The HappenStance Story – Unsuitable Blog and HappenStance News

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.

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”.

WHAT THE F?

Publishers are not to be trusted, and a poet (thank you, Oscar Wilde) can survive anything but a misprint. Yes, I did it again.

We live in a marketing age and it is very easy for poets to get lost. It is necessary to promote them, or at least we’ve accepted that it is. Hence Twitter and tweeting, Facebook and fleeting, Blurb and bleating.

I do my best in this world of pzazz and huzza. However, I make mistakes. I blame the Fs. After all, I never had a problem with Cliff Ashby. It is because Cliff Forshaw’s second name also begins with . . . F. Cliff Forshaw's Tiger

But I should explain: when people arrive at the HappenStance website, they can elect to receive the email newsletter. Quite a lot do just this. The emails go out three or four times a year, with news of new publications and exciting (sic) events. From my point of view, this is a good thing, since it elicits a small skirmish of orders, and that’s what keeps the boat afloat, the flag flying and the metaphors mixing.

On the other hand, it is one more thing to do in the list of necessities for each new publication. Things such as:

registration with Nielsen
bio page and photo on website
scan cover for online shop
information data for online shop
open sales file and author address labels
do the marketing flyer and electronic flyer
do the review slip
ask poet for review addresses
remember dog chews for printer’s dogs
pick up publication from printer
check bank balance
pay printer
pay artist
post out review copies
post out complimentary copies
send to copyright libraries
send to Scottish Poetry Library
send to National Poetry Library
send author copies to author
send cheque or more copies to author
enter for PBS quarterly choice (3 copies)
send to my mother
create a storage space
include new publication in the diagram that helps me find where in the spare bedroom each publication is hiding
send out for Sphinx review (three reviewers who are not current authors)
mention in blog

So the email newsletter comes last. I don’t want it to be a straight repeat of what’s written elsewhere because that’s boring. So I write something new.

Last week it was something about Jennifer Copley’s Living Daylights, Chapter 5 of The HappenStance Story, and Cliff Forshaw’s Tiger.

Or it should have been Cliff Forshaw’s Tiger, but Cliff proved my downfall. I called him Geoff. I have a good friend called Geoff, whom I email every week. That could have had something to do with it.

I don’t think Cliff Forshaw gets the newsletter. He hasn’t said anything about it yet . . .

SUBSCRIBER ALERT!

Chapter Five of The HappenStance Story is written and at the printer. It is all very well being super-efficient and so on, but think what happened to the Roman Empire.

There are more subscribers than ever before. So this time the mailshot really will extend to nearly 200 people: at least £160.00 in stamps alone. And if we allow five minutes per parcel to update and print the labels, collect the flyers and inserts, put in the packet and stick the stamp on, that’s 1000 minutes which is about 17 hours non-stop, which is nearly a week of spending three hours a day doing just this.

Have I made a monster? I hope not. It is an entertaining chapter, I think, and it took me a long time to write. However, sometimes I regret living with myself and my complicated plans.

The schedule for 2011 is done. Altogether there will be 13 pamphlets and one book. The full collection will be by Gerry Cambridge and it will be terrific. The pamphlets are a marvellous set too, but then I would say that, wouldn’t I? You’ll have to make up your own mind — hopefully after buying some of them. Please buy some of them, she added weakly.

Jackie Kay, in the Guardian yesterday, said there’s definitely a poetry renaissance happening. It is a very exhausting renaissance from the point of view of a minor, and aging, midwife. (if you follow that Guardian link, do look at the URL at the top of your webpage. I love the end: poetry-poets-stage-roar-renaissance.)

The schedule for 2012 is also pencilled in, though I’m not sharing it yet because some of the poets are ‘maybes’: it depends what they send in July.

But today (hurray-poetry-poets-stage-roar-renaissance) I am proud to announce Jennifer Copley’s Living Daylights has been delivered. It was a painless birth and the bairn is about to go into the online shop. It is a beautiful sequence about the dead, all of whom arrive one day and move back into the author’s house. It is surreal, funny and sad, and close to my heart.

Cliff Forshaw’s Tiger is still waiting for its footprints, but they will arrive later today. It is another in the sequence series and it will be born by Valentine’s Day, footprints and all, without an anaesthetic. More of that next week.

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF BOOKS

I love them so much. But there are volumes of them. The pile I am reading just now would seriously injure a small child if it fell. (The books, not the child.)

At the side of my bed, there is a hillock of books which extends to the bottom of the light-shade. I am actively reading the books at the top of that hillock (several underneath have gone into good-intention territory).

Active bedtime reading currently includes: John Lucas, Next Year Will Be Better, Stephen Fry’s The Fry Chronicles and Don Paterson’s Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets. I have nearly finished the first of these, am just over halfway through the second and have been unable to resist starting the third, although I was supposed not to touch it until Stephen Fry was done with. No wonder I have odd dreams.

Others that I am sort of reading, and three of which I have to review:

Les Murray, Taller When Prone (poetry)
Patrick Ingram, What Follows? (poetry)
Paul Muldoon, Maggot (poetry)
M A Griffiths, Grasshopper (poetry)
Fiona Thackeray, The Secret’s in the Folding (short stories)
Michael Jenkins, A House in Flanders (memoir)
Marion Nestle, Food Politics (what it sounds like)
John Berryman, The Dream Songs (poetry)
Carrie Etter, The Tethers (poetry)
Walter Perrie, Lyrics and Tales in Twa Tongues (poetry)
Brian Johnstone, The Book of Belongings (poetry)
Peter Sansom, Selected Poems
Paulo Coelho, The Zahir (novel)
Iain M Banks, Inversions (novel)

Last year I spent £592.60 on books. I only know this because I keep book purchases tallied as part of my HappenStance accounts. But now I think of it, that’s not all book purchases; it’s just poetry books. So in fact, I must have spent £750. Ish.

Oh — and I forgot to mention the magazines. There is also IOTA, in all its spendidness, and it is very FAT — much more than one iota. And the last issue of PN Review. And the latest issue of Mslexia with a picture of Susan Hill on the front cover that would scare anybody off writing for life. And Obsessed with Pipework, and Krax and New Walk.

Meanwhile, I am on Chapter 12 of Chapter 5. Writing it, not reading it. That’s The HappenStance Story again. It’s my intention to finish it today. So beware subscribers! Soon that chapter will add itself to YOUR reading mountain!