Tag: poetry book society

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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.

Angst/

Back to school, current reading & looking forward

Back. After twelve days or so away I’m feeling positively autumnal and a bit ‘back to school’ (garden looking blousy, woollies coming out the wardrobe, wondering when Masterchef starts, etc).

I haven’t got back into any new writing but that will come. Sometimes I get the feeling I’m waiting  – for inspiration maybe – for a collection of poems, rather than a poem here, a poem there – and I’m a bit annoyed with myself. I really enjoyed hearing Kei Miller read at Hastings LitFest a few weeks ago, and he surprised some us by saying that he only wrote poems when he had a book in mind, and when there’s no book in mind, there are no poems. This was refreshing in a way – I’ve never been one of those people who are disciplined to write every day (not poetry, anyway). I’ve also never been very good at using exercises or ‘free writing’ as a means of churning out (or up?) ideas into proto-poems. Thinking in ‘book’ terms appeals to me and I do it a lot – trouble is, it seems to be in parallel to writing poems; I haven’t yet tied the two together. And I need to remember that Kei Miller also writes novels, so he’s quite possibly knocking out several books in those poetry dry-times. Ha!

Current reading

The September edition of Poetry, which seems to be breaking the boundaries this month with the inclusion of graphic prose poetry, a computer program, pictures of fans and a couple of essays… intriguing.

Madeleine Wurzburger‘s pamphlet Sleeve Catching Fire at Dawn (Smith/Doorstop), a gift from Marion Tracy. The poems are written in a kind of pseudo-historical style, in that they seem to be (on the face of it) well-researched historic portraits, commentary, testimonies. But they’re witty, funny in places, and certainly interesting.

Stephen Sexton‘s first collection If All the World and Love were Young (Penguin) – what a gem of a title for starters. You’ll be reading plenty of reviews of this, watch as it comes up for various awards. I was at the prize giving ceremony for the National Poetry Competition in 2017 when this poet won it, still in his early twenties. Oh my. This book was a slow burner for me, but I’ve read nothing like it. Very subtle and original and all the more moving for it. If you get a quarter of the way through and you’ve still no idea what’s going on, trust me and stick with it! Nice piece here by Stephen in the Irish Times, on the background to the book.

Coming up, in brief

Next week two lovely poet friends, Clare Best and Robert Hamberger, are launching their new collections in Brighton and I’m hoping to go, but if not then I’ll definitely hear them read at Needlewriters in Lewes next month, for which I’ll be MC-ing which is always fun. Also next month I’ll be running a workshop for some lovely High Weald Stanza writers. Some time in November I’ll have a new pamphlet ready to launch, alongside three fine Live Canon pamphleteers. And I’ll be reading in London in November at a special night being organised by Mat Riches and Matthew Stewart.

Meanwhile I’m still deciding whether to renew my membership of the Poetry Book Society. I tend to buy poetry books at readings, or second-hand. I’m not sure how useful I find the PBS Bulletin which basically includes brief review/blurbs, long poet blogs, huge poet photos and a sample poem for each of the ‘recommendations’. Pamphlets only get a very small amount of space. Buying through the PBS doesn’t save any money (once you factor in the postage cost and cost of membership). Or should I not be looking at it in those terms?  I’d be interested to know people’s thoughts on this.

 

Blog/

Time for some good news!

I always seem to be having a moan about submissions-constipation and other niggly stuff on here but I thought I ought to share some of the Big Positives for a change. (I was going to call this post ‘Good news for once’ after one of my favourite Brian Patten poems, ‘On time for once’, but then I decided that was typically off-hand of me and given the poem (spoiler alert!) is about someone about to hear bad news, not appropriate. Ha!

Anyway, a couple of good things recently – The Poetry Society were kind enough to send my ‘Orford Ness’ poem (that won the Stanza comp) in for the Forward Prize single poem award. Even though I know that’s a helluva long way from being shortlisted or anything as exciting as that, it’s still exciting.

Then last week I got a phone call from a gentleman who (after I identified myself) asked ‘Are you a poet?’ Now this could have been a test of some sort, or a joke, so after answering ‘yes’ I then had a moment of doubt. ‘Well I think so,’ I added, whereupon he told me I’d got 2nd prize in the Plough Poetry Competition. My first thought was confusion, because I’d written it off, given it was a few weeks past the ‘winners will be notified by…’ date. Also, I’d already re-sent a version of this poem to the Rialto Nature Poetry competition. But it turned out judge Liz Lochhead had been running late with getting the results in. It also meant I couldn’t attend the prize giving which was on Saturday night (a few days later), but a four and a half hour drive away, not having time to change existing arrangements. I then poked around on the computer to remind myself what the prize money was, to find I’d won £500 – lordy! So having to withdraw my poem from the Rialto comp wasn’t too harsh after all. Make no mistake, this money will go straight back into poetry, a good chunk of it probably into Telltale Press, speaking of which…

Telltale Press logo

Telltale Press has recruited its newest member in Siegfried Baber, and we’re in the process of getting his pamphlet typeset and designed up for a May launch in Siegfried’s home town of Bath. This is the third pamphlet we’ve published and I’m starting to get the hang of this publishing lark – I now know how and when to enter pamphlets for the quarterly Poetry Book Society choices, how and when to register the ISBN and where copies have to be sent, and our list of reviewers and potential reviewers is growing. We’re also hoping to have a presence at the Poetry Book Fair in the autumn, our next reading is coming up in Lewes with two more potential Telltale Poets reading plus the ever-supportive Martin Malone… so a lot to be thrilled about. We’re seizing the means of poetry production and are having a lot of fun! Not only this, but Siegfried’s poem ‘When Love Came to the Cartoon Kid’ (from which his pamphlet takes its title) is also a Forward Prize nomination … yay!

And finally, the lovely Jeremy Page of The Frogmore Papers has asked if I will be a co-selector with him for the autumn edition of South magazine. This will be really interesting – my first experience of being on the blunt end of poetry submissions! I’m so pleased to be asked and really looking forward to it.