Here’s what’s on my bedside table this month vying with the Sudoku book…
The March issue of Poetryarrived the other day so I’ve only just dipped into it. A wonderful piece towards the end by Kate Farrell introducing an unfinished poem by her ex-husband Kenneth Koch written when he was in Rome in 1978. This resonates with me particularly as it was to Rome that I ran away in 1979 and I’ve strong memories of that time and place. Other stand-outs so far: three wonderful poems by Michelle Y. Burke. Here’s one: Diameter. It’s exciting to get Poetry in the post – always new names and new surprises.
Jackie Wills, Woman’s Head as Jug (Arc, 2013). Jackie is someone I’ve been aware of for a long time as she’s Brighton-based and well-known in these parts as a writer and tutor, and although I’ve only heard her read twice it was memorable. I loved the short poems I’d heard from the middle section of Woman’s Head as Jug (great title!) in a sequence called ‘Sweats’, partly with the fear of ‘oh god is this what’s to come’ but also for their precision and black humour. The book begins with a series of poems giving voice to an eclectic range of female workers, from ‘A Lone Leaping Woman’ (which we’re told is a female itinerant worker in Mediaeval England) to ‘Dorset Buttonmaker’ and possibly the poet herself in ‘Saturday Girl’.
Byron, Selected Verse & Prose Works including Letters and Extracts from Lord Byron’s Journals and Diaries (ed. Quennell, Collins 1959). I’ve never read any Byron. Although I’m a reasonable bluffer should I need to pretend I have. This book came to me via my husband’s step-daughter who was clearing her grandparents’ house and put all the poetry books into a box with my name on. There was no pressure on me to have them all, thankfully, but I gratefully took this one, as well as a Rupert Brooke Collected and a Penguin Poets first edition of Burns. I’ve actually gone straight to Byron’s journal and ‘detached thoughts’, basically the 19th century equivalent of a blog. I’m excited at the idea of learning more about his life, work and personality through these writings. This book is a little odd in that it’s been bound upside-down, which means I always try opening it the wrong way. Hmmm.
Katherine Mansfield, Selected Stories (OUP 2008). I’ve always wanted to read some Katherine Mansfield. Perhaps partly because of her being published by the Hogarth Press and her connection to the Bloomsbury group (Charleston House is very near Lewes and I’m a fan of its annual literary festival.) In my book group a few years ago we discussed reading her but it never happened, so now I’m reading it in my book group of one.
Agnieszka Studzinska, What Things Are (Eyewear, 2104). I haven’t started this yet but I’m looking forward to it. I found myself sitting next to Agnieszka (who kindly told me she goes by the name ‘Nisha’ for short) at a recent Coffee House Poetry workshop. She’s one of those beautiful, modest AND talented poets who are also down-to-earth and friendly – GRRR! – for heaven’s sake, Nisha, give the rest of us mortals a break!! The collection comes with warm blurbs from Michael Symmons Roberts, Deryn Rees-Jones and Hannah Lowe. One to watch, if you’re not already watching her.
I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to get my lazy bod along to the Troubadour cafe for Anne-Marie-Fyfe’s Coffee House Poetry nights. I guess the journey was putting me off, but actually it was as sweet as a trip on Southern Rail could be. Trains on time. Changing at Clapham Junction. Two stops on the overground and a 5 minute trot past the scary-looking Brompton Cemetery. I left home at 5.30pm and was back by midnight.
The Troubadour…. what can I say? I already gave a flavour of it in a previous post. The downstairs room where the readings are held is an interesting L-shape, and tables and chairs were tightly packed in. Readers were called in groups of 6 in order to be ready to leap to the stage. A military operation, but handled with good humour, and people responded by (mostly) sticking to the rules – one poem, no more than 25 lines, little or no preamble. There must have been 60 or more readers in all, and an amazing range of poems to the theme of ‘yellow’. Most of those read were by the poets themselves, but we also heard work by Louis Macneice, Philip Devine and Frances Leviston among others.
Jan Heritage and I reading our poems. (Sorry for the grainy pics)
I was looked after by poet friend Jan who’s a regular, although there were several other people there I knew and it was very nice to finally meet others who I knew only by reputation, such as Mona Arshi (who I’m reading with next month at Lauderdale House, oh did I mention that already?) and Robert Peake.
The event has been going for some years now but I got no feeling of it being a clique – which has to be down to Anne-Marie’s hosting skills. She appears to know everyone’s name, (including mine, even though we’d only met once), she’s there greeting people as they come in, chatting and making introductions beforehand and in the break. Her relaxed persona rubs off on the audience, with happy results. It’s a style I’d love to emulate when I’m running events, because I’m aware I can sometimes get into the “don’t panic!” mode and the rictus grin/short temper if things aren’t going quite to plan. Must try harder!
Anne-Marie Fyfe, Stephen Bone and myself, and featuring Stephen’s yellow socks – OK, I know it’s a bit blurry, but it was dark!
If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know I can get a bit irritated about event timekeeping (ahem!), but in this case, given the number of readers it was easily forgivable that it ended a teensy bit later than scheduled. Sadly I had to catch a train so missed the final few readers, the results of the Big Yellow Taxi quiz (at which I sucked big time) and the announcement of the favourite poem of the night. I was told it wasn’t always quite that busy, as the regular nights feature just a handful of headline readers. I’m already looking forward to the next one in May when the season starts up again for the summer. If you’ve ever thought of going along but haven’t yet, do so if you can, it’s well worth it.
Today I made my first visit to the Troubadour cafe, after thinking about it for a long time – I thought I’d start by going to one of Anne-Marie Fyfe‘s Coffee House Poetry workshops, which always sound enticing. The theme was ‘bridges’, and the first irony of the day was my inability to locate Wandsworth Bridge, despite the satnav lady giving it her best shot. Thankfully I managed it second time around. I’m glad I drove – although it’s a couple of hours away from where I live, parking around the Troubadour is free and easy on a Sunday, whereas the rail service from the South coast is non-existent on Sundays, making for miserable four-hour journeys. And it was pouring with rain when I left so jumping into the car was wonderful.
Is that Hilda lurking behind the partition?
There’s something a tad intimidating about the Troubadour cafe – the door is solid and heavy so it’s as if you have to be ‘in the know’ to enter. The interior is, well, quirky. As I quietly ordered my cup of tea, wondering if I’d see anyone I knew, it was a relief to hear my name being called from out of the darkness by none other than the grande dame of Swindon Poetry, Hilda Sheehan. Brilliant – and when I uploaded my photos I realised I’d captured Hilda in shot without noticing – ha ha! Hilda introduced me to Anne-Marie and some of of the participants, many of whose names I knew – Angela Kirby, Dorothy Yamamoto, Jill Abram. There was a slight panic as Hilda and I rushed upstairs for the start of the workshop only to find ourselves in someone’s kitchen. Ooops! Luckily no-one appeared to ask what the hell we were doing there. All I can say is that the door to the gallery is right next to someone’s flat. You have been warned!
It was a well-run writing workshop – to time, with lots of reading material to get inspiration from and to take away to read properly later. Anne-Marie was a warm & supportive tutor with a toolbox of tricks, from guided writing exercises to a pack of bridge photos around which we were to invited to write just one line before moving onto the next. In the break we had time to polish up a poem to share, and although I didn’t come up with anything very original it served its purpose to get me thinking and writing. Lots of interesting stuff produced by others.
There were rather a lot of participants, although for once I wasn’t bothered by this. And I was lucky to find myself sitting between two lovely poets whose names rang a bell and who I’ve since looked up, to discover they are indeed both talented and accomplished writers: Agnieszka Studzinska and Frances Galleymore. Exciting and humbling to have been in such good company. I’ll be back.
Great night yesterday at The Bear in Camberwell for Richard Skinner’s Vanguard Readings. It’s an excellent series, basically offering a showcase to writers at all stages of their writing journey. It means you get to hear both new and seasoned authors, and sometimes poets too.
The readings are free to attend and Richard runs a smooth show, making everyone welcome and introducing audience members to one another beforehand and during the break. It’s a real skill and the effect is that newcomers quickly feel welcome, you always meet interesting people and the event never feels cliquey. Last night, for example, it was a pleasure to meet Paul Golden, a writer of Asian historical fiction, who may soon also be a neighbour. Small world!
Of the readers, the headline act Nikesh Shukla stood out for many reasons – the big ol’ welcome as he boomed onto the stage, his reading and also his performance of the promotional rap he’d done for his latest book Meatspace, and the impassioned and original plea for us to buy his book. (I wish I had – but with not enough cash on me – no, really! – and with the five copies he brought being snapped up rather quickly, I missed out).
Meatspace appears to be a very funny tale of online shenanigans, identity theft, dysfunctional life in the internet age… The Guardian compares it to Douglas Coupland’s Generation X. It’s hard to believe Coupland’s classic was published in 1991, a full seven years before I made may own personal discovery of the internet and was living a highly dysfunctional life in Portland, Oregon, staying up all night to chat on ICQ and frequently falling asleep at the keyboard. (It was Coupland’s Microserfs that did it for me – or did for me, whichever way you look at it, heh.)
Anyhow, Meatspace sounds like a novel I’d definitely enjoy and if you get the chance to hear Nikesh read, please grab it, he’s great fun.
The other day I received an email rejection letter from Rattle, an excellent US magazine I both subscribe to and aspire to being published in. So yes, it was a blow to have my poems rejected. But I didn’t feel dejected. Here’s why. Editor Tim Green sends out what I can only describe as a model rejection letter.
As we all know, rejections can vary in quality, and you just have to deal with them. But I do believe there are good and bad ways to reject, just as we’re always being told there are good and bad ways to submit our poems.
So, rather than naming and shaming the poor ones I think it’s better all round to draw attention to the very best, in the hope that others may follow suit. With Tim Green’s permission I am reproducing the entire letter here:
Dear Robin,
Thank you for sending us “4 poems from Robin Houghton – thanks for considering,” but unfortunately we’ve decided not to publish any of these pieces. I want to assure you that your work has been taken under careful consideration—Megan and I each read every poem before replying, so everything has been read twice by the actual editors.
This is a form letter—necessary with a staff of two and all these submissions—but what I’m about to say is sincere: Unlike most literary magazines, we don’t directly solicit work from anyone; we feel that practice isn’t fair, and doesn’t make for a good magazine. Instead, we read a great number of poems—over 80,000 each year—and publish our favorite 150, regardless of who wrote them. The odds are always going to be long, but that’s the only thing that keeps the quality of the magazine as high as it is. We always appreciate the opportunity to read your work—that’s what we’re here to do.
Also, it should go without saying that our decision to return this submission doesn’t mean much. We’re just fans of poetry ourselves, and all tastes are subjective. Moreover, we’re always looking to make the magazine as eclectic as possible—often we end up turning down submissions that we enjoy, simply because they’re similar in tone or content to other pieces we’ve published.
In any event, thanks for continuing to share your work. We’re happy to read submissions any time, year-round—and we just announced that we’ll be paying all contributors $50 per piece, too. So hopefully we’ll always be at the top of your list for places to send new poems.
Best Wishes,
Tim
Timothy Green
Editor
tim@rattle.com
www.rattle.com
So there you have it – an honest, matter-of-fact, informative and elegant rejection letter. No hand-wringing, no patronising and no BS.
I’m a big fan of the simple but kind ‘your poems weren’t right on this occasion, sorry’ rejection slip. But if you’re going to say any more than that, then this, surely is the model to live up to.
I hope if I’m ever in Tim’s position I’ll be able to do as good a job.
Help! I can’t be the only one who has this problem. Poem titles. What the &%$?!*?
I seem to have a issue with both the creative and the administrative aspects of poem titles.
Sometimes I’m pleased with a poem, but the ‘working title’ just doesn’t cut it. Or I don’t even have a working title. Sometimes I save a poem under its working title and then can’t find it. Sometimes I submit a poem with ‘title X’ which, after four or five rejections, I rework a bit and change the title, then can’t find either the poem or where I submitted it. Sometimes I have a GREAT title in my head, but can’t write a poem to go with it. Maybe it’s a pamphlet title? But I haven’t written the pamphlet either. Sometimes I look at the titles of poems in magazines and wonder at their length or quirkiness, and I TRY to write long, quirky titles to my poems. But they resist and resist until they’re just one or two words again. The first one often being ‘The’.
O gods of poetry, please tell me where the poem titles are, I need a clue!
Welcome to the first of my new series of Regional Focus pieces about the poetry scene around the UK. I suppose I could have called it ‘Down Your Way’ or some other BBC-esque ever-so-slightly patronising title. Or I could have racked my brains for something witty, wacky or non-cliched. But hey.
PS: it’s long – grab a cup of tea and a biscuit.
So. Leicestershire. Where better to start than one of England’s ancient land-locked counties? Let’s get the basics out of the way. Here’s where it is:
For the benefit of my non-British readers, or anyone who’s not sure (I feel a BBC moment coming on here!) it’s pronounced like this:
If you think that’s tricky then in 1087 it was called Laegrecastrescir. Which I’m not going to attempt to pronounce.
(I’ve been alerted to the fact that the above audio file doesn’t work for everyone – apologies if you clicked and nothing happened!)
Wikipedia says the population of the whole county is just under a million, and let me tell you, it’s seething with poetry. I asked a number of Leics poets what was going on up there. They sent back a TON of juicy information.
First of all, a bit about my special correspondents:
Jayne Stanton
Jayne is one of my virtual blogger friends who writes about her poetry life and the local scene on her blog. She’s lived in Leicestershire since 1989. Her pamphlet Beyond the Tune was published by Soundswrite in September 2014. Soundswrite is a women’s poetry workshopping and reading group that also has a small press – so far it has published three anthologies and five pamphlets. As well as attending and running workshops, Jayne is heavily involved in local projects including her most recent role as a commissioned writer for Sole2Soul, a project by University of Leicester’s Centre for New Writing, to attract visitors to Market Harborough Museum’s Faulkner boot and shoe exhibit.
DA (Davina) Prince
I first met Davina at a launch of The Rialto last year, and when we met again at the Poetry Book Fair we talked about many things including the idea of a Regional Focus series on this blog. So I have Davina to thank for the inspiration. Leicestershire-born Davina was a little coy about answering my request to ‘tell us about yourself’, but from her Poetry p f page I glean that she has had three pamphlets and two collections of poetry published, the latest being the super Common Ground from HappenStance (2014).
Roy Marshall
Roy was manning the HappenStance table at the Poetry Book Fair last year when we were introduced – always wonderful to meet poet bloggers face to face, and I’ve been enjoying Roy’s thoughtful and perceptive blog for some time now. Roy lives in a village on the south side of Leicester where he’s been since 1998, although he lived in Leicestershire as a child “so I’m familiar with the greeting ‘Aye up me duck’, although you hear this less nowadays” – shame! Roy is widely published and has a pamphlet Gopagilla (Crystal Clear, 2012) and a full collection The Sun Bathers (Shoestring Press, 2013).
Maria Taylor
Partly raised in Nottinghamshire, Maria admits “It was love that brought me back to the Midlands” – aaw! Now living in Loughborough, she balances bringing up twin 6-year old daughters with ‘poeting’ – her term for travelling around attending events, readings and so forth. Maria’s name came up again and again in my research for this piece – she’s a publisher, reviewer and poetry event promoter as well as a poet and she blogs at Commonplace. Her collection Melanchrini is published by Nine Arches Press (2012) and was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize.
Charles Lauder Jnr
Charles is a native Texan who, like Maria, was brought to Leicestershire by love – to the village where his wife grew up in fact. Anglophile Charles is fascinated by English history – “like many ex-pats, I now often write about how my adopted culture compares to my native culture.” Charles has run the South Leicestershire Stanza for the last six years, and as well as being widely published he’s also Deputy Editor of The Interpreter’s House.
I ought to add that I didn’t manage to speak to Matt Merritt or Emma Lee, although they were both on my list, but I had so much info from the others that I couldn’t cope with any more! Both Matt and Emma’s names were mentioned by my reporters, and they both write fine blogs.
It’s a Leicester Fiesta – Martin Harvey (image from http://artintodust.blogspot.co.uk/)
Q1: Are there any specific towns/cities with a vibrant poetry scene?
Maria Taylor (MT): The vast majority of events I attend are in Leicester, my closest city. I also attend events in Nottingham too. There’s a lot going on in the bigger cities, but there are also many things occurring in the smaller towns and villages. With the advent of various presses and regular events in the East Midlands, the region really does have a sense of identity on the poetry map.
DA Prince (DAP): I realise that a city/county boundary doesn’t define the area for me: I go to the Nottingham Stanza because it’s a group that reads full-length collections, and also because I hear what’s happening in Nottingham. I think we would all see ourselves as more Midlands than just ‘Leicester’ – and poets in Nottingham say they envy the range of activity in Leicester while those of us in Leicester look with longing at the range in Nottingham. The grass is always greener …
Jayne Stanton (JS): Leicester has a growing number of poetry open mic nights as well as readings and events organised by its two universities. Loughborough also has regular events, I believe. I’ve also begun to travel further afield, lately, and enjoy poetry nights out across the Midlands, in Lichfield, Burton on Trent, Coventry, Kettering and Rugby.
Q2: Who are the poetry ‘movers and shakers’ ??
Charles Lauder (CL): Jonathan & Maria Taylor, Lydia Towsey, Jane Commane, Karin Koller who runs the Soundswrite Group, Mark Goodwin, a prolific poet who describes himself as a ‘community poet’—in the past he ran a lot of workshops for children in schools and for adults in adult education centers and in prisons. In the past year, he’s put on public installations in Leicester and Cornwall.
MT: Not sure if I’m a ‘mover’ or a ‘shaker’! I try and facilitate opportunities for readings with Shindig, but I think one of the most productive (and modest!) person is Jane Commane who organises all sorts of readings. Also Lydia Towsey and Pam Thompson who do sterling work in Leicester. I should also say my husband Jonathan Taylor, otherwise he’d get upset! Seriously, he organises and hosts lots and lots of events. Jonathan and Jane combined at Shindig are a force to be reckoned with! It’s hard to answer a question like this because I don’t want to miss anyone out. To be honest it’s more like a big web of people connecting with each other. Everyone can offer something.
Lydia Towsey, ‘Girl walks into a bar’
JS: Gosh! There are so many! Maria and Jonathan Taylor, Roy Marshall, D A Prince, Matt Merritt, Mark Goodwin, Jess Green, Lydia Towsey, Pam Thompson – to name just a few…
Roy Marshall (RM): Jonathan and Maria Taylor because they are involved in organising the spoken word night Shindig (together with Nine Arches Press.) They’re also publishers (Crystal Clear Creators). Other poets who do other things include Matt Merritt, who blogs and reviews for magazines such as Magma, and all the people involved with ‘WORD’ at the Y theatre, including Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Pam Thompson and Lydia Towsey. And Soundswrite Press which is based here and publishes women poets.
Q3: What regular poetry events are there in your area?
CL:Shindig! is a bi-monthly open mic night at the Western Pub on Western Road in Leicester, organised by Jonathan & Maria Taylor (of Crystal Clear Creators) and Jane Commane (of Nine Arches Press). The night is divided into two halves—CCC hosts one half and Nine Arches the other—of about 10 open-micers each followed by 2 guest readers. For a Monday night, it’s a lively crowd of about 40–50 people who are very supportive and cheer everyone on. It’s mostly page poets, with some performance poets too.
MT: Obviously Shindig is my top event as I help to run it with Jane and Jonathan and I’m often a host. The Open Mic is very high calibre, we often have some really exceptional poets reading. It’s also a friendly place for newcomers as well. Main readers have included some top notch poets, such as Kim Moore, Sarah Jackson, Rory Waterman and David Morley. We also use those slots to showcase local and regional writers. This year I was really cheered that Shindig was shortlisted for a Saboteur award, up against many London based events.
RM: I think Shindig (at the Western pub) is fantastic. Always a really good set of guest poets and a good open mic. Appreciative and attentive audience.
JS: Shindig! is unmissable, in my book (in fact, the only one I’ve missed was just after my hip replacement)!
CL:Word! at the Y is the longest running spoken word event in the Midlands and is hosted by Lydia Towsey. This is held monthly on the first Tuesday of the month, with an evening of open-micers and a guest reader at the end. Most of those reading are performance poets and sometimes visuals will accompany the poets. Well-attended.
MT: I began reading at WORD! myself nearly 5 years ago now. It’s a similar format to Shindig with lots of Open Mic. I recently heard George Szirtes and Pascale Petit read there. I was asked to read as a support act to Ann and Peter Sansom in April, which was lovely. It’s a very supportive atmosphere and readers are warmly welcomed.
RM: WORD! at the Y theatre was the first place I ever read a poem aloud and has had a great mix of guest poets over the years.
JS: Word! is where I cut my teeth as a poet at the open mic, and where I still attend as often as possible.
MT: WORD! also has a sister group called Pinggg…k run by Bobba Cass…
JS:Pinggg…K! is a monthly open mic night in celebration of metrosexual verse, at Duffy’s Bar, Pocklington’s Walk. Held on the last Tuesday of the month. The format: poetry circle, followed by open mics and feature poet. A popular event with a warm welcome to all from host Bobba Cass.
JS: Also, Find the Right Words: Performance Poetry and Rap Night hosted by Jess Green, held Upstairs at the Western (pub) monthly. The format: ten open mic slots and two feature performers. (I’ve not attended this one yet, but was sorry to miss Holly McNish recently).
MT: There’s lots going on in Nottingham, of course too. While bookshops are closing elsewhere, Five Leaves Bookshop run by Ross Bradshaw has opened. Great bookshop, you can actually browse poetry books! Apart from bookselling it’s also served as a venue for launches. One for the new issue of New Walk was held there in October for instance and it attracts good audiences who are serious about poetry. Then there’s also ‘Jazz and Poetry’ which is new-ish too with strong audiences. Should mention Nottingham Writer’s Studio too who offer writing space and courses.
A festival culture is also developing, supported in the main by local universities. These include States of Independence (DMU), Literary Leicester (Uni of Leicester) and Nottingham Festival of Words (Nottingham Trent). So you get the picture…there are lots of opportunities and masses of spoken word and performance poetry too. Again, sorry if I’ve missed anything out, there’s quite a lot!
Q4: Is there any poetry heritage associated with the area – famous dead poets, or locations or industries that inspired poets or poetry of the past, etc?
MT: Larkin lived in Leicester for a time, and was of course born in Coventry, but he is more widely affiliated with Hull. If D. H. Lawrence was a stick of rock he’d have Nottingham going through him. Lord Byron’s family home is at Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire. When you exit Nottingham station you’re greet with a big sign which reads ‘Our Rebel Writers’ and features Byron, Lawrence and Alan Sillitoe. Joe Orton and Sue Townsend came from Leicester. Poetry aside, both cities have a real literary heritage.
dun Larkin
JS: Other famous dead poets: Loughborough-born John Cleveland (1613-1656), Leicester-born poet and leading Chartist Thomas Cooper (1805-1892), Jessie Pope (1868-1941).
CL: Leicester is renown for its hosiery & shoe industry heritage. Currently, there is a project that involves the New Writing Centre at the University of Leicester and the Market Harborough Museum called ‘Sole2Soul’ (this is the project Jayne is involved in.)
Q5: Anything else I’ve missed?
CL: Two more important annual literary events to mention are Everybody’s Reading, a two-week festival in September with city-wide events to promote literacy throughout the city, and States of Independence (the equivalent of London’s Free Verse Book Fair), run by Ross Bradshaw of Five Leaves Press in Nottingham.
DAP: I realised you didn’t mention publishing as a separate category. In the past Leicester has had a range of small poetry publishers but they have quietly disappeared. Soundswrite is the only one I can think of – but so far we’ve only published from within our own members, so that keeps us in the ‘self-limited’ category. Nottingham, by contrast, has Shoestring, Five Leaves, Candlestick (all known nationally) – and, I suspect, others.
CL: I think the literary scene that’s alive and thriving now in Leics is making up for lost time. So many poets who are often reading at the city’s open mic events are publishing collections & pamphlets with national publishers and making a name for themselves. Years from now when a literary history of the early twenty-first century is written, Leicester will be highlighted as a thriving cultural centre for poetry.
MT: I think it’s great that my little bit of the East Midlands has such a vibrant poetry scene. Long may it thrive!
Q6: And finally … any interesting factoids for us?
MT: I really like the folklore tale of Black Annis, a blue-faced witch who’s meant to haunt the Leicestershire countryside. According to legend she has a taste for children and lambs and resides in a cave in the Dane Hills. She probably finds things a bit tricksy these days as many of her old haunts are now built up.
Loughborough was the home of Ladybird books and also the destination of the world’s first package tour. It was organised by Thomas Cook in 1841. They came all the way from Leicester on a train. Shilling a head.
CL: Quite a few native Leicesters I know don’t like Leicester. It’s a dirty, ugly city and a lot of its obvious architecture are failed post-war creations. However, you have to look beyond that to find some very historical (medieval, Tudor, Stuart, etc., up to Victorian) treasures. Now that Richard III’s body has been discovered, that might spur an historical revival of the city. Other nice little treasures are Cardinal Wolsey’s gravesite and the church where Chaucer got married.
RM: Bradgate Park (where the young David Attenborough found his first fossil) contains the oldest rocks in the world. The Python, Graham Chapman was from Leicester as was Sue Townsend of course.
JS: Leicester’s very own ‘King beneath the car park’: Richard III. Also: Leicester hosts the largest Divali celebrations outside of India. It was also Britain’s first ‘Environment City’ and is home to the National Space Centre.
It’s lovely in Leics! (Photo from http://www.goleicestershire.com)
Phew! Huge thanks to my tireless reporters. Do you live in Leicestershire? Have we missed anything or anyone out? Please let me know in the comments.
Would you like to see your area featured in a Regional Focus? Let me know!
I can’t tell you how great it will be to get our dining room back in order – currently it’s awash with piles of music, half-made Christmas cards, newspaper spread about the place with things drying (paint, glue), various papers to do with work but not yet actioned or filed, plus books and magazines I haven’t yet read, and laundry. OK, so the laundry will be under control today I hope. But I’ve just scooped up a bunch of reading material that I’m hoping I’ll get to enjoy a read of over Christmas.
I’ve been sitting on the Vanguard #1Poetry Anthology for several weeks, and a glance at the list of contributors confirms that it’s going to be a strong read.
Then there’s Josephine Corcoran’s new pamphlet, ‘The Misplaced House‘. I’m familiar with a few of the poems in this and I’m very pleased for Josephine that she’s been published by tall-lighthouse, their pamphlets are invariably excellent.
Recently arrived in the post is the BlueGate Poets Anthology 2014 which will be fun to delve into. I’m a sort of associate member of BlueGate – I live rather a long way from their Swindon heartland, so don’t get to join in things much, but I’m there in spirit!
Also just in is the December edition ofPoetry – the first issue of my new subscription, and I couldn’t resist a quick look through when it arrived, reading the introduction to the section on Larry Eigner. I’m very excited about being introduced to a wider range of contemporary poets and learning more about the US scene.
You might wonder what Thoughts on Design by Paul Rand is doing here. Not poetry, but close – Rand was a highly influential graphic designer who wrote this ‘manifesto’ in 1947, updated in 1970, and it’s still considered to be a classic. I’m halfway through this super book, illustrated throughout with Rand’s own designs, many of which are very familiar (for example logos for IBM and ABC).
And that’s not all! Last week at the very jolly Brighton Christmas Extrava-Stanza, poet friend Antony offered me his copy of Frank O’Hara’s Selected Poems, having moved onto his ‘Collected’… it’s already proving to be a wonderful ‘lucky dip’ sort of book (yes I know, call me superficial!) and I’m so pleased to have this to hand. O’Hara is one of those poets whose name comes up often and I’d already had him down as a poet I wanted to read more of.
Add to the mix Allison McVety’s Lighthouses which has been sat patiently awaiting reading, Jayne Stanton’s pamphlet ‘Beyond the Tune’ and D A Prince‘s luscious-looking book Common Ground, which I have started but not had a chance to return to, that’s probably enough reading material to keep me out of mischief.
Oh, and I’m launching a new ‘regional focus’ series on this blog – starting with Leicestershire – but that might have to wait until the New Year, as I’m in the middle of a blog tour to promote ‘Blogging for Writers’…ack!
SUBMISSIONS UPDATE: following last week’s blog post – thanks for all the discussion around this, on this blog, on Facebook and by email – I can report two sets of rejections, both mags responding within days of the blog post …. interesting! Let’s hope it’s not toooooo long before I can report something more positive!
One of the interesting things about the Poetry Book Fair in September was seeing poetry pamphlets and books from different publishers side by side, and the great variety in jacket designs, colours and fonts. Flarestack was one of the tables that really caught my attention, with its beautifully simple pamphlet covers. Just look at the clean, clear typeface (you can’t really see from this image but the title is in silver):
This was one of the pamphlets that caught my attention – was it the turquoise that did it? (it’s one of my favourite colours) – who knows. But I’m glad I bought it.
At first, from reading the cover blurb, I wasn’t sure. “Haunted by her son’s experience in Afghanistan…” created a sort of unfair knee-jerk reaction in me. There has been such a rash of war poems this year, some sublime but others less appealing. I don’t know what I feared exactly but as I read Isabel’s pamphlet I became increasingly engrossed. The poems are unsentimental yet full of compassion. There’s humour as well as pathos, commentary as well as reflection.
Some of the poems are from the point of view of the mother who goes about normal life at home ‘between / Watchfield and Swindon,/ outside the new police station, Adele on the radio,’ (‘Honour Guard’) but there are reminders everywhere of the war and its consequences. Yet we’re also in Afghanistan, immersed in the soldier’s life there, the characters and situations he encounters. Sometimes the mother’s and the son’s experiences conflate in a kind of fractured reality (‘Battle Shock’) or serve to remind us of the shocking transition from boy-child to man-soldier (‘Blueprint’). The closing poem, ‘Repatriation’, I found particularly wonderful. I won’t say any more about it as it might spoil the experience of encountering it after what’s gone before.
‘Ground Signs’ is a super pamphlet with so many strong poems – definitely recommended.
I contacted Isabel via Flarestack and asked if I could reproduce ‘Worst Case Scenario’ here. I also asked her for a few words about the poem, and her reply is here in its entirety – and anyone who knows me will know how unprecedented it is for me not to do any editing!
Of all the poems in ‘Ground Signs’, written at the rate of one a week while my son was searching for Improvised Explosive Devices in Afghanistan, this one reminds me, uncomfortably, of the words of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: ‘Cowards die many times before their deaths;/the valiant never taste of death but once.’
Coming from a family of soldiers, with a son preparing to do, arguably, the most dangerous job in the British Army, I had never thought of myself as a coward. Nevertheless, at that first family pre-deployment meeting on which the poem is based – and far too many times afterwards, when postmen, charity campaigners or trick-or-treaters called – I was much more fearful than I had ever expected to be.
The first shock was how well-rehearsed the casualty notification procedure had become, with a timescale of ‘within two hours’ and how, for reasons never explained, the Captain, whom we knew and trusted, wouldn’t be personally involved. That job was left to ‘someone’, even though the Captain had, on at least one occasion, attended while bailiffs cleared a young soldier’s home of its valuables.
They say that sailors are the most superstitious people in the military but the families of soldiers at war must come close. The ‘one sorry magpie’ seemed appropriate here, given the widespread tradition of ‘saluting’ a solitary magpie, showing due respect to a creature with a drop of devil’s blood under its tongue. Where superstition leads, prayers follow, ‘like a mantis, praying,/that rocks and ratchets/along a swaying leaf’, in much the same way as I imagined my son would soon be dodging enemy fire and sweeping the ground for IEDs.
Inevitably at a meeting like this, questions about the more arbitrary aspects of military discipline surfaced, such as, ‘Why/ do they have to iron uniforms/ to go out on patrol?’ – especially for frontline infantry, like the Rifles, skirmishers who were the first to swap their red coats for camouflage – although this practice has now been abandoned, due to the cost and danger of supplying so much extra power to remote bases.
However, a soldier and his family are never far away from black humour, the kind of psychic release that has you laughing down taboos, as was the case when a friend’s husband, who lost his legs in Afghanistan, had a fairly minor road traffic accident. He dined out many times on his description of the paramedic’s face when this former soldier emerged from his car and, looking down at his legs, announced, ‘It’s worse than I thought!’
It was that kind of humour that saw me telling the Captain afterwards all the times I would not be available to hear bad news – yoga (Mondays), the weekly shop (Fridays) – so that, when I told him I looked after my granddaughter on Tuesdays, ‘he didn’t write it down’, not knowing, I suppose, whether or not I was still joking.
Worst Case Scenario
The Captain didn’t say why
he would only loiter at the gate
if bad news comes calling.
Someone will come up your garden path – it won’t be me – within two hours and they’ll stay with you.
He didn’t say how long
or why there would be two of them
when one sorry magpie could do the job
or what use they’d be to someone
who knows everywhere you’ve been,
can look at a map of anywhere
and see only the shape of you –
how you can move
like a mantis, praying,
that rocks and ratchets
along a swaying leaf.
But when he asked for questions,
I was thinking, Why do they have to iron uniforms to go out on patrol?
As if smoothness could keep you safer
than all the browns and yellows in the world,
or heat could stroke the breath
into a tunic’s body
to keep the bullets out.
So when I said, If they must come, don’t make it on a Tuesday – I have Ellie then,
he didn’t write it down.
(from ‘Ground Signs’ by Isabel Palmer, published by Flarestack Poets, £5.50)
Isabel Palmer is a former English teacher, educational adviser and European Championship silver medallist in triathlon. Her poems have appeared in ‘Stand’, ‘The North’ and ‘The Frogmore Papers’. ‘Ground Signs’ is her first published pamphlet collection.
What is it about poets called Don? There’s Don Paterson for starters. Don. Paterson. And now Don Share. Maybe it’s the the power/mafia connotations (Don Corleone). Or the suggestion of raffishness (Don Juan). Or the hidden warning: not DO but DON’t.
So here’s the thing: picture sixteen or so poets perched in a circle, hothoused in a room of the Richard Jefferies Museum on the edge of Swindon. All eyes and ears are on the Editor of Poetry, Don Share, who’s been flown in from Chicago for the Swindon Festival of Poetry. No-one quite knows what to expect, but I for one am hoping not to have to do any work at all, other than listen and take the odd note. And that’s exactly what happened.
After the initial introductions, Don had a pretty good idea of just how much ambition and urgency was present in the room, and he set to answering our (mostly unspoken) questions. In the afternoon, there was some expectation that we’d all subject Don to one of our poems, for him to offer some pointers. We’d lost two participants (including one of the only 2 men) by then, but there still wasn’t time for everyone to have a go. But no-one really minded, especially as Don offered to email his comments to anyone who’d been left out.
I admired the way Don kept the energy going throughout the day when others might have wilted. Some of the funniest moments were clearly unscripted, such as the ten minute discussion about how he’d agonised over publishing a poem, the problem being the poet’s use of the word ‘slab’. And when he said with no hint of irony that he’d always wanted to visit Swindon (“it’s in the Domesday Book!”) Or pronouncing on the poetry greats: “I’ve no idea what they were setting out to do, what was going through their minds – maybe they were just geniuses and we’re all screwed!” And later on “The Waste Land is just crazy-ass!”
Of course there was also a huge amount of fascinating stuff…although you ‘had to be there’, here are my notes which I hope give a flavour of it. Huge thanks to Don for his generous sharing (no pun intended).
On the editor’s role
There are good editors who are not poets. There are good poets who are not great editors. Don sees them as 2 distinct roles. He reads a LOT of poetry – the magazine gets 120,000 submissions a year, for starters, and all are read by Don and Consulting Editor Christina Pugh.
Editors must be ‘pitiless and undeceived’
Editors can’t be publishing only poets with an established reputation – if that were case then (for example) Poetry wouldn’t have published T S Eliot. (As it was, the publication of ‘Prufrock’ in 1915 resulted in years of hatemail.) He still gets hatemail from people about stuff that’s published. “If we go down the route of only publishing what everyone thinks poetry is/should be, then we’re lost.”
Don doesn’t necessarily like most of the poems he publishes. It’s not about liking – “the most powerful poems are infuriating”. Christina Pugh’s judgement on the majority of ‘perfectly competent’ poems is “there’s nothing at stake here.”
On comparing oneself to the great poets
It’s absolutely correct to say ‘I’m not Ted Hughes’ or ‘I’m no Emily Dickinson’ – because they were themselves, and so must any poet be. “you can’t imagine Emily Dickinson in a workshop.”
Don read ALL the back issues of Poetry and he says that 94% of the poetry published in it over the hundred years or so is not good (ie it hasn’t stood the test of time).
The key for ‘competent poets’ – ie those of us getting published, writing perfectly OK poems, making a bit of a poetry name for ourselves – is to not just aim for mere competence. Don remembered when Derek Walcott became his mentor, looked over one of his poems and said ‘This is very good, well done … you could write these kinds of poems all your life… but is it your life’s work?”
Don’s advice – list ten poems that for you are absolute favourites, poems you aspire to, and ask yourself “are these competent poems? What makes them more than that?”
What can the poor aspiring poet do??
Eliminate the ‘obvious stupidities’:
Be honest – ie true to what you know, where you’re from, what you’ve lived. (This wasn’t discussed exactly but it made me think that perhaps the ‘poetic’ elements that can creep into a poem are to do with adopting a register that’s foreign to us in everyday speech. There was some discussion afterwards about how playing up to one’s ‘roots’ was a big trend in poetry at the moment – leaving those of us with very little in the way of distinguishing features – ethnic, regional, class etc – feeling a bit disadvantaged!)
Be specific. Make the reader live it/see it/ feel it like you do. “As soon as I see the word ‘bird’ in a poem, I’m done.” What kind of bird? “If it’s not coming from something you know, it’s scenic … it’s got to come from a place of honesty. When an American reads Ted Hughes, they see what he sees, it’s as if they were where he was – it’s not about a kind of realism, it’s about being able to inject a reader with an image.”
Another problem is that students of poetry are shown (or study) the great poems, and if that’s all they read (rather than reading broadly from a poet’s body of work) – that is a problem. If you only read the exemplars then you don’t have a feel for how the poet got where they did. Even the great poets wrote some crappy poems, went through stages when they couldn’t or didn’t write great poetry. “The work that your worst poems do has to be the work that your best poems do” … “make something of what you’re bad at” – (I’m still pondering what this means exactly).
“The things you worry about least in your poem are the things that can set the poem apart, if you pay attention to them.”
“If you start off knowing what you’re trying to say then the poem becomes predictable.”
“Readers are like editors – they catch you out.”
Tips/ comments from the workshopping session
Form – how a poem’s laid out on the page – is the first thing the reader/editor notices. Have a reason for the choosing the form you’ve chosen. Things like stepped lines, right aligned, spaces, one word on a line – what’s the reasoning? If you were to read it out loud, is the form obvious to the reader, and if not, why not put it into a form that matches how you read it? The rhythm might shape the poem. Play around with form. Try different things.
The title is the next biggest thing – if it says too much then the poem isn’t a surprise.
Pay attention to consistency of tone/language / register
Some of the lines of your poem may be scaffolding – it serves a purpose while the poem is evolving, but can be taken out at the end (I liked this a lot!)
Similarly, you can often edit out the first few lines – they’re often just like the vamping that musicians do before they start the actual piece of music
Using the pronouns ‘she’ or ‘he’ – why not ‘I’? It’s a distancing thing so maybe there’s a psychological purpose for it? Don’s advice is that readers prefer not to be put at a distance, want to feel the speaker is talking directly – more powerful.
Why not give people names? Character come to life when they’re given a name – readers care more if it feels like direct speech not just a story told by someone else. Don gives the example of Ted Hughes’ Letters – it’s the fact that it’s Ted & Sylvia that we’re reading that makes it so fascinating, not “just another guy in a crappy relationship.” If a poem is about a couple, their relationship, why not tell us their names?
Details, specifics. They can make a poem more memorable, different, unique even. eg ‘Adlestrop’. Think of Betjeman with all the proper names he uses. Larkin.
If you allude to something, the observation has to be good enough to stand alone, in case the reader doesn’t get the allusion
Be careful with words like ‘gush’ and ‘spume’ as they can overpower others. (Perhaps this should be the basis of a list – ‘words that overpower’?)
Somebody or something must be changed in the course of a poem – either in the poem itself or in the reader or both. There’s a shift – what is it?
I have some back issues of Poetry from when I took advantage of a freebie offer I think, and it’s a great magazine – I’m now motivated to subscribe properly, as one of my ‘rolling subscription’ system whereby I try to get around to subscribing to different magazines for at least a year at a time. The Poetry Foundation website is a fantastic free resource in itself, and every month there’s a Poetry Magazine Podcast that’s definitely worth a listen.
Of the readers, the headline act 
Isabel Palmer is a former English teacher, educational adviser and European Championship silver medallist in triathlon. Her poems have appeared in ‘Stand’, ‘The North’ and ‘The Frogmore Papers’. ‘Ground Signs’ is her first published pamphlet collection.
