Michael Mackmin – Unsuitable Blog and HappenStance News

ON WRITING TOO MUCH

‘People shouldn’t write so many poems,’ said one of the publishers.

It was at the Ledbury Festival and it was a panel event well over a decade ago. One of the issues under discussion was the quantity of poetry produced relative to the publishing outlets available. But what I remember most is Michael Mackmin’s immediate response to that statement. ‘Yes, they should,’ he said with feeling. ‘They should write as many poems as they want!’

And I agree. Even though I sigh when poets approach me with their work and tell me they’ve written over 400 poems in the last three months. But that’s not because I think they shouldn’t. It’s because more is not better, and I’m biassed in favour of slow work.

The more I think about it, the more it seems to me the act of writing is a wonderful thing, an almost holy thing. It is completely separate from the issue of publication, which is far less holy (though sometimes lovely).

It’s a communication, isn’t it, writing? And mysteriously and marvellously, its act of communication can continue after the writer is gone.

I’m working at the moment on the pieces of writing my mother left after her death, collecting them as a set. Mostly they’re stories and anecdotes, based on memory. Her brain, because of her illness, had become like a bucket with a hole in it. As fast as she filled it with stories, her ability to remember trickled out of the bottom. At first the hole was tiny and the loss was imperceptible. Then it got bigger, and bigger.

But for more than ten years, she was a member of a writing group, and this encouraged her to keep putting things down. Each week the group met, and each person read out something he or she had written during the week. To begin with, she loved this. As time went on, she used to moan and groan. ‘What on earth can I write about this week?’

There was always something. Some scrap of the past could be brought along. Some amusing thing would happen and it could be shared, and it was – with triumph and delight.

In this way, parts of her life were described for an audience, and saved. Her illness advanced, and even when her memory betrayed her utterly, those stories and rhymes could be read back to her, to her delight (‘Did I really write that?’). For family and carers, it was a way to learn things about her (and sometimes ourselves) that we would never otherwise have known.

My mother loved to write. All her life she loved it, and it was good for her. Sometimes people criticise the idea that poetry may be ‘mere’ therapy. What nonsense! Of course it’s therapeutic. All writing is.

It was important for my mother to put things into words that other people would understand, and in so doing make them clearer. Because writing does that: it clarifies.

I think of it like clarifying butter in a saucepan, where you heat the butter gently until the fat and the whey separate and the clear gold rises to the top and the milk solids sink to the bottom. But if you get over-excited and apply too much heat, the milk solids start to burn and the whole process falls apart.

Careful writing clarifies. Helps you see things. It’s a beautiful thing.

In Stephen King’s book On Writing, he says ‘Do not come lightly to the blank page’. Another way, I think, of remarking on the holiness of the act. And though I agree that the writer should not come lightly to the task, writing imparts lightness to the writer and, when the clarification process works, light to the reader.

Even here. Even in a blog, of which people write too many, too lightly.

But they should write as many as they want.

PARCELLING, PACKAGING AND THE EVIL POSTMAN

Two new pamphlets this week, and two new PoemCards. A frenzy of packets and packaging!

One was Kirsten Irving’s What To Do. Kirsten is one of the remarkable young editor/poets at the helm of Sidekick Books. (Jon Stone is the other one.) Anyone who has even glimpsed the recent Birdbook 1 will be agog to see her own first poetry collection. She has a full collection already scheduled from Salt next year but this is a chance to get a taster. She is a smashing writer. Read her!

Then there’s the irrepressible Ross Kightly, author of Gnome Balcony. Decades divide these two poets, insofar as age is concerned, but they have energy and unpredictable bounce in common. And this is Ross’s first collection too. An Australian by birth, he mixes voices and methods and sometimes mayhem. There is no holding him, and in fact, at several points he seems to be about to escape his own pamphlet.

On top of these, two lovely new PoemCards. At least I think they’re lovely. Tom Vaughan’s The Mower is a winner for Spring gardeners, lawnmower lovers, and anyone who can’t stop working. The illustration is perfect.

The other card, Stewart Conn’s, was originally devised for Valentine’s Day but it would be lovely for any romantic occasion. And it has an insert. Titled Cupid’s Dart, the dart itself (with another copy of the poem on it) is folded inside the card, ready for hurling at the heart. Really neat.

Behind the Scenes
That was the official bit. Behind the scenes, a frenzy of parceling and packaging and bone-folder folding. This is what had to be done:

Twelve author copies of What To Do in four different packets to author.
Twelve author copies of Gnome Balcony in four different packets to author.
One packet of fliers for What To Do in packet to author.
One packet of fliers for Gnome Balcony to author.
One box of 23 additional copies of What To Do in lieu of payment to author (packaged in a Suzuki drivebelt box, very useful)
One box of 23 additional copies of Gnome Balcony in lieu of payment to author (packaged in Suzuki drivebelt box)
Twenty author copies of The Mower to be folded, packaged and sent to author, with another twenty he had ordered and some copies of his Sampler, also ordered.
Twelve author copies of Cupid’s Dart to author: cards to be folded and inserts (much more complicated) to be folded.
Three copies of What To Do, Gnome Balcony, Michael Mackmin’s From There to Here, Peter Daniels’ Mr Luczinski Makes a Move, and Matthew Stewart’s Inventing Truth to Poetry Book Society for consideration for pamphlet choice (six years so far without a recommendation: can our special moment ever happen?)
Five copies of Gnome Balcony and What To Do to Agent for Copyright Libraries with accompanying letter.
One copy of Gnome Balcony and What To Do to British Library with accompanying letter.
Two copies of Gnome Balcony and What To Do to National Poetry Library with invoice, as well as copies of new PoemCards.
Two copies of Gnome Balcony and What To Do to Scottish Poetry Library.
Copies of cards and poems to Webmaster Sarah Willans, to Gillian Rose (who does the cover images), to two members of my family who get everything, two friends who get most things, and several other people.
Copies of Gnome Balcony and What To Do to three Sphinx reviewers.
Six other assorted orders despatched to customers and authors.

The Cupid’s Dart PoemCard is a labour of love. I want you to know that the folding and preparation (by hand) takes a considerable time, though it costs no more than the other cards (because I am nuts). So if you can think of anyone for whom it would be appropriate, please send for one. (You’re unlikely to get this one slipped in with an ordinary order.) And by Valentine’s Day next year, I expect a run.

I purchased all the new William Morris stamps from our local post office and had a cheery conversation with the Evil Postman, whom some of you will know of old from Chapters of the Story. I arrived on Saturday at five to twelve, and the ladies at the poet office made him wait for my two drive belt boxes to be duly labeled and put into his bags, by which time it was two minutes after twelve and he was snarling (he snarls with evil charm).

I’ll put them in the SLOW bag. That’ll mean they’ll take at least a week to get there.”

I don’t believe him. He has a gleam in his eye when he says (as he always does):

“You should get up earlier”.

COCKING IT UP AGAIN?

The email newsletter went out last week flagging three new publications. But guess what I forgot?

This is what it said:

Three new pamphlets. Which will you choose?

Matthew Stewart’s Inventing Truth is a first collection, Matthew works in Spain, and there’s a sense of moving between languages and cultures behind this unusual pamphlet. The poems are almost all brief. But they’re poignant and thoughtful. Moments in amber.

Peter Daniels is a name familiar to most readers of small press magazines. He has been writing good, resonant poems for a long time. I, for one, was convinced he already had at least one full collection in print. He hasn’t, not yet, though he will have soon. This pamphlet contains some competition winners and some new poems. Like the image on the cover, he is a writer of poise, elegance and panache.

Michael Mackmin’s pamphlet Twenty-Three Poems was published by HappenStance in 2006 and sold out quickly. Best known as editor of The Rialto, Michael’s own poems are quirky, different, experimental. If I hadn’t banned the word ‘risk-taking’ from my Sphinx reviewers I might mention something about risks. Instead, I’ll just suggest you read the poems.

The deliberate mistake (not) was failing to mention the titles of the second two new pamphlets (Twenty-Three Poems is long out of print). I thought this would add an air of mystery which would make you go and look for them.

No, that’s not really true. I just cocked it up again.

However, to make it easy, here’s a link to the shop details for

Matthew Stewart’s Inventing Truth

and

Peter Daniels’ Mr Luczinski Makes a Move

and

Michael Mackmin’s From there to here

I’m very pleased with these three. Good contrasting poets. Lovely looking publications. I sez it as knows.

Shortly there will be two more. One will be by Kirsten Irving and we think it will be called What to Do. The other is by Ross Kightly and it will probably be called Gnome Balcony.

But nothing is finalised, and I am going on holiday next week. In fact, with luck I will already be on holiday by the time you are reading this. When I come back, the poets, or their muses, may have changed their minds.

Watch this gnome . . .

HOW TO WIN A POETRY COMPETITION

I once carried out a lengthy analysis of winning entries in order to pin down the secret.

The exercise failed. All I managed to do was come up with tenuous links between winning poems, and some clear ideas about what made poets lose.

Yesterday I was at the final stage of judging the William Soutar Writing Prize, a free-to-enter Perth-based poetry competition which attracted just under two hundred entries last month. That’s a relatively small number compared to the biggies, which attract thousands and which you have to pay to enter. But at least it meant I could read all the poems.

It didn’t mean it was easy to pick the winners. My short list of 13 already excluded a couple of poems I liked a lot. It went down to 12 when I realised one exceeded the required length. (In all competitions, a surprising number put themselves out of the running by breaking the rules.)

Tim Love says “Winning competitions can be like applying for a job. The first stage is more to do with avoiding errors in order to get in the short-list. The second stage is where depth is revealed.”

I think he’s right. There were poems in my short list that would have made it to the long list of one of the major competitions. They were sound, well-made, interesting pieces of writing. With depth.

In the pile I put to one side, the non-winners, there were some fabulous lines and fragments. But in the end it’s the whole poem or nothing in a competition.

There were also the non-starters. These tend to be characterised by being presented in a centred format, often with an odd or over-large typeface, faulty punctuation — that kind of thing. It is not true (contrary to popular belief) that metre and rhyme make a poem less likely to win. But it is easier to spot weakness in formal construction, I think, than in the looser array of free verse (I was about to write ‘free dress’ — but in fact, this is partly it — how the poem is dressed.)

Back to the winners. This is the point where I became a committee of myselves. First I typed them all out again, in the same font so I wasn’t biassed by layout and typeface. Then I read them aloud. A poem is not just what it looks like and what it means: it’s how it feels in the mouth and the ear too. At least, that’s true in my book.

I had to do a bit of scouting about on the web, too, to check some background detail. When poems create a context for themselves, in terms of topical or historical reference, it’s good to check it out. Actually, I like it when the poem operates in a larger frame, when it sends its reader on a treasure hunt.

And then I sat down again with my 12 poems, all carefully typed out in Calibri. At this point, I could make a strong case for all the final contenders, and especially for particular features of each one.

But one has to decide. And that’s like the whole business of poetry publishing. In the final stages, subjective personal preference comes in. It is not enough to admire a poem. Which one do you want to learn by heart? Which do you desperately want to show your friends?

And so I did decide. But I’m not saying more about that here. It will be on the AK Bell Library website and the William Soutar website later this month . . . with the prizes awarded at Perth Writers’ Day on March 26th.

Meanwhile, for me it’s back to the three pamphlets in hand: Peter Daniels, Matthew Stewart and Michael Mackmin, winners one and all. Oh, and check out Graham Austin’s opportunity on the HappenStance competitions page. T S Eliot afficionados might like to take a crack at this.