Category: Blog

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Butcher’s Dog launch reading 5th June

One of the (very few) good things to have come from this whole lo****wn is being able to attend launches and readings that would normally be a huge mission to get to. (Although if it’s possible in terms of cost of travel/overnight stays then can be exciting – for example the wonderful trip I had to Liverpool a few years ago for a Coast to Coast to Coast launch).

Coming up at some point will be an online launch party for a forthcoming issue of Lighthouse in which I’m delighted to have a poem, and meanwhile those ever-creative peeps at Butcher’s Dog have done a brilliant poster for their Issue 15 launch event on Saturday 5th June. I’ll be reading in some excellent company – just wish I had a shorter name, then it would have been bigger, tee hee – ! The issue is co-edited by Ian Humphreys, with whom I shared some breakout room angst at a Ty Newydd masterclass week a few years ago. Please do come along, I think it will be a grand afternoon. Tickets available here.

Butchers Dog launch poster
Butchers Dog launch poster including names of readers
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On poetry magazines: The A3 Review

The A3 Review cover

You know how I’m a bit of a sucker for interesting poetry formats? Well, I’ve often wondered what The A3 Review was all about – a paean to the London to Portsmouth road, perhaps? Or a massive mag that won’t go through your letterbox? I bought a copy of issue #13 to find it’s neither of those. As the website says, it’s ‘a magazine that behaves like a map’ – it comes folded into A6 size, but opens out to reveal its contents.

A3 Review issue 13

In it I found poems by a number of international writers who I wasn’t familiar with, plus a pocket-sized Q & A with Roger Robinson (top tip: ‘read & write more, publish less’) and some quirky graphics. It was really interesting to see the poems spread out, so you get a visual sense of how they sit together as well as how they ‘talk’ to each other. Also in my package (sent from Spain where editor Sean Levin perhaps is based) was ‘Write About The House’, an innovative writing prompts booklet, or rather map, in the same A3 fold-out form. It’s a visual treat, as well as being packed with interesting prompts.

Write About the House by Writing Maps

How cool is this? The A3 Press has over 20 of these themed writing maps and also produces chapbooks (chapmaps?) as well as the A3 Review. Excellent value for money too.

PS: I’ve been asked if I get free copies of stuff that I review or talk about on this blog. The short answer is no, unless it’s a contributor’s copy of a magazine or a book that I’ve blurbed. This includes my quarterly list of magazine submission windows. So any ‘endorsement’ is entirely just my own thoughts.

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Faith, hope and podcasting

The sun is shining and I’m going to be gardening this afternoon. The weather is becoming less glacial and I may even be able to plant out the tomatoes. Hurray! I feel my mood lifting. The diary for May and June promises much, it looks like Nick will be working again after 15 months of enforced layoff, and musical events are on the calendar again. Not before time. I was starting to find it hard to get out of bed and not succumb to dark thoughts. But at least the pool has reopened!

In fact, the last week or two have brought some brilliant moments – not least of which was Wednesday’s launch of Antony Mair‘s new Live Canon collection A Suitcase Filled with Hope. I was proud to be able to say a few words about Antony, in front of his friends and family and many, many fine poets in the audience. He is a very modest person, but with a big talent and a huge heart. I think this is his best book yet. Highly recommended.

Last week I met up with my Planet Poetry co-producer Peter Kenny and poet friend Charlotte Gann for a few beers in Lewes. A bit of rain didn’t put us off! This is the first time Peter and I have been able to meet properly since last November, and although we thought we might do some recording for the show, we ended up just socialising.

We’re really proud of Planet Poetry;  we’ve learned as we’ve gone along, made mistakes and haven’t quite reached BBC standard yet but hey! This week I attended some sessions of a Podfest Masterclass, and although the things I heard about how to take a podcast ‘up a notch’, promote it to a wider audience, make it easier to subscribe to etc wasn’t anything I didn’t know, it was a fantastic kick up the backside. As a result Peter and I now have a domain name, plans for a website and lots of ideas for the future. We’re currently working on Episode 14, due out next week and it’s all about poetry publishing. Looking at the list of previous episodes I’m reminded how much wonderful new poetry we’ve encountered, and how many fascinating poets and editors we’ve spoken with – most recently the eminent American poet LeAnne Howe. Meanwhile here’s Peter and I in one of our recent recording sessions. Peter is ‘Proud Parsnip’ here…. don’t ask!

Robin Houghton and Peter Kenny on Planet Poetry podcast

 

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#Blossomwatch poem by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

cherry-blossom

This morning I was looking through the National Trust news and came across the latest Spring initiative, #blossomwatch, in which they are asking people to photograph blossom (I think the official day for it is tomorrow) and flood our social media channels with gorgeous pink and white. I dutifully downloaded the PDF ‘information pack’ and in it found a poem written by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett in response to members of the public who had contributed their thoughts on Spring. I confess I’d not heard of Elizabeth-Jane, and a crowd-sourced poem doesn’t always bode well, but I absolutely loved it and found myself reading it several times and wanting to show people.

I can’t post the whole poem here, and the extracts on the NT site and here on the Guardian website (which tells the whole story of how it was written) don’t do it justice, as the beauty is (for me) how the poem builds and ends. So do download the ‘pack’ and read the full poem.

Meanwhile the blossom round here is a bit behind, with all the cold dry weather we’re having. But the photo here is of the cherry tree opposite our house and was taken last year on 12th April.

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A sudden rush of sending out & signing up

Earlier this week I found myself pulling out old poems as well as some recent work, and giving them a bit of a pummelling. As a result I’ve had a spree of sending out to magazines and (yes I’m afraid so) the odd competition.

As luck would have it, I’m booked into a half-day Poetry Business workshop on Saturday with Jackie Wills and Michael Laskey, which I enrolled for months ago thinking by this time I’d be back in the poetry-writing saddle. Good timing.

And as if that weren’t enough, this morning I saw a tweet from Carrie Etter about her Arvon at Home week co-hosted by Sasha Dugdale, and I couldn’t resist an impulse-purchase. I’ve kind of sworn off any more residential courses, which I find rather stressful for many reasons, but the idea of doing it all from the comfort and splendid isolation of my home, with two of my favourite poets, is very appealing. The topic to be worked on is how to get a collection together, something I’ve been noodling around for ages, so that sealed the deal.

I’ve also been inspired by the latest issue (the first of my subscription) of PN Review which just arrived, including a page of poems by Shane McCrae which really excited me. They’re now pinned up next to my desk for inspiration.

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Drum roll please, the essay is submitted (and other news)

End of my first year on the MA Poetry & Poetics

On Tuesday I submitted my Spring term essay (HURRAH!), and well before the deadline, so no stress, except for not being able to find anything on my desk under the various piles of articles, but they are now all filed away. (This is the module I’ve been studying, if you’re interested). I’ve sent back the four library books I still had. I’m catching up with blogging, emailing and various house and garden jobs.

It’s all been rather strange, distance-learning with very little contact with other students or tutors. I’ve never actually set foot in the University library. Bizarre! If I go back for the second year I’m going to enjoy mooching about the library, going for the odd tutorial, having the odd beer with course-mates and doing all the things I remember as being What Students Do. We shall see how things pan out. There’s no teaching in the Summer term, so that’s my academic year over, pretty much, and universities have been told they can’t offer any face to face teaching in Arts subjects anyway. But I’ve been very lucky. I’m already set up to work from home, I don’t have to worry about accommodation or jobs or a career. But it must have been a pretty awful academic year for most students.

Butcher’s Dog magazine

Another nice thing was to have a poem accepted for the next edition of Butcher’s Dog magazine. Editor Jo Clement was recently being praised on Twitter for the quality and sensitivity of her rejections. It almost made me wish I’d had one. Now that’s perverse for you! I’m a new subscriber to the Dog (see more about it on this recent post) and although I’ve submitted there before this is my first acceptance, so I’m very pleased. Poetry magazines do rely on subscribers though, and I think the way it’s described on the Butcher’s Dog website puts the case for subscribing very well:

Why Subscribe?
Pre-ordering helps keep us in press. Subscribers directly contribute toward advance printing costs and press maintenance. Buy today and you’ll support the mix of emerging and established poets we strive to publish annually.
​
How does it work?
Prices reflect the complete checkout cost. This includes postage, packing and transportation costs for the first twelve months of your subscription, which includes two magazines: Spring and Autumn.

The virtual Needlewriters

The Needlewriters, the writers’ collective which I belong to, hasn’t been able to host its quarterly readings in Lewes, but we dipped our toe in the Zoom water last night and presented our four readers online: Julia Webb (poetry), Emily Bell (prose), Karen Smith (poetry) and Jackie Wills (prose). The readings were excellent, and we were thrilled with the turnout. Although it was free, many people very kindly made donations which has enabled us to stay in the black. Even though we haven’t had any live readings in the last year, unfortunately there are fixed costs that never go away, like web hosting. So it was a success all round. Next event in June, and then in the autumn we expect to be back in the pub and able to socialise, which personally I find impossible on Zoom.

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On encouraging children’s interest in writing poetry

I recently had a text from one of my stepdaughters who was passing on a question from her five-year-old: “Nana, how are poems made?”

Hmm! I tried to think very hard before responding. How to say something encouraging and likely to engage a five-year old, while still being honest? No doubt there are teachers or ex-teachers reading this who would have plenty of good suggestions. All my teaching experience has been with adults, and having been a Brownie helper for a short time I learned very quickly that I had no idea how to seriously pique the interest of a 9 year old, let alone a 5 year old. The last thing I wanted to do was to say anything that would put my granddaughter off poetry for life.

I wish I could remember what I thought about poetry when I was five. Did I love nonsense poetry, silly stories and loony rhymes? I’d hate children to think that’s all poetry is about. Is it the only way ‘into’ poetry for a five-year old, or is that just setting low expectations?

Anyway I tried to say something funny and interesting and intriguing, about looking very hard at what you see around you and playing with new words to describe things, reading aloud and enjoy words that sound the same, all that kind of well-meaning nonsense. I never got a reply, so even that was probably deemed to be over the girl’s head, who knows!

So now, having volunteered to help Live Canon with its brilliant Children’s Poetry Competition, I find myself with a whole folder of poems by 5, 6 and 7 year olds to mark. Luckily we’ve been given pointers about the kinds of things to look out for and ‘reward’, which helps me greatly in terms of where to set the bar.

It’s great fun to do: very encouraging that so many children that young are writing poems and impressive how some are already capable of tackling serious themes. I’ll try not to agonise about the responsibility, as I’m really only ‘another pair of eyes’ and won’t have to make the final decisions. I’ll be interested to see if any of my favourites make it to the winners’ list though!

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On over-exposure and other poetry ups and downs

It’s been a busy few weeks. To tell the truth, I’m feeling a little over-exposed. You know how annoying it is: Poet X has just launched this, then it’s announced they’re going to be judging some competition or other, then someone has just interviewed them or whatever and you just think I’ve had enough of Poet X and his/her face all over my social media. All I can say is that when you say yes to an interview, or send some poems to a magazine or competition, or write a review, it’s out of your control when these things hit. Sometimes it all happens at once.*

Anyway, at the start of March I had the magazines windows spreadsheet thingy to update (no I still haven’t got a short/neat name for this. Suggestions please) three interviews to edit for Planet Poetry, and the usual shedload of reading. I’d half thought I would enter the Poetry Business pamphlet competition this year, but once I’d got out my sorry pile of poems I realised it was the usual mish-mash of unrelated material with no discernible link between any of them.

Reader, I did not enter the competition. But one very good thing came of the ‘getting out the poems’ exercise, which was the realisation that with a bit of work, I had a dozen or so poems that could be good enough to send out. So I set to on the work, then did some sending out. Let the rejections or acceptances begin. I need to move forward and the only way to get my poetry-writing mojo on is to SEND SEND SEND, thus clearing the way for NEW poems.

My uni course is still online, sadly… it looks like I’m going to do an entire academic year without setting foot in the library. Thank goodness for electronic resources, and World of Books. But the handful of us majoring in poetry & poetics have chummed up on WhatsApp, and we meet for Zoom chats too, which is almost as nice as socialising in the ‘Common Room’, or wherever the socialising takes place in normal 21st century times. I got my first term essay back with a somewhat mediocre mark and dismaying feedback. I’ve certainly had some wobbly moments on this course and that was one of them. But hey ho. I’m a grown up and can take criticism, albeit through gritted teeth. And selectively. I’m doing this for fun, right?

Something that really is fun is the Planet Poetry podcast. We recently put out the 10th episode, an interview with Inua Ellams who really blew us away. A fine poet and a lovely guy. It was so interesting what he had to say – do have a listen if you haven’t already. Co-host Peter Kenny and I have a number of interviews in the pipeline and I like to think we’re getting better at it as we go along – I’ve certainly learnt a lot, and even enjoy the editing, finding music to use in between clips etc.

*OK, since you asked (!) there’s an interview with me on Abegail Morley’s website talking about life in lockdown, recordings of three poems on Mark Antony Owen‘s marvellous Iambapoet website wave 5 (going live on Monday 15th I believe) now live – and I’m currently a ‘featured poet’ on the Chichester Poetry website. Subscribers to South magazine will shortly be receiving the latest issue with featured poet Miriam Patrick, for whom I was delighted to write an introduction. I’m sure you will have seen Miriam’s work in magazines. She’s a poet for whom I genuinely feel a first pamphlet (or collection) is well overdue. Come to think of it, I know of several people in that category… I may make a blog post of it.

And finally, I’d like to mention a couple of poets I’ve discovered via the excellent Live Canon Friday lunchtime readings, whose work I’ve really enjoyed: Laura Theis and NJ Hynes. These readings are every Friday at 1pm and have been excellent – next Friday the line-up is Marcus Smith, Jill Abram, Andrea Holland and Cherie Taylor Battiste. Recommended.

(PS just noticed I’ve used THUS and two instances of WHOM in this blog post. All this academic reading must be rubbing off on me.)

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On poetry magazines: Stand, Agenda, The Dark Horse

This is the second in my mini-series on UK & Irish poetry magazines. The three featured today are all long-standing publications.

Stand magazine

Stand started up in 1954, when, according to the website,  “Jon Silkin used his £5 redundancy money, received after trying to organise some of his fellow manual workers, to found a magazine which would ‘stand’ against injustice and oppression, and ‘stand’ for the role that the arts, poetry and fiction in particular, could and should play in that fight.”

What a brilliant story. Jon Silkin died in 1997 and the magazine has had a number of editors over the years, and a long association with the University of Leeds that continues to this day. John Whale is the current managing editor, and each edition seems to include a nice mix of both well-established and newer poets. It runs to around 150 pages and the landscape layout, while interesting, offers I suspect some challenges. The name of every contributor since 1999 appears on the website!

Agenda magazine

Another small magazine with a big reputation is Agenda, founded by William Cookson in 1959, with a big input from Ezra Pound, no less. Cookson’s recollection of how the journal came into being appears on the website, and is a fascinating read. I particularly liked the detail that Pound thought the fifth issue was ‘particularly boring’ and he suggested Cookson should stop, “but he soon relented, sending £5 towards the printer’s bill to help me to continue, writing, ’Oke Hay / Fluctuat. But get some GUTS into the next issue, and something that isn’t watered down E.P.'” Priceless.

The current editor Patricia McCarthy does much to promote young poets in the ‘broadsheet’ section, and the magazine (again more of a book really, at 160 pages) is a blend of poetry, reviews and editorial (and GUTS of course). Most issues are themed, and its ‘retrospectives’ are particularly interesting.

The Dark Horse journal

And finally for now, The Dark Horse. This is a journal I’ve been aware of for a while but only recently sent for a copy. Billing itself as ‘Scotland’s Transatlantic Poetry Magazine’, it clearly has gravitas –  there is work in this recent issue by heavyweights including Michael Longley and Dana Gioia.  I also really enjoyed the essays, including a harrowing tale of ‘cancel culture’ by Jenny Lindsay and an extract from Hamish Whyte’s memoir of his thirty-year friendship with Edwin Morgan.

The Dark Horse was founded in 1995 by Gerry Cambridge, who is still its editor, and clearly also the driving force behind its design and impressive production values. Incidentally he wrote this interesting piece entitled Why we do it – on editing a poetry magazine.

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On giving a poetry reading via Zoom

I’m very pleased to be taking part in an online reading this coming Friday 19th February at 1pm. Live Canon, the lovely publisher of my 2019 pamphlet Why? is hosting a series of weekly lunchtime readings, and this week it’s the turn of Adham Smart, Gillie Robic, Laura Theis and myself.

I’ve only done two readings before on Zoom, both very brief, and I find it a bit of an ordeal – BUT I’m learning. Here are a few of the issues I’ve been working through, which I thought I would share. (The issues go from ‘easy’ to harder’ by the way…)

Preparation

Of course the first thing is preparation. Going on past Live Canon lunchtime readings, I’m assuming the slot is about ten minutes. I’ve not had this confirmed but I know it won’t be less, and I also know from experience there’s rarely such a thing a too short reading. I’ll have decided on the poems to read, practised them and timed the whole set, including introductions. This is of course standard prep, so nothing different from an ‘in-person’ reading.

Set-up

I’ve learned this the hard way – get your laptop in place, use an ethernet cable if possible (rather than wi-fi) and check how you will look with the lighting that’s available. All at least 15 mins before it’s due to start. We’ve all done plenty of Zooms by now, and I’m admiring of people who’ve cracked this. I’m still learning, but I think the best bit of advice I’ve had is to light your face from the front. Also, check what’s behind you. A dressing gown hanging up on the door? A weird ‘shape’ that might be a printer or a cat basket or whatever – anything that’s going to distract people and have them thinking ‘what IS that thing?’ instead of meditating on one’s lovely poem – get rid of it, or change position. I open up ‘Photo Booth’ on my Mac and use that to check the view!

What to wear

You have to kind of get into the showtime mood, whatever that means for you, and it’s difficult when you’re all cosy at home! You know all that stuff about not wearing slippers when you’re working from home, standing up when taking a difficult phone call and so on – I think it’s the same if you’re giving a reading. I would say dress up a bit, even though no-one’s going to see what you’re wearing. And I definitely prefer to stand up, but failing that, sit forward rather than back.

Energy

Standing up isn’t just a psychological thing, it helps you breathe better, and you can allow the energy to flow through your body, which I think is the number one way you connect with an audience. Energy doesn’t mean bouncing about. It’s just means you’re alert and reaching out, you’re more likely to give an enjoyable reading. I have to warm-up beforehand: I do things like make stupid faces in the mirror, do a few jaw exercises, take some deep yoga breaths. It may sound over the top but I think it really helps the reading. (Yes I know, I’m setting myself up a bit here – I hope the actual reading lives up to my own advice!)

Engaging the audience

This must be the hardest thing on Zoom. I don’t have the definitive answer. One of the things I enjoy most about readings is the live audience – you can see how they’re reacting, you can address people through eye contact. And on Zoom? You’re lucky if you’ve spotted your friends, who could be on page 2 of the mosaic, you could be faced with a patchwork of faces and blank screens with names, some of which are something like ‘K’s laptop’. Everyone’s muted. Ugh!

The last reading I did, I had the poems on my computer screen so I could read off them and not keep looking down. When it’s just your head and shoulders visible, if people are looking at me (and hopefully they’re not all the time!) I want to seem as if I’m addressing them. I know I like this when I’m watching a poet read, and a number of people have told me they like it too. The downside to this strategy is, if you’re on a laptop, you might find your Word document (with the poems on) obscures the Zoom window, and with no ‘feedback loop’ you just have to carry on and trust people are there and haven’t all gone home, or that your connection has died and you haven’t realised, so you’ve been talking to yourself for ten minutes. Another way might be to pin your poems on the wall above your screen, which come to think of it might work better as you’ll be looking at a point just above the camera. OK now I’m overthinking things, and making myself more anxious…

You might find points these useful, or you may disagree – if you have any tips to add, please feel free to share.  If you can do so before Friday lunchtime, even better!