Tag: Templar

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.

Close readings/

Kim Lasky pamphlet launch

… or rather ‘pamphlets’ launch – not only did Kim Lasky win the Iota Shots competition last year, she did a double whammy with the Poetry Business comp – now that’s just greedy!! Although, to be fair, I don’t know Kim personally but I’m told by several good friends that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person and more deserving poet.

Anyway, imagine my surprise to get a Templar email alert last Monday to say a pamphlet was about to be launched not only here in my home town of Lewes, but three doors along from my house. How convenient!

kim lasky pamphlets

Kim’s two pamphlets are Petrol, Cyan, Electric (Smith Doorstop) and Eclipse (Templar), available on the night for just £8 for the two – too cheap! And as always from these presses, lovely production values. Kim read from them both, Eclipse accompanied by a beautiful film. (If I’d had my reading glasses and with a teensy bit more light I’d have read along from the copy while listening. I often have that feeling when listening to poetry being read – I want to see it on the page at the same time. Is that something to do with how our brains process information – maybe there’s a word for being more able to absorb the written rather than the spoken word ?)

I haven’t yet read Eclipse properly, but I’m very much enjoying Petrol, Cyan, Electric. I wasn’t quite sure I connected with the subject matter at first (pioneers and early experiments in electricity) yet in fact I’m finding so much that I like in the poems, such as ‘Cut’ in which the silence of a power cut throws what light there is into sharp relief: ‘The moon lays a white sheet / on the bed’ and later ‘the odd spotlight / of an upturned torch / like a ringed planet.’

Elsewhere, in ‘In the Mood’ we’re offered a glimpse of ‘the father I have in photographs’ who ‘took five sugars in tea’ imagined in an empty aircraft hangar, leading the narrator in a 1940s dance –  ‘In your arms I smell the man I never knew / Brylcreem, the chemistry of petrol.’

The collection features many more delicately described incidents, imagined happenings. There is a sense of wonder about it.  I love the way Kim brings real (his)stories to the fore without it feeling like a backwards take, preserving the magic and the mystery of things which, like electricity, are still never fully explainable.

Petrol, Cyan, Electric is on the shortlist for this year’s Michael Marks Pamphlet Award, with results being announced tomorrow.

Books/

A day at the (Poetry Book) Fair

poetry book fair 2013

Having answered a call for volunteers on Facebook, I found myself yesterday at Conway Hall in London, donning a blue badge and helping out at the Free Verse: Poetry Book Fair.

Organised by Chrissy Williams and CB Editions, with a lot of help also from Joey Connolly, the Fair is in its third year and apparently bigger than ever. I wasn’t sure what to expect but it was quite a crush – and with something like 700 visitors through the door and 50 or so publishers present, I felt nervously close to the epicentre of the poetry world.

When it comes to events I quite enjoy having a job to do, because otherwise I tend to turn up, wander around, not dare to talk to anyone and leave with a sensation that everyone else knows each other and I don’t know anyone. Actually I still felt like I didn’t know anyone, even though I blatantly did – the ever-friendly Mike from the Poetry Society plus several poet friends including Hilda Sheehan, Marion Tracy and Harry Man. I had very nice chats with many of the publishers and by the end of the day had minded shop for Amy from Seren Books and Sophie from Inpress. I even sold a book for Inpress (thanks, Marion!) I introduced myself to Nell Nelson from HappenStance and discovered a poetry press in my own home town that I’d never heard of. Who’d have thunk it?

I nearly bought quite a lot of stuff but in the end restrained myself. On the Templar table I fell for Matt Bryden’s Night Porter, which has got me thinking seriously about how I might group up some of my poems around a distinct theme and enter them for the Iota Shots pamphlet comp.

Then I spent £3 on a set of 4 microbooks from Hazard Press, witty confections and utterly not what I ought to have been buying, but I couldn’t resist.

On the Roncadora Press table, artist Hugh Bryden told me about the processes involved in producing their beautiful publications, all hand-made. I was so, so tempted by Nest – the photo on their site does not do it justice, the whole thing is a wonderful work of art, and they were selling it for just £6. Blimey, that can hardly have paid for the paper.

Astrid Alben

After the publishers had packed up and left, everyone moved over to the pub for an evening of free readings. Although I didn’t stay for them all, I did catch an enjoyable short set from Astrid Alben, reading from her Arc collection Ai! Ai! Pianissimo (memorable or what?) and later on, with a whole army of young male fans in tow, Chris McCabe who read in tandem with Jeremy Reed from their Nine Arches Press publication Whitehall Jackals. Read his blog post about the making of it here. Sorry about the rather grainy pics by the way.

chris mccabe

Chris was the highlight of the evening for me. I loved his poetry and both he and Astrid were readers with real presence – something that’s hard to define and probably impossible to teach, but you kind of know it when you see it. All in all an enjoyable and inspirational day.