GETTING YOUR POETRY PUBLISHED – Page 8 – Unsuitable Blog and HappenStance News

SUBMISSIONS AND DECISIONS

It’s my submissions month, so lots of fat brown envelopes are flopping onto the mat.

The furore of Christmas is also in the air. Pressure builds, pressure builds. Santa is King at the Kingdom Centre, with grandparents and small queuing up. When a poetry submission is sent recorded delivery, and I have to drive to the sorting depot at the other side of town to pick it up, I get testy.

But all three new pamphlet publications are here finally, as well as three new PoemCards. Consequently, packets are being parceled up and sent thither and hither, fro and to, hence and whence.

And as for the new hardbacked (the only HappenStance hardbacked) book by Gerry Cambridge, I have just ordered extra large padded envelopes for the customers who send for more than one (It is nice. It does make a good Christmas gift, and at the moment all copies come with a PoemCard featuring what I call ‘Gerry’s pink poem’ laid in).

I’m afraid all the special editions of Notes for Lighting a Fire, those lettered A to Z, are spoken for, so if you’ve asked for one and haven’t had it confirmed, it’s because I haven’t had your email (this sometimes happens when people hit ‘reply’ to the newsletter, instead of nell@happenstancepress.com as suggested. If this applies to you, I am sorry.) If you would like a signed copy of either Gerry’s book or Peter Gilmour’s pamphlet and are in Scotland, come along to the launch next week at the Scottish Poetry Library — Saturday afternoon. There will be snacks. There will be something to imbibe. There will be some excellent people.

Stamps, stamps, stamps. I am keeping the post office going single-handed, I swear.

Rather than the usual blurb about new publications, I thought I’d share a few lines from each, some of the phrases or stanzas I’ve come to love while working on these them. Just a wee taste of the bits that crackle. Looking at the extracts, I can see they look a little ominous—even a bit grim maybe. Remember what Kay Ryan said? “Poetry never adds to your burden. It never weighs you down.” These poems are charged with energy. They lift you up.

Besides, for anyone thinking of making a submission, there’s an insight into what I liked and continue to like, since I can’t explain that in words, only recognize it when I see it.

Sue Butler: Arson

………………………………Hard

as magpies, aging, luck. As women
gossiping. As Elgar, Tess, Kier and why.

Peter Gilmour: Taking Account

and how can they who lack holiness know

how the unhallowed spirit sticks and dies?

David Hale: The Last Walking Stick Factory

Between jobs, he designs a coffin,

roughs out measurements,
makes it snug
but with room for expansion

Sue Butler: Arson

Now she tells the tribal elders
she’s leaving the land. They mock
her desires: Fool. Look

which side your bread is buttered

(they like to speak
in metaphor).

Peter Gilmour: Taking Account

I married a woman who killed herself.
Our children then were thirteen and fourteen
and I, fifty, and God, they say, is ageless.

David Hale: The Last Walking Stick Factory

………………….Our work calls for edges,

the sharper the better. Even though I can see
what you say is true, we’re running out of lint and pins

and words for pain, and surely this is beyond probability,
this tendency of restless steel drawn as if by moon

or some other magnetic force through skin and nail.
No mere carelessness could spill so much blood.

Sue Butler: Arson

We drink tea and nothing happens
until something slight
puts down its mug, opens the door
with hardly a click.

Peter Gilmour: Taking Account

No, they are not my parents.
Mine were never that intimate,
as I have said, will say again
as many times as are required.
Were never that intimate!
Will that do? Is that enough?

David Hale: The Last Walking Stick Factory

There’s a man with a rope
running through the woods
this cold November day,

looking for a tree,
a bough—anything solid,
manageable, quick.

IN IT TO WIN IT: THE POETRY COMPETITION BUSINESS

It’s so much easier to describe how NOT to than the reverse.

There are more of them all the time. How do you win them? How do you CHOOSE the winner?

I don’t really know, but I (like Frank Sinatra but less melodiously) do it my way. It goes something like this. . . .

Ten days ago, I read the 664 entries to the Nottingham Open Poetry Competition, which closed on 6^th September. That’s a lot of poems. I say this with feeling because I was attempting to read the poems on journeys hither and thither and I couldn’t carry them all.

It’s the biggest number of poems I’ve ever read at once, I think, and when I got to the end I felt peculiar, as though I had eaten a vast amount of porridge and was struggling to walk. Or perhaps gravel, not porridge.

I thought I’d note some of my impressions during the process, since reading 664 poems isn’t something I do often. The first thing that interested me was whether there were obvious barriers to reading. By this I mean off-putting presentation, including:

multiple folds in the sheet of paper
splashes of tipp-x
italic fonts
tiny fonts
huge fonts
bold fonts
spelling errors
wrongly used apostrophes
print that was excessively faint
centred formats
coloured print
uneven margins
dirty marks on the paper
lines too close together
lines too far apart
margins too narrow
pages that looked crumpled, as though they had been in and out of the washing machine and never quite recovered
blood stains on the paper

(Okay I made up the last one). Out of the 664 poems, I recorded 165 with a format that was alienating. I hasten to say, I didn’t rule any of these poems out simply because I didn’t like the look of them, but I had to force myself to be nice to them.

I also noted the poems with formal constructions. Out of 664, I counted 82 that were definitely not free verse – about 12%. I may have missed a couple.

Then I re-read them all, this time putting little ticks in the corners of the poems I wanted to come back to. This was the first trawl and it left me 180 poems. I can carry 180 on a train, so that cheered me up. I still had no idea which would win, and I was aware some people had sent in a good set, though they could only win one prize.

I repeated the process the following day. The second swathe left me 98 poems.

The third swathe, the day after that, brought the complement down to 55.

By this stage, I’d dropped a number of poems I liked but which seemed to me to have flaws. I still didn’t know what was going to win, and I was a little worried that two or three seemed to follow similar structures or approaches, though their ‘voices’ were dissimilar.

The fourth swathe was hard. I had been happy with that group of 55. I liked them all, in different ways and for different reasons. However, hardening my heart (tough love, or what?), I reduced it to 43.

At each of these stages, some of the poems with off-putting formats had made it through. I still had three that looked (to me) pretty grim in presentation terms, as well as two formally constructed poems.

On Friday night, I steeled myself. By this stage I was aware there were some poems I wanted to win, though I wasn’t sure whether they would. There were also some poems I liked (and if they had come to me as part of a submission, I would have liked the poet behind them, I think) but which I didn’t think were competition winners. Why? I don’t know. It’s incredibly hard to put it into words. My preferences wouldn’t be the same as someone else’s.

Somehow, I got that 43 down to 20. A whole set of good poems were lost at this stage, poems I’d have been happy to read in any magazine.

What was left? Well, still some poems that were interestingly different. One of the group was faint and tippexed, and for some reason didn’t end in a full stop – I think that must have been an error, since the rest of it behaved in a punctuated way. It also had a sub-title, which I thought it needed to lose. One had two spelling mistakes. Two were rather like each other in construction and design (though not written by the same person), and I began to conjecture about workshop writing exercises, though if they were products of an exercise, it was a good one. There was one poem that could have been excellent, I thought, had the writer formatted the direct speech more effectively. There was one I loved, really loved, but thought the last line needed to go. I had grown unreasonably fond of one rather odd poem but thought other people might not be. Then I decided it wasn’t my job to worry about Other People. One wasn’t as good, when I typed it out, as I’d thought it on first reading. By now I’d read them all about ten times.

I typed the final twenty out and printed them, correcting any obvious errors. That way, I knew I wouldn’t be influenced by how they looked on the piece of paper because each would have the self-same type-face and presentation. I was beginning to be fairly sure of two of the prize winners, though mildly surprised (but pleased) that these two had risen, like dumplings, to the top.

At Haymarket Station yesterday evening, I became totally ruthless. There’s nothing like having a train cancelled to harden the nicest of adjudicators. I chose number one: a poem I will not forget. Very different. I had six others I wanted to give second and third prizes to.

Okay. I’ve just this minute decided which the second and third prizes shall be. And there are ten merits, people who get honorary subscriptions to Assent, a very nice magazine. Several out of these ten could have won prizes. (At least eight poems that didn’t even get to the final twenty were undeniably good. I miss them still.)

For those who entered but did not win, at least you were supporting a worthy poetry organisation. For the actual results, keep an eye on the Nottingham Poetry Society website. Happily, I’ll be at the presentation in Nottingham on Saturday November 26^th at The Nottingham Mechanics, 3 North Sherwood Street, Nottingham NG1 4EZ. So if I’ve written really annoying things about the process of adjudication here, come along and take me to task.

Later that same evening (26.11.2011), there’ll be a HappenStance event at Lee Rosy’s at seven-thirty. So perhaps I’ll meet some of you there . . . .

NOT MOUNT PARNASSUS

I made two firm offers to poets during July’s reading window. What did they have that the others didn’t?

There’s no straightforward answer. All the same, sending poetry to someone like me is not like entering a raffle. I want specific things, and I try to tell people what they are.

But not everybody looks on the web or finds out much about the publisher before they pack up their poems and post them. Not everybody reads blogs like this one. Why should they? I was the same myself once, so it’s something I understand. But in terms of getting published, it’s a mistake.

If I offer to do a publication for a poet, I’m committing to spending several hundred quid and two weeks. That’s a big commitment. It’s invariably a privilege to work with a poet, so I don’t want to suggest I’m totally noble. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t get an incredible buzz out of it. But the buzz is not about money or glory or fame. It’s about poetry.

So yes, there are specific things I look for.

Namely, poems I want to carry in my head and then type out word by word. That’s my way of trying them on, like a dress or a jumper. This won’t apply to the whole submission of course, but there’ll be at least a couple of poems I’ve fallen for and want to share.

Behind the poems, there’ll be someone I like the sound of. I’m likely to get that impression from the covering letter. It will be personal and it will tell me something about them. I’ll have the feeling I’d like to work with that person.

The person will be dedicated. This is a hard thing to measure. Raving about poetry in your life is not the same as dedication. I think dedication is less showy. It’s about reading and learning, studying poetry and absorbing it, drinking it in, thinking about it in depth. Not your own—other people’s.

The person will have chosen to send poems to HappenStance for a reason, not just as one of a lucky-bag of publishers to apply to. They’ll have read some of my publications and noticed something about the enterprise and the values. They’re likely to be a subscriber. Not everyone would want a publication handled by me: I can be really annoying.

The person will have been interacting in the poetry business for a while—sending poems out to worthy publications, noting the feedback, learning. They’ll welcome constructive feedback. They’ll understand a bit about how things work these days, including online things, and they’ll have given some thought to the matter of readership (sorry to talk HORRIBLE jargon) and sales.

But there’s no perfect formula, only various routes up a modest little hill. It isn’t Mount Parnassus: that’s a myth. And sending poetry to me is not a one-way journey with success or failure at the end. Mostly I give some feedback, which I hope people will think about. If they feel what I’ve said is inappropriate (which it’s bound to be in some cases), they’ll know I’m not the publisher for them. There are other imprints, and new ones keep emerging. I update my list regularly (free download in the HappenStance shop).

And if I like the sound of the poet, I hope they’ll keep in touch. Not necessarily because I’ll ever publish their work, but because I’m interested – interested in poets and their activities, interested in poetry and what it’s up to in the second decade of century number 21.

So if you’re thinking of sending me poems in December, which will be on us before we know it –

The beginning of the month is better than the end. By the end, I’ve run out of steam and I’m in process of struggling to shut that window. And sending the work early, so I can save it till the reading window opens, is a Bad Idea.

Please don’t include recommendations from other poets. I’m beginning to think people must be advised to do this by some experts somewhere because it’s happening increasingly. Stuff the experts. If your covering letter tells me Seamus Heaney thinks your poems are ‘remarkable’, it will only put me off.

If some of the poems included have been published in magazines already, it’s useful to know what was printed where, and useful to know the range of magazines you’ve had work in. I don’t need a complete list of every poem you’ve ever had printed.

Avoid mentioning numbers. I don’t care how many poems you’ve written or had published. I only care whether you’ve written three good ones. Besides, I’m biased in favour of people who write fewer . . .

Keep the type-face plain. Make it big enough for me to read but not huge (take a look at one of my pamphlets and go for something similar).

Keep the type-face the same size and spacing throughout, not bigger on some pages and smaller than others.

Name and address on every sheet, not stapled, not bound. If there’s a particular order you prefer, that’s fine. I will read them in the order you present them.

The submission guidelines suggest I’ll read between 12 and 20 poems. Twelve is better than 20, unless your poems are very short. If I like them, I’ll ask for more.

Please don’t think I am a Poetry Person of Power. I am small beer doing my best in straitened circumstances. While I’m reading my way carefully through your submission, I’m also worrying about sales. If the current pamphlets don’t sell well, I won’t be able to publish yours anyway. . . . so if you want to help keep things going, buy one now!

HOW TO GET YOUR POEMS STOLEN

I’ve never knowingly stolen anybody’s poem but I can see how I could.

Both my arms this week came out in red blotches and my legs are still covered in little bruises, particularly just above the knee. Why? Because I’ve been dusting, that’s why.

The dusting didn’t cause the bruises but I think it made my arms blotchy, because I’ve stopped dusting now and the blotches have gone away. It was carrying the boxes and bags up the ladder that bruised my legs.

I’ve been reading and responding to poetry submissions every day, and after that I’ve been trying to make sufficient space to live in. Last week-end, a floor was finally put into our roof, and this was a marvellous opportunity to file the archives under the rafters.

HappenStance generates a huge amount of paper. I keep a fat wallet of papers and correspondence for every publication (there have been about 110 of them so far). Then there are the publisher’s copies – boxes of them, the business correspondence, the accounts. Oh dear me. And the publications themselves.

Latterly it wasn’t actually possible to get into the ‘spare’ bedroom and the space beneath the stairs was not a space. There were also boxes of flyers and pamphlets in the sitting room, and the submissions box was in the conservatory, which leaks.

I firmly believe the physical environment in which I work corresponds closely with my mental territory. Clutter, clutter, clutter.

It took five days to move all the stuff, put it into boxes, label them, carry them into different parts of the roof, dust and re-order the books which stretch from floor to ceiling on three walls, as well as on seven other bookcases. I’m not a great duster normally. Spiders like me.

But it’s done, and at last I can think more clearly. One eerie thought is uppermost: the next person to open these boxes is not particularly likely to be me. Most of my files will only be examined, if they are examined at all, after I am gone.

In fact, one of the motivating factors for the labeling of things was the thought that my poor children would be overwhelmed with the stuff. And even if they offered most of the HappenStance files to the National Library (which may not want them, let’s face it), the librarians would quail. We’re approaching an age of electronic files. What was H Nelson doing with all this PAPER?

Back to the stolen poems. I had a huge box of personal correspondence under the table to my left. The box had plastic wallets of letters and poems from various people and it sat underneath the wire basket in which I collect paper for recycling. A lot of it.

Originally the correspondence box, which was very large and dated back to the late 1990s, had a sort of filing system, in that I did keep letters by person, in a polywallet (or two) for each correspondent.

But as time went on, and pressure built up, I started just to stuff papers into the box, with a person’s latest communication somewhere near their polywallet, but not in it, because the wallet was full.

Opening this box was fascinating, of course, though also lamentable because I knew I should have done it all better, and the pages of some letters had become separated from themselves, and I simply hadn’t time to marry them all up again. There were cards with illegible signatures: I had no idea who had sent them, or when, because they weren’t dated. I found an old poem of my own, copied out in my mother’s handwriting – I think I wrote it when I was at school. Nobody but me would know what it was.

I found a Valentine poem written by my mother, unsigned. I think she may well have forgotten she ever wrote it. But at least I know.

Several other poems had become detached from the letters that once accompanied them. Most of them had names on them, so I could file them with the letters of their authors. But there were a few with no name, no address, no date.

I sat on the floor on the landing, surrounded by a scattering of unnamed poems. In three cases, I thought I might have written them myself, but I’m not sure. There were two I really liked. I wrote an awful lot of poems once. Were they mine? Or whose were they?

I suggest to poets sending in submissions they should add their name and address to every sheet. Often it’s the tried and tested poets who are most resistant to this idea. They believe nobody will treat their valuable poems carelessly or drop them on the floor or misfile them, or remove them from the annoying red binder. They are wrong. Ultimately poems are no more than dust collectors.

And tomorrow, more will arrive.

I did the decent thing with the author-less poems that could have been mine. I put them in the paper bin. Honestly.

James Thurber cartoon

STUFF AND NONSENSE

The number of poetry submissions has vastly exceeded all previous reading months. Help!

It’s interesting and it’s difficult. I read each one, each poem, carefully, even if it’s apparent from page two that it’s not a go-er. Then I read them again and scribble pencil notes on the pages. Then I write a letter or card to the poet trying to explain my response.

I wish I could, with my own poems, see immediately how the real poem begins at line 6, or the last line needs to go. I would be a better poet if I could.

I’m interested in the person behind the poems. Perhaps that’s why I do this. I think it’s teaching me something, though I’m never quite sure what. When I find out, perhaps I’ll stop.

I’m already over-committed this year. I’ve taken on more publications than I can cope with, in terms of time and actually money too. While I was away on holiday in the first few days of the month, I resolved not to let it get out of hand in 2012.

However, my schedule for next year is already intimidating, which means I’m looking at 2013. And what I hope, each time I open another envelope, is that there’ll be good reasons to knock back the submission. Yes, I love it, but yes, I’m crumbling.

Generally, reading poetry submissions is just like reading books of poetry. By and large, you like a poem here and there, or you think they’re well made but not to your taste. Then one comes along and knocks your socks off – but that’s rare. If I knew what it was, what the secret thing was that makes this happen, I would tell you. “If I could tell you, I would let you know,” as R D Laing, who knocked my socks off once, says, though I think he was quoting Auden.

There was one like this yesterday. I’ve been doing about seven a day, which is incredibly hard work – the hardest unpaid work I’ve ever done, bar none. Officially, I only give detailed feedback to HappenStance subscribers, who with their annual £7.50 keep the press afloat, but unofficially I do it for nearly everybody, hoping wistfully they’ll at least buy something afterwards, maybe subscribe. They probably won’t – not after they’ve read my comments on their syntax.

Meanwhile, we have two men (family members) upstairs flooring the roof. Somehow we have to create more space for the files and archives and boxes of STUFF that are taking over the whole house. It’s completely out of hand. I wish I was worth half as much as Wendy Cope.

However, before they started work in the roof, we had to bring down all the boxes that were already up there. The dust! In our bedroom, the spare bedroom and my study, everything’s stacked with STUFF, dusty stuff – the sort of stuff you daren’t start looking at because it’s your diary from 1972 and you’ll get dragged in. I’m typing in a little space in the middle of STUFF.

The door to my study is open because it won’t shut now. So over my shoulder I can see the silver extending ladder with red feet that stretches up into the loft space, the hot little loft space in which Graham and Mike have been coughing, hammering and working away. They haven’t arrived yet but they’ll be here any moment. Then I’m off to the conservatory, where I’ll sit and read in the dry corner, contemplating the row of bowls set out to catch the drips from the leaks. It’s very upmarket here, you know. I haven’t done any ironing for ten days, my hair’s a mess. Who cares? July rain gleaming on the leaves, pattering on the glass:

…….Elephants get sprayed with it
…….Scotch is made with it
…….Water
…….I like that stuff

as Adrian Mitchell said. Even tortured by poetry and dust, it’s all part of the same stuff, the stuff of living and being rained on. I can hear his voice through the rain, old man rhythm:

…….Well, I like that stuff
…….Yes I like that stuff”
…….The earth
…….Is made of earth
…….And I like that stuff

NO NEED FOR A NOTEBOOK!

Remember the days when you would read anything? The small print on a bar of chocolate, the rubbish on a packet of cornflakes?

And then, some people would also write on anything. Graffiti folk on walls and bridges. Drunks on beer mats. Children on books and wallpaper. Poets on anything at all.

Scribbling memorably – a human instinct as old as print itself.

I had an emotionally turbulent week last week. However, a small calm place in the middle of this was Nick Asbury’s Wrapper Rhymes project.

From this I learned that St Andrews University, only 20 miles from my home, is home to an august body known as The Tunnocks Caramel Wafer Appreciation Society, a club which this year has no fewer than 120 members and whose president is a fourth year student of astrophysics.

The TCWAS is a whole separate entity from Tunnocks, the noble Scottish family firm which still manufactures the caramel wafers I so often eat instead of lunch.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes – the museum of the University of St Andrews is currently exhibiting a Tunnocks Caramel Wafer wrapper sporting a handwritten poem by Ted Hughes. It is one of three wrappers to inspire the bard.

And this wrapper, having inspired the poet, subsequently inspired the museum to make it a feature for exhibition, then inspired the Scottish Poetry Library to post a picture of the wrapper poem. This, in turn, led to a Twitter conversation between the Scottish Poetry Society, Inpress Books, Glasgow Design Firm Effective Studio and Nick Asbury, of Asbury and Asbury.

Phew. The Twitter conversation (who says Twitter is mindless rubbish?) focused on the idea that wrapper poetry might be a whole new genre.

Could this be? Would you like it to be? Read on.

WrapperRhymes is about to be a whole collection of poems written  on wrappers, following the example set by Ted Hughes. It has been launched by Nick Asbury, using a beautifully designed platform (Effektive Studio) and a lovely little Asbury piece on a Chewits wrapper.

Submissions are invited. It’s free. How could you resist?

But wait. It’s hard to write on a caramel wafer paper. The waxy surface, with smears of chocolate (who left this in the sun?) is resistant. However, it’s not impossible, as Ted demonstrated.

Between periods of turbulence, I have spent a week considering which wrappers you can write on and which you can’t. Ah, it is not as easy as in Ted’s day. Back in 1986, when y-fronts went out and boxer shorts came in, a wrapper might have been silver paper (as we called it then) underneath but a good, old, paper outer-sleeve offered its services on most confectionery products.

And now? I leapt at the opportunity of a KitKat, (which still sells with a paper sleeve as well as the shiny version) but I imagine so did several other would-be wrapper rhymers. I had to cheat with a Curlywurly, although it strikes me as just possible a CD marker might write on that slippery surface. Equally, it might not.

Green & Blacks Organic was better. I have eaten several bars this week while thinking about the possibilities. You can just about write on the waxed wrapper as well as the outer paper. In fact, this week I’ve eaten things I’ve resisted for years, just while exploring the wrapper possibilities.

But oh how things have changed! Do you realize how many chocolate bars are wrapped in a slippery sleeve that nobody could write on? We’re mainly enticed by wrappers made of plastic and aluminum laminates, a combination described by those in the know as “extremely durable, both chemically and physically”. That means not only can you not write on it (unless you cheat in some way – labels, post-its etc), but, unlike poetry, it will probably never die. (I know your alter-eco can make more things out of them, but you almost certainly won’t.)

Meanwhile, there are a few things you can still write on. I’m about to consume breakfast cereal. It comes in a box. You can write inside a box, while thinking outside it, and munching. I could probably fit an epic inside some boxes . . . .

DON’T DO IT YET!

HappenStance has an open submissions policy for poets. There are two reading ‘windows’ per year. The next one is July. Please don’t send them in June!

Generally I like poets. I know they’re all potty to some extent or other, but that’s okay. I’m potty in just the same way myself.

Like most (but not all) editors and publishers, I’ve been on both sides of the business. I’ve sent my own poems away and felt, to varying degrees at different times, embarrassed or inadequate when the response was returned. I wasn’t an expert. I made a lot of mistakes.

But just now I’m stuck on this side of that process. So if you’re thinking of sending poems to me, you need to know something about my expectations before sending your valued cargo in my direction.

I have written a lot about this already, so the first thing to do (please, oh please) is to read it. Think of it as entering a competition. If you break the rules, it’s not going to augur well. So read the submission guidelines carefully. If the ‘window’ for reading is July, don’t send the poems in June, even though it also starts ‘Ju’.

You could also search back blog entries, using the Getting Your Poetry Published category.

Several submissions have arrived already, but I don’t read them in June. If they arrive in May or June they will go to the bottom, not the top, of the pile. (Actually I’m also away on holiday the first week in July and I’m not taking them with me). Best time to send is second week in July.

There is a document called 33 DOs and 13.5 DON’Ts of Poetry Submission available as a free download in the shop. It would be a good idea to get it and check the boxes as appropriate. Different publishers have different expectations. These are mine.

If you haven’t already read it, get How (Not) to Get Your Poetry Published. I wrote it because I had run out of energy to tell people all the things that are in it. I think you should read it, even if you think you know it all already. But I would think that.

Chris Hamilton-Emery’s book 101 Ways to Make Poems Sell is depressing in many ways, especially if you’re a gentle, modest, reticent person – the kind of person I like. But you should read it.

Bottom line: I spend most of my time worrying how I’m going to find readers for the poetry pamphlets I already have in print. I don’t make money from these publications, I lose it – and I am not rich.

I will turn down nearly all the submissions I get in July perforce, although I will give feedback, provided people include an envelope large enough to return the poems in (I invariably write on the poems in pencil as I read, and even if I accept the submission, that feedback has to go back to the author). If the submissions are from HappenStance subscribers, it will be detailed.

There are other pamphlet publishers too. I am not the only one. Check out my list of poetry pamphlet publishers – also in the shop. I keep updating it, though it is never comprehensive.

And bear in mind I am working two years ahead. If you want your poems published, in a specific set, sooner than that, enter one of the competitions. If you’re starting out, take a look at Iota Shots. Or look out for this year’s Poetry Business Competition. Hedge your bets.

Actually, there are lots of lovely people not reading this at all. And they are packing up poems to send to me at this very moment. Sigh. And it is starting to rain.

Meanwhile, I am putting together, in much more cheery mode, pamphlets by Michael Loveday (who edits the splendid little magazine 14), Lydia Fulleylove, who lives beside the sea, and Lorna Dowell, who is an expert on chocolate brazil soft-baked biscuits. I have been communicating with all three for years now, but the first approach from each of them was an unsolicited submission.

That’s why I continue to welcome these – and even to look forward to reading them. In July.

ps If you’ve already sent them, don’t lose sleep over it. Worse things happen at sea.

BANISH THIS WORD FROM YOUR POEMS!

It looks innocuous, sounds harmless, pops up all over the place – and it’s a killer. No, not ‘shards’. Not even ‘memories’.

What is the evil little beast? I would tell you right away but I won’t, as I’m sure you’ll guess. It is as short as your average monosyllable. It creeps up behind you as you’re thinking what to write next. It proliferates in school essays (as if they weren’t bad enough), as people feel they ought to sound formal.

What’s the word? You guessed. It is AS.

What’s so wrong with as? You can see above, it has at least three possible meanings and also at least three grammatical functions (adverb, conjunction, preposition). Often a poet drops it into a line and it’s not immediately obvious which function it’s about to take on. Well – it’s obvious to the poet of course, but that’s the problem. The person writing the poem always knows what she means. It’s the reader who gets confused. Lord help us – sometimes the word as even hangs on the end of a line before a line break. . . .

There’s:

as …. meaning like
as….. meaning while
as…. meaning because

And the common as phrases:

as of today
as if (accompanied by sniff)
as I said
as per
as regards
as though
acting as counsellor
as well as
as required
as needful
as ever

The worst of the ases – the absolute worstest of the worst – is as meaning because. Can you imagine somebody actually saying: “I am going to give up poetry as I find it too difficult?” It makes sense, yes. But it’s flat. Deader than a doughnut.

“I am going shopping as I have run out of sugar.” Listen to the rhythm. Listen to the tone. That sentence died a long time ago. Now it stinks.

So, if you’re planning on using as to mean because, use because. (If you substitute since, it can also have more than one function and more than one meaning, though not as many as the fiendish as.) Better still, stop the sentence: I am going shopping. I have run out of sugar. Not exciting writing, but at least the sentences have perked up. They might even be going somewhere.

When it comes to as meaning ‘like’, for example as soft as silk – well, it’s not great. That way lies cliché country. Be careful.

And oh dear me, look at this:

As I walk into the graveyard
I think of my dead antelope

Okay – not really an antelope. Probably something much more poignant. But that construction (as + ‘I’ + present tense verb, linking to ‘I think’ or ‘I feel’ or ‘I wonder’) is a common pattern in weak contemporary verse. Poets take note.

Am I sounding narky? As if.

Oh well, then. Yes I am. I spend my editorial life dealing with the dead wood associated with as. Often it just goes. Delete as, stop the sentence, start another. Sometimes I stick in because. At least I understand what the person’s talking about then. Quite often a writer has used as in three different ways in one paragraph or stanza and not even noticed.

I can bear ‘as if’. In fact, I quite like it. But that’s because the rhythm briskly throws the stress onto the second word. ‘F’ is a good consonant for energizing language – one of our frequently used expletives can testify to that. As, on the other hand, sounds like cold scrambled egg. Yeuch.

Please don’t add comments telling me there are exceptions. There are exceptions to everything. I’m trying to make you so self-conscious about using the evil word as that you’ll stop and think twice (even three times) before you let it in. If my plan works, I’ll have done you a favour.

Trust me as I am a poet.

See?

WHY POETRY PUBLISHERS ARE PERNICKETY

Here’s the scenario. Your cousin has self-published a book. You plan to buy a copy, though you haven’t seen the cousin for years, and she doesn’t live near you. She sends you the Amazon link. Good grief!! Her book costs TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY QUID. How cousinly d’you feel now?

Here’s the scenario:

Your cousin has had a book of poems published. He sends you the Amazon link. Good grief!! It costs TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY QUID. Will you buy it?

I know that wasn’t realistic. In real life, you want to buy the book and you swither because it’s a bit more than you expect. Twelve quid . . . er . . . now let me see. But if you like your cousin (never mind the content of the book), you’ll probably go for it.

Money’s a curious substance. It gets in the way. It has emotional properties. It can be magical and glittering (competition prizes). It can be dirty (bribes and promises).

Anyway, I need to get to the point here. When I get a poetry submission for HappenStance, first I decide whether I like the poetry.

After that, I have to decide how much I like it. Because to produce a 32-page pamphlet costs me about three hundred quid. Do I love these poems enough to fork out a quarter of my monthly income?

At this point, the analogy with your cousin breaks down a bit. I’m not buying one copy. I’m buying two or three hundred of them, and I’m going to sell at least half of those. So I’ll get some of my money back, though not yet. With most of my publications, I get back less than I paid.

But the outlay is not just money. It’s time. A lot of unremunerated time. I really need to be in love with these poems (or their author, of course, but I’m a bit past that).

I’m simplifying. There are other factors, which I won’t go into here. And ultimately if I love the poems and I like the author, I’m purchasing a rare privilege.

However, it’s because of all this that publishers are entitled to be pernickety. It is reasonable, in these circumstances, to expect poets to send submissions according to the guidelines on the website, and to do so during reading periods. Every submission to HappenStance adds up to this proposal: Would you like to spend three hundred quid and two weeks of your life on my poetry?

Competitions are different. In this case, the entrant parts with a significant fee to send in the work. She has effectively paid for her poems to be read and carefully considered. Nobody has to fall in love with anybody or anything. The work is disqualified if it doesn’t follow the rules, and a (probably paid) judge simply selects the best contenders.

The result is magic money. And acclaim. The Purple Moose Pamphlet Competition closing date is May 1^st. It is run by Poetry Wales and the winners get £250.00 and pamphlet publication. They are fine pamphlets.

There’s a new interview with Poetry Wales editor Zoe Skoulding in the Sphinx area of the website, as well as one with Luke Wright of Nasty Little Press (in his case, the deciding factors are love and performance potential).

If you’re trying to get work published and none of this works for you, my next reading ‘window’ is July. But I’m pernickety, mind. Check out the submission guidelines carefully. Read the free download about Dos and Don’ts. And read some HappenStance publications: think what they cost me!

‘OVERPUBLICATION IS A TERRIBLE THING’

Shakespeare said it first. Or at least Don Paterson’s version of Shakespeare’s sonnet 102 did:

That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming
The owner’s tongue doth publish everywhere.

Shakespeare said it first. Or at least Don Paterson’s version of Shakespeare’s sonnet 102 did:

That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming
The owner’s tongue doth publish everywhere.

Which leads DP into:

Oh yes – overpublication is a terrible thing in a poet, and only arouses suspicion. It looks like it’s coming way too easily, meaning either it’s not costing you enough, or you’re insincere, or you’re probably repeating yourself. (And it’s all too easy to do: readers like to read their poetry as if it were something rare and precious. A poet can saturate his or her market just by publishing every three years.)

Yes, it’s the opposite of ‘tell everyone if you plan to go on a diet’. The quotation is, of course, from DP’s recent commentary Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which, among other things, includes tips and advice to poets from One Who Knows. Not everyone will agree with him here, needless to say – though I do.

That’s because the pile of poems and anthologies at my elbow grows daily and there is a point at which it all becomes like too much pudding (not padding, pudding). You only look forward to dessert as a special thing, if you’re going to be able to get up and walk after you’ve eaten it.

This creates a wee problem for those poets who are hugely prolific, and possibly for those who are currently writing a poem a day for NatPoMo. Well – it does if writing and poems and sharing them with the world are seen as hand-in-hand activities, as they are by many.

This week, on Facebook, poet and publisher Peter Daniels shared Book Business comments from someone called Neal Goff (great name) of Egremont Associates, a firm that helps publishers sell stuff. And what does he say?

. . . in order to succeed in selling books directly to consumers . . . publishers are going to have to step back and nurture gatherings of consumers in the consumers’ interest areas before creating content that those gatherings want. This is the antithesis of what publishers were once able to do, which was publish content and then create audience interest.

Oo-er missus. I was at one of Colin Will’s book launches yesterday – lovely readings from Geoff Cooper, Eddie Gibbons and Lyn Moir to support their new pamphlet publications. Was that nurturing gatherings of consumers? I suppose it was in a way.

As is Rob Mackenzie’s Poetry at the . . . Store this very evening, at which one of ‘my’ new poets, Matthew Stewart, launches his new pamphlet (32 pages of poems compiled carefully over several years).

But I don’t think we can nurture enough consumers to beat the book battle. Nurturing people is very time-consuming. It’s hellish trying to nurture folk and produce poetry publications at the same time. Are you being nurtured as you read this? If not, email me. I will send chocolate.

Jon Stone suggests “alternatives to the single author volume” may be the answer. More anthologies. Anthologies do seem to reach more common readers, or readers who like their theme, which can counteract the Fear of Po. The two big sources of income for poetry activity, in the days of vanishing AC funding, must surely be competitions and anthologies (take a look at Bloodaxe’s top ten titles).

This gives me a nice opportunity to work in a mention of the new Grey Hen volume, out this week, Get Me Out of Here! Poems for trying circumstances. Quirky (often funny) poems by “older women poets” of whom I am one. A very enjoyable read and probably going to be marketed to a nurtured gathering of older women readers (there will be noteworthy exceptions). We older women (OWs) are still, I imagine, the main poetry-book-buying group in the UK. (YWs reading this: you can be an OW eventually. If you want to know what it’s like, read this book. YMs: tough.)

And there’s another excellent new anthology from Leicester-based Soundswrite, this time women from aged 25 to 98! A pleasure to read. If I were in the area, I would want to be involved with this group: a place where nature and nurture are combined. (YMs: sorry.)

But Mr Goff suggests that “the internet is the best marketing medium ever invented”. Maybe so. Maybe no. It connects with a vast number of people, theoretically, but that vast number of people is having a vast amount of stuff marketed to it every second of every hour of every day of every. . . .

Therefore, like her [Philomel], I sometime hold my tongue,
Because I would not dull you with my song.