Tag: janet sutherland

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All shall be well

detail of Nativity facade bronze door, Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

I know, I know – not that Julian of Norwich quote again, I hear you say. But it’s the start of the year, I’m looking out at blue sky, and this is the first day since November 8th that I’ve felt properly well, and that the three colds I’ve had back-to-back since then are finally wearing off. Life is good and all shall be well.

Julian of Norwich was really just a name to me until poet friend Antony lent me his copy of I, Julian by Clare Gilbert, (Hachette) which is a fictionalised autobiography of the medieval anchoress who wrote ‘Revelations of Divine Love’. I was interested in finding out more about Julian’s life, and actually I found it un-put-downable.

At the other end of the spectrum I’ve been converted to the Ruth Galloway novels by Elly Griffiths which I’ve been hoovering up on my kindle. They’re great fun, perfect for long waiting times in airports and hospitals, and a good example of (ahem) how to write not a single novel but a series.

On the poetry front, Janet Sutherland’s The Messenger House (Shearsman) has risen to the top of the TBR pile and I’ve made tentative progress through it. The book is a hybrid of prose, poetry, memoir, travelogue. So far I’ve found it intriguing and exciting. Janet likes to push the boundaries and her work is never predictable.

Last week we had a few days away in Barcelona: art, architecture, tapas, wine. We also managed a boat trip, trips on two funny trains and a cable car. We like to go on a boat wherever we go on holiday, and a funny train is a bonus! The image that accompanies this post is a detail of one of the huge doors to Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. Cast in bronze, the doors are on the Nativity front and depict nature in all its detail. Really lovely work by Japanese sculptor and follower of Gaudi, Etsuro Sotoo.

And now I must decide what I’m reading at Needlewriters on Thursday. Already a few non-poet friends have told me they’re coming (gulp). There’ll also be poet friends there who’ve heard me read before. I want to read some new stuff, but maybe I should include material that isn’t new but that has gone down well in readings before. Also, nothing too grim or opaque. Help! It’s a been a while since I’ve done a 15 minute set, so I need to get practising.

But hey – at least I’m not reading at the T S Eliots on Sunday. Then I might be a tad nervous. Katy Evans-Bush is running two online sessions (Saturday and Sunday) discussing the ten shortlisted collections – more info here. I’ve been to Katy’s sessions when they were in-person at the old Poetry School premises in Lambeth and they were both enjoyable and very helpful. Katy really knows her stuff and does her research, but these workshops are very much collaborative discussions, not lectures. But they are online. I think sadly since the Poetry School moved north of the river, renting a space there for such a workshop is now prohibitive. A great shame.

 

 

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Recent reading: Janet Sutherland, Poetry magazine

Alongside making updates to the look and feel of this site (and general online spring cleaning) I’ve been enjoying some stimulating reading lately. The January edition of Poetry has yielded up a lot of interesting material, including extracts from ‘A Frank O’Hara Notebook’ by Bill Berkson, which made for rich reading on a train journey yesterday…

a frank o'hara notebook

At the back of the mag Mark Ford reviews the Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons (over 2,000 pages!) – a poet I confess I’d never heard of, and clearly someone who went against the grain in more ways than one.

I’ve also listened to two of the podcasts for this issue, in which Don Share, Lindsay Garbutt and Christina Pugh focus on a single poem for reading and discussion. It’s like listening in to an editorial meeting, and always makes me appreciate a poem more. Each month they pick three or four poems to talk about. The two I heard were Khaled Mattawa’s ‘The Boat Merchant’s Wife’ and Jorie Graham’s ‘Overheard in the Herd’. Fascinating. You can catch all the Poetry magazine podcasts here.

A few weeks ago, Janet Sutherland and Matthew Stewart were two of the readers at Needlewriters, a quarterly event in Lewes, in which I’m involved. They each read from their latest collections. I’ll talk more about Matthew’s collection The Knives of Villalejo in a future post.

Home Farm by Janet Sutherland

Home Farm is Janet Sutherland‘s fourth collection from Shearsman. As an aside, when I was at the Swindon Poetry Festival last October, Tony Frazer of Shearsman was on an editors’ panel, and when they were all asked ‘is there a poet you are most proud of having discovered?’ Tony’s answer was ‘Janet Sutherland.’

The cover illustration of a cross-section of a cow sets the scene perfectly. Janet grew up on her parent’s dairy farm in Wiltshire, and much of the book is set there – the experience of day-to-day life and death, the precarious nature of land, weather, animals ‘If symptoms are severe / your animal can die in just an hour -‘ (‘Bloat’) This is no cosy pastoral memoir. The poems draw on actual incidents, stories and memories, extracts from books, letters and accounts. We learn the names of the fields (‘Stony ground, East Close, Home ground, Muddy Track, Paddock, Park, Chapel, Horatio…’ – ‘Fields and Copses’) and the cows, are given glimpses into the ways that love and care for the animals is balanced out by the hard realities. In ‘Mum’s Accounts’ of births and deaths, we’re told ‘The Middle Column is for notes of trouble, trial, losses (‘1987: Gorse, milk fever. Lotus, calved early, calf dead. Dolly, needed help, calf died next day.’) The writing is unsentimental, brutal at times and brilliantly so.

…
You’ve see calves born, shut them in pens,
and heard their mothers’ bellowing.

You set that grief aside. You taught
calves how to dip unwilling heads to drink,
to suck your milky fingers like a straw.  (‘You hold in your head a notion of the land’)

A seemingly simple poem about a doe making her way tentatively through a wood (‘She will enter’) is a moment of such intensity and understatement, very typical of Janet’s style. I hesitate to call it ‘nature writing’ as there’s something rather limp about the phrase.

The collection embraces experimental poems, fragments and illustrations, all of which I found absorbing, moving and mysterious, propelling me on.

A facsimile of a page from a letter is reproduced, phrases from which appear in a poem later in the book to heartbreaking effect:

I was just looking at your room this morning
and wishing you were home

this room is already empty
the face above the sheets
has gone to clay

now son take care of yourself

Even as I type this my eyes are welling up! Surely this is what poetry exists for.

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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.
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Poems for a Christmas concert

not another Dickensian Xmas

I was recently asked to select some readings to go in between the movements of a choral piece. The piece is Bob Chilcott’s On Christmas Night. In it, Chilcott sets a number of carols in a sequence, telling the Christmas story from the fall of Adam and Eve (yes, it hadn’t occurred to me that it starts there – Nativity Plays usually skip straight to the shepherds in the fields) – to the birth of Jesus.

I’ll come clean now – it was my husband who asked me, on behalf of the East Sussex Community Choir which he conducts. The project interested me, so even though I knew there wouldn’t be any payment on this occasion (!) I was happy to take it on.

The score suggests which readings would be suitable, but that others may be substituted. Now, I’ve been to plenty of concerts (especially at Christmas) where there are readings in between the music. Almost without exception they are either the standard Bible readings of ‘lessons and carols’ (such as the one that’s broadcast each year from King’s College Cambridge), or they are ‘light’ – passages from Dickens or ‘The night before Christmas’ by Clement Clark Moore, amusing Christmas-themed stories or anecdotes. Or else it’s Eliot’s Journey of the Magi.

I wasn’t interested in doing the ‘same old’, so I set out to find poems or texts that were by living/contemporary writers. I wanted secular, not sacred – words that would complement the religious story being told by the choir, and invite contemplation of the wider spiritual context – themes of wonder, joy, love, birth, death and the cycle of nature.

I topped and tailed with two extracts from A C Grayling‘s extraordinary The Good Book, a kind of secular Bible and a fascinating compilation of thousands of texts by philosophers, teachers, prophets, leaders, literary figures and writers. So, alongside the carol about Adam eating the apple and falling from grace, we are reminded how a tree bears both flowers and fruit, and its fruit is knowledge, which teaches the good gardener how to understand the world.  The closing extract is a short passage about the nature of wisdom, which parallels the Biblical story of the ‘wise men’.

For the rest of the readings I chose poems:

Janet Sutherland‘s ‘line’ from her collection Hangman’s Acre takes us into a wintry but beautiful landscape where geese ‘carve a soundless line’, where ‘simple shapes’ and ‘muffled earth’ set a scene of waiting and anticipation, before ‘the line sets out alone’. There is both apprehension and wonder in this – to navigate a path (through life?) with ‘no compass   no margin’ and yet not to hesitate, but to simply wait for the moment. For me, this approximates to the journey facing Mary, and indeed Christ after her – they face up to the unknown because they have no choice – they have faith and they accept.

‘Prayer’ by Carol Ann Duffy is a favourite of mine, and I knew that it would be familiar to at least some of the audience. For me it examines self-doubt, sadness, possibly even grief, in a way that uplifts by showing us the hope and love present when we open our ears to the quotidian sounds around us. Life goes on, children practise their piano scales, we cope with bad days – all this and more expressed in a sonnet which concludes with an extract from the Shipping Forecast, an enduring and recognisable ritual not unlike daily prayers and ‘Latin chants’. And as with ‘line’, there are musical references in ‘Prayer’ which felt appropriate for this context.

When it came to the nativity, I wanted a poem to express all the wonder, hope, and love felt by a parent at the birth of a child. ‘William’ by Jack Underwood (from his collection Happiness) is a creative, exuberant and highly original love poem to a new baby, from his father. Starting from the point of what he is familiar with, the speaker then finds himself at a loss when faced with ‘your fine melon head, your innocent daring-to-be’ – completely ‘uncooked’ at the newness and intensity of his feelings – ‘I can feel my socks being on’ – pure joy and a lot of fun.

The final poem I chose was the wonderful song-like ‘A short story of falling’ by Alice Oswald from her collection Falling Awake. It takes the audience back to the theme of birth, lifecycles, regeneration and the wonder of nature. The title also plays on the idea of the Biblical ‘fall’ with which we began. There is so much beauty in this poem – the summer shower that ‘steals the light and hides it in a flower’ and the narrator wanting to know how to ‘balance/ the weight of hope against the light of patience’. Like a song, we reach the end and feel we are ready to being again – ‘the story of the falling rain / that rises to the light and falls again’.

I can’t say yet whether all this will work or not, as the concert is this evening in Lewes! The reader will be a member of the choir who’s also an actor – in rehearsal he delivered the poems with sensitivity and clarity. I haven’t asked for the poems to be printed in the programme as I didn’t want to risk breaching any copyright, so it’s all in the reading. All the poems are credited though, and I hope it may encourage some people to seek out the books in which they appear. Not everyone will be that interested, but at least it gets contemporary writing in front of a general audience.

So no ‘jolly old Saint Nick’ or Tiny Tim or the ghost of Christmas past for the audience tonight, but more challenging fare! Let’s do it!

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New – List of UK poetry magazine submission windows

window at chichester station

It’s been a while since I updated my last year’s post on this topic and I decided it was worth starting from scratch, as a few web addresses and/or submissions policies had changed, plus it’s given me a chance to review them all. As a result I’ve now got a list of 48 UK (well, one or two Europe/non-UK) poetry journals (some also include fiction, reviews, artwork etc in their pages, but I’ve tried to focus on poetry-led publications.) The list includes:

  • a link to their poetry submissions page
  • regular windows/ dates when you can submit, and/or next ‘open window’ (where available). I’ve also included a couple of mags that I’ve mentioned before but that now appear to be closed.
  • how many poems to send
  • whether they accept simultaneous submissions
  • submissions method (eg email, Submittable, post)
  • notes of anything unusual, eg no responses sent

You still need to visit the submissions pages as some of them are VERY long and specific!

Caveat

There’s an element of recommendation here; it’s not a comprehensive list of magazines. The majority of them I’ve either read, submitted to, or both. There are a few that have been recommended, and which look good. I’m always happy to hear of others – I’m sure there are tons more, please feel free to tell us in the comments if you want to mention any – and if it’s a publication I’d consider submitting to myself then I’ll add it to the list when I update it.

Beat ‘overwhelm’ with a system that suits you

This may look like a daunting list. More and more magazines have submissions windows, and some give little notice of openings, so you may need to follow them on social media or by email in order to be ‘in the know’. As I’m sure I’ve said before, I recommend having a system for keeping track of submissions – I use a good old-fashioned spreadsheets but there are other tools, some more user-friendly than others.

Submitting to magazines: workshop in Lewes, East Sussex

One more thing I’d like to mention – if you’re within travelling distance of Lewes, there’s a workshop coming up called ‘Poetry Submissions Without Tears’ being led by Janet Sutherland and Maria Jastrzębska. They say it’s a ‘hands-on workshop for beginning and more experienced poets on submitting to poetry magazines and anthologies’. It’s on October 21st and full details are here. Janet and Maria are experienced poets who walk the talk, as well as being all-round nice and generous people, so if you’re even slightly unsure about the whole submissions process then this is for you.

List of UK poetry magazines and their submissions windows, etc

There are a few European (non-UK) journals on the list, mainly because they seem to take poems from UK poets, or they just happen to be on my radar.

I’ve done the complete list as a free PDF download. Here are some example listings:

The North – currently open, but closing September 1st. Submit up to 6 poems by post only (so be quick!). No stated policy on simultaneous submissions.

Agenda – currently open, but could close any time. Submit up to 5 poems, by email only. No stated policy on simultaneous submissions.

The Rialto – submit any time, via Submittable or by post. Send up to 5 poems. Simultaneous submissions – OK.

Ink, Sweat & Tears – recently moved to submissions windows – the next opens 2nd October. Send 4 – 6 poems (‘no more, no less’) by email only. No simultaneous submissions.

Get the full list

I’ve created this as a spreadsheet and saved it as a PDF with live links, which I hope makes it easier to work from. It’s also a lot less work for me than to reproduce the whole list on a blog post! I’d be happy to share it with you – please email me if you’d like a copy (I’d rather you didn’t just ask in the comments as that’s harder for me to monitor. Thanks!)

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A (tell) Tale of Two Collectives

Telltale infiltrates Sainsburys

I’m fortunate to be a part of two writers’ collectives, one is of course Telltale Press and the other The Needlewriters.

Needlewriters is based in Lewes and consists of about 6 or 7 of us (not entirely sure how many at the moment!) and we’re all writers of prose, poetry or both. We host quarterly events at the Needlemakers cafe (geddit?) at which there are generally three readers – two prose and one poetry, or the other way around. In the interval we sell books and have a raffle, the cafe is open and it’s a well-supported evening. We’ve also produced an anthology featuring work by many of the writers who have read at the event over the years. (The online version can be read for free here.)

Last Thursday we had our Spring reading which for the first time was a Poetry Special, with four readers: Lucy Cotterill, Jemma Borg, Janet Sutherland and Vanessa Gebbie. I was struck by the range of subject matter and styles we witnessed. And each of the poets read so well – although the voices were quite different they all seemed to exude a kind of relaxed authority. No wonder we had such good feedback at the end of the night.

And of course I have to give a plug to Telltale Press – we also hold regular readings, the next of which is on Wednesday 13th April at the Lewes Arms: special guest Abegail Morley, plus Telltales Sarah Barnsley and myself are joined by Rebecca White. Rebecca is a name you may not know, but she’s very talented – a recent graduate of the University of East Anglia Creative Writing MA. We’re all very excited to hear her read, and we hope the poetry-lovers of Lewes will turn out.

Now I’ve got to decide what to read – some newer stuff, certainly – and perhaps see if I can work up one or two from memory. Eek!

The following week I’m the ‘featured poet’ at Poetry at the Underground Theatre Cafe on my home turf here in Eastbourne, which is sightly nerve-wracking (I’m not sure how many will come, and I don’t yet have many friends in Eastbourne) but I know I’ll enjoy it.

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The Reading List, week 2

The Reading LIst, week 2 - Poetgal

The weather has been so good lately it’s tempting to go out for a walk (or a pub lunch!) rather than read. But I’m enjoying the discipline – I find last thing at night and first thing in the morning are good times to read. This week I read through five more collections.

Hangman’s Acre – Janet Sutherland (Shearsman 2009)

I love the way this collection is shaped, framed by poems of love, separation and reunion. In between there are tender explorations of ageing, loss and grief. But there’s much more than that: Janet’s poetry of the South Downs, spirituality as seen through nature, the death of animals and a powerful rage against female genital mutilation. And more – such as the short ‘Bone Monkey’ sequence, a precursor to the more recent collection of that name. Janet’s poems are spare and precise, a joy to read over. Favourite poem: ‘A Walk with Five Dewponds’.

Crow – Ted Hughes (Faber 1972)

At school, we read half a dozen Ted Hughes poems and I memorised ‘Hawk Roosting’ for my A level English. Reading Hughes got me interested in writing poetry and I’ve always regarded him with awe. And yet reading Crow made it so obvious that I’ve only scratched a very small bit of the surface when it comes to his work. This was actually a two-day job, even without re-reading as I went along (one of my ‘reading list’ rules). What to say about Crow? A masterclass in extended metaphor. I would say ‘a roller coaster ride’ if that weren’t such a  stupid cliche – gruesome, comedic, horrifying, tender and raging, you could say it was all those things. Above all it challenged me, pushed me into things I didn’t like, made me want to put the book down, but just as strong was the urge to read on. I had a few nightmares. But it was worth it. Favourite poem: ‘Lovesong’.

Earthworks – Jacqueline Gabbitas (Stonewood Press, 2012)

More lovely poetry of nature, from close (and slightly spooky) encounters with creatures both dead and alive in forests, on hills and in the garden (‘Bird Buried’) to pagan celebrations, and everywhere the feel and smell of clay, soil, peat, coal and all that lies buried in the earth. There’s a touching memorial which appears to be to the poet’s mother (‘In principio’) and a couple of poems in some kind of dialect – which I struggled a bit with as I couldn’t ‘hear’ the voice, but no doubt would come to life in a reading. Many rich seams of meaning and experience to be uncovered in this short (and neatly packaged) collection. Favourite poem: ‘Bird Buried’.

Hugo Williams – Dear Room (Faber, 2006)

I think Hermione Lee in the cover blurb nicely sums up what I think of Hugo Williams – “.. a poet of such intimate charm, such grace and cunning, and such ordinary comical sadness”. I’ve dipped into this collection many times and it was easy to read it all through in one go. I know Williams’ work is regarded in some quarters as less than heavyweight. But personally I love the ‘accessible’ poems with their deadpan delivery and crushing irony, the small poems telling of big joy (eg ‘Pieces of Sky’) and even bigger melancholy (eg ‘The Cry’).  So much to love in this collection – OK it’s not Crow, but who says you can’t enjoy both chocolate and curly kale? Favourite poem: ‘All the Way Down.’

Kim Lasky – Petrol, Cyan, Electric (Smith/Doorstop 2013)

This pamphlet is a real gem which was shortlisted for the Michael Marks award in 2013 and I don’t know why it hasn’t had the sort of widespread publicity and acclaim that it deserves. The poems link seemingly diverse topics as the science of colour (‘Newton Sees the Seventh Colour’), early experiments in electricity, a mother’s gradual loss of speech and slow descent – ‘We are past the fact of muscle, flesh and nails.’ (‘As if the very air’) and the poet’s imagined meeting with her father in 1944. It really does get better with every reading because there is always something more to discover and enjoy. Favourite poem: ‘There are not enough words in the language.’

This post is the latest update to my ‘Reading List’ project begun in July 2015.

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A very Lewes launch: Janet Sutherland & Jeremy Page

Janet Sutherland and Jeremy Page
Janet Sutherland and Jeremy Page launching their new books in Lewes.

Somehow I managed to arrive too late for a seat at the Elephant & Castle yesterday evening (despite having a commute of approximately 30 seconds) but really enjoyed the atmosphere in the packed function room. Poets galore were joined by friends and neighbours for the joint launch of Bone Monkey by Janet Sutherland published by Shearsman and Closing Time by Jeremy Page, published by Pindrop Press.

Bone Monkey and Closing Time

The poets were introduced briefly by Maria Jastrzębska (Janet) and Jo Hemmant (Jeremy). I’m fortunate enough to be in a workshopping group with both Maria and Janet and am always so grateful both for their feedback on my own work but also for the opportunity to hear and see what they’re working on. Consequently, a few of the poems in Bone Monkey are familiar to me – I also heard Janet read from the book at the Needlewriters earlier in April, and I almost always appreciate a poem more for having heard it read more than once. Jeremy is the publisher of the Frogmore Press / Frogmore Papers, going now for 31 years, and he’s been kind enough to publish a couple of my poems in the magazine and the anthology Poems from the Old Hill.  I’ve met Jo, who runs Pindrop Press, a few times, including when we read together at Tunbridge Wells library, an event organised by Abegail Morley, who was also there last night.

Candles, canapes, poetry and friends … great stuff. But alas, I had to make my apologies and leave before the end. I think I’m so fried with work at the moment. I haven’t had a chance yet to even open Closing Time, but I’m hoping to do so over the weekend when I may get some breathing/poetry space.

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Quick Friday update – events, submissions etc

It’s been a thin year so far as regards writing, getting stuff out and accepted by magazines. I do have one excuse, which is that work has taken up a lot more of my time than usual these last 6 months. Not that I’m complaining, as my work and poetry interests continue to converge, slowly but surely. I now have ambitious plans for bringing all my activities under one virtual roof, combining blogs/websites/social outposts etc to create a united front. About time! Give me until the end of the year, though.

A quick what’s-been and will-be happening:

Last night I was at the Needlemakers in Lewes for the launch of Judith Kazantzis‘s new collection Sister Invention. It was a nice intimate affair with free-flowing prosecco. It’s a mighty book – hundreds of poems with (at first glance) a vast geographical and thematic span. I’m looking forward to delving into it.

Tomorrow – the New Writing South Publishing Industry Day at Brighton Library. I’m giving a short talk about ‘building a successful online writer presence’, after which we’re headed off to step-daughter’s 30th birthday party.

Next week, Janet Sutherland and Jeremy Page are holding a joint launch event for their respective new collections, Bone Monkey and Closing Time, and again just a few moments from my front door. How lucky am I?

I’ve had a few days off from writing about blogging, but it all kicks off again next week: book number two to begin, plus hundreds of image permissions to obtain… wish me luck.

June is looking interesting in terms of poetry events – I’ve been invited to read at the Lamb Festival in north London on June 2nd, then also that week we have a lovely event planned in memory of Jo Grigg, friend, poet and Brighton Stanza rep who died so suddenly year. Later in the month, Brighton Stanza are joining Palmers Green for a Stanza Bonanza at the Poetry Cafe. Always great fun, the only nail-biting bit being whether those of us living in the sticks manage to make the last train home.

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An acceptance, a talk and workshop news

Pleasant Stores

Pleasant Stores

I haven’t had a poem accepted for a while so it was very nice to hear from Jeremy Page at The Frogmore Papers to say he’d like to take one for issue 82 in the autumn. Hurrah!

(I also had some other good news last week but more about that shortly.)

And now I’d like your thoughts please on a slightly sticky situation. I’m still rather on tenterhooks with Agenda, after a four month wait I thought I would email again to ask very gently if my poems were still being considered (it does say on the website to expect a 12-week wait, and subscribers -of which I am one- are allegedly given some priority in being dealt with, so I didn’t think it unreasonable to ask.) But would you believe it, apparently my (email) submission was never received, but editor Patricia McCarthy was apologetic and invited me to resubmit, which I did, asking for acknowledgement that they had been received. But I’ve heard nothing.

So here’s the issue:  do I assume my emails aren’t getting through, and just submit the poems elsewhere? (Email is now the only way to submit to Agenda.) Or do I wait, and for how long? I don’t really want to put these poems away for another 4 months. But I don’t want to put myself in the editor’s bad books by having to tell her the poems have gone elsewhere, if she does want them. I also don’t want to pester her with emails saying ‘can you please tell me you’ve got them’ or whatever. It’s a good magazine and I’ve had work in there before, so I don’t want to give up lightly.

Lordy! The etiquette of submissions. And is it very common for poems to go astray? It seems to have happened to me an inordinate number of times.

Meanwhile on the workshop front I enjoyed hosting Colin Bell’s poetry evening in Pleasant Stores round the corner from me in Lewes, although only 2 people turned up. So with Sara the cafe owner that made four of us. It’s not a workshopping group, but people are invited to bring either their own poetry or someone else’s. I took along a selection of mags and books and read poems by Lewes poet Janet Sutherland which everyone liked, and a couple from Sam Rivere’s 81 Austeries, which I love but I think they were a bit too challenging for those present. (Read the review by Ruth Padel in the Guardian.)

Then yesterday I was at Brighton Library giving a short talk for writers about ‘Building your social web presence’. It was part of  New Writing South‘s Publishing Industry Day which was well attended and I sat in on a couple of the other sessions, including one on Arts Council funding which was very interesting. I think I managed to sell a few tickets for the workshops I’m doing there next month and into May, so that’s good.