How to launch a poetry book

There are many ways. 

I like the way the word ‘launch’ suggests champagne and an ocean liner. And recently I did attend a poetry reading in the sea. It was almost certainly the first ever event of its kind and it was during Poetry in Aldeburgh in early November.

Four swimmers entering the water, three in swimsuits, one in a bikini. The photo captures them from behind.Four swimmers posed for photo out of the water. They are glowing with health. I am not sure of all the names but all are laughing and they certainly include Bryony Bax and Fiona Moore -- I think one of the other two is Lisa Kelly.

Poets are tough people. They can do almost anything. Including taking off their clothes and immersing themselves in bitterly cold sea water while declaiming verse. The four fearless poets involved in this reading were each other’s audience because the spectators (I was one of these) were too far away to hear the words – and comfortably dry.

Poetry in the Sea was an unforgettable and stunningly beautiful event. But it wouldn’t do for a launch, despite the possibility of boats, because the books would get wet. And at a launch, there are books.

However, there was also a dry HappenStance launch at Aldeburgh, when we booked a beautiful room (with a sea view and amazing stripes wallpaper) in the Brudenell Hotel to launch Charlotte Gann’s Noir. It’s a dark and shadowy book, elliptical in its suggestion and grace – but there was much laughter on the day, as you can see from the photograph, and many HappenStance subscribers and poets came along.

Helena Nelson and Charlotte Gann. Helena is holding up a copy of the book and laughing at some joke evidently just made by Charlotte, who is pictured (shoulder length blonde hair) from the back and in half profile. Behind them is wallpaper in thick vertical stripes of bright red, white and gold.

But what are the essential ingredients for launching books?

Well, you do need an audience. There must be books to sell (this sounds simple but printers go bust every year). There needs to be a signing table. There needs to be an author to read (even this can go wrong and I have known launches where the author was elsewhere). The poet/reader needs to perform well and not for too long. Someone needs to make a little speech, introducing the poet and probably proposing a toast. You need glasses, or at least paper cups, and something with which to toast the success of the publication – anything from purest tap water to champagne.

You need something to put the money in. You need change. You need paper to note down sales etc. You need pens for signing the books. You need a clear head. You need a budget.

Because all this almost certainly costs a bob or two. You may or may not have to hire a room (you could use a free back room in a local pub; you could use your back garden; you could assemble in a park). But there is a cost factor.

If you’re selling the books yourself, you may pull in enough cash from the event to cover the cost. But the launch could be at a festival – like Paul Stephenson’s first reading from The Days That Followed Paris – which was also at Poetry in Aldeburgh. At a public event of this kind, you don’t have to fork out for the venue (and if you’re lucky you may even receive a performer’s fee), but the official bookseller will handle sales.

You can have more than one launch, of course, and bigger publishers do organise these for popular titles at bookshops across the nation. But most poetry titles have just one, and occasionally two.

It all sounds a bit scary if you’re a new poet and contemplating organising such a thing – because often it is the poet who organises the launch – not the wonderful publisher, who is already working on the next three titles and anyway is on holiday in the Seychelles.

I have known poets who got a friend to do the organisation: an unofficial publicity person or secret agent. That works well, and the friend can also do the introductory speech. It’s also often a good idea to launch with at least one other writer: more variety during the reading and someone else to bolster the confidence and share costs.

But there are many models and ways of doing it. The most important single thing is that the audience – and the poet herself, if possible – has fun. It’s a sort of party: a birthday party for the book and a well-wishing. So once you think of this, nothing else matters but a spirit of celebration. 

Last weekend I was in Taunton for Annie Fisher’s launch of Infinite in All Perfections. If you give a collection a title like this, you’re asking for trouble. However, it was a fabulous launch with a style of its own. 

It was an afternoon launch with glasses of Prosecco, Victorian china, floral decoration on all the tea tables, acres of glorious cake and tea. It was a launch in a terrific hall with microphones and comfy seating. There was a band playing before and after the poetry. It was a launch at which the poet not only read but sang. Such a voice! Such a lyric performance! 

Annie Fisher reading with microphone to an audience in a large hall, comfy seats in a big semi circle and light from big overhead windows. Behind her, along the white wall a striking exhibition of photographs.An array of cake: Victoria sponge, Walnut gateau, Lemon Drizzle, Coffee Cake, Something chocolatey etc, all carefully sliced and ready to serve.Close up of Annie reading or singing. She is wearing glasses and has shoulder length grey/blonde hair and a dark dress. She looks pretty happy and focussed.A long table with white cloth lined with copies of the pamphlet. At one end, Annie is bent over the table organising something.

If a publication would make a suitable Christmas gift (this is certainly true of Annie’s pamphlet), it’s no bad idea to launch in November or December, so timing’s worth consideration.

I’ve always wanted to do a launch at which copies of the publication were given away free to everyone who came. I’ve never done it but I love the idea; and it could be possible, if it were a launch with a paid entry. Or if the poet (or publisher) was singularly well-heeled. 

What’s the purpose of a launch again? It’s to celebrate the arrival of a new piece of making, to send it out into the world, and to find it some good readers. It’s only the beginning, but a good beginning helps. 

(One thing to bear in mind: the launch of your first publication is the easiest. Launching subsequent books is much harder. By now, your family and friends have got used to the idea you do this kind of thing. So you may need to think hard about how to do it in a different way with different attractions. A magician. Games. A celebrity guest. Rabbits.)

Close up of iced carrot cake, decorated with walnuts and sliced ready to serve. About twenty slices, I'd say. It was delicious.

The smell of the poem

These days there’s a lot of interest in what poems look like.

Issue 57 of Magma was titled The Shape of the Poem and the submission invitation began: ‘Poetry is a shaping of words and that shape can often be seen on the page’. It made reference to the visual cue of lines that turn before they reach the edge of the page: an early indicator that text is poem not prose.

Generally readers expect poems to look like poems. They expect more space round them than around prose. They expect a lot of other things too, many of which are conditioned expectations, operating subliminally – such as rhyme, an aural cue.

If you want to know a reader’s subconscious expectations of poetry, give them a poem that satisfies none of them. Give them a one-word poem. Give them an absence in the middle of a square. Give them a poem in which every line is struck-through or blotted out. Give them a poem they can’t hear. Give them a poem they can’t see.

Poetry – whatever it may be – works by acknowledging, and then – to various extents – both satisfying and disrupting expectation. If it doesn’t satisfy, you won’t like it much. If has no element of surprise, you won’t rate it.

Robert Pinsky says of poetry: ‘It’s voice. It’s a vocal art.’ Well, it can be, although it usually requires more than one sensual response eg. seeing and hearing.Photograph of my mainly drunk mug of tea with a pair of glasses balanced across the top. The mug is white and decorated with examples of different typefaces. You can see TYP and held of the E in bold print at the top.

But try watching Cochlear Implant, by the extraordinary British Sign Language poet Richard Carter, and see what you think. That’s if you can see him. Is vision the only way for British Sign Language to be accessible?  There might be another way, through touch. Helen Keller could read speech by touching people’s lips with her hands.

We operate through our senses. We make communication in whatever way we can. We call some of those communications – especially those unusually important to us – ‘poetry’. Like water through porous rock, poetry finds ways to reach people.

But what if we think poetry is a visual art, and then lose sight? What if we believe the shape on the page (or the page itself) is essential? What if we believe the poem must be heard?

We are an exceptionally creative species. We find ways. Some of them are technological.

I’ve been fascinated in recent months by Giles Turnbull’s blog. Giles is a poet who can’t see – though he wasn’t born without sight, which means he has his own expectations regarding shape and form. He has acquired a pair of magic glasses, which do the most extraordinary things. His blog about the Orcam glasses is here. And his story is ongoing – do follow that blog.

Giles can’t, I think, respond to Richard Carter making poems in BSL. Richard can respond to Giles because deaf poets can read, though English may not be their first language, so there could be a language barrier. Barriers are not terrible obstructions: they’re creative opportunities.

As for poetry of touch, I expect it’s out there. Taste poetry may, arguably, already be with us. And dogs smell stories. If you don’t believe it, look or listen to this little film.

 

ps I will be at Poetry in Aldeburgh next weekend. Do come if you can. Paul Stephenson will be reading from The Days That Followed Paris, and Charlotte Gann will have a private launch of Noir on the Saturday afternoon at the Brudenell Hotel, to which you’re warmly invited. Email me (nell) at happenstancepress.com for details or use the message box on the website.