Tag: south poetry

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.

Bring up the poems (are they dead or sleeping?)

As part of my autumn poetry reactivation plan (sounds good, eh?) I’ve signed up for an online course from the Poetry’s School with Karen McCarthy Woolf. It’s a feedback course for the ‘general improvement of left-for-dead poems in need of resuscitation’. This premise really appealed to me – having quite a few poems languishing at the moment, some of which I feel at the end of my editorial tether (with). (Apologies for the clumsy construction, but since I’m off duty while writing this I feel able to mush over any dodgy grammar or whatever. It’s the equivalent of pulling on a onesie and eating a takeaway while watching TV. I’m at home. Off duty.)

Putting Baby to Bed

Soooo … time to dust off some old pomes. While we’re on the subject, I should mention that I was pleased to find out that South have taken two poems of mine for their autumn issue, just when I’d thought they wouldn’t find a home. I did think I wasn’t going to submit to South again, but when it came to it I just felt those poems belonged there, so I’m glad the selectors felt the same. It’s an unusual setup there – no one editor, but a committee, of which (as far as I can tell) two or three people act as selectors for each issue. Although submissions are anonymous, there’s a distinctive consistency about the poems chosen. For example, my Lewes cohort Jeremy Page manages to have something in every single issue – what gives, JP?? – and other names too are ‘regulars’. The magazine doesn’t include poet biogs (which is a shame) but it does have a launch event for each issue (which is good).

Anyway, I digress – my question to you is, when do you leave a poem for dead? Is it ever actually ‘dead’, or just sleeping gently in a drawer until you bring it out for another airing? Do you have any good success stories about poems you resurrected after a long period of time? I’d love to hear them.