Tag: south downs poetry festival

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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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Seven Questions for Poets #8 – Anna Kisby

I first met Anna Kisby at the Brighton Poetry Stanza and was struck by her writing. Sadly for us, she then relocated to the west country. But it’s always a joy to come across her work, and we met again recently at the South Downs Poetry Festival, where she was awarded first prize in the Havant Poetry Competition. Last year she was commended by Faber, and she recently won the BBC Proms Poetry Competition. Here are Anna’s answers to the seven questions…

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

The Kingdom of Ordinary Time by Marie Howe, recent Poet Laureate of New York State. I’m interested in how she writes about the actuality of life – using plain language and metaphor only very sparingly – but the poems lift off the page.

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? 

Sometimes there are poems that, as a friend describes it, ‘Come out whole, like laying an egg’. I always feel affection for poems I write like that as opposed to the ones I labour over, which start to get on my nerves.

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

That hotel in the Alps where Hemingway and his wife Hadley stay in the 1920s (as described in A Moveable Feast.)

4 – Do you enter poetry competitions?

In phases – at the moment, yes! A mixture of the biggies (worth a try?) and smaller ones tied to local festivals.

5 – If someone has never read any poetry, where would you suggest they start?

A predictable answer but: Staying Alive (Bloodaxe, ed Neil Astley). It set me going again.

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

New shoes.

7 – Can you remember the first poem you wrote? What was it about?

Living in America, aged 8, a long rhyming poem about sisters Primrose and Camomile Brown – it was flowery and quite self-consciously English. The important thing was that when I showed it to our neighbour, a craftswoman, she made me feel it was the best poem she’d ever read, bought me a special Poetry Notebook and took me very seriously as a writer. I rather let her down by not focusing on poetry again for another 30 years…

 

QUICK PLUG:

Anna Kisby’s most recently-published poem is included in the Live Canon anthology 154: contemporary poets in response to Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. On 4th Nov 2016 the Live Canon ensemble will perform a selection of poems from the anthology at Oxford Playhouse – details available here.

Previous ‘Seven Questions for Poets’:
#1 – Clare Best
#2 – Jill Abram
#3 – Antony Mair
#4 – Hilda Sheehan
#5 – Ian Humphreys
#6 – Claire Dyer
#7 – Louise Ordish

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Notes from a workshop with Andrew McMillan

andrew mcmillan photographed by Innes Morrison

As promised in my last post, here are my notes from the workshop I did on Saturday at the South Downs Poetry Festival, with Andrew McMillan. I’m including links at the end to other workshop notes, in case you find these posts useful.

I was really impressed with Andrew’s workshop. It’s tricky to teach a one-off session like this when you’ve no way of knowing who is coming to the session nor what they hope to get from it. As well as asking us to each say (briefly) what we hoped to take away, he also offered participants the chance to feed back after every exercise, and the chance to read aloud the example poems. Andrew had planned the session well and we motored through a lot of great material, but his calm and relaxed style meant it never felt hurried or forced. That’s exactly what I want as a participant – to feel challenged by the material, confident in the teacher and unaware of time passing.

So here’s a summary, in which I hope I’ve captured the essential points.

‘All poems fail – which is why you have to write the next one.’

‘Be prepared to throw your life off a cliff.’

Go to the place that makes you feel uncomfortable. Write the thing you wouldn’t want your mother to read.

How do you get at the plain truth of something and still make it sound fresh? Think about the notions of ‘truth’ and ‘honesty’. Getting to the ‘poetic’ truth might not mean presenting the actual truth of what happened.

The thing you want to tackle may be too big or overwhelming to get to grips with. So drill down to a small detail and let that be a metaphor for the big thing.

Example poem: ‘Your Blue Shirt’ by Selima Hill (from Gloria: Selected Poems. Bloodaxe. 2008)

‘How plain can it be and still be poetry?’

‘All poetic metaphor exists because you can’t find the one word or phrase which encompasses what you really want to say.’

AM loves it when plain language is used to express a simple truth, eg W H Auden: “Thousands have lived without love but none without water.”

Readers need time to pause and think.

It’s important to achieve balance – moments of ‘high poetry’ can contrast with those of mundane or ‘plain’ language – the contrast and balance can make each moment effective. Compare for example to music with its highs and lows.

Example poem: ‘Filling Station’ by Elizabeth Bishop (from The Complete Poems, 1927-1979)

If something’s not working, try stripping out everything that’s not essential – adjectives, fancy verbs, ‘wow’ words etc. Find the ‘survival mechanism’ of the poem. In this way you’re left with something sparse but dense. THEN you can think about building it up.

Example: ‘His Stillness’ by Sharon Olds (fantastically moving!) – from Selected Poems, 2005 (Cape)

Uncertainty can come across as more honest

The idea of not being sure about something can somehow be more honest and can allow a way in for the reader.

In a way, all memory is false because another person present will recall the same thing differently.

Example poem: ‘A Spruce New Colour’ by Tom Paulin (Love’s Bonfire, Faber 2012)

Consider balance and contrast in language choice and tone

Try to avoid writing about a serious subject matter in too high a register – it can seem a bit ‘poetic’, not really honest. Explore ways around this by varying the language.

Example poem: ‘I will love the twenty first century’ by Mark Strand (from the Ambit Magazine Retrospective) – where he gives the more ‘serious’ ideas voice via a third person, which the voice of the poet then undercuts.

One way of framing a serious topic and to foreground it without losing credibility and staying grounded/true is by bookending it with more down to earth details.

Example poem: ‘Dave and the Curried Soup’ by John Sewell (Bursting the Clouds, Cape 1998) – a mid section of energy and sexual excitement bookended by the banal details of a soup (‘The trouble with Jerusalem artichokes…’)

Last thoughts: ‘What people will think when reading your work … is not important’ (ie don’t let that fear inhibit you … you have the freedom to write whatever it is you need to write) – AM says when he wrote the poems in Physical he wasn’t thinking about them being published let alone read!

‘Poems need to vibrate on the page with energy.’

‘Something has to be on the line when you write a poem.’

If you’ve enjoyed this you may be interested in previous blog posts where I’ve passed on words of wisdom from poets:

Notes from a Don Share masterclass

Mimi Khalvati on editing and what to bin

More words of advice from Mimi Khalvati

Tips from Don Paterson

Mimi Khalvati on form, and a few ‘banned’ words

 

 

 

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At the South Downs Poetry Festival

Robin & Jess at South Downs Poetry Festival

When Tim Dawes came to Lewes just a few months ago to talk about his plans for a South Downs Poetry Festival, I admit I was sceptical about whether it could be done in such a short timeframe. But hats off to him, the event happened and from what I can tell, it was a super success.

After a poetry bike ride taking in the length of the South Downs, plus numerous readings and workshops throughout the area, things culminated in a day-long event in Petersfield on Saturday, which I was very pleased to be a part of.

I was there with fellow Telltale Poet Jess Mookherjee, flying the Telltale flag, socialising with fellow publishers/poets and taking in readings and workshops where possible. Being a new festival, it was on a small scale – which made it actually all the more fun. With smallness comes intimacy – everyone was relaxed, poets and organisers accessible, and there was time and space to really talk to people. And we brought cookies – free edibles are always a magnet!

The sun was blazing outside, which made the short walk between venues all the better – although screams of delight from the next-door lido almost made me wish I’d brought my cossie. I even had an enjoyable drive there and back – 80 miles each way through some of Sussex’s loveliest towns, and the A272 was oddly free of horse boxes, cycle races and traction engines. Result! And let’s not forget a memorable warm-up breakfast at the Apothecary Cafe with Jess – we were ON FIRE with ideas by the time we were setting up our stand.

But I digress! The business of the day was of course poetry – Jess and I managed to catch the prize-winning readings of the Havant Poetry Competition, judged by Stephanie Norgate and won by former Brighton Stanza member Anna Kisby with a fine prose poem. Now based in Devon, Anna is a very talented poet who tends to quietly win a lot stuff and deserves a big audience.

During the day there were workshops going on, and readings and performances into the evening. I enjoyed meeting and/or catching up with lots of friendly faces and lovely poet friends including Lucy Cotterill, Hilda Sheehan (sorry we never got to chat properly, Hilda!), Frances White, Hugh Dunkerley, Wendy Klein and Andrew McMillan – whose workshop I managed to get along to and so glad I did – I’ll be posting a full report on this shortly. It was also nice to meet and chat with Alwyn Marriage, who is doing an amazing job running Oversteps Books single-handledly.

My one annoyance was coming out with a phone that I hadn’t charged up properly – a dead phone, DUH! So no photos of our stand (the one above is thanks to the good peeps of Winchester Poetry Festival, taken before we all moved into the much cosier foyer), no pics of the readers, no pics of our superior breakfast, no selfie with Andrew McMillan – tragic!

But despite the lack of pics, it was still a fantastic day. We’re already looking forward to next year’s festival.