Getting it Out There

I was updating my personal bibliography a couple of months ago and was shocked to discover that I had only had one poem published in 2014. I had had work accepted that will come out this year, I had been shortlisted in a pamphlet competition and I had written a couple of reviews - but still only one poem. I was shocked. Part of my problem is that I have never been pro-active enough about sending out my work. I had a beginner's flurry - where you send out lots of work that isn't good enough because you are so excited about this amazing writing thing. But since then I have sent out in fits and starts - fits mostly.

Once I had discovered this I started sending the occasional thing out. I also made one of my New Year Resolutions to be to get my work out there more to send out at least one submission a week. The more work you send out, the more you stand a chance of having something accepted, and ultimately the more chance you have of a publisher taking your pamphlet or collection seriously - it's not rocket science. Amazingly once you start sending work out regularly it suddenly becomes less of a big deal. I have found that now I am sending out more and more work, and I have already had a few things accepted.

There are two things that really helped motivate me with this - one was being coached by a friend who was training as a writing coach - kind of like a life coach but for writers. She asked me lots of questions about my writing life that made me think about what I do and why - you can read more about that here. The second thing was reading a blog post by Canal Laureate Jo Bell, which you can read here. One of the things that Jo suggests is making a database or spreadsheet to track which pieces of writing you send where and when you might expect a reply by. This is a brilliant (and simple) idea. It means that you are less likely to submit the same poem to journals at the same time, or, and I have done this, send the same poem to the same journal twice.  I actually made two spreadsheets - one that shows which all the journals poems have been submitted to - I highlight the place it is eventually published in - and the other which shows what poems are currently out, where they have gone and when to expect a reply by. It has certainly revolutionised my submission practice.

Family Albums and the Movability of Memory

Blow the bugles, bang the drums - I seem to have started a new sequence of poems, although I must confess that I am a little scared of looking at them in the cold light of day. The seed of the idea has been germinating away somewhere in deep in my mind for weeks. It started when I watched a film called Stories We Tell - a film that describes the journey of one family (or really one woman) through interviews with family members and friends, interspersed with old home movie footage and photos. It is a fascinating film and a moving story - or rather stories - because what the film highlights is how we all view events differently from one another, and how memory manipulates events over time to suit our own world view.

A few weeks later I went to my Grandma's funeral. One of the things that my aunts had done was to leave out some photo albums for us to look at, and in one were photos of my family (me, my dad and mum and brother and sister) that I had never seen before - as well as quite a few pictures of my father as a child.  Some of the photos in the album were identical to photos in our own family photo albums and this got me thinking about who might have taken the pictures. I had always assumed that it was my mum and dad - but actually it could just as easily have been visiting relatives.  We did have a family camera but I don't remember it being used very much. I guess developing photographs was expensive in the 1970s.  

Things have been busy since the funeral and I didn't think much more about the photos, but yesterday evening, for some reason, the whole idea of family albums came back into my mind. I decided to write a few poems or verbal sketches of photos from the photo albums of my childhood, but rather than get the albums out and look at the photos I would try and write about them from my memories of the photos.  This was an interesting exercise - writing a memory of a memory of a memory. It will be interesting at some point to look at the actual photographs and see if my memory of them is true. I may even write from some of the other photos, but for the moment it is the process that I am finding interesting. 

Another thing that happened was that writing about a memory of a picture led me to realise that I could take a leap further - what if I was to write about a picture that could have been taken but never was. We all have memories of things that happened and people who came and went from our childhood homes, but we don't always have any photographic evidence of these people. Nowadays we have mobile phones with photographic capabilities so everything is much more documented, but in the 70s and 80s developing film was expensive so people tended to mostly take pictures of special occasions - birthdays, holidays, that kind of thing. Human memory is pictorial - I have lots of memories of childhood that are like little home movies or still images that I can call to mind - like the children next door looking over the fence or my aunt coming to visit unexpectedly in her fur coat and bearing gifts of easter eggs and cuddly toys. I found myself writing about the non-existent photos of those memories.  Of course it could be that the poems will turn out to be nonsense - they may be more like small vignettes and be of no interest to anybody else but me. Whether this is the case or not it is interesting writing them and I imagine it may trigger other memories - if nothing else I will have fun. I wrote quite a bit about autobiographical poetry back in 2008. Here is a rough draft.

The Girl from Number 79

This is the girl from next door
who offered to take you swimming,
this is her standing on the top rung of the fence
looking into your garden,
here is your mother explaining how to hold
her hand as you cross the roads,
here you are with your mouth and nose
filled with chlorinated water,
and here you are again
under the wheels of a Morris Traveller,
the driver's mouth an O of surprise,
and here is the girl
whose name you can't remember
wearing her grumpy face
because your mum has changed her mind
and said you are too young to go.

Books Read in 2014

• Last first...
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• 93 In the Bee Latitudes - ‘Annah Sobelman (poetry)
• 92) The Legend of Colton H. Bryant - Alexandra Fuller (non-fiction)
• 91) Maggie and Me - Damaien Barr (non-fiction)
• 90) The Gypsy and the Poet - David Morley (poetry)
• 89) Every Day is for the Thief - Teju Cole (fiction)
• 88) Notes From the Balcony - Lynn Woollacott (poetry)
• 87) Like Rabbits - Lynne Bryan (fiction)
• 86) Diary Of an Unsmug Married - Polly James (fiction)
• 85) Granta 113: The Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists (fiction - short stories)
• 84) My Sister's Keeper - Bill Benners (fiction)
• 83) The Mathematics of Friedrich Gauss: Family Snapshots - D.W. Wilson (fiction)
• 82) All One Breath - John Burnside (poetry)
• 81) Beneath Stars Long Extinct - Ron Egatz (poetry)
• 80) Small Grass - Jacqueline Gabbitas (poetry)
• 79) Place - Jorie Graham (poetry)
• 78) The Beginner's Goodbye - Anne Tyler (fiction)
• 77) The Waterproof Bible - Andrew Kaufman (fiction)
• 76) Picture Me Gone - Meg Rossoff (fiction)
• 75) And After All This I Saw: Selections from the Work of Julian of Norwich - Edwin Kelly (poetry)
• 74) The Book of Strange New Things - Michel Faber (fiction)
• 73) Irene - Piere Lemaitre (fiction)
• 72) At the Time of Partition - Moniza Alvi (poetry)
• 71) Black Country - Liz Berry (poetry)
• 70) Wreaking - James Scudamore (fiction)
• 69) Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee (fiction)
• 68) Thunderstruck and other Stories - Elizabeth McCracken (fiction - short stories)
• 67) Ballistics - D.W. Wilson (fiction)
• 66) The Dead Lake - Hamid Ismailov (fiction)
• 65) Strange Bodies - Marcel Theroux (fiction)
• 64) When I was Five I Killed Myself - Howard Buten (fiction)
• 63) Fauverie - Pascale Petit (poetry)
• 62) Zoo Father - Pascale Petit (poetry, re-read)
• 61) The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes (fiction)
• 60) Snapper - Brian Kimberling (fiction)
• 59) Imagined Sons - Carrie Etter (poetry)
• 58) Under the Skin - Michael Faber (fiction)
• 57) The Lake in the Woods - Tim O'Brien (fiction)
• 56) Moontide - Niall Campbell (poetry)
• 55) Comradely Greetings – Nadya Tolokonnikova (non-fiction)
• 54) This is Yarrow - Tara Bergin (poetry)
• 53) Parallax -Sinead Morrisey (poetry)
• 52) Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn (fiction)
• 51) Sins of the Leopard - James Brooks (poetry)
• 50) The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion - Kei Miller (poetry)
• 49) The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson (fiction)
• 48) Elizabeth is Missing - Emma Healey (fiction)
• 47) Ties that Bind - Catherine Deveney (fiction)
• 46) Hoad and other Stories - Sarah Passingham (fiction, short stories)
• 45) The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (fiction)
• 44) The Universe Versus Alex Woods - Gavin Extence (fiction)
• 43) Erosion - S.A. Hemmings (fiction)
• 42) Sic Transit Wagon and other stories - Barbara Jenkins (Fiction, short stories)
• 41) The White Lioness - henning Mankell (fiction)
• 40) The Impossible Dead - Ian Rankin (fiction)
• 39) Hot Damn - Cat Woodward (poetry)
• 38) Candide - Voltaire (fiction)
• 37) Black Beauty - Anna Sewell (fiction)
• 36) Sleeping Keys - Jean Sprackland (poetry)
• 35) Double Negative - Ivan Vladislavic (non fiction)
• 34) Planet-shaped Horse - Luke Kennard (poetry)
• 33) Bysuss - Jen Hadfield (poetry)
• 32) Division Street - Helen Mort (poetry)
• 31) Tenth of December - George Saunders (fiction - re-read)
• 30) Adventures in Form - edited by Tom Chivers (poetry)
• 29) Bevel - William Letford (poetry, re-read)
• 28) Barcelona - Philip Langeskov (fiction)
• 27) Love Me Do - Lydia Macpherson (poetry)
• 26) Gathering Evidence - Caoilinn Hughes (poetry)
• 25) Perfect -Rachel Joyce (fiction)
• 24) Strange Weather inTokyo - Hiromi Kawakami ( fiction)
• 23) Standard Twin Fantasy - Sam Riviere (poetry)
• 22) Forward Book of Poetry 2014 (poetry)
• 21) Yoga - Tom Warner (poetry)
• 20) Love, Nina, Despatches from Family Life - Nina Stibbe (non fiction)
• 19) Instant-Flex 718 - Heather Phillipson (poetry)
• 18) Enough About You - Notes Towards the New Autobiography - David Shields (non-fiction)
• 17) Ink's Wish - Sarah Law (poetry)
• 16) When the Killing's Done - T.C. Boyle (fiction)
• 15) Violet - Selima Hill (poetry - re-read)
• 14) The Marlowe Papers - Ros Barber (poetry)
• 13) Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro (fiction)
• 12) Truffle Beds - Katherine Pierpoint (poetry)
• 11) The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt (fiction)
• 10) Stag's Leap - Sharon Olds (poetry, re-read)
• 9) Splitfish - Kiran Millwood Hargrave (poetry)
• 8) The Shock of the Fall - Nathan Filer (fiction)
• 7) Conjure - Michael Donaghy (poetry)
• 6) The Paraffin Child - Stephen Blanchard (fiction)
• 5) Her Birth - Rebecca Goss (poetry)
• 4) The Museum of Disappearing Sounds - Zoe Skoulding (poetry)
• 3) Ice - Gillian Clarke (poetry)
• 2) Life: An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet (fiction)
• 1) Fallen Land - Patrick Flannery (fiction)

NoNoWriMo and Writing Coaches

Well I kept NanNoWriMo up for about half of November and I wrote a sizeable chunk of my novel in progress (which is shaping up to be a YA novel it seems), but then somehow I lost my momentum. There are lots of things that I can blame - general busyness, too much planning for work etc etc, but the truth is I found it too hard to sustain. It's not that I lost interest, but somehow I just screeched to a halt. I had other things that I wanted to write, I wanted to enter a poetry pamphlet competition and that took days of preparation. I suppose I just wasn't committed enough. I also think that if I am to try it again next year (and I might) I will try to write straight onto the computer. two thousand words is a lot to write by hand ( I generally managed just over a thousand a day) and it leaves you with a daunting pile of writing to be typed up. I haven't even begun to type up what I have written yet - every time I look at it it makes me groan.

On a more positive note I have been working with a writing coach. A writing coach is a bit like a life coach - but they just look at your writing life. They help you to look at any problems you may be having regarding writing, sending off your work etc. I have had two sessions and have found it invaluable. I had to come to the session with areas that I wanted to look at and the coach asked me a series of questions designed to make me think about what is holding me back. One of the things that I found really helpful was making a chart of how I used my time - I was then able to pencil time into my schedule for writing, editing and sending out work. The hard bit, of course, is sticking to it! The other thing that she really helped me with was thinking about pamphlet competitions. I had got rather stuck in my way of thinking about it. Because the pamphlet I had put together had been shortlisted for a major competition I am not able to enter it for any others, and for some reason I just couldn't see a way round this. My coach suggested pulling out a different thread from my collection - one that overlapped in terms of content so that I could still keep my strongest poems - she even suggested breaking up one of the poems and interspersing it throughout the pamphlet to make the theme stronger. It is funny how sometimes it takes a new pair of eyes to see the obvious in your work!

NaNoWriMo and all that

I have talked before about how a series of personal setbacks, coupled with a planning-heavy class that I took over at the last minute, have left me little head-space and inspiration for poetry writing. I think it is more than this though - I think I am lacking a theme to write around. Not having a theme never used to be a problem but putting together a collection has somehow made me feel like all my writing has to be cohesive. Realising this has been quite useful, and I am hoping that it will free me up creatively. What I need to do, I now realise, is simply write and out of writing eventually a theme will (hopefully) emerge.

However that said I am not writing much poetry, but instead have been participationg in National Novel Writing Month. The aim is to write part of a novel every day for a month - so that in theory at the end you will end up with a nearly completed novel. I have been averaging around 10000 words a day, which is not bad, although I have had a couple of days where I haven't written anything. I am writing parts of a novel that I started a while ago. I was not really sure where it was going or who it was aimed at - but at the moment it seems to be going in the direction of becoming a novel for young adults. Writing every day like this is a good discipline. I wonder though if I am being too ambitious thinking that I can write poetry and fiction alongside each other. It seems to me that poetry and prose use different parts of the brain. I may be making that last bit up of course...

Words that Leave you Cold and Words that Inspire

I have been a little out of sorts with poetry of late - I have read quite a lot of poetry books in the past couple of months, but none of them has really excited me. I thought it must be to do with my own state of mind - I have been going through some tough times in my personal life so I assumed that this had put me out of kilter, especially as some of the books were ones I had been looking forward to, and had high expectations of, like Kei Miller's The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion. The knock on effect for me of not reading poetry that inspires, is that my own creativity is effected and I start writing less. Not a great place to be in for a writer.

This has all changed in the last couple of weeks. I have been to two really awe inspiring poetry readings. The first was Carrie Etter (at Cafe Writers in Norwich) and the second was Pascale Petit at Wymondham Words Festival. This is writing that speaks to my soul - writing that walks the tightrope between the personal and the surreal. Etter's book Imagined Sons is a poignant exploration of an imagined relationship with a son that she gave up for adoption shortly after birth when she was seventeen. Etter imagines meeting her son in a variety of situations (where he is doing a variety of jobs), as well as exploring her own reasons and the judgements that others might make. The result is a powerful and emotive read, the poetry finely honed and exact. Petit's new book Fauverie centres on the author's father and Paris. Petit is drawn to animals and animal imagery and the big cats of the Paris Fauverie of the title are a strong and compelling presence in her work. This is highly emotive writing - but there is no stream of consciousness or sloppiness here. This is tightly edited and beautiful and each word is working hard to earn its keep. It is a difficult read though so be warned and some of the description is extremely unpleasant - for example at the reading Pascale read a poem where her father eats an ortolan (a small songbird) whole with his head under a napkin in the traditional manner. This image has stayed with me ever since.

It goes to show, I think, that poetry has to speak to you (me) as the reader. It doesn't matter if it is well written or whether the writer has won this, that or the other reward. If you can't make some kind of emotional connection with it it can leave you cold. This is something I tell my students in my reader workshops - you can't just pick up a poetry book at random and expect to love it or be inspired. It is like any other type of book (or music) - you have to find the writer that resonates with you at that particular moment in your life. I am very pleased to back on the poetry horse.

Putting things into Perspective

It has not been a great year so far - there I've said it. Things keep going wrong and costing money, old friends have died, jobs have fallen through - I could go on. What, you may ask, does all this have to do with writing? Well quite a bit actually. Happiness may often quell the desire to write, but so does stress, and this year I have had stress by the bucketload.  I have, though, managed to keep up a tentative writing practice and I have sent the occasional poetic missive out into the world. And that's where things start looking up. I got my first rejection from a major publisher - but he recommended somewhere else to try. I have been shortlisted for a national poetry pamphlet competition (shortlist of 10 from 600 entrants!), and today I had a poem accepted for a poetry anthology. Could still do with a major cash injection but things are definitely looking up!