Readings – Page 2 – Robin Houghton

Angst/ 21/02/2024

And there goes February flying past…

This is not my favourite time of year I confess, although I love all the early signs of Spring – the first sunny days, the first buds, daffodils and birdsong. Just look how grand the beach looked the other day! We even had breakfast outside on Friday! But this month in particular I’ve been plagued by asthma. Struggling to swim, or jog, or even walk uphill is a bit depressing. I’m managing to do a little yoga, and I’m still singing, although my chest sometimes hurts afterwards. Roll on warmer and dryer weather.

But what about the writing, you might ask. I’m kind of in a no-man’s land at the moment. I’m not writing poetry with any great intent. But I feel as if I might be moving towards writing something. Hard to describe the feeling really but it’s there.

As regards the prose, I’ve had two rejections so far of my manuscript, with four more probably to come. I will send it out to another six agents, but unless I get a bite I’m not spending any more time on it now. I feel as if that ship has sailed. On a positive note, I’ve already started on the characters and an outline plot for another book. I’ve got a list of the mistakes I think I made in the first one, and the things I could do better this time, starting with characterisation. I’m also setting this one in the present day. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Meanwhile I’ve started putting out feelers for readings early next year when my poetry collection will be coming out with Pindrop Press. So if you have any suggestions of places I might read, please let me know. I will travel (within reason!)

And of course Planet Poetry is my regular connection to the poetry world. I’m continual kept on my toes by our excellent guests, and by my co-host Peter. Interviews I have planned in the next few weeks include Roy McFarlane and Seni Seneviratne, both of whose work I’ve really enjoyed getting up close with.

Coming up: This Friday 23rd I’ll be in Seaford to hear my poetry pal Antony Mair reading his work at the Seahaven Poets Open Mic, then on Sunday 25th at 4pm my group The Lewes Singers are giving a concert at St Saviour’s Church Eastbourne. The church is huge, so I hope we have at least fifty people in the audience or else we shall be rattling around! The interior of St Saviour’s is gorgeous – Victorian ‘arts and crafts’ red brick, beautiful mosaics all around the walls and an amazing painted ceiling.

Art/ 09/01/2024

All shall be well

detail of Nativity facade bronze door, Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

I know, I know – not that Julian of Norwich quote again, I hear you say. But it’s the start of the year, I’m looking out at blue sky, and this is the first day since November 8th that I’ve felt properly well, and that the three colds I’ve had back-to-back since then are finally wearing off. Life is good and all shall be well.

Julian of Norwich was really just a name to me until poet friend Antony lent me his copy of I, Julian by Clare Gilbert, (Hachette) which is a fictionalised autobiography of the medieval anchoress who wrote ‘Revelations of Divine Love’. I was interested in finding out more about Julian’s life, and actually I found it un-put-downable.

At the other end of the spectrum I’ve been converted to the Ruth Galloway novels by Elly Griffiths which I’ve been hoovering up on my kindle. They’re great fun, perfect for long waiting times in airports and hospitals, and a good example of (ahem) how to write not a single novel but a series.

On the poetry front, Janet Sutherland’s The Messenger House (Shearsman) has risen to the top of the TBR pile and I’ve made tentative progress through it. The book is a hybrid of prose, poetry, memoir, travelogue. So far I’ve found it intriguing and exciting. Janet likes to push the boundaries and her work is never predictable.

Last week we had a few days away in Barcelona: art, architecture, tapas, wine. We also managed a boat trip, trips on two funny trains and a cable car. We like to go on a boat wherever we go on holiday, and a funny train is a bonus! The image that accompanies this post is a detail of one of the huge doors to Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. Cast in bronze, the doors are on the Nativity front and depict nature in all its detail. Really lovely work by Japanese sculptor and follower of Gaudi, Etsuro Sotoo.

And now I must decide what I’m reading at Needlewriters on Thursday. Already a few non-poet friends have told me they’re coming (gulp). There’ll also be poet friends there who’ve heard me read before. I want to read some new stuff, but maybe I should include material that isn’t new but that has gone down well in readings before. Also, nothing too grim or opaque. Help! It’s a been a while since I’ve done a 15 minute set, so I need to get practising.

But hey – at least I’m not reading at the T S Eliots on Sunday. Then I might be a tad nervous. Katy Evans-Bush is running two online sessions (Saturday and Sunday) discussing the ten shortlisted collections – more info here. I’ve been to Katy’s sessions when they were in-person at the old Poetry School premises in Lambeth and they were both enjoyable and very helpful. Katy really knows her stuff and does her research, but these workshops are very much collaborative discussions, not lectures. But they are online. I think sadly since the Poetry School moved north of the river, renting a space there for such a workshop is now prohibitive. A great shame.

Blog/ 15/05/202315/05/2023

Launches, project updates and two disputed works

The poor weather has meant I’ve not been spending time in the garden as I normally would at this time of year. Still too cold to plant out courgettes and tomatoes! So instead I’ve been keeping myself out of mischief with ‘deskwork’…

A poet friend whose website I created a few years ago has asked for a revamp, so I’m enjoying working on that. I’ve also got two Planet Poetry interview recordings coming up soon, so I’ve been reading and preparing for those.

Meanwhile despite days off and other distractions, I have kept to my ‘average 1,000 words a day’ on my novel and am past the 60k mark already, so the end-of-May (self-imposed) deadline for finishing the first draft is well in sight. Alongside this I’m researching agents and planning my strategy! I have no idea of a title for this book yet, but I’m looking forward to giving it some thought.

There seem to be plenty of launches and other events coming up. I just read today about Josephine Corcoran’s new pamphlet from Live Canon, to be launched on May 21st. Tomorrow Jill Abram’s launch for her debut pamphlet from Broken Sleep is happening in London – I had booked to go along, but then was offered the chance to talk about Planet Poetry to 3rd year students at Brighton University at their end of year publishing course. Peter and I couldn’t resist the idea of being on a panel and talking about the podcast! Thanks to Lou Tondeur for the invitation. On June 2nd I’m delighted to be reading at Frogmore at 40, Frogmore Press’s 40th Anniversary event in Brighton. I’m a tad daunted to be honest, looking at the names of the other readers. So I just hope I’m not reading first. Please come if you’re anywhere near Brighton, it should be a grand night!

The Charleston Festival is coming up (no, I haven’t been invited to read there!) and as usual I’ll be going to a few talks with my good non-poet-but-writer friend Caroline. On May 26th the amazingly talented and lurrvly Inua Ellams is reading. I loved interviewing him on the Planet Poetry podcast and can’t wait to see how he goes down with the Bloomsbury set.

A couple of weeks ago we were in Stratford upon Avon to see a performance of Cymbelline. I’d never seen it before and nobody I’d spoken to about it had seen it either. Turns out it is a disputed play (ie some say it’s not actually by Shakespeare) – it is certainly a bit of a mashup of other Shakespeare plays both in plot and plot devices. Postmodern, eh? A bit like that song that just won the Eurovision Song Contest sounding suspiciously like ‘Winner takes it all’ by ABBA – is it a conspiracy to get the contest back in Sweden next year for the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s win? Anyway, whoever wrote it (Cymbelline that is) we enjoyed it! (But personally I preferred the Austrian entry about Edgar Allen Poe…)

Blog/ 08/04/2023

National Poetry Competition and a Finished Creatures launch

Lee Stockdale wins the National POetry Competition 2022

Just grabbing a few minutes on Easter Saturday to write this. There’s only so much gardening you can do before needing a break. So, now I’ve tackled the wayward honeysuckle…

Last week, Peter Kenny and I treated ourselves to an informal ‘works do’ by going along to the prize giving for the National Poetry Competition on the South Bank in London. We were armed with a handful of home-made business cards for Planet Poetry, just in case, I and even gave a couple out, but we didn’t do any ‘roving mic’ interviews or anything, as I’m not sure we’re organised enough for that. But we enjoyed hearing the winning poems and (naturally) dissecting everything on the train home.

We talked about it on the podcast, so I won’t repeat myself here. The winner was Lee Stockdale, an American poet who we heard had entered the competition many times before before nailing the jackpot. Of course, hearing each poem read, just once, wasn’t nearly enough time to appreciate any of them properly. Certainly, there were poems (including the winner) which left me a bit nonplussed by on the night, but I warmed to them subsequently after reading them in the Winners’ Anthology.

Poetry competitions are a bit nuts, aren’t they? But lovely if you win, of course, and even a ‘commended’ or a ‘longlisting’ in the National can be a boost. But to keep entering all the competitions and never win anything I guess you need to have a thick skin and healthy self-belief. I think you have to remind yourself there is always, always an element of luck, and even if your poem does well in a competition it’s no guarantee everyone will like it. I speak as someone who once had a poem longlisted in the National, which I then confidently submitted over and over again to magazines and not a single editor would touch it. Some you win, some you lose!

On to this week and I was back at the Betsey Trotwood again, this time for the launch of Finished Creatures 7. I was very grateful to Jan Heritage for taking a wee poem of mine for this, the ‘shelter’ issue. As always, Jan managed the time splendidly while keeping things relaxed and informal. I was very pleased to hear reading a good number of poets I’d never come across before, such as Katie Byford and Steph Morris

It also made my day when Jefferey Sugarman came up to tell me how much he appreciates my submissions list. Thank you, Jeff!

By the way, do have a listen to this week’s Planet Poetry episode, which includes an interview with the delightful Liz Berry about her new book The Home Child.

Blog/ 23/03/2023

Poetry at the Betsey

Hard to believe it was over ten years ago that I first stumbled on (or rather out of) The Betsey Trotwood pub in London’s Clerkenwell with my long-suffering willing-to-be-taken-to-poetry-readings friend Lucy. It’s certainly a stalwart of the poetry scene.

A week or so ago I was there to hear readings from students on the Poetry School Writing Poetry MA. Friends and fellow Hastings Stanza members Judith and Oenone are both on the course – Judith about to complete her final year, Oenone her first. They both gave fine readings, as did many others, and the whole event was a huge love-in for the tutors Glyn Maxwell and Tammy Yoseloff.

I do love the atmosphere at ‘The Betsey’ – an achetypical Victorian London pub with an upstairs function, these days entirely smoke-free of course, but just a few decades ago it would have been eye-stingingly fuggy. (It was pointed out to me however that the room was not accessible. This is of course a problem with all the old pubs – they just weren’t built with accessibility in mind. I’m not sure what the answer is.)

The pub used to be called The Butcher’s Arms apparently, and perhaps the renaming (taking the name of a character in Dickens’s David Copperfield) was symbolic of its friendliness to the poor poets and writers of Owd Lahndon Tahn. Many a book launch happens there. In fact, the latest edition of Finished Creatures launches there on Tuesday 4th April. Do come if you can.

Angst/ 15/11/2022

Self-sabotage, womansplaining and other poetry joys

I should be preparing for a recording session this afternoon, for a Planet Poetry episode that’s going out on Thursday, but I’m feeling a bit guilty about neglecting this blog. So herewith a quick update. Subheadings are here to help you skip forward (or skip it all if you so wish!)

Reasons/excuses for not writing much poetry right now

Mid-November and everything’s kicking off as regards Christmas – I mean for those of us involved in concerts. I’m personally only singing in one, but my choir-director husband is full on with more ensembles and gigs than I can keep up with. In his wake, here I am helping out by creating posters & programmes, placing adverts, liaising with concert organisers and ticket selling outlets, managing ticket sales and worrying about things like whether the heating will be working at the venue and have I got someone’s up-to-date biog, have I got the right date and time on the posters, managing the music hire and allocation for The Lewes Singers and making sure we have enough tea, coffee and gluten-free biscuits for our rehearsals. Etcetera. I’m also knee-deep in executor stuff, trying to sell my sister’s two properties & dealing with buyers pulling out, estate agents/managing agents/solicitors and endless questions to answer and forms to fill in. Not a great time to be selling a flat, or two. But hey. I’m alive. I’m healthy. Neither my home nor my livelihood is on the line, so it ain’t really stressful, just time consuming. Then again, I’m such a self-saboteur that I’m probably secretly quite happy not to have too much writing time on my hands.

Recent and forthcoming poetry gigs

On Sunday I was at the Eastbourne Poetry Cafe to hear Karen Smith give a reading – Karen is a class act I have to say, she lit up the room. I think I first met Karen on a New Writing South course, then she had a collection Schist published by Smith Doorstop, and that set her on her way. There’s a very nice interview with Karen here. It was also great to meet Christopher Horton and hear him read, someone I’ve not come across before.

I’m looking forward to hearing my Hastings Stanza pal Antony Mair at Needlewriters in Lewes this coming Thursday. Another classy poet who always gives engaging and entertaining readings.

At least I am writing a BIT…

Bill Greenwell’s online workshop has forced me to come up with some new poems, hurray! I will try to send something out this month. I have a few poems ‘out there’, some of which are due back soon I think, so that will be an added impetus. I may even try sending a pamphlet submission to Broken Sleep before that deadline passes.

and reading…

There’s always reading to be done to prepare for Planet Poetry interviews. I read somewhere recently that writing poetry reviews (the traditional kind, for poetry mags) is a good discipline as it makes you really read closely and engage with poetry collections. I have to say that interviewing a poet on a podcast takes all that and then some – thinking up relevant questions to ask, talking with the poet about your reading/understanding of their work, suggesting which poems they read and commenting in a way that listeners may find interesting… it’s not easy, and I often curse myself for sounding like an idiot, a sycophant or a ‘womansplainer’, sometimes all three in the same episode. It’s all good fun though!

Angst/ 01/04/2022

At last, some (a)live poetry events

Having missed three Hastings Stanza meetings due to a choir commitment, next month I’m so looking forward to workshopping with everyone again around a table and the odd cup of tea or glass of wine. We restarted face to face meetings last autumn, and after all the months of having to ‘meet’ online it was such a joy. Actual, live events are just that, aren’t they? (A)LIVE. The same goes for live poetry readings – there are two lovely launch events coming up: first John McCullough is launching his new book Panic Response (Penned in the Margins) in Brighton next week, guaranteed to be a love-in for his many friends and fans, then in June poet friend Sarah Barnsley has very kindly asked me to be one her support acts at an informal launch of her brilliant collection, The Thoughts (Smith Doorstop).

In between, there’s a Needlewriters evening coming up on April 14th. I’ll have the privilege of ’emcee-ing’ this one, and hearing the excellent Peter Raynard whose new book Manland is forthcoming from Nine Arches in July.

Online blues

Like most people I put up with Zoom readings and events when it was the only thing allowed, and I hadn’t realised how much I loathed it until I started to contemplate the horror of online poetry events becoming a permanent thing. The ‘Zoom factor’ is having a detrimental effect on my decision about whether to return to the University of York to finish my MA later this year: as long as there is any chance whatsoever that seminars will be moved online, I can’t honestly contemplate returning.

Ironic really: twenty-five years ago, as an internet newbie I was basking in the excitement of what the Web had to offer, online for hours every night (this was in the US, where it was free!) and making friends across the globe (yes, actual people – some of whom I got to know in real life). I then spent the best part of twenty years working in online marketing and speaking, teaching, advocating and writing books about the power (and brilliance) of the internet for business, for communities and for communication generally.

And now? After nearly three months ‘resting’ from Twitter, I’m wondering just how much I missed it, if at all. In two days’ time it will be my 15th anniversary of joining. But the reasons I used to love it have gone, and I watch it being slowly poisoned by human behaviour and commercial interests. However, having ditched Facebook several years ago (with no regrets), I’m not about to jump ship from Twitter. But I will be carrying out some changes so I can enjoy it more.

Latest news about the collection

Version three of the manuscript is out the door and with the second of the wise poets who are helping me with ordering, culling, titling and general confidence. I finally have a working title that I think I like and will work. Huzzah! (No, that’s not it!) Meanwhile one of my newer poems has been taken by The Alchemy Spoon, and I have a dozen or so others out to other mags. I think I’m back in the submissions saddle.

Blog/ 13/10/2021

Readings, decisions, fresh starts

I’m feeling very uplifted by real-life in-person poetry events. Last week in Lewes was the launch of three Frogmore Press publications: The Naming by Jeremy Page, Marion Tracy’s Evidence of Love and Neil Gower’s Meet me in Palermo. Strong readings all round and a cautiously-convivial atmosphere. Fast on this comes tomorrow’s Needlewriters event, our first live readings since January 2020, featuring Jeremy Page and two prose writers Alice Owens and Anna Hayward.

Peter Kenny’s and my podcast Planet Poetry has restarted, the first episode of Season 2 featuring the wonderful American poet Kim Addonizio. There are several interviews currently in the bag, so it will be great to see how listeners respond. I was a bit sad not to see Planet Poetry in a recent round-up of poetry podcasts in Poetry News, and it was a kick up the bum to finish our new website and make sure it’s Google-friendly. Although having worked in online marketing for decades I find it hard to get enthusiastic about keywords and search terms any more. Anyway, those lovely folks at the Poetry Society offered to give our Season two opener a plug on Twitter, which was nice.

Although I’m on a year’s leave of absence from the University of York, I’m actually still plugged in to Dante and also Chaucer these days, and find myself referring to notes I was making on my core course module last year. I’m loving Mary Jo Bang’s translation of Purgatorio, incorporating characters and language from the present day, although I suspect it might be sniffed at in some scholarly circles!

As regards submissions to magazines, I’ve decided to step away from them for bit. I have half a dozen poems out at the moment, but I’m not sending any more for now. I have a few reasons for this.

Firstly, I don’t need to, in the sense that I have a track record of publication now, and I’ve nothing to prove to myself or anyone else. I think I’ve found my level. It would have been nice to be have published in The Poetry Review or Granta, but it’s OK to accept that it’s not going to happen. I could kill myself trying to write the ‘right’ sort of stuff, or I could write what I want to write, and enjoy honing it as best I can.

Secondly (related to the first point), I have a publisher for my first collection. I don’t have the collection yet, but I have the freedom to complete it, knowing it will have a home. This is a very privileged position to be in and I want to enjoy the moment, not fret about why Publication A, B or C don’t want any of the individual poems. Plenty of high profile poets have told about how the individual poems in their (successful) collections were consistently rejected by magazines. Or even that they never submitted them to magazines.

I can’t swear that I won’t submit the odd poem here and there, but I’ll be very happy not to be constantly putting my work up for possible rejection. I think the course at York has opened my eyes/mind to a lot of things. Perhaps a leave of absence makes the heart grow fonder – I’m starting to look forward to going back, which is quite a turnaround.

Blog/ 13/09/2021

Happy days

Some lovely poetry stuff recently – firstly the launch of Finished Creatures in Lewes, the first in-person poetry reading I’ve been to for (pretty much) years. Editor Jan Heritage created a warm atmosphere as always and invited contributors to read their own poem plus another one from the magazine. Although Paul Stephenson and Roy Marshall weren’t actually there, their poems were popular choices! Both before and afterwards we spilled out onto the sunny patio at the Depot to eat, drink and catch up. Perfect.

Then I had some unexpected good news. A poem of mine won the Ruth Selina Poetry Prize, an annual competition held at the University of York and open to anyone in the department of English and Related Literature. It was judged by JT Welsch and Vahni Capildeo. Ruth Selina was a promising student who died at a very young age, and her family endowed both this prize and another at Leeds University. I feel very proud to have won it, especially as I’m currently on a year’s leave of absence from my course, so it’s nice to keep the connection going and remind myself I’m still a student there.

We’re just back from a hot, sunny week in North Norfolk. We seem to be very lucky with the weather when go away in September. I just wish I’d taken more summer clothes! We rented a holiday cottage in Blakeney, completely unaware that it’s the most expensive place we could have chosen (£18 for pub fish & chips, anyone?) But we had a lovely time and managed to actually self-cater, despite the cottage lacking a few essentials. The North Norfolk coast is gorgeous and we also managed a day on the Broads (in which I discovered I CANNOT drive a boat) as well as visits to historic houses and churches. A few pics below.

Meanwhile Planet Poetry is about to begin its second series… I have some interview editing to do!

Obligatory trip to see the seals at Blakeney Point

Blog/ 22/07/2021

Lighthouse launch: reading a new poem and its prequel

Tomorrow evening is the online launch of Lighthouse Journal #22 in which I have a poem called ‘Let’s pretend to go shopping together’. This poem revisits an older one entitled ‘Closure’ which first appeared in (the late lamented) Envoi in 2014 and then again in my Cinnamon pamphlet All the Relevant Gods (only £2.09 at Abe Books!)

So I was delighted when Lighthouse editor Julia Webb got in touch to say there would be a launch event, and that contributors were invited to read two poems. I hadn’t actually placed ‘Closure’ and ‘Let’s Pretend…’ side by side until just now, and it has been interesting to compare them. The earlier poem refers to the end of a brief affair between two work colleagues, one of whom had had a quadruple heart bypass. At the time of writing I didn’t consider ‘Closure’ to be nostalgic, but placed next to this new poem the wistfulness is unmistakeable. Plus, something weird happens. Actually several things.

First of all I can see much more clearly now that both poems are concerned with the superficiality of not just this relationship but possibly many of the relationships that at some point in time feel real and substantial. I’m thinking of work friendships as much as romantic ones. Another thing is how the memory massages events of the past to the point that misremembered details get re-invented. For example in this case, the name of the hotel changes from one poem to the next. ‘Closure’ ends with reference to a ‘false heart’, ‘Let’s Pretend…’ is a wholly imagined scenario in which even the existence of the first poem is questioned. What exactly was ever true or false? Does the second poem change the first one? Which version of the narrator is the more reliable?

Tune in tomorrow for all the answers (or not!) and of course, plenty of fine poems from this issue’s contributors.

Category: Readings