Category: Writing

Angst/

A few thoughts from Virginia Woolf on praise and fame

Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary is proving a rich source of inspiration. On the subject of a writer’s insecurity, it’s refreshing to find the same things bothered her that do us all – is my writing any good, what will people make of it, how come so-and-so got more coverage/attention than me, and so on. She didn’t have social media to cope with of course, but she had a fiercely intellectual and competitive circle of friends and family, and the media of her day carried enormous influence.

Here are a few extracts I’ve enjoyed so far. (‘Nessa’ is Vanessa Bell, VW’s sister, and ‘Lytton’ is Lytton Strachey.)

Shall I ever be able to read it again?

March 1919 

“I don’t suppose I’ve ever enjoyed any writing so much as I did the last half of Night and Day. Indeed, no part of it taxed me as The Voyage Out did; and if one’s own ease and interest promise anything good, I should have hopes that some people at least will find it a pleasure. I wonder if I shall ever be able to read it again? Is the time coming when I can endure to read my own writing in print without blushing—shivering and wishing to take cover?”

This question of praise and fame

March 1921

“Nessa approved of Monday or Tuesday—mercifully; and thus somewhat redeems it in my eyes. I now wonder a little what reviewers will make of it—this time next month. Let me try to prophesy. Well, The Times will be kindly, a little cautious. Mrs Woolf, they will say, must beware of virtuosity. She must beware of obscurity. Her great natural gifts etc etc. … […] then, in the Westminster, Pall Mall and other serious evening papers I shall be be treated very shortly with sarcasm.

[…] And I ought to be writing Jacob’s Room and I can’t […] you see, I’m a failure as a writer. I’m out of fashion: old: shan’t do any better […] my book out (prematurely) and nipped, a damp firework. […] Ralph sent my book out to The Times for review without date of publication in it. Thus a short notice is scrambled through to be in “on Monday at latest”, put in an obscure place, rather scrappy, complimentary enough, but quite unintelligent. Oh, and Lytton’s book is out and takes up three columns […] my temper sank and sank till for half an hour I was as depressed as I ever am.  […] To rub this in we had a festive party at 41: to congratulate Lytton; which was all it should be, but then he never mentioned my book, which I suppose he has read, and for the first time I have not his praise to count on.

[…] This question of praise and fame must be faced. […] I think the only prescription for me is to have a thousand interests—if one is damaged [by criticism] to be able instantly to let my energy flow into Russian, or Greek, or the Press, or my garden, or people, or some activity disconnected with my own writing.”

Beyond boasting – the supreme triumph

May 1921

“I sat in Gordon Square yesterday for an hour and a half talking to Maynard [Keynes]. […] Maynard said he liked praised, and always wanted to boast. He said that many men marry in order to have a wife to boast to. But, I said, it’s odd that one boasts considering that no-one is ever taken in by it. It’s odd too that you of all people should want praise. You and Lytton are passed beyond boasting —which is the supreme triumph. […] I love praise, he said. I want it for the things I am doubtful about.”

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Look what I found! Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Writer’s Diary’

Virginia Woolf A Writer's Diary

… Fourth Impression (1965) with a foreword by Leonard Woolf. Hogarth Press! Original dust jacket bearing Vanessa Bell’s design!

I found it at Much Ado Books in Alfriston, well worth a visit if you’re ever in the area. It’s housed in a range of quirky buildings set back off the road in its own front garden. I did find the plethora of notices rather off-putting  (a number of which suggest one is guilty until proven innocent – PLEASE LEAVE LARGE BAGS AT THE COUNTER BEFORE GOING UPSTAIRS, PLEASE RESPECT OUR GARDEN etc) but I can only suppose this quiet, well-do-do village must have its fair share of book shop-lifters and vandals. What a shame.

much ado books alfriston

Anyway, I look forward to sharing extracts and thoughts on Woolf’s reading and writing process with you here from time to time.

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On redrafting old material, and a welcome acceptance

During my mini-retreat in Cork I dug out a number of old as-yet-unfinished or unpublished poems to see what I could breathe new life into. Re-use & recycle! Nothing’s wasted! Or is it?

Sometimes when I get out an old poem I find I’ve put enough distance between it and me, and now I’m able to see its flaws and work on it anew.

Other times I wonder if the whole poem needs to be killed off, like cutting a plant right down to an inch from the ground, letting in light and air, giving energy and space for new growth. When I re-read a poem I started years ago, if it doesn’t excite me enough to want to work on it further, I ask myself do I still want to say this? If yes, then can I go back to the first impetus – whatever it was that started me on this poem – and start again on an entirely new road?

I’ve come back from Cork with two re-worked poems I’m quite pleased with, two that I started to re-work but not yet feeling the love, and one ‘new start’ poem, still early days. Another poem is completely new, but the idea has been mulling for a while.

Meanwhile I’m very pleased to have had an acceptance from Magma, for their ‘Work’ themed issue coming up in July. I’m always banging on about there not being enough poems written about work, so of course I thought the theme was right up my Strasse – although an older version of the same poem was actually written for the Poetry News theme of ‘Hotel’ (also one of my favourite topics, so I was a bit miffed that the selector didn’t like my poem on that occasion!)

This hotel/work poem is a good example of the ‘re-use/recycle’ thing. Earliest versions from about two years ago bear no resemblance to the one that’s going into Magma. The fifth version was the one that Poetry News rejected. I then workshopped it both at Hastings Stanza and with poet friend Marion Tracy and it became more fractured and a lot darker. The title became weirder. Ian Duhig at the Garsdale Retreat last summer had some positive comments on it. I worked on it a bit more until it felt stronger and stranger, then sent it (by now, version 12) to The Poetry Review, where it was rejected. It was then in the drawer for six months until the Magma theme came up and I gave it one more outing. So persistence paid off, and by heck I was needing a confidence boost.

I hope you have similar stories to tell. Here’s to successful recycling, upcycling or whatever cycling floats your boat, so to speak.

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To Cork!

Rather unlike me but I decided on the spur of the moment to go to the Cork Poetry Festival! Having followed a tweet about it, I looked to see how possible/expensive it might be to go, and before I knew it I’d booked travel, accommodation and all the sessions. Within a few days of booking, this arrive in the post:

Cork Poetry Festival programme

So why Cork, of all the festivals? It was a combination of factors. The dates work for me. The cost of attending all the paid-for readings and ‘in conversation’s (many are free) came out at around £80 (if I had wanted to take part in a daily workshop or a manuscript appraisal then that would have cost extra).Many of the poets reading there are completely unfamiliar to me, plus there’ll be a magazine launch, a young writers showcase and a competition results night…lots of exposure to new voices and outside the comfort zone of familiar faces. Another thing I liked was that all the readings are in the afternoon and evening, leaving the mornings free. This gives me mornings to write, and maybe do some exploring – although I may just want to have lie-ins or hole up with hot chocolate in the bar. With so much new stuff to take in it will be nice to have unencumbered headspace each day, and by turning it into a writing retreat it becomes even more of a justifiable expense. I’ll just have to make sure I don’t take too much stuff, so I can bring back a bunch of books without breaking the weight-limit for the plane.

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What Mary Oliver said about distractions

Mary Oliver A Poetry Handbook

One of the first books I bought and consumed (once I started thinking it possible I could write the odd semi-decent poem) was Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook, along with Julia Cameron’s The Sound of Paper. Now Mary Oliver has died I suppose it was inevitable there would be a flurry of Oliver-appreciation, and I’ve enjoyed being reminded of her wisdom.

This week in Brain Pickings, Maria Popova has pulled up from the archive The Third Self: Mary Oliver on Time, Concentration, the Artist’s Task, and the Central Commitment of the Creative Life. It’s a wonderful read, and I love her description of how interruptions can destroy the creative mind at work. This was well before social media of course, but it’s not just outside forces that can do the damage:

…just as often, if not more often, the interruption comes not from another but from the self itself, or some other self within the self, that whistles and pounds upon the door panels and tosses itself, splashing, into the pond of meditation.

Indeed. I hope this week brings you at least some moments of sustained solitude in which to write.

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Catchup for a rainy day – news, upcoming etc

With a real sense of summer coming to an end, I just wanted to mention a few things before August is up, and that feeling of moving on to the start of a new year. (Still haunted by school terms, decades on…)

Excellent Events

Back in July, I didn’t manage to make it to The Interpreter’s House launch reading in London, although that was fortuitous because it turned out the Southern Rail had a lovely treat planned for that night which left people coming back from London either stranded at Haywards Heath and facing a large taxi bill to get home, or a 3-4 hour journey via who-knows-where. BUT I hear it was a fine and well-attended send-off for outgoing editor Martin Malone. By all accounts it was a tad hot and sweaty in the July heat. But we’re not complaining about the weather, are we? New editor Georgi Gill has already taken charge of the next edition. Which reminds me, it’s just about time for me to update the UK poetry magazines submissions windows list…

Also in early July I had the privilege of being invited to the launch of No Bird on My Bough, an anthology of work by The Writers’ Place Poets in Brighton. This was a group which had been selected by New Writing South for a year of mentoring from Dean Atta, culminating in the anthology and reading. It was a really enjoyable evening of poetry with strong readings. Great to hear Ann Perrin, who’s a stalwart of the Brighton poetry scene, Claire Booker, whose work I’ve spotted in magazines and Sophie Brown, whose ‘The party as a metaphor for death, yeah’ I found very moving. And Judith Shaw, a member of our Hastings Stanza, who’s doing amazing things these days with her poetry which is wonderful to see. She’s also a visual artist; one of her paintings is on the cover of the anthology. Applications are open for the next round of Writers’ Place Poets.

Write Stuff

Since June I’ve been thinking a lot about my first collection. Actually, just saying ‘my first collection’ like that is a step in the right direction. I’ve a lot of related things in the pipeline, including two applications for funding, neither of which I’m particularly optimistic about, but one can but try. I’m writing new material – not a shedload, but some. It’s new and it’s (I think) different. Thanks to a manic sending-out spate last month I have a number of submissions out there looking for homes. Last week I had a very kind  ‘no thank you’ note from Prole – they are so good at turning submissions around promptly. I wonder if the longer one waits the harder the blow is when getting the ‘no’? On the other hand, it was lovely to receive a contributor copy of The North the other week. I’ve yet to sit down to read it properly but already I see many unfamiliar names alongside familiar ones. I’ll Google them as I go along, in the absence of poet biogs – something I value a lot in a poetry magazine. But maybe that’s just me. I do enjoy the articles in The North – a close reading, poets I go back to – and this is one of the things informing my new ‘poetry-related project’ (more to come on this, but still under wraps as I do the planning and risk assessment!)

Currently reading

Summer editions of The Poetry Review, The North, Poetry & Granta…. Selected Stories by Katherine Mansfield, and Feel Free, Essays by Zadie Smith. (Also Guiding Magazine and anything to do with the new programme ahead of Brownies restarting in a couple of weeks.)

Coming up soon

This coming Saturday 1st September I’ll be joining fellow Hastings Stanza poets for a Hastings Literary Festival Fringe Reading at Grand Cafe Rue de Pera at 11am. (Actually I think we ARE the Fringe – he he).

Then on September 22nd it’s Free Verse the Poetry Book Fair, this year at the Senate House in London and bigger than ever I hear.  I plan to be there helping (?) out on the Frogmore Press table, and possibly flogging the odd copy of Telltale Press anthology TRUTHS.

I’m currently gearing up for the Poetry Swindon Festival 4th – 8th October where I’ll be blogger-in-residence – what the heck’s that, I hear you say, and you’ll be he first to know once I’ve got my strategy in order!  But basically I’ll be attending workshops and readings and blogging about them in the only way I know how, on the Festival Chronicle blog (and bits and bobs here too). I see I’m also down to do a reading and then blog about it – should be interesting! More about the Poetry Swindon Festival to come on this blog – stand back – meanwhile bookings are open, and there’s a fab range of events lined up, all for a VERY modest price. Do come.

On Monday 29th October it’s my birthday – and I’ll be one of several poets reading a new poem at The Troubadour that night. More about this nearer the time.

Angst/

“Patience is the master key to every situation”

Another wonderful article from Brain Pickings, this time Rilke on ‘the lonely patience of creative work.’

Solitude and patience are essential to creative work, he says: “Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth.”

Since having a garden, and making my first steps towards growing things, I’m understanding this a lot better.

Just look at this – it’s a broccoli seed

A seed of a broccoli plant

I planted some of these last summer. Here are the seedlings, just planted out, in around July:

Broccoli seedlings

Little was I to know there are FAR too many here, because they get big…I had to pull up 5 plants in the end, and the bed still looked like this a month or two later, with plants nearly as tall as me:

The leaves were ravaged by caterpillars as we didn’t know to protect the plants from butterflies. Over the winter I really wondered if any of the plants would produce actual broccoli, or whether we might as well pull them up. They went through snow and cold and looked pretty sad, but by January there was broccoli appearing, much to my excitement:

The fruits of nature’s labour, and my own patience :

As metaphors go, it’s a good one I think. Those yellowing, rotting leaves on the ground in the penultimate photo pretty much represent the poems that died, but they didn’t prevent the good stuff from bearing fruit. And quite a lot of the ‘good stuff’ didn’t look at all good most of the time, so much so that I nearly gave up on the lot, which would have been a shame.

This year’s broccoli seedlings are growing, but I won’t say ‘I can’t wait’ for them to produce, because this time I know I can wait!

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Notes on a poetry residential at Garsdale

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.”

“Taking the line for a walk” – Paul Klee.

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From Picasso to Garsdale: news roundup

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.’)

  1. 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.
  2. 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).
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
Angst/

Roundup | a good poetry week

Bit of a roundup post. Last Tuesday evening at West Greenwich Library I got to hear some super poems inspired by the Mary Evans Picture Library, by Sarah Westcott (who I almost didn’t recognise because her new, chic pixie haircut was different to her Twitter pic!) Lorraine Mariner, Mick Delap, Peter Wallis and others – including Sarah’s father Richard, who was also kind enough to buy my pamphlet (!) I bought Lorraine Mariner’s collection There will be no more nonsense (Picador) and have romped through it. Recommended!

lorraine mariner - there will be no more nonsense

I wasn’t able to go to my regular Hastings Stanza group on Wednesday which was a shame, but on Thursday there was a bit of a poets’ reunion at Needlewriters from which I came away enthused – about recent writing, about our plans for Telltale Press, and about catching up with poet friends.

Then on Saturday I was in Brighton for a small group workshop given by Jackie Wills. The day started well (trains running!), until I realised I’d gone to the wrong address entirely. So after a leisurely twenty minute walk from the station, I then turned into a crazy woman trying to find her way across town to the actual venue – and let me tell you Brighton is hilly! So I arrived 40 minutes late, red in the face and carrying all the layers I’d taken off en route while overheating. I then started developing a headache from hell so by the end of the day I was very grateful for sharing a taxi back to the station with two of my fellow poets. I somehow managed to run for the train and then sat through the journey with my eyes closed, praying not to be sick.

And yet! I enjoyed the day very much – Jackie presented us with a series of exercises that were all based on poems by quite different poets, from Thomas Sheridan to Adrienne Rich. I came away with plenty of writing roughs that felt work-uppable.

Meanwhile I have The Rialto still to read properly. It was bittersweet to see two of my poems on a double page spread. It’s always brilliant to get something in The Rialto, but (and I don’t think this is unusual) part of me worries straight away that everything around it always seems so MUCH better. And instead of enjoying the moment I’m thinking how high the next hill is to climb. I did read a very insightful piece recently which I thought shed light on this – how focusing on goals means that satisfaction is always in the future or the past – The Problem of Living in the Present. It’s not about ‘mindfulness’. Worth a read if any of this resonates with you.