Category: Events

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Pre-Cork checklist

banshee magazineAlthough I’m going to miss my writer’s group this week it’s for a good reason, as I’ll be in Ireland for the Cork International Poetry Festival, which sounds rather grand, but so far my impression is that it’s going to be a chilled affair, perhaps not as intimate as Swindon but not as scary as Aldeburgh in its Snape Maltings days. Having booked for all the sessions online it was lovely (and unexpected) to receive the slightly ‘alt’ programme in the post. I’ve been googling various poets so that I’m not entirely in the dark when I go hear them read. I’ve also come across at least one ‘fringe’ or rival event on Thursday night, so perhaps there’ll be a bit of poetry gunslinging. All adding to the good energy no doubt. Anyway, you’ll be the first to hear about what goes on as I’ll certainly be writing the odd blog post… but I’ve promised myself some serious writing time each morning. The weather forecast is rain, so what better than to hole up in the warm and dry, reading fine poetry and writing, um, poetry?

Meanwhile I’ve been dipping my toe in the Irish poetry scene with Banshee, three back issues of which arrived in the post, together with a nifty tote which may well come in handy in the next few days. So far so good – and I’ve been enjoying the essays as much as the poems. I do enjoy creative non-fiction and for me it sits well with poetry, whereas I struggle to switch my attention between poetry and short stories. This hasn’t occurred to me before so it’s an interesting discovery.

A couple of things: Martyn Crucefix asked me to mention his current project Works and Days of Division – basically he is posting 29 new, original poems in which he wrestles with Brexit. The form he’s following is an old one. “The so-called vacana poems originate in the bhakti religious protest movements in 10-12th century India. Through plain language, repetition and refrain, they offer praise to the god, Siva, though they also express personal anger, puzzlement, even despair.” A thoughtful alternative to the current political “debate” and one which dwells more on what Martyn terms the “psychological fallout”.  Here’s today’s poem, ‘O Twitterstorm’.

And surfacing on on Twitter, this gem of a poem by Claire Cox was voted the Poem of the Month on Ink, Sweat & Tears: ‘The card given out at his funeral’. Lovely stuff.

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‘Work’ poems, getting readings (or not), Spring is coming HURRAY

Last weekend I was reading at Buzzwords Cheltenham, which happens to take place not five minutes from my brother & sister-in-law’s home, so I stayed with them and they seemed very happy to come to the reading. (My long-suffering family!) What a warm and responsive audience there was, and an impressive open mic.

My goodness, Buzzwords live up to its name – we started with a robust discussion about getting work published in magazines, and it was clear very early on that there were some very accomplished poets in the group, published, self-published and ambitious. I chatted to some very interesting people in the breaks. I find it fascinating how diverse people’s background are – coming to poetry after careers in engineering or law, or (as in the case of one lady I spoke to) running huge organisations such as NHS Trusts. It makes me wonder why there isn’t more poetry written about workplace culture, career-path politics, surviving in competitive organisations or making difficult, heartbreaking or extremely stressful decisions on a daily basis.

I’ll be hoping for some of that in the forthcoming issue of Magma which has ‘Work’ as its theme. (I’ve got a poem ‘long listed’ for it, so who knows, it may make the cut.)

Meanwhile, at readings I continue to plug my little handmade pamphlet Foot Wear. I need to make the last 10 copies, then that will be it. Until the next ‘hand made’ project!

I’ve no more readings planned now, so will have to start begging soon. If you don’t ask, you don’t get is my experience. Unless of course you’ve made it to the A or B list, usually by winning something prominent, having friends in high places, or both! BUT I  do have Cork Poetry Festival to look forward to – AND today the weather feels positively Springlike. Bring it on.

 

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At Buzzwords this weekend

If you’re within the Cheltenham catchment area I hope you’ll come to Buzzwords this Sunday evening (10th Feb) where I’ll be the guest reader, and also leading a Q&A/discussion about getting published in poetry magazines. I’ll even have the last few copies of the guide with me to sell – funny that!

I’ll be reading from All the Relevant Gods, Foot Wear and some new material. Maybe even the odd funny! YES it has been known!!

Buzzwords features a popular open mic, and it’s upstairs at The Exmouth Arms on Bath Road. Q&A/discussion at 7pm, reading and open mic starts 8pm. Full details here. Please come, and say hello!

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To Cork!

Rather unlike me but I decided on the spur of the moment to go to the Cork Poetry Festival! Having followed a tweet about it, I looked to see how possible/expensive it might be to go, and before I knew it I’d booked travel, accommodation and all the sessions. Within a few days of booking, this arrive in the post:

Cork Poetry Festival programme

So why Cork, of all the festivals? It was a combination of factors. The dates work for me. The cost of attending all the paid-for readings and ‘in conversation’s (many are free) came out at around £80 (if I had wanted to take part in a daily workshop or a manuscript appraisal then that would have cost extra).Many of the poets reading there are completely unfamiliar to me, plus there’ll be a magazine launch, a young writers showcase and a competition results night…lots of exposure to new voices and outside the comfort zone of familiar faces. Another thing I liked was that all the readings are in the afternoon and evening, leaving the mornings free. This gives me mornings to write, and maybe do some exploring – although I may just want to have lie-ins or hole up with hot chocolate in the bar. With so much new stuff to take in it will be nice to have unencumbered headspace each day, and by turning it into a writing retreat it becomes even more of a justifiable expense. I’ll just have to make sure I don’t take too much stuff, so I can bring back a bunch of books without breaking the weight-limit for the plane.

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New Year, new intentions

I’m a big fan of yoga teacher Adriene Mischler, whose ‘home practice’ videos I’ve been following for about six months. I’ve just started her latest ’30 Days of Yoga’ series and she talks at the beginning about ‘setting an intention’. I really like that idea – rather than New Year’s resolutions, how about setting some intentions? It feels more intimate somehow, more inclusive, kinder on oneself.

I have a number of intentions in mind – encompassing writing, blogging, giving myself permission, looking after myself, all the usual things I suppose. A poet friend tells me the ‘Guide to getting published in magazines’ that took up so much of my time recently was yet another ‘displacement activity’ distracting me from writing poetry. He may have a point. I seem to have some deep down belief that writing poetry is the ultimate indulgence and I’m not sure I deserve to do too much of it, especially when other projects present themselves.*

So, with all this in mind, I’ve already signed up for a fortnightly workshopping group led by the excellent Katy Evans-Bush, which I’m hoping will boot me out of my comfort zone. I’m intending to start a poem a week, and am looking forward to reading Jo Bell’s wise words on the subject. I haven’t yet done my annual stock-take of submissions and rejections but I know I’ve had a lazy year on that front. (Details to come!) On the other hand I’ve enjoyed giving readings. I’ve two more coming up very soon – at Reading Poet’s Cafe this coming Friday 11th January, and next month at Buzzwords Cheltenham. All very exciting and fun, and incentive to really work on delivering a strong set.

*OK, I’ve literally just been over to Katy Evans-Bush’s blog and read the entire chronicle of her last nine months or so, being made homeless by criminally bad landlords and how she’s now putting her life back together, and I feel ashamed of all my hand-wringing ‘oh I don’t allow myself to write poems, I need to be kinder on myself’ etc etc. I live a comfortable, charmed life and one of my intentions is now to remind myself of that every single day. Happy New Year!

 

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The view, looking back

Royal Opera House
The view, looking back

I’m just taking a moment to post what will probably be my last of 2018, and I have to be careful not to descend into a sort of ’round robin’ where I refer to myself in the third person, blurt out a list of frightening achievements and try to put a positive spin on any chronic ailments with a sad emoji, etc etc. Actually I have nothing new to declare on the chronic ailments front, so HURRAH for that. Frightening achievements? Hmmm… let me see. I think that’s also a no. BUT this was the year…

I joined the Poetry Book Society

… a ‘Black Friday’ deal had me. Then after receiving my first book, Raymond Antrobus’s The Perseverance I was on a train to a friends’ reunion and realised I’d forgotten the ‘wrapped pre-loved paperback’ for the Secret Santa. So I wrapped Ray’s half-read book in a page from the Guardian and sacrificed it. The recipient seemed delighted with the book though – my consolation, and a reminder to give poetry more often to people who don’t buy poetry books.

I went to the Forward Prize readings

…having heard they were ‘different’ to the T S Eliots, plus a poet friend pulled together a few of us to be fangirls and boys for amazingly talented and unbelievably modest Abigail Parry. She didn’t win, but I loved the readings, especially Danez Smith who read this poem as a spellbinding encore.

I didn’t book to go to the T S Eliot Prize Readings in January 2019

This is the first one I’ve missed in (I think) five or six years. But having been to the Forwards, and bearing in mind the difficulties of getting to the South Bank on a Sunday in January, I thought I’d give it a miss. In previous years the experience has been enhanced for me by attending Katy Evans Bush‘s workshop the day before the readings, in which the shortlisted books are discussed. I’m not sure if she’s running it this year, but if she I highly recommend it.

Telltale Press launched its first and last anthology

A superb way to wrap up the Telltale experiment (for now…)

Cinnamon published a pamphlet of mine

A huge relief to get this ‘out the door’, and almost as exciting as actual publication was being shortlisted for the Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition (oh that was last year, so excuse me for STILL milking it, he he.)

I wrote a booklet on how to get published in UK poetry mags

… and it’s selling a lot better than the pamphlet – surprise!

I was turned down for an ACE grant (again)

… however hard I try I can’t tick the right boxes.

I took part in a radio recording ‘with’ Alice Oswald

… OK, she was definitely in the recording. My little voice might not make the cut at all – but hey! I was there 🙂

Also …I went on a lovely Garsdale Retreat week with Ian Duhig, and blogged (blagged?) my way through the charming Swindon Poetry Festival, managed (just about) a ‘dry’ November, perfected my front crawl in the tiny local swimming pool, discovered the joy of yoga, sang in Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral and experienced my first live ballet at the Royal Opera House no less. All this and a fantastic summer in the garden. Life is good.

Although I’ve been writing poetry, I haven’t been sending poems out as much as previous years, which means I’ve only had a handful of poems published. But the first collection is starting to have a shape, and I have a good feeling about it (you have to, don’t you?) AND a good poet friend has got me into freelance features writing again, so there are things coming up on that front in 2019.

Thank you so much for reading, commenting on and supporting this blog. I hope the season of goodwill is good for you, wherever and however you spend it. Here’s to whatever you look forward to.

Robin xxx

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Alice Oswald at the BBC

Alice Oswald at Book Club

 

Something different. I answered the Poetry Society’s call for audience members at a recording of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book Club’. The guest poet being interviewed by James Naughtie was Alice Oswald. I’ve heard the stories about Alice rarely giving interviews or readings, and since the session was to discuss her 2016 collection Falling Awake (which I loved), I thought it would be fun to do.

I’d never been to the iconic Broadcasting House before, so that in itself was exciting. I wanted to take a photo of the huge Latin inscription in the foyer but I was a bit intimidated by all the security and number of people standing around wearing headsets and keeping an eye on the poets as we all loitered waiting to be ‘called in’.  I just assumed the audience members would be poets, and I wasn’t far wrong. There was a large group of people from Poet in the City for starters. And I was happy to spot a familiar face in Cheryl Moskowitz.

The discussion/recording took place in the Council Chamber, a semi-circular wood-panelled room which dates from when the building was first opened in 1931. Huge portraits of past Director-Generals look down on you, and the Art Deco is everywhere, including the lovely clock face above the fireplace. For me, it was worth going just to see all that!

Art Deco fireplace at the Beeb

There were about thirty in the audience, and quite a few of us got the chance to ask a question. Alice’s answers were fascinating, and although I wish I could have recorded it, I guess that’s a bit daft as it’s going to be broadcast in February anyway. Whether or not ‘my’ question makes the final edit remains to be seen!

BBC Council Chamber Book Club recording

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The new ‘How to’ guide is finally done…

A Guide to Getting Published in UK Poetry Magazines by Robin Houghton

Things have been a bit quiet on this blog for the last month, mainly because I’ve been full-on with the new booklet which arrived from the printers today – hurrah! More about that below… a quick zip through other news:

Workshops, readings etc

Last month I went up to London for a Coffee-House Poetry workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe over two Sunday afternoons. The subject was ‘snow’ and all its freezing friends. We were asked to write a ‘lyric essay’ as homework, which resulted in my researching the myriad words for snow according to (no, not Inuit – that’s a myth) SKIERS. It took me back to my snowboarding days (sigh) and phrases like ‘crud’, ‘corduroy’ and ‘mash potato’. There were a number of new ones on me too. ‘Sierra Cement’ for starters. Great fun. Did I write anything that could be worked up into anything? Not sure really but at least it got me writing.

I’ve been to some lovely readings this month: at Needlewriters the very talented Liz Bahs read from her pamphlet Greyhound Night Service (Maquette) (which is on my pile to read, together with about ten other books) and announced that very day she’d just heard that Pindrop Press are to publish her first full collection next year. Great news and long-deserved. Then a triple launch for Lewes writers Jeremy Page (London Calling published by Cultured Llama is a book of short and flash fiction and what I’ve read so far has been very funny), Kay Syrad (Inland – Cinnamon Press – and another on my to read list!) and Clare Best. Clare’s memoir, The Missing List (Linen Press), has been many years in the writing. Clare’s beautiful prose, her presentation of the narrative through fragments, lists, descriptions of cine films and the melding of the distant and near-pasts is mesmeric. The slow revealing of the truth painfully mirrors the process of the author as she tries to recall conversations and make sense of what happened. Extraordinary.

On 29th October I read a poem at the Troubadour in London –  we’d been asked to write something especially for the evening so since it was my birthday I went with a little ‘found’ poem gleaned from the Hallmark.com website. I was inspired by knowing that Zaffar Kunial used to work as a copywriter for Hallmark. Anyway, DESPITE my having stumbled on the last line (I believe it was the poetry reading equivalent of ‘stacking it’) I had at least half a dozen people come up to me during the evening to say they enjoyed it. Unprecedented!  Maybe my stumble was still on my mind last Friday when I read alongside Jeremy Page and Peter Philips at Camden Poetry, a regular poetry event to raise money for the London homeless. It was a small audience, and rather quiet – I felt my confidence wavering somewhat, and didn’t sell any books. Perhaps I chose the wrong poems to read.  Later this month I’m off to Chichester Open Mic hosted by Barry Smith, which I’ve been told attracts a warm and full crowd, so I shall look forward to it.

Declined … again

So my carefully (I thought) composed ‘Develop your creative practice’ application to the Arts Council was rejected. I was asking for a modest contribution towards the costs of mentoring, to help me put together a first collection. The judgement was that they ‘preferred other projects’. Poor old page poetry just isn’t exciting enough I guess. It’s a minor setback but of course a bit annoying. Meanwhile I’ve had work rejected from The Poetry Review (am still trying!) and there are poems still on the slush pile at three other journals – one since February. Ho hum!

The Booklet!

Yes I’m calling it that, rather than ‘book’, so as not to raise expectations unreasonably. Although I’m rather proud of its 32 pages. A Guide to Getting Published in UK Poetry Magazines is now published on the Telltale Press imprint and orders are being taken as I type, thanks to some lovely people retweeting it (thanks chaps!). I had a lot of fun compiling it. Asking magazine editors for their thoughts on various things and reading the replies was one of the funnest things. Wrestling with the layout, edits and other tech issues was less fun, BUT I had the eagle-eyed and massively supportive Sarah Barnsley on my side, finding stray spaces and querying dodgy grammar in her thorough but very polite fashion. I hope you like the result!! I’ve got a landing page up here where you can buy it. Please forgive all the ‘about the author’ puffery, but I felt the need to parade my creds, as it were, in order to sell the darn book.

If you’re on my list for the quarterly submissions windows updates, you’ll get an email about it this week. Now for the really tricky bit: selling the bejesus out of it. It’s a groovy stocking filler! Tell your poetry writing friends!

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Home again, and deadlines approaching

Clare Shaw interviews Carrie Etter at Poetry Swindon Festival
Clare Shaw interviews Carrie Etter at Poetry Swindon Festival

The Swindon Poetry Festival over, I’m now catching up with stuff, looking at my book purchases (actually there are a couple of books I still need to buy, not being able to do so because I ran out of cash. Note to self: always take a thick wodge of CASH to poetry events as that will invariably be the only method of payment AND you can be sure there won’t be a cash machine within a mile. Judi Sutherland kindly drove me around the roundabouts of Swindon on Sunday morning as we tried to a) follow the directions given by people in the hotel and petrol station and b) find a cash machine that actually worked.

You can read all my Swindon Festival posts here if you’re interested –  including some audio recordings.

Anyhow, next week is the Needlewriters on Thursday 18th in Lewes which I’m looking forward to very much, then there are a few poetry competition deadlines coming up, such as the Troubadour and the National. Each year I feel less and less optimistic about entering competitions, there seem to be so many brilliant ‘up and coming’ poets on the scene, plus very experienced/successful/professional poets entering (and winning) comps, and who can blame them if the prize money is good? But still. I must remind myself that there is at least an element of luck. And it’s good to support the Poetry Society, Coffee-House Poetry and the many shoestring organisations who rely on income from competitions to stay afloat.

Most importantly I need to finish the ‘how to get published in magazines’ book, before people go off the boil about it. I’ve really enjoyed gathering comments and advice from magazine editors which I think will make very interesting reading. Just when you think it’s all been said, I guess it hasn’t!

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An aside from Swindon

Clare Shaw reading at Swindon Poetry Festival

Although I’m currently officially blogging the Poetry Swindon Festival over at Festival Chronicle, this is my own blog so I thought I’d put any personal asides on here. You know me, don’t you?

On Friday morning some us were lucky enough to be in workshops with either Clare Shaw or Kim Moore. I was with the former. We did a fair bit of free writing, which I’m not sure I’m doing right as my ‘stream of consciousness’ writing is invariably as prosaic as it comes.  When asked to describe a fish, my piece went a bit like this “The fish lives a small pond and often tries to hide under a lily pad although I can still see its tail waving.” Whereas my fellow poets will typically produce “the fish’s silvery backbone strokes the water’s surface like a reflexion of the moon skittering across my lonely eye” which is sightly intimidating. Is it just me?

Now I want to say a few words about Clare Shaw, who I’d not met before, but was curious about after Sarah Dixon the day before had announced herself to be a Clare Shaw Fangirl. When Ms Shaw entered the room there was an undoubted frisson. I immediately thought of James Bond, but then no, more Doctor Who. Forget Jodie Whittaker, Clare Shaw for Doctor. She probably is a doctor for all I know. Anyway: rangy, no-nonsense and a great voice. Clare reminded me a bit of Jeanette Winterson, but taller. The kind of woman who makes me almost forget I’m straight. In Clare’s workshop, Clare’s in control – “Feel free to ignore me (if you dare…)” but she’s playful too. Selima Hill urges us to ‘go naked into the shower of truth’ – “which I’d like to do,” says Clare, “but I’m not inviting you to picture that – I just did! Stop it! Really intrusive!”

At the evening readings even Hilda seemed unable to say Clare’s name without dropping her voice an octave, at one point announcing there was only one copy of Clare’s book Flood left to buy – then proceeded to rub the said book briskly over her chest in a way that only the hilarious Hilda can get away with, before telling the audience the price had gone up twenty quid. Stop it! Inappropriate!!

Notice I’m not saying anything about Clare’s poetry or her reading here, but I’m putting all that in the official report. Speaking of which, l’d better get back to business.

Here’s the link to my report of Friday night’s readings from Clare Shaw, Kim Moore and Wayne Holloway Smith, including audio recording of Clare and Kim reading a couple of poems.