PUBLISHING CONUNDRUMS – Unsuitable Blog and HappenStance News

THE LOST LAST POEM

I put off finishing the poem a good while ago. There was a bit of a muddle in the middle. It needed plenty of time, and I didn’t have plenty. I never have plenty.

Today it occurred to me that it’s been over a year — it might even be nearly two — since I last looked at it. But the last line keeps coming back to me. Gotta be telling me something.

It’s the last poem in a long set. A long set that I want to make into a book. It’s ten years since my last book of serious poems came out. You can put things off too long.

I can put things off too long.

So I go to the electronic folder to take a look. Oh. It’s not where I thought it was.

Where is that folder? I know what it’s called. ‘Find’ comes up with four copies of a 2003 folder. Not the one I’m looking for.

But I’m cool with this. I’ll find it.

Systematically, I search the usual places. My hard drive; the USB sticks I take on holiday; the desktop of the laptop; the Cloud. It’ll show up.

Except it doesn’t. Bummer.

The end of the poem is taunting me. It goes like this (the line breaks may not be right):

So now tell me, she says,
what you’ve done with my pearls.

This might not sound riveting. But I tell you there was a tricky back-story before those lines. A tale that was the last tale to be told in the bigger story of Mr and Mrs Philpott, who began in a Rialto publication in 2003 and might be finally at the end. Except I’ve lost the end.

I might once have panicked. But not these days. I know how things get lost. I know how to find them. (I know there are too many poems in the world already.)

I go to my ring-bound paper files, where I print and file every poem. Well, nearly. It seems I didn’t print this one. Or if I did, I didn’t file it.

But I remember putting the poem into the large file I’d made of all the poems. The WHOLE SET, which amounted to a great many pages. And I printed that file. It’s in a perspex wallet underneath the mountain of books and magazines on the table beside the stove.

And this turns out to be true.

Except when I printed that WHOLE SET, the last poem hadn’t been added. I might have guessed, since the plastic wallet is dusty. But at least its physical existence proves I did create a file of more than 80 pages. Because here they are.

But I worked on several versions of the last (and longest) poem. I remember this absolutely clearly. It has to be somewhere.

Two hours later, I can confirm the Pearls poem is not somewhere. It is not even in the back-up drive of time-machine-saved files, most of which could be jettisoned with impunity. I must have been keeping it in the Cloud, in the same folder as the book file to which it was to be added. I must somehow have deleted the whole folder, no doubt thinking I had a copy on the backed-up hard drive. It happens.

Nobody else has seen that poem but me. It might as well never have existed. They call it The Cloud for a reason.

Idly, I riffle through the stack of metal trays on my desk, where I keep all sorts of odds and sods. Letters, poems, bills, cartoons, pictures. I also go through them regularly and throw old poems away. But not this one. This poem is there.

Nearly three A4 pages. It’s THERE.

It’s not the last saved version, because a whole lot of stuff is horribly wrong with it. I fixed some of the muddle, I know I did. I’m not even sure it’s a good poem, now that I read it again. Maybe I should end with the one before. Maybe it was meant to get lost.

On the other hand, one of the reasons for getting poems published (if you’re lucky enough to be able to) is to save them from oblivion, at least temporarily. Or to ensure that they get lost in the right way, i.e. by being forgettable for most readers.

So now I had better help that to happen, if I can. It’s time.

When Zoom is doom

‘She left the web, she left the zoom’ (‘The Lady of Shalott’)

For poets inhabiting the online world, all sorts of virtual spaces (and opportunities) are springing up. Most publishers (I am no exception) are delivering online events to help promote books. We learn as we go.

People are using many different platforms. Zoom (‘In this together. Keeping you securely connected wherever you are’) has the most memorable name, and I think it might yet get into the dictionary, like hoover did – when a brand became the generic term. Wouldn’t that please the Zoom people?

But all sorts of other platforms are on the go, with their various not very inspiring catchphrases. For example:

ClickMeeting (‘We help you stay connected’ — unambitious but at least short)
Zoho (‘Your Life’s Work Powered By Our Life’s Work’ — what’s with the capital letters?)
Webex (‘Webex is here when the world needs to connect, communicate and collaborate’ —not a catchphrase, practically a paragraph!)
GotoMeeting (‘WE’RE HERE TO HELP’ — please stop shouting)
Microsoft Teams (‘Nothing can stop a team’—oh YES it can!)
Periscope live streaming (developed by Twitter: ‘See what the world is seeing’ — ho-hum)

But yes, Zoom (‘In this together. Keeping you securely connected wherever you are’) is the best name, though limp catchphrase. And in the UK, at least, Zoom seems to be the most popular right now, at least for ordinary people as opposed to giant organisations, whose employees use the one they’re told to use (which is frequently one they don’t like).

All but one of the poetry events I’ve attended online recently have been Zoom affairs. I spent time exploring both GotoMeeting (and GotoWebinar) and Webex, but it seemed to me Zoom was easiest to use. Also it has the advantage of being the one I’m getting most used to.

Not that I like everything about it, by any means. And there are many things I don’t understand. For example, having read carefully about headsets, I don’t understand why the sound quality I get through mine is worse than my Imac’s own microphone. Okay, so one of the headsets was cheap but the other was £25.00 and I thought it might have something to offer. Nope.

I have learned quite a bit about things that go wrong.

Like that sometimes my computer’s camera stops working, and I have to restart the whole shebang.

Like that when I select ‘record automatically’ in Zoom settings, it doesn’t record automatically.

Like that Zoom is unhappy about screen-share when the document shared is set to ‘full screen’, though sometimes it’s ok.

Like that sometimes nothing works right, and it is not the user’s fault. Sundays may be bad days.

Today, for example, the Zoom website status indicated that all sorts of things weren’t working. ‘Our team is continuing to investigate this issue.’ I can bear witness to the fact that there most certainly was an issue.

When its good, it’s very very good. When it stops working, Zoom is doom.

But for any virtual conferencing technology, watching poets’ faces while they read poems, with variable sound quality, is a mixed blessing. Some events share the poem-text at the same time, though. That adds a little something that you don’t usually get at a live reading.

Zoom events where attendees can use public chat are … risky. Sometimes the contributions are, let’s say, less than tasteful. And when chat comments pop up in the middle of a reading, it’s distracting. Terribly tempting, too, to send a sarky message about the presenter to a friend (a bit like whispering during a poetry reading). Just wait till you find you’ve sent it publicly by accident.

It’s distracting too, when some of the attendees visible in video windows are eating lunch or (as in one recent instance) applying moisturiser.

Having been to live open mic events where the poets left one by one after they had delivered their two minutes-worth, I suspect precisely the same happens online. A bit like Pass the Parcel, except the final one to unwrap the paper is entirely on their own.

Some attendees turn their video off so they can continue to listen while making dinner, without anybody seeing what they’re doing. This is actually quite sensible, though maybe not ideal at a poetry event, when you’re secretly hoping people might be concentrating.

But maybe the key issue for any of us at online events is motivation. We sign up because we think it might be interesting. But after the novelty of the first few has worn off, what’s in it for us? When you go to a live poetry reading, you know you’re going to see some friends, probably have a convivial drink and an outing. But on the web?

From a publisher-host’s point of view, one reason for zooming is to sell books. So one could argue, that from the attendee’s point of view, a reason for going is to find out whether or not you’d want a copy. Is that enough to offset Zoom-fatigue? What else can online events offer attendees?

I don’t think it works to transfer the content of a typical poetry reading into an online event. It’s a different medium and something different needs to happen. If it’s a live event, it might include some conversation, some insights, a bit of background on the book, a bit of enjoyable gossip. There may be aspects of audience interaction too that would draw people in and make them feel involved. Something to be learned that you can’t get any other way – that’s what I most like in an online event. I like to leave the meeting feeling I know something I didn’t know when I went in.

That’s if the technology works!

Essential Zoom terms

Zoom-gloom—low mood after Zoom events
Zoomophobia—fear of Zoom events
Inzoomnia—lack of sleep after too much zooming
Zoomo sapiens—new species of virtual human
Zoom-tomb—deadly boring Zoom event
Zoom-exhume—post-Zoom analysis
Zoom-grooming (don’t ask)
Zoomba—a virtual dance
Zoom-Vrrrroom—the energy boost from an inspiring online event
Rule of Zoom—rough estimate of length of Zoom event
Nom de Zoom—ability to change one’s name at Zoom event
Back to the Zomb Therapy—a new birthing technique
Bride and Zoom—virtual weddings
Zoominating—reflecting during a Zoom event; alternatively: eating grass during a Zoom event
Superzooman—Zoom participant with special powers

Are Your Modifiers Dangling?

My reading window last month brought more poems than ever before. So 159 poets sent work. I can’t read and respond to more than 1000 poems a month and stay sane, so I was at my limit.

But the challenge remains interesting, not least in the way trends change noticeably from one window to the next. So here are some trends I observed during the window. I’ve mentioned many of them before, but not all.

(I am aware I have a number of bees in my bonnet. It’s inescapable. You get over-sensitized to things.)

There were an unprecedented number of poems formatted in double spacing (often because Microsoft Word may double-space each time you hit the ‘return’ or ‘enter’ key). I strongly suspect some people think this is what ‘poem’ text is suppose to look like.
I have seen the most ever poems with zero punctuation, though the poet may make an exception in the case of a dash, a question mark or an ellipsis. So actually there is punctuation but no commas or full stops.
Punctuation-less poems in stanza form but with a capital letter at the start of the first word of each stanza. Gaps may be used to suggest pauses.
‘So’ or ‘such’ used as intensifiers.
Poems that switch verb tense somewhere in the middle. Most poems these days are in the present tense. We have forgotten that this is a fashion. Once they were mostly in the past tense.
Insertion of the phrase ‘I think of’, sneaking in even more often than ‘I remember’.
Prose poems formatted in very wide blocks, long LONG lines.
Line breaks allowed to substitute for commas.
Punny titles.
‘As’ used too often (my most unfavourite word, because of its grisly sound and the fact it can mean three things)
Lists of nouns, but no ‘and’ before the last one.
Metaphors that create an unfortunate mental image if you take them literally.
Some poets have favourite shapes, so each poem looks rather like the one before (even though it may be about something completely different) eg long and thin, or short and fat.
Enjambing every stanza.
Whilst, amidst (but not amongst).
Not heft this time, and only one shards, but quite a bit of musk and citalopram.
Pantoums (loads): it’s the new villanelle.
‘After’ poems (I need to blog about this separately because there is no consistency in what people mean by ‘after’ and it really does get confusing).
The single sentence poem that gets its syntactical knickers in a twist in the middle.
Long sentences with difficult syntax, often with the key verb and subject delayed and maybe three or four line breaks to negotiate before things start to make sense.
That thing called a ‘dangling modifier’ is an arch culprit in poems. If your modifiers are dangling, I’d say you have a problem.
Anaphora poems, by which I mean poems that start each stanza or each line with the same word or phrase (the ‘Because’ poem is a familiar example). This can be powerful. This can be powerful, of course. This can be powerful in the right poem. But you can have too much of a powerful thing.
Sentences starting with a verb but subject implied: I am seeing this more and more. She goes to the cupboard. Takes out a cup. Thinks of a bad sonnet. (Is this actually a variation on ‘leaning verbs’?)
The ampersand is back, judicious use in some poems, rather than a consistent stylistic feature.
Poems that can only work inside the space of an A4 page.
The single most common problem: unintended obscurity. The poem is behaving as though it’s obvious what’s going on but the reader is mystified. This is quite different from deliberate obscurity, which can be compelling.

If any of the points above are obscure, it was unintentional. Sometimes you just can’t see how difficult you’re being.

OPEN THE WINDOW AND WHERE IS RUMPELSTILTZKIN?

The reading window is about to open. Look back, look out, look forward.

On HappenStance‘s sister website, Sphinx review, this year we OPOI-reviewed 92 pamphlets. They came in through the front door. But we received far more than we OPOI-ed.

The stated aim is to write about each and every one that’s sent in, but it’s an impossible aim.

Besides, who will read all the reviews? Let’s be honest. Reviews are not top of the reading list for most people, unless the review is of their own book.

Sometimes it occurs to me to offer authors an OPOI review of their publication provided they write one (of somebody else’s pamphlet). But then some of the authors might write thoughtlessly or carelessly because their hearts weren’t in it.

Still, a mammoth number of poetry pamphlets now appears every year. Of course the authors like critical notice. But how is it to be managed? We did 92. I have 68 more pamphlets sitting here right this minute unwritten-about. I need Rumpelstiltskin.

Besides, there are more, far more. We weren’t even sent copies of all the pamphlets that were produced. There must be 200-300 every year in the UK, at a guess. How would anybody ever know the real number? Many of them don’t have ISB numbers.

But the OPOI reviews are (yes, I am biassed) rather interesting to read, and writing reviews (especially OPOIs) is good for poets. I really think that. And if you’ve never done anything like this before, it’s good training. You have a couple of kindly hands-on editors here to help. They’re nice.

This one is also currently sharpening her pencils for another purpose.

The poetry reading window is open from January 2nd to January 29th. Yay!

The window for offering OPOI reviews is open all year round.

THE POETRY ELF FAILS TO WRITE THE RIGHT SORT OF BLOG

They have switched the Christmas lights on in our town and the shops (those of them that are still in business) are full of tinsel and elves.

Here at HappenStance HQ, two elves are busy putting bits of paper into envelopes. Tomorrow a mailshot goes out to the 310 postal subscribers and 100 or so electronic ones.

We have four new pamphlets out (or will have by tomorrow) and are hoping that some people will want to buy some as seasonal gifts. Poetry needs all the help it can get to find its way into people’s houses. But assuming you buy one, the little folded, staple-stitched publication you will hold in your hand has weeks and weeks and weeks of activity behind it. It’s the claws of Art, which extend to many activities.

First there’s the acreage of time that the poet put into each line: the thought, the revision, the doubt, the risk. In some cases, this takes years. Well, you know about that.

Then there’s the discussion of the poems one by one with me, the fate of the semi-colons, the ones that didn’t make the cut, the titles that were changed, the order of contents — all of that business. Hours, rather than weeks, but then subsequent weeks of email exchanges about drafts (with four different poets at the same time).

There’s the image on the cover and the discussions with Gillian Rose who draws them between fighting off small children. There are the images she and I rejected, and the days spent in In-Design and Photoshop trying (and frequently failing) to make the jacket look like I want it to.

There’s the title registration and uploading of jacket images to Nielsen Bookdata, and then, after an interval to allow them to be processed, the giant Amazon (oops, I haven’t done Amazon yet — so add that to the list of things to do today, 21 and counting).

There’s the trip with the pamphlet pages to be printed to Robert and Liz at Dolphin Press in Glenrothes, about a mile from here. Yes, this is very old-fashioned. I print them and take them. There’s the review of what endpapers we have left or can use from Robert’s stock.

Then, for Robert at Dolphin, there’s the making of the lithographic plates, the printing, and this time round there’s the day the stapling machine broke and Robert spent three and a half hours fixing it (I think that was part way through D.A. Prince’s Bookmarks, but it could have been Geoff Lander’s The Lesser Mortal).

But before the stapling, there’s the collating of pages (usually Robert and Liz’s daughter Nicky does that), the filling of boxes. There’s me driving there to pick up boxes, and me and Matt staggering along to the house with them (the hall is full of cardboard boxes and we haven’t even picked up Meg Peacocke’s Honeycomb or Helen Nicholson’s Briar Mouth yet).

And the flyers. Each new pamphlet has a promotional flyer, so those take a while to design and make, and then they’re printed by Robert in time for the mailshot, into which (this time) goes not only four flyers but a bookmark, a postcard, a Bardcard, a newsletter and (if it applies) a subscription renewal slip. The postcard was printed by Moo (costs a fortune but they do a good job), the bookmark by Solopress (cheaper and not bad). Designing and uploading and ordering these – a day for each one.

The newsletters take an age to write. Each time I’m fearful of forgetting to mention something or someone essential and obvious. The brain gets too full. Some days I could forget my own name. And there has to be a product page in the online shop for each pamphlet, and an updated poet’s page for the poet, and an electronic version of everything in the right place at the right time for the online-only subscribers. All that stuff is ready now: I spent a couple of days on it last week, but it’s not yet visible. (Don’t publish the product till you’re ready to sell it!)

Besides, first I had to update the publications in print list, and the subscriber list, making sure as I can that the second of these is accurate and that the address labels correspond with the list (there are always anomalies because some people renew by cheque and some online, and the two systems need a human being to bring them together). That takes another half day. Then finally I print the address labels.

Matt collates all the bits and pieces for the mailshot, gets very grumpy, tells me whether we have enough envelopes of the right size, fills the envelopes and sticks on the labels, and checks them off on the list one by one, adding in reminders to those who are due to renew. He usually discovers (and brandishes) at least three mistakes I’ve made somewhere. The whole process takes him three days and quite a bit of backache, and I am not allowed to interrupt except with meals. Finally we put them in sacks and drive them in a pony and cart (not really – it’s a small red car) to the sorting office on the other side of the town. (NB We haven’t even sold one pamphlet yet.)

Then there are copies to be sent to the authors (they get twenty complimentary pamphlets), and copies sent to the copyright libraries, and Scottish poetry library, and Southbank Poetry library, and complimentary copies to old friends and supporters, and review copies hither and thither, and there’s the bemused expression on the face of the lady in the post office when I arrive to buy another three hundred quid’s worth of stamps. Yes, the cost is scary!

In fact, the cost in time and money and elves is all upfront. It takes faith. By this stage, the bank account is at rock bottom so we wait anxiously to see what will sell and when. New publications help to sell the ones that are already done and dusted (literally) and sitting hopefully.

Oh, I forgot to mention the publisher’s blog. That is this VERY document, which has failed miserably to do what promotional text should do – mention the most important thing first.

Well, let me see. What was the most important thing? Oh yes, the titles of the four new publications. Here I am talking about making them and the key fact of selling them and I haven’t even told you anything about them.

Nor have I mentioned the reading window NOT being in December, but in January now. That’s important too. Oh bum.

Watch this space. I have just spent four hours writing the wrong sort of blog. I’ll be back tomorrow.

BORING

So it’s not all reading windows, and competitions, and new publications. Or whatever else people think poetry publishers (even little ones) do.

Much of the necessary and time-consuming stuff is too ordinary to talk about. It makes for a boring blog.

But I’m not averse to boring people. Otherwise they might think it’s all FUN here.

So my August was sorting out the archives in the roof, and getting some of the boxes ready to send to the National Library. It involved dust and cobwebs, ladders and trips to the dump – sorry ‘recycling centre’.

And then there was the self-assessment return and updating the accounts. Lord knows, this takes days and days and days.If I would only do it every month it wouldn’t be so bad, but I start well each year, and then suddenly I’m five months behind.

And then there’s stock-taking. And taking stock.

Ordering new envelopes, all sizes, for despatch and for cards. More boxes!

Ordering new labels, new toner, new pencils, new batteries.

And letter writing (some people do still write them, by hand, and on paper).

Reading poems for non-window people (promises are promises).

A bit of tidying my desk, and in this case ordering a new one, since this one can’t be moved without collapsing. And a new chair, since the current one is the polar opposite of ergonomic.

Getting hair cut. Visiting old friends. Some of them very old.

A funeral or two. Review of black or grey clothes.

Getting teeth scaled and polished (*grins and flashes teeth*).

Working on one small poem of my own. Slowly.

Bramble picking and making jelly.

Watching the crab apples ripening. (Crab apple jelly soon.)

Reading Peter Main’s excellent biography of Ruthven Todd.

Reading Matthew Walker’s rather worrying book about sleep.

Making ice cream.

Clearing and cleaning the freezer.

Making bread.

Drinking Pact coffee.

Thinking.

GDPR AND POEM PRIVACY POLICY

Poems don’t have to have a Privacy Policy. But websites do. Or any organisation that collects personal data that might be used for nefarious purposes.

And we do worry about personal data. We worry about our phone numbers, and our dates of birth, our bank accounts and our passport numbers. We worry while giving them to all sorts of people for all sorts of purposes.

And now some of us suddenly worry about a new set of capital letters: GDPR. The General Data Protection Regulation.

Health Warning: the rest of this blog is quite dry. You could just skip to the poem at the end if you’re not feeling strong. Or go for a nice walk.

The GDPR is a piece of European legislation (please don’t mention Brexit) designed to protect consumers Europe-wide. It gives more rights to the individual and more obligations to organisations holding personal data.

The GDPR is, to be precise, Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing or personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC.

In the UK, matters of data protection, including this one safe-guarding ‘natural persons’, are looked after by the ICO, the Information Commissioner’s Office. This is the government-appointed body that recently carried out a much publicised investigation into Cambridge Analytica.

Innumerable worthy, smaller, not-for-profit organisations (like HappenStance Press) have also had to think hard about GDPR, because they too are subject to the new regulation, and need to ensure they’re doing things properly.

Which is why everyone who uses email will have had multiple emails recently asking them to re-subscribe to X, Y or Z.

The idea is that we shouldn’t be receiving marketing or sales emails unless we have expressly asked for them. (The word ‘consent’is now the lynch pin.)

After May 25 (next week), every organisation that holds your contact details, and uses them, should have asked your permission explicitly first. They should observe the key principles of article 5 of the GDPR.

Some organisations who hold your contact details have little idea whether they originally asked your consent or not (contact addresses were sometimes shared or purchased in the past) and in any case they want to make double sure.

So they are all asking us to confirm that we want to stay on list A, B or C. (And they are nervous, because the ICO can fine people for not doing things properly.)

The advised consent procedure for mail-shots is called ‘positive opt-in’ and it works as follows. You go to a website (like this one) and enter your details into a box to be added to a contact list. But you’re not actually on that list until you reply to an email which invites you to confirm. When you confirm, this is proof of ‘consent’, i.e. proof you really really mean it. At least, you really meant it at that moment. Ease of unsubscribing is also important.

So on this very blog page, you will see, in red, instructions on how to subscribe to receive future blog notifications. If you enter your name and email address in the relevant box and click, you will be advised to look out for an email to confirm.

You look out for the email. You open it. You click again (life is all clicking these days). Now you have consented. Hurray!

Oh but I haven’t mentioned the bit about confirming that you’re not a robot, which is straightforward so long as you can see. Issues such as these are raised by Giles Turnbull, on his blog. Accessibility is a key issue here, and one that is not always top of the agenda when it comes to legislation.

I understand why people may be uneasy about registering their names, addresses and emails on this website when they purchase books. Why should they trust a little press with a happy-go-lucky name like ‘HappenStance‘? The information seems to be disappearing into a medium that nobody quite understands, at the same time as we read alarming stories about hackers and alien intelligence. Well, hackers anyway.

It may not help that we promise to keep the information safe, although from now on, HappenStancecustomers can read the Privacy Policy, which I put together this week when I could have been writing a poem. But will it reassure?

There is a good alternative to buying things online. It’s called a shop. People can still order books from bookshops without revealing their full personal details. Bookshops are good places, especially indies like The Lighthousein Edinburgh. A bookshop doesn’t need personal data. Oh, wait – they probably will require at least a name and phone number, unless the book is held in store. But customers can theoretically use a false name, enter the shop disguised as a gorilla, and pay in cash – while cash still exists.

Sigh. Yes, basically, it’s all risky.

But the GDPR is designed to protect us. Or at least make organisations state precisely what personal information they collect from us, why they collect it, and what they use it for, before we sign up. It could be worse.

Privacy Policy & Consent

This poem will not collect your data
to contact you a few weeks later
and call you back.

The lyric stands alone, defiant,
entirely GPDR compliant,
in white and black.

Impervious, then, to consternation
or European legislation
or Union Jack,

it here extends its own address,
which may be shared in times of stress—
no fear of flak.

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.

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.

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!

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.)

Robert Frost’s ‘Design’ and ‘The Rule of the Shorter Term’

After publishing Charlotte Gann’s book, Noir, I’ve started to think of noir poems as a genre — poems with shadows; poems that set up the dark/light opposition. Poems that expose.

So it struck me yesterday that Robert Frost’s sonnet ‘Design’ was another of them. And it appears I can quote it in full, since it’s listed as a poem that’s in the public domain in the USA in Wikisource.

But wait – copyright is a strange business. ‘Design’ is in the public domain (free for use) in the USA because it was published before January 1, 1923 and its copyright term was not renewed in its 28^th year after publication. That is American law. (If you don’t want to know any more about copyright, skip the next 5 paragraphs.)

But what about in other countries? Robert Frost died in 1963 (53 years ago) and so the work can also be used freely in areas where the legal copyright term is the author’s life plus 50 years or less.

Okay. I am in the UK (though you may not be) where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 70 years. Still, I now learn that some countries have native copyright terms that apply ‘the rule of the shorter term’ to foreign works.

It’s a foreign work. So am I in a country that applies the rule of the shorter term? Apparently ‘the rule of the shorter term’ does, at present, apply to countries in the European Union. Oh but following Brexit, I shan’t be in the EU much longer.

Also, the Wiki Talk page for ‘the rule of the shorter term’ suggests it doesn’t apply even now because of the EU legal caveat that says: “The fact that there is a reference to national execution measures does not necessarily mean that these measures are either comprehensive or in conformity.”

Do I really understand this? No. But I am a publisher. I care about copyright and protection of creative rights, so I’ve decided not to reproduce the poem on this blog for another 17 years, although you can read it here, here or here.

So what was I going to say about that poem? Oh yes. It’s Noir-ness. But also why it’s such a beautiful piece of writing. Have I mentioned how much I love rhyme? And in this fully-rhyming poem there are only three. There’s ‘white’ – the key word that recurs in both octet and sestet (and this sonnet physically divides the two) – which is chiming through lines 1, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 11, in order to arrive at its true partner at the end of line 12, which is ‘night’. Then there’s ‘moth’, one of the key players; and there’s the ‘heal-all’, the common wild flower. Three rhymes: three characters.

But I’m getting technical and I haven’t mentioned the picture because you have to have in mind what the poet has seen – just an ordinary thing, really – something you might bend and note on a country walk first thing in the morning. (You might want to open the poem itself in a different window.)

The poet has noticed a fat, white, dimpled spider – arresting because we tend to think of spiders as black – although most spiders aren’t. More unusually, this spider is on a common wild flower, the ‘heal-all’ which is usually a purply blue. But this time the flower is white.

The spider catches the poet’s attention, hard to see at first being white on white, and then he sees it’s carrying a dead moth, and the moth is white too. So all the creatures are white – as he gradually ‘sees’ what he’s seeing – ‘like the ingredients of a witches’ broth’ (so this is a Hallowe’en poem too, if ever there was one).

Yet even in the first stanza, what strange oppositions! The three ‘characters of death and blight’ are mixed ‘ready to begin the morning right’. But what morning begins ‘right’ with such an assortment?

This brings the poet to three questions in a row in the sestet of the poem, and the tone changes from macabre fascination to a desperate plea: ‘What had that flower to do with being white, / The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?’ It’s a Shakespearean switch, like sonnet 138 when the speaker suddenly reaches desperately for some kind of understanding: “But wherefore says she not she is unjust? / And wherefore say not I that I am old?’

But Shakespeare works towards a cynical resolution whereas Frost goes for more questions: ‘What brought the kindred spider to that height, / Then steered the white moth thither in the night?’ (I love the word ‘thither’.) This bit reminds me of Blake’s noir poem, ‘The Sick Rose’, with the ‘invisible worm, /That flies in the night’, and surely Blake, too, whatever the wider meaning of that piece, had been shocked more than once by looking into the heart of a garden rose and seeing maggots.

But Frost is a crafty makar; and all poems are in some way or other about themselves. They are designed. So in the last question – which is also an answer: ‘What but design of darkness to appall?’ – he stacks up the weight of evil with the D alliteration but also brings in ‘appall’, which comes from the Latin ‘pallescere’, to grow pale. And this also contains ‘pall’, the cloth thrown over a coffin or casket and usually, these days, white. (Remember Wilfrid Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ – ‘The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall’?)

What a phrase – ‘design of darkness to appall’ – what a cracking phrase! And then how masterfully Frost brings the sonnet back to reality, back to an afterthought, back to the innocent heal-all – ‘If design govern in a thing so small’. If there’s God, if there’s a creator, if there’s a purpose behind that sight of spider and moth (which is, in fact, neither good nor bad, only as it strikes the viewer). This is just a fourteen-line poem but the design is extraordinary.

‘We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us and, if we do not agree, puts its hand into its breeches pocket,’ wrote John Keats to John Hamilton Reynolds in 1818, and quite right too. But Frost’s design in ‘Design’ is not palpable. It’s subtle and beautiful, discoverable by close attention. The smallest line in the poem shrinks back to the word ‘small’. It’s a fabulous piece of making, and in its own beauty offers a counter-balance to death, blight and the indisputable fact that the common heal-all, white or blue, doesn’t – and can’t – heal all.

Photo by Ivar Leidus, (Iifar),
Creative Commons Licensed.

Why is it so HARD?

Why is it so hard to do publicity?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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