Tag: cinnamon press

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The view, looking back

Royal Opera House
The view, looking back

I’m just taking a moment to post what will probably be my last of 2018, and I have to be careful not to descend into a sort of ’round robin’ where I refer to myself in the third person, blurt out a list of frightening achievements and try to put a positive spin on any chronic ailments with a sad emoji, etc etc. Actually I have nothing new to declare on the chronic ailments front, so HURRAH for that. Frightening achievements? Hmmm… let me see. I think that’s also a no. BUT this was the year…

I joined the Poetry Book Society

… a ‘Black Friday’ deal had me. Then after receiving my first book, Raymond Antrobus’s The Perseverance I was on a train to a friends’ reunion and realised I’d forgotten the ‘wrapped pre-loved paperback’ for the Secret Santa. So I wrapped Ray’s half-read book in a page from the Guardian and sacrificed it. The recipient seemed delighted with the book though – my consolation, and a reminder to give poetry more often to people who don’t buy poetry books.

I went to the Forward Prize readings

…having heard they were ‘different’ to the T S Eliots, plus a poet friend pulled together a few of us to be fangirls and boys for amazingly talented and unbelievably modest Abigail Parry. She didn’t win, but I loved the readings, especially Danez Smith who read this poem as a spellbinding encore.

I didn’t book to go to the T S Eliot Prize Readings in January 2019

This is the first one I’ve missed in (I think) five or six years. But having been to the Forwards, and bearing in mind the difficulties of getting to the South Bank on a Sunday in January, I thought I’d give it a miss. In previous years the experience has been enhanced for me by attending Katy Evans Bush‘s workshop the day before the readings, in which the shortlisted books are discussed. I’m not sure if she’s running it this year, but if she I highly recommend it.

Telltale Press launched its first and last anthology

A superb way to wrap up the Telltale experiment (for now…)

Cinnamon published a pamphlet of mine

A huge relief to get this ‘out the door’, and almost as exciting as actual publication was being shortlisted for the Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition (oh that was last year, so excuse me for STILL milking it, he he.)

I wrote a booklet on how to get published in UK poetry mags

… and it’s selling a lot better than the pamphlet – surprise!

I was turned down for an ACE grant (again)

… however hard I try I can’t tick the right boxes.

I took part in a radio recording ‘with’ Alice Oswald

… OK, she was definitely in the recording. My little voice might not make the cut at all – but hey! I was there 🙂

Also …I went on a lovely Garsdale Retreat week with Ian Duhig, and blogged (blagged?) my way through the charming Swindon Poetry Festival, managed (just about) a ‘dry’ November, perfected my front crawl in the tiny local swimming pool, discovered the joy of yoga, sang in Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral and experienced my first live ballet at the Royal Opera House no less. All this and a fantastic summer in the garden. Life is good.

Although I’ve been writing poetry, I haven’t been sending poems out as much as previous years, which means I’ve only had a handful of poems published. But the first collection is starting to have a shape, and I have a good feeling about it (you have to, don’t you?) AND a good poet friend has got me into freelance features writing again, so there are things coming up on that front in 2019.

Thank you so much for reading, commenting on and supporting this blog. I hope the season of goodwill is good for you, wherever and however you spend it. Here’s to whatever you look forward to.

Robin xxx

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Pamphlet launch night

Launch of poetry pamphlets at Printers Playhouse Eastbourne

Stephen Bone and I had a blast last Thursday launching our pamphlets in Eastbourne, at the brilliant Printers Playhouse. The audience was a sea of fantastic poet friends, non-poet friends and supportive other-halves… we had excellent guest readings from our good friends Sarah Barnsley and Antony Mair, and what else can I say except massive thankyous to everyone who came, read, listened and bought.

If you couldn’t make it but would like to buy a signed copy of All the Relevant Gods, you can do so through this link – please just put your name and address in the ‘note to seller’ – and thank you!

Antony Mair at the launch of All the Relevant Gods
Antony Mair
Sarah Barnsley at the launch of All the Relevant Gods
Sarah Barnsley
Stephen Bone at the launch of Plainsong
Stephen Bone reads from his new pamphlet ‘Plainsong’ from Indigo Dreams

 

Robin Houghton at the launch of All the Relevant Gods
I think I was having a bit too much fun at this point!
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The new pamphlet is here | launch details

Box of poetry pamphlets

Exciting times. My third pamphlet (counting ‘Foot Wear‘ as one) All the Relevant Gods is here. A box of copies arrived last week, so now I have to go about emptying it!

There are reviews to solicit, copies to send out, readings to secure – I already have readings confirmed for Needlewriters Lewes in April, plus Reading and Cheltenham in 2019. I’m hoping to have some more in 2018 but it’s amazing how far ahead reading slots get booked. I ought to know this – at Needlewriters we’re booked up to 2020.

And of course the launch evening – which is shaping up into something fabulous. My far-too-modest poet friend Stephen Bone also has a new pamphlet out, Plainsong, from Indigo Dreams, so we’re having a joint launch party in Eastbourne at the suitably funky Printers Playhouse.

We’ve invited two horribly talented poets as our guest readers, and they’re probably going to show us up, but hey! At least in my dotage I’ll be able to tell people I shared the stage with fine poets Antony Mair and Sarah Barnsley…

Here’s the launch invitation, featuring a Titan Arum, a huge smelly flower about which Stephen writes most lustily!

Poetry book launch flyer

If you’re anywhere nearby, do come join the party and let us entertain you!

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Currently reading (part 1)

latest reading

Through the letterbox fell two parcels yesterday, one from Germany and one from Wales, although both in English, luckily.
A Bee’s Breakfast is the latest anthology from Beautiful Dragons, a Facebook-based collaboration and the brainchild of Rebecca Bilkau. This is the third ‘Dragons’ anthology I’ve contributed to and I think it has the most beautiful cover art of the series. Previous themes have included the table of elements (my element was Osmium, and I learnt a lot about it in my research!) and constellations. This time it’s all about the counties of the UK, so there are 126 contributors. I’ve only skimmed through so far but already I sense an underlying disquiet – it’s fascinating to see the country through the eyes of others, and particularly now when the burden of Brexit weighs heavy on the nation.

My county was the Isle of Wight, which I have at least visited a few times – I confess if the choice had been between Clackmannanshire and the The Copeland Islands (google it!) I’d have been a tad stumped.  I took a traditional tack and thought of Tennyson, but I had a bit of fun by taking his long poem ‘Enoch Arden’, doing a little ‘erasure’ on it and re-creating a new, short poem which I hope is suggestive of both the island itself and Tennyson’s own life. All the words are actually his – hopefully that counts as ‘found’ rather than ‘plagiarism’.

From Wales has come the latest issue of Envoi, from Cinnamon (my publisher!!) – and the excitement at seeing ‘First Salsa in Cusco’ on page 46 was almost eclipsed by getting my name on the cover! Yes! What writer doesn’t love a byline?? ‘First Salsa’ has been a loooong time in the fermentation – the first drafts were written in December 2012. Anyway, it’s out there now, and I actually still like it, so it will probably be the oldest poem in the new pamphlet.

And finally, Granta, which I usually start by reading the photo journalism and poems, although this issue is the latest special featuring the ‘Best of Young American Novelists’. So fiction all the way. I like the fact that Granta is always introducing me to new work often by people whose names are new to me. It feels exotic, feels mind-opening. It also tends to stay by my bedside until the next issue arrives, as a short story is the most I can manage before falling asleep.

 

Angst/

A new pamphlet & all the angst of getting there

getting the pamphlet together

It’s taken a while coming but I’ve found a home for my second pamphlet, ‘All the Relevant Gods’. Those lovely, hardworking folks at Cinnamon Press (Jan Fortune and team) have offered to publish it, due out early next year.

What I’m feeling right now is a mix of gratitude and relief, and a wonderful sense of calm – now I can move on and focus properly on new writing and maybe even work up some of those projects I’ve started in my mind but not progressed.

I also think the process of getting to this point has made me grow up a bit.

I had no idea it would take so long to herd a bunch of poems into a pamphlet, at least, one that a publisher would take a punt on. I’ve always angsted about what my problem could possibly be. I’ve driven friends mad over a pint, moaning about this and that. Despite the odd shortlisting (which regular readers of this blog know, I  – rightly or wrongly – tend not to set much store by), my efforts in pamphlet competitions have always been unsuccessful. But then again I suppose I’ve never believed 100% in my submissions (‘I don’t have a theme!’  ‘I have some themed poems but not enough!’ ‘I don’t have a voice!’).

But three things happened in the last year.

First of all I emailed a publisher I really respect to ask if they would consider reading my pamphlet (apologetically, as I know unsolicited submissions can be a pain) and they agreed to consider it. Although they didn’t take it, the response was kind and included a little feedback. Crucially, I was invited to re-submit once I had worked it up a bit more. This was encouraging – a chink of light at the end of the tunnel. I realised I’d never tried my pamphlet on anyone other than in competitions, and maybe sending it on spec was a gentler, less stressful way in.

Then I sent the same group of poems to a poet/editor and paid for a detailed critique. (I say I paid, but I really want to thank New Writing South here – they have supported me in many ways, not least of all with a modest but crucial grant for mentoring. Huge kudos to them.) The feedback was certainly detailed, and full of suggestions of poets to read and how I might improve the individual poems and the manuscript generally. This was useful – I tried hard to take both good and bad comments on board and forced myself to be grown-up about it, but the report was topped and tailed with phrases like ‘disappointing’ and ‘not the standard required for publication as a pamphlet.’ I couldn’t help feeling knocked-back, and it was several months before I was able to look at the poems again and see what could be improved. It didn’t help that most of them had been published in magazines, which I took to mean they are ‘good’ in some way. But beware – if you also get that feeling when you get a poem published, or it wins something, – ‘it must be good!’ – that feeling is a false friend! I won’t even go into the whole ‘it’s all subjective’ thing here because poets tell ourselves that all the time and it doesn’t always help 🙂

Eventually, after redrafts, and with several pamphlet competition deadlines and reading windows approaching, I asked another poet who I really admire to help me work the manuscript up (paid for with the rest of my NWS grant) . She read the poems. We then spent a long afternoon going through the poems themselves, the ordering, themes, which were weaker, which would work better first or last, and so on. There were criticisms I’d heard before and hadn’t liked (but when you hear the same thing from different sources – hmm!), there were poems I was determined to keep in but ended up removing, there were a few unpublished/new poems that I hadn’t tested on magazines but followed my instinct and included. Being familiar with this poet’s work and meeting face to face made a huge difference.

So something I’ve taken from all this is that I don’t always respond well to the written word alone. This is quite an admission, given my championing of online communication for the last twenty years. And I know that asking for a critique is not asking for praise. You need to know what’s not working. And yet we hear the written word in our heads, and (for me anyway) anything negative -especially if we don’t like the tone of it! – can jump out and take on a far greater significance than anything positive. When the same comments are delivered face to face, with space for all that entails – tone of voice, empathic feedback, the possibility of discussion and clarification, for me this is a marvellous thing.

The reworked pamphlet felt good. I sent it out. It’s going to be published. When I think of all the workshopping groups, magazine editors and poet friends who have encouraged and helped me, and of course you, for reading this blog with its warts and all, I’m truly grateful. There was a huge dollop of luck involved (there always is!) but if any of this sounds familiar, if you’re in the position I was, I would say it is as much to do with perseverance and finding a way to negotiate criticism – in such a way that you make it work for you, without chipping away at your confidence.

Angst/

What makes you buy (poetry)?

First, a little story about sales.

My first ever job was as a Saturday girl in the Lilley & Skinner shoe shop on London’s Oxford Street. I remember one of my first ‘training’ sessions with the supervisor, in which he told each of us our sales targets for shoes, matching handbags and ‘sundries’ – everything from shoe-trees to spray protector. We were supposed to push them quite aggressively. I asked ‘what if the customer says they’ve already got the spray protector?’ His answer: ‘Tell them it’s new on the market.’ ‘But what if they were here last week and bought this actual same spray protector?’ ‘Tell them it’s new on the market.’

This taught me two things: 1) I was never going to do well in that job and 2) I never, ever wanted to work in sales.

Little did I know that in the 21st century everyone would work in sales, whether we wanted to or not. (Nor did I know that footwear would actually provide the most significant turning point in my life, but that’s another story.)

The problem (still) with ‘sales’ is that we’re bombarded with information about ‘how to sell’. The first question on people’s lips whenever they find out I have a background in marketing is how can I sell my pamphlet/get more people to my readings/increase sales? It sometimes feels as if people are expecting some kind of magic bullet. My answer is invariably that you have to turn the question around.

It’s not a question of what sells, it’s a question of what people buy. And I don’t just mean ‘people buy benefits not features’ – sure they do, but that’s not the whole picture. The real question is, what makes people part with their hard-earned dosh?

Now a sales person will tell you people buy out of fear: fear of missing out (‘buy now before the price increase!’), fear of losing their home/income/possessions/professional standing etc (insurance), fear of feeling inadequate or out of step with peers, fear of their kids feeling inadequate or out of step with peers, fear of feeling left behind/old/different, (probably covers all consumer goods) fear of just about anything that can be painted as negative or threatening to one’s way of life or beliefs, substantiated or not (politics), fear of illness/pain/stress/life – you get the picture.

Of course this is a simplified picture. Fear is the age-old, lazy way to sell.  So what are the other reasons we buy? To get into the head of someone who might consider buying your book/pamphlet/services/whatever, look at any similar things you’ve spent your money on recently and ask yourself what motivated you to buy. For example, here’s where my poetry pennies have gone recently:

1) Two tickets for the Poetry Trust Poetry Prom at Snape Maltings in August. My husband is a musician and had been reading a biography of Benjamin Britten. He’d never been to Suffolk, and fancied a short break there to do the Britten trail.  I’d heard so much about the East Anglian poetry scene so wondered if there was something we could go to – found the August Poetry Prom, saw it was John Hegley and Ian McMillan, knew it would be something we’d both enjoy. The dates worked. Done deal.

Reasons for buying: reputation made me search for events at Snape, it was serendipity/luck that the dates worked, the poets appearing were known to me as being accessible for a non-poetry audience, and good seats were available at a fair price. If the price had been higher we would still have booked, because all the other factors made this event very attractive. Price is often seen as the most decisive factor in determining sales, but sometimes its role is negligible.

2) A copy of Jeremy Page’s new collection Closing Time (Pindrop Press, £9.99).

Reasons for buying: I was at the launch event and know Jeremy (we live in the same town and are both involved in the Needlewriters) – so I suppose you could class that reason as personal connection/loyalty, plus I also know Jo Hemmant of Pindrop Press. All the same, it’s hard to support every writer you know or always buy a copy if you go to a launch – it can get a tad expensive. There were other factors – I enjoyed Jeremy’s reading and was genuinely curious to read the whole collection, the book also looks and feels attractive and I’m a sucker for excellent production quality (more of this later). The price also seemed fair. It’s rare that I find a poetry book over-priced, to be honest, have you?

3) A donation to Cinnamon Press (£10). I wanted to mention this because I think asking for donations is both an under-utilised tactic but also requiring very delicate navigation. You could write an entire blog on the subject but I just want to offer up one example. I was browsing the Cinnamon website and followed a link to ‘Cinnamon Friends.’ You can visit this page to find out more, but basically two Cinnamon authors have got together to help fundraise for the press, so it can ‘stay innovative, independent and sustainable’. How wonderful is that? Not only does it say to me ‘this is a press that clearly values and supports its authors in such a way that they want to give something back’, but the language of the page does not cajole or make the reader feel guilty or anxious.

Too often, we’re told that a poetry press can only survive if we all buy more of its books and help prevent it going under, or the owner of the press has sold their house/children/life for the cause of the press and the least we can do is to buy one damn book... I am sympathetic, truly! But does it feel good to buy out of guilt? Not for me. I’m after that sense of well-being that comes from giving willingly, from helping people who are doing a great (tough) job but not asking me to feel bad that it’s a struggle.  I want to feel my donation (however small) makes a difference – but I need to be shown that, not told it. I want to feel special in some way, not a person on a mailing list. It’s the kind of thing that large charities, for example, can sometimes get wrong.

Reasons for the donation: I was impressed with the initiative, the page oozes a gentle confidence and I was made to feel my donation would be genuinely appreciated, I was offered many different ways to donate/support and it was quick and easy. I was also in a good mood and probably thinking about my own foray into publishing and how nice it would be to get a donation out of the blue. I haven’t been pestered for more, but I did get a personal thank you, all of which makes me inclined to do it again. You could say my reasons were that it felt good, I liked what it said about the press, it was easy to do and the timing was right.

4) A copy of the Little Magazine issue 1110 from Miel. No, I hadn’t heard of Miel either – I followed a link from someone’s tweet – so quickly I can’t remember who it was – singing the praises of something she’d just got in the post from this Belgian outfit and how beautiful it was. The stationery/letterpress geek in me was getting excited as I explored the site, and almost bought a chapbook as well as the mag – until I realised with the shipping costs it was a bit extravagant. So I just went for for little mag, and can’t wait to have it in my hands.

Reasons for buying: the promise as presented on the website appealed to me (lovely production/paper/print), the serendipity of the unknown, I was curious about it and it was fairly low risk (10 euros). It was an impulse, the kind that has often paid off in the past.

This has been a long post – thank you for staying with me. I’m interested to know what makes you part with your poetry money – do you respond to the guilt thing, and how does it make you feel? Do you agree that personal connection is a huge factor? Is it terribly shallow of me to be affected by the production quality of a book? What do you think about asking for donations (a huge area I know)? Do you agree that key to making sales is at least trying to understand people’s motivations for buying?