Look what arrived for me while I was away on a yoga-vegan-retreat in Spain (yup! That’s where I took this photo!) – Snow, the new pamphlet by Peter Kenny (poems) and Palo Almond (art) from Hedgehog Press. It’s a little A6-sized gem, with beautiful endpapers. Just four perfect little tankas accompanying Almond’s dreamy watercolours. Snow is number 6 in Hedgehog’s ‘Little Black Book’ series, and it’s official release date is 22nd May. Peter is of course my Planet Poetry podcast co-host so OK I’m a tad biased but hey, he’s not just a podcaster but a poet, whose work deserves to be more widely known.
I’ve been neck-deep recently in moving my various websites to a different hosting service, a process that is fraught with potential cock-ups. So if you spot anything weird about this site, or my email, or the sign up for my poetry magazines spreadsheet, please let me know. Speaking of which, I’m currently cooking up some extras to offer on my BuyMeACoffee page. More on that coming soon.
I’m currently working each morning from a little B&B room in a farmhouse in Pembrokeshire, while Nick is here playing the organ for St David’s Cathedral. Apart from occasionally getting up in the night and bashing into furniture it’s all very pleasant. A cockerel and a swarm of hens outside. Peaceful countryside views. We’ve had some lovely walks along the coast, and a boat trip over to Skomer island. Our hosts are accommodating and don’t seem to mind me holing up here a lot of the time, even though it probably seems a bit odd. Our flat and garden are being taken care of at home, so I’m trying not to worry about the tomatoes, or dwell on the heatwave we’re missing…
The timing is a bit weird as we’re shortly off for a ‘proper’ holiday, and so I’m finding there’s rather a lot to fit in beforehand. One big (but unpaid!) job is to get the quarterly magazines submissions windows list up to date for mailing out on or around September 1st. So far I’ve been through the spreadsheet and updated all that I can from the magazine websites and/or Twitter feed: new URLs, new subs windows info, changes to guidelines, publication schedules and whatever. I’ll emailed eleven magazine editors to ask them to clarify (eg when websites show a July submissions deadline, that sort of thing). Have heard back from one so far, but hopefully by the end of next week… It looks like there are at least half a dozen new publications to add. And some windows closing on August 31st or early September, so I’ll let everyone know that on an email prior to the end of the month.
If you’re not on the email list for this and would like to be, just let me know (robin at robinhoughtonpoetry.co.uk) and I’ll add you.
Meanwhile, I’m reviewing my manuscript for Live Canon, as some of the poems have changed a little. And I’m trying to keep up with (but enjoying) Live Canon’s August Treasure Hunt.
On the submissions front I’ve had three poems rejected by Prole (they have such a fast turnaround, which never ceases to amaze me) and two accepted by Stand, which I’m very pleased about as I’ve never had anything published there, and it’s a great mag (and I like the shape/ format too).
I was hoping to make this week a bit of a mini-retreat, but so far I’ve only managed to start one new poem. I’ve been reading as well, but I haven’t quite had the time I imagined I’d have.
Anyway here are a few photos to give you the feel of the place…
I’m back from an inspirational week at the Garsdale Retreat, on a poetry residential course that deserved to be full but wasn’t – if you’ve ever done an Arvon week then I recommend you go to Garsdale for a change. Although the selfish part of me doesn’t want anyone else to discover it, I of course want it to be wildly successful. It’s run by partners Hamish and Rebecca, who realised a dream by relocating to the Yorkshire Dales (although strictly speaking they are just into Cumbria) from Hertfordshire. The Retreat has only been open a year but I predict its courses will very soon be oversubscribed. Kim Moore has been a tutor there and has blogged about it too.
On our week, just four of us had Ian Duhig to ourselves, plus a very absorbing evening reading from Hannah Lowe, food to die for, very comfortable accommodation and a gorgeous location. Lambs baaa-ed me to sleep each night and I witnessed the joy of Jackpot the bull being introduced to a field of cows. I saw my first-ever red squirrel. And one day we were even treated to the sight of a steam train passing. We were guests at a cello & piano recital and one evening did a lot of shouting and laughing over a ‘literary game’ that Hamish has clearly got very good at. Plus – oh yes! I wrote, read, thought about, listened to and discussed a lot of poetry.
Ian Duhig has an encyclopedic knowledge of literature, history, myth & legend, politics, the environment and much more. (He’s also hilariously down-to-earth.) Tapping into him was rather like releasing a fireman’s hose (nothing lewd intended in this simile!) and many times I found myself giving up trying to write down references or understand everything and just let his talk flow over me. It felt like the way you pick up bits of a foreign language by going to a country and sitting in a cafe where you overhear conversations and the background talk of a TV or radio. The tutorials with him were intense. I was already somewhat in awe. ‘The Lammas Hireling’ made a huge impression on me when I first read it, and, dear God, he’s won the National twice. Now, in one-to-ones I’m aware I can be a bit difficult at times, so I was very grateful for his forbearance & generosity. I came away challenged and felt suitably kicked up the arse.
The fragmentary way of absorbing ideas and sounds ties in pretty well with the key theme of the week, which was how ‘nothing is wasted’ – digging up fragments, interrogating them, piecing things together, enjoying the connections but also the gaps. In this spirit of this, and since so much of what happens on a course stays between those who were there, in this blog post the narrative ends here.
In what follows I share a few of the phrases and ideas that stayed with me, along with some photos I took there which I hope give a feel of the experience.
“We live in descriptions of places not places” – Wallace Stevens – I tracked this down to a letter written to Henry Church in April 1945.
Untranslateable words, eg Dustsceawung (Old English) – meaning ‘viewing or contemplating dust in the spirit of all things turning to dust. Such contemplation may loosen the grip of worldly desires.’ Ha!
Walls, windows, doors. Idea of ‘the wall which is a door’ in Theology.
‘The ear drieth words as the mouth tastes the meat’ – Book of Job
The disappearing East Coast of England.
Does complex form make you think the poem is less sincere?
“A poem is a bridge that leads to itself” – Paul Muldoon
You don’t want the reader to think “this part of your work is based on an assumption that I don’t think you’ve challenged.”
Next week I’m off to the Garsdale Retreat for a week tutored by Ian Duhig and guest reader Hannah Lowe. I’m excited by the prospect of a week just focusing on poetry, away from my usual surroundings. The last time I did a residential I was quite traumatised by it, and thought I’d never go on one again, even though some good poems came of it (at least two of which subsequently published). It also gave me the impetus to start Telltale Press, and from there to my first pamphlet and beyond. The negatives were the sheer number of people on the course, the lack of free reading and fresh air time and the kitchen duties. But that was nearly five years ago and the Garsdale Retreat is a very different prospect indeed. There are still places available, so why not come and join me? Once you’ve explored the website and read the course description you might well be tempted.
Swindon Poetry
Another date in my diary is the Swindon Poetry Festival on 4th – 8th October, where I’ve been invited by the lovely Hilda Sheehan to be the festival blogger and may even be doing a cheeky reading. I missed this the last two years for various reasons and am looking forward to the warm, friendly and somewhat alternative atmosphere that Hilda cultivates down Swindon way. For some reason I don’t feel this Festival gets the amount of social media love it deserves, but it goes from strength to strength every year. The full programme will be up soon and I hear there will be a shedload of fine poets and engaging sessions, it’s also great value. Do come!
Writing vs bathroom
At home we’ve been having weeks of new bathroom installation. I never thought a bathroom could be more trouble or more complex than a new kitchen, but after starting the work on May 1st they’re only now (as I type) on the last job, leaving us to finish the painting. I don’t blame the workmen since a key issue was to do with me changing my mind about having a wall-hung loo (since you ask… it just felt …umm… worryingly unstable!) But two weeks having to flush with a bucket and many days of ear-splitting noise wasn’t conducive to creative writing. This may sound like middle-class hand-wringing but let me remind you that toilet matters are right there at the bottom (sic) of Maslow’s pyramid. Plus I was worried we’d never be friends again with the neighbours upstairs.
On entering a big comp
Anyway, enough of all that. I did manage to scrape together a poem to send to the Bridport this year. I’ve talked before about how I decide whether to enter a competition – the various things to consider and so on. Everyone has different reasons I guess, but the first hurdle I usually fall at is ‘do I have anything?’. I don’t really see the point of paying £9 to enter a big comp unless I think my entry has a fighting chance of winning. (Note: this is not the same as saying you expect your poem to win). I know that’s not the received wisdom of seasoned compers, many of whom play the numbers game and have a budget for it. And I know there’s a huge amount of luck involved. But there’s no harm in developing a feel for which poems should be sent to mags and which are worth entering into a comp, especially if you don’t have a ton of good poems coming out of your ears. Discuss!
Taking a leaf out of Peter Kenny’s book, here are seven items from the imaginary newsdesk at Kenny Houghton Towers (sorry Peter – but as Picasso said – possibly – ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal.’)
Picasso is as good as any place to start, having just visited the Tate Modern exhibition featuring work from a year in his life (1932). For once, a major London exhibition that wasn’t ruined by too many visitors (at least, on the day we went). There were two major takeaways for me: firstly, Picasso was prolific. Unbelievably so. For example on Christmas Day 1931 we’re told that ‘after the festivities’ he finished a painting he’d been working on for a week (a long time for him) AND THEN knocked off another big canvas. Secondly, he shot from the hip – first drafts for him were usually the finished article. That’s not to say he didn’t make changes – you can clearly see lines painted out (but often still visible). A bit like my maths teacher at school used to say – show your workings out, you can cross stuff out but don’t erase anything because it could actually be correct. I like that idea – it could actually be correct – as if Picasso didn’t mind anyone seeing what he’d originally drawn, because it allows for multiple and even valid readings. Very interesting to think about in terms of writing and workshopping, and it plays to my liking for (and experimentation with) erasures. PS the image featured here is of a Picasso print that I bought at the Tate – ‘Woman with flower writing’ – destined for the bedroom so I hope Nick will like it. The Tate has a very good framed print ordering system, with free delivery if you spend more than £50.
Two more welcome reviews/mentions of All the Relevant Gods – one by eminent lit blogger & Guardian journalist Billy Mills on Elliptical Movements, and another by Martin Malone forthcoming in The Interpreter’s House. (He tells me it was written in a lighthouse, no less).
Telltale Press launched its latest (and final) publication, the TRUTHS anthology, at a warm and well-attended event in Lewes. I know I would say this, but I think it’s a fine collection with contributions from poets both new and established. Blog post and photos here. I haven’t quite got around to putting it with a sales button on the website, but in the meantime copies may be ordered from Peter Kenny. A snip at £8 plus postage.
Needlewriters Lewes are running a special day of events on Thursday 14th June as part of the South Downs Poetry Festival – a ‘poetry surgeries’ session in the afternoon followed by an Open Mic and then our regular quarterly readings. The ‘poetry surgeries’ are actually a brilliant opportunity to pick the brains of not one but two of our finest poetry magazine editors (Jeremy Page of the Frogmore Papers and Kay Syrad of Envoi) plus fine poets Janet Sutherland and Charlotte Gann. And all for just a tenner (or £12 for the whole afternoon and evening). I was hoping to be helping with the organisation on the day but I double-booked myself – bizarrely it took me several weeks to realise this, having been involved in brainstorming the event & preparing the publicity, and THEN realising I was going to be at the Garsdale Retreat that week – DUH.
Two more poetry events on my radar – Abegail Morley is one of the organisers of the Tunbridge Wells Poetry Festival on 15th and 16th June which features various events including workshops and readings – more info here. This is also during my Garsdale week so I won’t be able to check it out but it looks very good. And before that, on May 31st in Brighton, Pighog night features Annie Freud and Pam Thompson, with Michaela Ridgway compering. Definitely looking forward to that.
A lovely thing – a friend asked if I would write a poem for her nephew, for a ‘big’ birthday. Now this friend has bought my pamphlets and knows my style, so I had no hesitation in saying yes, because I knew she wasn’t after something funny and rhyming. (Not that I couldn’t do that but… it didn’t particularly appeal.) I spent a morning with her, listening to her talking about the nephew, how their lives had intersected, looking at photos. And just when I was starting to wonder how I would tackle this she said one thing that stuck in my head. And that’s really it, isn’t it? That one thing that makes a poem, in this case one idea or image that somehow in a moment lets the receiver know what’s in the giver’s heart…. without sounding schmalzy or sentimental. I really enjoyed the project and was very relieved when my friend said she loved it.
And so in four weeks’ time I’ll be off to Garsdale – a residential with Ian Duhig and guest poet Hannah Lowe, on the subject of ‘nothing is useless’. I’m not sure if this means ‘nothing you’ve experienced in your life is useless’ or more ‘all those old drafts and poems you’re really embarrassed about may still be useful’. Either way, I can’t wait.
Well the submissions list was popular… I hope you managed to get some poems out before some of the deadlines. I’ve got a few things out now. Although sorry to report that YET AGAIN I didn’t win the National. Oh well! I’m hoping to be at the award ceremony on Wednesday (if my RSVP wasn’t too late) so at least I’ll experience the vicarious excitement of it all.
Off the back of my pamphlet launch I’ve got a few readings sorted. The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society had a last minute cancellation so they slotted me in to read last week alongside Canadian poet Miranda Pearson. I really enjoyed the evening – good venue, good vibe, good size audience and wonderfully attentive – and I got the biggest laugh I’ve ever had for the pamphlet’s title poem. I know that shouldn’t be the criterion for a successful poetry reading, but it’s always fun when people laugh – maybe I should have set my sights on standup. Er, but then again, probably not!
With Miranda Pearson at the Kent & Sussex in Tunbridge Wells
After Easter I’ll be reading in Lewes at the Needlewriters, alongside Nicholas Royle and Jonathan Totman. I’m a member of the Needlewriters collective so it’s home turf for me – which actually makes it a bit nerve-wracking. Not to mention my worrying about a number of poets in the audience having heard all my stuff before. I just have to remind myself that people are unlikely to remember, so I must treat it all as fresh. Never apologise!
Guess who’s going to Garsdale
Now for the big treat – I’ve booked in to a residential week at the Garsdale Retreat in June, with Ian Duhig and Hannah Lowe as the visiting guest. I’m a big admirer of Ian’s work and just know it’s going to be a fab week. I know after my experience at Ty Newydd a few years ago I wondered if I’d ever do another residential. Although that particular experience was amazing and a real boost for my writing, nonetheless I found it exhausting – there just weren’t enough hours in the day to do all the homework, no time to go out and take a walk, so many participants and quite a combative atmosphere, and the dreaded cooking/washing up duties. I’m someone who needs time and space to think, and lots of sleep. So having to get up at 6 to get work done in time for a morning seminar, after a late night the night before (compulsory activities every evening), was a bit much for me.
So… when I found the Garsdale Retreat (I think it was after I’d done a search on Ian Duhig, who I was hoping to ask for a blurb for the Telltale anthology – more on that in a minute) – two things in particular jumped off the screen at me: NO cooking or washing up (in fact the food all sounds excellent) and HALF the number of participants you get on a typical residential. Not only that, but the schedule looks about right in terms of group activity and tutor contact, with a good balance of free time. And it’s in a beautiful part of the country. So now I’m planning with military precision to get hold of Advance train tickets. It’s all very exciting and I feel very lucky to be able to go.
Coming soon! TRUTHS: A Telltale Press Anthology
Something that’s been taking up a lot of my time lately has been the forthcoming Telltale anthology, Truths – it’s been a labour of love though, so I’m not complaining. And working with Sarah Barnsley on editing has made me realise how mediocre I am at proofing – I can’t believe how many ‘straight vs curly’ quote marks and ‘hyphens vs en-dashes’ she spotted and I missed – ha ha! Seriously, Sarah is the queen of all this, and that’s on top of being an insightful and sensitive editor. My job has mostly been to fiddle around in Affinity Designer and stress about fonts and gutters.
A brief aside here – I’d like to offer an (unpaid) endorsement for this Affinity software. When I bought a new computer I needed to replace my Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, but they’re now only available on subscription (each costs more than £200 a year!) So I did some research and found Affinity, who make alternative software called Photo and Designer, with a third, Publisher, due out soon. Each program costs under £50 to buy outright, there are tons of tutorials on the website and the company is British. I’ve been using both programs very successfully and have even found Designer to be more intuitive than Illustrator. It has been a learning curve with Photo, but I’m SO pleased with the results and certainly for my needs I don’t feel the software is an any way inferior to the Adobe equivalents. End of advert!
So the Telltale Press anthology will be going to print this coming week, and the launch is on April 25 in Lewes. Do come if you’re able – there will be a stellar list of readers. Contributors to the anthology are poets who have read with us at ‘Telltale Press & Friends’ since 2014, as well as a number of others who have supported us in the project. It feels to me like a really strong collection (OK, I would say that, wouldn’t I), and with its theme of ‘truth’, rather timely – it’s been fascinating to see how poets have interpreted the theme.
No, not flogging in the sense of selling, although who knows? Maybe there’s a market for it – poets could sell their old given-up-on poems to others who might be able to make something of them.
But what I’m talking about here is old stuff that you rediscover years later and think ‘hmm… maybe there is something in this.’
I don’t know about you but I have tons of folders on my computer, actually it’s sprawled across two computers, both of which are current, just to add to the mess. ‘Poems Archive’, ‘Old poems’, ‘Old bad poems’, ‘Poems to work on’, etc. There are also folders which date from various ‘poem a day’ exercises, courses and self-styled retreats, going back seven or eight years.
When I find myself trawling the current ‘working on’ folder and finding nothing to inspire me, I sometimes open up one of the old folders for a peek. But I think the trick is not to do it too often, because you want to surprise yourself with stuff you’ve forgotten about.
Sometimes I just need reassurance. ‘Wow! look at the tat I was writing in 2009’ or whatever. Or to see how fruitful a certain retreat or course had been. In March 2015, for example, I took myself off to Standen for a three day retreat. When I looked at the folder of ten poems I started or worked on while I was there, I see that two were subsequently published – after a lot of work though – in Prole and The Interpreter’s House, and one eventually came second in the 2016 Stanza competition. On the other hand, the May 2013 ‘poem a day’ folder only contains three poems (!), none of which made it to publication.
But more exciting is to find poems I just could not get to work, but when I read them again now I’m thinking ‘I still want to say this.’
So after today’s hunt through the various rejected-by-myself piles, I have found seventeen poems worth revisiting, on the basis that each of them have something, however small, going for them. Yes, they are riddled with tired phrases, poor line breaks, too much ‘telling’, portentous last lines and the rest. But that can all be worked on, and it will be fun to do so. Most importantly, they make me think ‘yes, I still want to say this.’
Back from a couple of days away at Standen, a National Trust house in the Sussex countryside about 45 minutes from where I live. The idea was for it to be a poetry reading & writing retreat, time away from the internet, work and house moving stuff. I love visiting Standen and it was a treat to be able to stay there, even if just for a short time. I’d like to take my husband there in the summer so we can have private picnics on the lawn after the massed general public has gone home.
I got there on Monday evening and thought I ought to have a plan for how to spend my time, but it didn’t really work out that way. I got up early on the first full day, intending to write – I’d brought a selection of books with me, so I started reading, and the reading took over. I got out Don Paterson’s Landing Light and resolved to read it all the way through – even the long poems which I admit I often avoid – and make notes. This was a really good thing to do as I discovered so many connections between poems and appreciated the ordering and the shape of the collection. Too often I dip in and out of collections and probably miss much of the interesting detail. I then started doing the same with Allison McVety’s Lighthouses, but got distracted (or actually inspired, to put it more positively) by an idea for a poem.
Another book I revisited was Strong Words, edited by W N Herbert and Matthew Hollis (Bloodaxe). It’s a marvellous resource, a collection of essays by ‘modern poets on modern poetry’. I just keep coming back to it, it’s so rich and there are so many poets represented it’s a lot to take in. This time I focused on three very different viewpoints from Eavan Boland, Edwin Morgan and U A Fanthorpe.
But you can’t stay at Standen without taking a tour around the house itself, or one of the many countryside walks from the door.
Not my digs alas – the Drawing Room at StandenIs it New England? No, Olde England – view from the holiday apartment at Standen
I was lucky with the weather, so I walked down to the Weirwood Reservoir yesterday and only encountered one other person en route. But I did hear a woodpecker, enjoyed the songs of chaffinches, robins and blackbirds and caught a glimpse of two deer in the trees.
Standen is an Arts & Crafts house, designed by Philip Webb and built in the last decade of the 19th century. Every aspect of the interior – architecture, layout, furniture and furnishings – is down to him and his Arts & Crafts colleagues (Morris, Voysey et al). Now although I’m partial to a bit of William Morris wallpaper, and once even had curtains made in one of his designs, on closer inspection I think I can say for sure that I would find it hard to live with on this scale. Standen is a family home, but there’s something rather austere about it, which seems slightly odd given the amount of decoration everywhere. It’s tightly controlled. The wallpaper and textile patterns are stylised. Some of the lamps are, quite honestly, ugly. The much-admired Webb fireplaces can verge on the brutalist. There is artisanship everywhere, but not a huge amount of art. Interesting to contrast this with, say, Charleston Farmhouse with its riotous hand-painted decoration to every surface. I realise we’re talking a slightly later period, and the owners of Standen (for all their interest in building a ‘contemporary’ house) were by no means bohemian.
The Garden Room at Charleston in Sussex, home of artists Vanessa and Clive Bell and Duncan Grant from 1916
But back to my little retreat….the holiday apartment I stayed in is on the second floor, up the servants’ staircase, but nothing about it is poky. This is a grand amount of space and the walls, doors and fitted cupboards have a fine solidity about them. The bathroom is the size of a 21st century studio flat. I loved staying there – it was warm, quiet & private, I could look out on the comings and goings of workers and visitors.
I did fondly imagine I would spend time in the main house, sitting in the conservatory or the Morning Room with my notebook, as if I owned the place, taking in the vibes of the house, its history and characters. But that’s for a longer stay. Although people staying in the apartment are free to visit the house during opening hours, and I’m sure no-one would have minded if I’d settled in one of the rooms, I think I would have been a curiosity, and detracted from people’s enjoyment of the atmosphere. I’m not sure how I would answer the questions about what I was doing there, or (worse) questions about the rooms and the place itself (although I might have had fun bluffing). I think I’d also end up writing about the visitors rather than the house. As it was, I worked very well upstairs in my lovely garret.
The second day was more productive, I got into my stride and ideas popped. I rummaged through some of the MANY old poems on my computer and selected a few to revive or rework. I did try going through all the others, archiving and even *shudder* deleting some, but soon became exhausted and had to take a nap. Although I was supposed to be internet-free, I did have my phone and kept up with emails and Twitter – which actually wasn’t all bad because a story I read about via a link posted on Twitter got me into a new poem. In the evening I was going up to London for a memorial event for Dannie Abse, so I had to venture out, but I knew I’d be leaving anyway the next day, so the retreat was kind of over then anyway. This morning when I left it was raining and I could hardly see the fields or the reservoir from my window.
The final takeaways – six new poems started, four old ones revived, some good quality reading and an interesting immersion (well, dip) into Arts & Crafts style. Now to see if I have anything worth sending out…
