Category: Blog

Angst/

The rejections behind poem acceptances

Drafts of Plath poems

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

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

Details, details

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

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

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

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

Rejections  (actually I prefer ‘Failed Submissions’)

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

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

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World Poetry Day – Sussex Poets’ showcase

John Myers (aka Mister John) runs a regular poetry evening here in Eastbourne at the Underground Theatre cafe. I’m giving it a good plug not least of all because next month I’m the guest poet. And I do also want people to support the event, as we’re not awash with poetry events in Eastbourne (YET).  The format of John’s events is to have a guest reader each time, sandwiched around open mic spots which bring in a decent audience.

So, with World Poetry Day coming up John had the idea of holding a special event to celebrate the many poetry workshopping groups in East Sussex – a showcase evening in which members of the different groups could each read/perform. Last night the event came together amazingly well, considering how many poets there were to herd.

I was there as a supporter, having connections with three of the five groups. Represented were Brighton Poetry Stanza, Rottingdean Writers, Downland Poets, Hastings Poetry Stanza and Mid Sussex Stanza. It was a convivial evening with only two or three people taking more than their allotted time (I’d like to say ‘they know who they are’ but sadly that’s not often the case). So we heard readings from around 30 poets, followed by an open mic, and John ran a pretty tight ship.

Not everyone gave their name (or full name) which was a shame. There was a big range of material, from the usual subjects (nature, death, family) to belly dancing (literally) and people pissing on doormats (not literally). I was so pleased to hear Louise Taylor‘s ‘leather bird’ and ‘bikini wax’ poems again, she is so funny and thanks to her brilliant timing I never fail to guffaw at the punchlines. Marion Tracy read from her impressive new collection Dreaming of Our Better Selves (Vanguard Editions) which I’ve been enjoying reading – more on that to come in a later post. Antony Mair gave a stonker of a reading, virtually from memory (but not the ‘stare straight ahead, speak quickly and look as if I’m trying to remember my lines’ way AT ALL). He told me it was down to an excellent day he’d spent at Live Canon, learning about how to deliver one’s poetry.

Miriam Patrick
Miriam Patrick, Mid Sussex Stanza
Marion Tracy, Rottingdean Writers & Mid Sussex Stanza
Marion Tracy, Rottingdean Writers & Mid Sussex Stanza
Louise Taylor, Rottingdean Writers
Louise Taylor, Rottingdean Writers
Antony Mair, Hastings Poetry Stanza
Antony Mair, Hastings Poetry Stanza
Jasmine from Rottingdean Writers
Jasmine from Rottingdean Writers
The Downland Poets
The Downland Poets

 

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Lynne Hjelmgaard book launch

[…]

Outside each propelling constellation
but inside that feeling of boat.

It demands and bruises,
cuts pride, hardens stomachs.

[…] (‘That Feeling of Boat’)

It was such a pleasure to be at the launch of Lynne Hjelmgaard’s new collection A Boat Called Annalise last night.

Hosted by publisher Seren Books, it was a warm occasion, well attended and with an open bar (slightly dangerous when there are poets around, but Lynne assured me there was a cap!) The upstairs room at the Yorkshire Grey in Camberwell was a good venue – there seem to be a number of pubs in that area where poetry events happen, usually while a completely different set of patrons drink downstairs, unaware of the poetry doo-dads happening above.

I’ve known Lynne for a few years now, and apart from being a truly generous and gentle soul, she has a rare and quiet wisdom from which I’ve drawn great support.  I admire her work, her attitude and her honesty and I’m fortunate to count her as a friend. Clearly many people feel the same way as there was a lot of love in the room.

Lynne Hjelmgaard book launch for A Boat Called Annalise

Several of the poems in A Boat Called Annalise are familiar to me from workshopping sessions in the past. As Lynne would be getting out her poem I’d occasionally tease her ‘is it about … boats..?’

But to read them as a sequence so much is revealed – about the adventure at the core of the collection (the poet sailing across the Atlantic to the Caribbean with her late husband, and their lives there) and the relationships – between husband and wife, between the poet and the boat, the sea, the landscapes and the people.

Beautiful, tender, dream-like in parts, yes, but this is a real story about hard-won achievement and the poignancy of loss; the poems  take the reader into the guts of the experience.

[…]

The no-moon night,
the dark ghostly creatures,
the slow-motion small tsunamis

engulf Annalise,
reek of rotten seaweed,
spilled oil, dead shark.  (‘Night Watch’)

A Boat Called Annalise, Seren 2016 £9.99

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Readings, talks, good poetry stuff on the horizon

Poetry at the Troubadour

Last Thursday I was at Roehampton University where I’d been invited by Principal Lecturer Louise Tondeur to talk to her Creative Writing students about Telltale Press, collaborative working, the importance of submitting work to magazines, marketing your work/yourself, that sort of thing. I get a bit scared when faced by a room of people (mostly) under 21 – I find it impossible to tell if they’re interested or even listening. I suppose all my teaching experience has been with adults who are uninhibited about showing enthusiasm or appreciation, asking questions, and engaging fully. And yet the general feedback afterwards was great, and several people wanted to talk to me individually. I was even invited to the students’ showcase event to hear their work. Once again I was reminded of my great admiration for our overworked and underpaid teachers and lecturers.

Monday: to the Troubadour. Anne-Marie Fyfe’s Coffee House Poetry nights at the Troubadour are always well attended. On Monday it was standing room only, and I was lucky to get a seat. The nice thing about everyone squashing up together is you always meet new people, which is great if you go on your own. The room heaves with published poets. Plus there’s always some kind of surprise guest in the audience – or the rumour of one. It all adds to the mystique. The season finale nights are long, with over 60 poets each reading a poem. I haven’t yet made it to the end, only because I have to get the second-to-last train home (the last being over an hour later). But I always enjoy the night. It has to be the most successful poetry night in London… unless you know differently?

Last night: Hastings Stanza. One of the fun things about having relocated to Eastbourne is discovering parts of Sussex I’d never much explored before. I’ve yet to really spend time in Hastings, but it’s less than half an hour on the train and pootling over to the Stanza evenings is a pleasure.

I’ve mentioned before how Antony Mair runs the group with such an air of organised calm. And there’s always something interesting coming up – Antony and Jill Fricker are currently collaborating with local choirs on a project to mark the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, and last night Jill brought along a lovely poem about Harold’s widow identifying him after the battle by his tattoos. Meanwhile Antony had been to a Live Canon workshop day and subsequently been invited to contribute to an anthology of responses to Shakespeare’s sonnets (another anniversary). He was kind enough to get me invited too, so more about this in another post.

The Hastings Stanza poets are taking part in a World Poetry Day event in Eastbourne on March 21st and a Stanza Bonanza in London in April. All good stuff.

Spring is definitely here – there are lots of readings coming up (more in another post) and next week I’m looking forward to the launch of Lynne Hjelmgaard’s collection A Boat Called Annalise (Seren). Having heard many of the poems in the workshop stage it will be fascinating – plus lovely to see Lynne’s poetry being celebrated. She’s a good friend and mentor, generous and modest about her writing.

Angst/

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

Real Poet luggage tag

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

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

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

Over to Ann:

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

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

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

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

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

 

‘Real Poet’ luggage tag by Zazzle.

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Quick update – submissions, good news, real life stuff

Obsessed with Pipework issue 73

The big news this week is that we finally completed our purchase of the new flat, and we’re now wondering what we can afford to do to it in the five weeks before we move in. Within an hour of getting the keys I’d already stripped wallpaper from an entire wall – it came off so easily I think it was put on with Spray Mount. Honestly I could have rolled it back up and sold it on eBay. I’ll try not be a property bore here because I’ve started another blog dedicated to pretty much that.

Something to do with the heating
Does anyone even know what this is?

But on to the business of poetry … I’m really enjoying workshopping with my new buddies at the Hastings Poetry Stanza. The group was set up in 2014 by Antony Mair and he’s done a brilliant job of attracting an interesting group of motivated writers. There’s some fine talent east of here, and nice people too. Over in Brighton I’ve been attending a fortnightly poetry course at New Writing South led by John McCullough which has been great for introducing me to international poets and different styles, and for challenging me in my own writing.

Telltale Press has had to take a back seat as I’ve been full on with work and everything else lately but we have our lineup for the next Telltale & Friends event in Lewes on 13th April, more about that soon when I’ve done the flyers.

Some positive results of submissions: Helen Ivory published my knot/love poem ‘Tying the Bowline’ on Ink, Sweat & Tears last week, and thanks also to Charles Johnson of Obsessed with Pipework for taking two poems in the just-out issue 73.  Meanwhile I have a poem forthcoming in Prole called ‘Two Honeymoons’ which came  out of a retreat I did at Standen last March. I’m grateful to Brett Evans for his encouragement (and prompt response times!) Also forthcoming is a poem in the Paper Swans anthology ‘The Chronicles of Eve’, and I was excited and pleased to discover a lovely review of my pamphlet by Jan Fortune in Envoi 172  – “A fine new voice to watch.” There’s something to live up to.

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Roundup: five popular posts from the last year

screenshot of this blog

One of the fascinating things about blog stats is seeing which posts take off over time and just seem to keep attracting visits. It doesn’t always coincide with the effort it took to write the bloomin’ thing, nor my own expectations!

Looking at 2015, here are five of the most popular posts, in case you missed them and/or just FYI.

  1. Of all the reviews I’ve written, this short review of Stephen Bone’s pamphlet In the Cinema just keeps bringing in the eyeballs. It was actually published in December 2014, but still outdid almost everything else in 2015.
  2. It’s lovely in the midlands… as evidenced by the sheer number of peeps reading my Leicestershire Regional Focus (a feature I’m planning to resurrect, by the way.)
  3. Poetry titles – what the $@*!? It seems to be a perennial topic of discussion, seeing the number of visits this piece continues to get – The Naming Game
  4. I didn’t think this was going to be controversial, but I actually got a bit of flak for this one – Should poems be read from memory? (I was only asking!)
  5. Gone but not forgotten … these were my post-event thoughts after a visit to the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. May a phoenix rise from the ashes!

 

Angst/

The Reading List, winding up

I'm nobody, who are you?

First: general ‘how I’m feeling’ stuff, feel free to skip down if you’re short of time

Apologies for the silence these last few days. The usual self-employed person’s dilemma of feeling like rubbish and simultaneously wanting to stay on top of work and not let people down.

Yesterday I had to leave early from John McCullough’s poetry workshop at New Writing South, for fear of irritating everyone with my endless coughing. Once home, I went to bed for two hours. And being a fast day was good, especially the no-alcohol bit. So the upshot is that I’m feeling much improved today (but not well enough to go to choir rehearsal tonight.)

The Reading List

My mini-review series ‘The Reading List’ has come to an end. It was just SO 2015! There are plenty of excellent other blogs featuring reviews, and looking at the stats for this site I could see that the initial interest in mine had levelled out. However, I’d like to assure you I’m still reading, and now and then I may well be moved to blog about individual poetry collections.

What I’ve enjoyed lately: Mark Doty’s Deep Lane, full of pathos, warmth and even farce – there’s a lovely tale of the narrator locking himself out of his house not once, but twice, and having to clamber through the window ‘which makes me think / this was what it was like to be born: / awkward, too big for the passageway…’ (‘Spent’).

I’m meandering my way through Mark Ford’s essays on poets, as gathered in This Dialogue of One (Eyewear). They are thought provoking, well researched and accessible (but not so ‘accessible’ that I don’t feel I’m being educated!) For example, this morning I read about the controversy surrounding the interpretation of Emily Dickinson’s work and how her editors disagreed about how it should be presented – as pure manuscript, or as ‘visual productions’. It made me think about her poems quite differently. If she’d been around today I think she would have wholeheartedly embraced everything from graffiti to video and sculpture in the course of expressing herself. Probably not a performance poet though, given her reserve. But a kindred spirit to Banksy, perhaps?

News of poetry rejections, submissions etc

Last week I spent a few days going over the poems I’ve been gathering for a next pamphlet. I haven’t entered the Poetry Business pamphlet comp for a few years now (since my over-confident days!), because I feel it’s the ‘big one’ as regards pamphlet comps, and the odds of winning are low. Also, I don’t feel I’ve had a strong enough submission, the time hasn’t been right, etc. But a funny thing happened as I was reading and ordering this latest group: they seemed quite good. So I thought I’d just do it, and enter. I ruthlessly ditched a couple that seemed weaker, although I like them. I’d also resurrected a poem that first saw light of day in The Interpreter’s House about 4 years ago, but that I’d been working on to improve since. In the end I had 21 poems. I wasn’t sure about the title, but I never am. Anyway, it’s sent now. Never to be thought about again, until I can try it somewhere else!

Are you currently sending out pamphlet submissions? What’s your feeling about them? I once heard a poet talking about how she wouldn’t send out her MS unless she’d first paid a professional poet to edit it. Is that usual? I just kind of naively thought you put it together yourself, did your best to order the poems, eliminate any stupid errors, and … send. And if someone liked it, you then worked with the publisher/editor to hone things up. Do share your own experience of this, I’d love to know.

Meanwhile I received yet another rejection last night, to add to the one last week. Talking about kicking a sick poet when she’s down. Still, not quite as bad as getting a £100 speeding fine three days before Christmas – Top of the Season to you, DVLA! Still, as regards the rejections (I prefer ‘DECLINED’ as a folder name) I console myself with the fact that several of the re*****d poems had been out so long I’ve since revised (and hopefully improved) them. We shall see, when I try them elsewhere. On the good news front, Charles Johnson of Obsessed with Pipework has found space for my 2 poems in the February issue, so I won’t have to wait until May to see them in print and settled down.

And MORE good news – Telltale Press has at last been accepted by the Poetry Library as a legitimate press, which means we will have a listing on their website and that all our forthcoming pamphlets will be available there. Another small but significant sign of recognition, and gratefully received.

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Ronnie-O Oh Oh!

If you’ve been at a reading I’ve given you may have heard the snooker poem… it’s a bit of fun, my homage to snooker genius Ronnie O’Sullivan. I’m not sure what it adds to the ‘after Christopher Smart’ oevre, but I hope there’s entertainment value to it. It helps to know a wee bit about Ronnie, and about snooker (147 is the maximum you can score, by potting all 15 red balls, the black 15 times, and then all the colours in order.)

At the weekend I was watching Ronnie playing in the Masters and was overcome by the need to get the poem down on video. I’d had a glass of wine at the time and couldn’t recite the whole thing in one take, and the lighting and editing are a bit rough but HEY – it gets better as it goes along, so hang in there… maybe I’ll re-do it more slickly one of these days!