clare best – Robin Houghton

Angst/ 04/02/2025

Readings, giving myself a talking-to and some early Spring cleaning

Actually January was pretty good overall. Not for the pelargoniums in the garden that have been reduced to a frostbitten mess. But our goldfish Brahms and Liszt have both been spotted alive and well so the cold snaps haven’t done for them yet. Also I’ve been illness-free (write it!) and the collection is coming along.

This time last week I was in London at the very characterful Club for Acts and Actors for Red Door Poets’ winter party, reading with Simon Madrell, Red Door Poets including Mary Mulholland and a host of excellent open-mic-ers. I was invited by Gillie Robic, and it was a delight to meet up with poet friends I haven’t seen in a while, including Jill Abram, Hilaire, Mary Allen, Chaucer Cameron, Helen Dewbery, Tom Cunliffe, and fellow Live Canon ‘pamphleteer’ Katie Griffiths. It’s really put me in the mood for more readings, which is lucky because I have a few lined up for later in the year when the book is out.

A few weeks ago was the Needlewriters in Lewes and it was so good to hear Clare Best and Jeremy Page read, plus meeting up with my Lewes-area poet mates. These poetry events are very cockle-warming I find, especially at this time of year when I really need to get out and beat the cold weather and dark evenings.

Luckily February always brings lovely things in this household – a birthday, a wedding anniversary and the promise of Spring in the offing. I’ve already been spring-cleaning my poetry folders, and feeling rather humbled as regards my poor submissions habit. I seem to have a reputation as a submissions queen, because of my spreadsheet. But there’s that expression ‘physician heal thyself’ (where the heck does that come from?). A number of people have accosted me recently to ask about magazine submissions, and I’ve had to admit I haven’t submitted anything much for ages. Why? I suppose it’s partly because I feel there are so many up and coming poets whose work is appearing everywhere, I’m feeling my work might be a bit ‘has been’. But I know that’s stupid really, because for all the ‘fast fashion’ that exists in the poetry world, decent writing is still appreciated. Plus, my first collection is about to launch, so this is no time to wallow in self-flagellation. I guess I’m making excuses for being a bit lazy. Having Sharon Black of Pindrop Press critique my poems for the collection, in great detail, has given me a bit of a kick up the bum I suppose. As a result, I’ve pulled together all the poems I’ve written over the last few years that I’ve abandoned, sometimes after multiple failed submissions, others that I just lost interest in too soon, and have them now all in a 2025 folder ‘to be worked up’. There are over seventy poems or proto-poems in that folder. I picked one out randomly and (without planning to) spent a whole day playing with it. I have plenty of material to revisit!

Blog/ 08/11/2023

Currently reading, plus an anthology & a contract

It’s been a busy few weeks. Planet Poetry is two episodes into Season 4 and I’ve currently got three interviews to record before Christmas. The first is with Paul Stephenson, whose debut collection Hard Drive (Carcanet) comes with gold-plated reviews – and all well-deserved in my opinion. If this book doesn’t make the shortlists next year we might as well all give up now. Buy the book and even better still! listen to the poddy and watch out for the interview.

The launch event for the Hastings Stanza Anthology last month was standing room only, and we were thrilled to raise several hundred pounds for the brilliant Refugee Buddy Project. Copies are still available (ask me) and since we’ve covered our costs all sales income now goes to the Project. The cover features a painting by the multi-talented Judith Shaw and there’s lots of lovely work in this book as you can see from the below.

I went to the London launch of Clare Best‘s new collection Beyond the Gate last month and it was a super evening. Unfortunately, having to leave to catch a train while Clare was still surrounded by a crowd of acolytes, I was delighted when my signed copy arrived in the post. It’s an excellent collection. I do love Clare’s work.

Also on my ‘to be read’ pile: Isabel Galleymore Significant Other (Carcanet) and Jane Clarke A Change in the Air (Bloodaxe), both poets I’m going to be interviewing soon for the podcast. Jane’s book was shortlisted for the Forward Prize this year and is on the TS Eliot shortlist. And I’m pretty sure Isabel’s collection was on the shortlists a couple of years ago.

Good news on the submissions front – Pindrop Press has offered to publish my collection next year and I’ve signed the contract, so I guess it’s official. I’ve been so impressed with editor Sharon Black’s communication and enthusiasm. I feel very fortunate indeed, and in safe hands.

Alongside the poetry, I’m reading plenty of novels these days, mostly to learn something about what makes an enthralling historical & general mystery/thriller, as that’s basically what I’m writing. I’ve developed a bad Abebooks/ World of Books habit, but the problem is that a lot of novels (actually, most of them) just don’t excite me enough beyond the first chapter, and I’m either left with bookshelves bulging with stuff I don’t want to read or having to take bagfuls of books down the charity shops. So I’ve bought a Kindle. I never thought I would, but actually it means I can get through a lot more novels without having to house the actual books, or even carry them around. And because it’s easier take with me everywhere, or read in bed, I read more books right to the end. I get it out everywhere I used to get my phone out – on train platforms, on trains and buses, in hospital waiting areas etc. I like it a lot. And I’m doing far less doom-scrolling.

Meanwhile Christmas is coming and with it all the concerts. Posters to design, programmes to produce, music to learn etc. And Nick and I have several Lewes Singers gigs and two one-day workshops in the early part of 2024, so that’s another load of music-sourcing, event promotion, communicating with participants, tea-making etc etc. Never a dull moment, teehee.

Btw I’m singing in a big Verdi Requiem this coming Saturday 11th November at All Saints Hove. It’s big, blowsy, dramatic stuff! Come and listen!

Blog/ 10/10/2023

All kinds of poetry news and shenanigans

"Bird in a Wilderness" Hastings Stanza Poetry Anthology

I like the word shenanigans, don’t you? Although as I just check its meaning I see it can mean underhand goings-on. I don’t have anything underhand to report, but a few things happening now that Autumn is kicking in (just). And my birthday is approaching – always a time of fluidity and change.

Poem submissions

The blockage has finally cleared! Poems that had been gathering dust in numerous in-trays have finally come back to me, all with a polite ‘no thanks’ attached. Oh well. Although having said that, I’ve two poems forthcoming in South magazine and another two in the Hastings Stanza Anthology ‘Bird in a Wilderness’ which we’re launching on Friday October 20 at The White Rock Hotel, Hastings at 7 pm – if you’re anywhere near, do come! The book is partly in aid of The Refugee Buddy Project that does wonderful work in welcoming refugees in the Hastings area.

Readings/launches

Clare Best is launching her new book Beyond the Gate from Worple Press this evening in London, compered by none other than my old poddy mate Peter Kenny, so I am braving the train journey north and dodging the replacement buses to be there.

On Thursday I’m looking forward to Needlewriters in Lewes, which I haven’t managed to get to for a while, and it’s always a lovely social Lewes event. Reading from their new collections will be Janet Sutherland and Richard Skinner.

Also on Thursday is the ‘season opener’ of Planet Poetry Season Four – yup! We’re still going strong…and as befits the first episode we have a special guest… poetry royalty, you could say…

Novel stuff

My ‘hot new bestseller’ is at a crucial stage – basically I’m re-writing the ending. It will be much better for it, and transition coolly into Book Two. I’m a month behind schedule but will definitely be submitting to agents before the end of October.

Music stuff

My choir the Lewes Singers has its concert this coming Saturday which I know will be lovely, but that doesn’t stop me checking bookings every day and hoping we will cover our costs with ticket sales! Next month I’ll be taking part in a big Verdi Requiem in Brighton with two big choirs which will be fun. Plus, on my birthday can you believe, I’ve been press-ganged by a friend to take part in one of her musical soirees in which friends and neighbours agree to listen to various musical turns by amateurs. So I’ll be donning some dreadful costume and hamming it up on something called ‘The Stepsisters’ Lament’. Gawds, I can’t believe I’m admitting to it.

Competitions/ 03/10/2022

National Poetry Day (week of)

So Thursday is National Poetry Day, which I shall be celebrating with my Hastings Stanza group, doing what poets do… agonising over line-breaks, commas and what have you.

Before that though, on Wednesday, I’ll be at the Fisherman’s Club for the prize readings of a local competition I was a judge for, on the theme of ‘Eastbourne and the Environment’. A theme that was interpreted in some interesting ways! Hastings Stanza member Jackie Hutchinson is among the winners, so I’m looking forward to hearing her winning poem.

Last week I was in Lewes for the launch of The Frogmore Papers‘ 100th issue, an amazing feat, and under the editorship of Jeremy Page the whole time. We heard readings from some of the contributors and from co-founder Andre Evans on how it all began in a cafe in Folkestone. It’s a lovely story, and having heard it a few times it’s now taken on almost mythic status, up there with Aeneas crossing the Mediterranean to found the city of Rome, or Phil Knight making rubber outsoles on his mum’s waffle machine for the first Nike trainers. Anyway, having read the edition from cover to cover I can confirm it’s a fine book – and let’s face it, some of our ‘little magazines’ coming in at 90 pages or more deserve to be called books. On that subject, I can also recommend Prole 33 which recently arrived, weighing in at 140 pages (although about half of it is short stories.)

The Lewes event was also the launch of Clare Best‘s new collection, End of Season (Fine di Stagione), published by the Frogmore Press, in which the poems are presented in both English and Italian. It was lovely to hear both Clare and Jeremy reading the poems in both languages – very evocative. I’m enjoying the book especially as it is about a beautiful place on Lake Maggiore called Cannero where Nick and I stayed for a week back in 2019 (on Clare’s recommendation).

Meanwhile, if you’re a member of the Poetry Society you may notice a piece I’ve written for Poetry News on magazines’ submissions windows, which should be hitting your doormat this week.

Nothing much to report on the new writing front, although I have just sent out another tranche of poems that have been languishing in the ‘am I ever going to go back to working on these or shall I just send them out’ pile. So that’s 22 poems out to magazines at the moment, and one pamphlet submission.

Happy National Poetry ~~Day~~ Week!

At the launch of Frogmore Papers 100 and ‘End of the Season’: Andre Evans, Neil Gower, Jeremy Page, Clare Best, Alexandra Loske and Peter Stewart

Blog/ 18/11/201918/11/2019

Recent reading

I’ve got into a rhythm of reading a Canto of Dante’s Purgatory each night before falling asleep, sometimes I get through the chapter commentary & notes too, sometimes not. If I’m too tired to finish the Canto I have to start it again the next day. Purgatorio is a more complex read than Inferno. There are just as many references to people and politics of the time, requiring explanation, but it seems to me there’s more characterisation and symbolism to get one’s head around, not to mention the philosophical wondering it’s sent me on.

Alongside this I’ve had a number of poetry collections on the go recently. Perhaps I’m getting more reading done this month because I’m not drinking alcohol? I can’t really see the connection, but I’m struggling to notice any other benefits to Dry November except the feeling of smug satisfaction that I can do it, if I put my mind to it. I hope I’m not jinxing it by making that claim when there are twelve days to go. Anyway, I wish I could commune with my internal organs and ask them if they’re feeling detoxified or rejuvenated.

Getting to the point (I know! finally!), here’s a roundup…

Each Other by Clare Best

Clare Best, Each Other (Waterloo Press £12)

I always make sure I settle down with a nice ~~glass of wine~~ cup of tea before delving into a new collection from Clare, because I know I’ll be reading it in one go. She manages to write with such punch, and yet it’s so elegantly understated. The second half of the book is the title sequence, charting a relationship from courtship to old age. Somehow Clare gets to the (sometimes heartbreaking) bottom of the subject with both grace and humour. The first section contains some beautiful, quite personal poems honouring family ties, love and loss. ‘In February’ is especially moving – ‘You’re introduced to angels […] look, they welcome you with song and wine/ as I would, darling. But I must stay behind.’

A Second Whisper by Lynne Hjelmgaard

Lynne Hjelmgaard, A Second Whisper (Seren, £9.99)

Another new release, from another poet friend (disclosure!) In reading many of these poems I feel I’m being invited into a very private space in which the poet mourns the loss of her husband and the subsequent journey that takes her into another loving relationship which also ends in that partner’s death. If that sounds morbid then it’s not – there is more celebration than sadness here, and the reader is left with a strong sense of love, gratitude and hope. Like Clare Best, Lynne has a connection with nature that permeates her explorations of human relationships. ‘Planted on either side of the garden / they slowly inch their way closer/until finally (a century or two later)/ the fir leans into its beloved palm.’ (‘Three Tree Poem’).

Head On by Clare Shaw

Clare Shaw, Head On (Bloodaxe 2012, £8.95)

The book’s blurb tells us we’re in for ‘interweaving themes of personal and political conflict’ and indeed you’re straight into this from the first poem, the powerful ‘I do not believe in silence’, with its repeated ‘because..’ and the turn from ‘I do not believe..’ into the positive: ‘I believe in the heart and its beat / and its bleep and the dance of the trace / on the screen…’ This rhythmic quality is a kind of drumbeat that drives the whole collection. The subject matter is often raw – injustices, dementia, rape, miscarriage – but it also bursts with passion and pure love:

‘How love must, at all costs,

be answered. We have answered
and so have a million before us
and each of their names is a vow.

So now I can tell you, quite simply
you are the house I will live in’

(‘Vow’)

Something that surprised me was the number of dactyls, particularly from the poem ‘A withered brown flower takes on a new colour’ (title dactylic in itself) to the end of the book. There was something about putting these poems back-to-back that meant the metre became a stumbling block in my reading of them. Still a wow of a book though.

The main reason I ordered Head On was because Clare’s one of the tutors at Kim Moore’s Poetry Carousel that I’m going to next month. Similarly, I’ve ordered books by David Tait and Malika Booker, to get at least a feel for their work. So more on those collections in another post.

Blog/ 05/11/2018

The new ‘How to’ guide is finally done…

Things have been a bit quiet on this blog for the last month, mainly because I’ve been full-on with the new booklet which arrived from the printers today – hurrah! More about that below… a quick zip through other news:

Workshops, readings etc

Last month I went up to London for a Coffee-House Poetry workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe over two Sunday afternoons. The subject was ‘snow’ and all its freezing friends. We were asked to write a ‘lyric essay’ as homework, which resulted in my researching the myriad words for snow according to (no, not Inuit – that’s a myth) SKIERS. It took me back to my snowboarding days (sigh) and phrases like ‘crud’, ‘corduroy’ and ‘mash potato’. There were a number of new ones on me too. ‘Sierra Cement’ for starters. Great fun. Did I write anything that could be worked up into anything? Not sure really but at least it got me writing.

I’ve been to some lovely readings this month: at Needlewriters the very talented Liz Bahs read from her pamphlet Greyhound Night Service (Maquette) (which is on my pile to read, together with about ten other books) and announced that very day she’d just heard that Pindrop Press are to publish her first full collection next year. Great news and long-deserved. Then a triple launch for Lewes writers Jeremy Page (London Calling published by Cultured Llama is a book of short and flash fiction and what I’ve read so far has been very funny), Kay Syrad (Inland – Cinnamon Press – and another on my to read list!) and Clare Best. Clare’s memoir, The Missing List (Linen Press), has been many years in the writing. Clare’s beautiful prose, her presentation of the narrative through fragments, lists, descriptions of cine films and the melding of the distant and near-pasts is mesmeric. The slow revealing of the truth painfully mirrors the process of the author as she tries to recall conversations and make sense of what happened. Extraordinary.

On 29th October I read a poem at the Troubadour in London – we’d been asked to write something especially for the evening so since it was my birthday I went with a little ‘found’ poem gleaned from the Hallmark.com website. I was inspired by knowing that Zaffar Kunial used to work as a copywriter for Hallmark. Anyway, DESPITE my having stumbled on the last line (I believe it was the poetry reading equivalent of ‘stacking it’) I had at least half a dozen people come up to me during the evening to say they enjoyed it. Unprecedented! Maybe my stumble was still on my mind last Friday when I read alongside Jeremy Page and Peter Philips at Camden Poetry, a regular poetry event to raise money for the London homeless. It was a small audience, and rather quiet – I felt my confidence wavering somewhat, and didn’t sell any books. Perhaps I chose the wrong poems to read. Later this month I’m off to Chichester Open Mic hosted by Barry Smith, which I’ve been told attracts a warm and full crowd, so I shall look forward to it.

Declined … again

So my carefully (I thought) composed ‘Develop your creative practice’ application to the Arts Council was rejected. I was asking for a modest contribution towards the costs of mentoring, to help me put together a first collection. The judgement was that they ‘preferred other projects’. Poor old page poetry just isn’t exciting enough I guess. It’s a minor setback but of course a bit annoying. Meanwhile I’ve had work rejected from The Poetry Review (am still trying!) and there are poems still on the slush pile at three other journals – one since February. Ho hum!

The Booklet!

Yes I’m calling it that, rather than ‘book’, so as not to raise expectations unreasonably. Although I’m rather proud of its 32 pages. A Guide to Getting Published in UK Poetry Magazines is now published on the Telltale Press imprint and orders are being taken as I type, thanks to some lovely people retweeting it (thanks chaps!). I had a lot of fun compiling it. Asking magazine editors for their thoughts on various things and reading the replies was one of the funnest things. Wrestling with the layout, edits and other tech issues was less fun, BUT I had the eagle-eyed and massively supportive Sarah Barnsley on my side, finding stray spaces and querying dodgy grammar in her thorough but very polite fashion. I hope you like the result!! I’ve got a landing page up here where you can buy it. Please forgive all the ‘about the author’ puffery, but I felt the need to parade my creds, as it were, in order to sell the darn book.

If you’re on my list for the quarterly submissions windows updates, you’ll get an email about it this week. Now for the really tricky bit: selling the bejesus out of it. It’s a groovy stocking filler! Tell your poetry writing friends!

Blog/ 08/07/2017

Readings, launches & other poetry news

There’s been a flurry of poetry events lately and lovely things happening.

Hastings Stanza reading

A couple of weeks back the Hastings Poetry Stanza had its second evening of readings as part of the St Leonards Festival. Somehow we all crammed into the bijou bookshop The Bookkeeper, the proprietors of which are extremely supportive of local poetry and generously laid on drinks and nibbles. The heard a wonderful variety of styles and subject matter, from Gavin Martin’s hilarious riff-rant on Liam Fox to some understated and moving work from Andrea Samuelson.

Huge thanks as ever to Antony Mair for managing everything so calmly and efficiently. A most convivial (& warm in every sense of the word) event – and somehow I managed to spill three glasses of wine before a drop had even passed my lips. Serves me right for wearing white trousers.

Clare Best book launch

Last Thursday I was at the newly-opened Depot in Lewes on what felt like the hottest day of the year for the launch of Springlines, the book of Clare Best’s collaboration with artist Mary Ann Aytoun-Ellis. We heard some short readings, enjoyed a rolling slide show of the photos and artwork from the book, shots of Clare’s notebooks (I enjoyed these particularly!) plus photos of previous events around the project. Two years ago I saw the exhibition at Glyndebourne of some of Mary Ann’s paintings and Clare’s poems and it was magnificent. Some of these, together with new work, is currently on show at Tunbridge Wells Museum. Do go see it if you’re anywhere nearby.

In the capacity of my ‘day job’ I’ve recently finished a revamp of Clare’s website – also worth a visit, especially for the lovely recordings Clare has made of several of her poems.

A bit about singing

By the way I passed my singing exam – despite a pathetic showing in the sight-reading test I managed to ‘perform’ the songs convincingly. Today I’m singing with Eastbourne Choral Society in their summer concert (summer is traditionally ‘easy listening’ – show medleys, a bit of Gilbert & Sullivan, John Rutter’s folk-song medley ‘Sprig of Thyme’ etc). It sometimes seems as if both choral singing and poetry take a hiatus in the summer on the assumption that no-one is around during the school holidays, so there’s inevitably a big spree of launches/readings/concerts/festivals before the end of June & July.

Speaking of which…

Magma launch

Magma 68 is having a launch event at the London Review Bookshop on Friday 28th July. I’m hoping to combine reading a poem there with a visit to the Hokusai exhibition at the British Museum as it’s just around the corner from the bookshop. It’s the first time I’ve had a poem in Magma so I’m excited about this.

A bit about acceptances & rejections

I’ve had a huge amount of luck this year and it’s a strange feeling to have so many poems in the ‘forthcoming’ pile.

This week I heard that The Rialto are taking two poems for their August issue. This kind of news is always reassuring. Believe me, I get as many rejections as the next poet – I make a point of mentioning all of them here in order to show the real situation, not a sugar-coated one. But I also mention the acceptances, to show that persistence can sometimes pay off. The two poems that The Rialto liked have both been rejected elsewhere, one in particular has been floating around for three years, been rejected by six magazines and got nowhere in two competitions. I have certainly tweaked it from time to time, in between sending out. But not substantially.

I currently have five poems in the ‘recently rejected/review and re-send’ file – three came back from The Poetry Review (I can only try!), one from The Rialto and one from Poetry News. It’s now a question of do I have anything newer that’s ready to go, or do I ‘review and re-send’? Historically I tend not to send something out right away but let it sit and stew for at least a few months. So maybe I’ve answered my own question there.

Blog/ 15/08/2016

Seven Questions for Poets #1 – Clare Best

A new series begins here. I thought I’d have a fun Q & A with some of my poet friends, throwing them each seven thorny questions and seeing what comes back. Huge thanks to everyone for playing the game. Stand by for some interesting answers!

First up – Clare Best. Clare is author of Treasure Ground (HappenStance 2009), Excisions (Waterloo Press 2011), Breastless (Pighog 2011) and Cell (Frogmore Press 2015). She’s based in Lewes, which is really how I met her. I’ve had the privilege of taking part in workshops with Clare and also helping out at the Needlewriters, the writers’ collective she co-founded. Clare has a great sense of fun and was quick to rise to the seven question challenge!

1 – What was the last poetry book you read, that you would recommend?

The Long Haul by Alan Buckley (HappenStance 2016) – a beautiful, tightly-worked pamphlet. Very skilled, heartfelt, complete poems, and slow-cooked. Thoroughly recommended. I’m always reading Raymond Carver’s A New Path to the Waterfall and find more in it at each sitting – I’m a big fan of Carver.

2 – Philip Larkin and Dannie Abse are both alleged to have said they only wrote one or two decent poems a year. How is it for you?

The problem is you don’t really know what is likely to be at all decent until quite a while down the line! Probably one to three a year that I feel content with – enough to leave them alone. Lots get chucked out early on, most are just abandoned at some point. There’s a lot of starting…

3 – Do you enter poetry competitions?

From time to time, not often. I prefer sending to mags and journals on the whole, it feels less impersonal.

4 – If someone has never read any poetry, where would you suggest they start?

I think I’d point them towards the Bloodaxe anthologies: Staying Alive; Being Alive; Being Human and Anthony Wilson’s Lifesaving Poems. All are excellent. Oh, and Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience.

5 – You’re asked to give a reading at the Royal Festival Hall, to thousands of people. What goes through your mind?

Honestly: at first, well, sheer delight – the fear etc will come later. Then, What the hell am I going to wear?

6 Why is end-rhyme considered a good thing in performance poetry, but rarely found in contemporary magazines?

Good question. There are quite a few odd differences in taste and fashion between the various presentations of poetry. I think if you see end-rhymed poetry on the page first, the end-rhyme sticks out but if you hear it first and read it afterwards you remember the sounds as pleasurable. We probably need clear sound-patterning more in poetry we first encounter through our ears.

7 – A murmuration of starlings, a murder of crows etc – what would you call a group of poets?

Depends on the group of poets. 😉 But how about a ‘plunder’ of poets?

QUICK PLUG: Clare Best is reading in Edinburgh this Wednesday 17th August, at the Fruitmarket Gallery, alongside Tessa Berring, Isobel Dixon, Alan Gillis, Eliza Kentridge and Rob A. Mackenzie. The reading will include poems responding to the gallery’s current exhibition by Mexican artist Damian Ortega. Doors 7pm – drinks, exhibition. Readings 7.30pm. FREE EVENT! Bar, art, poetry and the special Fruitmarket Gallery festival atmosphere.

Blog/ 13/12/2015

The Reading List, week 11 – Clare Best’s ‘Cell’

It seems my blog posts of ‘micro reviews’ have set some sort of trend – who’d have thought? Anyway, I haven’t posted one for a couple of weeks as other aspects of LIFE have rather taken priority. The original idea to read a book a day was ambitious, but the blogging of the reviews has proven to be the hardest bit, and something I haven’t always managed to find time for. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading.

Rather than waiting until I have the time to write three or more reviews at once, I think I’ll sometimes just get them out singly. So coming up soon – thoughts on Mark Doty’s T S Eliot Prize-nominated Deep Lane (Cape) and Wendy Pratt’s pamphlet Lapstrake (Flarestack). But today I’ll focus on one pamphlet.

Cell – Clare Best & Michaela Ridgway (Frogmore Press 2015)

An unusual pamphlet, both in physical form and concept. Clare Best’s award-winning sequence ‘Cell’ is in the voice of Christine Carpenter, a 14 year old girl who, in 1329, took a vow of ‘solitary devotion’ and became an anchoress. Accompanying the sequence are a number of powerful pen and charcoal sketches of the human (female) form by Michaela Ridgway (herself an accomplished poet).

In the unfolding and re-folding of the single sheet, you create a box-like space which represents the cell in which the girl spent over 1,000 days. From there, following the sequence isn’t easy – each is numbered in Roman numerals, which took me a few moments to work out (come on then – CCCMLXXI? Quick!) Having been at the launch event, I know from Clare’s reading that the numerals represent the number of days since the girl’s incarceration. Otherwise that too would need some work on the part of the reader.

And that’s surely the point – reading ‘Cell’ was like following a set of clues, deciphering a horrible secret – in figuring out the folding and the ordering, observing the contortions of the figures, the smudged-out body parts that seem to overstuff their pages, even before reading we have to do a little work, but not very much in face of what we’re about to witness in the poems. We are primed to ‘solve’ the mystery. And a mystery it is, certainly to present-day readers, why a young girl would go willingly into such a contract.

Just one day, Mother, since you
kissed my brow, my cheeks and chin.
I must not love the window,
must protect my sinful heart. (II)

In reading Christine’s words and thoughts it’s hard not to be moved – not just by the pathos of the situation, but also the girl’s ongoing reflection in terms of her belief (having perhaps no other framework to cling to) even as she passes from excitement and determination to fear, pain and finally resignation.

Dreams like thoughts –
both sense and
nonsense. How shall I
bear the silence
of this place? (CCLXI)

The reader isn’t spared any details of the girl’s physical and mental deterioration ‘scalp alive with lice’, ‘shrunken gums’, and the nightmares (‘Lucifer, again. … he spreads me, enters like a fist’) but for me the story is told with intimate tenderness and without judgement. ‘Cell’ is a challenging read, moving and highly compelling. Both the artwork and Katy Mawhood’s ingenious pamphlet design corroborate the story and heighten the reader’s involvement – which is what genuine ‘multimedia’ should be about. Excellent job.

Blog/ 29/11/2015

A Bonanza, a Finale and a look ahead to 2016

It’s been a busy week, still catching up, but I wanted to post a recap of things before we’re into the pre-Christmas week when events seem to accelerate.

Last Monday I was I privileged to be a member of the Brighton team (especially considering I now live in Eastbourne) at a Stanza Bonanza with Kent & Sussex Stanza at the Poetry Cafe. Bonanzas are the regular readings organised by Paul McGrane of the Poetry Society. They give Stanza members a chance to read at the iconic venue and meet/socialise with other Stanza poets. Always great fun, and this one was a corker. Poet friends Jill Munro and Jess Mookherjee were on the opposing team and it was lovely to hear them read, and Brighton definitely brought out the big guns – Peter Kenny, Tony Gill, Andie Davidson, Susan Evans and Marek Urbanowicz.

Thursday saw the launch reading of Clare Best’s poem ‘Cell’ which has been produced beautifully by the The Frogmore Press in a fold-out pamphlet alongside striking artwork by Michaela Ridgway. Michaela organises and generally hosts the Pighog poetry nights at the Redroaster in Brighton, but on this occasion she handed over the MC responsibility to Daisy Behagg, who did a fine job. The audience was very well behaved – not sure if that was a concession to Daisy, or just that the season finale drew a particularly high quality audience! Also on the bill were Tom Chivers of Penned in the Margins, and Stephen Payne who I seem to run into regularly at readings around the south and who was in the audience for my reading at Words & Ears last month, which was a lovely surprise. Michaela is super multi-talented, by the way – poet, artist and someone who makes things happen, on top of a big day job. Props. It was an excellent evening and I felt really energised and inspired by the poetry I heard. Here are some pics from the night:

Daisy Behagg at Pighog poetry night in Brighton — Daisy Behagg

Tom Chivers at Pighog poetry night in Brighton — Tom Chivers

Michaela Ridgway & Clare Best at Pighog poetry night in Brighton — Michaela Ridgway & Clare Best

Then on Friday we finally had our Telltale Press & Friends January reading all confirmed – to be held at the Poetry Cafe on Thursday 7th January, with special guest poet Jack Underwood. I’ve been a big fan of Jack’s work for a while and enjoyed his ‘putting together a pamphlet’ course at the Poetry School a couple of years ago. I loved his collection Happiness too, so I’m of course very happy that he’s reading with us alongside Telltales Siegfried Baber & Peter Kenny, and Kitty Coles. I often see Kitty’s work in magazines and heard her read at the launch of South magazine last month, so I was very pleased she agreed to join us for this event. If you’re within striking distance of London do come along – it’s free! A warm Telltale welcome awaits.

Tag: clare best