Year: 2009

If there were any music that could seem true
it was of a pessimistic piano or violin and it would be
an étude, nothing divertimento, an étude in rain . . .

 

That’s a poem out of Mark Halliday’s pamphlet. I love rain poems and it seems appropriate this morning which has gone grey, which has mulched  the fallen leaves into a miry mess. But work goes on.

Laurna Robertson’s Sampler is nearly done. A sense of story is at the heart of it. She has a particular delicacy which is hard to describe: spare and restrained, I think, like the Samplers themselves, but also wiry and enduring. Perhaps her Shetland origins have something to do with this quality. She gets under your skin without your quite knowing how she did it.

Clare Best’s Treasure Ground is also well on. It’s a fascinating pamphlet sequence, and it’ll be the first in a new Sequence Series. It is set in the Lincolnshire Fens and the poems are born from a residency she did at Woodlands Organic Farm. While she was there, her poems went out to customers in vegetable boxes! It is a most beautiful set, starting and ending with prose descriptions of the landscape. Somehow she makes everything more than usually alive, often spookily so, and the poems follow the cycle of the seasons. It’s nourishing, somehow. I don’t think you have to be ‘into’ poetry to enjoy this one.

Meanwhile, there’s Perthshire-based Deborah Trayhurn, whose Embracing Water turns out to have unexpected connections with Treasure Ground. I had thought of them as radically dissimilar, which they are in many ways.

But suddenly I see there are strong connections. Deborah’s poems also read as a sequence. She uses entirely first-line titles and an unusual fluid style that washes you through the poems. It’s partly impressionistic but precise too. I can’t quite describe the effect of these because they are unusual. It’s a love sequence, as it seems to me. There’s a tension between city and country here, landscapes of city and farmland, absence and presence. The person in the country yearns for the person in the town, and that’s part of the love, but the other part is for the land itself, for its mysterious and magical metamorphoses and changes.

Oh and did I mention a second set of unsuitable poems? By me? This one is called The Unread Squirrel. One day I’ll even finalise the contents . . .

Phone call from Levenmouth Printers. Sphinx 11 is ready, So the post-out starts this week. If you subscribe, you should get it within the next fortnight, provided postal services are back to normal.

Meanwhile, I still haven’t cleared my submissions box from July. That’s because I can’t respond in detail to a person’s poems quickly. Each takes me about an hour and a half. No wonder I never catch up with myself. And there’s the accounts . . . And the winning STORY booklet, and the HappenStance Chapter 4 to be written. And it’s still raining, raining, raining . . .

This is entirely written, of course, in the additional hour — the one that went backwards in the middle of the night and meant that I got up at half past eight instead of half past nine.

It’s been a week of coming and going, between Glenrothes and Killin, so it was a muddled half-holiday because I got the holiday dates confused this year. Matt stayed there all week. I drove back to work, then back again, acquired a migraine midway through the week and descended into a kind of Autumn sludge, from which I admired the foliage (and started to work through the accounts). Some amazing, amazing trees. Such a glory! You can see from the photos that stormy rain wasn’t far away but  the contrast between the black clouds and the golden beeches was a feast in itself.

 

Last night, while the hour was doing its double act, the wind was raging and the rain lashing, with the result that most of the leaves are now down. The red rowan outside my study window is all bare branches. Still, winter is a good time for working, and all those leaves are mulching merrily.

Nice to see that Salt’s proposed online Review includes an element of ‘rating’ for poetry books. Great minds think alike (or ‘Fools never differ’, as they used to say when I was at school). But Sphinx pamphlets get not one, but three reviews and the overall stripe rating is based on visible criteria and an accumulation of three ratings. I still worry about this, though, despite the fact that I like the way it makes you put your money where your mouth is.

Because what happens if the collection as a whole strikes you as creaky, but there’s one poem in it — one that makes you sit up and think WOW? Maybe it’s accidentally brilliant, but who cares? Or even one part of one poem that stays with you long after you put the book down, a part that follows you round the house even when you’re hoovering? It’s interesting that a bad poem in a collection — even an abysmal poem — is forgivable and forgettable provided the one you love is also there.

In an interview that’s in the current issue of Sphinx (still with the printer but about to go out soon), Peter Sansom says (in response to a question about the current situation in poetry publishing): “But really I’m only interested in poetry, and not even that exactly: I’m interested in poems and, to some extent, poets.”

That’s made me think long and hard, because perhaps I feel the same. I have to find one poem to connect with in any volume before I can start to get my head around the whole book. When reading new submissions, it’s often a single poem that clinches it for me: sometimes two or three. That’s what starts the drive to want to find a whole set that’ll make a publication. And when I think about the poets whose work I love, it’s really individual poems I think of: Ode to Autumn, Spring and Fall, The Collar, Mending Wall, The Lie, Damson Boy. Even then, I probably wouldn’t want to rate an individual poem. I’d rather love it. Here I am undermining my own system. This’ll never do!

 

 

Anne Caldwell, author of Slug Language, has won a First Collection award with Cinnamon Press and will have a full length collection out with them in 2011. Great news! Hardly any of Anne’s pamphlets are left, so if you want a collector’s item, ask for one now.

 

And somehow it has turned into October. The rowan outside my study window is turning red and the sun glinting on it most beautifully. The leaves are rippling in the breeze. Sphinx 11 is finished: just needs its buttons polished. PoemCards are coursing their way around the world.

There won’t be a blog entry next weekend because I’ll be away doing an event on Saturday afternoon in Chester.

D A Prince, Gill McEvoy (who runs the Chester Oyez festival), Anne Caldwell and Janet Loverseed will be joining me, so if you’re anywhere in the vicinity do come along. I have had my hair coloured redder so as to be visible. It may be a little too red. Oh well.

The excellent winners of the STORY competition will be announced next weekend too.

And before we know it, it’ll be Christmas . . .

How nice it is to get out! Chester Oyez was a lovely experience. Alas, D A Prince was ill and unable to be there, but Anne Caldwell, Gill McEvoy and Janet Loverseed made it. They read marvellously well. Gill McEvoy nearly brought me to unseemly tears with a poem I know well — but it was still amazing. Janet read her Grey Hen competition winning poem — stunning. Both Gill and Anne have full collections forthcoming from Cinnamon. These are going to be books worth waiting for!

Then, back in Fife, I had the privilege of reading at Cupar Arts Festival with Gordon Dargie and James Robertson. We read in a church — a most beautiful venue with a magical acoustic. I had already been impressed with Gordon’s poems on the page, but in performance they were almost overwhelming. He is a VERY good reader. Hard to believe that a person could come to writing poetry late in life and somehow cut the mustard like a seasoned mustard-cutter. A true poet. James is never less than excellent, of course, and he rang the changes between funny, couthie, wry and deeply thought-provoking. Extraordinary to be able to do such subtle and beautiful verse, and also write novels!

And what an unexpected pleasure — to meet STORY competition prize-winner Heather Reid at the event. I hadn’t realised (because all the judging is done anonymously) that three of the winners of this year’s competition hail from Scotland and that two of them know each other! More of this in due course. One of my tasks in the next month is to typeset the winners’ anthology. Meanwhile, back to Sphinx reviews . . .

 

 

Some of the reviews are now on the website. That is to say the ones written by three people, with a stripey Sphinx on the top. Count the stripes to get the rating.

They are:
Corpoetics, by Nick Asbury
Perfect Yorkshire, by Leon Shann
Tunnel of Love, by Gordon Dargie
The Terrors, by Tom Chivers.

More three-battered-person reviews will be up soon.

Meanwhile, one of the dedicated Sphinx reviewers, Karin Koller can be seeing doing wonderful work on the fourth plinth.

I don’t know whether I can fold or post or packet any more things! I think I’m posted out. The subscriber mailshot this week took all last weekend, plus Monday afternoon and evening and Thursday afternoon and evening. I keep filling postboxes!

Meanwhile, my wonderful subscribers – bless their cotton socks — as soon as they got the mailshots, started ordering things, with the result that I did another 20 packets yesterday morning and by the time I was done, missed the bank.

Lovely feedback comments so far about the new pamphlets, though needless to say have already noted (with pain) two smallish errors. Things are never perfect. I need three assistants. Where are you assistants?

People have liked the PoemCards too – several orders in for those already. Some have asked about my throw-away comment that people could sponsor a poem. Sponsor? How? How much?

The answer is £50.00 (unless there is also a copyright permission charge in which case add that too) and you’d get 25 cards as part of the deal. But it’s not simple, because I wouldn’t use a poem unless it fits my bill in all sorts of respects. (Oh, and you can’t sponsor your own poem because the poetic ego is already bad enough.)

What else? Not more than 17 lines, and preferably fewer. Lines must not be too wide because of format of card. Poem must be able to live with a graphic. Poem must incorporate a little ‘lift’ of some kind. Poem ideally suits an occasion there aren’t cards for. Like coming across a mouse on your stairs at night and it making you aware of a whole world of existence that is Other. Or knowing a person who is juggling their life and dropping some of the balls. Or getting tense about things. Or being on a VERY wet holiday. Or feeling thoughtful about happiness and indoor plants. You get the general idea . . .

Oh and you would need to send me a copy of the poem. But please, first, buy some of this lot. Can’t make more unless I can sell ’em. Remember I am folding these babies by hand, and placing each in its nice clear acetate sleeve with gold sticker. That little glass of red wine in the picture below is a warning sign.

The STORY competition is in its final stages too. And some of the new three-reviewer reviews are finally on the website. More will follow later today, God willing. Now gotta get Sphinx 11 finished before I go nuts. Then another mailshot frenzy will follow.

 

 

 

Good news: Gill McEvoy (author of our out-of-print  Uncertain Days and in-print Sampler) won first prize in the Havant Literary Festival Competition. Hurray!

Not only that — there have been some brilliant autumn days this week and even this morning the sun is shining and the rowan outside my window is turning red. I’m one third of the way through the subscriber mailshot and desperately hoping the postal services will get the bits and pieces to people. All subscribers are getting a free sample PoemCard as well as flyers for the new publications: everyday festival (Rose Cooke), Salaams (Sally Festing, Shadow (Alison Brackenbury) and No Panic Here (Mark Halliday). This time they’re a kind of suite of pamphlets, all with cream covers but different inside flyleafs. And some lovely cover designs. Mark Halliday’s is a sort of man-meets-ketchup, self-inside-self portrait, which really fits the poems (you’ve got to read them).

The short list of stories from the competition has gone to Janice Galloway: watch out for list appearing on site.

If I can just get to the end of my British Writers essay – sort of thing you can’t skimp on – I’ll tie up Sphinx 11, a lot of which is already done and do the scheduling for next year. I’m hoping to do at least three more pamphlets this year – a tall order – actually more than three. Oh dear. The manuscripts from my July reading window are patiently sitting in a box under the settee in the conservatory (that’s so that none of the leaks in the roof can possibly get to them). Any not bumped back to their authors are still in the box for positive reasons. However, there are too many to work with, so about two-thirds must go – should get to that within next four weeks…

And most important of all: I have to do the accounts or the whole shebang will go bust and I will get an enormous tax bill for actually losing loads of money. Must not let that happen! Just now the balance of the books is, let us say, delicate.

It’s been an autumn weekend of many postings. An generous friend sent me a little collection of stamps – such a kind thought. They went onto some of the 22 packets I posted today. I took eight to the post office yesterday – various shapes and sizes. Another five have to be done this evening.

This is partly to do with the new pamphlets and partly the Sphinx review process, and a few other things. The Subscriber mailshot about the new publications hasn’t happened formally yet because I’m waiting for two things: the Mark Halliday pamphlet, No Panic Here, which is with the printer, and the PoemCards, the first run of which should be done this week. Next week-end it will be all go.

Then I decided I had to do something with some Helena Nelson poems today – not a lot, didn’t get far – sigh. One has to try.

There were deluges of rain on Friday, more on Saturday. Today grey and dampish. The little plum tree in the garden which Gillian and Christopher bought me was laden with pink plums this year. I picked them on Saturday. They are organically grown anyway; I left a half a dozen for the birds and the wasps.

In reading around William Soutar, I was working through Thomas Moult’s The Best Poems of 1930. Ah, Thomas Moult, adoring fan of W H Davies, who at his best was good indeed but not the demi-god Moult thought he was. Now this Best of is a sobering volume. Who remembers Witter Bynner, (what a name for a poet!), Helen Choate (better than inchoate), R P Tristram Coffin, Viola Gerard Garvin, Lizette Woodworth Reese, Enest Harsock and Anderson M Scruggs now?

Someone has written, in pencil, two versions of a poem in the blank pages at the back of the book. Alas, it is somewhat grief-soaked (“loveful things/ evanescent/ are dying / all too soon/ and cherished soul/ departs / from dearest, tenderest soul”). There is a message here for us all, how we will fade in pencil, in two unfinished versions, long after all that intense feeling is forgotten — indeed it has no owner any more.

But here is W H Davies boldly versifying on wet, dismal Autumn. I have read this poem before but not really noticed it until it applied:

OLD AUTUMN

Is this old Autumn standing here,
Where wind-blown fruits decay;
Dressed up in limp bedraggled flowers
That Summer cast away?

Within whose mist no dewdrops shine,
And grass, once green, goes yellow;
For whom no bird will sing or chirp,
On either Ash or Willow?

If this is his poor pelted face,
With dead leaves soaked in rain,
Come, Winter, with your kindly frost
That’s almost cruelly sane;

Take him, with his unwanted life,
To his last sleep and end —
Like the cat that cannot find a home,
And the dog that has no friend.

 

 

So much to do! But how much worse to be bored!

Three pamphlets are now at the press: everyday festival must be about to come back, with the other two not far behind. Flyers are done for these three.

So much to do! But how much worse to be bored!

Three pamphlets are now at the press: everyday festival must be about to come back, with the other two not far behind. Flyers are done for these three.

Now the HappenStance subscriber list needs updating to make sure everyone gets the next mailshot and the sticky labels have the right addresses on them! Although I love sending things to people, I somewhat dread the time it takes to do the practical business of putting things into envelopes, stamping them and seeing them on their way.

The new PoemCards – a set of six, also available individually – should also go to Dolphin Press this week. It looks very simple: one poem on a card. But I have been dithering with it all summer: the design, the shape of the card, the final envelopes (green), the size of the things. After all this, the trouble is you can’t really see them yourself any more.

It’s very interesting selecting poems to go onto cards too. Some excellent poems don’t seem to me to work in this context – that is to say, I wouldn’t want them sitting on my breakfast table. Others, which at first seem relatively slight, work beautifully on a card. It’s a bit like Poems in the Waiting Room: there are poems you would welcome while sitting in a hospital waiting room, and those you definitely would not. You want the sort of poem that makes the reader’s face light up slightly at the end, but one that also makes them think, makes them want to go back to the poem over and over.

Meanwhile, Sphinx is gradually being assembled in the background too, as are the triplicate reviews. I want to get some of these onto the archive as soon as possible. They are ready. I just haven’t quite had the time (oh time, where are you?) to finalise and publish them.

Have been working my way through the STORY competition entries also. There were fewer than last year but more than the first year. The standard varies less dramatically than it did last year. A lot of stories sitting firmly in the middle of not-great-but-not-bad. Very few that are outstandingly creaky. Two (so far) are re-entries (I remember them well from last year). Alas, they won’t win this year either. One story was entered twice at different times (curiously reassuring that other people can get confused – this is the sort of thing I might have done myself).

When reading your way through a set of story entries, you think long and hard what makes one work and another not work. There are obvious things, of course. One of the easy weaknesses to spot is the huge swathes of ‘back’ information, clumsily patched in, all of it in the past perfect: ‘She had met Roberto when they were on holiday in Andalusia. She had been eighteen. He had been twenty-five. It had been a marriage made in heaven. They had had no idea then how magical etc etc etc’.

It’s very hard to read stories with no paragraph indents, and lots of people don’t bother with them. It wouldn’t stop a good one working, of course, but it makes a middle-of-the-range one much harder work.

But it’s not the plot. It’s not the characters. It’s not anything you can exactly put your finger on that makes beautiful prose do the job. But when it’s there – that easy control of style and phrasing – you just read. It’s like looking through a clean window. You’re not aware of the glass when the writing is good. Or it’s like a surfer, when the movement of the little human being on the board is so elegant, so assured, so easy that you forget the unstable waves and the whole difficult world beneath.

I was reading Alice Munro earlier in the summer. She’s a superb short story writer, of course, and everybody know that. But the quality of her writing is so clean and pure. It’s like drinking water from the source. Sometimes I don’t even like her plots. Sometimes her plots are almost not there. But the way she writes is such a pleasure.

In the background, I’m still working on William Soutar, who was a marvellous prose writer, of course, as well as poet. He didn’t know how good he was. Here’s a bit from June 6, 1932:

The mind is a most contrairy craitur — today it turns as if on ball-bearings, to-morrow the wheels are like fretting mill-stones with iron filings between them — rusty at that. But that sudden pulse of joy when you are jogging along and suddenly are lifted up as on a wave-crest of life. So with the words — those drab, peeping sparrows which, in an instant, clap their rainbow wings and soar up singing.

Outside the window of my study where I’m writing this, the berries on the rowans are glowing orangy-red, even in the rain. Yesterday, I picked (and ate) a handful of blackberries (brambles in Scotland). Autumn is here.

When I was somewhere around twenty, I remember having a discussion with an artist friend, someone much older than me – he was in his early sixties then. We were talking about seasons and I spoke about Autumn, my favourite season, how I loved the colours and the feeling in the air. He said that when I was older I would come to prefer the Spring.