maria isakova bennett – Robin Houghton

Blog/ 12/09/2018

New: how-to guide to submitting to UK poetry magazines, plus new collaborations

New book!

With the UK poetry magazines submissions windows spreadsheet becoming so popular, I’ve decided to take it step further: a how-to booklet – everything you need to know about submitting to UK poetry mags – well, pretty much everything apart from how to write stunning poems – ha ha! I leave that kind of advice well and truly up to others!

There will be honest advice from magazine editors, tips on how to minimise your admin, dealing with rejections, up-to-date magazine profiles, mistakes to avoid… and more. As much as I can squish into a pocket-book, basically. Expect bullets, calls to action, URLs and minimal padding. This will be a lean, mean fact-packed machine. Magazine submissions is a topic that comes up regularly on this blog and always generates questions and discussion, so let’s get stuck in.

More details to follow soon.

Collaboration for Poetry in Aldeburgh

I love autumn and its sense of re-starting, of new opportunities. A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to take part in Maria Isakova Bennett‘s Aldeburgh Collaborative, a project involving poets all over the country sharing a moment at the coast on the last day of August. Maria is the artist-in-residence at the Poetry in Aldeburgh festival in November, alongside Michael Brown, and her collaborative piece will be on display there. It’s sure to include hand-stitching and a strong visual element. Here’s a fascinating interview with Maria on Paul Stevenson’s blog where she talks to him about her projects.

Another potential collaboration

I was recently contacted by a visual artist who liked a poem of mine on the Mary Evans Picture Library ‘Poems and Pictures’ website called ‘Ladies’ Hour’. She has in mind a collaborative project which sounds really exciting. We’re both new to collaborations, but we’re both at the same sort of stage in our careers and looking for new challenges. Of course there’s the usual issue of funding to apply for first. I also need to stay focused on my first collection, although this new project would be spread out through the year. I’ll keep you posted as to how it pans out.

Magazine news

The Rialto has just opened its window for poetry submissions. It’s a fantastic magazine to get work into, with a fine reputation. It’s competitive, but Michael Mackmin and his assistant editors are always open to new voices. Good luck.

Not really news, but I’ve just taken out a subscription to Strix, a new-ish magazine produced in Leeds (thank you to Heidi Beck for the recommendation) and am loving first of all the presentation. OK I know looks aren’t everything, but it’s joyful when you have something of beauty in your hands. I’m also already enjoying the poetry inside, work by Julie Mellor and Helen Burke in particular.

Blog/ 03/02/201802/02/2018

Opportunity to have a hand-stitched pamphlet of your poems

I promised Maria Isakova-Bennett I would mention this to you – Maria is the creator of the beautiful Coast to Coast to Coast magazine I’ve featured here recently. Well, she and co-editor Michael Brown are offering a great opportunity to one lucky poet – the chance to have their small collection published as a handmade, handstitched artifact.

You do need to hurry though – the closing date is February 10th. Good luck!

Blog/ 21/12/2017

Launch of ‘Coast to Coast to Coast’ issue 2

I’m back from an (almost) flying trip to Liverpool, a city about 300 miles north of where I live, for a five minute poetry reading – crazy or what? Except I wasn’t the only ‘poetry tourist’ there, and no wonder, as we were there for the launch of no ordinary magazine.

Edited by Maria Isakova Bennett and Michael Brown, ‘Coast to Coast to Coast’ is a handmade journal and every one is unique. I’ve opened it up in the above photo so you can see the cover – Maria designs and creates the covers from tissue, tiny pieces of card, silk and tulle-type fabric and ribbon – each is hand-stitched and assembled. The cover theme for this issue is wintery and cool – the inner pages are printed on complementary paper (white with the whiter covers, cream for the creamer colour schemes). The whole look is so delicate and ethereal you almost don’t want to handle it! Having made my little ‘Foot Wear’ pamphlet (a lot fewer pages and with a printed cover) and knowing the time it took, I can only boggle at the labour that’s gone into the making of these journals (150 copies!)

A bit of Liverpool love

I want to digress here for a moment – first of all to say how much fun the journey was. Travelling by Virgin Pendolino train was What Train Travel Should Be Like. Down here on the South coast we endure Southern Rail: constant cancellations, delays, replacement buses every weekend, slow, uncomfortable journeys in ancient and filthy carriages, expensive and utterly unreliable. So getting on a train that leaves and arrives ON TIME, is quiet, clean and FAST… and, thanks to Advance ticket fares, cheap… I’d simply forgotten any of this was possible!

And Liverpool? There’s such an energy to the place. Its history is on show everywhere.

From inside the Liver Building in Liverpool — Looking out at the Ice Fair from inside the Liver Building

We stayed in the Ropewalks part of town which is basically warehouses mostly converted to flats, hotels, clubs, bars and yet more bars.

liverpool-ropewalks — Um, not actually where we stayed…

Liverpudlians take their entertainment (and shopping) seriously I think. Then there’s the Albert Dock, transformed beyond recognition since the 1980s and now home to the Tate Liverpool, the Maritime Museum and the striking Museum of Liverpool, which reminded me of the Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI Centre for Contemporary Arts in Rome – separated at birth?

Museum of Liverpool and Maxxi Rome — Museum of Liverpool and (bottom right) MAXXI Rome – some similarity, surely?

padlocks by the side of the Mersey in Liverpool — ‘Love locks’ on the chain fence by the side of the Mersey

Back to the launch …

Within the same complex as the Museum of Liverpool is the Open Eye Gallery, a gallery of contemporary photography where the launch for ‘Coast to Coast to Coast’ took place on Tuesday evening. Writer-in-residence Pauline Rowe, who also has a poem in the magazine, co-hosted the event and introduced the current exhibition which we were invited to browse.

It was wonderful to hear readings from poets I knew of but had never met, and some I didn’t know of. I had a great chat with Charles Lauder Jr, and finally got to meet the great Fogginzo himself, John Foggin – naturally I was quick to remind him how he pipped me out of five hundred quid in the Plough competition a couple of years ago, but hey!

robin houghton & johnfoggin — Robin meets the great Fogginzo

I was sorry not to talk with Michael Brown, Maria’s co-editor, who I’ve since discovered with a little research is a fine poet (Roy Marshall has a good interview with him here on his blog) but perhaps our paths will cross again.

With so much good stuff in the magazine it’s hard to pick out the highlights. I loved David Coldwell’s ‘Winter’s Indifference’ and Martin Bewick’s ‘Ways’. In the magazine I enjoyed moving contributions from Suzannah V. Evans and Pippa Little, as well as a funny prose poem from Paul Stephenson. Maria and Michael were thrilled to have had a submission from John Glenday, testament to how well the first edition of the magazine had been received, no doubt. His poem opens the magazine and Maria read it on the night.

Giveaway

So that was my great pre-Christmas adventure. My copy of the magazine is number 15, but I also bought number 55 which is equally beautiful, and I’d like to give it to one of my blog readers. If you’d like to have it, let me know in the comments and I’ll put all names into a hat and draw a winner. The only criterion I ask for is that you’ve posted a comment here over the last year, or that you’ve let me know in some other way that you read the blog. You know who you are! I’ll be doing the draw in a week or so.

Coast to Coast to Coast issue 2 — This beautiful magazine (on the right) could be yours!

Blog/ 11/11/201719/11/2017

Readings, diagram poems and towards a new handmade pamphlet…

Oh dear, looks like it’s been a while since my last post – there’s been a lot going on, including a birthday (and all the stock-taking and reassessing that brings),a reading at the swish new Poetry Cafe in London, and the making of a new pamphlet. Plus the clocks have gone back, we’ve put the garden to bed and I’ve even bought my tickets for the T S Eliot prize readings in January. The year must be nearly over!

With Telltale at the new-look Poetry Cafe

The Telltale Press & Friends night at the Poetry Cafe was a real highlight of the last few weeks. I travelled up with Catherine Smith, who has been such a fantastic support both to Telltale and to me personally in my writing. Hearing her read is always a pleasure, and alongside Peter Kenny too – Peter is a creative powerhouse, and I couldn’t have done the whole Telltale thing without him. (He recently won the HappenStance Dream Poem competition – and just look at the marvellous feedback here from judge J O Morgan.) Compering the night with great élan was Sarah Barnsley, another inspirational Telltaler, and our special guest was Abigail Parry – a hugely talented poet whose first collection is coming out with Bloodaxe in the New Year – and long-awaited I think – Abby has won some very impressive prizes. She’s also one of the most modest and humble poets I’ve ever met. All this, plus a full & appreciative audience (the Poetry Cafe always seems to deliver!) made for a fantastic night.

Peter Kenny at Telltale Poets and Friends, the Poetry Cafe — Peter Kenny

Readings coming up

I’ve got some lovely poetry readings to look forward to now – this Monday I’m at Winchester Loose Muse reading alongside the mighty Sasha Dugdale. I’m grateful to organiser Sue Wrinch for inviting me – and in such great company. I’ll be practising my set this weekend!

Then next month a trip to the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool for the Coast to Coast to Coast vol 2 magazine launch, at the invitation of editor Maria Isakova Bennett. I’m not sure who else is reading at the launch but the list of contributors is a pretty exciting. And a night away in Liverpool at Christmas is going to be great fun!

Illustrators making poetry pamphlets

Coast to Coast to Coast is a hand-stitched thing of beauty. I’ve always loved handmade journals. They feel so personal, as if there’s a tactile connection with the person who made it, and I love the thought of having number 14 (or whatever) of only 50 produced.

I was at the Towner Gallery recently for the Ink, Paper & Print Fair, and came away totally enthused. I picked up two limited edition pamphlets which caught my eye – Bangheads by illustrator Ceri Amphlett and To Eden, Diagram Poems by Matthew Kay. The concept of diagram poems was new to me, and I love it – where each single word really does come loaded, the collages of old-school diagrams with unexpected labels that you feel compelled to examine. The idea of diagrams – traditionally used to express complexities in ways that are supposed to enlighten, to reveal the wisdom behind the facts – as poems, makes sense, and appropriating the diagrams as a means of exploring a relationship feels both humorous and deadly serious.

Ceri’s pamphlet is, she admitted, illustration-driven, and she doesn’t claim to be a poet, nevertheless I liked the accompanying short poems a lot.

All this got me thinking again about hand-making a pamphlet, just in limited numbers, using some of the poems I’ve had no luck in getting published, or versions of them. I love the design aspect of pamphlets and being involved in every aspect of the visual presentation.

The themed sequence I’ve had knocking around for a few years now is the ‘Business Class’ series of poems based on the years I spent in the sport shoe industry. I always bring a couple of them out at readings, and they’re often the ones people comment on, or seem to remember. Most of the poems have been published individually in various journals, but I’ve given up on finding a publisher for them as a pamphlet. The idea once felt original and unusual but maybe no longer – I recently heard of another poet bringing out a pamphlet based on his workplace experiences called – you guessed it – ‘Business Class’.

But I still think the sequence has legs, so I changed the emphasis slightly and decided to focus on the shoe theme. I then realised I’ve actually had a bit of a life in shoes! In this way a short collection started to take shape. I’ve combined the poems together with some relevant grainy photos, and produced a semi-autobiographical sequence called Foot Wear.

This post is already quite long so I’ll talk more about Foot Wear, and my adventures in book-binding, in another post…

Blog/ 20/09/2017

To Liverpool, 28 drafts later

It’s wonderful how software like Illustrator allows non-designers like me a chance to play around with layout, typefaces and graphic design. I really value how digital has made good quality print projects possible for amateur creatives. We can all be publishers now. Producing your own zine, poster, wall art or whatever is cheap and easy.

Perhaps this is what gives the handmade or hand finished object extra appeal. I haven’t seen the magazine Coast to Coast to Coast yet – it’s only on its second edition – but when I came across a tweet asking for submissions, and read about it being hand stitched , I knew I wanted it – and to be in it, if possible. The magazine editors are Maria Isakova Bennett and Michael Brown. I knew Maria’s name from her poetry, but she is also a fine artist, and the magazine is designed to be a work of art, a beautiful artefact in itself. (Fuselit, edited by Kirsten Irving and Jon Stone, is another handmade, limited edition magazine which I have a few copies of, and they are small things of great wonder.)

When Maria emailed to say they had accepted my submission I was excited for several reasons – firstly obviously to have a poem in the magazine and alongside the work of many fine poets, secondly because this particular poem has been in development for A Very Long Time, and lastly because the launch event is at the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, it means I get a good reason to go visit.

“The greatest team in Europe…”

When I was a teenager I worshipped Liverpool FC. My girlfriends and I were happy talking about Kevin Keegan all day. I never saw my team play at home, because a journey to Liverpool was inconceivable – at that time I lived in London and I’d never been north of Derby. But I recorded each season’s match results religiously in my diary, an early version of which also bizarrely contained a ‘Club News’ section, written up in my best fourteen-year-old’s sports journalist style, even though no-one read it but me!

Although I’ve only been twice to Liverpool, the thought of going up there in December to hear some lovely poetry, in an art gallery, to stay the night in the city and to take away a handmade piece of art fills me with a ridiculous amount of joy. Ironically I don’t follow football any more.

So what about the 28 drafts?

The poem features a fur, or an alleged fur – depending on how you read it (perhaps it was always destined to appear in a tactile/textile magazine?) Anyway, the first draft was in 2011, and looking at the computer folder I see it has had 28 drafts and six different titles over the last seven years. This has to be a record for me. I know I workshopped it at least three times, each time resulting in my thinking it rubbish and putting it away. I submitted it several times in the early days, but stopped over the years as I lost confidence in it. But I couldn’t give up on it entirely. This year I got it out again for more redrafting. It felt much better – as if I’d had to grow into the poem. And now it’s finally found a home, and I’m absurdly grateful.

Hurrah for the handmade and the labours of love!

Tag: maria isakova bennett