Tag: jill abram

Blog/

Midsummer update: poetry projects, novel stuff, podcast…

It’s been a busy few weeks. Today started very well by my getting the Wordle in one – third time this year! If you don’t know what Wordle is then I apologise. But a ONE is pure luck. I danced around the room – Nick probably thought I’d got a book deal. Speaking of which:

How’s the novel going?

Thanks for asking! I finished the first draft in 9 weeks, and have been editing since, also writing a synopsis, researching agents and trying to come up with a title. I’m also itching to start book two. Which might end up being book one, if you see what I mean. Apparently many first books are rubbish.

I was being polite, I’m really only interested in poetry..

Oh well fair enough! A funny thing did happen the other day, I suddenly wrote four poems – a sort of sequence I suppose – out of nowhere. But I haven’t really given poetry writing a lot of headspace lately. The ‘sudden burst’ actually came after listening to an online book launch by Pindrop Press. I was enjoying poems by Lydia Harris, and was inspired enough to buy her collection, Objects of Private Devotion. I haven’t started it yet though, mainly because I’ve been ploughing though historical novels to try to gauge where mine sits. But also, I have two poetry books to review for the Frogmore Papers, plus Jill Abram‘s debut collection Forgetting My Father (Broken Sleep) waiting to be read. Patience!

Another project I’m involved with at the moment is an anthology that the Hastings Stanza is putting together, to be published in October under the Telltale Press imprint. There are four of us on the editorial “committee” and at the moment I’m busy on the typesetting. I think the standard of poems is pretty high, though I say so myself, so it’s a pleasure to work on.

Recent events I’ve attended include the 40th birthday celebration reading for the Frogmore Press, then Rachel Playforth reading at Needlewriters. Rachel has written this lovely sequence about her home town of Lewes, called ‘Twitten’…

As regards submissions I’ve still got a dozen or so poems that have been out for between nine months and a year. Talk about indigestion. I kicked a few others out the door recently. But who knows. My acceptance rate is a shadow of it former self. I think perhaps my poetry is out of fashion. Oh well! Like growing older. What can you do?

At the least the Planet Poetry podcast is on the up, according to download/listener stats. It’s hard work though. I’ve just had an exhausting month recording and editing two back-to-back episodes, both of which had technical challenges. The most recent episode is a ‘Bumper Children’s Poetry Special’ in which I talk to Rachel Piercey and Kate Wakeling. It was great fun to do! Nevertheless Peter and I are looking forward to our summer break…

Forthcoming poem alert: those lovely editors at Atrium, Holly Magill and Claire Walker, have taken a poem of mine, ‘For Sagra, at Port-Gentil on Midsummer’s Day’ to go live this Friday. “It was the closest date we could get to Midsummer’s Day!” they told me. Hurray for the longest day!

Right, now I’m off to buy a lottery ticket…

Blog/

Launches, project updates and two disputed works

Royal Shakespeare Theatre Stratford

The poor weather has meant I’ve not been spending time in the garden as I normally would at this time of year. Still too cold to plant out courgettes and tomatoes! So instead I’ve been keeping myself out of mischief with ‘deskwork’…

A poet friend whose website I created a few years ago has asked for a revamp, so I’m enjoying working on that. I’ve also got two Planet Poetry interview recordings coming up soon, so I’ve been reading and preparing for those.

Meanwhile despite days off and other distractions, I have kept to my ‘average 1,000 words a day’ on my novel and am past the 60k mark already, so the end-of-May (self-imposed) deadline for finishing the first draft is well in sight. Alongside this I’m researching agents and planning my strategy! I have no idea of a title for this book yet, but I’m looking forward to giving it some thought.

There seem to be plenty of launches and other events coming up. I just read today about Josephine Corcoran’s new pamphlet from Live Canon, to be launched on May 21st. Tomorrow Jill Abram’s launch for her debut pamphlet from Broken Sleep is happening in London – I had booked to go along, but then was offered the chance to talk about Planet Poetry to 3rd year students at Brighton University at their end of year publishing course. Peter and I couldn’t resist the idea of being on a panel and talking about the podcast! Thanks to Lou Tondeur for the invitation. On June 2nd I’m delighted to be reading at Frogmore at 40, Frogmore Press’s 40th Anniversary event in Brighton. I’m a tad daunted to be honest, looking at the names of the other readers. So I just hope I’m not reading first. Please come if you’re anywhere near Brighton, it should be a grand night!

The Charleston Festival is coming up (no, I haven’t been invited to read there!) and as usual I’ll be going to a few talks with my good non-poet-but-writer friend Caroline. On May 26th the amazingly talented and lurrvly Inua Ellams is reading. I loved interviewing him on the Planet Poetry podcast and can’t wait to see how he goes down with the Bloomsbury set.

A couple of weeks ago we were in Stratford upon Avon to see a performance of Cymbelline. I’d never seen it before and nobody I’d spoken to about it had seen it either. Turns out it is a disputed play (ie some say it’s not actually by Shakespeare) – it is certainly a bit of a mashup of other Shakespeare plays both in plot and plot devices. Postmodern, eh? A bit like that song that just won the Eurovision Song Contest sounding suspiciously like ‘Winner takes it all’ by ABBA – is it a conspiracy to get the contest back in Sweden next year for the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s win? Anyway, whoever wrote it (Cymbelline that is) we enjoyed it! (But personally I preferred the Austrian entry about Edgar Allen Poe…)

 

Blog/

Seven Questions for Poets #2 – Jill Abram

My second poet under ‘seven questions’ interrogation is Jill Abram. Jill is widely published in the magazines and is both the Director of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen – a collective of writers who focus on craft, community and development – and a Tideway Poet. She’s really active on the poetry scene, especially around London – not only in giving readings and staging events, but supporting others too. I’ve met her at various places including Richard Skinner’s Vanguard Readings and Anne-Marie Fyfe’s Troubadour nights. Here are Jill’s answers…

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

The Immigration Handbook by Caroline Smith (Seren) – I’m still reading it as the poems are so powerful, you have to take them in small doses and savour each one.

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?

Well, I think that everything that I write is a work of genius but others may beg to differ. I’d like to think I write more than one or two decent poems a year, but I can’t present evidence that anyone else thinks so too…

3 – Do you enter poetry competitions?

I won the very first competition I entered but have yet to repeat that success.  I’m focusing on magazine submissions at the moment, and have had three accepted recently (Under the Radar, Cake and The Rialto).  I have entered some pamphlet competitions so fingers crossed!

4 – What would be your ideal place for a writing retreat? 

Somewhere with a good view, good catering and internet access.

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

At last!

6 – Can you remember the first poem you wrote – what was it about?

That would have been when I was a child and I can’t remember it. It was probably funny and rhyming – I was brought up on Edward Lear and the like.  Then there would have been the teen angst poems, which I wrote in my twenties (late developer). These were mostly about my parents not understanding me, but also included an anti-Thatcher rant!  I started writing more seriously and consistently on an Arvon course in 2007 – those poems are probably best forgotten too!  Except to mark the start of something.

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

I don’t know but I work as a studio manager and our collective noun is a ‘whinge’, as that’s what we do when we get together!

QUICK PLUG:  Jill Abram is curating a series of readings called ‘Stablemates’ at Waterstones Piccadilly on the last Thursday of the month, starting in September. Each will feature three poets from one publisher. The first are Penned in the Margins, Nine Arches and Seren. Details will be on the events page of Waterstones website and on Jill’s site.

Previous ‘Seven Questions for Poets’:
#1 – Clare Best