Tag: fiona sampson

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Oh hello! Quick catch up

What was I doing all last month? Mostly singing (I passed my Grade 8 with merit – hurrah!), the odd party (friends with birthdays and/or launches), gardening (what was possible with the scaffolding up), executor stuff for my sister, making jam & chutney from all the rhubarb, and seeing an old friend from my adidas/Nike days who was over from the States and came to see me for a day. So a LOT of excitement. As regards poetry:

A few disappointments – the usual rejections, also my collection is somewhat in mothballs at the moment for various reasons, and may not see the light of day after all. But I’m oddly upbeat about it. I feel I’ve kind of moved on and am working on new strands. I’m bad at feeling pleased about poems for very long, they go stale on me and I just can’t bring myself to stick by them. This happens even if a poem is published somewhere – in fact especially so. I hope this is normal. Anyway, I’m sure at least some of the poems will find their way into a pamphlet or collection at some point.

On the positive side – I’ve re-joined the Poetry Book Society. I didn’t renew for several years, for various reasons. I still don’t really like the magazine they send out, and the ‘selection’ process, with different selectors every season or so, does seem to mean a lot of the same poets popping up on a regular basis. However, I do need to widen my reading in a more systematic way. It feeds into my writing but also into the podcast. We’re just coming up to our Season 2 finale, in which I interview Fiona Sampson. Fiona got me thinking about many things, for example I was inspired by the way she spoke about her tenure as editor of Poetry Review. So I’m already fired up about Season 3 of Planet Poetry.

Also positive – Richard Skinner has taken a poem of mine for the next issue of 14, a welcome acceptance email after a tranche of NOs (thank you, thank you!) Plus I have a poem out in the latest edition of Prole, and in the Autumn I’ve a poem in the 100th edition of The Frogmore Papers.

And of course I’m still plugging away at the list of poetry magazines and their submissions windows. The big quarterly update was last month, and I also send out end of the month reminders. I’ve got a good list of subscribers and people are very appreciative. So now I’m thinking about what else I can offer. Watch this space.

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Currently inspired by…

The Waste Land detail of MS

Writing inspiration comes in all shapes and sizes I suppose. I was recently at a Charleston Festival event (Sheila Hancock in conversation with Joan Bakewell – combined age 182 and a huge inspiration/advertisement for a good old age). But I digress. In the bookshop marquee I was casually browsing and came across a single copy of a book I decided I had to have.

cover of T S Eliot book

Now I’m no huge Eliot fan but I do dip into the Four Quartets every now and then. I’ve never got to grips with The Waste Land, but I’m a sucker for manuscripts that show different versions, crossings out etc. It’s like getting into the poet’s head. And this edition shows every page, with annotations from both Ezra Pound and Valerie Eliot. It’s extraordinary. And I’m now enjoying going back to the poem armed with more insight into its genesis.

Meanwhile our Planet Poetry guests continue to challenge (and delight) me – in the last episode I talked with the effervescent Caleb Parkin and his excellent book This Fruiting Body, and my most recent interview was with Fiona Sampson. I admit I was nervous, interviewing a poet with such a formidable CV (29 books for starters). But Fiona was delightful and fascinating. I’m not sure yet when the interview will ‘air’ but it’ll be worth listening, I guarantee.

A few near-misses lately. I was pleasantly surprised to find I had two poems on the Plough Prize shortlist this year, judged by Roger McGough (one of my early heroes!). Incidentally, the winner was Di Slaney, a former Planet Poetry guest and an editor who deserves to be better known as A POET. Then, the other day I decided to query PN Review again, as it’s been so long since I submitted there, and this time I got a prompt reply that although ‘no’, was very encouraging.

All this is good grist to the mill and keeps me thinking about poetry, even if I’m not yet writing much new, but that will come. In the meantime it’s singing that’s my main concern, having signed up to take Grade 8 at the end of this month – gulp! Now excuse me as I go over the YouTube to watch yet more tutorials about ‘how to get rid of breathy tone’ etc. Nothing like a bit of last minute cramming to turn me from lowly choir member into Dame Felicity Lott, tee hee.