Why is it so HARD?

Why is it so hard to do publicity?

I always thought the most difficult thing to write well was – a poem. 

But there’s something else I find more difficult. And it’s writing the publicity material about the poems. It’s almost impossible. 

Why should it be so hard to put into words how something you think is remarkable is . . . remarkable?

It may be something to do with fear, fear that the describing words turn into marketing clichés and disappear down the drain. It’s fear of letting the poets down. And beneath that, there’s something else – a kind of rage about the way the world works these days. So much hype, so many shiny, empty words. I’m scared mine will disappear with the rest of the dross.

But here I am again about to launch five new publications. Five! Five things to say about five different publications. How can they all be wonderful?  

Well four of them are wonderful, and the fifth is funny. How do I know they’re wonderful?

No, wait. I don’t like ‘wonderful’. Please put it back.  I’ll have ‘remarkable’ please, and yes, I do most certainly think they’re remarkable. They made me sit up and remark. They made me sit up and remark so much that I wanted to work with these writers. And work we did. It’s taken an age to make them. You have no idea of the time spent debating commas, accents, format, poems to go in, poems to come out, running order, titles that were okay, titles that were rubbish, where to put notes, what to say on the back jacket, which design worked best on the cover, which didn’t….

The books are done. Two are at the printer’s in Berwick-on-Tweed. Three are about to make their way to Dolphin Press tomorrow morning. They’re not in the HappenStance online shop yet because they don’t fully exist yet except electronically, though that is existence.

And yesterday I spent several hours finalising the flyers and the copy for the publications list. The publications list! What a nightmare. Each time I revise it I get something wrong.The words for the new publications either start to sound tinny or I find I’ve described two books in the same way. You can’t have TWO fresh and originals. And since each one is completely different from the rest, it can’t be that hard. Can it?

Take it from me, it’s hard. Even for a bard.

But here’s what it says about the new babes on the sweated-over publications list.

Number one: a whole book, a first book, no less.. And here’s what it says on the publications list:

Noir, Charlotte Gann
Troubled, troubling and fearless, Charlotte Gann’s first collection confronts manipulation and damage, and sails into the light. A book that can be read like a film.
 

You may think those italics emerged easily, just like turning on a tap. Wrong. I have never before read a collection of poems that resembled a film in its clarity of image and narrative thrust. But for me, Charlotte’s book is like this. Like a noir film. With shivers.

Then there are three pamphlets, described below in alphabetical order of writer’s surname (just in case you think it’s in order of remarkableness). 

The Days that Followed Paris, Paul Stephenson.
During a night of co-ordinated terrorist attacks in November 2015, the poet was at home in Paris. He was unharmed but swept up (like the whole city) into a maelstrom of publicity and alarm. These poems, in many shapes and forms, offer a response to that unhinging experience.

Instructions for Making Me, Maria Taylor.
Poems of unfailing vitality and charm. You read them and immediately want to share them. Honestly, every poet and aspiring writer should read ‘The Horse’ …

In the Glasshouse, Helen Tookey.
Haunting and evocative work that crosses the boundaries of form and feeling, searching, experimenting, feeling its way. Between truth and fable, intuition and enquiry, something magical and beautiful emerges.

Okay, what do you think? There’s so much more to be said, but in a publications list you have to whittle it down to the bare minimum.

You can’t read any of these yet, but soon you will be able to.

My slaved-over descriptive words have two purposes. They’re trying to make you want to read the poems – of course – but they’re also trying to evoke these publications as they are – entirely remarkable, but in different ways.

I’m not mentioning the fifth yet because it’s called Down with Poetry! That heretical book will look after itself.

More on heresy soon.

Front cover of Charlotte Gann's book. It shows a dark skyline, a city skyline with windows, and behind it another shadowy skyline. The book's title is in large yellow caps in the bottom third, the the name of the author in white above it.

 

THE KINDNESS OF PUBLISHERS

Gerry Cambridge, the paperback, is about to appear!

That’s the first of the new titles that went to the printer’s this week. Notes For Lighting A Fire in hardback is sold out, though I haven’t taken it out of the shop yet: four copies left. We reprinted twice, but after the second reprinting MPG Biddles went bust.

So we decided to do G Cambridge, the paperback. As a special treat and enticement, it will have four additional poems – five if you count the one on the dedication page. One of the new poems is the delightful ‘Stylophilia’ (love of fountain pens). It celebrates the beautiful names of the many pens and inks a collector can fall in love with. Anyone who knows Gerry knows this is not an idle whim in his case: it is a passion.

But that’s not all. The little book of Fife Place Name Limericks has also finally been completed. I began writing it over twenty years ago. I started typesetting it over two years ago, and now it has finally gone to print. It is not a work of great literature, you understand. It is amusing and has pictures. It will be a test of commitment for me because I need to get this on sale in shops, not just on the HappenStance website. Unlike everything else I do, it was intended to make a profit and therefore keep the press afloat.

When I started this publishing lark, I had no idea of the range of skills required, not all of which come naturally to me. There’s the communication with the authors, the design of the publication, the typesetting, the record-keeping, the proof-reading, the packaging and dispatching, the updating of websites (fortunately I don’t have to design or make the web site because Sarah at ZipFish does that). And there’s the typing, the correspondence, the communication with professional printers, the upsides and downsides of In-Design, the keeping of accounts, the using of couriers, the buying of vast quantities of stamps, padded envelopes, cello bags, printed labels. There’s the folding of cards; the buying of matching envelopes in different colours and sizes; the continual updating of subscriber records. And there’s the ISB numbers (just ordered another 100), the registration of books, the sending of books to copyright libraries, the bar-coding (haven’t got as far as QR codes but that will come next). And there’s the marketing – the flyers, the electronic newsletters, the paper newsletters, the information in the shop, the launch events, the Sunday blog.Oh and the sending of publications to competition places, to reviewers, to those and such as those. And I mustn’t forget the pricing and selling of products (my weakest point – I would cheerfully give everything away if I could). The late Duncan Glen was a wonderful role model: he had great connections with local shops and no hesitation about marching with a new title and a persuasive tone. I have to get better at this.

But back to the titles. There are Maria Taylor’s Poetry Bingo Cards too:  a little joke for poets who play. These will be A5 in size with enough room on the back to write and post to your friends, and to mine, if I still have any. And once printed, someone here will be packing them into packets of four with a sticky label. Another labour of love for my loved-one.

And there’s Jonty Driver’s pamphlet Citizen of Elsewhere, a new and selected collection from a South African-born poet. Poems of life and death from someone who was exiled from his home country for decades. We agreed on the cover yesterday – the image will be a little cave painting ostrich, a bird on its way if ever I saw one. It will go to the printer tomorrow.

Tom Vaughan’s Envoy is nearly nearly done: the only collection I have seen with a poem in which Tony Blair appears as a real character! Lots of fun here, but also some grim reality from a former diplomat. Still waiting the last details of design and cover image for Envoy and then I start tinkering again.

Hamish Whyte’s Hannah, Are You Listening? went to the printer a week ago, so that should be coming back imminently together with two new BardCards and . . . the annual HappenStance Christmas Card, which will go to subscribers in a month.

I find it hard to keep up with this, and I’m supposed to be in charge. I haven’t yet mentioned Tom Duddy’s full collection, his second posthumous book, The Years, which is also nearly done. This will be a hardback book. One of today’s tasks is to look again at the cover. I’m not experienced at designing book jackets but it’s another skill I need. Gerry Cambridge, the best in the business, will advise (though don’t expect anything of the same calibre).

One of the most moving aspects of this publishing business is the kindness and generosity you enounter. People help you. I mentioned Duncan Glen earlier. In the last few years before he died Duncan (Akros Publications) gave me all sorts of useful advice. How well I remember him saying, with that glint in his eye, ‘Publishers always lie!’ And when I started Sphinx, Sally Evans of Poetry Scotland, herself a compendium of wisdom born of experience, sent me a twenty pound note in the post. I’ve never forgotten that. Sheila Wakefield of Red Squirrel has helped in more ways than she knows: a poetry publisher who ran a successful garage knows a thing or two. And there’s Ross Bradshaw of Five Leaves, and John Lucas of Shoestring Press, Mike Mackmin at The Rialto and Michael Laskey, publishing through both Smiths Knoll and Garlic Press. These guys know stuff. It is great always having someone to ask. And I haven’t even named all the secret helpers.

But I mustn’t forget to mention the Christmas event at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh. On Saturday December 14th, 1.30-3.30, we will celebrate winter (I hope it won’t be deep snow by then) and launch several books onto the world. These will include:

  • Hamish Whyte’s Hannah, Are You Listening?
  • Gerry Cambridge’s paperback Notes
  • Tom Vaughan’s Envoy
  • J C (Jonty) Driver’s Citizen of Elsewhere
  • Fife Place Name Limericks
  • Poetry Bingo Cards (great last minute Christmas gift)

and possibly

  • Tom Duddy’s The Years (it may or may not be done by then)

Please come if you can. Fun will be had by all, with wine and party snacks. Somehow we will make it to Christmas!

b2ap3_thumbnail_present3.jpg

 

AND ANOTHER REASON FOR WRITING REVIEWS . . .

How could I NOT have said this last week?

How could I NOT have said this last week?

. . .  is to learn. Maria Taylor reminded me and of course it’s true. For a  poet-reviewer, you study other people’s poems because you want to learn how it’s done (and occasionally what to avoid).

Gerry Cambridge, whose ‘bio’ paragraphs for poets at the end of The Dark Horse are often a little more unpredictable than some, once described me as “a practising poet”. Wonderful description! It’s like being a doctor, in which case my practice is in Fife. But it can also mean, and certainly subsumes, the sense that regular practice is required, or even that one is only a practising poet. Practising for the real thing, that is.

But part of being a Permanently Practising Poet (PPP) is taking part in your own individualised master-classes. By this, I mean carefully and closely reading work you admire. In this way, the master poem demonstrates its art to you. Sometimes, with superb work, you just goggle because it is so good.

Or you go over and over it, and can’t quite work out how it does what it does, although it still does it (my favourite kind of text).

At other times, after reading and re-reading, you see many interesting intricacies in the pattern of shape and sound. It’s like a first-rate fruit cake. You enjoy it more, the slower you nibble, the more you notice the shape and texture, the fine ingredients.

I don’t want to push the fruit cake analogy, or mix my metaphors too far. There is a limit to how much fruit cake you want to nibble. Also a limit to how much fine poetry you can take in at one go. But that’s as it should be.

Mostly reviewers grapple with mixed work. Some great bits, some wobbly bits, some damned interesting bits. And then the analogy is more like panning for gold. When you find what you think might be the RT (Real Thing), you get very excited and pore over it for ages. And if you think it definitely is, you want to share your find. What a pleasure then, to write about it!

If you think it’s FG (Fool’s Gold), you get a bit narky, especially if you’ve spent a very long time standing in a cold stream with your 14” heavy gauge steel pan (although these days, you can get plastic gold pans). It is this emotion that sometimes leads to impatience on the part of reviewers. But they should know better.

And ideally, there is some gold. It is what the PPP is looking for and it is what the PUS (Poet Under Scrutiny) is looking for too. And it is invariably highly interesting and worthy of drawing attention to, because no one bit of Po Go is like any other bit. So the PPP reviewer tries to learn what makes it what it is, tries phenomenally hard, because if we could only learn the secret, we could replicate it. But by and large, all that can be learned (though this is not to be sneezed at) is something about technique, or occasionally something about lack of it. This is only one of the reasons why poetry is amazing.

And sometimes, that which is indubitably gold to one PPP is dross to another, which is also part of the fun. “What is aught but as ’tis valued,” as Troilus says to Hector (of Cressida).

Speaking of which, a number of Cressidas volunteered their services as Sphinx reviewers last week. I am delighted.