high quality production. All of which makes it a pleasure to listen to, and most importantly allows the content to shine through.

The Poetry Foundation (which publishes Poetry) has a number of related podcasts, including Poetry Off the Shelf which ‘explores the diverse world of contemporary American poetry with readings by poets, interviews with critics and short poetry documentaries.’ Lots to discover here.

There are other podcasts I haven’t yet really assessed yet but have subscribed to, such as the Scottish Poetry Library podcast which appears also to have been going for some years, each episode a conversation with an individual poet, incorporating them reading some of their work. The UK arts charity Poet in the City also puts out a podcast, albeit infrequently (two or three episodes a year) but an interesting mix of ‘performances, reflection and debate’. The Poetry Society podcast features ‘both readings by poets and the fascinating exchanges between editors of The Poetry Review and contributors, past and present, as they explore ideas and themes generated by the issue.’ One podcast I have listened to before occasionally is The Transatlantic Poetry Pondcast (sic) produced by Robert Peake, which brings together UK and US poets for live readings and debate – the live element is exciting.

There are tons more I’m sure, but I don’t want to enter overwhelm too soon. I’ll probably subscribe to loads of channels and end up just going back to a small number. I’m already getting a feel for differing production standards – sound quality for example. Just saying!

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Notes on a poetry residential at Garsdale

I’m back from an inspirational week at the Garsdale Retreat, on a poetry residential course that deserved to be full but wasn’t – if you’ve ever done an Arvon week then I recommend you go to Garsdale for a change. Although the selfish part of me doesn’t want anyone else to discover it, I of course want it to be wildly successful. It’s run by partners Hamish and Rebecca, who realised a dream by relocating to the Yorkshire Dales (although strictly speaking they are just into Cumbria) from Hertfordshire. The Retreat has only been open a year but I predict its courses will very soon be oversubscribed. Kim Moore has been a tutor there and has blogged about it too.

On our week, just four of us had Ian Duhig to ourselves, plus a very absorbing  evening reading from Hannah Lowe, food to die for, very comfortable accommodation and a gorgeous location. Lambs baaa-ed me to sleep each night and I witnessed the joy of Jackpot the bull being introduced to a field of cows. I saw my first-ever red squirrel. And one day we were even treated to the sight of a steam train passing. We were guests at a cello & piano recital and one evening did a lot of shouting and laughing over a ‘literary game’ that Hamish has clearly got very good at. Plus – oh yes! I wrote, read, thought about, listened to and discussed a lot of poetry.

Ian Duhig has an encyclopedic knowledge of literature, history, myth & legend, politics, the environment and much more. (He’s also hilariously down-to-earth.) Tapping into him was rather like releasing a fireman’s hose (nothing lewd intended in this simile!) and many times I found myself giving up trying to write down references or understand everything and just let his talk flow over me. It felt like the way you pick up bits of a foreign language by going to a country and sitting in a cafe where you overhear conversations and the background talk of a TV or radio. The tutorials with him were intense. I was already somewhat in awe. ‘The Lammas Hireling’ made a huge impression on me when I first read it, and, dear God, he’s won the National twice. Now, in one-to-ones I’m aware I can be a bit difficult at times, so I was very grateful for his forbearance & generosity. I came away challenged and felt suitably kicked up the arse.

The fragmentary way of absorbing ideas and sounds ties in pretty well with the key theme of the week, which was how ‘nothing is wasted’ – digging up fragments, interrogating them, piecing things together, enjoying the connections but also the gaps. In this spirit of this, and since so much of what happens on a course stays between those who were there, in this blog post the narrative ends here.

In what follows I share a few of the phrases and ideas that stayed with me, along with some photos I took there which I hope give a feel of the experience.

“We live in descriptions of places not places” – Wallace Stevens –  I tracked this down to a letter written to Henry Church in April 1945.

Untranslateable words, eg Dustsceawung (Old English) – meaning ‘viewing or contemplating dust in the spirit of all things turning to dust. Such contemplation may loosen the grip of worldly desires.’ Ha!

Walls, windows, doors. Idea of ‘the wall which is a door’ in Theology.

‘The ear drieth words as the mouth tastes the meat’ – Book of Job

The disappearing East Coast of England.

Does complex form make you think the poem is less sincere?

“A poem is a bridge that leads to itself” – Paul Muldoon

You don’t want the reader to think “this part of your work is based on an assumption that I don’t think you’ve challenged.”

“Taking the line for a walk” – Paul Klee.

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UPDATED – list of UK poetry magazines submissions windows

view from window

I’ve now done the quarterly update of my PDF list of UK poetry magazines submissions windows, with live links to their submissions guidelines pages.

I’ll be emailing the updated list today to everyone who requested previous versions. If you’re not on the mailing list but would like a copy of this one, please drop me an email (robin at robinhoughtonpoetry.co.uk)*.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice one or two international journals have crept in. I’m only planning to include those that appear to be UK-poet-friendly (in terms of how to submit etc) and/or that have been recommended to me and I like to look of.

Thanks as ever to those who have alerted me to amends or additions.

Highlights of this version:

  1. I’ve now added ‘journal type’ – eg print or online
  2. nine journals added
  3. nineteen journals with updated information (highlighted in red)
  4. forty-two journals are OPEN for submissions now (some closing very soon though)
  5. three journals will be opening their windows in the next month or so

Go forth and be published!

*PS: I’m away to Cumbria tomorrow and pretty much off the grid for the week, so if I don’t respond to your comments or email requests right away then that’s why. I’ll reply when I’m back next weekend.

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A forthcoming retreat | writing vs bathroom | Swindon Festival

Hilda Sheehan and the Swindon Poetry Festival 2016 - Photo:Swindon Advertiser

Retreating

Next week I’m off to the Garsdale Retreat for a week tutored by Ian Duhig and guest reader Hannah Lowe. I’m excited by the prospect of a week just focusing on poetry, away from my usual surroundings. The last time I did a residential I was quite traumatised by it, and thought I’d never go on one again, even though some good poems came of it (at least two of which subsequently published). It also gave me the impetus to start Telltale Press, and from there to my first pamphlet and beyond. The negatives were the sheer number of people on the course, the lack of free reading and fresh air time and the kitchen duties. But that was nearly five years ago and the Garsdale Retreat is a very different prospect indeed. There are still places available, so why not come and join me? Once you’ve explored the website and read the course description you might well be tempted.

Swindon Poetry

Another date in my diary is the Swindon Poetry Festival on 4th – 8th October, where I’ve been invited by the lovely Hilda Sheehan to be the festival blogger and may even be doing a cheeky reading. I missed this the last two years for various reasons and am looking forward to the warm, friendly and somewhat alternative atmosphere that Hilda cultivates down Swindon way. For some reason I don’t feel this Festival gets the amount of social media love it deserves, but it goes from strength to strength every year. The full programme will be up soon and I hear there will be a shedload of fine poets and engaging sessions, it’s also great value. Do come!

Writing vs bathroom

At home we’ve been having weeks of new bathroom installation. I never thought a bathroom could be more trouble or more complex than a new kitchen, but after starting the work on May 1st they’re only now (as I type) on the last job, leaving us to finish the painting. I don’t blame the workmen since a key issue was to do with me changing my mind about having a wall-hung loo (since you ask… it just felt …umm… worryingly unstable!) But two weeks having to flush with a bucket and many days of ear-splitting noise wasn’t conducive to creative writing. This may sound like middle-class hand-wringing but let me remind you that toilet matters are right there at the bottom (sic) of Maslow’s pyramid. Plus I was worried we’d never be friends again with the neighbours upstairs.

On entering a big comp

Anyway, enough of all that. I did manage to scrape together a poem to send to the Bridport this year. I’ve talked before about how I decide whether to enter a competition – the various things to consider and so on. Everyone has different reasons I guess, but the first hurdle I usually fall at is ‘do I have anything?’. I don’t really see the point of paying £9 to enter a big comp unless I think my entry has a fighting chance of winning. (Note: this is not the same as saying you expect your poem to win). I know that’s not the received wisdom of seasoned compers, many of whom play the numbers game and have a budget for it. And I know there’s a huge amount of luck involved. But there’s no harm in developing a feel for which poems should be sent to mags and which are worth entering into a comp, especially if you don’t have a ton of good poems coming out of your ears. Discuss!

Coming up

Before I go to Cumbria I have the Poetry Magazine Submissions list to update, so let me know if you’re not already on the list and would like a copy.

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Stop the GDPR madness! Small poetry presses & arts organisations please read

This isn’t the usual subject for my blog. I try not to mix (marketing) business with (poetry) pleasure. But as the emails about GDPR intensify I’ve decided I have to say something – in the hope that it might prevent even one small, underfunded, hardworking, non-profit poetry press or community writers’ group from the suicidal step of unsubscribing its entire email list.

We’ve all been getting them – the emails telling us that in order to comply with the new GDPR regulations, we MUST re-subscribe to their list, or else they WON’T BE ABLE TO CONTACT US EVER AGAIN after May 25th.

I have no idea where this advice originated, but it has spread like a bad joke, to the point of madness.

My first thought on receiving an email like this is ‘why do they think can’t they contact me after that date, when I already signed up for their emails, or paid my subscription, or regularly attend their events?’ The second is ‘why am I being punished for not going along with their mistaken belief in what the GDPR is all about?’

When it’s an organisation I’m fond of, or feel sorry for, or if I’m just in an altruistic mood, I reply – telling them they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, offering links to the information they should read, offering my advice – always with the caveat that I’m no lawyer, but I do speak with nearly 20 years’ experience of working in email marketing. Sometimes I am thanked, sometimes I’m told ‘you’re probably right but we’re not sure if we’re compliant and we only do it for love and don’t have 17 million quid to pay the fine’, or words to that effect, I’ve even received the icily defensive “well we’re just a teeny weeny non-profit run by volunteers but you are obviously much more up on it than us!”

It’s very sad that so many completely well-meaning people, who would never dream of knowingly spamming anyone, are panicked by the well-publicised “fines of up to £17.5 million” – to the point of potentially ruining their entire enterprise (please read – or jump – to the end for the last word on this). The deluge of emails has resulted in ‘consent fatigue’ – the current re-subscribe rate is averaging 10%. At this rate, mailing lists (the lifeblood of many arts organisations) will be decimated. Even if you have a high quality list consisting of engaged, loyal supporters, you’re looking at probably losing half of them. This has implications not just for the marketing of books, magazines, courses and events, but for issues such as funding too – size matters when it comes to ‘how many people do you reach on a regular basis’- type questions.

Plus, it’s not advisable to just copy what others are doing. Rebecca Cooney has this sensible advice at The Third Sector:

“If you rush to write to all of your supporters, saying you’re moving to consent and if they don’t respond they’ll never hear from you again, you really can’t go back on that[…]so the phrasing and the wording that you use is really, really important.”

There is only one point of authority on the GDPR, and that is the ICO (the Office of the Information Commissioner.) If you have been compliant with current rules on email communications (Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations of 2003, anyone?) then the permission you obtained under those regs still holds good under GDPR. The new regulations require higher levels of transparency, lawfulness and fairness when dealing with people’s data. This wider context seems to have been lost on many people.

Here’s Toni Vitale, from law firm Winckworth Sherwood, quoted in The Guardian a few days ago: (my emphases)

“Businesses are not required to automatically ‘repaper’ or refresh all existing 1998 Act consents in preparation for the GDPR,” Vitale said. “The first question to ask is: which of the six legal grounds under the GDPR should you rely on to process personal data? Consent is only one ground.”

Vitale goes on to suggest that the process of emailing people to ask for their permission may even be illegal, since it suggests you don’t actually have permission to send that email. (See the cautionary tale at the end of this post.)

One of the other legal grounds you may rely on to process data is ‘legitimate interest’. Here’s Ben Rapp on the Rappidly blog:

“Most processing of data for the purposes of sending out marketing emails would be justified under Article 6.1f  – it’s in your legitimate interest to do it, and you believe that that interest outweighs the consumer’s right to privacy. Which, if we’re just talking about a name, an email address and their prior browsing and purchasing history from you, is probably true. You need to write that justification down, and show it to the natural person if they ask for it – or to the ICO, if they ask for it.”

And Todd at the Spaghetti marketing agency blog:

“…you can pretty much apply it [legitimate interest] to your marketing and business to suit you as long as you’re transparent about what you send and why and then how you store the data; and you’ve conducted a balancing test to make sure your legitimate interest doesn’t outweigh the individual’s.”

None of this means you don’t need to ask people’s permission to email them – it just demonstrates that if you already have that permission and want to be absolutely compliant with the new regs then stop asking people to re-subscribe to your list and instead look at your data collection and processing systems, at how easy it is for people to leave your list, at whether you tell them what data you store and what you used it for.

Anyone with an email list who’s unsure what to do then a good place to start is the ICO’s Lawful Basis Interactive Guidance Tool.

And the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) have produced this free PDF document on ‘Consent and Legitimate Interests’.

There are also some very good examples of how to do it. Here are two I’ve received. I have highlighted in red the sentences that illustrate what I’m talking about. The first is from Live Canon:

To all our followers,

As you’ll be aware, new mailing list/data protection laws (GDPR) come into effect imminently. We have been reviewing how we use our mailing list, and how we store the data to make sure we are fully compliant.

We wanted to reassure you that we only hold email addresses on our mailing list; these are not cross-referenced to names, addresses or any other data. All of our mailings (including this one) have an unsubscribe button at the bottom; this allows you to unsubscribe from the mailing list immediately at any point.

We hope you will continue to follow our mailing list and receive news of what Live Canon are up to…

And another, in an email from Write & Shine:

A note on GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation comes into effect on 25 May. We’ve updated all our processes to ensure we adhere to the new law. As you’ve opted in to the Write & Shine mailing list in the past there’s nothing you need to do, but please update your subscription preferences and read our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe from the newsletter anytime by clicking the link in the email footer or by contacting us at hello@write-and-shine.com.

And finally here’s something else to think about. What would it take to get that £17.5 million pound fine? First of all, someone on your mailing list has to complain to the ICO. The chances of this happening is in itself pretty low when you think about it. “Dear Information Commissioner, I got an email from the Poetry Goodguys to tell me about a workshop they’re running at Bromley Library costing £20 and I don’t know how they got hold of my email although it might have been at the Poetry Book Fair.” Then if they’re having a quiet day, who knows, the ICO might investigate. They might find that Poetry Goodguys have emailed 137 people whose emails they obtained at various poetry events and they wrote them all down longhand in a notebook and added them to their list of poets who might be interested in courses, without a double-opt-in and most of them without actual names, just email addresses. Are they going to fine them 17.5 million quid? Are they going to fine them at all? Are they even going to investigate the complaint, in these days of under-resourcing and bigger-fish-to-fry?

OK then, how about this cautionary tale, as reported in The Register:

An investigation by the ICO found that Exeter-based airline Flybe had “deliberately sent more than 3.3 million emails to people who had told them they didn’t want to receive marketing emails from the firm”.

Those emails ironically were asking customers to update their marketing preferences, including whether they wanted to receive emails like the ones Flybe had just sent, and offered customers the chance to be “entered into a prize draw” for contributing.

Flybe ostensibly sent the email to ensure that its data on customers was held in compliance with the GDPR but landed a a £70,000 monetary penalty notice from the ICO for breaking the Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations (PECR) while attempting to do so.

Laugh? I nearly cried. And note the amount – £70,000. For a firm the size of FlyBe sending 3.3 million emails. That were asking people to re-subscribe to their mailing list. I rest my case.

 

 

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From Picasso to Garsdale: news roundup

Taking a leaf out of Peter Kenny’s book, here are seven items from the imaginary newsdesk at Kenny Houghton Towers (sorry Peter – but as Picasso said – possibly – ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal.’)

  1. Picasso is as good as any place to start, having just visited the Tate Modern exhibition featuring work from a year in his life (1932). For once, a major London exhibition that wasn’t ruined by too many visitors (at least, on the day we went). There were two major takeaways for me: firstly, Picasso was prolific. Unbelievably so. For example on Christmas Day 1931 we’re told that ‘after the festivities’ he finished a painting he’d been working on for a week (a long time for him) AND THEN knocked off another big canvas. Secondly, he shot from the hip – first drafts for him were usually the finished article. That’s not to say he didn’t make changes – you can clearly see lines painted out (but often still visible). A bit like my maths teacher at school used to say – show your workings out, you can cross stuff out but don’t erase anything because it could actually be correct. I like that idea – it could actually be correct – as if Picasso didn’t mind anyone seeing what he’d originally drawn, because it allows for multiple and even valid readings. Very interesting to think about in terms of writing and workshopping, and it plays to my liking for (and experimentation with) erasures. PS the image featured here is of a Picasso print that I bought at the Tate – ‘Woman with flower writing’ – destined for the bedroom so I hope Nick will like it. The Tate has a very good framed print ordering system, with free delivery if you spend more than £50.
  2. Two more welcome reviews/mentions of All the Relevant Gods – one by eminent lit blogger & Guardian journalist Billy Mills on Elliptical Movements, and another by Martin Malone forthcoming in The Interpreter’s House. (He tells me it was written in a lighthouse, no less).
  3. Telltale Press launched its latest (and final) publication, the TRUTHS anthology, at a warm and well-attended event in Lewes. I know I would say this, but I think it’s a fine collection with contributions from poets both new and established. Blog post and photos here. I haven’t quite got around to putting it with a sales button on the website, but in the meantime copies may be ordered from Peter Kenny. A snip at £8 plus postage.
  4. Needlewriters Lewes are running a special day of events on Thursday 14th June as part of the South Downs Poetry Festival – a ‘poetry surgeries’ session in the afternoon followed by an Open Mic and then our regular quarterly readings. The ‘poetry surgeries’ are actually a brilliant opportunity to pick the brains of not one but two of our finest poetry magazine editors (Jeremy Page of the Frogmore Papers and Kay Syrad of Envoi) plus fine poets Janet Sutherland and Charlotte Gann. And all for just a tenner (or £12 for the whole afternoon and evening). I was hoping to be helping with the organisation on the day but I double-booked myself – bizarrely it took me several weeks to realise this, having been involved in brainstorming the event & preparing the publicity, and THEN realising I was going to be at the Garsdale Retreat that week – DUH.
  5. Two more poetry events on my radar – Abegail Morley is one of the organisers of the Tunbridge Wells Poetry Festival on 15th and 16th June which features various events including workshops and readings – more info here.  This is also during my Garsdale week so I won’t be able to check it out but it looks very good. And before that, on May 31st in Brighton, Pighog night features Annie Freud and Pam Thompson, with Michaela Ridgway compering. Definitely looking forward to that.
  6. A lovely thing – a friend asked if I would write a poem for her nephew, for a ‘big’ birthday. Now this friend has bought my pamphlets and knows my style, so I had no hesitation in saying yes, because I knew she wasn’t after something funny and rhyming. (Not that I couldn’t do that but… it didn’t particularly appeal.) I spent a morning with her, listening to her talking about the nephew, how their lives had intersected, looking at photos. And just when I was starting to wonder how I would tackle this she said one thing that stuck in my head. And that’s really it, isn’t it? That one thing that makes a poem, in this case one idea or image that somehow in a moment lets the receiver know what’s in the giver’s heart…. without sounding schmalzy or sentimental. I really enjoyed the project and was very relieved when my friend said she loved it.
  7. And so in four weeks’ time I’ll be off to Garsdale – a residential with Ian Duhig and guest poet Hannah Lowe, on the subject of ‘nothing is useless’. I’m not sure if this means ‘nothing you’ve experienced in your life is useless’ or more ‘all those old drafts and poems you’re really embarrassed about may still be useful’. Either way, I can’t wait.
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Poems coming out, new anthology, currently reading etc

Intro/bit of a rant etc (skip this if you’d rather go straight to The Poetry stuff)

Where has the month gone? (Rhetorical question.) Why am I being besieged by companies/organisations telling me I must re-subscribe to their emails? (Non-rhetorical question, although I think I know the answer – *some people* are spreading panic about new legislation and the country is alive with the sound of knees jerking.) A small rant: there used to be an acronym in Ye Olde Internet Dayes: RTFM. I’m too polite to say what that stands for but you can always Google it. My point is, if you read the ICO website and the text of the new GDPR then you will know IF you need to ask for re-confirmation of consent. Or NOT. Meanwhile I’m almost looking forward to not getting all those emails I used to enjoy getting.

In the last few weeks I’ve been suffering with back and arm problems which meant I had to limit my time on the computer. It’s all to do with posture, and related to the RSI I’ve had for nearly two decades. Nothing life-threatening, just annoying, and coinciding with the painstaking job of typesetting and formatting TRUTHS, the new Telltale Press Anthology (see below) not to mention endless need for posters and programmes for various concerts, workshops, recitals and assorted music-related ephemera. And five weeks of having work done on our garden. But HEY I am back on the comp (taking lots of breaks), the garden is finished, we have a new granddaughter (who I think is going to be a fine poetry critic), everyone is well and life is good!

bad poem, good poem

Needlewriters

I had a blast reading at Needlewriters earlier in the month, and we’re currently planning our June 14th event which will be a South Downs Poetry Festival Special. That means that as well as our regular evening of readings, there’ll be an open mic to kick off the evening, and in the afternoon five of us will be offering poetry ‘surgeries’ (not as queasy as it sounds) to which we hope lots of lovely poets and aspiring poets will flock. More on that another time.

Launch of TRUTHS: a Telltale Press Anthology

Yes, it’s finally here – or it will be – (long story) – next Wednesday 25th April, 7.30pm, upstairs at the John Harvey Tavern in Lewes… a dozen or so of the contributors will be reading their poems on the theme of truth/truths, and much over-excitement will be had by all, especially those of us mad enough to have a) suggested it and b) put it together. Once more the excellent Hannah Clare has created a cracking cover. It’s a stonker of a collection, but of course I would say that. You’ll just have to buy a copy to find out! The technicalities of producing TRUTHS has revealed to me another truth: I have so much to learn about print publishing. There were issues. But I am confident it will be good. Come and see! Free entry. Here’s the Facebook event page.

Coupla poems coming out here and there, plus pamphlet reviews

A few months ago I was wondering why I had nothing ‘forthcoming’ until it occurred to me I just wasn’t sending poems out. Duh. For some reason I’ve had a spate of sending to competitions rather than magazines, and being met with the sound of silence. But I’m slowly getting back on track. There’s one poem coming out in the next Interpreter’s House, which will be Martin Malone‘s last as editor, so I’m hoping there’ll be a launch somewhere that I can get to. Rumour has it that Martin is currently residing in a lighthouse on Shetland, clearly on a mission to move as far north as possible. So we’ll see.

Then a welcome surprise yesterday – a letter from Ann Sansom to say they’d like two of the poems I sent them for The North. I’ve only ever had one poem in The North and it’s been years since I’ve sent anything there as I’d convinced myself my stuff wasn’t for them. So I guess it’s always worth trying again.

Meanwhile I’d like to thank both Emma Lee writing on her blog, and Pam Thompson in London Grip for their thoughtful reviews of All the Relevant Gods, and Abegail Morley for this super mention at The Poetry Shed.

Currently / recently reading

A random selection… the March edition of Poetry and the Spring edition of The Poetry Review, in which I particularly enjoyed poems by Hannah Lowe, Ruth McIlroy and Rebecca Goss. Still to read the essays and reviews. Mary Ruefle’s The Most of It, a prose collection, although the stories (stories? somewhere between short stories and flash fiction) feel more like poems. I’m getting a lot of inspiration from this book.  Also the Spring edition of Rattle, in which I thought I’d read two poems by Sharon Olds, which I loved, but they’re not there. So where did I see these two poems? I thought it was in a recently-arrived mag. But can’t track them down. Do you know?

Stephen Bone‘s Plainsong (Indigo Dreams) is still on the ‘current’ pile – meaning I can’t resist dipping back into it (double-dipping?) before putting it on the shelf, and after a mention by Abigail Morley recently of Robin Robertson I’ve also got out my copy of Hill of Doors for a re-read and it’s paying off.

Peter Raynard is currently on tour promoting his collection Precarious, and it’s one of those books I hesitate to use the word ‘enjoyed’ about as I rather felt I’d been pulled along by my hair to arrive slightly scathed at the end. It’s breathless stuff – the language comes at you with force, a fire hydrant of feelings. There’s a great deal of humour, especially in the poems towards the end, but the overall effect on me was unsettling – ‘exposing us all to unending rounds of worry’ (‘They always come out fighting’).

Look what Ann Perrin pressed into my hand the other day – a copy of her lovely illustrated booklet The hole in the wall, produced by none other than the Dry Stone Walling Association, completely charming and one I will look forward to reading to the granddaughters when they’re a little older.

ann perrin - the hole in the wall

I also recently enjoyed Finishing Lines (Rack Press) by Ian Harrow, a very short pamphlet about illness, with a happy ending; ‘Come, Spring, make the difference.’ (‘Entreaty’). Yes indeed. I’m about to step outside and see for myself.