Category: Readings

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A clutch of Spring readings

Spring Daffs

After reading Jayne Stanton’s uplifting post about all the things she’s got to look forward to and how glad she is to see the back of February, I couldn’t help but agree – Spring is on its way and several treats are on the horizon.

Things kick off this evening at The Troubadour, where Anne-Marie Fyfe has invited me to join the readers in a yellow-themed extravaganza Big Yellow Taxi. I’m planning to read a short ‘poem starting with a first line by Emily Dickinson’ which features some of my favourite things yellow (eg Doris Day’s hair). I’m looking forward to seeing Stephen Bone there too, and I know he’s famous for taking the colour theme very seriously!

In a couple of week’s time I’m taking myself off to the lovely Arts and Crafts house Standen for a few days where I’m having a self-styled reading & writing retreat. Hurrah! Returning just in time for the launch of the Needlewriters Anthology in Lewes  on 26th March and an opportunity to read alongside my fabulous poetic cohorts Clare Best, Janet Sutherland, Charlotte Gann, Jeremy Page, Liz Bahs, Judith Kazantzis & Kay Syrad. I feel like the new girl being invited to the prefects’ table.

The next Needlewriters quarterly event is on April 9th, closely followed the next week by Telltale Poets & Friends at the Lewes Arms on Wednesday 15th April. I’m very excited about that as our headline reader will be Martin Malone, a fine poet as well as editor of The Interpreter’s House. We’ll also be showcasing two up and coming poets, Ryan Whatley and Helen Fletcher. Helen’s coming all the way from Carlisle so I hope we can get good audience and show her what a poetry-loving lot we are in Lewes.

In the back end of the month I’ll be reading at Poetry in the House, Shanta Acharya’s regular event at Lauderdale House in Highgate, on Wednesday 22nd April alongside some super poets including Mona Arshi and Richard Skinner.

And big thanks to Michaela Ridgway for inviting me to read at the long-running Pighog Poetry night in Brighton on Thursday 30th April.  Pighog Press have been taken over by US publisher Red Hen, but the Brighton poetry nights continue. The Redroaster Cafe is a super venue and the nights are well attended, so it should be great fun.

If you’re able to get to any of the above, please come and say hello!

 

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Nikesh Shukla at the Vanguard Readings

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!

Nikesh ShuklaOf 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 by Nikesh Shukla

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.

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Reading at Lewes Needlewriters

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of reading at a Needlewriters event – a quarterly evening of readings, both poetry and prose, at the Needlemakers cafe in Lewes. It’s the only event of its kind I know round here, combining prose and poetry. (Disclaimer: I’m on the organising committee… although still a new girl.)

As the only poet I was slotted in between two wonderful readings by Kerry Evans and Bethan Roberts. Kerry read an extract from her award-winning novel ‘116 words per minute’, which was fast-paced and entertaining, and from Bethan we heard the opening of her latest book Mother Island, a rather creepy psychological thriller, which left me wanting to know what happened next.

Robin Houghton reading at Needlewriters LewesIt’s a warm and supportive audience at Needlewriters, and I really enjoyed my set. It’s a funny process choosing what to read. Although my pamphlet was on sale (and yes I sold a few copies, hoorah!) I only included two poems from it: ‘Ellipsis’ which tends to be popular, so I generally include it, and ‘Closure’ which I read as part of a selection of my corporate workplace-inspired poems. Apart from that, everything else was new-ish and/or unpublished in magazines. Which is one reason why I’m not posting any video or audio footage here: the other is that the quality isn’t great. We did record one poem and although the picture wasn’t sharp (I am, after all PERMANENTLY jinxed when it comes to being filmed) the audio wasn’t bad. So if/when that particular poem gets published I may share it on the blog.

Oh, and I gave my paean to Ronnie O’Sullivan a second outing and it seemed to go down well – tee hee.

Do come to a Needlewriters event if you’re ever able to. It’s run by a small team of writers on (naturally!) a shoestring. This spring sees the publication of our first anthology, with work from many of the poets, novelists, short story writers, playwrights and so forth who’ve read at Needlewriters events over the years. More about that in due course.

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A writing retreat, and other treats

Standen House

I always think of January as being a bit dreary, so it tends to be the time of year I make plans for things to look forward to.

Number one is a short writing retreat – I did a DIY retreat a couple of years ago and got a lot out of it – not least of all enough material to produce two decent poems.  But I was a bit lonely – so this time I’ve booked 3 nights away rather than four, at a National Trust flat in Standen, an Arts & Crafts house which I’ve always loved visiting. I’ll have free range access to all the gardens and grounds while I’m there and a cosy flat in the servants quarters where I can read and write. Are you jealous yet?! That will be in March, when the days will be slightly longer and who knows, maybe warmer too.

I’ve also booked onto an afternoon workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe on the theme of ‘a bridge too far’ in February, and this workshop offered by Poetry Swindon also looks tempting – Smart reading for smarter writing with Martin Malone – but it’s the day before and I might be tad exhausted from all the workshopping (and travelling) in one weekend.

It’s a good thing I’m going to be doing some workshopping and retreating because I’ve got a few readings coming up, and need new material! This Thursday 22nd January I’m on home turf here in Lewes for Needlewriters, then nothing else booked for a while, although Telltale Poets are planning another reading in March or April – we’ll be finalising that soon. On April 22nd I’ll be reading at Lauderdale House in London, as part of Shanta Acharya’s Poetry in the House series, which will be fab, and in May 3rd I’ll be in Mayfield for a reading during the Mayfield Fringe Festival, at the kind invitation of Sian Thomas. Later in the year, big thanks to Dawn Gorman for booking me to read at Words and Ears in Bradford on Avon on October 29th – which is actually my birthday, so we’re making a nice trip of it.

As regards submissions, there’s no news to report I’m afraid. I’ve lost a bit of momentum. I’m in the doldrums with no sign of the wind getting up. So I’m focusing more on finding the time to write, and am resisting the urge to enter competitions or submit to any more mags just for the sake of getting things out there. To be honest the cupboard is bare at the moment – all my half-decent stuff is tied up and out of circulation. If you’re interested, here’s how the magazine submissions are going:

4 poems have been out for 5 days – yes! I submitted a few the other day – but other than that:
9 poems have been out for 76 days
4 poems for 131 days
4 poems for 156 days

I’ll soon be able to move a couple back into circulation which were out to competitions. It’s a slooooow process, isn’t it? But I’m heartened by reminding myself that for many fine poets three or four good poems a year was (or is) enough.  Quality, not quantity 🙂 And think of the treats coming up!

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An evening at the T S Eliot Prize readings

T S Eliot Prize readings 2015

Since being introduced to this annual event about 5 years ago by poet friends Julia and Charlotte, I’ve made it a fixture on my calendar. Held at the cavernous Royal Festival Hall on London’s Southbank, the T S Eliot Prize readings seem to be as much about the socialising and the catching up with other poets as they are with the poetry itself.

And why not? Us poety-types aren’t always the most social of bods. As well as the chance to say hello to so many poet friends all in one place, I love the buzzy feel of this event – standing on one of the mezzanine landings and surveying the foyer and bar area (was that Melvyn Bragg over there?) Rubbing shoulders with the poetry glitterati (poet-ati?) I love the wonderful mix of ages and styles across the audience – it would be hard to point at one one person and say “that’s a poet”. And yet they probably all are.

Unlike last year, I didn’t go to Katy Evans-Bush‘s marvellous pre-readings workshop day, in which all ten nominated collections are dipped into, mulled over and discussed in the light of Katy’s expert analysis and guidance. I was familiar with the work of some of the poets reading, but certainly not all. And not these latest collections.

This year the Poetry Book Society went gung-ho on the live tweeting, with two of the tweeters at the end of our row causing a slight fracas at the end of the first half as people in the row behind them asked to desist from tapping into their phones non-stop. I did feel for the complainants. I had a terrific view from my seat and wanted to take photos of the poets as they read, but couldn’t bring myself to do it as I know it can be distracting. And as I struggled to concentrate on Pascale Petit‘s reading with the phone action going on next to me, I resolved quite early on that the my phone was staying in the bag. Except for the empty lectern shot you see here, taken before the second half got going. Anyway, I think the live tweeters were more discreet in the second half so hopefully peace broke out.

As regards the actual readings (ahem!) there was nothing I really didn’t like, but I did enjoy very much hearing Michael Longley (warm, down to earth, compelling), Arundhathi Subramaniam (assured and commanding), Fiona Benson (charmingly nervous but read very powerfully) and David Harsent (made me want to read more of him). Sadly there were three proxy readers – while I was gutted that Hugo Williams couldn’t be there, it was good news to hear that he is apparently on the mend, and actor Jeremy Clyde gave an excellent delivery of Hugo’s poems. Here is the ‘From the dialysis ward’ sequence from his collection ‘I knew the Bride’ (Faber). But I didn’t feel justice was done to Kevin Powers’ work ‘Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting’ (Sceptre) by the reader who took his place, as he didn’t come across as being at all engaged with the material, which was a shame.

As always, Ian McMillan did a fine job of compering, picking out aspects of the various collections and pulling them into an intellectual yet entertaining ribbon of thought. Funny yet respectful. I don’t really know how he does that but it works! And who will win the £20,000 prize? Who knows!

The full shortlist and details of the judges are here. The result is announced this evening.

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Kicking off the New Year at the Poetry Cafe

The Poetry Cafe

Telltale Poets & Friends were at the Poetry Cafe last night and it was a lovely evening. I’d been a bit nervous about holding this event so soon in the New Year but it felt really good and positive – plus we had a super quality audience and no empty seats! (OK so we didn’t put ALL the seats out!)

Peter Kenny & I were joined by special guests Rhona McAdam (over from Canada), Catherine Smith (who read an extract from her pamphlet The New Cockaigne, a wonderful paean to excess and debauchery) and our new discovery Siegfried Baber who gave a very self-assured and entertaining reading. You’ll be hearing more about him.

We all sold a few books/pamphlets, which was great. And with a 7pm start, it meant many of us had some quality time in the pub afterwards, and us Lewes folks were still home by not long after midnight.

My only regret is not taking photos – what is wrong with me?? I always either forget or end up with rubbish pics I can’t use. DUH! Must do better.

I really enjoyed meeting Rhona and Sieg, and also poets in the audience including Tamar Yoseloff, Robert Seatter, Nancy Mattson and Mike Bartholomew-Briggs. Lovely to see Lynne Hjelmgaard there also. What a warm atmosphere. We even had an audience member all the way from Knoxville, Tennessee, who’d come across the event by chance and was on his first visit to London. Needless to say we took him under our wing and he came with us to the Cross Keys afterwards. I like to think he’ll go home with a story about the crazy night in the basement room in Covent Garden listening to poetry, followed by the full London Pub Experience.

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Stanza Reps & Reading at Keats House

Last Wednesday I spent a good part of the day at Keats House in London – in the afternoon meeting with around 35 or so Stanza Reps from around the country and beyond, then the evening AGM where I’d been invited to read. Even as I write that I find it slightly unreal. But it did actually happen – I know this because although part of me thinks there are some things in my life I may have invented or imagined, in this case I do actually have photos.

Keats House

Things started well. As I got to Keats House a jay flew in and landed on a bush right in front of me, which felt like a good omen. I’ve only seen a jay once before and not exactly up close. It seems just too colourful a bird to be British (and yes I know we have parakeets but they’re just arrivistes – ooh! I is that a half-rhyme?)

Paul McGrane of the Poetry Society had co-ordinated the Reps’ meeting and it was a great chance to meet up with reps I already knew such as Antony Mair (Hastings), Robert Harper (Shrewsbury), Margaret Beston (Tonbridge), Sarah Leavesley (Worcestershire) and Tessa Lang (Clapham), and others I’d never met – although many of the names were familiar.

We had short readings from some of the reps, myself included, and these were interjected through the afternoon rather than all in one go, which I thought was a great idea. There was plenty of discussion about meeting etiquette & procedure, now to put together an anthology, events and so forth. If you’re not familiar with Stanzas – they’re volunteer-run groups, under the auspices of the Poetry Society, although anyone can attend, you don’t have to be a Poetry Society member. I’m the rep for Brighton, although I live about 7 miles away in Lewes, but luckily I have a ‘loose committee’ of helpers and others who help with things like booking venues. It’s quite a lot of work, but enjoyable – even with the occasional ‘difficult’ customer.

Stanza Reps at Keats House

Hurrah for the Stanza reps and the Poetry Society! A very useful and enjoyable afternoon. With half an hour or so between the Reps’ meeting and the AGM, Robert Harper and I went off to a local cafe for a coffee and a chat about his magazine Bare Fiction. It’s a beautiful-looking book and Robert’s done an amazing job building up the readership and dealing with the avalanches of submissions he gets, PLUS running a successful competition, all in its first year.

Robin Houghton poet reading at Keats House

By the time my reading ‘slot’ came along I was nervous but itching to get up there. I’m looking a bit stiff in this photo – but at least my eyes are open! It wasn’t a huge audience, but it included incoming and outgoing trustees, all the key staff and many fine poets. Also reading were  Suzanna Fitzpatrick (who won the Hamish Canham Prize this year) and Daljit Nagra who was great fun, and whose poem about Krishna pleasuring hundreds of new brides at the same time (which is OK apparently, because he’s a god) was very funny indeed.

Suzanna Fitzpatrick, Daljit Nagra & Robin Houghton poetry reading

It just felt like a huge privilege to be there and to have those people even give my two wee poems the time of day. And that’s not me fishing for compliments, believe it or not. I know I’m a novice poet and no number of competition successes or published poems changes that fact. I think whether I make it beyond the novice stage is entirely a matter of time and graft. But I’m learning to be patient!

During the day I even got rid of a number of pamphlets – I won’t say ‘sold’ as I left a pile on the freebies table and… well you can guess what happened!

After all the excitement I had a really lovely time unwinding in the pub with poet friend Lynne – a wise and inspirational person if ever there was one.

Then the reality of the train journey home, carriages packed to the brim with Arsenal fans and people munching smelly food – thankfully I had ‘Gravity’ to watch on my phone, which blotted out all distractions.

(Photos courtesy of Sophie at the Poetry Society)

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Vanguard Readings – Six Poets & Anthology Launch

Richard Skinner’s excellent Vanguard Readings at The Bear in Camberwell generally hosts both poets and prose writers, but last night was a poetry special. Somehow I managed to arrived only just in time, but I’m pleased I did as the first reader was my friend Josephine Corcoran.

Josephine’s first pamphlet is ‘The Misplaced House’, out from tall-lighthouse at the end of this month and I think it’s going to be a corker (no pun intended… well, maybe). Reading first (or last!) isn’t always easy but Josephine did a fine job. She was followed by Josephine Dickinson, a poet who I’m not familiar with, but I enjoyed the sense of magic she created in the room and and felt I wanted to know more about her and her work. All the way from Alston in Cumbria, a place I know (and I know how far it is from anywhere), an impressive way to come to entertain the Vanguard audience.

Vanguard Readers 20-11-14

The final first-half reader was no less than Michael Symmons Roberts, reading mostly from his amazing book Drysalter which won last year’s Forward Poetry Prize and Costa Book Award as well as being shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. It was a shame that Michael had to leave for his train back to Manchester as I’d like to have spoken to him. I liked his reading style and was fascinated to know more about how he went about writing Drysalter, 150 poems each 15 lines long, over 5 years.

In the second half I moved down the front and consequently the photos are a bit less fuzzy, although I seem to have captured some shut-eye moments in the readers – sorr-eee! Not only did we hear from Matt Merritt, legendary blogger and the official bird watching poet – great to meet him at last – but also Cristina Navazo-Eguía Newton who I last saw performing flamenco in Swindon.  In Matt’s reading I particularly enjoyed the poems from his ‘unpronounceable’ collection hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica from Nine Arches Press. Good thing it’s available to buy online, as I’m not sure I’d be able to ask for it in our local bookshop.

3 more Vanguard Readers 201114

When Cristina took to the floor she commanded it as usual, petite as she it, her personality is ginormous and she recited two of her long poems, entirely from memory, with electricity and panache. Very hard to take one’s eyes off her! The final reader of the evening was our host Richard Skinner who read three poems from the first anthology from Vanguard Editions, by poets who couldn’t be present – the last of which was by Marion Tracy, from her excellent pamphlet The Giant in the Doorway (HappenStance). Richard gave Marion an amazing introduction and announced her to be ‘one of the least well known poets around but one of the best’. Are you listening, Marion?! Hope so!

vanguard #1anthology

It’s always nice to put faces to names at these events, and I was very pleased to meet for the first time blogger poet Clarissa Aykroyd, and to chat with her on the bus back towards Victoria about the various merits of Vancouver vs London and knowing someone from Kamloops.

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Catherine Smith’s The New Cockaigne

The New Cockaigne by Catherine Smith

Last week I managed to grab the last available chair upstairs at The Lewes Arms for the first performance of Catherine Smith’s The New Cockaigne. Luckily I didn’t sit in the chair reserved for the performers, or it could have been embarrassing – we were treated to an unrestrained romp – “a verbal feast of sexual, gastronomic and alcoholic excess” – the performers being two young actors who emphasised each word with mime-play and were intent on a bit of mild audience participation.

The New Cockaigne is published by the Frogmore Press, with a superb cover design (look closely at the images in those pretty circles!) It’s a ballad, and a note in the foreword explains that “the Land of Cockaigne was a medieval hedonistic fantasy, explored in legend, oral history and art.” Catherine incorporates all the details of the original, but brings it up to date into a kind of Orwellian satire on regimes and regimens.

I’d call it both scary and hilarious – (‘scalarious’?) Not to give the story away, but just to say that by half way through I was feeling a bit queasy as I nervously sipped my white wine spritzer, but it all came good in the end (sort of) – and I did enjoy the Licorice Allsorts. Having live music (“from a live musician”) was a great addition and director Mark Hewitt did a fantastic job of staging this piece in a very small space indeed, the claustrophobia was perfect. I know he and Catherine are hoping to tour performances of The New Cockaigne and certainly for me it worked beautifully in the confines of the pub space, with the ambient noises of pub goings-on and the audience-as-props. Great fun.

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Submissions, readings, blogging books

Orford Ness

I’ve been busy with work stuff lately so just a quick update.

I had another rejection from The Poetry Review (but a nice note from Maurice Riordan) and I’m still awaiting news on half a dozen magazines I have poems out to. After umming and ahhing about submitting my short pamphlet to Templar Iota Shots I finally decided it was good enough to go.

The thing about submitting to Templar is that it doesn’t have different judges each time (unlike, say, the Poetry Business Pamphlet competition.) This means that if Templar editor Alex McMillen doesn’t like one’s style, he possibly never will. Some of the poems in the collection I submitted are the same or new versions of ones which I included in my submission last year. Let’s hope they’re not memorable or horrible enough to hinder my second go at it.

On the positive side, I can’t complain about my poetry autumn, having a poem appear in the current Rialto, winning the Stanza comp and being invited to read at Keats House – which is on Wednesday 26th November by the way – I’m REALLY hoping there’ll be some familiar, friendly faces in the audience – it’s the Poetry Society AGM and I’ll be reading alongside Daljit Nagra and Suzannah Fitzpatrick. Must start practising.

As regards Telltale Press, Peter and I have been contacting potential Telltale poets and putting our heads together on all sorts of plans …  we’re hosting another reading at the Poetry Cafe in London on January 7th, with special guest Canadian poet Rhona McAdam. Hope you can come to that!

I’ve enjoyed reading the accounts of Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, here’s how Sarah Salway captured it, and of course Anthony Wilson wrote several insightful posts as blogger in residence. Next year I’ll be there with poet friends Clare and Charlotte – the beach house is already booked. So looking forward to that!

Meanwhile it’s all kicking off with ‘Blogging for Writers’ – I’m in the process of organising a Blog Tour which is shaping up nicely, then there’s the blog to update, blog posts to write… I even have a guest blog post booked in for an excellent US site next April, which is when the next blogging book is due to launch, and readings for that are being discussed already, so I could be in for a busy Spring.