A Pause...

Hi again, I'm challenging my one post a month target this April. I'm often a diarist when it comes to blogging, but I thought this was a good time to write more generally about things. I might write another 'diary' post this month too.

The young man featured above is 'The Hanged Man.'  You may remember him from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, where he's mentioned but doesn't actually turn up to the Tarot party. He's not as unhappy as you might think. Yes, he's upside down hanging from his left ankle, but here he's actually giving up control, taking time out. He's happy to watch the world go by, albeit from a strange angle.

What has this to do with a poetry blog, apart from the tenuous reference to Eliot? In my experience poets can be very impatient. I am no exception. I had about 4-5 months off sending out recently. This has been an interesting time. I've not heard anything as yet and am about to start work in earnest on a manuscript very soon. A return to the world of acceptance/rejection and being active is imminent. No news is possibly good news at this stage. In the last few days of 'hanging out' and mulling over things, it's worth reflecting on this. Many poets, and I do this as well, judge what they do on 'acceptance.' This time last year I was very busy sending off and getting published. This went on till about October and I needed a breather. By Christmas, I'd had a couple of' 'no thank yous' and then the holidays came and went. January is usually a non-starter and February's only marginally better etc and then I realised I was out of the game! I'd not sent out for ages - well relatively, it was only 4 months, but things move fast. I was missing all sorts of deadlines. I'd spent more time off-line and felt a bit overwhelmed when I realised how much was going on. So, I made myself  send out again and am waiting for responses! I've had 6 months off now, even though there's been the odd publication from that earlier period of busily sending out.

Why is sending out so important? Well, apart from the glow of acceptance, even rejection is important. It sends signals out to both poet and editor that you're out there doing your thing. Some rejections are 'nice' ones, even though they don't feel like it. Some poets choose only to send to people they know, some aerially bombard everywhere. When I first started sending out over 6 years ago I kept a notebook and had an X for reject and tick for acceptance. There were a lot of Xs. The majority in fact were Xs. But I kept going.  I look back at that time and realise how important it was, like cutting teeth. You don't need a complicated system of recording your submissions, unless you have lots of them. A simple notebook will do. There will always be Xs of course. I also think it's natural to go through quieter periods as it's hard to maintain that busy momentum.

Here are two things David Morley taught me that seem relevant here:

1. Don't write for magazines - i.e. write what you need to write, not what you think you should.

Added to this is the not-beating-yourself-up-over-not-writing-much:

2. 'The Silence Reservoir'. I'm quoting here from David: 'You will find you fluency naturally slowing in order to allow the reservoir of language and ideas within your unconscious mind to replenish. Leave the field. Stop writing. Finish for the day and go for a walk...Silence is itself a type of eloquence...'*

David should know. David was my tutor at Warwick many years ago and I remember one seminar in 1998 where he came in distraught at the start. He'd just heard that Ted Hughes had died. Hughes was a massive influence on David and he referred to him that day as 'a poetic father.' He felt an undeniable loss, which makes this news not only gratifying, but also very moving as it was won in Ted's name.


See you later on in April!

* From The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing, David Morley, Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Spots of Time: Marty McFly and the Time-Travelling Poet

Today’s Back to the Future day. Marty McFly will be joining us all the way from 1985. How could I let this anniversary slip? The first time I saw Back to the Future was at the end of the 80s with a hall full of pupils as our end of term treat. It was on a box shaped TV and if you were sitting near the back it was pretty much postage stamp size, but it was still considerably better than maths.

Anyway, I am using the film as an excuse to talk about poetry. Or I’m using poetry as an excuse to talk about Back to the Future. Not sure. The title (not the Marty McFly bit obviously) refers to Wordsworth’s ‘spots of time’ passage in The Prelude, which is about how poems bring into present consciousness certain memories or moments in time. Recently, I’ve been thinking about how many poems crystallise moments in time, while clarifying something about the present and we owe a debt to the Romantics for this approach. Certainly a lot of workshop exercises ask students to think of a particular happening or thing.  Then there’s James Schulyer’s method of writing about a moment in time, or more specifically, writing about the present tense. Schulyer isn’t remembering or reminiscing he’s writing about now, or his now, as something like ‘Dec. 28, 1974’ shows. His now isn’t ours, so to me those poems feel like a form of time travel and, oddly, also an exploration of the present.Can you draft such a poem, or do you write it all in one go?

This is a long way away from discussing DeLoreans and Flux Capacitors. There were always bits of Back to the Future that got my imagination going, like the photo of the disappearing McFly children; If mom and dad don’t kiss at the dance, then no family and no Marty. In a photo he's taken along with him for the journey, all of them are fading fast. So Marty has to work fast to bring romance into his parents’ lives.

Of course if you haven’t seen the film, you won’t know what I’m talking about. Sorry. But it did occur to me that the key years in the film, 1955, 1985 and 2015 are relevant dates for me right now. Quite a coincidence. Firstly, some years ago I wrote a poem with 1955 in the title, which is currently on John Foggin’s blog and can be found here and is halfway through the piece. I’m very grateful to him for writing about my poems. Secondly, 1985 was the year I went to Cyprus to visit my family over there for the first time as a girl. I wrote a poem about that experience which features on Warwick University’s 50^th anniversary poetry page. I’m sharing that page with some fantastic poets, so have a look here.  It also features a recording of the poem. I was asked to take part by David Morley as I was a student there. Finally, I’m also including a 2015 poem, which is very different to the other two, and is a tongue in cheek look at my now, on the Poems in Which site you can find here.

And still no hoverboards...

***************

To finish off, you may remember that at the end of Back to the Future, when the lovers kiss and everything’s funkydory at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, Marty plays something a little far out for 1955 on his guitar. He utters the line, "I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet... but your kids are gonna love it."If you click on the link below and listen, it’s possible Marty underestimated some of his mid-50s audience.

Frog!





[N.B. There's no reason for why I called this blog post 'Frog' I couldn't think of a better title and Roy's blog features a frog and what a lot of assonant rhyme there is here.]

Roy Marshall has put up one of my poems on his excellent blog, it's called 'Fable' and you can find this here:
http://roymarshall.wordpress.com/favourite-poem-of-the-week/
I should also mention that back copies of 'The Rialto' have gone up on the South Bank poetry magazines website, here you can find one of Roy's poems, 'Hayride' on this great resource: http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=26988
It was a very good edition which also included poetry from Katy-Evans Bush, David Morley, Sarah Jackson and some frozen peas from Simon Armitage.