magma – Robin Houghton

Blog/ 24/06/2019

New reading: Magma 74 and the Laureate’s Choice Anthology

Laureate's Choice Anthology and Magma 74

The new edition of Magma, edited by Benedict Newbery and Pauline Sewards, is dedicated to ‘work’, a subject close to my heart. It’s always puzzled me why there appears to be so little written about traditional (or otherwise) workplaces, given how many hours of many people’s lives are given over to work (in the sense of ‘earning a living’, although of course the Magma editors were hoping for plenty of poems about ‘work’ in its wider sense.)

Sarah Mnatzaganian‘s ‘Laying up’ appeared to me with its rich nautical vocabulary (‘…until our halves meet / and lie without stretch or slack, / my luff to your leech, head to your foot, / clew to your tack, throat to your peak’). I loved the evocation of a mass laying off (a subject I’ve tried to write about myself) by Fokkina McDonnell, ‘The empty hours’, with its matter-of-factness capturing the reality of having to stay dispassionate when tasked with an uncomfortable job (‘If we’d stayed at the Bridge Hotel, Kendal, staff / would have recognised us from last time, / would’ve made phone calls last night.’) Steve Kendall‘s ‘Emotional Labour’ beautifully captures that feeling of doing what is essentially a meaningless job, with random rules and procedures (‘I must send it to whoever’s desk is equidistant from / the first addressee and Emma’), embroidering one’s thoughts with whatever it takes to make it through the day. I think my own poem comes under the category of ‘a bit offputting’, with its crossed out words and slightly odd title (‘Hospitality Management (Diploma) Enrol Now £2,400’). I hope it doesn’t put everyone off reading it though. I know I can be a bit impatient with this sort of thing, rather like my first thoughts about Shaun Carter‘s ‘<title> The office sound in broken code </title>’ – reading through broken code is a bit too close to home for me!

Magma‘s featured poet in this issue is Tom Sastry, who seems to be having a bit of a moment. He also pops up in The Laureate’s Choice Anthology (smith|doorstop), a selection of work chose by Carol Ann Duffy during her tenure as Poet Laureate. As a side note, I did first hear about the ‘Laureate’s Choice’ from Carol Ann when I was on a course with her and Gillian Clarke at Ty Newydd back in 2013. She asked me then (as well as a couple of others) to send her my pamphlet manuscript, for consideration. I didn’t really understand what it was about, but I sent her it anyway. Nothing came of it, but David Borrott, who was on the same course, made the cut. So when this anthology came through my door I was only a TINY BIT bitter!)

But back to Tom Sastry – his poems did rather jump out at me for their originality and intrigue. I loved ‘Difference’, a telling snapshot of a relationship running on parallel lines, the sadness of ‘The Office’ (‘You can bring the name of a bird/ in from the outside, if you like. You can bring its call/ on your ringtone…’ and the simple beauty of ‘Waking’ (‘I dreamt that we were older. It didn’t matter at all.’)

I enjoyed a huge number of the poems in this anthology. Just flicking through again I’m reminded of a few: Yvonne Reddick‘s ‘The Bait’, Mark Pajak‘s ‘Spitting Distance’, David Borrott‘s ‘felicitous blending of figure and landscape’ and ‘Wolf Fell’, John Fennelly’s ‘Those flowers’.

The anthology doesn’t have a foreword, which is a shame, as I’d like to have read something by Carol Ann talking about the thinking behind the project and her selections. Some of the poets are clearly newcomers, whereas others I would describe as established already, with full collections and awards to their name. It’s true that they were picked up over a five-year period – the first Laureate’s Choice collections were published in 2015. Nevertheless it makes for an interesting mix of work.

The Laureate’s Choice Anthology is available now from The Poetry Business, £10.

I’ll be reading (and possibly explaining a bit about my poem) at the London launch of Magma 74 on Thursday 6th July, 6.30pm at Exmouth Market, alongside many fine poets including Lorraine Mariner and Alison Brackenbury. Perhaps see you there?

Blog/ 01/04/2019

On redrafting old material, and a welcome acceptance

During my mini-retreat in Cork I dug out a number of old as-yet-unfinished or unpublished poems to see what I could breathe new life into. Re-use & recycle! Nothing’s wasted! Or is it?

Sometimes when I get out an old poem I find I’ve put enough distance between it and me, and now I’m able to see its flaws and work on it anew.

Other times I wonder if the whole poem needs to be killed off, like cutting a plant right down to an inch from the ground, letting in light and air, giving energy and space for new growth. When I re-read a poem I started years ago, if it doesn’t excite me enough to want to work on it further, I ask myself do I still want to say this? If yes, then can I go back to the first impetus – whatever it was that started me on this poem – and start again on an entirely new road?

I’ve come back from Cork with two re-worked poems I’m quite pleased with, two that I started to re-work but not yet feeling the love, and one ‘new start’ poem, still early days. Another poem is completely new, but the idea has been mulling for a while.

Meanwhile I’m very pleased to have had an acceptance from Magma, for their ‘Work’ themed issue coming up in July. I’m always banging on about there not being enough poems written about work, so of course I thought the theme was right up my Strasse – although an older version of the same poem was actually written for the Poetry News theme of ‘Hotel’ (also one of my favourite topics, so I was a bit miffed that the selector didn’t like my poem on that occasion!)

This hotel/work poem is a good example of the ‘re-use/recycle’ thing. Earliest versions from about two years ago bear no resemblance to the one that’s going into Magma. The fifth version was the one that Poetry News rejected. I then workshopped it both at Hastings Stanza and with poet friend Marion Tracy and it became more fractured and a lot darker. The title became weirder. Ian Duhig at the Garsdale Retreat last summer had some positive comments on it. I worked on it a bit more until it felt stronger and stranger, then sent it (by now, version 12) to The Poetry Review, where it was rejected. It was then in the drawer for six months until the Magma theme came up and I gave it one more outing. So persistence paid off, and by heck I was needing a confidence boost.

I hope you have similar stories to tell. Here’s to successful recycling, upcycling or whatever cycling floats your boat, so to speak.

Blog/ 15/02/2019

‘Work’ poems, getting readings (or not), Spring is coming HURRAY

Last weekend I was reading at Buzzwords Cheltenham, which happens to take place not five minutes from my brother & sister-in-law’s home, so I stayed with them and they seemed very happy to come to the reading. (My long-suffering family!) What a warm and responsive audience there was, and an impressive open mic.

My goodness, Buzzwords live up to its name – we started with a robust discussion about getting work published in magazines, and it was clear very early on that there were some very accomplished poets in the group, published, self-published and ambitious. I chatted to some very interesting people in the breaks. I find it fascinating how diverse people’s background are – coming to poetry after careers in engineering or law, or (as in the case of one lady I spoke to) running huge organisations such as NHS Trusts. It makes me wonder why there isn’t more poetry written about workplace culture, career-path politics, surviving in competitive organisations or making difficult, heartbreaking or extremely stressful decisions on a daily basis.

I’ll be hoping for some of that in the forthcoming issue of Magma which has ‘Work’ as its theme. (I’ve got a poem ‘long listed’ for it, so who knows, it may make the cut.)

Meanwhile, at readings I continue to plug my little handmade pamphlet Foot Wear. I need to make the last 10 copies, then that will be it. Until the next ‘hand made’ project!

I’ve no more readings planned now, so will have to start begging soon. If you don’t ask, you don’t get is my experience. Unless of course you’ve made it to the A or B list, usually by winning something prominent, having friends in high places, or both! BUT I do have Cork Poetry Festival to look forward to – AND today the weather feels positively Springlike. Bring it on.

Blog/ 12/08/201713/08/2017

Four magazines, five poets to watch

A slew of poetry magazines have been arriving the last couple of weeks and I’ve enjoyed ‘discovering’ work by new names. Well, new to me anyway – turns out they’re all accomplished poets, but that doesn’t surprise me. I thought I’d share with you a little about each of the magazines, and a contributor or two to each that caught my attention.

Brittle Star has to get the prize for the most interesting covers. They invariably span front and back, with no writing to spoil the image other than on the spine:

The magazine is run by Martin Parker and Jacqueline Gabbitas on the proverbial shoestring – and for a little mag they are remarkably innovative in finding ways to keep going. Their latest fundraising initiative is to invite readers to support the magazine via Patreon. As they say on their website, “If only 5% of people who follow us on social media donated $2 (about £1.60) a month we’d be half way to hitting our first goal of £750!” Brittle Star is always well produced and they even hold launch readings for every edition. It’s all pretty impressive. Got to be worth $1 or two a month.

Poems that jumped out at me were those by Jack Houston and Barbara Cumbers. Jack’s ‘Separate Towers’ had just the right amount of bonkers humour and painful poignancy to float my boat, with the building of a model cathedral in lolly sticks serving as a metaphor for relationship issues :

Worms may well turn in the earth but we’ll be adhered
to this task until this entire tube of UHU’s been used.

Barbara Cumbers paints a mesmerising picture of a young girl’s quest for control (revenge? stubbornness?) by writing smaller and smaller.

[…] Once, a teacher set me lines –

I had to write “I must writer bigger” fifty times.
I wrote them on the back of a postage stamp. (‘Small’)

Next, the mighty Magma, with its ten-strong editorial board, administrator and freelance staff, immaculately produced and also with a distinctive look, in particular its square format. I have a love-hate relationship with Magma, partly because I’ve had too many submissions rejected (!), but also because I’ve never been able to get the feel for what the magazine is looking for, or what it’s about – its heart, if you like. It may be down to the fact that the editors rotate and change from one edition to the next.

Magma 68 is on the theme of ‘Margins’, so it’s not surprising that we get a good number of poems on the heartfelt/hardcore spectrum – from protest and despair to death, slaughter and eco-apocalypse. I really warmed to Ellie Danak‘s ‘Dear Lab-Man’, a mysterious love-letter with ‘Fatal Attraction’ written all over it –

[…]
There’s no excuse for my welling up,
strangling all that tubing to spell out LOVE.
My lips can distil blood. Meet me
in the fume cupboard tonight.

But if it’s strangeness you’re after then Obsessed with Pipework is self-proclaimed ‘poetry with strangeness and charm’. It’s another double spread cover this time featuring artwork by Graham Higgins:

Obsessed with Pipework is edited by Charles Johnson, and although my poems in this issue sadly lost most of their formatting, I can’t hold it against Charles as he’s been a fine supporter of my work and I owe him one. And besides the poems are all the more strange for it.

I particularly enjoyed three poems by Sue Kindon, of whom I know nothing (and her ‘biog’ in the magazine was sketchy, you might say – although it had strangeness and charm). We have a poem about blockages (actual and metaphorical), while another features a woman on a cruise, on the verge of betraying her husband with the moon –

[…]
I sense that rare blue-eyed look
you keep in reserve, to anchor me. (‘Anniversary on Board’)

I liked the subverting of nice middle-class themes (‘I’ve chosen something marble-veined / and a safe brie’) with undertones of something much harder-hitting (‘Sacred places are sawn off […] Old gods wander the desert of dementia’).

And finally Under the Radar, another well-respected and long-running magazine, published by Nine Arches Press and edited by Jane Commane. This edition features a review of The Swell, Jessica Mookherjee’s pamphlet published by Telltale Press last autumn. My eye was also caught by a poem by Julian Dobson, partly because I’d seen his work in Magma and had nearly chosen to mention him then. So, a name I hadn’t met before and then I see it in two magazines. Like me he must have done some serious submitting around six to nine months ago.

In choosing ‘Meet the neighbour’ I’m starting to wonder why I’m drawn to these on-the-face-of-it memoir poems into which you can read as much menace as you like. I once told a poet friend how much I’d enjoyed a poem of hers in ‘The Rialto’ – ‘…it gave me the creeps! Really menacing!’ only to have her reply that it was supposed to be positive and comforting – hmm! So here we have Julian Dobson’s ‘rumple-haired man from the basement flat’ who ‘had a way of vanishing before Dad got home’, while Dad has

No truck with stories, a reddening head
bursting with hellfire and helplessness.
We found crevices and corners
in the echoing house.

Nonetheless, I find myself worrying for him, and enjoying the not-knowing of the poem.

So there we are – another five poets I want to keep an eye out for and read more of.

I should add that these were contributor copies, apart from Under the Radar which was a a publisher copy. I do subscribe to magazines but I limit it to one or two mags per year, on a rotating basis. I know it’s expensive to support all the myriad poetry mags out there, and this is my tactic to do so in an affordable manner. It’s not only interesting to keep an eye on new writing, but it also informs my submissions – where to send, which magazine would a poem suit, that kind of thing.

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.

Angst/ 03/04/2017

Eyewear Anthology launch & a scary flashback

Eyewear - Best New British and Irish Poets anthology

This one is dedicated to my good friend Lucy, who often comes with me to London poetry readings. I’ve taken her to standing-room only upstairs rooms in Victorian pubs, damp basements that turn into saunas in the summer, corners of (yet more) pubs where poets compete with the steady traffic to/from the gents, drunk hilarity from the bar and piped music. She listens, she smiles, she pays her way, she never asks ‘is it nearly over yet?’ and she never complains. And whenever I invite her, she comes along, cheerful as ever! Thank you, Lucy!

Yesterday she and I were at the launch event for Eyewear’s ‘Best New British and Irish Poets 2017’ anthology, at the Windmill in Brixton. I’m very grateful to have a poem in such an anthology, and in such good company. Luke Kennard, thank you for picking it up – I didn’t feel able to elbow my way in to your entourage yesterday to say so, so I’m saying it here. I also want to thank Charles Johnson who originally published the poem in ‘Obsessed with Pipework’.

The Windmill is apparently a legendary music venue – award-winning, longstanding etc. But it had a very strange effect on me. The instructions to find it were to ‘walk along Blenheim Gardens until you think you’ve missed it’ – and I can sort of see why. The road is quiet and residential. The Windmill is slightly set back, and has the appearance of a social club or a school games hut, quite the opposite of the gentrified gastropub one expects in these well-connected, used-to-be-gritty parts of South London. The first thing we noticed was a huge barking/drooling dog on the roof, presumably the one the landlord sends in when punters are reluctant to leave at night.

When I walked inside, I had the most weird sense of deja-vu, or rather being transported back in time to the early eighties, or even earlier. I was hit by a sudden smell – it was as if People Had Been Smoking in there – you know, like in the old days! And no-one had opened any windows since 1986. But wait! I don’t think there were any windows.

The place was dark and deserted but for a chap behind the bar. He was friendly, and sold us two very reasonably priced glasses of wine. I resisted the urge to ask for half a lager & lime, telling myself this is not Lewisham in 1978, I am not a teenager but I was drowning in flashbacks to school discos, freezing cold bus stops, dingy pubs with sticky floors and the acrid taste of snogs with boys who smoked and drank bitter. I tried to laugh it off, thinking it was because I’m currently loving my box set of The Sweeney (“fags, slags, jags and blags”), with all its wonderful shabby London locations and dialogue.

Things got going though, and after sitting outside in the sun for a while we made our way back in for the start and found it packed. Yes, standing room only – although we did find seats at the back for a while, until someone came to ‘fix the air conditioning’ above our heads and we had to move. We heard readings from Eyewear poets, from Luke Kennard (who was the selector for the anthology) and also from contributors, including Jayne Stanton down from the Midlands and Telltale’s own Jess Mookherjee. Todd Swift, Eyewear publisher and compere, was very entertaining and saw us through not one but two power cuts when the fuses went. And Jill Abram was there, at one point working the desk and getting the mic in order – she’s clearly a multi-talented woman.

When it came to my turn to read, I had the usual struggle with the lighting/reading glasses etc, and then when I started speaking I heard this rough-sounding Sarf London accent ricocheting round the room – is that me? I have no idea what was happening, unless it was the trauma of the flashback-stuff and being so close to where I grew up – plus The Sweeney – but I was channelling Denis Waterman (“Ere Guv, isn’t this the boozer where you nicked Fat Charlie in that blag?”) Anyway, I couldn’t do anything about it – if I’d have smartened up my vowels halfway through then it would have sounded weird – like I was putting on a posh poetry voice or something. And I wasn’t imagining this – I mentioned it to Lucy as I sat down and she confirmed it. Ugh! Is there no end to the stressful situations we put ourselves through??!

By that point I was too embarrassed to risk introducing myself to Luke K. So I left feeling rather sheepish about it all. We couldn’t stay to the end as I had to get back to Eastbourne, so I felt a bit guilty about that too. But hey, it was a lovely sunny day. And on the way home I picked up an email to say I’d had a poem accepted for Magma. So that cheered me up. I didn’t watch any of The Sweeney when I got home though.

audio/ 19/09/2013

Audio poem (an experiment)

I was inspired by Mark Hewitt’s performance of ‘expiry tbc‘ the other evening here in Lewes. It was actually a 3-person production featuring Peter Copley on live (and looped) cello, and wonderful lighting effects by Kristina Hjelm. I’d had the privilege of being in Mark’s workshopping group led by Mimi Khalvati earlier in the year, and he had brought along various versions of the text. But although some of the words were familiar, it was amazing how exciting and moving the whole package became with the addition of sound, light and staging. I’ve often fallen into the trap of thinking that performance poetry is mostly about shouting, rhyming and making the audience laugh. But this was something else entirely.

So I went back to my ‘3 voice canon’ poem – the one I sent to Magma for their theme ‘The music of words’ (still open for admissions, by the way) but was rejected, because they said they couldn’t see the connection between the stanzas, and I recorded it the way I envisage it being read. I used a bit of software called Audacity, in which it’s easy to record one track and layer copies of it over the top in a stagger. I was having so much fun I gave it four tracks in the end. So maybe I should re-title it ‘4-voice canon’?

I did it on one take, so I’m sure I could improve on it, although I don’t want to start putting on silly voices or making it over dramatic. Let me know what you think – thanks.

Angst/ 18/08/2013

A couple of rejections this week – oh well

Two rejections this week – firstly, a ruthlessly perky email from Mslexia regarding their poetry comp (subject line “Better luck next time!”) – I suppose it’s good to be told you haven’t won anything, rather than not hearing anything, which is the norm. Nevertheless it felt a bit like failing to hook a plastic duck at a fairground sideshow – sorry love! – and the consequent tearing up of the losing raffle ticket. Ah well. At least the subject line wasn’t ALL IN CAPS.

Then I got a rejection from Magma, who I’ve found are generally very good at quick turnarounds of submissions, so all credit to them. This one seemed to be an individual rather than a standard reply, since the editors explained that while my use of ‘sound language’ fulfilled the brief better than most of the entries they had so far received, they hadn’t felt the three stanzas related sufficiently to one another to justify the subtitle I’d given it (‘Three voice canon’). I sent a off a quick ‘no problem! thanks anyway!’ chippy kind of reply, then woke up during the night wondering why on earth I hadn’t at least explained that the ‘canon’ referred to the reciting of the poem by three people almost simultaneously, the stanza breaks being the places where the next voice starts.

Should I have explained this in a footnote? Personally I don’t care for footnotes or complex explanations. But this is the first thing I’ve written intentionally for performance. So, yes, you guessed it, I sent another email saying just that – ‘since you took the trouble to offer feedback, I wanted to just say . . .’ – which probably came over as passive-aggressive but it wasn’t intended that way. I hope I was brief, calm and polite. I realise if there was an alternative reading of the piece then the fault is entirely mine, and I probably should have left it there. I’ve never engaged in correspondence over a rejection before, and in the deafening silence that greeted my email I had a sinking feeling that I had behaved badly. What do you think? Have I blotted my copybook? Clearly my ‘canon’ isn’t a page poem – so maybe I’ll publish it here on my blog and save it for performance only (I need 2 co-performers though!)

My week has been dominated mainly by very sad news of a poet friend, the kind of news that stops you in your tracks and makes you think just how inconsequential in the scheme of things it is to be blogging about the microworld of poetry or the ups and downs of competition entries and magazine submissions. And I remember the words of a neighbour and friend who died last year aged just 52, ‘in the end, all that’s left is love.’

Angst/ 05/07/2013

I mislaid my poetic mojo in a Ghent hostel

Having been away for four days ‘helping’ with a college trip to Belgium (my husband was the tour leader – his A level students) I’m finding it hard to get back to poetry.

I suppose it’s partly because I’m having to catch up with work as well, and not having a proper night’s sleep the whole time we were away (teenagers don’t go to sleep before 2am, so nor can anyone else in a Youth Hostel where there are no carpets and the doors all slam).

Although they were (for the most part) very nice people, I just found the whole being-around-40-teenagers utterly exhausting and a tad depressing. Their energy saps mine, their zest for life deadens my creativity. I’m amazed at how so many writers are able to combine a teaching career with writing – and yet it’s such a common combination, whether it’s by choice or necessity.

OK, I realise I’m probably being over-dramatic here, after all I think a foreign trip is tiring even for the full time teachers, because you’re never off-duty, not for a moment.

Anyway, I think I now have an even higher respect for my husband and his colleagues for everything they bring and give to teaching. I just know I don’t have that kind of generosity in me!

But on a more positive note… lots to look forward to, not least of all some much-needed sunshine!

The answer to a creativity deadzone for me is to read, and read good stuff. I’ve still to explore the new Poetry Review and Magma which arrived a week or so ago, plus I’m reading Abegail Morley’s Snow Child and Ben Parker’s The Escape Artists, so I’ll be talking about those soon on the blog.

Poetry readings coming up: Hilda Sheehan has very kindly invited me to read at the Blue Gate Poets meeting on 8th August in Swindon, and I’m currently talking with the organisers of the Shoreham Wordfest about putting on a poetry night where I hope to be reading alongside some lovely poet friends. Then come October there are exciting plans for a reading with Abegail Morley and Emer Gillespie – will keep you posted.

Angst/ 17/12/2012

My recent poetry unsuccesses

True to my pledge to blog the UNsuccesses as well as the successes, here’s the latest news.

Firstly Magma – I’ve submitted there a couple of times previously and on both occasions was rejected pretty quickly. This sets a precendent – you assume that if you don’t hear quickly, that your poem is likely to have been shortlisted. However, with different editors for each issue, I guess they all have their different methods. In this case, decisions were sent out relatively late, and several of us who had been on tenterhooks all learned more or less at the same time that it was a ‘thanks but no thanks.’

Anyway, I haven’t held it against them (how could I? when it’s their loss!!) and have now subscribed to Magma, as it does look like an interesting and wide-ranging magazine. This subscription will be at the expense of Aesthetica, which I subscribed to for a year but realised that although it was intriguing for its coverage of art, it doesn’t actually feature poetry any more.

Which brings me to my next unsuccess, which came in the form of a standard rejection from PN Review. This wasn’t so much of a surprise, as PN Review is a very high brow mag indeed, and its rejection of my work only increases both my admiration of it and my determination to one day produce something worthy of its pages.

I’m now trying to decide whether to subscribe to PN Review, both as part of my general poetry education and in an attempt to mold something they would like. If I do, it has to be a straight swap with my Mslexia subscription, but that doesn’t expire until next summer. I feel like I’ve kind of moved on from Mslexia. Although I still enjoy browsing the directory of courses & competitions and dreaming about going on a writing retreat in Italy, I get frustrated at how little serious coverage is given to poetry. Plus, recent articles about social media and blogging have annoyed me in their simplification of the issues and regurgitation of same old advice. Not exactly cutting edge.

So there we are – I still have a few things out for consideration here and there, and I’ll let you know what happens. But for now I try to do what Kipling urged – to ‘meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same” – he he.

Tag: magma

Hastings Stanza reading

Clare Best book launch

A bit about singing

Magma launch

A bit about acceptances & rejections