Jim Carruth – Unsuitable Blog and HappenStance News

LOSING, WINNING, WINING AND BUILDING

But not whining. Or I hope not.

But it has been quite a week.

The decoration of the HappenStance bedroom/office was neatly finished in time for the work downstairs to commence with a vengeance. The conservatory, which was leaking in more places than we had bowls to put under, has been torn down (ready for rebuilding). So the furniture from the conservatory is in the newly painted bedroom. It is difficult to move there.

The new conservatory has not yet been built so the door which would go into it is boarded up and the sitting room is consequently very dark.

However, the log burning stove (cue previous saga) has been installed. We are still getting used to the shock of stove plus huge pipe. But it works. It certainly works. And the light from the flames slightly offsets the huge dark from the boarded up wall.

Half the exterior of the house has been rough cast and harled. Men come to do pipes, cladding and gutters tomorrow morning. And more of the building work round the soon-to-be-erected conservatory. They are all men. On the board in the kitchen, there’s a small list of names and what they take in their tea.

And on my upstairs list (it has been increasingly hard to get to this computer which is a gateway to the WORLD) there has been the pleasure of knowing Gerry Cambridge’s book, Notes for Lighting a Fire, has been short-listed for The Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards. Long live mortgages!

But meanwhile (a lot of my paragraphs are starting with ‘but’, but that’s the least of it), my friend and HappenStance poet Marcia Menter, arrived from New York, and together we set off for the Isle of Arran, leaving the building work behind, and my long-suffering partner Matt in charge of log stoves, tea for the workers and general survival.

Why Arran? Marcia was one of four winners of the Robert McLellan poetry prize and she flew over, like a true poetry executive, for the award ceremony. (This is not the sort of thing she usually does but hey, life is short).

The three other winners included another HappenStance poet, Jim Carruth (hurray!) And then there was Ron Scowcroft, Hubert Moore and highly commended Emma Strang. Hubert is the one with his hand in his pocket, Ron the one gripping the lectern. Jim, you will recognise. A lovely bunch of people.

But it wasn’t all winning. On our way to the event, Gerry Cambridge texted to say Seamus Heaney had died, a huge loss. I would not normally see this from a US perspective but because I was with Marcia, I knew that this death was featured next day on the front page of the New York Times above the fold. This is practically unheard of.

And so, as PoetryWorld shivered on its foundations, we celebrated poetry, which will outlive all of us.

Peter and Ann Sansom were the judges of the McLellan competition and awarded prizes. But they did much more than that. They are not ordinary judges (or poets). They talked about each winning poem. They read each poem, and then the poets read them again. We got to know those poems, and their authors.

All this in a little community hall on Arran, set out not in in rows, but with café-style tables and bring-your-own bottles of wine. There was a lovely atmosphere. Peter and Ann read a few of their own poems too – not many – with charm, humour and generosity. We laughed a great deal. Oh did you read Anthony Wilson on Ann Sansom? It is all true.

I think it’s true to say that on this lovely occasion on Arran, despite the loss of the great Seamus, we felt like we had all won. He was not forgotten, and as long as there is life and letters, he never will be.

We arrived in Arran in rain but with rainbows.

We left in a squall of rain that nearly soaked us through, followed by brilliant sunshine.

Now back to the building of the HappenStance emporium. This week the conservatory should go up, the roofwork should be done – oh and a few other things. One day it might be possible to read and write here again.

But not yet.

On Friday, I go to London, taking some HappenStance wares to the Free Verse Bookfair at the Conway Hall in London. I must work out where it is before then. If you’re based in or near the metropolis, do come along and have a chat. I may have dust and mortar in my hair, but who cares?

STANDING ROOM ONLY

The two Jims attracted a magnificent crowd for the launch of their new pamphlets on Saturday afternoon.

Both are accomplished readers and they did not disappoint. In fact, they were at their magnificent best. Highlights were Jim Carruth on the Scottish Independence vote, hilariously packaged in a poem about ice-cream; and Jim C Wilson taking Stevenson’s Mr Hyde in his stride via Adelaide Crapsey on an unerring route to Minsk which, as he pointed out, has not only a precise geography but a precise enunciation, without which it can turn to ‘mince’.

The audience was marvellously attentive, and the business of managing wine tasting in three sections between the poems made it a reading with zing. Ross Kightly, author of Gnome Balcony, became the blurb from Matthew Stewart’s wine poems. I was the wine.

The wine itself was also there in liquid form and merrily imbibed. Ross’s wife Chris joined the elves (the quiet but essential support staff (these included my daughter Gillian and her husband Jamie) circulating with wine tastings, pouring drinks downstairs, and later selling the books.

It was lovely to have several other HappenStance poets there too. Gerry Cambridge was on the stairs, Eleanor Livingstone, Alan Hill and Deborah Trayhurn sitting down. Jenny Elliott (whose mysterious Shed Press pamphlet Preparing to be Beautiful snuck into the recent subscriber mailshot) was there too. Patricia Ace standing at the back, Margaret Christie sitting near the front. Gill Andrews and Theresa Munoz came in a little later. Who says poetry is not a welcoming world?

Meanwhile, the Scottish Poetry Library was as life-enhancing as always, light streaming through the upstairs windows. There were people sitting on chairs listening, standing at the back, on the stairs – a couple even sitting downstairs for the sound to fall from above like snow. The angelic SPL staff were at the desk calm, reassuring and supportive. The ancient poets nodded quietly from their places between the pages on the library stacks.

This is a place in which magical things happen – and yesterday they did.

THE TWO JIMS, AND HAVING A SAY

There is Jim C, and then there is Jim . . . C.

I should have known it was a mistake to release two publications by poets with the same first name. Both Scottish. Both charming gentlemen, whom I would not wish, in any way, to offend.

However, Jim Carruth (author of Rider at the Crossing), when abbreviated becomes Jim C. And Jim Wilson (author of Will I Ever Get to Minsk?) is also . . . er . . . Jim C Wilson, and therefore I often save files of his as Jim C.

So more than once, I have sent communications about Jim C to Jim C. I mean, Jim C Wilson to Jim Carruth. And to add insult to injury, I have kept referring to Jim Carruth’s pamphlet, Rider at the Crossing as Rider at the Crossroads.

The Two Jims will have a Christmas launch at the Scottish Poetry Library on December 15^th (a Saturday afternoon), and there will be several Zaleo wines and some interesting sort of tasting going on. What are the chances that I will introduce the Crossing as Crossroads, and Jim W as Jim C?

I think I ought to say that although the two Jims are Scottish and share a first name, their poems and their personalities are nothing like each other. They are men of distinction and character. Both can be funny, but in very different ways. One is West, one is East. One is Jim C and one is Jim W.

For Jim W, the collection represents many of his best poems from the last several years, and some of them recall other great personalities from Scottish poetry, people Jim met in person and remembers here: Norman MacCaig, for example. He is a rich source of anecdote and tradition, and he always has a little mischief up his capacious sleeve.

For Jim Carruth, often known for his settings in field and farm, there is not a farm in sight. But there is much else: fun, and sadness, and the feeling of a bit of a crossroads. I mean crossing. No, I do mean crossroads. You have the sense he is mid-career as a poet, looking back and forward, appraising the road already travelled, weighing up what’s on the horizon.

Paula Jennings will not be surprised at my getting things wrong. Her lovely and unusual collection, From the Body of the Green Girl, stuck in my mind as Out of the Body of the Green Girl, and as a result I kept putting that erroneous title into bits and pieces of things, including the official registration for the publication. I had to go back and register the correction. In fact, even a few moments ago, I typed them the wrong way round. But I think she has forgiven me.

I am in many ways a perfectionist, so these things are painful. How on earth did I manage to publish four poets whose first name was Martin? (If you have just sent me a submission and Martin is your name, it will not increase your chances of success.)

My level of confusion rises when exhaustion sets in, and exhaustion, like strawberry jam with additional pectin, has certainly set this week.

As I am all too fond of reminding people, it is not easy to sell poetry. Although that literary form is still somehow regarded as rare and beautiful, most possible purchasers are content to regard its beauty from a distance. So the business of negotiating, designing and printing a small pamphlet publication is the least of it. After that, there’s the flyer to design, the book to register, the online shop to populate, the poets’ bio pages to complete, the copies to post to the National Library, the Agency for the other copyright libraries, the Scottish Poetry Library, the London Poetry Library, the authors (some in packets, some in a large box), the queues in the post office, and so on. Later, it’s review copies and fulfilling the online orders, which start trickling in.

The poets themselves will shift some copies. This is good but it won’t be enough (or it rarely is). This is where the subscribers come in, the wonderful people who formally express an interest in HappenStance, in the form of a £7.50 payment. For this, they get (at the moment) an annual chapter in the story of the press. This year, the chapters vanished completely and one day these things will have a value, so if you have Chapter 6, hang onto it. They also get a pamphlet of their choice.

After that, they also get approximately two mailshots per year by post. By good old-fashioned, and now extremely expensive, stamps. The Christmas mailshot has just gone out and this year it even contained a free gift, a small and lovely little thing designed by Jenny Elliott and her secret and mischievous Shed Press. And there’s the Christmas card: 300 were handfolded last week and enveloped.

I have always been better at giving things away then making money. So it’s a particular point of pride to me to design attractive flyers for each publication, with a sample poem on the back, and these go in the mailshot too.

Of course, I hope some people will order some pamphlets as a result of all this, not least from the two Jims, and most subscribers do order at least two or three publications a year – the point at which the subscription scheme starts to cover its costs and put some cash back in the bank. And at least those who can’t afford to buy, or who don’t fancy the current bunch of poets, get the flyers and other bits and pieces.

Over the years, the subscriber list has grown steadily. Each person has a number and I am now up to 384, I think. In real terms there are just about 300 ‘live’ subscribers, several of which have become regular correspondents and friends. I’ve lost 80ish. When I say ‘live’, some of my subscribers really have died, to my particular grief. These have included, for example, Julia Casterton, Cliff Ashby, Tom Duddy and Bertie Lomas. Others simply drop the subscription, either because they don’t like most of the poetry I’m publishing (a wholly valid reason for dropping out) or because they only subscribed because they were sending in a submission of their own, and I have not come up trumps.

Most of the poets I have, in the end, published do continue to subscribe, and there are a lot of them now. I once calculated that if I had eventually published 500 poets (I am up to about 130), and if they all continued to support the press and purchased two pamphlets a year at full price, or 4 at half price, I could continue to fund six new pamphlet poets annually, and do all the other poetry stuff I do. Or almost. Now there’s a thought.

But it’s not just the business of buying things. Or selling things. It’s the issue of a proper readership. What I hope for in the HappenStance subscribers is people who actually read the poems—and preferably tell me what they think of them. Because the current list of publications reflects something in the story of literature. This list is current and contemporary. This is some of whatever poets are doing right now, at this minute, in the UK. And at some point, folk will look back on it and maybe say, ‘Now that was quite interesting.’ Or ‘Now that was bollocks’, or ‘How on earth did they underestimate that one?’

When I was at school, and even at university, I read dead poets. Nothing against dead poets. I like dead poets. But when, back in the early 1970s, I picked up a copy of a contemporary magazine – like Poetry Review for example, which I had even heard of – I didn’t like most of it. It didn’t live up to whatever it was I expected from the rare and beautiful thing poetry was supposed to be. I didn’t know where to start to find the thing I would like or did want.

Even now, it’s difficult, isn’t it? I read a ton of poetry every year. We have to heave it away from the door in buckets. And lots of it is okay. Some is good. Hardly any is rare and beautiful. Even the best poets alive write little that’s rare and beautiful.

People sometimes ask publishers why they started. In my case, there are many answers to that question. One of mine – and I don’t often admit it, because it feels risky – is that I wanted a say in what was going on. Someone always has a say in what gets to be Literature. But actually, anybody can have a say. It’s not as difficult as it’s cracked up to be.

Besides, it’s one of the best rides at the workaholics’ theme park.