Category: POETRY STUFF

Po Nott Rules.

 

Po Nott Rules.

 

At least it does in my book. I’ve always liked this little magazine and the current issue has contributions from no fewer than five of ‘my’ poets: Trish Ace, Martin Cook, Gill McEvoy, Matt Merritt and Martin Reed. (I think I have begun to collect Martins since I also published Martin Parker last year…)

Then there’s a review of D A Prince’s Nearly the Happy Hour by Ian Collinson. I liked the way he described ‘The Pig-Killing Knife’ as possessing “a delicate brutality”‘ though I think the collection may be rather more uneasy than he finds it. He opens with the issue of gender, an interesting one. Davina has always written under the gender-neutral D A Prince, which is, after all, her name, like C K Williams is his, like K D Laing hers.

Ian Collinson decides, though, that gender neutrality is not the reason for the D A in Prince because the poetry is “unashamedly feminine”. I daren’t go into a discussion of this because I will get myself into unashamedly feminine hot water, I’m afraid, but the name issue is interesting.

I had a submission recently from a poet who wrote gender-neutrally and signed himself using his initials so I couldn’t tell whether he was a he or a she. Actually the poems didn’t give much away either, though I thought the tone of the letter was probably male. I don’t mind not knowing whether the poems are by a man or a woman, but I do like a letter to be signed with a person’s first name, and I got a lot more comfortable all round, once I knew he was a he. All of this is probably very unreasonable.

I have a soft spot for (good) poems which could only have been written by a woman, which come from the heart of what being female is. The same is true for some poems by men. (I don’t mean they come from the heart of being female: I mean — shh, silly — from the heart of being male.) Of course, only a small number of poems in anybody’s repertoire could be described in that way, but it’s interesting when you find them, I think.

In my case, my writing name (Helena Nelson) is unashamedly feminine. My workaday name, after all, is Helen. That added ‘a’ puts me into the bracket of 18th century novel heroines, or at least I certainly hope it does. And it has a rhythm I prefer. However, it is a pen-name and over the years it has aroused some animosity from time to time from male writers and editors. They ask, from time to time, why I don’t use my ‘real’ name.

Such an interesting question! What is my real name? Yes, well. Beaton is my married name, and technically not only was it never mine, but now that I’m divorced it is onloan through an expired marriage certificate and many people would think I should have returned it long ago. Curry was my maiden name, but when I was growing up I was certain sure that Curry belonged to my father. Morton was my mother’s name (and also belonged to my cousins and uncles). I was never quite sure what I was. Some kind of Curry-Morton half-breed. But I was brought up expecting to get married, expecting to change my name into what would become my ‘real’ name and the name of my children.

Which I did for a bit. Then I mucked that up. And what on earth am I now? By email and in correspondence, friends call me Nell. So I figured I’d choose my own second name, one that could be the ‘real’ one. ‘Nelson’ is Nell’s own name. See? It all makes sense in an unashamedly confusing sort of way…

It seemed like a good idea at the time. In fact, I’ve been nurturing it for ages, working on the rating sheet and thinking it through.

Now, as usual, I’m beginning to wonder.

I spend quite a long time brooding, you see, and one of the things I brood about is awards and prizes. If you publish primarily pamphlets, as I do, it is quite hard to attract much attention to them. There is a quarterly Poetry Book Society ‘choice’, for which I always submit pamphlets in triplicate, but none of mine, so far, has merited being chosen.

Then there is Writer’s Forum Choice (which is nice because you get a logo, and nice because at least one of my pamphlets so far — Cliff Ashby’s A Few Late Flowers — has been selected) but I regret to say the  effect on sales is negligible.

And there’s the Callum McDonald Memorial Prize for pamphlets (Scotland only) which is a nice annual event, and one of my pamphlets (Margaret Christie’s The Oboist’s Bedside Book) was shortlisted for that last year, but again — only six worthy publications can make that shortlist annually. That’s not a lot of scope, especially when you consider how rarely pamphlets are reviewed and how widely they are not read.

Having said which, some pamphlets are read at least as widely as full-collections. But it would be nice for the best of them to get a bit more of an opportunity for accolade. So I decided to invent the Sphinx star-rating system, which then became a stripe rating system and now I’m not sure what it will be at all.

I may be influenced by working in a criterion-referenced (or at least it used to be) educational system. It often irks me that judgements are made about publications but nobody can see on  what basis the judgements were made. So I decided to draw up a set of criteria and then ask a whole group of people (not just three readers) to apply them and come up with a rating.

Does this not sound reasonable? Admirable, even? I think so.

But YOU try drawing up a set of criteria for judging a pamphlet of poetry, especially a set that have to be applied inside 20 minutes because otherwise nobody would have time to rate all the publications Im sending them…

I was quite pleased with the final rating sheet, actually. But now I’ve tried applying it myself and already I see another problem. I created 10 criteria with a rating of up to 5 for each. But the trouble is they are not all equally important. The typography, for example, is not as important as the words (unless it makes the words illegible). I am too weary to go into this in detail. Anyway, you’re already bored.

However, some of my long-suffering reviewers are about to receive requests in the post to take part in the pilot. I’ll write more about how it works, or doesn’t, later.

If you’re reading this, and you think you might be prepared to help (I’m not sure how yet), drop me an email. It is proving complicated and Sphinx 10, which is already behind its schedule, will probably drop even further behind as a result.

Nil Desperandum! Let’s see what the Sphinx thinx.

Colin Begg’s account of the production of D A Prince’s Nearly the Happy Hour (the first HappenStance book-length collection) is available for free download from the HappenStance shop.

 

Colin wrote this originally for part of his M Litt in Creative Writing in Glasgow. Here it’s lost some of its academic footnoting and is presented in a way that’s very readable. If you want to know what went on behind the scenes of this book, just nip into the shop and pick up a copy.

Colin (by the by) had a poem in Unsuitable Companions, the chapbook anthology of light verse, which is now out of print.

Comments welcome!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patricia Ace (author of HappenStance chapbook First Blood) won a prize some time ago in the first ever Aesthetica Creative Works Competition.

 

 

That poem will now appear in the Aesthetica Annual, on sale at a bookshop or branch of W H Smiths near you. She was first among 97 overall finalists judged by Cherie Federico. The 2009 competition is now open for

The deadline for Ambit reviews is tomorrow. That means I have to stop thinking and start writing.

 

Meanwhile, there’s the box of submissions, the core skill papers, the letters, the accounts and the Sphinxing matters. And two friends not well to be visited. And a niggly tooth-ache telling me something somewhere.

But the sun is shining and this morning I sat listening to the sounds an empty house makes, in between books to be reviewed. Sometimes, when you can do that, time opens around you.

Empty houses, of course, are much more beautiful when they follow full houses. It’s the contrast. Like the silence at the bottom of the poem box. Or waking up after being asleep.

 

 

It always rolls past somehow or other. This time I was dipping in and out of three books I’m reviewing this week, while wondering (this thought continually recurs to me) why somebody would read a collection of poetry. By choice, I mean.

 

As for me, there’s the obsession thing. Anybody can get obsessed with an art form, a genre or sub-genre. But why would an ordinary person read some of what I read? And why — when they’ve read the first 6 lines of most of the poems I read — would they continue?

I don’t mean this cynically at all. I’m never quite sure of the answer. In fact, part of what keeps me reading is simply wondering why I’m supposed to be reading whatever it is.

Sometimes, when you get to the end, you have a feeling that might always be summed up as: ‘So that was why’.

And sometimes it’s more like: ‘Was that all?’

Very occasionally, of course, you end thinking: ‘Yes!’

But Yes-Poetry is rare and sometimes I think it’s my fault. On the back cover, it is perfectly obvious that this is meant to be a whole book of Yes. Not just moderately, but extremely Yes, and several clever people are attesting to that fact. My brain is simply not attuned correctly. Or I’m somehow missing the point. Or it would be different if I’d met them. Or it would be different if I heard them. Or it would be different if festive hats and greenery didn’t get in the way…

But the berries outside are superb. They gleam like lights. And the birds are already up earlier in the morning and a lot of dodgy merriment is going on in the bushes. Between birds, I mean. Today six long-tailed tits arrived in the front garden at once. That was a lovely moment. Five at once, with their tails at various lop-sided angles on the fat ball in the eucalyptus tree. Yes!

Of course, they don’t need my fat balls. Fat balls are just twenty-first century decadence. They should be busy with the jewelled red berries… and whatever else birds ate before humans started stirring up trouble.

 

It was a close call. During this last week of college work, I wasn’t sure I would actually make it to Friday. But it’s amazing how this always somehow happens (or has always somehow happened so far). I’ve just read that Adrian Mitchell has left the world. People are fragile. We don’t continue forever.

I’m glad I met Adrian, had the privilege of working with him both at Snape and in St Andrews (StAnza) and that he told me about working with Stevie Smith and Tove Jansson.

 

We all link together – a chain of odd, word-obsessed human beings. I won’t forget him — at least until I myself am on the opposite shore.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working (in between a small mountain of college marking) with Colin Begg and D A Prince to get the text of Nearly ‘Nearly the Happy Hour’ ready to be downloadable from the HappenStance shop. It is an account of the editorial process behind that book. Colin put this together for his M Litt and we’ve since modified it somewhat to be a little bit more general-reader friendly. All the erudite footnotes have vanished.  It is very nearly done and dusted. It will be freely available and I think it’s an interesting insight, but then I would.

Now it’s back to several unfinished pieces of work. One is called How (not) to get your Poetry Published which I hope will summarise lots of the advice I send back to people sending me manuscript submissions, in a gentle and humorous way. It is very easy to give offence, but there are lots of things people should know and often don’t. I didn’t myself once.

Another job waiting for me is A Conversation with Ruth Pitter, which author/artist Thomas McKean shared with me some considerable time ago and which I simply haven’t had time to page set. Yet.

Then there’s Sphinx 11 which is already moving from grist to mill. And I suppose I’d better wrap some presents.

It is odd what we do, we human beings dominated by the Christmas principle: rush off, acquire sundry objects, wrap them in paper and various kinds of glittery string, unwrap them again, consume turkeys… I don’t know. The older you get, the odder you think it is.

Meanwhile, the wild and withering wind wuthers outside my window. It’s the shortest day. Magnificent displays of red berries are all over the place. Who needs Christmas decorations?

Somehow, I seem to have missed flagging the fact that Eleanor recently won the Second Light Poetry competition. Yeay!! (http://www.secondlightlive.co.uk/news.shtml#Comp). Please cut and paste that link – WordPress won’t let me add it as live link, because I should have put it in back at the start…

 

She has a Poetry PF page as well www.poetrypf.co.uk/eleanorlivingstonepage.html) and from there you can see a link to a youtube video of her reading ‘In the Morthouse’ outside the Byre at night in St Andrews.

Her HappenStance pamphlet in which that Morthouse poem appeared is out of print, but she is in print in a recent Sampler publication, which is a very nice size and shape to post to your friends. She is one of that special breed of people who spend most of their time supporting, publicising or facilitating other poets. But meanwhile she quietly works away producing some cool, crisp poems herself. In the Sampler I specially like the love poem ‘July Evening’ which gives me a little shiver of pleasure whenever I read it…

There are four Samplers now: Andy Philip, Eleanor Livingstone, Gill McEvoy (all HappenStance pamphlet poets hitherto out of print) and Martin Parker.

Martin is the exception, since I haven’t published him before, so his pamphlet will come later. He is the only light verse poet too: his Sampler is light as a feather. Pure joy. The trouble with it is that I keep giving them away because I want everyone I like to have a copy. But there are a few left. Great Christmas gift…. even for people who don’t like poetry. Oh, if I can find the right photo, you’ll see me reading from Martin (his Eeyore poem) at same recent event where Eleanor was snapped.

Thanks to David Andrew who diligently took photos and thus appears in none of them…

 

 

The launch of four pamphlets and the seasonal merriment last Saturday went beautifully. There was a really lovely atmosphere, especially with Edinburgh bathed in frosty chill outside. The Mai Thai restaurant did us proud – -and I think it was the most packed launch we have ever had. All four poets did masterful readings, and there were poet pop-ups in between.

It was fun and it was varied and it was a great audience. Now I am so tired….

But on Monday it was the launch of Hamish Whyte’s new Shoestring book. Oh bugger, the name of this very nice volume temporarily escapes me, but I will come back and edit it in later. He read from it beautifully.

This time the launch was in the Writer’s Museum in Edinburgh. I confess this is my first visit to that august venue, and the Museum wasn’t even open. It’s at the top of the Mound. As you come out you see the Christmas lights in the trees, and down on Princes Street, the Christmas carousels and the ferris wheel. After the launch, Eleanor Livingstone and I walked with John Lucas (Shoestring Publisher) through the Christmas market and over towards Charlotte Square…. It was very cold and glittery and, in retrospect, slightly magical.

Oh bother! After writing a whole set of paragraphs in the HappenStance Story Chapter 3 about the pain of errors and having to learn to live with it, there was a bebo, I mean booboo, in the first line of my verse Christmas card. How many times have I read that card? How many weeks did the prototype sit in the dining room table? I don’t think I would ever have seen it said ‘Bards of Bards’ instead of ‘Bard of Bards’ if someone hadn’t written and pointed out the ‘clunker’.

 

It reminds me how one day I found a mistake in a poem that had been to and fro to magazines, printed in a couple of places — and nobody, including me, had noticed something dead obvious. You read what you know is supposed to be there, especially when you were the person who wrote it.

There is an error in my poem ‘Falling in Love’ — I carried it through issue one of Unsuitable Poems, through the revised edition two years later as well.

It’s on the postcard of the poem.

The same error was in the same poem in an Aldeburgh Festival poster this autumn.

It persisted into in the recent Scottish Love Poems anthology.

It’s not a bad error, I suppose. It’s a capitalisation thing: following a colon at the end of a line, there’s a capital T at the front of ‘They’ll write on our headstone’. It should, of course, be lower case, because that’s the pattern for the rest of the poem. It causes me a little twinge every time I see it.

Oh well. It represents just how blind and intelligent person can be about her own scribblings. So I’m pointing it out for the record. Nobody is to be trusted, but most of all not yourself.

I expect it’s observations like this that win blog competitions..