Camilla’s Bookshop is open again in Eastbourne after an arson attack, and I can report that the parrot is still alive and greeting you as you enter, and the stacks of books are as tightly packed as ever – in fact even more so! Here’s how the poetry section looked before (multiply this ten or even twenty times over and you get a good picture of the shop as a whole!
Now, the stacks on the floor are about 4 foot tall and it’s impossible to bend down and get one’s head into a position to see what’s actually in the stack…however I managed to find two books of interest on the upper shelves. One is John Donne, TheComplete English Poems (Penguin Classics) and the other is The Eavan Boland Sourcebook (Carcanet) which I’ve started and already it’s fascinating. Eavan Boland is a poet I’d only heard of but not read, but when she died earlier this year there was such an outpouring of grief from the poetry community that I decided I needed to seek her out.
In addition to this I’m near the end of a lovely book by Jean Sprackland, a memoir in which she retraces her steps through the graveyards and cemeteries she’s known over the years.
Other recent reading:
Vicki Feaver‘s I want I want (Cape) is one of the Forward Prize shortlisted books that I ordered, and Sestet is an anthology that I’ll be reviewing for The Frogmore Papers. I must say I’m looking forward to reading Rachel Long‘s My Darling from the Lions, which is up for Best First Collection in the Forwards. I really liked her recent work in The Poetry Review.
Also waiting in the wings to be read is Little Kings by Peter Kahn (Nine Arches), kindly given to me by Peter Raynard. Peter Kahn is a new poet to me, and the book jacket blurbs make it sound very promising.
My contributor copy ofStand arrived recently. I’m delighted to have a poem in Stand; I’ve subscribed this last year and have enjoyed much of its content. Particularly interesting are the editorials. I think it’s a shame that not all mags have them.
I’ve resubscribed to Poetry just at a turbulent time it seems. A poem in the July/August issue by Michael Dickman has caused a massive furore, and editor Don Share resigned. Here’s his extraordinary final editorial.
Feature on the Frogmore blog
And speaking of The Frogmore Papers, here’s a lovely post on their blog about the sad demise of listings mag Viva Lewes. The April issue was due to feature four of the members of the Needlewriters Collective (Jeremy Page, Charlotte Gann, Janet Sutherland and myself) but it never went to print. But the feature is reproduced here, like a sort of echo of what almost happened.
‘Ellipsis’ on Radio Reverb
Another lovely thing: fine poet and Brighton Reverb Radio presenter Jackie Wills featured one of my poems on the Reverb Literature Hour the other week. It was such a treat to hear her read the poem; I don’t think I’ve heard anyone read a poem of mine before. And her analysis of it was wonderful. I was very touched. With Jackie’s permission I’m posting it here:
I’ve come rather late to the podcast party, although my good friend Lucy has often sung their praises. Before my longish train journey north I decided to finally download a free podcast app (Castbox, which works well on my Samsung Galaxy S6) and then went on the search for some interesting things to take with me and listen to.
It’s been quite a revelation. I’ve never found it easy to read on the train, but putting on headphones and listening, cutting out all the stupid conversations or noises around me, and still able to watch the countryside going by, was perfect. And back home I find it’s a fine companion in the kitchen when cooking. For someone who rarely finds radio output of any interest, it’s amazing how I’ve taken to this.
My all-out favourite is the New Yorker Poetry podcast, in which a guest poet discusses someone else’s poem, then reads it, followed by conversation and a reading of one of their own poems. The host until last October was Paul Muldoon who I find perfectly suited to the medium. His voice is wonderful to listen to and the conversations he has with guests are fascinating. He’s always careful not to either talk down to the listener nor to exclude us. Each monthly edition lasts about half an hour and they go back to 2013 so there’s a rich archive to enjoy. So far I’ve heard Andrew Motion reading Alice Oswald, Eileen Myles reading James Schuyler and Nick Laird reading Elizabeth Bishop. One funny thing is the odd advert – presumably added automatically by the software as they sometimes pop up in the middle of a sentence (but not, so far, a poem!) To be fair I’ve only noticed one or two per episode, and they’re very brief. We’re not talking commericial-radio-time-to-make-a three-course-meal-style ad breaks.
Then there’s the Poetry magazine podcast, co-hosted by Don Share and Lindsay Garbutt or other members of the editorial team. I’ve no idea why I’ve never explored this one before. When Poetry comes through the post I love the fact that you open and and you’re straight into the poems – no editorial or anything else forming a barrier between the cover art and the inside art. But I do sometimes think I’d like some sort of commentary, background or insight into the editors’ choices. The podcast description is ‘The editors go inside the pages of Poetry, talking to poets and critics, debating the issues, and sharing their poem selections with listeners.’ It’s short (under 10 minutes), frequent (weekly) and to the point. And again – great voices and high quality production. All of which makes it a pleasure to listen to, and most importantly allows the content to shine through.
There are other podcasts I haven’t yet really assessed yet but have subscribed to, such as the Scottish Poetry Library podcast which appears also to have been going for some years, each episode a conversation with an individual poet, incorporating them reading some of their work. The UK arts charity Poet in the City also puts out a podcast, albeit infrequently (two or three episodes a year) but an interesting mix of ‘performances, reflection and debate’. The Poetry Society podcast features ‘both readings by poets and the fascinating exchanges between editors of The Poetry Review and contributors, past and present, as they explore ideas and themes generated by the issue.’ One podcast I have listened to before occasionally is The Transatlantic Poetry Pondcast (sic) produced by Robert Peake, which brings together UK and US poets for live readings and debate – the live element is exciting.
There are tons more I’m sure, but I don’t want to enter overwhelm too soon. I’ll probably subscribe to loads of channels and end up just going back to a small number. I’m already getting a feel for differing production standards – sound quality for example. Just saying!
Just the other day Don Share posted on Twitter a link to a recording of Robert Frost reading ‘The Road Not Taken’. How wonderful to hear it in the poet’s voice. Here it is on YouTube:
Matthew Hollis, in his 2011 biography of Edward Thomas, Now All Roads Lead to France, tells of Thomas’s distress at this poem, taking it so personally, in fact, that it was the final push that sent him off to war (and his death). This, despite Frost trying to reassure him the poem wasn’t meant as an admonishment for Thomas’s (self-perceived) cowardice or indecision, but rather a very mixed message indeed, full of ironies and what the poet called ‘the fun of the thing’.
In this early internet age of ‘fear of missing out’ – one of the truly troubling aspects of social media – the idea of being haunted by the road not taken, or the lives we might have lived or perhaps we feel we ought to be living, seems extraordinarily relevant.
As Philips puts it, “We have an abiding sense, however obscure and obscured, that the lives we do lead are informed by the lives that escape us,” going on to argue that our ‘wished for’ or fantasy lives, the ones we could have/might have lived, are as much a part of us as our real lives, and as Popova says, “the most ideal of these missed-out-on experiences reveal a great deal about the realest aspects of our lives.”
This is a fascinating read which got me thinking about so many aspects of online behaviour, not just FOMO or how the medium seems to fan the flames of envy, but also the holding power of online communities, fantasy worlds and games. I wrote an academic paper on the subject fifteen years ago entitled ‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave’ – props to the first person to tell us in the comments what song that line comes from!
What is it about poets called Don? There’s Don Paterson for starters. Don. Paterson. And now Don Share. Maybe it’s the the power/mafia connotations (Don Corleone). Or the suggestion of raffishness (Don Juan). Or the hidden warning: not DO but DON’t.
So here’s the thing: picture sixteen or so poets perched in a circle, hothoused in a room of the Richard Jefferies Museum on the edge of Swindon. All eyes and ears are on the Editor of Poetry, Don Share, who’s been flown in from Chicago for the Swindon Festival of Poetry. No-one quite knows what to expect, but I for one am hoping not to have to do any work at all, other than listen and take the odd note. And that’s exactly what happened.
After the initial introductions, Don had a pretty good idea of just how much ambition and urgency was present in the room, and he set to answering our (mostly unspoken) questions. In the afternoon, there was some expectation that we’d all subject Don to one of our poems, for him to offer some pointers. We’d lost two participants (including one of the only 2 men) by then, but there still wasn’t time for everyone to have a go. But no-one really minded, especially as Don offered to email his comments to anyone who’d been left out.
I admired the way Don kept the energy going throughout the day when others might have wilted. Some of the funniest moments were clearly unscripted, such as the ten minute discussion about how he’d agonised over publishing a poem, the problem being the poet’s use of the word ‘slab’. And when he said with no hint of irony that he’d always wanted to visit Swindon (“it’s in the Domesday Book!”) Or pronouncing on the poetry greats: “I’ve no idea what they were setting out to do, what was going through their minds – maybe they were just geniuses and we’re all screwed!” And later on “The Waste Land is just crazy-ass!”
Of course there was also a huge amount of fascinating stuff…although you ‘had to be there’, here are my notes which I hope give a flavour of it. Huge thanks to Don for his generous sharing (no pun intended).
On the editor’s role
There are good editors who are not poets. There are good poets who are not great editors. Don sees them as 2 distinct roles. He reads a LOT of poetry – the magazine gets 120,000 submissions a year, for starters, and all are read by Don and Consulting Editor Christina Pugh.
Editors must be ‘pitiless and undeceived’
Editors can’t be publishing only poets with an established reputation – if that were case then (for example) Poetry wouldn’t have published T S Eliot. (As it was, the publication of ‘Prufrock’ in 1915 resulted in years of hatemail.) He still gets hatemail from people about stuff that’s published. “If we go down the route of only publishing what everyone thinks poetry is/should be, then we’re lost.”
Don doesn’t necessarily like most of the poems he publishes. It’s not about liking – “the most powerful poems are infuriating”. Christina Pugh’s judgement on the majority of ‘perfectly competent’ poems is “there’s nothing at stake here.”
On comparing oneself to the great poets
It’s absolutely correct to say ‘I’m not Ted Hughes’ or ‘I’m no Emily Dickinson’ – because they were themselves, and so must any poet be. “you can’t imagine Emily Dickinson in a workshop.”
Don read ALL the back issues of Poetry and he says that 94% of the poetry published in it over the hundred years or so is not good (ie it hasn’t stood the test of time).
The key for ‘competent poets’ – ie those of us getting published, writing perfectly OK poems, making a bit of a poetry name for ourselves – is to not just aim for mere competence. Don remembered when Derek Walcott became his mentor, looked over one of his poems and said ‘This is very good, well done … you could write these kinds of poems all your life… but is it your life’s work?”
Don’s advice – list ten poems that for you are absolute favourites, poems you aspire to, and ask yourself “are these competent poems? What makes them more than that?”
What can the poor aspiring poet do??
Eliminate the ‘obvious stupidities’:
Be honest – ie true to what you know, where you’re from, what you’ve lived. (This wasn’t discussed exactly but it made me think that perhaps the ‘poetic’ elements that can creep into a poem are to do with adopting a register that’s foreign to us in everyday speech. There was some discussion afterwards about how playing up to one’s ‘roots’ was a big trend in poetry at the moment – leaving those of us with very little in the way of distinguishing features – ethnic, regional, class etc – feeling a bit disadvantaged!)
Be specific. Make the reader live it/see it/ feel it like you do. “As soon as I see the word ‘bird’ in a poem, I’m done.” What kind of bird? “If it’s not coming from something you know, it’s scenic … it’s got to come from a place of honesty. When an American reads Ted Hughes, they see what he sees, it’s as if they were where he was – it’s not about a kind of realism, it’s about being able to inject a reader with an image.”
Another problem is that students of poetry are shown (or study) the great poems, and if that’s all they read (rather than reading broadly from a poet’s body of work) – that is a problem. If you only read the exemplars then you don’t have a feel for how the poet got where they did. Even the great poets wrote some crappy poems, went through stages when they couldn’t or didn’t write great poetry. “The work that your worst poems do has to be the work that your best poems do” … “make something of what you’re bad at” – (I’m still pondering what this means exactly).
“The things you worry about least in your poem are the things that can set the poem apart, if you pay attention to them.”
“If you start off knowing what you’re trying to say then the poem becomes predictable.”
“Readers are like editors – they catch you out.”
Tips/ comments from the workshopping session
Form – how a poem’s laid out on the page – is the first thing the reader/editor notices. Have a reason for the choosing the form you’ve chosen. Things like stepped lines, right aligned, spaces, one word on a line – what’s the reasoning? If you were to read it out loud, is the form obvious to the reader, and if not, why not put it into a form that matches how you read it? The rhythm might shape the poem. Play around with form. Try different things.
The title is the next biggest thing – if it says too much then the poem isn’t a surprise.
Pay attention to consistency of tone/language / register
Some of the lines of your poem may be scaffolding – it serves a purpose while the poem is evolving, but can be taken out at the end (I liked this a lot!)
Similarly, you can often edit out the first few lines – they’re often just like the vamping that musicians do before they start the actual piece of music
Using the pronouns ‘she’ or ‘he’ – why not ‘I’? It’s a distancing thing so maybe there’s a psychological purpose for it? Don’s advice is that readers prefer not to be put at a distance, want to feel the speaker is talking directly – more powerful.
Why not give people names? Character come to life when they’re given a name – readers care more if it feels like direct speech not just a story told by someone else. Don gives the example of Ted Hughes’ Letters – it’s the fact that it’s Ted & Sylvia that we’re reading that makes it so fascinating, not “just another guy in a crappy relationship.” If a poem is about a couple, their relationship, why not tell us their names?
Details, specifics. They can make a poem more memorable, different, unique even. eg ‘Adlestrop’. Think of Betjeman with all the proper names he uses. Larkin.
If you allude to something, the observation has to be good enough to stand alone, in case the reader doesn’t get the allusion
Be careful with words like ‘gush’ and ‘spume’ as they can overpower others. (Perhaps this should be the basis of a list – ‘words that overpower’?)
Somebody or something must be changed in the course of a poem – either in the poem itself or in the reader or both. There’s a shift – what is it?
I have some back issues of Poetry from when I took advantage of a freebie offer I think, and it’s a great magazine – I’m now motivated to subscribe properly, as one of my ‘rolling subscription’ system whereby I try to get around to subscribing to different magazines for at least a year at a time. The Poetry Foundation website is a fantastic free resource in itself, and every month there’s a Poetry Magazine Podcast that’s definitely worth a listen.
I must stop trying too hard with blog post titles. What’s with the ‘fest’/’feast’ thing? Stop me, somebody.
Anyway, I’m now musing on a weekend in Swindon, not a place I’ve ever had strong feelings about, I confess, but clearly a place where poets settle and are proud of. The indefatigable Hilda Sheehan and her team worked hard all weekend, and the atmosphere was one of laid-back fun and a definite hippy vibe. Workshops and readings took place at Lower Shaw Farm, which looked like the set from ‘The Darling Buds of May’ with a bit of fruit-picker-style accommodation thrown in. It’s clearly a secret place – without the help of sat-nav I found myself in estate cul-de-sac hell for some time before I found it on Friday afternoon. One attendee came by taxi and admitted the driver had never heard of it. “What happens here?” he asked nervously, as if expecting the reply “oh, cooking with cheesecloth, tantric sex and ritual sacrifice.”
Over the two days I enjoyed hearing readings from Kathryn Maris, who turned out to be none other than Maurice Riordan’s ‘willowy companion with the ombre hair’, Maurice Riordan, Alison McVety, Don Share, David Morley, Cristina Navazo-Eguía Newton and the prize winners in the Battered Moons poetry competition. I also took part in a short workshop led by Cliff Yates and a day-long masterclass with Don Share (more on this in a separate post). It was great fun to meet some people I’ve only known via this blog or social media, or just by reputation: Cliff Yates, Judi Sutherland, Alison Brackenbury to name but three, and to catch up with blogging buddy Josephine Corcoran and editor of The Interpreter’s House Martin Malone.
Don Share and backing musicians
One thing I really enjoyed about the evening readings was the music element – on Friday we were treated to Don Share reading to a musical backdrop from some fine musicians doing jazz improv. It could have been the sixties, but without the marijuana, the greasy hair or the loon pants. Then on Saturday, to complement the Battered Moons competition readings, there was a wonderful performance of flamenco guitar from a chap whose name escapes me (what a shame) and Cristina Newton mesmerised us with her dramatic and moving reading interspersed with some Romany singing. This photo doesn’t do her justice. She has a wonderful singing voice. Fire and beauty.
Cristina Newton
Although it rained on Saturday morning, in the afternoon the skies cleared and we had a wonderful walk up at the White Horse at Uffington.
On the RidgewayWith JosephineThe eye of the White HorsePoets at the White Horse
And so to Sunday, and our day with Don Share. So much great stuff came out of that, so I’m going to write a separate post with as many tips, stories and Don-isms as I managed to jot down.
Hurray! First of all I managed to snag a place on the Don Share workshop in October in Swindon (before it sold out) and then thanks to a prompt from Josephine Corcoran I’m now booked in from Friday night, so I’ll be able to join in on Saturday also.
The Swindon Festival of Poetry, brainchild of the indefatigable Hilda Sheehan, takes place from Thursday 2nd to Sunday 5th October, and with the range of workshops, readings, walks and other fun events on offer I think it’s going to be a super weekend.
It feels like so long since I was able to think/talk/write poetry for more than a couple of hours at a time. So I really feel I need this. Can’t wait.
It’s all been a bit hectic lately, but I thought I’d just check in with updates on a few things.
Readings – On Wednesday I’m at the Poetry Cafe with 5 other Brighton-ish based poets, talking on Palmers Green in a Stanza Bonanza. I’m wondering how little clothing I can get away with, given the typical ambience of the Poetry Cafe basement even in February (think Brazilian rainforest). From 7pm – come and support us if you dare!
Workshops – the amazing Hilda Sheehan has pulled off a right royal coup – she’s only been and got Don Share to come and give a workshop in Swindon in October – blimey! His fan club has got its antenna up and the Share-heads are already whooping it up on Facebook. I am so there – although of course I already have my autographed copy of Union – yeah, baby!
Found poem – Not strictly ‘found’ in that sense, but it recently came to my attention that a poem I sent to poetsonline.org has appeared on their website. It was in response to one of their periodic prompts, this one being Emily Dickinson’s first lines. Naturally I thought of ‘Poem beginning with a line by Emily Dickinson’, a little number I had written for the 2013 Brighton Stanza Anthology. So nice to see it given an online home.
Submissions – nowt happening on that front, alas, although I think I’ve written a couple of good poems this year. They’re either sat in someone’s slush/pending/unread pile, or underneath 5,736,204 competition entries somewhere, or stuck in the wrong box in a sorting office, never to surface until one day in 2196 when they might make it into a museum of curios. Who knows?
Yesterday evening I was at Keats House in Hampstead listening to a Poetry Society debate on the subject of Ezra Pound’s enormously influential article ‘A Few Don’ts’, first published a hundred years ago.
As the respective editors of Poetry Review (UK) and Poetry (US), Maurice Riordan and Don Share could be said to represent the behemoth of the poetry establishment from both sides of the Atlantic. And both magazines published ‘A Few Don’ts’ when it first came out. Fascinating though the evening was, I guess this was never going to be a platform for a radical re-working of the ‘don’ts’.
Riordan in particular expressed fondness for many of the ‘rules’, and also argued that they were more discretionary than they are usually given credit for. “Go in fear of abstractions” isn’t the same thing as “don’t use abstractions”, for example. He also pointed out that Pound did say the ‘don’ts’ were not to be considered as dogma, rather that they offered guidance – “cautions gained by experience” and were up for debate.
There were some questions and observations from the floor and the talk was less about whether we need a new list of don’ts, but the bigger question of whether in this century we will see a new poetic movement to take us away from modernism, whether we need (or have) another Pound in our midst to reinvent poetry in the way that he did, “from the doughy mess of Romanticism”. Someone said that in order for a new movement to take off, enough people need to hate what currently holds as fine poetry.
Another important point made by Don Share was that there is far greater access now to poetry from around the world, and new ideas spread quickly via the internet. It’s hard to imagine anyone having the influence and power of Pound over today’s poetry scene, with its myriad different artistic movements, sub cultures and niche followings.
I first came across ‘A Few Don’ts’ in a brilliant book called Strong Words, an anthology of essays by poets on poetry, edited by W N Herbert and Matthew Hollis. I think it’s one of those books that’s on the reading list of any Creative Writing MA, but if like me you’ve never done one, it’s a revelation. Highly recommended.
There seems to be plenty happening at the moment, so here’s a quick round-up of some things I’m going to / involved with …
Firstly, please bear with me if I give a quick plug to my short course at New Writing South which starts tomorrow week, 26th September, 6.30 – 9pm for three weeks, on ‘Improving your social web presence’. It’s basically for any writer who has made small inroads into social media but may be struggling a bit – with finding the time, wondering what to blog or tweet about, not sure how to find writer communities online, struggling with the etiquette or thinking about a Facebook Page, that sort of thing. Lots of practical examples and exercises designed to help writers be inspired, develop useful contacts and find the joy in social media. It’s £80 for the 3 sessions and 10% discount for NWS members. I think there are only 2 places left but I’ll no doubt be running it again in the Spring.
Next Tuesday 24th I’m excited to be going to a Faber Social to hear Sam Riviere, Ruth Padel and others plus music. Yay!
Coming up very soon is my trip to Ty Newydd Writers’ Centre for a residential week with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke. I have a feeling it’s going to be pretty epic and I’m so looking forward to it. Not sure what the broadband is like there, so I may be off the grid for a week and blogging about it when I get back.
Later that week a bit closer to home is Needlewriters, a quarterly event in Lewes. The October 24th event features our very own John Agard and Grace Nichols, so it’s bound to be a sell-out. I’m delighted to have been invited to join the organising committee of Needlewriters. It’s not really a committee as such – with minutes, officers and regulations – thankfully. (What is it about the word committee? We need a new word which encompasses the idea of a group of organisers working for a common cause, but without the connotations of officiousness, jobsworthyness and petty politics. Or maybe that’s just my take on it?)
Let me know if you going to any of the above, and let’s say hello.
PS completely off-topic but I noticed on the Popshot blog that Transport for London are seeking a number of poets-in-residence to work out of tube stations during the week of National Poetry Day – if you’re in London it sounds like a lot of fun – details here (PDF).
Firstly, my post about having received a free copy of Poetry magazine was picked up by Steven Critelli who alerted Don Share, senior editor of that venerable publication, who promptly lived up to his name and tweeted it …
Then one of the other participants going to the Ty Newydd course in October (Zoe Fiander) found this blog and left an introductory note for me, which was very nice.
And finally, not really serendipitous but a treat all the same, when Inpress ran out of ‘How to pour madness into a teacup’ (by the excellent Abegail Morley) and couldn’t fulfil my order, they (and the publisher Cinnamon Press) offered me another book from their list, by way of an apology. So, I got Abegail’s book from elsewhere and am also the proud owner of A Handful of Water, a new collection by Rebecca Gethin. So plenty of new reading material to look forward to!
Speaking of new material, The Rialto has also just dropped through my letterbox.
So I’m hoping all this high quality poetry nutrition will pay off soon in the form of some decent poems of my own.
But for now I’ll leave you with an extract from William Logan’s poem The Nude that Stays Nude in Poetry magazine, consisting basically of a whole list of new ‘don’ts’ for poets – one of which is
Don’t think what you have to say is important. The way you say it is important. What you have to say is rubbish.
This itself is a line a poem, so one has to take it with an ironic postmodern pinch of salt. Or not. You decide!
