Tag: stanza poetry competition

Blog/

Lewes & Oxford readings this week, plus poet friends’ success

october 2015 poetry readings

Ah, National Poetry Day seems to be the unofficial kickstarter of the poetry season (is that ‘open season’)? Last week saw a flurry of competition results and exciting announcements: Facebook was groaning under the weight of congratulations and almost couldn’t keep up.

First of all the Stanza Poetry Competition, won by Graham Burchell to whom I hand over my tiara (although I think it looks better on me, to be honest) and Runners Up none other than my old Brighton Stanza mates Marion Tracy and Tess Jolly. Yay!

Then lovely poet friend Abegail Morley scooped up the Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year award (not exactly from under my nose – I only made the longlist, but I would have put up a fight if I’d been there!) Hurrah!

For my own part, I’ve nothing amazing to announce but I did make the longlist for the Poetry School/Nine Arches ‘Primers’ competition. Longlisting is an interesting idea – I have to remind myself that its purpose is actually to encourage the entrants. Longlistings don’t make it onto CVs (except possibly for the National). But at least you know you came close-ish.

This week sees a lovely bumper crop of readings – on Wednesday 14th October I’ll be back on my old manor in Lewes for the launch of South Magazine 52. I was one of the selectors together with Jeremy Page of The Frogmore Papers so will be be reading a couple of poems alongside a number of the contributors including poet friends Lucy Cotterill and Miriam Patrick. The selection process for South is done anonymously, so I had no idea we’d chosen poems by Miriam and Lucy, but it was a nice surprise.

On Thursday 15th, I’m in … Lewes. Yep – like I never left! It’s the quarterly Needlewriters readings, this time featuring Matthew Stewart, Ros Barber and Caroline Clark. I’m not reading but as I’m on the committee I’m naturally there helping (?) out where possible. It’ll be nice to remind my Lewes poet friends that I haven’t actually stepped off the edge of the planet even though Eastbourne is a foreign country; they do things differently (t)here.

On Friday 16th, that somewhat rakish editor of The Interpreter’s House Martin Malone has kindly invited me to join him for the launch of his new collection Cur (Shoestring Press),  at the Albion Beatnik Bookshop in Oxford. He’s probably hoping to placate me after rejecting the poems I sent to TIH earlier in the year – ggrrr! The other guest readers are fellow Telltale Siegfried Baber, lovely Swindon poetry impresario Hilda Sheehan and the seemingly ubiquitous Roy Marshall, who pops up in every magazine I look at these days. I last met up with Roy in the summer at a reading in Camberwell organised by Richard Skinner.

I need a good night’s sleep after getting back from Oxford because on Saturday 17th I’ll be giving a talk to the Society of Women Writers and Journalists on the subject of … well, it’s a wide open brief, so hang onto your hats, I may be flying without a parachute. But there will definitely be some tech evangelism, some uplifting female empowerment messages and some major myth busting. Wish me luck!

Bloggers/

Submissions, readings, blogging books

Orford Ness

I’ve been busy with work stuff lately so just a quick update.

I had another rejection from The Poetry Review (but a nice note from Maurice Riordan) and I’m still awaiting news on half a dozen magazines I have poems out to. After umming and ahhing about submitting my short pamphlet to Templar Iota Shots I finally decided it was good enough to go.

The thing about submitting to Templar is that it doesn’t have different judges each time (unlike, say, the Poetry Business Pamphlet competition.) This means that if Templar editor Alex McMillen doesn’t like one’s style, he possibly never will. Some of the poems in the collection I submitted are the same or new versions of ones which I included in my submission last year. Let’s hope they’re not memorable or horrible enough to hinder my second go at it.

On the positive side, I can’t complain about my poetry autumn, having a poem appear in the current Rialto, winning the Stanza comp and being invited to read at Keats House – which is on Wednesday 26th November by the way – I’m REALLY hoping there’ll be some familiar, friendly faces in the audience – it’s the Poetry Society AGM and I’ll be reading alongside Daljit Nagra and Suzannah Fitzpatrick. Must start practising.

As regards Telltale Press, Peter and I have been contacting potential Telltale poets and putting our heads together on all sorts of plans …  we’re hosting another reading at the Poetry Cafe in London on January 7th, with special guest Canadian poet Rhona McAdam. Hope you can come to that!

I’ve enjoyed reading the accounts of Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, here’s how Sarah Salway captured it, and of course Anthony Wilson wrote several insightful posts as blogger in residence. Next year I’ll be there with poet friends Clare and Charlotte – the beach house is already booked. So looking forward to that!

Meanwhile it’s all kicking off with ‘Blogging for Writers’ – I’m in the process of organising a Blog Tour which is shaping up nicely, then there’s the blog to update, blog posts to write… I even have a guest blog post booked in for an excellent US site next April, which is when the next blogging book is due to launch, and readings for that are being discussed already, so I could be in for a busy Spring.

Events/

Launches, lunches & putting the ‘win’ into Swindon

A quick update before I make my way to Swindon Festival of Poetry via lunch in Newbury with my sister-in-law. The Telltale Press public launch on Wednesday evening at the Poetry Cafe was a great success – the audience was mostly friends and friends of friends of myself and Peter Kenny, so we felt right at home. And the peeps at the Poetry Cafe are so helpful and unfussy. We’ll definitely be back in the New Year. Plans are afoot!

Rishi Dastidar at the London Telltale launch
Rishi Dastidar reading at our launch on Wednesday

Our guest readers on Wednesday were Anja Konig, all the way from Switzerland with her new pamphlet ‘Advice for an Only Child’ (Flipped Eye) hot off the press, and Rishi Dastidar, who’s part of the Complete Works II programme, launching on Monday evening at the South Bank. 

Then yesterday was National Poetry Day, with an avalanche of stuff on social media and a shedload of events, none of which I actually got to, but that’s mainly because of tiredness and in anticipation of a full-on poetry fest this weekend. I don’t know if it’s just my perception, but it feels as if NPD gets more mainstream coverage than it used to. Probably just my skewed viewpoint.

Somewhere in amongst all the excitement about Forward Prize winners, Next Gen Poets, NPD readings etc was the little announcement about the Stanza Poetry Competition, which I somehow managed to, er, win. (As a reward I get to read at the AGM of the Poetry Society at Keats’ House in November. I am absurdly excited about this.) It was lovely to receive emails and messages of congratulations from fellow poets. Thank you so much. The winning poems and judges comments are here.

And now – I must pack and get myself off to sunny Swindon, where Hilda Sheehan has been Facebook updating with her particular brand of exhilarated craziness – porcelain dogs, men with megaphones, lunch poetry and all kinds of shenanigans appear to be happening. What the hell’s going on down there, Hilda? I’m coming to find out …