Hello,

this blog is now part of my new website, please follow this link,

thank you,

Terry.

https://terryquinnpoetryuk.wordpress.com/

Damson Poets is on this coming Wednesday, 30^th October, and will be held in the Snug at the Continental. This month I am really pleased that Jane Routh is our Guest Reader

Jane Routh has published four collections (most recently Listening to the Night 2018). She won the Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition with her first collection, and has been shortlisted for a Forward Prize and had a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

Jane contributes articles and reviews to several journals and has also published a prose book, Falling into Place, on wildlife, weather and work in the rural area where she lives in north Lancashire, managing an area of ASNW and new woodlands.

She was asked by the BBC to write a poem for this year’s National Poetry Day. Here is the result:

https://youtu.be/s-955-_rtD8

One of the pleasures of being in a local Poetry Society such as Preston Poets is that there are always people who know stuff about poets I should have heard of.

Last night David Wilkinson gave a fascinating talk on:

Norman Nicholson - The underappreciated Lake Poet

Norman Nicholson was born in Millom, Cumbria, in 1914 and lived there for the rest of his life. He was award the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1977, and the OBE in 1981.

Nicholson also wrote what David thought of as the best Guide to the Lakes ever written.

David is an antiquarian bookseller and member of our Society and brought along 12 copies of Nicholson’s selected poems which he handed out to keep.

Going on courses

A few months ago I went to a poetry reading that was followed by a Q&A session. Whether Q&A is a good thing may be dealt with another time.

Anyway, during this session someone asked the panel of the poets who had been reading whether going to Poetry Courses, Exhibitions, Festivals etc increased one’s chances of getting published. The question was related to the ability to pay for these quite expensive events if one was unemployed or on a low wage. This, obviously, means that one is not making contacts or friends in the poetry scene.

The answer was that this made no difference at all and that if one’s work was good enough then it would be published.

What a load of rubbish.

I could name half a dozen books off the top of my head that would not have seen the light of day without the poet knowing the publisher. And I’m not just talking about going to the same University.

I  wrote the following for Lancashire Dead Good Poets a few months ago:

‘In 2012 I tuned into the BBC for a reading of The Wasteland by Jeremy Irons and Eileen Atkins. I seem to remember recoiling in a mixture of horror and laughter. I'm not sure about Atkins, but Jeremy wasn't reading but performing.That was when I started to notice that there is a difference between poets reading poetry and actors reading poetry. I came across a phrase that sums up that difference. This person (and I can't find their name, damn it) said "Actors read vowels and poets read consonants." Another way of looking at it is that vowels are the emotion and consonants are the intellect. Consonants can only be spoken in one way and so make speech hard and crisp but vowels can be pronounced in many ways. Thus with consonants there is a concentration on the words being spoken but with vowels their open-ended nature gives rise to you listening to the pronunciation, the rise and fall of the voice, and away from the meaning of the poem.’

Later I came across this in an article I had saved in 2013. I’m pretty sure it was by Al Alverez:

Given the chance, I'd expel actors from my poetic republic, on pain of hearing an endlessley repeated reading of Tennyson's 'Break, Break, Break', given by Donald Sinden. Because, for the most part, they just don't get it. Their oratorical training lends them power, charisma, grandiosity and flashes of the craftily sincere, but also a tendency towards what Basil Fawlty described as the bleeding obvious. Those silken or trumpeting tones belong in the auditorium or on the screen: they are so rarely equipped to touch on the idiosyncratic mysteries of the poem.

Some years ago, there was a Radio 4 reading of Keats's 'The Eve of St Agnes' by Michael Maloney. It should have been a rare treat to hear the whole of a great poem. It wasn't. Maloney's enunciation, his intonation, his abrupt, non-metrical pauses, his obtrusive sense of himself were all so acute that the effect was emetic rather than scary, sensual, forbidden and delicious. No inner life: all display.
On another occasion I witnessed Fiona Shaw reading Eliot's 'Waste Land', a show that won golden acclaim. She can be a fine actress, certainly but what she inflicted on 'The Waste Land' failed to capture its fragmentation, its repressed torment, its distinctly conservative apocalypse. Pound knew what he was about with his editing and what he didn't aim for was melodrama. Listen to Eliot's own reading and you will overhear the true timbre of desperation. Especially on Margate beach.
The flaws in a poet's reading are very often an aspect of the poem's dark corners and infuriating ambiguities. Take Simon Armitage on the West Yorkshire attack; Jackie Kay a burst of sunshine, a growl of rage. Seamus Heaney, that gentle, tough, tentative bear of a man. Or the deceptively offhand Don Patterson, the quirky, stubborn, slightly bonkers Selima Hill, the much-more-acerbic-than-she-seems Wendy Cope.

I  went to a seminar on the subject of blogs and websites at the Wolverhampton Literature Festival recently and it completely changed my mind as to the use of  such things. So, let’s start again.

standing

One of the minor delights of working as a Medical Engineer in the NHS was the opportunity to slip off if I’d been sitting down too much at the bench. Save up a few jobs and say I’m just going to Ward such and such and I could have a stroll, a chat to people and get back a bit later refreshed.

One of the problems of writing now is the sitting down without an excuse to move. I always fancied getting a lectern. In fact, I still do. But I did find a sort of solution towards the end of last year when, of all things, I’d put a small table on top of my dining ( and writing ) table to get it out of the way when I vacuumed. The combined height is just about right although the surface area could be improved. Vacuumed.

I use it for two tasks. In the morning I can lean on it, hold it and lean back, stretch my legs and most usefully it can be used to lay down my A4 sheets, pencil and rubber. In the evening it does duty as a place to put my laptop.

I was feeling rather pleased with myself until I discovered that loads of other writers have written standing up. Rather confusingly not many seem to be writers that I like.

However, I then found that there are other ways of solving my problem. There are actually companies that make stand up desks with or without drawers. I presume an online search would find something to suit and joy of joys I’ve heard of some that come with a foot rail.

I have seen an adjustable computer desk although I can’t remember where it was. And I don’t really like designed computer desks as most that I’ve seen are useless.

It’s possible also to make a desk that fits to the wall. I have thought about this but I don’t really have the space unless it folded up and I think I’d find that irritating.

I just had a peep on the internet to check on any articles on standing and writing and blow me there’s dozens. In the second one I read the writer actually said ‘that having a stand up desk is now hip’. Hip.

Oh, well.

judy brown at Conti

reponse to david perman

letter to acumen from david perman

Buy this

Buy this – it’s terrific:

Julie Maclean’s latest collection, inspired by a research intensive to Scandinavia with Deakin University, was published in October and is available from Poetry Salzburg as part of its pamphlet series with samples of poems from the collection here: http://www.poetrysalzburg.com/viking.htm

Reviwed here: http://sabotagereviews.com/2014/10/17/kiss-of-the-viking-by-julie-maclean/

The launch in Oz will be at;

Sun Nov 9 at 3pm 
Paton Books 
3/329  Pakington Street
Geelong

Guernsey Int Lit Fest

Guernsey International Literary Festival must have some of the best prizes in the country. The first three get cash but they and another three plus winners of certain categories such as school, Channel Islands residency also get their poems on pop up posters at the airport which will be moved to places round the island during the year plus all those then get their poems on the buses for the year.

And that’s not all. The winning three poems also get a painting based on their work by professional artists and this year the art teachers involved in schools on the island decided that art students would also interpret their poems so in a gallery they had around 10 paintings based on a poet’s work.

The four days of the Festival are packed with lectures, workshops, music and film. Well worth a visit next year.

It also has Herm Island aka Paradise three miles of its coast.

robins

from Preston Poets' Newsletter

Editorial

A tentative glimpse of Spring so welcome to this quarter’s Newsletter with the hope that there will be sufficient poetry and poetry events to keep everyone happy.

Linda France will certainly be happy. She is the winner of the 2013 National Poetry Competition with her poem entitled Bernard and Corinthe. It is the account of an erotic encounter between a repressed man and a flower. The first two verses:

if a curtain is always a velvet curtain

onto some peepshow he never opens,

it’s a shock to find himself, sheltering

from the storm in a greenhouse.

The reason for mentioning this is not the actual poem. Some people have criticized it, others like it, mostly ( as far as I can find ) people don’t seem to care one way or the other.

What I am concerned about is the subject matter. For the last few years the National Poetry Prize has been won with poems about Clothes from the Great War, Virginia Woolf, a Robin, something about time past, a father, something about looking through a window.

This is the National Poetry Prize. Presumably this means that this is how the state of British poetry is seen as viewed from the rest of the world and somewhere there’s a quote suggesting that poetry reflects the underlying state of a nation. I just can’t find that quote, if anyone knows it could they let me know.

So, on an earth that has Climate Change, Peak Oil, water shortage, food shortage, wars, the list goes on, the concerns of British poetry revolve around flowers and Robins.

Perhaps I should put some parameters on that paragraph. There are poets who write about such global matters but they are not those being taken up by what can be termed the Poetry Establishment. I’m not talking about the really top poets like Carol Anne Duffy or Simon Armitage but the ones below that level who have been to the same Universities and share the same beliefs in terms of poetical values and also control the purse strings and access to the publishing houses.

Did I enter the National Poetry Competition? Yes. Is this sour grapes? Maybe. Is there any truth in these thoughts? I think so, how about you.

Never mind the controversy ( if there is one ) over the winning poem in the National Poetry Prize there is an even greater one in the realms of our local poetry scene.

It involves the question of whether applause should be encouraged, or not, after each poem in a reading by a poet.

My feeling is that it depends on the length of the poems and the nature of the poems. It can be a bit distracting if every 8 line poem is clapped by the audience, it can disrupt the flow of the delivery of the poet. But, conversely, if a poet has delivered a rather wonderful poem which touches people then they have every right to let their feelings show in a response to the poet.

One of the worst experiences in reading and listening is where there is a cold stillness in the air after each poem. No one dares cough or talk or fidget between poems. The poet can’t tell whether they should alter their tone or change the poems as they are getting no feedback. Everyone is stuck in this 10 minutes of sterility waiting for it to end.

Applaud away as far as I’m concerned, make a point to a friend, have a drink, adjust your seat. Just be quiet when the poet is actually reading.

When I was away in Lincolnshire on family matters for a month I thought it might be an idea to have a look into the history of the local boy who made good. And I mean good. In the radio show on Preston fm  I played a recording of him as he read ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ recorded in the 1890s. If you get the chance have a listen to the podcast. It’s fascinating. The following notes are from the script for the programme.

Which is the give away to the fact it is Alfred, Lord Tennyson I was looking into. Now I bet when I wrote Alfred Tennyson the image that sprang to mind was of a man in his 40s or 50s with a massive beard, lined face, cloak and a wide brimmed hat – someone at the very pinnacle of Victorian Society. And when that recording was made he was.

But that eminent man was once a boy and he was a boy in a very remote part of Lincolnshire. In fact the village of Somersby is very remote even now. So, let’s get rid of the hat and beard and view a face that was, when he was in his 20s, according to the sketches that exist a very handsome and dashing sort of face. He was also immensely strong. One of the local sports was throwing a crowbar and he could beat all comers. His party piece, when there was a gathering on the Rectory lawn, was to pick up a Shetland pony and carry it round.

And on the subject of animals it should be mentioned that he cared passionately about them and delighted in springing the traps that gamekeepers had set. He was so good at animal and bird calls that an owl became his constant companion.

But it wasn’t all nature and sport. He was often found tramping the lanes and reading in the sort of snow that was around when I was there. On one occasion he was so immersed in his book that he failed to hear the Louth coach coming up behind him. He was eventually roused from his reverie by a shout from the coachman and looking up saw a horse’s muzzle protruding over his shoulder as if it too was immersed in the book.

At this point I went out and recorded some observations in Somersby itself. If you get the chance to listen I hope you enjoy the show.

some events

from Preston Poets' Newsletter:

..... but March is more promising with the Huddersfield Literature Festival taking place between the 6^th and 16^th with Lemn Sissay alongside authors like Joanne Harris.

Between the 7^th and 16^th at the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick guests include Blake Morrison, Don Paterson and Melvyn Bragg. The full programme for this event is amazing with a diverse selection of talks and guests. Here’s one that took my fancy. It’s by Katie Waldgrave and is entitled The Poets’ Daughters and is about the lifelong friendship between Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge.

From the 20 to the 31^st is the York Literature Festival and includes Roger McGough. Just down the road from the 28^th to the 30^th is the Otley Word Feast which has the delightfully sounding Sonnets and Scones on the 29^th and A Terribly Sedate and Right Proper Poetry Reading on the same day.

Those are the most local events I could find that one can dip in and out of. But what if one wants something more structured to help oneself on a one to one or group basis. I’ve been on an Arvon Residential course back in 2007 not for poetry but for script writing. However Simon Armitage was the course tutor with his partner Sue Roberts, a drama producer at the BBC and editor of the Verb. Apart from some useful technical advice the main thing I got from the week was some writerly friends who I still keep in contact with. For £500 ( then ) that’s a lot of money. So you need to know what you want.

There are all sorts of courses - for instance local weekends such as at Weetwood Hall, Leeds where Alison Chisholm is explaining ‘All you need to know about Writing Competitions’ from the 14-16^th March, no price for this as yet. There is a 4 day writing retreat in Mungrisdale, Cumbria with Grevel Lindop for £199 from the 9th to the 12^th May.

If you want to combine a summer holiday with a writing course there are loads of choices. This seems to be the business to be in. How about a week in Alicante for a week long poetry course from the 24^th to the 31^st of May run by ( the very influential ) Ann Sansom. That will knock you back 750 Euros. Which, if you’ve got the money, isn’t a bad deal.

To sum up: there’s probably some course out there that will suit you. It depends on the cost and what you want out of it. And don’t forget that some of these places, especially the Arvon ones, give grants to those on a small income.

In Praise of Bureaucracy

Just recently one of the members of our local Poetry Society said that they were not going to bother coming to the meetings any more as they were fed up with the half hour spent prior to the main part of the meeting.

This half hour is taken up with what might be called Business where stuff like notifications of poetry comps, guest speakers, finance ( occasionally ), information about various internal or external tasks that need to be done is shared with members.

It goes almost without saying that some of this is a bit boring and most societies have two or three people who like the sound of their own voice or want to push their own agenda.

But the crucial point here is that the Society has now been active for over 60 years. This didn’t happen by accident.

There have been countless other attempts to start other poetry groups in this area. Some have been quite successful in what they achieved but all have fallen by the wayside because they relied on one or two people to do everything. There seems to have been an expectation by the majority of poets that things would happen – a sort of 60’s counter culture where it’s a bit heavy to be involved with Organisation, Man.

Very wrong. A good committee makes things easy. We’ve had a good committee for decades and the experience of this shows that the quality and quantity of the poetry actually increases.

Like most people who have ever listened to Desert Island Discs I have collected and changed my selection many times over. A few constants have been Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street, Pie Jesu from Faure’s Requiem and the aria Ebben? Ne andrò lontana from Catalini’s La Wally.

I, also, always have a spoken word track which got me to thinking today what would be my Desert Island Poems. Today they are:

1. Dart by Alice Oswald

2. The Four Quartets by TS Eliot

3. The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin

4. The Wasteland by TS Eliot

5. A Treatise of Civil Power by Geoffrey Hill

6. Teach Yourself Mapmaking by Jane Routh

7. A Sea Chantey by Derek Walcott

8. Turning into Whitby by Sarah Hymas

Last week I organised an alternative to Guy Fawkes Bonfire Night. I had asked ( on posters, email and facebook ) for a poem that would celebrate the night/stars/dark or even fireworks. That was my big mistake.

I started the evening at 7-45pm, introduced the first poet and sat down to doodle and make a few notes on the next poet up. I was somewhat surprised when the first person finished their poem and sat down.

I introduced the next poet and sat down to doodle and make notes. She read her poem and left the stage.

You can see where this is going.

By 8pm 5 poets had got up and sat down. So, the lesson is – you sometimes get what you ask for. I should have asked that people include in their 6 or 7 minute slot one ( or more ) poem to do with the theme.

In the next few weeks I’m hosting an event at a local Arts’ Space. I’ve started the Facebook and email notifications and am now considering the flyers and posters.

In the last two events that I’ve organised I’ve spent upwards of £50 on the things and as far as I can tell there has only been one person who has looked at them and as a result come to the evening.

So, is there a point in not only spending the money but also the time going round to libraries, galleries and shops and spending, sometimes, frustrating hours persuading people to take them or take them for consideration by them upstairs.

On top of that - the event is supposed to be Free Entry but that means I finish up well out of pocket. So, I have to embarrass myself by asking for donations from people on the way out.

The answer, for me, is that it is not worth it but I’m still going to have to do it on the off chance that this time the effort will pay off. People expect a poster. It’s just one of those things.