From chocolate poems to the real thing. And not just any old chocolate either. . . .
Yesterday afternoon, Gillian and I went to Peebles for chocolate reasons. It was a fabulous day and the town was looking enchanting in rich August sunshine. The Peebles Show was in full flood and people were flocking.
We flocked right past the show car park, up the hill and into unit 7 of the Southpark Industrial Estate. Ah, it sounds ordinary, doesn’t it? It wasn’t.
Unit 7 is the tidily tucked away Chocolate & Confectionery School of Cocoa Black and that’s where we stayed for the rest of the afternoon. We were two of six beginners in a petits fours making class with world-class chocolatier Ruth Hinks.
When I say ‘world class’, I mean it. Ruth is not only one classy trainer (it was just like being with a celebrity chef in terms of dynamism and charisma), she’s one of five finalists for the UK Chocolate Master Title at Olympia in less than a month’s time. She’s also tall, elegant and beautiful—proof, if any were needed, that a diet of chocolate is life-enhancing.
Our afternoon at the petits fours workshop was amazing. It was also enormous fun. And we saw all the real stuff, the various ingredients in tubs and boxes and packets, and how they do it: the moulds, the racks, the chocolate mould scrapers, the melting tanks. The magical became possible.
While mixing and piping and scrutinizing and sprinkling, we were thinking about the HappenStance chocolate poem anthology, which is still taking shape. Discussions for its design are gathering momentum. It’s going to be a hardback book, and it will be lovely to read and hold, a direct route up Chocolate Parnassus.
With a bit of luck and nifty organization, subscriber contributors will come and help launch the book next year at quality chocolate centres round the UK.
Cocoa Black also have a chocolate shop, where you can have fabulous afternoon teas on Wednesdays and Sundays. We’ll try them for a potential HappenStand and chocolate poem launch. Watch this space—especially if you’re within range of the Scottish Borders.
HappenStance subscribers can continue to send in potential choc-lit until the end of this month. If you need inspiration for choc-po, try Hotel Chocolat (the Tasting Club is best because the chocolate’s freshly made) or send for some of Ruth’s from Cocoa Black. You don’t even have to write the poems. You can just eat the chocolates. . . .
That’s the first line of Richie McCaffery’s first poem from Spinning Plates.
Niall Campbell observes, ‘How difficult it is returning’ and Theresa remarks, ‘We agree to reconvene in a few hours’.
Even from those first lines of the first poems you pick up their very different voices, the immediacy with which they dive straight in, without preamble or fuss.
These three were launched at StAnza last week, with splendid readings from the poets (we sold all the pamphlets on the bookstall). They are a unique set for HappenStance because all three are aged under thirty.
They therefore bring down the average age of the HappenStance poet significantly overnight, though two of them would be dead already if they were Keats. As it were . . .
Happily there are lots more copies in the spare bedroom, and they can be ordered now. Just click on the links below.
The contents of the three new pamphlets are done. Now it’s the covers.
The contents of the three new pamphlets are done. Now it’s the covers.
We are currently juggling graphics. Gillian has been drawing plates spinning, rain raining, anchors, ropes, cups and a horse-shoe (I haven’t had the horseshoe yet). I bought what I think is a lovely new typeface for these covers too, and even a set of graphic symbols for Richie McCaffery, the spinning plate man. For Niall Campbell there have been ropes and horse-shoes. For Theresa Muñoz a variety of sad faces, rain, flowers, hearts. Hers may not be finalized quite yet.
You would think it would be relatively quick, and perhaps it would be, were I better at all the arts I practise. But in fact, I make graphics bigger and smaller, fatter and thinner, darker and lighter. I move letters to and fro, decrease spaces, change details, review the back copy, worry endlessly about kerning and tracking, and whether I can do what I want to do and use the right words to describe it.
By and large, I try to stay simple. If you’re not an out-and-out expert, I reckon simple is best.
I find, as I get older, there’s increasing fascination in individual words – never mind sentences. I don’t count sheep any more at night. I lie in bed and crawl inside a word. Almost any word will do. Take ‘posture’. Crawl up the descender and round the bowl of the ‘p’ and think about plosives and perkiness and the way ‘p’ alliterates with unique satisfaction. The police. Then ‘O’, the white space in the middle like a window – you can look through it, you can pop in and out, and to me it’s a white letter. And actually so is ‘s’ which always has a sizzle to it, a secret hiss in the middle of the word, and it’s white in a different way, a more solid way, like tipp-x. ‘t’ is pale brown and you can slide down the curve of the letter and sit in the foot, lean against it and think a while.
And so on. Except there’s syllables to inhabit too, and the sound texture of the word as it goes through and the endless connotations and ramifications. Soon I’m losture in posture. And then I’m asleep.
Some aspects of HappenStance are patient drudgery.
Some aspects of HappenStance are patient drudgery.
That’s the checking and checking and checking that everything has been done, and finding it hasn’t, and checking again. And getting details in the website and details on the back cover and details to Nielsen and contracts to poets and details on flyers and copyright copies to libraries. Pamphlets in packets and stamps on the envelopes. Parcels to post office. More toner for printer, more paper for printing, more poems to process, more process to pickle. Orders from website, orders through letter box. Weighing the packets, keeping accounts, doing correspondence through letter and email and writing the blog. What a slog.
But actually, it isn’t. This week I’ve been typesetting first drafts of the three new pamphlets. This is a magical process, and a joy. And when you speak to the poets themselves, live and in person, it is an overwhelming privilege and pleasure to be involved in this magical thing we make out of language, this poetry thing. Also it is fun.
Here is a foretaste, a little of each. Richie McCaffery’s pamphlet is called Spinning Plates and here is the second part of ‘Ash’:
…..There is as much ash …..in a smoked tab as there is …..in a cremated finger.
…..The finger in question …..was nicotine stained …..and prone to point and jab.
…..God had a good long drag …..on that one, then stubbed …..it out in a rented ossuary.
That one is terse indeed. In other places he is lyrical, headstrong, windswept. Richie is a great man for words: loves them, soaks them up, collects them in his head like beautiful marbles—and then—watch them roll!
Theresa Muñoz writes simply. Great white spaces open out around her words and phrases, and she crosses continents effortlessly. Born in Canada to parents who hailed from two different countries, her mental location permanently traverses other homes, other countries. Here’s a bit from ‘Glasgow, December’:
…..Something to do with the change …..in season, something about the early dark …..and watching people stroll …..up the flood-lit walk
…..takes me to that morning …..at home, warm waking …..in a white-frame house …..with creaky doors and high windows …..far from here, far from the roar
…..of buses braking hard in turn …..and police sirens going off helplessly …..in back lanes and the hum …..of cheery rough voices …..in the crowd …..getting louder.
And there’s Niall Campbell (pronounced like kneel, not the river Nile), who was born on the Hebridean Island of Uist. Niall’s poems are richly sensuous. In Grez, in France, it “smells impossibly of rain: and “the bowed sky is heavy / with the deep-song of that purple colour”. In ‘Thirst’, the tap water is “almost glacial, wintered, sweetened / by the clear honey of its coldness”. And human senses pick up something not quite of this earth. Here is a bit from ‘On Eriskay’ (also a Hebridean island):
…..What a way to be seen out: confused …..among the pearlwort and the fallow. …..Her beach songs, like the recalled taste …..of bucket milk, inched from her tongue. …..Dusk grew behind the house. I watched …..her drink the moon from a moon-filled trough.
That’s whatI’ve been doing this week — drinking the moon from a moon-filled trough. Amazing.
Obviously this is because of assembling poems on that very theme, something on my mind just now. I eat chocolate too, of course, most days. I don’t just dream about it. We’re very hands-on, here at HappenStance.
I’m pleased to say Chapter Six went out to subscribers last week and, as a result, so many orders came back in that I’ve spent the last two days putting things in envelopes.
I am out of stock of Gerry Cambridge’s book but more will arrive imminently. Also being out of stock is great news.
The other happy effect of the sending out of Chapter Six, with its reminder about the chocolate anthology, was a small influx of choc-lit. I have some lovely things and the publication is shaping up nicely.
One or two people have mentioned spreading the word about the search for chocolate poems. The word doesn’t need to be spread. This opportunity, both milk and dark, is only for subscribers. But if you’re reading this and you’re not one, you could be. . . .
I am currently starting work on three new pamphlets. These are by Niall Campbell, Richie McCaffery and Theresa Munoz, all of whom are reading at a showcase event as part of StAnza in March. Watch this space.
There is a point, in the middle of buying 400 first class stamps at 46 pence each, that you wonder . . . why.
There is a point, in the middle of buying 400 first class stamps at 46 pence each, that you wonder . . . why.
Posting out Chapter SixThere are answers of course. The stamps are for posting out the annual chapter of the HappenStance Story, which goes to HappenStance subscribers every year as part of the intricate marketing strategy I’ve set myself. As a strategy it is insane, of course. But then anyone who sets out to purvey, to provide, to peddle poetry has to be peculiar.
HappenStance subscribers currently pay £7.50 per year (more if overseas, but really this scheme only works for people in the UK or possibly Europe) and for that I send them one pamphlet of their choice, a couple of mailshots with flyers and new PoemCards during the year, and the annual Chapter. I lose on this, unless they also purchase a couple of things during the year.
The point of the Chapter is to give a bit of the backstory, so the subscribers feel ‘involved’. They are literally involved, of course, because I rely on 20-30 of them purchasing each publication, and by and large they do. (At the moment there are about 220 subscribers altogether.)
Originally I spoke about the publications one by one in the annual Chapter: a bit about the process behind each. Now there are too many publications to do that. Besides the format had got too predictable. So now there is also stuff about the mistakes I have made during the year, the business of poetry, the Sphinx stuff, the money side — that sort of thing. I want it to tell people the things you don’t usually get to know (though there are lots of things, like most publishers, I don’t tell anybody). Quite a few subscribers tell me they enjoy reading it – and they continue to subscribe, so I tend to believe them. For poets who want to get work published, either through me or another small press publisher, it’s educative – I hope.
Recently I got Krax 48 from Andy Robson, who writes to me from time to time, and to whom I quite often send pamphlets. He did not love Chapter Five of The HappenStance Story.
I admire Andy. He is a magazine editor of the old style, cranky and self-driven, and his magazine has been going since 1971. His publication is old style too. Each poem has the title in capitals, then the poem, then the name of the author slightly to the right. All of this is in a bold serif font: probably Times Roman. It is saddle stitched (two staples in the middle) in traditional chapbook style and far too packed with pages to lie flat. It has no page numbers. There are some illustrations, all monochrome, some funny line drawings, all credited, and some black and white photos which may be of the authors of some of the poems.
You’ll find very little information about Krax in this ethersphere (it is only issued once each year). I interviewed him about the magazine in Sphinx 2008 and this is what he said about modern methods:
Nothing has changed since the early days. Production is on a tighter-than-tight budget. We use the equipment we have. Half the fun is trying to imitate time-consuming software effects with scissors, paste and some photocopied image off the back of an envelope. I don’t have a computer, and if I had, then I wouldn’t have time to use it. . . .
I think he may have a computer now, though he still sends hand-written letters, all of which I keep. In the middle of KRAX, there are several pages of reviews presumably by the editor, separately stapled. These are in tiny typeface – probably about an 8, but in a sans-serif, maybe Arial, and they’re separated into sections: Fishing for Freebies, Zine it All Before, To Frisbee or Not To. . . ?, Chat an’ Chew, Chew, Chew the Fat, Homeward Trails. I think Andy comments on everything anybody sends him.
I send him stuff from time to time, though his responses are never what I expect. He praises some things I don’t expect him to like, cordially dislikes things I think he might take to, and is completely consistent in his responses. That is to say: he says precisely what he thinks, without (as they say) fear or favour. I admire this, even when it makes me squirm.
A lot of the time I don’t pass on his comments to authors because they might find them painful. Many of them are, of course, warm comments but that sometimes worries me too. I was cheered that he noticed and liked Alan Dixon’s cover for the Ruth Pitter Selected, for example, and remarked it was the same Alan Dixon who had featured in Smoke. But his descriptive adjective for Ruth’s writing was “jolly”. Jolly? In the middle of Andy’s reviews, I have marked my place with a shopping list that reads ‘Cherries, semolina, parsnips, washing up liquid, butter’. This does somehow reflect the pages I was reading.
Which brings me to the washing up liquid. Andy is warmly complimentary about the final issue of Sphinx but oh dear, when he comes to the HappenStance Story Chapter 5, it won’t wash:
Clearly publishers will find it interesting and be bemused by the priorities and be green with envy at some of the material acquired. Not of much interest to a casual browser, sadly. One for the trade.
But the HappenStance Story doesn’t go to publishers! It’s written mainly for subscribers and they aren’t publishers (with the occasional exception). They’re mainly poets or folk interested in small press ventures. Some of them are actually poetry readers. But Andy’s comment does at least make me think hard. I think Chapter Seven, if there is one, may need to change format. Get different. And it would be useful to have back chapters on the web as downloads.
In reviewing Laurna Robertson’s Sampler, which I’m glad to say he likes, Andy remarks that the Samplers seem to be “a quirk of the press . . . possibly a left-over set from a collection or even surplus submissions for the HappenStance Poetry Cards (a rare breed only obtained on subscription as a perk for collectors). Or simply just pieces that don’t seem to fit with anything else.”
Help! The Samplers aren’t left-overs! They’re brief collections – a taste of the poet’s work. Martin Parker’s Sampler preceded a pamphlet. Eleanor Livingstone’s and Andrew Philip’s came after their first pamphlet: just enough poems for a twenty-minute reading. And the PoemCards, of course, can be had by anybody from the website or by post, although it’s true subscribers get one free with every order.
I must have been mulling this matter for the last ten days or so because now it has got out in this blog. I assume everybody knows what I do and why and how, simply because I’ve written it several times somewhere or other. But these days I am beginning to forget what I’ve already said and where.
Having said all this, I have just saved the original Krax interview as a pdf and it will go onto the new Sphinx site imminently. I recommend Krax although, as Andy tells me in his letter, it has no Scots poets in it this issue – there are plenty of Americans (their state of origin is mentioned) and presumably English and Welsh, perhaps even Irish – why are the Scots not sending?
Krax is not all light verse but the emphasis is often on light, and some of the light pieces in it are well worth their salt. It’s fun to read, and different. It doesn’t compromise. Some poems are by names you know (K V Skene, Christopher James, Alan Dent, Richard Bonington, Richard Titman). Others are names wholly new to me, but I enjoyed meeting their poems. There’s prose too. In this issue a dramatic scene in Athens General Hospital Emergency Room during the 2005 Olympic Games (Roger Freed, Colorado) and a story by S M Bates ‘The Case of the Sticky Wellingtons’. No editorial. I can’t even find the name of the editor in the publication.
Go on – send Andy Robson a fiver for at least one issue. This publication has been appearing for the last 40 years. Help make it 50!
And now I’m back to posting out Chapter Six, like it or lump it! Watch out!
KRAX magazine, c/o 63 Dixon Lane, Leeds LS12 4RR, Yorkshire U.K Editor: Andy Robson: £4.50 ($9) each. Remittances to A. Robson
I like the word resolution. I’ve always liked it. I like the connections (actually but also in my head) with solving and dissolving, and the fact it rhymes with revolution. Are poets who always write in free verse less aware of rhymes, I wonder? They follow me round like persistent ghosts. (The rhymes, not the poets.)
I also like resolute and dissolute. And involute, come to that. And convolute.
But resolute most. It makes me think of myself as firm-minded, a person able to decide clearly about what is a poem and what is not. I wish I were that person.
Well, I am nearly that person today. Today I am resolute and here are the resolutions:
Get out more. Fresh air and people.
Tell the people I love I love them (another died three days ago).
Agree to take on only such tasks as I can manage.
Complete Chapter Six of The HappenStance Story.
Read more prose. (I could have said ‘read less poetry’ but see below.)
Make only positive resolutions.
Be more grateful for stuff, starting with Merrriam Webster’s Word of the Day, which so frequently enhances my life. It stops me from just using words and reminds me to be amazed by them. Today’s word was incommunicado, which made its way magnificently via Spanish into English. The rhythm of that word is astonishingly good.
And check out MW on resolution. You thought resolutions were a simple matter? Nope. It even applies to pixels. Which means I can end with a photo, sent today by Ron King from Morayshire, where there is at least a view of snow. Get out more. Fresh air and people. Going now.
Yesterday the Scottish Poetry Library got double kindling.
Yesterday the Scottish Poetry Library got double kindling.
How fascinating that you can publish two collections of poetry, scrutinizing every page of each, yet not till you hear the two poets read, do you realize each of them has a poem (each of them has chosen to read a poem) in which ‘kindling’ is seminal.Gerry Cambridge and I signing the ‘special editions’
The kindling in Gerry Cambrldge’s poem ‘Notes for Lighting a Fire’ is very different from the process referred to in Peter Gilmour’s ‘Kindling’. But how lovely it was to hear one poet read after the other and suddenly hear that connection.
All in all, this book launch was a splendid event. My sister, who was forced into duty as official camera person, took on this role with reluctance. ‘I’m useless at taking photographs,’ she said.
‘Just point and click,’ I said.
So Lou took a great many photographs. Most of them resemble medieval wall paintings in Italian churches, where the actual features have been destroyed by the depradations of hoodlums or time. So those people who felt anxious about being snapped need have no fear. Few of them are recognizable…
Many copies of the books have been sold. Many more are in the post. As ever, the staff of SPL were wonderful, welcoming and warm. The venue is second to none: literary history unfolds before your eyes. The people who came along, bought copies and mingled — the readers and friends — were amazing. I am too tired to say more. . . .
More pictures follow. First some of the recognisable audience, then Peter Gilmour reading, and finally Gerry.
The official publication date for Gerry Cambridge’s Notes for Lighting a Fireis January 2012. But we have made good time and the first set of volumes arrived out of the blue this week, such are the vagaries of printers.
Gerry’s book is not blue, however, but the colour of the top of the milk in the days when milk came in bottles. And it is a proper hard-backed book with a paper jacket. It will sit on the shelf and not disappear.
Meanwhile, three pamphlets are with local printer Dolphin Press and about to arrive in time for Christmas. They are Arson by Sue Butler, Taking Account by Peter Gilmour and The Last Walking Stick Factory by David Hale. They provide a complete contrast to each other, in the best possible way. I won’t say more yet, though there will be plenty to say.
Pamphlets, of course, do have a habit of disappearing. It is their weakness and their strength. They are unassuming and slight. They don’t make the same demands of you that books do. You can bend the covers without a smidgeon of guilt, and because their soft covers and flimsy centres disappear so readily, they become rare and valuable before you even know it.
There are new PoemCards about to arrive too – even more ephemeral, those proud little upstarts.
I have them filtered. Sounds good, doesn’t it? As though I’m purifying and simplifying.
It means the Facebook messages (of which there are fewer recently, and no bad thing either, now they’ve changed the system), the GoodReads updates, the Freegle notifications and the HappenStance Shop registrations go automatically into separate folders. I check them all. I haven’t got Twitter messages filtered: I ought to have.
Anyway, into my main email in-tray flood all the rest.
Last night I was out. For the first time in ages, I didn’t pick up messages.
Today, I get home from college and into my study, to find 61 filtered Freegle emails and 8 GoodReads updates. I don’t check the HappenStance Shop registrations because so many of them are spammers. A mere 6 from FaceBook, including birthdays.
In my main in-tray, there are about 20 saved messages – things I’m currently dealing with or about to – as well as about 12 more new communications I need to do something about today; another 12 that can be dealt with instantly or deleted. Three reminders from a bulletin board thread — I ought to log in and reply to at least one. There are 20 red herrings as well: evil spam-people leaving messages on the website by clicking the ‘click here for more information boxes’. I hate these people. Sarah has taken away the boxes now, so nobody can click for more information. They’ll just have to send me an email and ask…
Speaking of email: 28 junk messages. I check quickly to see they ARE really all garbage.
Online, there are 5 private messages sitting in FaceBook – haven’t looked at them yet – but the page is open in the corner of my eye, ominously.
I put the SQA messages (educational jobs) into the SQA folder, Sphinx-related messages into the Sphinx folder (26 messages there currently waiting there with urgent tasks for me to do), save emails from Mad Poets in the Mad Poets file for posterity, put messages from printers into the Printer folder, once I’ve replied…
Then there are 2 shop orders I need to parcel up and send out. Downstairs there are 3 snail mail submissions (sent in the wrong month – send them back quick before I go under and SNARL), as well as 2 book orders: this means going online and printing out the invoices before I parcel them up. While I’m doing this, another email pops in, and another. It is a mistake to reply quickly. It generates interaction.
It’s hard to manage the feeling of swimming against a continuous fast current. It’s hard to get on quietly with work – reading poems, sorting out a publication, even with thinking – because of what feels like an onslaught, a maddening, exhilarating manifestation of the world spinning, and spinning me with it, faster and faster and faster, along with the other seven billion. . . .
