NO NEWS IS SLOW NEWS

I have only just reached 29.

That’s to say number 29 out of the 77 December submissions, and this is too slow for comfort. So no blog writing today, only writing scribbly notes on people’s poems between pencil sharpenings. (I have sharpened two whole pencils to oblivion).

There will be feedback on the process in due course—another couple of weeks yet.

Meanwhile, Chapter Seven of the HappenStance Story is just about ready to go to print. If you’d like a copy (we sold out of Chapter Six) and you’re not a subscriber, here’s your link.

We have no snow in this wintry corner of Fife—at least only a powdery dusting. Rather disappointing, even for grown-ups. Also no word from the Bank of Scotland. Please forgive me if you’ve sent a cheque in the last fortnight. I can’t pay them in. I can only sit and look at them. If the situation persists for another week, a new account will be opened.

Meanwhile, the last word is with Robert Nye’s poem ‘Winter More’, included in the HappenStance pamphlet anthology, Winter Gifts, right back at the beginning, in 2005.

WINTER MORE

When it was Winter what I saw
Was not enough for my heart’s claw.

I wanted the North Wind to blow
Like God the Father shouting No.

My heart was greedy for pure cold:
I wanted icicles of gold.

I wanted Taj Mahals of ice
And no mere Arctic could suffice.

Winter extreme, Winter complete
Was what I longed for in my heat

To reach an absolute North Pole
And know in body and in soul

Some more-than-polar vertigo,
The truth of snow on snow on snow.

This was my secret lust and lore:
I always wanted Winter more.

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

POMOPHOBIA IS NORMAL

I teach loads of adult students who loathe poetry. Sometimes I hate it more than they do. I look at books of it piling up around me and I feel sick. I feel like the miller’s daughter locked in a room of straw without the faintest hope of Rumpelstiltskin.

I’m not a creative writing tutor. That’s different. People who want to write poetry often love it. I teach literature (some of the time) in further education. Many of the people who arrive there read novels and enjoy films. But mention the big Po and a troubled look comes over their faces. I wish I could suggest a few hours in my classroom transforms their feelings. Sometimes it’s the reverse.

Pomophobia is normal. Why? All sorts of reasons. School has a lot to do with it. We get Poetry, like an attack of flu. To get rid of it, we have to analyse it. We don’t understand it and this makes us feel stupid. We don’t like feeling stupid and we tend to dislike people and things that make us feel that way. So. . . .

And yet there are bits of verse (stuff the word ‘poetry’) that people do like. They’re memorable, frequently rhythmic, sometimes funny and, as you get older, and especially if you’re a boy, frequently rude. You can skip to them, sing to them, stamp to them, sigh to them, get revenge on them:

Helen Curry is no good (substitute name of victim).
Chop her up for firewood (you have to say ‘fy-er-wood’).
When she’s dead, stamp on her head
And make her into currant bread.

So it’s okay to rejoice in that kind of thing. I wish I dared share some of the rudest examples. I do collect them. ‘The Good Ship Venus’ is a winner.

But back to hating poetry, before I work myself back into an inadvertent lather of liking the stuff.

All those books piled up staring at me. Three more arrived to review yesterday. There are at least ten waiting unread already. I have books of poetry that people sent me as gifts. And I have small collections waiting in coloured folders waiting for me to read through and make them into HappenStance pamphlets.

The trouble with poetry is that it is so bloody demanding. It has one assertion only and it is this: READ ME. Total attention. Nothing less will do. READ ME. And then – READ ME AGAIN.

Coupled with this is the unstated promise: I WILL REPAY. The idea is that you read the stuff and it does something magical for you, something you won’t forget. Isn’t that so? But somewhere in there, there’s a secret, like the name of Rumpelstilkskin or Tom Tit Tot or Whuppity Stoorie. If you can’t come up with the secret name, the whole thing will stay straw and you’ll be stuck in that room with it for the rest of your life.

So how do you feel, when you read it and the spell doesn’t work? Horribly cheated, that’s how. Vengeful. Especially since the thing you didn’t understand a word of, or were totally bored by, is supposed to be important. The person who wrote it is hugely significant and has the key to the whole of life: it says so on the back cover.

But there is quite a good thriller on the bookcase and it won’t make you feel like that. All it demands is:

READ ME, IF YOU HAPPEN TO FEEL LIKE IT

[ONCE]

It will be easy. And a bit of fun.

All this I understand all too well.

However, on Friday, I sat quietly in a room full of poetry and a little bit of prose (some prose is necessary, like pasta, rice, bread or potatoes with your dinner). And the magic worked again. I had Mike Horwood’s book Midas Touch – not one poem made me feel inadequate. Lovely first collection. And August Kleinzahler’s New and Selected – a bit more nervous about that, and there were bits I teetered over, but some whole poems were okay. And Tim Liardet’s Shoestring pamphlet – oh hey – it even tells a story, a beautiful, sad story. And did you know Brian Aldiss, the science fiction writer, did Po too? I didn’t, but he does. Perhaps not the best poetry I have ever read but hey, it caused me no pain at all to read the lot. And I sailed through the one by Gail White practically singing.

But even better than this. I went back to three folders of PIPs. That, for the uninformed among you, stands for Poets In Progress, and these PIPs are the next three HappenStance pamphlets. They are Mike Loveday, Lorna Dowell and Lydia Fulleylove. Oh my goodness! I haven’t read them for ages, not properly, not since I said Yes to the pamphlet possibility. I slowly perused the poems that had been sitting in my yellow box beside the dining table for months, and I came out of the reading calm, happy and enriched.

And excited. It was the same with Ross Kightly and Kirsten Irving, only a few weeks ago. This is why I do it. I’m only the miller’s daughter. The magic has nothing to do with me, but these poets have transformed paper and scratchy words to gold. I want to share them and there’s nothing I’d rather do.

Meanwhile, I’ll inflict a poem of my own on you, no matter whether you hate it or not, because it’s relevant and I’d forgotten I’d written it until I came to do this morning’s blog. It emerged ten years ago, as a direct result of three lovely adult students who came to me woefully after I had forced them to read Shakespeare sonnet 138, ‘When my love swears that she is made of truth’. One of them really did say to me, ‘We’ve tried and we’ve tried and we can’t like it.’

The Challenge of Literature

(‘We’ve tried and we’ve tried and we can’t like it. . . .’)

I gave them the sonnet I always used.
‘You don’t have to like it,’ I conceded
when hardly a single one enthused.
‘Shakespeare can grow on you. Go on—read it.’

I was convinced it would do no harm
to meet the best of the best. Great art
is good for exams; it keeps you calm.
Some people even learn it by heart.

On the last day, in no mood for sighing,
I tossed them a titbit by Wendy Cope:
some nice little lines, a kind of test.
What would they think? Well—I dared to hope.

The bastards. They liked it without even trying.
I might have guessed.

Getting and spending

What a week. Ooya-hun — what a week! I warn you — this blog entry is much too long.

No post last weekend because it was the fifth birthday party. Family were staying, including my sister sleeping in the study where I write this blog on a Sunday morning. It was the most complicated event I’ve ever attempted to organise. Mid-preparations, Gina Wilson’s pamphlet was in its final stages — I took a mock-up to the party itself to give to her for final checking.

What a week. Ooya-hun — what a week! I warn you — this blog entry is much too long.

Gillian (artist daughter) made an amazing cake. More than 60 people, about 20 of these being HappenStance poets, came along. Robin Vaughan-Wiliams did a Risk Assessment. Poems were read from past pamphlets, recent pamphlets, pamphlets out of print, pamphlets in process and pamphlets which haven’t even got as far as a contents list. Jamie Rose of Reeds (son-in-law made music and sang one of the poems, a ballad). I nearly cried. I was able to say my bit about poetry, whatever it may be, being less about the art of the individual than the mystery of language (to which all poets subscribe). I think I said it less pretentiously than that.

At the party, I didn’t mention being shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award for the second year. However, on Monday there was a mysterious email from PBS about jpgs.

On the Tuesday, there was an email to check whether I was coming and if so, bringing how many guests. I replied to say I couldn’t come — working flat out in college — but that two of ‘my’ poets would be there.

On the Wednesday (day of the award ceremony) there was another email, asking me to call as soon as possible, and even including a mobile number. And a similar message left on the message machine (not on my mobile though). I didn’t get home on that Wednesday until 7.45 (the college work really is driving me demented just now and it’s end of term next Friday) and when I picked up the message I thought, hm, that’s interesting (see post of 5th May).

About ten minutes later I got a text message which read: Congratulations! Hope your ears are burning!

Even more interesting. I wasn’t sure who the text was from (changed my phone recently and not all my contacts, for reasons not understood, transferred from old phone to new one). So I texted back: Congratulations on what?

And it was Davina (D A Prince), who was at the Michael Marks Event in the British Library, and with her Clare Best, who also texted me. And we had WON. So there was much jumping up and down in the HappenStance household, phone calls hither and thither. Descriptions from Davina and Clare on the phone. Tessa Ransford had picked up the cheque on my behalf and made a nice speech.

Anyway, I won’t go on about this further, except to remark that five thousand quid is a huge sum of money in terms of pamphlet publishing. My annual turnover is about eight thousand pounds. Last year there was a loss of about two. For 2008-2009 I should have come closer to breaking even but I haven’t done the books yet. So five thousand extra?! I will be thinking very carefully how that money can be spent, apart from upgrading my Imac which will be step one. And I’ll report on that too, in Chapter Five of the Story, which goes out to subscribers.

I feel proud and pleased to get this money. And at the same time . . . pamphlet publishing is obviously important to me, and although I willingly entered this competition for cash and kudos, this niche of publishing is not competitive in the ordinary way (except with itself, in the desire to get better and better).

The other publishers on the short list (and many who either didn’t enter or weren’t short listed) are not competitors; they are — what is the word? Not exactly ‘colleagues’ but close to that. Perhaps fellow workers, slogging away in slightly different territory. I admire the work of Templar, for example, very much. And Oystercatcher who won last year. I know little about Veer Books, would like to know more, but nothing of theirs has come in for review by Sphinx even . . . And there are some wonderful people who won’t have entered, doing remarkable work (see all the stories told in Sphinx over the last four years).

Think what a difference the Smith/Doorstop pamphlets have made over the last decade! And the publishers of the short-listed poets — tall-lighthouse, Roncadora Press, Flarestack (whose Selima Hill took the prize), Nine Arches. So far as I am concerned, there is something terrific about the activity, the dynamism that represents a small press. Without the inspiration of James Robertson’s Kettillonia, I would never have started. In Scotland alone, think of the late Duncan Glen’s Akros imprint, the very much alive Hamish Whyte’s Mariscat and Colin Will’s Calder Wood Press, and Koo Press in Aberdeen! Think of the work of Hansel Press and the amazing letter press-artist-poet Len McDermid! Think of the gorgeous pamphlets done by Sally Evans and Ian King of Diehard Press last year! Think of the marvellous range of publications celebrated on the Scottish Pamphlet Poetry Website!

There is plenty of celebration of individual poets — prizes galore. This publisher’s award isn’t about an individual — it’s about the whole process of bringing the work to readers, bringing it into the light.

So it does occur to me that such sums of money, rather than going to a single prize winner, should perhaps be shared round a bit. What I want is to support this kind of activity, uphold high values of production and enterprise, increase good opportunities for aspiring and established poets, keep this bit of poetry activity vibrant and interesting. Winning is not about me as an individual — at least I certainly hope not. It’s about all the poets I’ve worked with and am still working with, the two excellent printers I use, the local post office, the man who sticks the stamps on the envelopes, Sarah who does (among other things) the website and email newsletter, Gillian who does the cover images, the subscribers — the hugely important subscribers, without which the thing wouldn’t even keep afloat.

Which is where I will stop for the moment. Much more to be said, but not yet. Thank you to all those people who have enthused, supported, helped. Thanks to the Sphinx reviewers who carry out this activity without recompense, except in appreciation and respect. Thanks to the amazing poets I’ve had the privilege of working with. And of course boundless thanks to Lady Marks for munificence and generosity towards this area of the arts.

Party preliminaries

It’s complicated. In 2005 I bought ten ISB numbers. To my surprise I’d used them all up within two years and I bought another hundred.

Three years later I’m over half way through that hundred. The idea at the birthday party, Saturday June 12th, is to do a kind of ‘This is your life’, recalling all that’s been and indicating a bit of what’s to come. But there’s a lot of it.

It’s complicated. In 2005 I bought ten ISB numbers. To my surprise I’d used them all up within two years and I bought another hundred.

I think about twenty of the poets should be there, all reading little bits or in one case quite a lot. Some is happy, some is sad, some is performancey, some is music, some is cake. It will be grrrrrrrreat.

In preparation I am making lists and lists of lists. Up to now I have been making electronic lists upstairs, and sending out more invitations to people I think I might have forgotten or whose reply I think I have managed to lose. Soon I am going downstairs to make more lists on pieces of normal paper.

Meanwhile, the Ruth Pitter Selected came home this week and so did David Ford’s Punch. The former is cheering and consolatory: Pitter has that effect. She is a magical poet. Punch, on the other hand, is one of the darkest collections I have done. Many of the poems have stunning impact: they are also often sinister and somewhat scary. Neither David nor Ruth can be at the party (though for somewhat different reasons) but Gina Wilson and Gill Andrews (the next two pamphlets) should be there.

Also expecting a whean of others – a plethora of poets including, Andrew Philip, Rob A Mackenzie, Clare Best, Jeremy Page, Alison Brackenbury, Janet Loverseed, D A Prince, Sally Festing, Jon Stone, Robin Vaughan-Williams, Ross Kightly, Paula Jennings, Jennifer Copley, Stewart Conn, Christine de Luca, Margaret Christie — and MORE! Honestly this is THE poetry event of the year.

Do join us, (Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh, 3.00 for 3.30) but let me know because numbers are swelling (and swell). nell@happenstancepress.com

: Ruth Pitter cover

Right as rain

All the ‘spare’ time in the last ten days has been spent looking for used cars with Gillian (artist daughter). She passed her test (first time, unlike her mother) about two weeks ago and needs to have a vehicle to drive. ‘Bean cans on wheels’ my mechanic partner calls them. He hates cars . . . However, we finally found one yesterday: a pale blue Getz. Let’s getz a Getz. Here it is, or similar.

: Gillian’s car

It reminded me of the first car I and my then husband bought together, which was a little red Fiat (we didn’t know about Fiats then) with a sunshine roof. The salesman had huge ears which practically flapped while he was talking.

We took the car out to the Derbyshire hills the first weekend after the purchase, excited to get away on our own for a country walk. The brakes failed on the top of a hill. Completely. We got home on handbrake and gears — jist and nae mair, as they say in Scotland. I remember confronting the flapping-eared salesman in a state of fury, shouting We could have been killed! In which case the world would have been saved from this blog entry. But we weren’t, and I hope Gillian and Jamie won’t be either, even though I’ve lain awake all week visualising them in endless car crashes.

So the poetry, to stay in metaphor, has taken a bit of a back seat, though a lot of things are about to happen. The Ruth Pitter Selected has been to Mark Pitter, Ruth’s nephew and copyright holder, for approval and he likes what I’ve done — so that’s a relief. I need to send a copy with the cover to (artist and poet) Alan Dixon, who has done the woodcut on the cover for his approval now (see image on left).

: The Traveller

Alan did Persephone in Hades as well. I love his woodcuts. In fact, I have many more of them which don’t fit onto pamphlet covers but which strike me as gorgeous. We used one on the Conversation with Ruth Pitter as well — not the one originally intended but a splendid cat walking along a wall. Alan loves cats.

I should be talking to David Ford later this morning and hopefully finalising most of the details of his pamphlet, Punch. Jeremy Page’s In and Out of the Dark Wood may be back from the printer by the end of this week. We’ll see.

The Po-Rating Standardisation Exercise is nearly complete. I sent the same pamphlet to 34 reviewers to rate, using the four criteria we’ve had in place since the tripartite review system went online. The results are very interesting. It doesn’t surprise me that the judgement on the poetry varies dramatically (a 4 being the lowest and a 10 the highest). However, it does surprise me that the variation on production quality is almost as wide (lowest 5, highest 10). I’m still thinking about how to put the feedback on this together.

Meanwhile, the latest issue of The Bow-Wow Shop is out. I particularly liked the bit on How Editors Choose. The return from Peter and Ann Sansom is cheering. The lack of return from some editors provokes many an evil chuckle. The B-W Shop has a great logo. I find the fully-justified white on black text extremely hard going though (I cut and paste into Word, change the justification and THEN read it) but at least the web makes that possible. (And the reviews are a long, long column, entailing endless scrolling and encouraging the supposition that nobody reads reviews anyway). And the left-hand toolbar lists the contents of issue 5 immediately on top of issue 4, which is confusing at best. Ezines are still thinking about themselves. Ease of reading on screen is paramount and rarely achieved. So much easier to work out how to accomplish this on paper, because of the centuries of forerunners.

Allegedly, an affiliation has been agreed between B-W Shop and P N Review, two very different publications but with some of the same writers. I think of P N Review, which I have had cause to admire in many ways over the years (not least for surviving and retaining its own character), as a solidly male magazine. Lots of lengthy male reflections in a solidly male prose style. Thankfully, there are bits in this Bow-Wow by interesting women like Nancy Campbell, reporting on her experience as writer in residence in Upernavik Museum, Greenland. I don’t mean to go ON about the male/female balance. It’s just a reminder that there are some women writing excellent prose. Haul more of them in!

Peter Daniels in the Bow-Wow also reviews some HappenStance publications appreciatively, which is nice and the appreciation is appreciated. He says HappenStance has style and a sense of purpose. Health warning: you have to scroll a long way down a fully-justified reviews column to find his comments on Paula Jennings (Out of the Body of the Green Girl), Clare Best (Treasure Ground) and Jon Stone (Scarecrows): look for the bit titled The Pamphleteers March On. And yes, there does seem to be a lot of fuss about pamphlets lately. It is still hard to sell 150 copies of anything — believe me.

Now, I must go make another pamphlet. And maybe some breakfast with purpose and style.

: Alan Dixon. Isn’t this marvellous?