I have been even more remiss than usual in writing blogposts since April, in part due to May being incredibly busy with the market residency and also because I was launching my poetry collection into the world. Then as soon as the residency was over I went straight into a month of hospital appointments and eye operations - none of which is very good for the soul. It has also meant that my ability to read has been somewhat curtailed and this has had a knock on effect on my writing. I have noticed this link before - if I am not reading then I tend to write a lot less. Julia Cameron calls it filling your artistic well. I am still not reading much as my eyes are not back to normal yet, and I never thought I would say this, but I am looking forward to being able to have an eye test and get new glasses.
I have, however, started writing again. I didn't think that I would write anything about the whole hospital/eye operation experience but suddenly found myself writing about it a few weeks ago. The hospital environment is like an alien world too and looking at things aslant is what we like to do in poetry so it would be hard NOT to write about it, and the jargon of the hospital and of hospital letters and literature is so weird and specific that it was just inviting me to use it in some way. I think there may be more to come on this subject...
Saturday, 16 July 2016
Wednesday, 20 April 2016
Wenlock, Books and Beyond
I am reading at Much Wenlock Poetry Festival this weekend as part of the Nine Arches Showcase with Abegail Morley and Isobel Dixon. Excited but nervous is probably the description that bests describes how I feel about it. A friend of mine suggested that I blog about the experience, which I may do if I have time.
Having a book out is tremendously exciting but it also makes one feel a little weird - it is after all the culmination of a lot of (years) work, so there is inevitably a feeling of anti-climax and something ending. There is also the realisation, as the book gets nearer to being in my hand, that other people are going to read and judge it. Having a poetry collection is very different to having poems published in journals. If a poem is published in a journal people either like it or they don't like it and move on. With a collection each poem isn't simply judged on its own individual merits - the body of work is looked at as a whole. The poems have to work together, but be different enough to one another to hold the readers attention and not make them bored. There has to be no feeling of padding - poems that are in their as filler - that perhaps aren't doing enough to earn their place. For a first collection there is also some extra pressure - as it is your first foray into the grown up poetry world - people will judge you more on your first collection than on subsequent collections. It is your first and possibly only chance to grab the poetry reader's attention, if a reader thinks your first book is weak they may not ever look at your work again.
I think it is also very important that the first collection feels like a fully realised whole and not the best poems you have written over X many years - a greatest hits almost. This is a trap that I have seen a few first collections fall into. A few strong poems and then the rest feel like filler. I have mixed emotions when I read a book like that - happy to have read some good poems, but tinged with a sadness that it wasn't good all the way through, that the poet didn't have the courage to wait longer (until they had more really strong work) or to put out a pamphlet rather than a full collection. I am hoping that my collection doesn't fall into this category. I feel confident that it doesn't because I waited and didn't publish too soon, and because I had Pascale Petit as a (most excellent) mentor and she threw out quite a lot of the padding and sent me away to write more. Working with a publisher then adds an extra stage of close editing - where poems are tweaked even more, and more poems are thrown out.
Well I will have the book in my hands in a couple of days - and it will be unleashed on the public. I wonder what they will think.
Having a book out is tremendously exciting but it also makes one feel a little weird - it is after all the culmination of a lot of (years) work, so there is inevitably a feeling of anti-climax and something ending. There is also the realisation, as the book gets nearer to being in my hand, that other people are going to read and judge it. Having a poetry collection is very different to having poems published in journals. If a poem is published in a journal people either like it or they don't like it and move on. With a collection each poem isn't simply judged on its own individual merits - the body of work is looked at as a whole. The poems have to work together, but be different enough to one another to hold the readers attention and not make them bored. There has to be no feeling of padding - poems that are in their as filler - that perhaps aren't doing enough to earn their place. For a first collection there is also some extra pressure - as it is your first foray into the grown up poetry world - people will judge you more on your first collection than on subsequent collections. It is your first and possibly only chance to grab the poetry reader's attention, if a reader thinks your first book is weak they may not ever look at your work again.
I think it is also very important that the first collection feels like a fully realised whole and not the best poems you have written over X many years - a greatest hits almost. This is a trap that I have seen a few first collections fall into. A few strong poems and then the rest feel like filler. I have mixed emotions when I read a book like that - happy to have read some good poems, but tinged with a sadness that it wasn't good all the way through, that the poet didn't have the courage to wait longer (until they had more really strong work) or to put out a pamphlet rather than a full collection. I am hoping that my collection doesn't fall into this category. I feel confident that it doesn't because I waited and didn't publish too soon, and because I had Pascale Petit as a (most excellent) mentor and she threw out quite a lot of the padding and sent me away to write more. Working with a publisher then adds an extra stage of close editing - where poems are tweaked even more, and more poems are thrown out.
Well I will have the book in my hands in a couple of days - and it will be unleashed on the public. I wonder what they will think.
Saturday, 23 January 2016
On Writing and Discovery
These outpourings come both bidden and unbidden, these bidings and bindings, these flows that can only ever be temporarily stemmed.
Writing is a rare thing but is also not/no/never a rare thing.
A rare thing indeed is to make the most perfect sense, as if to draw a sigh from the reader.
Like those blank/dry months of unsatisfying reading, when you suddenly and unexpectedly (after almost having given up all hope of ever being moved by poetry again) come upon something so right and profound that it makes you want to leap up out of your seat. throw the book into the air and shout: Yes that's it, that's exactly it! And then you want to read it again, over and over.
And it might be a mere simple, a distillation of the essence of something: a revelation of the true somethingness of something.
Or it might be a big thing, like the biggest, most exciting, most explosive use of language poem that warps your mind into a shape that it can never fully spring back from, that changes your relationship to the world/word.
And you might read it over and over.
It's a bit like sex in the excitement of that first time - the tentative and not so tentative exploration.
But it's also not like sex, because sex has room to get better and better, but although a mega exciting poem is still mega exciting on the second or fourth or sixteenth reading, you can never better that YES moment, that moment of revelation and discovery.
It must be like being an archaeologist or an explorer or an astronaut even.
That first moon-step is always going to be the one you most remember.
And these moon-steps; what are they but a doorway to another world, another way of thinking. They break the mind wide open like a rock cracked apart to reveal its crystals. They send the writer scuttling sideways for pen and paper.
Writing is a rare thing but is also not/no/never a rare thing.
A rare thing indeed is to make the most perfect sense, as if to draw a sigh from the reader.
Like those blank/dry months of unsatisfying reading, when you suddenly and unexpectedly (after almost having given up all hope of ever being moved by poetry again) come upon something so right and profound that it makes you want to leap up out of your seat. throw the book into the air and shout: Yes that's it, that's exactly it! And then you want to read it again, over and over.
And it might be a mere simple, a distillation of the essence of something: a revelation of the true somethingness of something.
Or it might be a big thing, like the biggest, most exciting, most explosive use of language poem that warps your mind into a shape that it can never fully spring back from, that changes your relationship to the world/word.
And you might read it over and over.
It's a bit like sex in the excitement of that first time - the tentative and not so tentative exploration.
But it's also not like sex, because sex has room to get better and better, but although a mega exciting poem is still mega exciting on the second or fourth or sixteenth reading, you can never better that YES moment, that moment of revelation and discovery.
It must be like being an archaeologist or an explorer or an astronaut even.
That first moon-step is always going to be the one you most remember.
And these moon-steps; what are they but a doorway to another world, another way of thinking. They break the mind wide open like a rock cracked apart to reveal its crystals. They send the writer scuttling sideways for pen and paper.
Thursday, 14 January 2016
Voice of the Ridge By C.D. Wright
I was devastated to hear of the death yesterday of my favourite poet C.D. Wright. What a loss to world poetry. My favourite poem of hers is not online so I will post it here as a tribute.
Voice of the Ridge
By
C.D. Wright
Something
about a hazy afternoon−a long drive
about cedars spearing the sky
Something
about a body at a crossing
about a dog missing a paw
about buying a freshly dressed hen
Something
about the locus of the dead
Something
about a strange town on a weekend
about large white panties on a line
About
a table in a family-owned café
an old morsel on the tines
Something
about the owner dragging one foot
Something
about wine from a jelly glass
Something
about a hazy afternoon−a long drive
about no purse no stockings
Something
about unfolding the map
about a cemetery that isn’t kept up
about grasshoppers−their knack for
surprise
Something
about finding a full set of clothes in the weed
Something
about a hazy afternoon−a long drive
about hills of goldenrod
Something
about filling-station attendants
the one blue hole in the clouds
Something
about birds of prey−the locus of the dead
Something
about the long drive home−a slow sundowning
about the din of insects
Something
about straight gold hair on a pillow
Something
about writing by the kingly light
in the quick minutes left before
lips
suction a nipple from wrinkled linen
Books read in 2015
(in reverse order to which I read them)
- 1 The Inflectionist Review Anthology of Poetry - John Sibley Williams & A. Molotkov (Editors) (poetry)
- Bunny - Selima Hill (poetry)
- What Every Body is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People - Joe Navarro (non fiction)
- The Notebook - Ágota Kristóf (fiction)
- Talking to Ourselves - Andrés Neuman (fiction)
- Jutland - Selima Hill (poetry)
- Mondeo Man - Luke Wright (poetry)
- Red Doc - Anne carson (poetry)
- Beauty/Beauty - Rebecca Perry (poetry)
- Crescendos - Jake Reynolds (poetry)
- Where is My Mask of an Honest Man? by Laura Del-Rivo (fiction, short stories)
- The Fire Station by Sarah Barnsley (poetry)
- That Smell and Notes from Prison - Sonallah Ibrahim (fiction)
- Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman and other poems - Grace Nichols (poetry)
- She Inserts the Key - Marianne Burton (poetry)
- Black Neon - Tony O'Neill (fiction)
- Actual Air - David Berman (poetry)
- Things to Make and Break - May-Lan Tan (fiction, short stories)
- Human Work: A Poet's Cookbook - Sean Borodale (poetry)
- The Age of Wire and String Fictions - Ben Marcus (fiction, short stories)
- Disinformation - Frances Leviston (poetry)
- At the Time of Partition - Moniza Alvi (poetry, re-read)
- Beautiful Girls - Melissa Lee Houghton (poetry, re-read)
- Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by U.K. Women Poets (poetry, re-read)
- House - Myra Connell (poetry)
- Poetry in Practice - Brian Keaney and Bill Lucas (non-fiction)
- The Merchant of Feathers - Tanya Shirley (poetry)
- The Taste of River Water - Cate Kennedy (poetry)
- UEA MA Creative Writing Anthologies 2015: Poetry (poetry)
- Native Guard - Natasha Trethewey (poetry)
- Loop of Jade - Sarah Howe (poetry)
- The Very Best of 52: a poem for every week of the year - Jonathan Davidson (editor) (poetry, re.read)
- Sooner or Later Frank - Jeremy Reed (poetry)
- Blue Movie - Bobby Parker (poetry - re read)
- Dolls - Tom Whelan (poetry)
- Things to Do Before you Leave Town - Ross Sutherland (poetry)
- Some Bright Elegance - Kayo Chingonyi (poetry)
- Circus Apprentice - Katherine Gallagher (poetry)
- Blood Work - Matthew Siegel (poetry)
- The Retrieval System - Maxine Kumin (poetry, re read)
- The Knowledge - Robert Peake (poetry, re-read)
- Sudden Collapses in Public Places - Julia Darling (poetry)
- Shibboleth - Michael Donaghy (poetry)
- Lifting the Piano With One Hand - Gaia Holmes (poetry)
- Making Nice - Matt Sumell (fiction, short stories)
- Wild Gratitude - Edward Hirsch (poetry)
- Trilobites & Other Stories - Breece D'J Pancake (fiction, short stories)
- Citizen: An American Lyric (poetry)
- Kith - Jo Bell (poetry, re read)
- See You in Paradise - J. Robert Lennon (fiction, short stories)
- Eliza and the Bear - Eleanor Rees (poetry)
- Physical - Andrew Macmillan (poetry)
- The Good Dark - Ryan Van Winkle (poetry)
- When God is a Traveller - Arundhathi Subramaniam (poetry)
- School of the Arts - Mark Doty (poetry)
- National Poetry Competition Winners' Anthology 2014 (poetry)
- Accurate Measurements - Adam White (poetry)
- The World Before Snow - Tim Liardet (poetry)
- Kim Kardashian's Marriage - Sam Riviere (poetry)
- The Organ Box - Matt Howard (poetry)
- The Knowledge - Robert Paeake (poetry)
- The Whole & Rain-domed Universe - Colette Bryce (poetry)
- The Very Best of 52: a poem for every week of the year - Jonathan Davidson (editor) (poetry)
- The Next Country - Idra Novey (poetry)
- Happiness - Jack Underwood (poetry)
- The Bluffer's Guide to Poetry - Nick Yapp (non fiction)
- Missing the Eclipse - Joan Hewitt (poetry)
- Beautiful Girls - Melissa Lee-Houghton (poetry)
- Tell Me the Truth About Love - W.H. Auden (poetry)
- My Family and other Superheroes - Jonathan Edwards (poetry)
- Moon Whales - Ted Hughes (poetry)
- Kumkum Malhotra - Preti Taneja (fiction)
- The Hitting Game - Graham Clifford (poetry)
- Corpus - Michael Symmons Roberts (poetry)
- Langoustine: Fragments of a Philosophical Marine Romance - George Szirtes (poetry)
- A Radiance - Bethany W. Pope (poetry)
- Bright Travellers - Fiona Benson (poetry)
- Small Hands - Mona Arshi (poetry)
- Those People - Paul Stephenson (poetry)
- Monkey Grip - Helen Garner (fiction)
- The Zoo Father - Pascale Petiit (poetry - re-read)
- Under the Pier - Selena Godden (poetry)
- The Gold Cell - Sharon Olds (poetry)
- The Summer Son: A Novel - Craig Lancaster (fiction)
- Prayers for the Stolen - Jennifer Clement (fiction)
- You Good Thing - Dara Wier (poetry)
- Indwelling - Gillian Allnutt (poetry)
- Navigation - Jo Bell (poetry)
- Grain - John Glenday (poetry)
- Permission to Breathe - Michael Laskey (poetry)
- The Albertine Workout - Anne Carson (poetry)
- The Collected Works of Billy the Kid - Michael Ondaatje (poetry)
- Skirrid Hill - Owen Sheers (poetry)
- Battleborn - Claire Vaye Watkins (fiction, short stories)
- Between Two Windows - Oli Hazzard (poetry)
- Blue Movie - Bobby Parker (poetry)
- Kith - Jo Bell (poetry)
- The Dead Lake - Hamid Ismailov (fiction, re-read)
- The Chicago Poems - Karl Sandburg (poetry)
- Prester John - John Buchan (fiction)
- The Korean Word For Butterfly - James Zerndt (fiction)
- Hallelujah for 50ft Women by Raving Beauties Hallelujah for 50ft Women: Poems About Women's Relationship to Their Bodies - edited by The Raving Beauties (poetry)
- Duetcetera - Ira Lightman (poetry)
- Gumbeaux - Kimberly Vargas (fiction)
- The Secret Life of Objects - Dawn Raffel (non fiction)
- The Awakening - Kate Chopin (fiction)
- Skelelittle - Ira Lightman (poetry)
- Party - Jackie Wills (poetry)
- One Dead Behind Us - Audre Lorde (poetry)
- The Answer to the Riddle Is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia - David Stuart MacLean (non-fiction)
- The Half-Finished Heaven - Tomas Tranströmer- translated by Robert Bly (poetry)
- Science and Steepleflower - Forrest Gander (poetry)
- Trains of Winnipeg - Clive Holden (poetry)
- Disclaimer - Renee Knight (fiction)
- Fauna - Jacueline Bishop (poetry)
- Ten: The New Wave - edited by Karen McCarthy Woolf (poetry)
- Soon Every House Will have One - Holly Hopkins (poetry)
- The Shared Surface - Jane Monson (poetry)
- What the Living Do - Marie Howe (poetry, re-read)
- Inventory - Linda Black (poetry)
- The Girl On the Train - Paula Hawkins (fiction)
- Touching Distances - Diary Poems - Anne Cluysenaar (poetry)
- Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence - Geoff Dyer (non fiction)
- After This Comes the Food - Sarah Perry (fiction)
- The Red Wardrobe - Sarah Corbett (poetry)
- The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald (fiction)
- Stop What You're Doing and Read This! - Various (non fiction)
- Woman's Head as a Jug - Jackie Wills (poetry)
- Odessa - Patricia Kirkpatrick (poetry)
- The Shining Girls - Lauren Beukes (fiction)
- The Lichtenberg Figures - Ben Lerner (poetry)
- How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2002 - Joy Harjo (poetry)
- Life in a Box is a Pretty Life - Dawn Lundy Martin (poetry)
- The White Road and Other Stories - Tania Hershman (short stories)
- On Purpose - Nick Laird (poetry)
- Livid among the Ghostings - Anna Percy (poetry)
- My Soul to Take - Yrsa Sigurðardóttir (fiction)
- Into the Darkest Corner - Elizabeth Haynes (fiction)
- Human Remains - Elizabeth Haynes (fiction)
- In the Miso Soup - Ryū Murakami (fiction)
- The Whole Story and Other Stories - Ali Smith (fiction - short stories)
- A Responsibility to Awe: Poems - Rebecca Elson (poetry)
- The Husband's Secret - Liane Moriarty (fiction)
- Snow Calling - Agnieszk Studzinska (poetry)
- Vauxhall - Gabriel Gbadamosi (fiction)
- In the Bee Latitudes - "Annah Sobelman (poetry)
- Slow man - J.M. Coetzee (fiction)
- The Indian Bride - Karin Fossum (fiction)
- The Woods - Harlen Coben (fiction)
- The Farm - Tom Rob Smith (fiction)
- The Three - Sarah Lotz (fiction)
- The Retrieval System - Maxine Kumin (poetry)
- The Barking Thing - Suzanne Batty (poetry)
Sunday, 4 October 2015
Some thoughts on new writers and publishing
As a tutor one of the most common mistakes I see in new writers is their acting to soon on that urge to get their work out there. I think most writers have it - I definitely did - when you really find the thing you feel is your calling it is very exciting and every new poem or short story you write is the best thing you have ever written and of course you can't wait to share it with the rest of the world. And maybe it IS the best thing YOU have ever written, and maybe your friends and family and even tutors have praised it, but that doesn't mean that it will necessarily cut it in the competitive publishing world.
I am not saying this to be mean or judgemental - I sent out some howlers before I knew better. For years I wrote poetry without really working on (or knowing how to work on) my craft and I would send the best (in my eyes) of those poems to the occasional competition convinced it might stand a chance - I look back on those with horror now. And then when I started writing seriously and my work started improving and evolving and I was dipping my toe into the writing world, again I was keen to start getting it out there. I remember a particularly painful rejection that came from a guest editor of Magma suggesting I might want to do a creative writing course - I was apoplectic at the time - I was in the last year of a creative writing degree of course I was a serious writer - but looking back he was right. My writing was showing signs of something promising but I was still making beginner's mistakes and I was nowhere near there yet (not that I am now either - but I am a bit further along the path).
A wise tutor (and respected poet) once told me that it takes six years hard work to become a mediocre poet. At the time I thought that was a little harsh but now I realise that he was right. I have worked on my craft seriously for six years now (I don't count the time on my Creative Writing BA in that - if I count that too it's nine years) and I only now feel that I am really beginning to find my feet with my writing. I started sending work out sporadically to journals towards the end of my MA year and didn't start thinking about pulling poems into a pamphlet or collection until a couple of years after that. And all the while I was writing a lot as well as reading lots of journals, poetry collections, poetry websites, essays and books on writing.
Social media has been a great thing for writers. I am involved with several Facebook workshopping groups and was part of Jo Bell's 52 project last year. Social media has enabled writers to feel less isolated, to make connections, to get invaluable feedback on their work, and to make lasting friendships. But the down side of this web community is that it can make people competitive and over eager to be published. Consequently there has been a small rash of web zines and journals springing up that are not overly discerning about what they publish and don't reject much (if any work). On the one hand a little healthy competition can be good and more poetry publishing opportunities must surely be a good thing, but the down side of this is that it is easier than ever to get into print but that the quality of the work being published is not always so good. I know from my own experience that as you improve as a writer that you are sometimes embarrassed by your earlier efforts - which is OK if it is just the odd poem in a back issue of a journal that no one will ever see - but less good if it is emblazoned across the internet and the first thing that comes up if an editor googles your name. Luckily for me the internet poetry world was not so big when I started out and I have managed to locate and delete the awful poetry blog I started years ago.
So what's my point? I am not saying that new writers should never send work out or think about what might happen further down the line if they keep writing. I am just saying be cautious. Sit on your work for a while first, edit re-edit, put it away for a while and then edit some more. Be aware that not everything you write will be good enough to publish - I probably write 10-15 poems to get one or two that are OK. Keep reading and writing and reading. Read widely. Read journals to see what's out there and get an idea of where your work might eventually sit. Read collections to learn and be inspired and to get an idea of how collections work. If you are a relatively new writer put publishing on the back burner for a bit - it's better to enter in a blaze of glory than with something mediocre, and if getting published is your only reason for writing perhaps consider another career.
I am not saying this to be mean or judgemental - I sent out some howlers before I knew better. For years I wrote poetry without really working on (or knowing how to work on) my craft and I would send the best (in my eyes) of those poems to the occasional competition convinced it might stand a chance - I look back on those with horror now. And then when I started writing seriously and my work started improving and evolving and I was dipping my toe into the writing world, again I was keen to start getting it out there. I remember a particularly painful rejection that came from a guest editor of Magma suggesting I might want to do a creative writing course - I was apoplectic at the time - I was in the last year of a creative writing degree of course I was a serious writer - but looking back he was right. My writing was showing signs of something promising but I was still making beginner's mistakes and I was nowhere near there yet (not that I am now either - but I am a bit further along the path).
A wise tutor (and respected poet) once told me that it takes six years hard work to become a mediocre poet. At the time I thought that was a little harsh but now I realise that he was right. I have worked on my craft seriously for six years now (I don't count the time on my Creative Writing BA in that - if I count that too it's nine years) and I only now feel that I am really beginning to find my feet with my writing. I started sending work out sporadically to journals towards the end of my MA year and didn't start thinking about pulling poems into a pamphlet or collection until a couple of years after that. And all the while I was writing a lot as well as reading lots of journals, poetry collections, poetry websites, essays and books on writing.
Social media has been a great thing for writers. I am involved with several Facebook workshopping groups and was part of Jo Bell's 52 project last year. Social media has enabled writers to feel less isolated, to make connections, to get invaluable feedback on their work, and to make lasting friendships. But the down side of this web community is that it can make people competitive and over eager to be published. Consequently there has been a small rash of web zines and journals springing up that are not overly discerning about what they publish and don't reject much (if any work). On the one hand a little healthy competition can be good and more poetry publishing opportunities must surely be a good thing, but the down side of this is that it is easier than ever to get into print but that the quality of the work being published is not always so good. I know from my own experience that as you improve as a writer that you are sometimes embarrassed by your earlier efforts - which is OK if it is just the odd poem in a back issue of a journal that no one will ever see - but less good if it is emblazoned across the internet and the first thing that comes up if an editor googles your name. Luckily for me the internet poetry world was not so big when I started out and I have managed to locate and delete the awful poetry blog I started years ago.
So what's my point? I am not saying that new writers should never send work out or think about what might happen further down the line if they keep writing. I am just saying be cautious. Sit on your work for a while first, edit re-edit, put it away for a while and then edit some more. Be aware that not everything you write will be good enough to publish - I probably write 10-15 poems to get one or two that are OK. Keep reading and writing and reading. Read widely. Read journals to see what's out there and get an idea of where your work might eventually sit. Read collections to learn and be inspired and to get an idea of how collections work. If you are a relatively new writer put publishing on the back burner for a bit - it's better to enter in a blaze of glory than with something mediocre, and if getting published is your only reason for writing perhaps consider another career.
Monday, 7 September 2015
Getting it out there revisited
Reading back over my blog posts I came across one I had written in February called Getting it Out There. In the post I bemoan the fact that I had very little (almost nothing actually) published last year. The upshot was that with the encouragement of Heidi Williamson my writing coach, and after reading Jo Bell's blog post about poetry submissions, I decided to shake up my approach to submissions.
When I say shake it up what I actually mean is put a rocket under it and light the touch paper. I resolved that I would send out at least one submission per week. What I found when I first started doing this was that some weeks I would send more than one lot of poems off - it's the getting started that's the hard bit, but once I have I sometimes find that I get on a roll and then it's easy to send more. My new spreadsheets (submission spreadsheet and poem destinations) make it much easier to track where I am sending stuff - and more importantly where I have sent things before - crucial if you don't want to submit the same poem to a journal twice (I have done this and it's very embarrassing!). The poem destinations spreadsheet lists all my poems that I think are submittable (probably a tenth or less of what I have written) and next to each poem all the journals each poem has been sent to. I highlight a journal in yellow if it accepts the poem so that I know not to send out the poem again. Of course spreadsheets are only as good as the person filling them in/reading them so mistakes and multiple submissions can and do still occur - but hopefully much less often.
I send to both print and online journals - always making sure that I have read the journal first and that I send something that I think will fit either the journal's style or the theme. I have kept up this submitting schedule for several months (I have slowed down a bit now) and I have been astonished by the results. Firstly I discovered that the more rejections I receive the less bothered am. When I was sending one submission every few months I would get very attached to the outcome and feel slightly depressed when the rejection arrived. Sending more work out inevitably means a lot more rejections but when I have several submissions out there I am less attached to each one. Secondly I have had almost thirty poems published already this year, with several more pending publication. All those years I had been brooding over occasional rejections and not sending out my work because I didn't think it was good enough - something that this months Mslexia cites as a common response amongst women - all I actually needed to do was send out more work.
I send to both print and online journals - always making sure that I have read the journal first and that I send something that I think will fit either the journal's style or the theme. I have kept up this submitting schedule for several months (I have slowed down a bit now) and I have been astonished by the results. Firstly I discovered that the more rejections I receive the less bothered am. When I was sending one submission every few months I would get very attached to the outcome and feel slightly depressed when the rejection arrived. Sending more work out inevitably means a lot more rejections but when I have several submissions out there I am less attached to each one. Secondly I have had almost thirty poems published already this year, with several more pending publication. All those years I had been brooding over occasional rejections and not sending out my work because I didn't think it was good enough - something that this months Mslexia cites as a common response amongst women - all I actually needed to do was send out more work.
Of course rejection still hurts, and if I have a few nos in a row it can still make me feel despondent, but now when I feel the despondency creeping up I remind myself to look at my Publishing History and I feel a lot better about the whole thing.
Some tips for submitting:
1) Read the journal.
2) Read the submission guidelines - they vary from journal to journal.
3) Send a polite cover letter/email including a brief and relevant bio (unless the guidelines ask you not to) listing the names of the poems and thanking the editors for taking the time to read your work.
4) Send several poems so the editor gets a feel for your work.
5) Don't expect a receipt or acknowledgement that they have received it - and please don't email asking for one.
6) Don't resubmit immediately as soon as you get a rejection. Leave at least a month or so in between. Magma is the exception to this as they have a different editor for each issue.
7) If you are submitting the same poem to several places email the other places immediately if a poem is accepted elsewhere.
8) If you have a poem accepted by a journal wait to submit more work (unless they ask you for some). Journals often like to wait at least an issue before they publish a poet again - Nutshells and Nuggets asks successful submitters to wait six months before re-submitting.
9) Don't use fancy fonts.
10) include you name and contact details in the header or footer of each page (unless the journal asks you not to - some journals read anonymously - check the guidelines).
11) Don't automatically assume a poem is bad because it gets rejected - I have had poems published after being rejected by five other places, and some that are strong that haven't found a home because they don't quite fit anywhere.
12) Don't send a poem out too soon after writing. Leave it a bit and edit it again. If you can take it to a workshopping group. If you write a poem you feel will be good there is always that excitement that makes you want to send it out into the world too soon - and if you do this the likelihood is it will be rejected. You will look at it later and feel embarrassed because it needs editing - but then, of course, you can't submit it to that journal as they have already rejected it. I speak from bitter experience!
11) Don't automatically assume a poem is bad because it gets rejected - I have had poems published after being rejected by five other places, and some that are strong that haven't found a home because they don't quite fit anywhere.
12) Don't send a poem out too soon after writing. Leave it a bit and edit it again. If you can take it to a workshopping group. If you write a poem you feel will be good there is always that excitement that makes you want to send it out into the world too soon - and if you do this the likelihood is it will be rejected. You will look at it later and feel embarrassed because it needs editing - but then, of course, you can't submit it to that journal as they have already rejected it. I speak from bitter experience!
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