Year: 2009

This was the last week before college bites — back to that other grindstone. So I locked the front door, ignored the phone and worked flat out. As usual I didn’t get as far as I thought I would. However, Rose Cook’s everyday festival has gone to Robert and Liz at Dolphin Press, and so has Alison Brackenbury’s Shadow ( a collection of animal poems).

 

The PoemCards are into their final stage: Robert can print them for me but I’ll have to fold by hand and of course match to envelope and acetate sleeve, which is time-consuming. Hm. I can print them myself but my printer is a little bit erratic and it doesn’t really like 160g card. He’ll do it better, I think, and cleaner and more neatly cut. Anyway, I really like these cards. If someone else made them, I would buy them, and I think I can price them very reasonably. (I was not put into this world to make money: the Dragons’ Den would demolish me).

Sally Festing’s Salaams should go to print towards the end of next week too. The flyers for that are done, as for the other two. Mark Halliday’s mock-up is somewhere in the post between here and the States. His cover isn’t done yet but it will be soon — oh and his title has changed: it is now No Panic Here.

Sphinx 11 is well underway, and so is part of 12.  Desperately need to get these publications moving now. Being a perfectionist is such Doom: you never get things perfect anyway and it makes you so slow.

The STORY competition closed last Sunday. There were slightly more entries than the first year but substantially fewer than last year. This is probably connected with the recession, which has affected lots of competitions, and perhaps also to changing the date. It means (sadly) less income for the press but also fewer stories to read this year: we’ll get to the long list more quickly I think. And we will have covered the costs and made something towards pamphlet production. More on that soon.

And it’s raining. Again!

One wedding over. It was a lovely day and the HappenStance prototype PoemCard made its first appearance. Since then it’s been slimmed down, tweaked, its leading changed, its titling endlessly rearranged, its backside information fiddled with. But some gorgeous envelopes are on order. The end product is very very close.

 

It is surprising how long it takes not just putting things in envelopes to post them to people, but simply ordering the necessary materials for the operation. I know online orders are relatively quick. One doesn’t have to drive to the shop or talk to anyone. But still it seems to take ages to do it all and make sure it’s done right.

Today and yesterday, at the crack of dawn (quite literally since I took my son to catch a plane to Geneva at 6.20 am and I was cracking) I was ordering (from several different suppliers):

• PoemCard envelopes, bright green, 500
• Padded envelopes for pamphlets
• Clear sleeves for pamphlets and envelopes (1000)
• Small address stickers (500)
• Card (various thicknesses) for printing onto

So once again, the spare bedroom – now that no-one is sleeping in it again – will become a store-room.

Meanwhile, the STORY competition ends today. I made an error with the dates and in one place put Saturday August 9th (on the flyer, I think) but the 9th is actually a Sunday. The part of my brain that deals with dates has never functioned well. (Seriously, not a joke.) Anyway, today, Sunday, will be the last day, and since the postal strike has timed itself to coincide with our end-date we’ll also need to wait for any mail put in the box by Friday but arriving a little late.

Not sure how many entries there are yet, whether it’s more or fewer than last year. There is always a huge flurry at the end. The main concern at this stage is that the competition should bring in enough money to cover its costs. It will be even better if it raises a bob or two to assist the poetry side of things. Anyway, an intense story reading period is about to start, to get to the long-list stage. This is done by Sarah Willans and myself.

Gillian gets married on Monday. Gillian is the person who does almost all the graphics for HappenStance and she’s my daughter. This week she’s been not only running in and out of Edinburgh, with her boyfriend, making wedding arrangements, getting cake tins (she’s doing her own wedding cake) and so on, but also sending me images for the pamphlets in hand.

 

Rose Cook and Sally Festing now have covers, though not quite finalised. However, it’s also been a busy week with submissions coming in at the end of the July ‘window’ and I’ve been trying to keep up with logging them and acknowledgements and/or feedback. Some excellent work has come in. In fact, no bad poetry has arrived, only some I liked better than others.

I have the impression that generally people are better at presenting work than they were three years ago, and better at knowing something about the publisher. Most of them have some familiarity with some of the HappenStance publications and that’s reassuring.

However, although ever so many people do download the free first chapters of How (Not) Get Your Poetry Published, fewer folk have bought the whole thing than I expected and I have given away a lot of copies! I continue to feel it says all the things people should know before they start trying to get poetry published and it even has a bit of encouragement and suggestion for old-hands who have had some difficulty in the matter. However, I’m not the best promoter in the world or I would have sent flyers to every local library in the land. Haven’t time. Just haven’t time . . .

Then there’s the HappenStance PoemCard. I’ve had this idea at the back of my mind for a couple of years now but the wedding has brought it to the fore. I’m reading a sonnet by Mick Standen at the event and I thought it would be nice to put it on a card to give to guests. My own ‘Falling in Love’ was done on a post-card and a couple of friends have given that away at their weddings (the age and garb of the loved-one can even be customised to order).

So I started messing around with what the cards might look like, using Gillian’s wedding graphic. Not postcards, this time, but stand-up cards, nearer to A5 size.

Gillian’s wedding card will be somewhat different than the others, since it has the poem inside instead of on the front. The general set will have a poem and graphic on the front, blank inside (for your own special message!) Rose Cook has a poem that I particularly wanted displayed in this way. It’s called ‘Poem for Someone who is Juggling her Life’. That describes me precisely. The card will, I hope, be a good promotional tool as well as just a nice thing to send. Rose hasn’t seen it yet herself . . .

The cards need to display poems that would be, for want of a better word, uplifting. That’s an interesting idea because it makes you so aware that most poems are not. In fact, most of my favourite poems are not. In college, students often ask why all the poems we study are about sex or death (or, in the case of ‘Porphyria’s Lover’, both.) Hm.

Anyway, I’ve got one by Edna Eglinton which is amusing and has a little lift, and there’s Mick Standen’s ‘A Metaphor Shared’ which I particularly love. There will be others. The card quality’s not right yet though and although I acquired some nice red envelopes for the wedding, they’re not the final envelopes I want to use for the PoemCards people can buy. However, subscribers will get a sample very soon.

 

 

Excellent news! Janet Loverseed’s poem ‘Portrait of Henrietta Moraes on a Blue Couch, 1965‘ has won the Grey Hen competition. The Judges’ comments are very interesting too — worth a look.

 

We’re in the middle of creating biographical pages for all the HappenStance poets, linked from the website. James Wood and Alison Brackenbury are there already, and mine. The rest will follow bit by bit as they come back from their holidays. How horrible it is writing biographical information. I hate it . . .

Meanwhile, Andy Philip is also a winner: his new baby Cerys Ilona, entered the world yesterday at 4.36 am when most of us were fast asleep. So Eilish has a wee sister. Congratulations to Andy and Jude!

After a nearly glorious day yesterday when I walked along the beach with my son, who is visiting, today it’s back to rain. A bit of a blow to find that a fourth leak seems to have developed in the conservatory roof. Oh dear. Something expensive is going to have to happen soon. I work in there!

 

This week more submissions have been flooding in and I’ve been trying to stem the flow (sorry, imagery of water is leaking into this blog against my will) while doing conversations about daughter’s wedding, picking up son from airport, doing hair and dentist stuff, putting bowls under leaks, sorting out Sphinx reviews and … oh but I’ll say something about the Sphinx reviews before I float off onto another subject.

Remember the new review scheme? This time three reviewers each return a response on a publication, as well as a stripe rating. Some of these have started to cohere now and it is absolutely fascinating. However, it’s a time-consuming task editing them into shape and amalgamating the ratings. I’m also spending quite a lot of time just putting things into envelopes, sending more new pamphlets to reviewers as they arrive. Soon I’ll make the first set of reviews available.

Issue 11 of the magazine is also coming along nicely but isn’t likely to make a splash before late September and possibly October. It’ll be worth waiting for.

Another distraction, one I hardly dare mention, was item 23 on my list ‘Sort out Own Poems’. It’s more straightforward to respond to other people’s poems than do something with your own and I’m rapidly turning into one of those poets who will have left a very long gap after their first collection. It gives me particular pleasure to work on an individual poem when I’m lucky enough to have one arrive. But wading through them en masse is a nightmare for me: it feels like diving. I go down so deep under poem-water that I fear I might not come up again.

Facing up to what the really special thing of your writing life actually looks like – your poetry – that is very scary. Because sometimes you’re worried to find it looks like . . . not much. Little scraps of text, which once seemed so vital. And now, placed next to each other on the floor, what do they look like? They don’t particularly get on with each other. And some of them end with the same word! Bugger, evidence of an obsessive mentality. If somebody sent them to me, I would probably reject them. Oh but not that one — I do have a fondness for that one. And so on . . .

I am horrified to to find how much water has flowed under the bridge. I have a big ring binder divided into sections. The first section is Pigeons out – that’s copies of the poems that have been sent to magazines and for which I’m waiting a response. It’s currently empty.

The second section is Pigeons returned — that’s the rejected poems. It’s pretty deep.

Then there’s a section called Fledglings, completed poems that haven’t been sent anywhere yet. Here I’m in deep water because I am very bad at finding time to do this. (Some of the fledglings haven’t even made it into the Fledgling folder.)

At the back, there’s Relegates, which is poems I’ve more or less decided should be submerged forever, but can’t bear to rip up.

There’s a separate binder for Pigeons with Homes, into which I transfer accepted poems.

Happily, after about 18 years of doing this (I started late), Poems with Homes now take up three binders. Less happily, I could not believe the amount of Relegates there are. There are just as many Relegates as there are Homes. And some of those Relegates took weeks of my life — or that’s how I remember it.

Anyway, I have at least fished out those poems from which I could draw a second collection, though I haven’t decided which will sink and which might swim in formation. And I have a second set of unsuitables too, for More Unsuitable Poems, an idea that was floated last year but was subsequently lost at sea.

Meanwhile, visitors come and go, roofs leak, the grass needs cutting, the summer jam hasn’t been made, four pamphlets are still in draft form, the tap in the kitchen shakes the whole house and MUST be replaced soon, the new ‘poetry-cards’ are in the melting pot but at least the one for the wedding has been done and the red envelopes ordered, some of the graphics for the new pamphlets are here from Gillian and I have been messing about with covers but haven’t finalised any yet. How DO other people manage all the things in their lives? It would be so much easier if I didn’t have to sleep.

 

 

It continues to be a non-Summer Summer. In the conservatory, the three dishes set to catch the drips caught quite a number when we were away (so did we).

However, for the first time in ages even the shadow of a migraine is absent. It probably won’t last but at least a little clear mental space is a delight. And I’m proud to say that I did spend one day cycling quite a long way down Loch Lochay and back and was none the worse for it: not exactly athlete territory but better than sitting for ten hours at a desk.

Now it’s back to the pamphlets. All sorts of plotting going on here. More publications afoot. Various interesting submissions falling through the letter-box. Most have, sadly, to be returned to their owners but I think it’s reassuring in many ways that there is more poetry worth putting into a pamphlet than I can handle and at least I’ve had time to give a bit of feedback. When the standard is good, it often comes down to taste. You simply like some people’s poems more than others — and, come to that — some of some people’s poems more than others. Occasionally the selection a person has sent just doesn’t grab you, though you can see they’re good.

Recently I had some beautifully presented work from a poet whose central theme was Scotland’s national sport. Now I ought to be interested in it, but I’m not. I am fond of poet Eddie Gibbons who loves football and writes about it too, but I have no affection for footie itself. Perhaps it’s because we weren’t allowed to play it at school. Years ago when I used to write romantic short stories for popular women’s magazines (it was another life: every cell in my body has changed since then), I had to get someone to take me to a match in Manchester. The plot required hands to be held in a football crowd and I wanted to make it authentic. It wasn’t a dramatic match — I seem to remember the final score was nil-nil — but I enjoyed it. I could see it could be fun, but it wasn’t my world.

But this is like the ‘Do not send me villanelles’ thing. I don’t pretend it’s reasonable. When working on a publication, I type all the poems out myself, to get inside them. After that I spend a lot of time reading, re-reading, scrutinising, rehearsing layouts and so on, just like I would with my own poems. Probably a ridiculous length of time in fact. But I choose to spend my time on forms – and subject matter – that are personally sympathetic. I expect most people would be the same.

Entries for the STORY competition have started to hot up a little bit too, which is just as well or it won’t raise enough money to pay the prizes and the judge! The HappenStance bank account is less than flush just now. So if you’re reading this and you know any short story writers, do encourage them to enter. The free tick-box critique is well worth having, I believe, even if you don’t win. Most competitions give no feedback at all and your story just disappears into the maw of the machine. Besides, with Janice Galloway as judge?? What an amazing writer!

Oh and I have discovered how HOT the MacBook gets on your knee. It’s like a hot water bottle. This is going to be comforting in the winter. I did my personal letters this week and my GoodReads reviews on it and I’ve finally come to face the truth: my fingers are happier writing on keys than with a pen. My brain must have finally made the switch. And the little screen on your knee is less stressful on the eyes for some reason. It feels quite relaxing working that way.

On with the work!

End of another week of primarily pamphletterie, although not being actually asked to do jury duty was part of it. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I dutifully turned up at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court. On Monday we waited for about an hour, then were sent home. On Tuesday we were there rather longer, while phone calls were made and people came and went. Then we were sent home again. On Wednesday, the thing started to happen after only about 40 minutes. They put all the prospective jurors’ names in a glass bowl and select them. Mine wasn’t selected. So I came home and did get on with quite a bit of work, thankfully.

Cliff Ashby’s Sampler is now on its way in the post to many and various, including the author, who is very nearly ninety, a remarkable man. My heading is from a poem of his, in which he says (of writing poetry):

It’s hard to put the words down–
Not the physical effort,
But the demand for truth
Makes every word suspect.

And that’s how he writes really, carefully and plainly. This little Sampler is a good taste of him and has a number of biographical poems in it. Doctor Green (for those who read the publication) is Gordon’s Gin.

Heres’ another few lines of Ashby:

A wise dog
Raises a
Paw when his
God appears.

Precaution is
The order
Of the day.

But as well as Cliff, Sally Festing’s pamphlet, which is to be called Salaams, is on its fourth draft and Gillian is working on cover images. Rose Cook’s first draft has gone out to her in the post. So has Alison Brackenbury’s — so far the names of theirs aren’t finalised. Mark Halliday’s has gone to him (two versions) as pdf, since posting stuff to Ohio is slow.

I spend quite a long time typing people’s poems out at the first stage (even when I have them electronically) because it’s like putting on clothes to see how they fit. I mess about with layout, obsess about where to split long lines, test which phrases (if any) seem to me not quite to be working and try to work out why I think that. It’s very intense but very lovely getting inside other people’s poems, and afterwards phrases from them follow you around. Sometimes even whole poems . . .

There is much more to be done but I’m going away to Killin again for a few days. Some serious sleeping is now on the agenda and an attempt to reduce the migraine tally.

 

 

I just noticed this one. Nearly passed me by, which might be good news to other people thinking of entering. Not as dear as the others, and what an excellent small press! Go for it!

tall-lighthouse poetry competition closing date 31 August 2009

The winner will have a pamphlet of twenty poems published by tall-lighthouse in the first quarter of 2010.

To celebrate ten years of tall-lighthouse press,as well as continuing success with the Poetry Book Society pamphlet choices, the press is holding a one-off competition, a unique publication opportunity. In addition the winner will receive a cheque for £100, while four runners-up will have three of their poems published in the next tall-lighthouse anthology (due at the end of 2010)

The competition will be judged anonymously by

• helen mort (Manchester Poetry Prize winner 2008)
• maggie  sullivan (Trustee of the Poetry Society)
• alan buckley (shiver, alan’s pamphlet is PBS pamphlet choice Summer 2009)

HOW TO ENTER – poets can send up to ten poems for a fee of £10

An email to tall.lighthouse@btinternet.com with the header competition will elicit competition rules and entry criteria.

I’ve had a week of not being in college, a week in which the summer has been simmering, the garden burgeoning. It’s been amazing. It’s July, of course, so submissions have also been trickling in, a couple each day, and I’ve sat in the conservatory and logged them (hell’s bells – I’m now blogging the logging) gently and quietly, listening to birdsong in the garden, admiring the purple clematis soundlessly asserting itself.

Some very interesting work coming in. Most of it is much more efficiently presented than it used to be when I started – some really professional-looking manuscripts – one with an amazing covering letter this week. If I was running a class in how to approach a publisher, I might use this one as an exemplar.

First: the poet knew my name (I hate being addressed as Dear HappenStance, or Dear Editor or — worst of all — Dear Sir.

Second: simple statement about what submission comprised.

Third: (under a sub-heading) ‘About …………. (name of sequence)’ – a summary of what I was about to read, rather like a synopsis for a novel. (Funny, I lost the word ‘synopsis’ there for a minute. My brain was going syllabus, syncopated, syllogism …). This synoptic paragraph would have made a very nice back cover blurb, although it was a little bit too slick. No matter. The author is young (but gifted).

Fourth: (under another heading) ‘About me’ – brief bio and summary of writing projects worked on – some really interesting ones at that, making clear, without overstating it, that the poet has good writing connections (which would help sell his work, without a doubt). A bit of education did no harm to mention either.

Fifth: (also subheaded and this is rare) – ‘Promotion’ – a statement of intent – how the poet proposes to help promote the publication.

The cover letter slipped up in one regard only (but at least that proves the poet is human) by not explaining why HappenStance. If he had demonstrated acquaintance with a couple of my publications I would have sent him a small covering letter award.

Confession: I read this incredibly efficient approach with slight scepticism, the way you start listening to a remarkable new tenor thinking he’s good, he’s good, but wait till he tries to hit that note at the end of the aria. I am only a pamphlet publisher. I don’t usually get that quality of pitch. And if you create high expectation with your opening gambit, your poems have such a lot to live up to.

However, they lived up. They did indeed. Shan’t say more now, but it did remind me that doing this poetry job is actually rather exciting. Sometimes it’s a whole set. Sometimes it’s just one poem. But it does feel like panning for gold, with rather more gold than you could reasonably expect arriving through your letterbox. In fact, more than I can publish.

Which reminds me. James Wood (of The Theory of Everything) was blogging last weekend, (‘Never been told’) quoting Giles Coren who

has made the bold claim that no-one cares about or likes poetry because, in reality, most poetry is so terrible.

I actually know a poem of Giles Coren’s by heart. At least I’m pretty sure it was by him. A delight. Here it is:

Ode to a goldfish

O
wet
pet!

James neatly refutes Giles Coren’s anti-poetry statements, with a reference (thank you James!) to HappenStance, and in particular to Matt Merritt and Tom Duddy. Matt’s HappenStance pamphlet is sold out. Tom’s (The Small Hours, one of my favourites) isn’t – and that is partly because the poet is not a natural self-promoter. His poems are quiet. They sneak up on you sideways. But the deep, quiet excitement I felt when I first read him is with me yet.

Poetry World, alas, has entered celebrity culture. Sometimes I like the fun of that. However, I also lament the pressure it brings for poets to have to be glitzy and out there, blogging, slogging, hogging the limelight.

Some of them should be doing that stuff, no question. It’s what they’re born for (though celebrity should not be equated with genius).

Others should be doing it their own way, skulking between the pages. Let them be hard to find, verschmuggelt. Let them be a well-kennt secret . . .

I was late in blogging this week because I shot off to London last Wednesday to the Michael Marks Award ceremony, then back to college for a day, then Barrow-in -Furness to do Poem n Pint reading (more of that separately), then Glasgow Monday for SQA meeting. I can’t do this kind of hectic thing. My brain is still spinning.

Anyway, the award. The train got me there dutifully and beautifully, and I stepped out of Kings Cross into hot sunshine. Sat for a couple of hours in a cafe in Hampstead with poet Sean Haldane, whom I know by letter but not in person. I had been reading his new book, his Always Two: Collected Poems on the train. So following that with meeting him in person and talking about some of those poems was excellent: like a little slice of time out of time.

Then met Davina (D A Prince) and Maggie Butt for the ceremony in the Conference Centre of the British Library. It was a friendly event, held in a little lecture theatre. When London is a place you don’t often go, you’re surprised to find it somehow not feeling overwhelmingly formal. It was all pretty friendly, Richard Price did an interesting talk at the start, the six short-listed single poets each read poems from their publications and then a winner was announced.

Elizabeth Burns took the poetry prize. Her little pamphlet of elegies is extremely attractive: I read it later on the train on the way back, with particular pleasure. It is most beautifully produced by Galdragon Press, based in Orkney – warmly recommended.

I was very glad to have the opportunity to chat to Maggie and Davina. I haven’t talked in person to Davina since her book launch, and it’s years since I saw Maggie. She put me up overnight and we had breakfast next day in the garden! Marvellous. It is heart-warming to know there are such lovely people in Poetry World. And at the event, I was also able to chat to Clare Best, whose pamphlet I hope to publish later this year.

The winning pamphlet publisher was Oystercatcher Press. It’s an interesting imprint and I had hoped to hear a bit more about them at the ceremony, but that didn’t happen, although there was a chance to take a look at some of the publications. It is run by poet and artist Peter Hughes, who has a dog called Great Aunt Maisy. His words of acceptance were very modest – he seemed a nice chap, though I didn’t speak to him in person unfortunately. I’ll see if I can get him to do an interview for Sphinx.

It was nice to have the encouragement of even being short-listed for the award. But now it just makes me aware that (as Gordon Brown, and before him Tony Blair, is fond of saying) I need to Get On With The Job . . . .