Pamphlets – Page 4 – Robin Houghton

Angst/ 04/09/2015

Poetry Book Fair excitement, plus my poetry gets a leg up

September so often seems like the shortest month – why is that? At the moment it’s also looking like the craziest this year. We have to move out of our house by 23rd, which is little more than a couple of weeks away. And no, we haven’t started packing yet, because we don’t have any boxes because we haven’t confirmed the movers because we don’t actually know where we’re moving to yet – UGH. There are a lot of ‘ifs’. But ‘if’ they all work out then it’s all going to be fine. I’m very grateful for your thoughts and good wishes. Thank you.

On the poetry front, I’ve been reading (as you know) but haven’t been doing much writing. Nevertheless I’ve been blessed with a number of rejections recently, which has freed up quite a few poems for submitting elsewhere! How’s that for positivism! (Oh no, that’s not the word is it? but you get my meaning).

Good news: those lovely peeps at New Writing South have offered me a place on their ‘NWS10’ scheme, which means I’m going to benefit from all kinds of fantastic advice and support for my writing over the next year or so. For starters, I’ll be joining John McCullough’s fortnightly ‘Advanced Poetry’ course from next month, which I’ve heard so many good things about. Then there’s a project I’m planning with a photographer friend which will be based in Eastbourne, my new home town. Having the support of NWS means I’ll be able to tap into their expertise and credibility which gives me much confidence about getting the project off the ground. I’m feeling really enthused about this – and I feel it also gives me ‘permission’ to write more, improve and try to grow as a poet.

Telltale Poets are getting excited about our first appearance at the Poetry Book Fair in London on 26th September, sharing a table with the delightful Frogmore Press and helping to represent the Lewes Massive. Never mind that I am DOUBLE BOOKED that day with my choir as I am planning to hologram myself and nobody will be any the wiser. Plus of course, both Telltale Press and Lewes Singers are Not All About Me! Anyway at the Book Fair we’ll be launching our latest pamphlet, The Fire Station by Sarah Barnsley… I can’t show you the cover yet because it’s top secret but the whole pamphlet is awesome or killin it as I’m told they say.

So if you’re coming to the Book Fair remember to drop by, say hello, pick up some delectable freebie stuff and spend a shedload of money on our pamphlets to help feed the poets. Thanks so much!

Blog/ 30/08/2015

The Reading List, week 5: McVety, Konig, James

Right now my reading material consists mainly of kitchen brochures, legal house-moving gumph and internet research on macerator toilets and whether you need planning permission to change a window on the rear of a building.

So the antidote is of course a splash of poetry. ‘Splash’ being the right word, I think, consider the amount of water present in this week’s reading list. Nothing to do with all the rain we’ve been having. Or the toilet stuff.

Lighthouses -Allison McVety (Smith Doorstop, 2014)

I heard Allison read at the Swindon Poetry Festival last year which was when I bought this book. I enjoyed re-encountering some of the poems from that reading, including ‘Lido’, in which the narrator is swimming lengths as the rain comes down and she’s caught in ‘the liquid rhythm of cup and crawl’. We meet the lighthouse/sea/water theme in various guises, via beacons of light, starlight, LED light, watery deaths and ‘To the Lighthouse’, the three stanza homage to Virginia Woolf that won the National Poetry Competition in 2011. There’s a beautiful set of poems on separation from a loved one – ‘we sway though ups /and downs, soft footing it, you towing my heel, / me towing your lead’ (‘Tightropes’) yet McVety is just as at home with a conversational voice (eg ‘Levenshulme Semi’). This is the sort of collection I would love to have written. Moving, entertaining, varied and very skilled indeed. Favourite poem: ‘Treasure’.

Advice for an Only Child – Anja Konig (Flipped Eye, 2014)

There are some quite brief poems in this pamphlet. For some poets this may be a problem in that there’s nowhere to hide. But here, for ‘brief’ read ‘intense’: not a syllable is wasted – Konig writes in a pared-down style which somehow embraces both tragedy and humour, and it comes thick and fast. We witness two friends meeting for coffee, one disclosing that ‘…it had spread – / brain, liver, bones,/ a butcher’s plate. / You looked afraid. We talked / of other things, /that we should get out more …’ (Triple Negative). In ‘Six Nineteen’, both the aftermath of a breakup and the whole crux of the relationship itself is expressed in just six lines. I was fortunate enough to meet Anja at the Duffy/Clarke masterclass I went to at Ty Newydd a couple of years ago and she made a big impression on me. Great to see her producing such an excellent pamphlet. Favourite poem: ‘Dump’.

Be[yond] – Sarah James (Knives Forks & Spoons, 2013)

Crazily inventive! Of the book’s three sections my favourite is probably the first, ‘Against Air and Water’, eleven mostly prose poems through which I felt I was tumbling with very few handholds. A relationship is under scrutiny as is the narrator’s sense of self. ‘Some days are all elbows and thumbs. Then air makes me nervous. But also water. All the things that refuse to mix – or rest in stillness.’ (‘Hydrophobic’) The middle section of the book sees the most wordplay and typographical experimentation: part-words picked out from other words in bold or enlarged type, shaped poems, intricate spatial games – I got the impression James was having a bit of fun at the expense of more ‘serious’ wordplay forms such as acrostics or Fibonacci. And yet amidst all the fireworks there are many gentle moments where the language sings quietly, ‘As blue bruises, / he shoulders the horizon, / wears her skin in his branches.’ (‘Childbirth’). Favourite poem: ‘Visiting the Zoo’.

Wild words: a typical double page spread from Sarah James's [Be]yond — Wild words: a typical double page spread from Sarah James’s [Be]yond

Blog/ 19/08/2015

The Reading List, week 4: Heaney, O’Brien, Williams

As promised, The Reading List continues …

District & Circle, Seamus Heaney (Faber, 2006)

Everything you’d expect from a Heaney collection: poignant but unsentimental recollections of the past, images you can’t get out of your head days later, a familiar strangeness, the ghosts of various characters from Edward Thomas and Dorothy Wordsworth to Harry Boyle the barber in his ‘one room, one chimney house’ (‘A Clip’). Wondrous use of language, so many poems I want to read again and again. Favourite: ‘Höfn’:

Höfn

The three-tongued glacier has begun to melt.
What will we do, they ask, when boulder-milt
Comes wallowing across the delta flats

And the miles-deep shag-ice makes its move?
I saw it, ridged and rock-set, from above,
Undead grey-gristed earth-pelt, aeon scruff,

And feared its coldness that still seemed enough
To iceblock the plane window dimmed with breath,
deepfreeze the seep of adamantine tilth

And every warm, mouthwatering word of mouth.

Downriver, Sean O’Brien (Picador, 2001)

Interesting choice of opening poem in this collection, in which a poet at a reading is requested to ‘..bore the arse off your nearest and dearest instead / Supposing they haven’t divorced you already / Or selfishly put themselves under a train’ (‘Welcome, Major Poet!’) I’m not sure what I was expecting after that, but it wasn’t a series of gritty landscapes, laments, commentary and songs. We’re tossed between classical myth, popular culture and what feel like a series of in-jokes. There’s a rollicking sequence called ‘The Sports Pages’ in which the Olympics, armchair footie experts and the commercialisation of sport is all rounded on – and packaged up in a comedic rhyme scheme that reminds us it is, after all, a game. Then there are train journeys, river journeys, mythical journeys. I wouldn’t say that O’Brien does wistfulness, but in Downriver the sense of place and belonging, and beauty in even the most unlikely places, is tangible – ‘All our excursions run / Not to our love but where we lived and died.’ (‘Ravilious’). Favourite poem: ‘Postcards to the Rain God.’

Flying into the Bear, Chrissy Williams (Happenstance, 2013)

I seem to remember from Media Studies that ‘postmodern’ had the qualities of pastiche, parody and cultural scepticism – which is possibly where this pamphlet sits – many of the poems in ‘Flying into the Bear’ are puzzling and I wondered occasionally if I was trying to read more into them than the poet intended. That said, there’s a thrilling energy and ‘so much to like’ (if that’s not too abused a phrase) in the experimental feel. Ezra Pound appears as a puppet ‘bearded, elderly lunatic’ in a poem that’s written as stage directions (‘The Puppet’). Tommy Cooper’s death on live TV features in ‘Bears of the Light Brigade’. There are many notes at the back, which I probably should have read but didn’t. The special textual effects were fun but I wasn’t convinced I needed them. The poems that worked best for me were probably the less surreal numbers, written with a sort of deadpan lyricism, a moving simplicity. – ‘This is London. It is on fire. / I go to bed while it is burning. I wake up / and parts of it are still burning.’ (‘The Burning of the Houses’). Favourite poem: ‘The Invisible Bear’.

This post is the latest update to my ‘Reading List’ project begun in July 2015.

Blog/ 18/07/2015

Some news about submissions, latest Telltale pamphlet

I see it’s been ages since I gave an update on submissions and what not. And it’s also been a while since I talked much on this blog about what I’m up to outside of my ‘read a poetry book a day’ challenge. So here goes.

Submissions

I recently had a poem accepted for a magazine after 34 weeks. I’d kind of given up on that submission, so I’ve meanwhile sent the same poem out to another magazine, one that doesn’t say ‘no simultaneous submissions’. But then nor do they give any email contact details on their site, so in the unlikely event of them wanting that particular poem I will have to admit it’s gone. I’d rather let them know now but not sure how to – save writing a letter, and I think letters are likely to be read ‘in order’ rather like submissions.

Currently out:

1 poem for 77 days
3 poems for 53 days
4 poems for 46 days
5 poems for 31 days
plus 3 poems out to competitions.

I’ve not sent anything out to magazines in over a month, but then again I haven’t written anything new in that time either. But I do feel the reading project is benefiting me big time. I’m getting so many ideas about how I need to improve my own work. This is good. Because although I’m not writing I’m preparing to write better stuff. Or so it feels. We’ll see.

Selecting, editing & publishing

Having said what I’ve not been doing, I’ve still been working on some very interesting things. One of which was being a guest selector for South magazine, together with Jeremy Page of the Frogmore Papers. Jeremy is an experienced editor, poet and industry veteran – it takes a lot to impress or surprise him. So it was great fun (and a real learning experience) for me. South Magazine has an anonymous submissions process, which means both selectors read all the poems (separately) and make their selections. Then they get together to compare, negotiate, re-read and finally reach an agreement as to which poems should make the cut. At no time did we know the names of the poets. Although our initial selections weren’t identical, we actually didn’t disagree much at all when it came to discussing individual poems. Fascinating stuff. The launch of South 52 will be in Lewes (yay!) in October.

And another wonderful experience for me has been working with Sarah Barnsley on her debut pamphlet, The Fire Station, for Telltale Press. Sarah is a joy to work with and such a talent. We hope to send the pamphlet to print very soon and the publication date is set for September. More on this in due course.

Blog/ 12/07/2015

The Reading List, week 2

The weather has been so good lately it’s tempting to go out for a walk (or a pub lunch!) rather than read. But I’m enjoying the discipline – I find last thing at night and first thing in the morning are good times to read. This week I read through five more collections.

Hangman’s Acre – Janet Sutherland (Shearsman 2009)

I love the way this collection is shaped, framed by poems of love, separation and reunion. In between there are tender explorations of ageing, loss and grief. But there’s much more than that: Janet’s poetry of the South Downs, spirituality as seen through nature, the death of animals and a powerful rage against female genital mutilation. And more – such as the short ‘Bone Monkey’ sequence, a precursor to the more recent collection of that name. Janet’s poems are spare and precise, a joy to read over. Favourite poem: ‘A Walk with Five Dewponds’.

Crow – Ted Hughes (Faber 1972)

At school, we read half a dozen Ted Hughes poems and I memorised ‘Hawk Roosting’ for my A level English. Reading Hughes got me interested in writing poetry and I’ve always regarded him with awe. And yet reading Crow made it so obvious that I’ve only scratched a very small bit of the surface when it comes to his work. This was actually a two-day job, even without re-reading as I went along (one of my ‘reading list’ rules). What to say about Crow? A masterclass in extended metaphor. I would say ‘a roller coaster ride’ if that weren’t such a stupid cliche – gruesome, comedic, horrifying, tender and raging, you could say it was all those things. Above all it challenged me, pushed me into things I didn’t like, made me want to put the book down, but just as strong was the urge to read on. I had a few nightmares. But it was worth it. Favourite poem: ‘Lovesong’.

Earthworks – Jacqueline Gabbitas (Stonewood Press, 2012)

More lovely poetry of nature, from close (and slightly spooky) encounters with creatures both dead and alive in forests, on hills and in the garden (‘Bird Buried’) to pagan celebrations, and everywhere the feel and smell of clay, soil, peat, coal and all that lies buried in the earth. There’s a touching memorial which appears to be to the poet’s mother (‘In principio’) and a couple of poems in some kind of dialect – which I struggled a bit with as I couldn’t ‘hear’ the voice, but no doubt would come to life in a reading. Many rich seams of meaning and experience to be uncovered in this short (and neatly packaged) collection. Favourite poem: ‘Bird Buried’.

Hugo Williams – Dear Room (Faber, 2006)

I think Hermione Lee in the cover blurb nicely sums up what I think of Hugo Williams – “.. a poet of such intimate charm, such grace and cunning, and such ordinary comical sadness”. I’ve dipped into this collection many times and it was easy to read it all through in one go. I know Williams’ work is regarded in some quarters as less than heavyweight. But personally I love the ‘accessible’ poems with their deadpan delivery and crushing irony, the small poems telling of big joy (eg ‘Pieces of Sky’) and even bigger melancholy (eg ‘The Cry’). So much to love in this collection – OK it’s not Crow, but who says you can’t enjoy both chocolate and curly kale? Favourite poem: ‘All the Way Down.’

Kim Lasky – Petrol, Cyan, Electric (Smith/Doorstop 2013)

This pamphlet is a real gem which was shortlisted for the Michael Marks award in 2013 and I don’t know why it hasn’t had the sort of widespread publicity and acclaim that it deserves. The poems link seemingly diverse topics as the science of colour (‘Newton Sees the Seventh Colour’), early experiments in electricity, a mother’s gradual loss of speech and slow descent – ‘We are past the fact of muscle, flesh and nails.’ (‘As if the very air’) and the poet’s imagined meeting with her father in 1944. It really does get better with every reading because there is always something more to discover and enjoy. Favourite poem: ‘There are not enough words in the language.’

This post is the latest update to my ‘Reading List’ project begun in July 2015.

Blog/ 05/07/2015

The Reading List, week 1

In the first week of my ‘read a poetry book a day’ quest I actually managed five books rather than seven, but I think that’s a pretty good start. As promised here’s a very brief roundup of my impressions, and a few notes on how the process is going generally.

The books

How to Pour Madness into a Teacup – Abegail Morley (Cinnamon, 2009)

A tense, claustrophobic world with two just principal protagonists (‘she’ and ‘he) and a series of nightmarish scenarios where little is said or sayable – ‘He reads her by her scars. / Does he remember writing them?’ (‘One Last Time’). The many references to limbs, hands, skin, nails and lips – dragging, wiping, scraping swallowing and sewing – of words, or body parts, or tears – is intensely physical and I felt completely pulled in. The poems are uncomfortable, but compelling – like staring at something you’d really rather turn away from. Read as a sequence at one sitting. Favourite poem: ‘Her Turn’.

Otherwhere – Catherine Smith (Smith/Doorstop, 2012)

Like Abegail, Catherine is both a friend and a poet for whom I have enormous respect. It was she who inspired me start the ‘Reading List’ project, as I explained in my last blog post. So who better to pick up and read in my first week. Reading Otherwhere in one go is rather than gorging on one of those huge chocolate Easter Eggs (in the days when they were filled with yet more chocolate.) One more piece? Oh go on then. In an effort to categorise the themes and styles I started trying to group individual poems under headings…Surreal, Satire, Poignant, Erotic charge, Childhood memory, Ironic observation and Powerful but hard to classify, which I admit is a bit of a cop out. A rich and rollicking great read. Favourite poem: ‘Story’.

A Recipe for Water – Gillian Clarke (Carcanet, 2009)

By the time I picked up A Recipe for Water I was starting to realise how much I have actually read of the poetry books I possess. I feel as if I haven’t had time to read them properly, but even having dipped in and out, I’m still finding many poems familiar. This collection is full of the beautiful nature poetry I associate with Gillian Clarke, her affinity with the Welsh language and her Welsh heritage – ”The sea turns its pages, speaking in tongues. / The stories are yours, and you are the story.’ – ‘First Words’. Favourite poem: ‘Kites’.

Brumaire and Later – Alasdair Paterson (Flarestack, 2010)

Ooh! I struggled a little here. A pamphlet, so short in length, but very dense. It’s in two halves and built around the premise of the French revolutionary calendar, ‘ in which not only every month but every day was re-named after familiar flora, fauna and work tools’. In the second half, the poems take on the same theme but extend it into post-revolutionary Russia. Not having any great handle on these undoubtedly historic events, I couldn’t quite crack the code. (I blame my French Revolution phobia on being force-fed A Tale of Two Cities when I was eleven.) But I liked the conceit of it, and it makes for some wonderful titles, from ‘Apple’ and ‘Goose’ to ‘Ear’ and ‘Holes’. Probably very entertaining to hear at a reading, with some background preamble.

Overwintering -Pippa Little (Carcanet, 2012)

I came across a poem by Pippa Little relatively recently and wanted to read more of her work. Pippa has a wide range of styles and registers, and many of the poems here are rooted in the Northumbrian landscape, its history and its characters. You could glance at the copious notes at the back and worry about what you’re getting into, but no need. The poems are perfectly enjoyable even if you don’t know what the odd word means or refers to (always a sign of good writing, in my book). It was easy to read through this collection in one go, and plenty that was memorable, such as ‘Beijing Flight, Thursday Morning’, ‘After Flooding’ and ‘Spending One Day with Patrick Kavanagh’. Favourite poem: ‘Axis’.

On the process:

To begin with it felt wrong to be reading poetry books as I would a novel – no re-reading or going back (or very little), just ploughing on. But there were unexpected benefits. First of all, when I got the end of a book, especially if I had read it through in one sitting, I found I had very good sense of the work, a big picture if you like, more wood than trees.

Secondly, there are sometimes extended or concurrent themes that may not be obvious when cherry picking or dipping in and out. A repeated word here and there, references between poems (intertextuality, I think that’s called?) and other nuances seem to ping out when you consume a whole book at once. You see many subtle and clever things that you might not otherwise.

It wasn’t easy at first, especially fighting my instinct to re-read when something wasn’t clear. I didn’t re-read until I’d got the end of the collection, and it paid off. On returning to individual poems they seemed so much clearer and familiar the second time around, more so than if I had spent half an hour doing a close reading of a single poem.

Angst/ 02/06/2015

An update on submissions, readings etc and a nail-biting aside

My fingernails are looking reasonable at the moment, which is pretty good considering that the house-moving stressometer is probably at its highest right now.

A short aside about nailbiting – a bit off-topic and do not read if you are squeamish

I can usually tell if I’ve got too much on my mind by the state of my fingers. Too much biting is part of a perpetual cycle of worry – unconscious biting (for comfort) – feelings of self-loathing (because it’s so horrible a habit) – self-congratulations (when the fingers grow back) – worrying if there’s something I should be worrying about, etc. Of course, sometimes the different stages last for ages, so I can go for a while without a crisis. It’s a lifetime sentence with which finger/nailbiters will probably identify, but leaves non-biters mystified and often somewhat repulsed. I can trace it back to childhood when it was never (and probably still isn’t) regarded as self-harming. I wonder if that’s because it’s politely called ‘nailbiting’ although for many of us it’s much worse than that. I can safely say I don’t do it for attention. I’ve had hypnotherapy on more than one occasion and that is the only thing that stops it – albeit for a certain period of time. But a single session has lasted me nearly two years in the past. Chronic nail or finger biters – I recommend it HIGHLY.

OK, back to the business of poetry … I seem to be having a good few days as regards writing. The recent results of the Cinnamon pamphlet competition – (reader, I flunked it) – have prompted me to look again at my submission and identify the weak links. And – joyous! – I see several. So. Looking again at some poems unattended for 6 months or more has sent me into a frenzy of revising and re-writing. I have sent out more of the individual poems. I am hoping an experienced poet will help me sharpen up the pamphlet, ready for the next submission. I’m feeling positive that many of the poems therein have merit, and I’m starting to understand what edits are needed. Good times!

Submissions latest – since my last blog post on the subject I’ve heard from one of the long unheard-from mags, to say that my poems had been sent to a mystery file …? But were now winging their way to the selector for some unspecified future sifting of submissions. How magazines work is entirely a mystery to me but soon the boot will be on the Other Foot! My time as a selector for South magazine is nigh. Together with (and guided by the superior experience of) Jeremy Page of The Frogmore Papers, I will soon be reading and selecting submissions. Stay tuned for how this pans out.

Readings – last week I was very pleased to be at Redroaster in Brighton to hear readings from D A Prince, Deborah Tyler-Bennet and Andie Davidson. Andie is a Brighton Poetry Stanza cohort and one of my ‘loose committee’ of organisers, as well as a super poet and excellent in a workshop. Sadly I was soooo tired I was too dead on my feet to really get into the atmosphere or do any chatting, in fact it was lucky I wasn’t driving home as I think I fell asleep before we reached the car.

Forthcoming – on Saturday I’m looking forward to a writing day at Riverhill Himalayan Gardens with poet friend Lucy and numerous others. The day is organised as part of Abegail Morley‘s poetry residency there, and if the sun shines it will be glorious. (Abegail recently posted a Q & A with me on her blog, on the subject of Telltale Press – do have a read if you’re interested.) Then on Monday I’m going to the Troubadour for Smith’s Knoll night and an injection of poetradrenaline (see what I did there?)

A few dates when I’m reading: Lewes and Brighton folks, I’d love to see you at St Anne’s in Lewes on Sunday 14th June 3pm, when I’ll be taking part in a reading on the (loosely interpreted, I hope) subject of ‘Creation’, alongside Ann Segrave, Jeremy Page and Mandy Pannett. Free, with a collection afterwards.

On Thursday 18th June at 7pm I’ll be at the Poetry Cafe in London for the next Telltale Poets & Friends (also FREE), reading with another lovely group of poets, namely Tamar Yoseloff, Sue Rose, Peter Kenny and our newest Telltale poet, Sarah Barnsley. I’m currently working with Sarah on producing her pamphlet and I can tell you it’s going to be big. Stand back for an early autumn launch.

Then on Monday 22nd June at 7.30pm as part of the Camberwell Arts Festival I’m reading at The Crooked Well together with Richard Skinner, Josephine Corcoran and Roy Marshall. Possibly free, or nearly. No wonder poets are all skint!

After that I’ll be taking a summer break from readings and the like. There’s a new home to think about, after all.

Blog/ 21/05/2015

And so to bed (and Bath)

Actually I wish I was still in my bed right now as I’m feeling a tad slug-like after another late night ‘up in town’ as my mum used to say. (It was always ‘up’ to London – even at the station announcers would always say “attention please on the up platform…” – I wonder if one goes ‘up’ to London from points north? Hmmm.)

But the ‘bed’ reference is more to do with what’s on my bedside table in the process of being read. The latest additions are a copy of Brittle Star issue 36 and a sleek little pamphlet called ‘Earthworks’ by Jacqueline Gabbitas. I was fortunate to meet Jacqueline and her Brittle Star co-editor Martin Parker last night at the launch event, at the Barbican Library. She was a warm and effervescent host, a hugs-rather-than-handshakes person who made everyone feel like long-lost friends. It was a lovely relaxed atmosphere. Oddly enough I was asked to read first, which is becoming a habit – I think I’ve been on first in the last four readings I’ve done. I also noticed I made a teensy error in the poem that appears in the magazine (‘practice’ instead of ‘practise’) but thankfully I wasn’t had up by the grammar police. My apologies nonetheless.

I was dead impressed with the whole operation – the magazine and other publications from Stonewood Press, their imprint, are beautifully produced, the event was well organised and well attended and they even provided free wine, Pimm’s & strawberries. Nice! Not only that, but it was a impressive range of readers (poetry and short stories). I particularly enjoyed a two-hander from Joolz Sparkes and Hilaire, who read a selection of poems from their project ‘London Undercurrents’ featuring tales of feisty London women from different periods of the city’s history. Also very nice to hear (and speak to) writers Jonny Wiles, Ruth Brandt and Stewart Foster.

Also on my current reading list is the May issue of Poetry (the cover alone has been giving me strange dreams). I suppose one of the pleasures of editing a monthly poetry journal (as opposed to the more usual half-yearly) is the ability to include longer pieces if you so wish, or to focus on a single theme or style. April’s edition was dedicated to ‘breakbeat poetry’, or a celebration of ‘new American poetry in the age of hip-hop’ as Don Share says in his introduction. This month the magazine opens with a 35-page long poem by Frank Bidart. Equally daunting is a 22-page essay by Donald Revell entitled ‘Scholium.’ I’m never sure of the best way to tackle longer pieces – I find the amount of concentration needed makes them impossible to digest in one sitting. So it’s usual case of start, skim, and go back. Or not, depending on how gripped I am.

And finally, Sonofabook – a new twice-yearly journal from CBEditions, a mix of poetry, short stories and non-fiction pieces which looks very promising. There’s an offer on at the moment as an incentive to subscribe. Sonofabook features a guest editor for each issue, and is the brain child of publisher Charles Boyle, who incidentally writes a very honest blog by the same name – check out this excoriating piece about Faber, for example!

Siegfried Baber pamphlet launch, photo by www.dotandlucyphotography.co.uk — Photo of Siegfried Baber by http://www.dotandlucyphotography.co.uk

Just a quick mention about last week’s event in Bath, which was such a pleasure for me – to unfurl the Telltale rollerbanner in Toppings bookshop and to introduce our latest Telltale poet Siegfried Baber and his pamphlet When Love Came To The Cartoon Kid. When I began the whole Telltale thing I didn’t realise how much enjoyment and satisfaction I would get from helping other poets on their way. The more you give to these things the more they seem to pay back. That’s not to say I’m not still ambitious for myself – but the two things (helping yourself and helping others) aren’t incompatible. Personally I think I they balance each other up.

It reminds me of a singing teacher who once told me that the way not to ‘run out of breath’ is to support it and keep fuelling it, rather than giving up too soon. If you believe all you have is a small amount of breath, that’s all you’ll ever have. But if you trust your lungs to do what they’re good at you’ll find there’s a lot more inside you than you think.

Blog/ 13/05/2015

News of readings, launches

Pamphlet launch

This evening Telltale Press goes global! Well, it makes its debut in the southwest of England, anyway… Siegfried Baber launches his debut pamphlet, When Love Came To the Cartoon Kid, at Toppings Bookstore in Bath, 8pm this evening. Come on down! Siegfried set the room alight when he read for us recently in Lewes. Talented & entertaining. If you can’t make it, be sure to snap up his pamphlet here…

Readings past …

I didn’t do a write up of the Mayfield Festival Fringe poetry evening, mainly because I was stuck in the hellhole of jury service, but it was a fab night. An absolutely packed room, I had to negotiate with the lovely host Sian Thomas for space to move (“no! don’t put any more chairs there!”). It was in the round and the audience was warm and attentive. My fellow readers were Patricia McCarthy (a dauntingly well-read poet, editor of the fine magazine Agenda and winner of the National Poetry Competition in 2013) and Jill Munro, doing her first fully-fledged reading and making a brilliant job of it. Very funny and definitely upcoming, with her first pamphlet out soon from Green Bottle Press.

Meanwhile here I am mid-flow with my ‘cartwheel’ poem…nothing to do with jazz hands, trust me.

Readings future…

Next Wednesday 20th May at the Barbican Library in London I’m on the bill for the launch event for Brittle Star issue 36. I love magazine launches as it gives you the chance to meet the other poets/writers in the same issue, and the editors of course, and you get a real feel for the culture/ethos of the publication, if that doesn’t sound too grand.

Doors open 6.30pm and it’s free, should be over by nine – do come!

On Sunday 14th June at 4pm I’m on home ground here in Lewes, reading at a wee fundraiser for St Anne’s Church, by invitation of lovely Lewes poet Ann Segrave, and with Mandy Pannett & Jeremy Page also reading. The theme is ‘creation’ (in a strictly ecumenical/not necessarily religious sense)… so I’d bettter get creating. Free, very relaxed and probably very Lewes!

On Thursday 18th June Telltale Poets & Friends is back at the Poetry Cafe in London, featuring a star-studded cast: Tamar Yoseloff, Sue Rose, our newest Telltale Sarah Barnsley, plus Peter Kenny & myself. It’s free, and it would be lovely to see you – please put it in your diary!

And the midsummer reading extravaganza continues with Camberwell Arts Festival, where I’ll be reading on Monday 22nd June alongside Richard Skinner, Roy Marshall and Josephine Corcoran. Lordy! What a poet-blogger fest that will be. Can’t wait!

Blog/ 12/05/2015

Coffee House Poetry at the Troubadour

Had a great evening yesterday at the Troubadour as Coffee House Poetry, Anne-Marie Fyfe’s fortnightly poetry readings, got underway for its summer season.

It’s a crazy scene – the vibrancy, the quirkiness, the sheer number of people, Cahal Dallat’s virtuosic keyboard skills (yesterday the background medleys included opera classics and a rumbunctious dose of Mozart, all from memory). Moving amongst the crowd, Anne-Marie greets everyone and the whole place feels like a party. And who’s that sitting at the back? Oh, it’s Van Morrison and Jimmy Page, dropped by for a spot of poetry action. You can’t help but feel you’re on a film set. Love it!

Last night’s first half readers were Mark Huband, Scarlett Sabet, Will Burns & Miranda Peake, after which we had a brief musical interlude when Henry Fajemirokun played and sang a very nice Simon & Garfunkel number. Mark Huband’s background in journalism and travel writing informs his poetry – he read from his book ‘American Road’ and some extracts from a new long work. I loved the start of Scarlett Sabet’s set, a strong first poem full of promise. Towards the end she read some more performance-style poems which I find a bit harder to digest – I suppose I mean the repetition and relentless hard rhymes, which I find distract from the meaning and weaken the power of the words. Miranda Peake admitted she was very nervous, which was a shame, because it dried out her voice – I suspect I would enjoy her poems on the page, they seemed accomplished.

I didn’t take notes, although I noticed a few people around me doing so. I wonder what they write? Maybe the names, for future reference, or perhaps an idea or two that needed capturing. I do sometimes find my mind wandering in a reading, but not in a bad way – it’s usually something I hear that takes seed or gives me a sudden angle on an old issue. As I’m writing now I’m remembering a couple of things I should have written down at the time. Oh well! And the other thing I’m famously pants at is taking photos of well-lit readers in dark spaces. Which is why I only managed one, but the reader is so blanched out it could be anyone – although it is in fact Will Burns:

The second half felt like the big-hitters, with Nigerian poet Inua Ellams (check out his beautiful and stylish website) full of warmth and humour getting things off to a cracking start, Tim Richardson – a big character with an even bigger following in the room, Roisin Tierney – authoritative presence & many Spanish food references and R.A. Villanueva, a vibrant American reader who I wish I could have paid more attention to, but I was a bit tired and thinking about my train at this point.

My favourite reading of the night was by Will Burns and I couldn’t wait to snap up a copy of his pamphlet. Something about his poetry made me sit up. There was nothing exotic about it, but it was extraordinary. The problem with writing about the extraordinary, whether it’s people, experiences, places, is that the writing has a lot to live up to. (See point 7 of Don Paterson’ tips). Plus there’s not always space for the reader. Whereas writing about the ordinary, in an extraordinary way, feels to me like the real work of poetry. It doesn’t just let me in, it reminds me there’s a reason to write and how much there is still to discover both in myself and in others.

On the home page of the website, a quote from Billy Collins declares that the Troubadour has “evolved over its 60 year history from a hidden-away beatnik coffee house to a world famous center for the performance of music and poetry.” Well, it still feels pretty beatnik to me, and nothing wrong with that.

Category: Pamphlets