Raw Light

Epicentre - a new literary ezine

2012-01-30T23:45:00.002Z

Jane in editorial mode

I am now editing Epicentre, a brand-new literary ezine - based geographically in the English Midlands but publishing internationally - with an emphasis on new poetry.

I intend to launch the first issue in April, and afterwards focus on rolling content rather than publishing new issues at set intervals. This seems to work well for literary ezines, such as the excellent Stride, which is updated according to the editor's whim. It also means I won't feel bound to any particular schedule but can edit the magazine and monitor the inbox when I have the time.

So if you've emailed work or a query, and not yet heard back, don't panic. I'll get round to everyone in the end. Though once it's more than 4-6 weeks, feel free to nudge me, in case your email went astray.

If you wish to send a contribution, please read and follow the submission guidelines, if only to avoid annoying me before I even open your email. Seriously. It's amazing how few people take the time to follow magazine submission guidelines, yet still expect the editor to read their work at the other end in a generous and professional spirit.

Though of course I always do. Because I'm such a ~~liar~~ nice person.

By the way, there is another Epicentre magazine. Though being American they are EpicentER whereas we are EpicentRE. A small distinction but an important one. Not least because you'll be sending your work to the wrong place if you don't check you're at the right site.

Psychicbread Tour Dates

2012-01-17T00:24:00.000Z

Received these tour dates today and thought I would kick off my 2012 blog posts with some promo for Mark Gwynne Jones and Psychicbread, a live poetry-music act I have had the joy and delight to see several times, and can heartily recommend to anyone with a developed sense of humour and a liking for the zany.

Dear Shimmering Mountain

Here are shows to bedazzle and delight in Derby, Nottingham, Manchester, Loughborough and London. Featuring such new creations as The Devil's Arse (the illusory nature of the world, as revealed by the world's greatest illusionist). Hope to see you somewhere. Thanks,

Mark Gwynne Jones

Nottingham - Wednesday 18^th Jan - Guest at Speakasy (an openfloor poetry night)
The Alley Cafe Bar, Cannon Court, Longrow West, NG1 6JE 8.30pm

London – Thursday 19^th Jan – Guest at BANG SAID THE GUN
The Roebuck, 50 Great Dover Street, SE1, Show 8pm £5 door

Manchester – Friday 27^th Jan – Mark Gwynne Jones delivers a Beat the Rush Hour Show
John Thaw Studio Theatre, Martin Harris Centre, The University of Manchester, Show 5.30 – 6.30 Tickets £5 - Tel: 0161 275 8951

Loughborough – Monday 5^th March – Guest at new open mic Speech Bubble
Students Union, Loughborough University, Doors 7pm, Tel: 01509 222 881

London – Sunday 11^th March - Guest at the Jazz Verse Jukebox
Ronnie Scott’s, 47 Frith Street, Soho, W1D 4HT, Doors 6.30, Show 8pm, £7 Door

London – Friday 23^rd March – Guest at The Poetry Café’s Fourth Friday (An evening of poetry and music, booked artists and voices from the floor)
20 Betterton Street, Covent Gardens, WC2H 98X, Tel: 020 7420 9887

Derby – Saturday 28^th April – The QUAD
Market Place, Cathedral Quarter, DE1 3AS, Tel: 01332 285 444

Mark Burnhope: The Snowboy

2011-12-08T00:30:00.007Z

In October, I attended a poetry reading in Oxford where various Salteenies were reading (poets published by Salt) and one of the new books of poetry I picked up that night was by one of the readers, Mark Burnhope.

His first pamphlet, The Snowboy, published this year, is priced at £6.50 - which I found rather steep for a pamphlet of 28 pages. (Luckily, he offered me a small discount when I made my sad spaniel face.) But the quality of Burnhope's poetry is also steep, which made up for the high price. (I also notice it is currently reduced to £5.20 on the Salt website, which is more realistic from a buyer's point of view.)

Burnhope's work is an odd but dynamic combination of mythic or lyrical influences and sudden flat prosaic touches. He is not afraid to declaim or strike postures, which is something I thought had died out with the last of the Romantics, suggesting a return to that contradictory attitude of self-conscious looking outwards which is somehow embarrassing and yet satisfying to encounter. It's an attitude which says to the listener or reader, at least on a subliminal level: 'I am a Poet and this is Poetry with a capital P, yet I am perfectly well aware of what's being written today, thank you, as well as what was written three hundred years ago.'

Being wheelchair-bound, Mark Burnhope's poetry gives us an unusual perspective on life, of seeing things that perhaps others miss, and also an awareness of his own peculiarly stand-out - perhaps even combative? - spatial relationship with the world. One of the most compelling poems in the book is his bold 'Wheelchair, Recast as a Site of Special Pastoral Interest':

O evil scaffold, levelled
             and controlled by spirit.
O wing-black spectral-silver mass;
crass imposition upon the meadow
formed of iron-carbon alloy - steel -
and foam; O folk dance of spoke,
            wheel, tyre, seat, the latter
to which, flush out of the field,
            the executed calf
                        and ewe contributed.

Here the hard, metallic, man-made structure of the wheelchair is placed in creative tension with the softer, ever-changing elements of the natural world, i.e. the 'meadow' (not a field, please note, which would be agricultural and therefore equally manmade) and the 'calf and ewe' (here, definitely from the 'field'). The 'folk dance' works beautifully with that idea of a pre-industrial world, a celebration of life and death, the 'executed calf' recalling the prodigal son's return, the forgiveness of the father for his wayward child.

And you also catch the most vital element of Burnhope's writing here, which is predominantly aural, focused on how the sounds strike the ear and play against each other. 'O, O, O,' this poem says. An exclamation, a sound of distress, an invocation on a stage. The wheel revolving. That final 'meadow' both prepares for and sparks off 'O folk dance of spoke'. Bach makes it into the final lines, 'bounding over the vales', as though the wheelchair had been constructed by music, or to music, so that music was somehow inherent in its structure, with 'vales' in the last line suggesting tears.

So the poet's love-hate relationship with his wheelchair does not so much dominate this book as underscore it musically. In a dream where he is imagined without it, Burnhope writes with grim humour:

In the absence of a wheelchair, I am walking
on one paw like a cirque-du-freak performer.

This seems to suggest that he sees the wheelchair as almost a normalising influence, a damping-down of creative energy, where its absence might allow him to become a daring 'performer', albeit one whose differentness is what people primarily flock to see, that 'paw' in place of a hand bringing an animalistic touch to the image. Burnhope's wild side? He then sees himself morphing into a scorpion that stings itself to death, perhaps through too much introspection. Other poems here mention sperm whales, Moby Dick, tentacles, skate, a cormorant ... Burnhope's touchstone is the sea, and it is a recurring image in this debut, as are those creatures which live within it.

Also a Christian, much of the imagery here finds its influence in the Christian religion, though with a certain dark pagan twist at times. (O folk dance ... ) I tend to dislike contemporary religious verse with extreme vehemence, though it's hard not to admire the sparing delicacy and slate-sharp edges of a poet like R.S. Thomas. It's also hard not to see that - very pleasing - influence at work here in Burnhope's debut:

Boscombe Pier pierces

the sea. On either side of me
the promenade extends

arms that end
in bending wrists of cliff-side.

The land is dark, but look, his fists
pin-lit,

loosing breakers overnight.

I want to ask Burnhope what 'pin-lit' means here - Christ's stigmata, one assumes, doubling up with the pinpoints of penny arcade or promenade lights - where or indeed what is the main verb, and how dare he casually toss the trauma of 'extends/ends/bending' into three consecutive lines and leave us to wrestle with that oblique, not quite understandable finale while we are still reeling from all those vibrating 'end' sounds? Meanwhile, this rather fine and striking piece of Christian imagery is a direct rebuttal to the prosaic opening to this poem, 'Christ is not your friend our lecturer said.'

Frankly, yes, wrong in places. But I love it. Not the opening though. I would say here, have the courage to back away from the inspiration for this poem, which adds nothing, and perhaps even detracts from or diminishes what follows it, and develop the lyric impulse instead. That's where the true power lies. Not in what we perceive as 'truth' (like those poor souls at open mic nights who say of their poems, as if to reassure us that it's not mere flim-flam, 'This really happened', not knowing that they are robbing their work of any possible power it might have possessed to ferry us into the magic territory of the 'story', as opposed to the stifling airing cupboard of the anecdote) but in the purely imaginary, the vital thought or image which creates its own reality as we attempt to capture it in a poem.

Though perhaps the prosaic is what anchors the poetry for Burnhope, gives the more powerful imagery an excuse to exist without sounding like 'Art for Art's sake'. Well, I can see how that might happen. But we don't always need to see the working out. Sometimes the solution is better presented naked and shorn of its original props.

What else? Assonance and alliteration like an insane rash. Yes, yes, yes. Let's get back to that in poetry. An odd and discordant use of verbs, or nouns that double up as verbs, or possibly do, so that the poem is constantly wrongfooting the listener, i.e. 'Where the one/we conceived on Christmas Eve/ pools, swaddles grass'. I mean, just read that first clause again. What the... ?

But again, I welcome it. Somewhere beneath the slightly tyro feel to these pieces is my kind of poetry. It's not boring. It has the ability to slap you in the face without being unsubtle about such a gesture. It possesses oddly beautiful and powerful imagery. It hints at dark undercurrents which I would love to see coming to the fore. And above all, it is Poetry, and is unafraid of that concept.

I'm very rarely excited and interested by new books of poetry, being a curmudgeonly sort. But there's something in Burnhope's debut which makes me hope he isn't easily satisfied by what he's got here. Because if he is, he will have thrown away his chance to be a truly excellent poet.

Help to encourage a new poet. Grab a copy of Mark Burnhope's The Snowboy from Salt Publishing or Amazon.

Extracts from "Gawain" at Horizon Review

2011-12-05T00:10:00.002Z

I realised just now, when posting up my comments on Christopher Logue's death, that I had completely forgotten to flag up my extracts from "Gawain" that appeared at Horizon Review a few months back.

Anyway, the extracts may be worth reading if you're into that kind of thing, i.e. free translations or versions of Middle English poetry. It's a version of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", of course, but I've just called it "Gawain", as the former is a bit of a mouthful.

I haven't finished it yet. I may never finish it at this rate, with all the other demands on my time and the need to earn a living. But what's been done so far is not too dreadful. In certain places.

Here's a mini-extract of the extracts on Horizon Review. As a teaser to encourage you to click the link.

Oblivious to the hounds circling upwind and panting, muscular, rump
         to shoulder, eager for the chase,
the fox himself stands watchful at the edge of a clearing, surveying
stiff grass, ice-locked.
Frost clings raw to the iron-clad earth. The sun rises, ruddied
against the cloud rack, a red eye
utterly cried-out
that morning, scouring the welkyn, shuffling the sky’s massive drift
for signs of fox.
One whiff and he’s off. Helter-skelter, criss-crossing wet fields
and muddied tracks. The hounds
fly after him, their hard-baying tongues heard as far away
as Hautdesert. There, her white throat bare,
the lady is entering Gawain’s bedchamber. Tiny bright stones,
         exquisitely-cut, hang in her hair.
Both her back and her breasts are smooth and exposed: gorgeous,
light-footed, she comes to his bed
in a robe trimmed with fur, laughing and calling
         his name.
Gawain wakes, dazzled. With answering laughter, he lays aside
         all her kisses and hot protestations
of love. Again
she comes at him. “Take this ring,” she whispers. When he refuses,
         she unhooks a belt from her waist,
green and gold, hung with tassels and pendants, a rich girdle,
and urges him to accept it, bending her face to his: “A poor gift,
unless you wish to save a man from death.”
Horns blow, out on the reed-edged marsh. The fox doubles back
too late; the hounds have found his scent.
They fall on him, and he is rent, flayed by furious teeth and claws,
         bloodied, a trophy.

Christopher Logue departs for the shades

2011-12-04T23:41:00.002Z

Sad to see that Christopher Logue has died at the age of 85, a poet and playwright whose visceral and blithely free translation of Homer, "War Music", had a profound influence on my own poetry.

In the Fifties, Logue also wrote a pornographic novel called "Lust" for the infamous Olympia Press in Paris, under the ironic pen-name Count Palmiro Vicarion. That alone would have made him a friend, but his "War Music" is such a towering achievement, I cannot imagine any poet of feeling being able to read it and not wish they had written the thing.

Christopher Logue won the Whitbread in 2005 for "Cold Calls", a continuation of his Homeric work. But it's "War Music" for which I will remember him. And the fact that, apart from that belated award towards the end of his life, his talent as a poet was almost never recognised by that shadowy institution, the Establishment. Thus the life of a maverick ends.

Picture the east Aegean sea by night,
And on a beach aslant its shimmering
Upwards of 50,000 men
Asleep like spoons beside their lethal Fleet ...

Buy "War Music" from Amazon UK.

"Disreputable" launches as an ebook!

2011-11-13T11:58:00.003Z

Browse this book on Amazon UK

I have just revised and launched the Kindle edition - also available to read on computers and smart phones - of my debut poetry collection (Bloodaxe Books, 1997), currently priced at only £2.14.

Originally published together under the title 'The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman', some of these tender young poems also appeared in: Blade, The Guardian, Iron, London Magazine, The Mail on Sunday, Making for Planet Alice (Bloodaxe Books, 1997), Oasis, PN Review, Poetry Review, Snooker Scene and The Times Literary Supplement.

Retitled "Disreputable", this collection is published here for the first time in digital form with some alterations of individual poems and a minor reshuffle of the order. I've even slung a few poems out that were either embarrassing, never really worked, or were just filler and didn't earn their place in the book. In these poems, English lyricism meets snooker exposé, the longer narrative form is explored, poetic influences are mocked and celebrated. The book holds something for everyone, in other words, and is unusual among debut collections in its experimental variety of form and subject matter.

'Jane Holland uses language both as a weapon and as a shield. This is an intelligent book, knife-sharp at moments, tender and gentle at others' - Brendan Kennelly.

'Poetically she puts the balls down with an elan rare in new poets' - Peter Forbes, The Guardian.

I originally wrote "Disreputable" back in the mid-Nineties, staggering about with all my influences on my back. It's the usual raw magic and intestines of a young poet's debut. But some of the poems here won me an Eric Gregory Award in 1996, and it's great value at £2.14.

Hope you feel able to grab a copy - bearing in mind that you don't need a Kindle to read an Amazon ebook; just go to the Amazon page and follow the sidebar instructions to download FREE software for reading Kindle books on your computer, phone or other devices.

Happy browsing!

And if you're based in the US or thereabouts, here's the link to "Disreputable" on Amazon.com.

Robert McKee: 'Thou Shalt Rewrite"

2011-10-30T01:42:00.000+01:00

About twenty years ago, perhaps even longer, but certainly when I was a mere whipper-snapper and unpublished to boot, I watched a television documentary about a great American screenwriting guru who had come to London to dispense his wisdom to the great and good of the British film industry. For years later, the top British film writers, producers and directors were all going about checking their film scripts for 'writing on the nose' or carefully 'putting a subtext under every text' and 'seeking the end of the line'.

That guru was Robert McKee, who even managed to make it into a film as himself (Adaptation), and this November he's back in London.

So for the first time in my life, I will finally get to sit through Bob McKee's gruelling but apparently awe-inspiring four day seminar on the art and secrets of screenwriting.

Yes, I know I'm a poet and a novelist, but almost everything I know about the structure of the novel has been learnt through studying films and reading books on film structure. The skills required for the screen are perfectly transferable to novel-writing.

Besides which, I still harbour dreams of writing for the screen one day.

And the day before the McKee seminar starts, I'll be having lunch with my lovely new editors at Random House Children's Books and discussing how the rest of my Witchstruck! series is shaping up. Which is just a fantastic day to look forward to.

Another busy week in the life ...

Meanwhile, why not entertain yourself with some of Robert McKee's Commandments for writers?

Launch of 'The Wanderer' on Kindle

2011-10-29T00:29:00.005+01:00

Available now on Kindle

I finally uploaded my single poem-version of 'The Lament of the Wanderer' to Kindle tonight, after months of dithering over whether I should augment it with other poems in the same vein.

In the end, I've just gone with the one poem, my translation of the haunting Anglo-Saxon poem, 'The Wanderer', plus the original introduction, with some changes, that was featured in the Heaventree Press edition in 2008. It's not very long as ebooks go, somewhere around 10 pages, but since the only reason I can imagine people wanting to download it would be to see an alternative version of the poem for academic reasons, it shouldn't really matter that it's so short.

It's possible that I may do a longer version, containing some other AS translations, but I'll have to make a few enquiries about that first, as all the poems concerned were originally published elsewhere.

My thanks go to Jon Morley, my editor at the Coventry-based Heaventree Press, who encouraged me to prepare the poem and its introduction for publication in 2008.

My 'lost' poem sequence, 'Umbra'

2011-10-03T18:04:00.000+01:00

Continuing my series of Sixth Birthday Celebration repeated blog posts from Raw Light's past, this post on my lost poem sequence, 'Umbra', is from January 2006.

One of the problems of working on computers is the thorny issue of when to back up, and what happens when you don't. I am extremely lax about backing up and have paid the price. Hundreds of my poems written between 1997 - 2004 are lost in the belly of the beast - i.e. inside one of my dead computers - and I have no idea how to access them and no funds available to engage the services of an expert on information retrieval.

One of the major victims is my long verse sequence UMBRA - later developed into a play for voices which was performed at Brasenose College, Oxford - of which only four poems still exist from about 40 in the original sequence. The rest are trapped inside a now defunct laptop which I was using while at Oxford. Having moved house five times since 1998, I have also managed to become separated from the paper copies of my older poems - where they existed at all. So unless they come to light at some point in the future, UMBRA is no more. No great loss, perhaps, to the literary world. But a part of my past which I would rather still have access to, if only for the pleasure of it.

So today I thought I'd post up a poem from UMBRA, and maybe the others that I have, slowly, in the coming days, to give them a little airing. They are certainly among the oddest poems I have ever written but they do deserve to be seen, I think. Indeed, the only reason I have these four poems at all is that they were published in the poetry magazine ‘Brando's Hat’ back in 1998, I think, and can be found at the Poetry Library website where they provide back issues of poetry magazines online. The rest are lost, probably forever.

UMBRA is a story told in poems - rather than a 'verse novel' - a storyline or theme developed through a sequence of poems.

The title character, Umbra, is a young woman who believes herself to be the reincarnation of Barton's wife, and feels drawn to take her place in his life. His daughter, Stella, feels threatened by Umbra whom she suspects of superseding her in her father's affections. Barton, who may or may not have murdered his wife, is both excited and disturbed by Umbra's sudden appearance. The sequence darts between the three voices, sometimes explorative, sometimes lyrical, often violent.

If there is a clear-cut theme in UMBRA - though I dislike having to discuss theme, which can be such a slippery thing for a writer - it's probably something to do with mental breakdown, with the odd disturbing shifts in personality that happen at that time, the inability to see oneself clearly, or as others see you, and the constant suspicion that your entire environment is somehow 'against' you, in a very real and threatening way.

This poem, 'Heaven to be out there, under', comes midway through the sequence and is unusual because it is written from the dead wife's point of view. She wants to communicate with her husband, to describe the experience of being dead, I suppose, but since the poem is told through Umbra's voice, it may not be entirely trustworthy. Umbra has begun to learn about and identify with the dead woman to such an extent that the boundaries between them begin to shift and blur from this point. Is she really the reincarnation of Barton's wife, possessing a direct mental link to the secrets and tragedies of his past, or is she simply mad?

Heaven, to be out there, under

she might have told him,
not rolling, but holding, taking

the thunder, a wild bird
into shelter, dredging the surf

of the storm, shimmying.
Hell, to be in here, realised,

torn to a stand, stripped
of these leaves, these coverings.

A cold hand summons the star.
Warm breath mists the mirror,

repeating the winter,
the dead season, where I

reel from the whirlpool,
the sucking in, the bright mote.

N.B. This is the first - and only - poem in which I have used the word 'mote' (speck of dust) more commonly associated with poor imitations of nineteenth century verse. Personally, my eyebrows shoot up whenever I encounter it in contemporary poetry, yet here it seems natural. To me, that is. You may disagree.

On Angels and Muscular Poetry

2011-09-25T00:43:00.000+01:00

Continuing my series of Sixth Birthday Celebration repeated blog posts from Raw Light's past, this odd little post is from Christmas 2005:

Several days have passed since I last updated my blog ... and no surprise there, with Christmas-a-coming and five kids in the house!

I was also struck down by one of these mystery bugs over the weekend and ended up sweating it out under a duvet on the sofa. Shades of being ten years old again and being allowed to watch telly for hours. Except now it’s the DVD collection of ANGEL I’m watching.

I only discovered BUFFY a couple of years back, having married a serious sci-fi/fantasy/horror fan, and now I have the pleasure of steadily watching my way through both BUFFY and ANGEL on DVD, courtesy of the incredibly good value home rental system on amazon. I find both highly entertaining. Especially when laid low and in desperate need of some eye-candy, as the Americans would put it. I’m referring, of course, to the sultry David Boreanaz, who plays Angel, the vampire with a soul.

So, I did my Fourcast reading at the Poetry Cafe last week and it went very well. I was nervous up until the last minute, then found it easy to slide back into performance mode. The poems I read were all new, i.e. uncollected, and some were so new they haven’t yet found their way into any magazines. I was very impressed by Martina Evans, Kevin Higgins and Jacob Sam-La Rose, the other poets reading with me that night, and it was good to see Roddy Lumsden again, who was hosting the event.

Jacob Sam-La Rose

My thanks to my husband Steve, who stoutly accompanied me down to London even though it meant he didn’t get to bed until nearly 3am and then had to get up for work again at 7am, and to my oldest and dearest friend Judy Ewart, who bought my train ticket, bless her, sat through the reading and then did something almost unheard-of at such events, and actually bought books by the other poets there. With hard cash!

Martina Evans and Kevin Higgins (first from the left)

Yes, it was an enjoyable and fruitful evening; I’ve found that reading poems to an audience is essential for testing them on the air. Otherwise you’re only hearing the poems inside the space of your own head, or as a private exchange between yourself and maybe your partner or husband or cat, whoever happens to be listening when you first try them aloud, and it can be harder to spot glitches in the rhythm or words which don’t fit as perfectly as they should. So it was a useful exercise and I did take away some thoughts on possible structural changes to the more recent poems. I also noted which poems seemed to ‘grip’ the audience more than others.

To my mind, no sin in a writer is greater than that of boring the reader or listener. So it’s a relief to find a poem within your repertoire that, like a good and trusted friend, can be relied upon in almost all circumstances: a muscular poem with broad shoulders and, even better, deep pockets.

The Death Instinct: from November 2005

2011-09-24T00:19:00.001+01:00

Continuing my reposting of old blog posts to celebrate six years of blogging here on Raw light, this poem-post comes from November 2005:

When I first started this blog, I thought it would be nice to post up some poems from time to time, but never really got around to managing that. But being deeply involved with a new novel at the moment, it seems a quick way of keeping the blog active without having to bare my soul online.

This isn't a new poem but it is one of my personal favourites. I wrote THANATOS in about 1998; it was published a year or so later in PN Review, an intelligent poetry magazine edited by Michael Schmidt of Carcanet Press (PN stands for Poetry Nation). Since my second collection is still forthcoming, it has not yet been published in book form.

[This poem appears in 'Boudicca & Co.' now available in paperback or Kindle edition. Jane]

It's never easy for a poet to 'explain' a poem they have written, but THANATOS, I suppose, is a poem which likens love to being caught in a cyclone. It's quite different from the poems in my first collection, most notably in terms of form; I'd been reading some of Ted Hughes' later work when I wrote this - his BIRTHDAY LETTERS, in particular - and I was rather taken with the prosiness (which I'm not convinced is a real word) and dramatic tone of that collection.

Thanatos comes from the Greek for death. I think it means something like 'death-instinct' - at least, that's what I took it to mean at the time I wrote this poem. Later, I agreed to medication and am no longer driven to write this sort of grim, self-involved poetry. I'm not sure if that's entirely a good thing. I prefer compulsive poetry to light anecdotal verse, and it's quite hard to write poetry of a compulsive nature when everything's sunny in your life and you're not struggling with some terrible inner demon. Though I imagine there are many poets out there who would - and probably will - disagree with that particular generalisation. Fortunately, I don't care.

THANATOS

Schoolgirl vulnerable, still smarting from
the fumbled mismatch of a love affair, I fell
straight out of space and into hell
that night. He was only a voice
on the edge of nothing, but I kept returning
to him, flickering like a stilled film
against the mindless black ferocity of wind.
The roof was trying to suck me out, vast mouth
clamped like a mad baby’s over the breast
of a house, whining for milk. I wanted
then to loose my hold, know how it feels
to spiral in the infinite, to Catherine-wheel
across the space that once was love.
Thanatos, pricking at my blood: the truth
that I came searching for, a weariness
that threatened to unclasp my hand, saying
it’s over, all over, why resist?
But at the other end of light, the funnelled dark
was a dead body I clung to out of
sheer stubbornness.

And the black wind
could not dislodge me from my welding-place,
though its eye bent in and saw me there,
plucked at my white knuckles, severed
the electric umbilical of light. I took
that place and hid it underneath the other times,
less brutal, more arranged. But it comes back,
obliterates that flash between dark and dawn,
and I pretend not to recognise it; call it
desire for solitude. Expurgate, disown the truth.

Reading Thomas Wyatt: a post from October 2005

2011-09-23T01:49:00.004+01:00

Continuing in my series of Sixth Birthday Celebration Repeat Postings, here is a post which has proved consistently popular with browsers since it first appeared on October 3rd, 2005. Seems there are quite a few Wyatt fans out there ...

A Tudor moment, with a glance at Whoso list to hunt (whoever chooses to hunt). This sonnet by Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) is a personal favourite of mine. It's a loose translation of Petrarch but entirely Wyatt's own, possibly written about a clandestine affair he's reputed to have had with Anne Boleyn, speaking across the centuries of frustrated love, impossible love, love at a distance.

A hind, of course, is a female deer.

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, alas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind,
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list to hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain,
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold though I seem tame.

Noli me tangere = Do not touch me (poachers of the king's deer could expect the death penalty - as could poachers of the king's wife!)

This modern version of Whoso list to hunt comes from Hardiman Scott's edition of Wyatt's Selected Poems, which is published by Carcanet Press. Here's the back cover copy for those who'd like to know more.

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), 'the first great English lyric poet', remains one of the most popular writers of Henry VIII's court, and perhaps the most romantic, given his entanglement with Anne Boleyn, which resulted - legend has it - in some of his most passionate and vulnerable poems. This book contains a representative selection of the work: all the best-loved poems and many lesser-known pieces which illuminate a complex and sophisticated sensibility. Hardiman Scott sees Wyatt as a modern poet before his time and demonstrates the impact he and his younger contemporary the Earl of Surrey had on the development of English poetry. Wyatt introduced the sonnet, terza rima and other Italian verse forms into English, and invented forms and processes of his own.

For those trying to remember the other much-anthologised poem by Wyatt, try this link to an online copy of his superb 'They flee from me that sometime did me seek'. More on Wyatt on this blog too, in an October 2007 entry.

My first ever post on Raw Light: from September 2005

2011-09-22T11:07:00.005+01:00

"For though my ryme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely rayne beaten,
Rusty and moughte eaten,
It hath in it some pyth."

I recently discovered a poetry performance venue in Coventry, called Night Blue Fruit and hosted by the Heaventree Press. It's essentially an open mic evening at the Tin Angel - a small and intimate bar on Medieval Spon Street in old Coventry - and something about the night's atmosphere kicked me back into revisiting John Skelton's work, who was a self-styled poet laureate back in the days of Henry VIII. I was thinking of one of his poems in particular, the gloriously scurrilous and jaunty Elinour Rumming, a poem of some 620 short lines dealing with the landlady and clientele of a disreputable Tudor ale house.

All through the evening at Night Blue Fruit, through the windows of the Tin Angel, we could see girls in high heels, short skirts, low-cut tops etc., out on the razzle, some of them drunk, others grazing on chips and kebabs in between night clubs. They would yell at each other, laugh as they staggered across the road for a taxi, while inside the Tin Angel the poetry continued to flow. By the time I got home there was a long poem brewing away inside me, a modern-day Elinour Rumming about poets and drunken girls and the English language ... though, of course, these things never work out the way you envisage them.

I sat up well into the early hours to finish it; a dangerous policy when you've had a few drinks. [This poem, 'Night Blue Fruit at the Tin Angel', was later a Guardian Poem of the Week - it attracted so many astonishing comments, the comments thread had to be closed after only a few days. You can read the properly formatted and finished version in Boudicca & Co. currently on Kindle promo for 86p! Jane]

But the poem was still halfway decent in the morning, which is a good sign that you haven't entirely wasted your time. I've tinkered with it since, cut some sections which weren't working, and inserted some additional sections which came into my head later. Naturally, it's a performance piece rather than what some might call a traditional poem. But would Skelton have considered that there was a difference between the two?

Over the centuries, many critics have dismissed poems like Elinour Rumming as not lyrical enough to be taken seriously or accepted into the mainstream. But I think their energy and the dynamic challenges such poems pose to the English language more than make up for a lack of formalism. That's what Skelton was about, after all; keeping English on its toes, constantly shocking and surprising us with what it can do when stretched and subverted. Some of his work is so modern, experimental and tongue-in-cheek that it's difficult to remember it was written in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century.

Here's the beginning of Skelton's famous satirical epic Phyllyp Sparowe, parodying the Offices for the Dead:

Pla ce bo,
Who is there, who?
Di le xi,
Dame Margery;
Fa, re, my, my,
Wherfore and why, why?
For the sowle of Philip Sparowe,
That was late slayn at Carowe,
Among the Nones Blake,
For that swete soules sake,
And for all sparowes soules,
Set in our bedrolles,
Pater noster qui,
With an Ave Mari,
And with the corner of a Crede,
The more shallbe your mede.

Whan I remember agayn
How mi Philyp was slayn,
Never half the payne
Was betwene you twayne,
Pyramus and Thesbe,
As than befell to me:
I wept and I wayled,
The tears downe hayled;
But nothing it avayled
To call Phylyp agayne,
Whom Gyb our cat hath slayne ...

This post was the first I ever wrote on Raw Light, back in September 2005. I shall be reposting old blog posts - my favourites, or those of interest - from previous years over the next week or so. Hope you enjoy them. Some of you may even have been there to see their original posting! Jx

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RAW LIGHT!

2011-09-19T23:24:00.005+01:00

This writing blog, Raw Light, is SIX YEARS OLD this month!

Amazing to think how many years it's been going strong. Yet I still haven't got bored and stopped posting. That's impressive for me. Looking back at my posting record, there have been a few dry patches here and there, but I always picked up the slack in the end.

So please wish Raw Light a Happy Birthday, and tweet it Happy Birthday too if the spirit moves you to gain me new followers!

In celebration of six successful years of blogging, I'm going to repost some favourite or significant blog posts from each year over the next few weeks. I'll put the original date in brackets alongside the title, and at the top of the post too, so hopefully people will understand it's a repeat.

Just a trip down memory lane for me, and perhaps for those who have been faithfully following this blog since its first inane flutters of life, back in September 2005.

The tag for old posts will be #RawLightRepeats

Many thanks to ALL my readers, past and present, and to those who are now Following Raw Light.

Couldn't have done it without you! Jane x

Boudicca & Co relaunches as Kindle edition for just 86p!

2011-09-17T09:36:00.009+01:00


'I was dashing from poem to poem, completely compelled.' Helena Nelson, Ambit magazine

Glorious news!

My second poetry collection, Boudicca & Co, has been launched by Salt Publishing today in a Kindle edition. You don't need a Kindle ereader to buy it, you can download free software from that page for computer or laptop, Mac or PC, and read it on your normal screen.

The paperback is 9.99. The Kindle edition is only 0.86p!

Please help to support poetry on Kindle - still an undiscovered world for most readers - by buying this book for less than a pound, or a dollar if you're in the States, and sharing this link, letting others know that it's now available in a digital edition.

Many thanks! Below are a few of the reviews and recommendations Boudicca & Co received on first publication in paperback.
*

'Jane Holland's Boudicca & Co is a book of adventurous, resonant inventions. As the title suggests, it offers a new view from the interior - of both country and psyche - in which history and geography are co-opted in effortless interplay. It's a work of synthesis, and of poetic and emotional maturity, in which Holland emerges as a true craftswoman, a supple and graceful thinker with an effortless grasp of line, at the heart of the English lyric tradition.'

Fiona Sampson, Editor of Poetry Review

'I reached the fourth section of the book, the Boudicca sequence, and everything went electric ... There's a touch of Vicki Feaver about the violence and the cool delight in blood and innards, but the work is quite distinctive ... I was dashing from poem to poem, completely compelled.'

Helena Nelson, Ambit 2007

'Extremely powerful and varied ... Holland has both the clarity for the reader and the mastery of language to say what she means in a way that makes the brain tingle with both shock and pleasure ... This collection is outstanding.'

Angela Topping, Stride Magazine

'... we need only compare Holland's work with the anti-war 'poetry' of Harold Pinter to gain some indication of how rich and rewarding her response to modern conflict is - by shifting methods towards the imaginative and narrative elements of poetry, rather than the rhetorical and political. In this sense, the 'Boudicca' sequence has a great deal in common with David Harsent's Legion, which represents a similar attempt by a non-combatant poet to engage intelligently with the realities of war. This is, frankly, an outstanding collection, and Holland, as a result, can now count herself amongst the front rank of contemporary British poets.'

Simon Turner, Gists and Piths, 2007

In her unconventional aspect, Boudicca is peculiarly modern, and there are moments in the sequence, where modern wars and conflicts appear to be invading the ancient story. In ‘'Last Stand'', the woods are ‘'thick / with sniper fire'’ and Romans beat the men with ‘'rifle butts''. By breaking with the historic period of the tale, Holland comments on the repetition of atrocities and war, as if Boudicca is looking forward to the suffering and dehumanisation of twentieth-century wars.

Zoë Brigley in English Studies

Boudicca & Co. is a bold re-imagining of Britishness. Our contemporary England of Sunday roasts and cyberspace gives way to a wild and alien landscape, a place that Holland lays glinting before us “like a coin tossed in the sun / blunt-edged, foreign.” Steeped in myth and medieval poetry, this is a land of “ruins under rain,” hares, oaks, gargoyles and the Green Man. At the heart of it, embodying both Britain’s fierce beauty and its bloodied past, is Boudicca, and her voice is a startling achievement: modern, pitch-black, funny, and yet hauntingly lyrical. Jane Holland’s second collection is full of love and astonishment, a tribute to the resilience of women, to the power of literature, and, most of all, to: “England // my beleaguered sunken island.”

Poet, Clare Pollard

A Regency Celebration Day with the RNA

2011-09-16T01:50:00.001+01:00

Do you love Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer? Do you wish you knew how to play Loo or dance a daring waltz?

Then this event is perfect for you: A Regency Celebration Day, hosted by the Romantic Novelists Association, with a varied list of activities for everyone to enjoy.

The RNA will be holding a Regency Celebration on Saturday 8 October 2011 between 9.00am-6.00pm at the Royal Overseas League, Park Place, off St James’s Street, London SW1A 1LR (near Green Park tube station).

This event will be a celebration of Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer and the books they have influenced. It coincides with the launch of a new biography of Georgette Heyer, written by Dr Jennifer Kloester, and 2011 also happens to be the bi-centenary of the publication of Jane Austen’s “Sense & Sensibility” – both perfect excuses for a Regency themed day!

The day will be a mixture of serious talks and more frivolous activities, and will include the following:-
• Georgette Heyer, Her Life and Writing – Talk by Dr Jennifer Kloester
• Sense & Sensibility: The Things You Didn’t Know – Talk by Amanda Grange
• Austen & Heyer – Were they better than they thought they were? Panel discussion
• The Celestial Bed: Sex and the Georgians – Talk and panel discussion
• Regency Scents: Odours and Malodours – Louise Allen and Christina Courtenay “sniff-and-tell”
• Regency Clothing - Jane Walton demonstrates the fashions of the day
• Regency Dancing – Mr and Mrs Ellis Rogers take us through the steps
• Parlour Games – Learn how to play Whist, Piquet, Vingt et Un or Loo
• Regency Walk – Guided tour of St James’s
• Afternoon Tea **

(** Please note, on a first come first served basis, fifty delegates will be able to attend a special afternoon tea at the East India Club in the room where the Prince Regent was given the news of the battle of Waterloo. For everyone else, there will be afternoon tea at the Royal Overseas League.)

Throughout the day, there will be a book stall and author signings, as well as a chance to chat to authors of historical romance. There will also be a competition and a quiz, with prizes donated by the authors.

The price for the day, including a sandwich lunch, tea and coffee, is only £55 (although for those of you wanting to attend the Waterloo Tea there is an extra charge of £18). At lunchtime, there will also be a cash bar available for extra drinks.

It all promises to be a wonderful day, so please spread the word!

If you’d like to join us, please fill out the booking form on our site. If you have any queries, please e-mail Pia Fenton at pia.fenton AT googlemail.com and you can join us on Facebook on the events page “A Regency Celebration” for regular updates. Authors – please contact Pia for a copy of our Authors’ Information Sheet.

Researching Shakespeare in Stratford

2011-09-14T12:17:00.002+01:00

I've been in this lovely cottage this week, researching Shakespeare's home life in Stratford upon Avon for the second book in my Tudor trilogy, written under the name Victoria Lamb.

I'm also writing that book at the same time and researching 'on the hoof', as it were, which is the best way to do it with such complicated historicals. It may seem easier to do all the research beforehand and then start writing. But that tends to make people research the spirit out of a book, procrastinate endlessly - just one more trip to the library! - and never begin the writing itself.

It's also a massively inefficient method for a novelist.

This is because you never know precisely what detail you may need until you start writing a scene and hit a snag - what soap would a Tudor lady have used in her bath? (Castille scented soap); how old was Kit Marlowe in the summer of 1586? (he was 22 that year) - at which point you would turn naturally to a book at your elbow or the internet. So I'm both researching and writing this week.

Although I love being here in Stratford upon Avon, with its quaint narrow streets and distinctive black and white half-timbered houses, my favourite topics for research so far have been the Tudor spy network and the brave new world of London theatres. The theatre in particular is a fascinating area for research, being a popular entertainment that was just beginning to expand in the late 1580s, though still dogged by plagues, repressive laws, and a dearth of good writers.

His Dark Lady - the second book in my Victoria Lamb Tudor trilogy - is due on my editor's desk on October 1st.

There's still quite a mountain to climb, even with the help of this stay in Stratford. Will I make it?

You can also follow my Tudor-writing progress on Twitter, where I am @VictoriaLamb1

'Every woman adores a Fascist'

2011-09-09T00:46:00.000+01:00

This is a blog post from earlier this year on the site I run for readers and fans of my mother, Charlotte Lamb. I decided to replicate it here as it's quite a complex piece on the nature of women writing for other women, and in particular doing so in the late seventies, and might be of interest to readers of this blog too.

Festival Summer was first published by Mills & Boon in 1977.

The Magnificent Milfords are one of England's great theatrical families - brilliant, beautiful and witty. All except Katrine, who prefers to stay at home and has no yearnings for the limelight. But this summer, at the Cantwich Festical, she falls under the spell of the brooding, enigmatic actor-director Max Neilson, who soon co-opts her as his PA. But Max has other plans for Katrine beside fetching and carrying ...

This is a very early contemporary Lamb title, written just as she is emerging from several years of writing fairly conservative historicals, and it flags up territory she will revisit in later novels about the stage or actors in general.

Charlotte Lamb had little or no contact with the professional theatre, despite the number of novels where her hero or heroine are actors. Before becoming a writer, she worked for a spell at the BBC, where she came into contact with a number of acting folk, and of course she was a great theatregoer herself while still living in the London area. Lamb's knowledge of Shakespeare was exemplary, and she knew much modern drama too, reading plays even once her many children made it difficult for her to visit the theatre in person. Yet she never showed any personal inclination to write for the stage or to act herself, preferring the solitude of the novelist's life.

In Festival Summer, Max Neilson shows all the hallmarks of a later classic Lamb hero: worldly-wise, cynical, brooding, charismatic, even domineering. The sample text in the inside front cover sums up that kind of hero's bleak outlook on life, and his reliance on the idea of a woman's destiny - which usually turns out to be a place in his bed:

He looked into her upturned face with a menacing smile. "Cowards have to learn that it's easier to fight than to run away because no matter how fast you run fate can run faster."

Katrine provides the pattern for Lamb's younger heroines, the ones who have yet to taste life and whose primary objective is to keep a low profile and hence avoid trouble. They are the emotional 'cowards' Max Neilson refers to above.

Where Festival Summer differs from some of the later Lamb titles following this same model is that Katrine has been suppressing her talent as an actress in order not to compete with her actor father and older siblings, all of whom are depicted as shallow, demanding, egotistical and self-serving - while Katrine herself is humble, modest, patient and a domestic slave. But she's not a doormat. There's an early scene in which she brushes her father aside and sorts out his clothes for him in a slightly brusque manner, making it clear that while she isn't keen on the limelight her siblings enjoy, she does need to feel in control of the household - and of them.

The first kiss appears to come over halfway through the book - too early yet for the infamous Lamb bedroom scenes - and again, sets the pattern for later sexual contact in Lamb novels of this period. Goaded beyond endurance by her stubborn refusal to admit any talent, the hero Max grabs Katrine and kisses her:

Max laughed. "Ordinary? You're as ordinary as dynamite!" He caught her by the shoulders, his fingers biting into her flesh, so that she raised her head, gasping.

'Max! You're hurt ..." The words were smothered beneath his lips as he bent his head and kissed her with violent intensity, so hard that it forced her head back and stretched her throat until it was painful.

Sounds harsh, yes? Yet one sentence later, we get this: 'A sensation of intolerable bliss burst upon her.'

Max Neilson is by no means the brutal, domineering hero of later Lamb novels, who comes along to wake the sleeping princess with a kiss - and likes to make damn sure she's aware of what's going on - but he does appear to be a prototype for that man. Indeed, these archetypal Lamb heroes are disturbingly reminiscent of Sylvia Plath's "Daddy", a visceral proto-feminist poem written about fifteen years earlier than Festival Summer:

Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

Here, the modest Katrine gets her reward. Max, who sees through her good-girl disguise to the star material beneath, tricks her into displaying her talent for all the world - but particularly her own family - to see. Because of this, she is cast in a major role, acting alongside her father and sister in the play festival of the title, and gains everyone's admiration. 'You could be a great actress,' Max tells her, near the end of the book.

In the final chapter, we see that Katrine's talent is undeniable, a shining future in theatre absolutely guaranteed. So does she pursue a career in the theatre, and outshine her talented father and siblings? No, because Max asks her to marry him immediately after the festival and she readily agrees, insisting that she wants to have children, not a career.

Those five minutes of fame are all Katrine wants - swiftly reverting to good-girl type before any of her readers can throw the book across the room. She will be quite happy to return to ironing shirts and cleaning up after other people, now she has a man in her life. Here the heroine validates the domestic drudgery of the typical late seventies romance reader by giving up her own dreams too and choosing marriage instead of a career.

Max resists for a few lines, 'incredulous' at this unthinking sacrifice: 'You mean you would give up the theatre, despite having made such a hit, just to have babies?' and then rapidly capitulates. But Katrine has earned the good virgin's reward with her sacrifice. His brooding violence is gone. She has tamed the beast, and now finds 'passion' in his eyes instead of anger and impatience.

It's hard to read these earlier Lamb novels now without being aware of how much British society has changed since the mid-late seventies. Yet these main characters are drawn in a complex way, with deeply contradictory impulses and hang-ups Freud would have recognised, something which is not always true of today's more politically correct short romances. Even the secondary characters here, the rest of the Magnificent Milfords - the flamboyant and emotionally flawed father, in particular - are masterpieces of psychological understanding.

Nor is Katrine's decision to abandon a career in acting irrelevant to today's readers, despite the three decades that have elapsed since it was written. Most women these days still face the same choice that Katrina faces here (even if she doesn't see it as a dilemma) once children arrive. Now, however, women are expected to 'have it all' - which, in real terms, means we are expected to cope with both the responsibility of raising children and the demands of an ongoing career - where that possibility would not have been open to the vast majority of women in post-war Britain, when my own mother was having her first children.

The irony of all this, of course, is that the writer herself was managing to do both, whilst tacitly condoning her heroine's decision to throw away her chance of a glittering career and be a 'stay at home mum' instead.

Visit the Charlotte Lamb fan blog, or see her books listed on Wikipedia.

Writing Retreat

2011-08-25T10:47:00.002+01:00

I'm off up to North Yorkshire tomorrow, to a remote little cottage nestled on the edge of the moors, not too far a drive from the salty air of Whitby. There's a log fire if the weather turns gloomy, and a table out in the pretty garden for sunny days. There I intend to write my novel and think deep thoughts, surrounded by my research books and listening to music.

Sounds idyllic?

Yes, it would be idyllic - if I wasn't so hard up against my deadline. Instead, picture me hammering away at the keys like a lunatic, pacing the small living room of the cottage as I consider how to get from A to B, or staring out of the window in despair because the story has stalled.

Meanwhile the final copyedits for my first historical novel, The Queen's Secret, will be sitting on the table, laughing at me. They are due back with the publisher just after my return from Yorkshire. They involve tricky and detailed research on which stuffed birds might have been served at Elizabeth I's table, other than the varieties already mentioned in the book, and some fiendish logistics which will probably have me tearing my hair out as I confront their impossibility.

I shall take one or two of my mother's diaries with me for comfort and inspiration. There's nothing like reading over a few random entries in her journals to burst my bubble of self-importance, reminding me in my darkest hour of 'Why me?' that writers have existed who write quicker, harder and without complaining so much.

Catch you all on the flipside.

Decided Against Standing, Prefer Sitting and Writing

2011-08-18T18:18:00.004+01:00

Today was the deadline for nominations for the Board of Trustees of the Poetry Society, and I decided not to submit my nomination form. Thanks to those who wanted to support my nomination, but I was only ever doing it to ensure there were some poets on the Board, and since announcing that I intended to stand, several other poets also leapt out of the bushes with their underwear pulled up over their tights.

In other words, I'm not needed, and good luck to them all.

I've decided, in fact, that at the moment I'm much better off sitting, either in front of my computer keyboard, writing my latest novel, or at a café table, working on my copy-edits. I'm quite good at just sitting, so why try to change things?

Judith Palmer is back at the Poetry Society too, so things are looking up as the summer of discontent draws to its fitful end. I no longer feel comfortable sending work to Poetry Review, which is sad, given my long and fruitful association with the flagship magazine of the Poetry Society, especially as a reviewer, but at some point that situation may change. I live in hope.

Should I Stand for the Board of the Poetry Society?

2011-08-16T23:48:00.003+01:00

I've been in conversation with various poets behind the scenes about standing for the Board of Trustees for the Poetry Society.

I'm not sure this would be the right thing to do, not least because it's a huge commitment, and I am already heavily committed to my writing for the next few years.

However, it was suggested that not enough people who are active poets are standing, and this was enough to make me feel I should. I don't feel comfortable with the idea that the entire Board of the Poetry Society should be made up of lawyers, accountants, and corporate types who also serve on other Society Boards. The ones I saw on the retiring - technically sacked - Board of Trustees at the EGM seemed to me quite scornful of poets, one describing us afterwards as mad. People who have sympathy with poets ought to stand, as the Poetry Society site makes clear, stating on its page for Trustee candidates: "A demonstrable interest in all aspects of poetry, including written, studied, spoken, electronic and performance is essential."

Although I've announced that I'm standing, and have two nominations from other members - I need a third, otherwise this is all academic - I haven't yet made a definitive decision. Since deciding to stand, Kona Macphee, who describes herself as an 'Australian-bred poet', has joined Polly Clark as a poet standing for the Board. I'm not sure now that I am particularly needed, in light of that, but it's hard when I have only sketchy information about how many are standing altogether, and how many are active poets.

Here's my statement:

I’m a poet, novelist and former editor with a strong knowledge of grass-roots poetry, especially performance and independent poetry presses.

I received an Eric Gregory Award in 1996, have been Warwick Poet Laureate, and have published three full-length collections of poetry, one with Bloodaxe and two with Salt Publishing. I edited a poetry magazine in the nineties, and more recently was Editor of Horizon Review. I have also been a commissioning editor for Salt Publishing, both for poetry and fiction.

I currently write commercial historical fiction for Transworld as Victoria Lamb, plus Young Adult fiction for Random House from 2012. I have a professional knowledge of what it takes to work in the arts as a practitioner, while my experience as an editor has allowed me to understand the practicalities of making that work public.

I have tutored for the Arvon Foundation, taught poetry and creative writing to adults and children over the past fifteen years, and have sat on arts committees as a specialist. My main aim in standing is to ensure we balance out a board of arts-friendly professionals from other walks of life with serious, long-term practitioners of the art.

There's also an interesting piece just published in the New Statesman by Daniel Barrow which discusses the current situation, quoting various poets, including Polly Clark and Tom Chivers, and indeed myself. It sums up how I feel about the direction the Poetry Society ought to be taking:

"I would be glad to see a return to a more inclusive programme at the Poetry Society, and by that I don't necessarily mean 'anyone who writes poetry' but a better understanding and sympathy for the aims and achievements of the small presses, including smaller magazines." .... A re-engagement between the small presses and grassroots groups and the Society is necessary: "it's about time we returned to a position of cheerful amateurism".

If another poet stands between now and the deadline on Thursday, I shall probably not bother putting in my nomination form. My only wish here is to serve the Poetry Society by ensuring there is a balance on the Board between poets and corporate professionals brought in for their expertise in other areas. If enough poets are already standing, I see no reason why I should also stand. I may be better placed to serve the Society in other ways.

Writing in Hotels: Coventry City Centre

2011-08-15T11:59:00.004+01:00

Just surfacing here from three nights at a hotel, largely spent writing my current novel but also having some alone-time, reading and thinking, staring out of the window, enjoying my solitude.

It's not really solitude though. I prefer to pick busy hotels rather than quiet country spots, because I like to hear city life going on around me while I work, the patter of toddlers' feet down the corridors, families moving in and out of rooms, the hum of traffic outside.

Too much noise would drive me crazy though, so I tend to pick hotels which have a high degree of noise insulation. City centre hotels, airport hotels, these are perfect.

I was staying at the Premier Inn - my chain of choice, because the beds tend to be very comfortable and the service is of a high quality, but relatively inexpensive - and I chose my favourite, only half an hour from where I live, the Coventry City Centre Premier Inn.

I wrote about 10,000 words, which isn't a huge amount for a three night stay, but had a very calming time of it, away from my kids and the constant interruptions of home. I had a large, comfortable room on the 4th floor, sat and looked out over the city lights at night, watched teenagers roaming the streets below me, shut my window whenever the sound of car stereos or sirens distracted me.

On my last night there, I was writing (as Victoria Lamb) a scene where Shakespeare, as a young theatrical, returns to his home town of Stratford, not far from Coventry, to see his wife Anne. Although sitting in a modern city centre hotel, it was surprisingly easy to imagine myself back in sixteenth century Warwickshire, for Coventry is a medieval city itself and steeped in history. Indeed, it's a city that Shakespeare would probably have known well; he may even have visited its magnificent medieval cathedral once or twice, now a burnt-out shell courtesy of bombing raids across the industrial Midlands during World War II.

It was quite a wrench to leave the hotel, but I have a trip up to Yorkshire booked for the end of the summer, where I hope to put the finishing touches to this novel. Meanwhile, I want to recommend the Coventry City Centre Premier Inn to travellers. I have stayed there many times over the past two years, while writing my Tudor novels, and can confirm that it is a great place to stay. All the staff there are invariably courteous, friendly and helpful. The cooked breakfast is probably the best I have ever eaten in a chain hotel in Britain - cooked to order rather than a buffet-style breakfast, with sausages and bacon bursting with flavour, and fluffy scrambled eggs (none of that runny mush you usually encounter). And the rooms are excellent: spacious, comfortable, very clean, and fully insulated from noise.

I only once had a problem while staying there, and that was when I was woken by a couple of noisy student-types eating a kebab outside my room at 3am. I rang down to reception, a burly security guard appeared after a few moments and moved them on, and in the morning I was told the cost of my room was being refunded.

It's also situated in the city centre, about 3 minutes on foot from the main shopping area, so when I get tired of writing alone in my room, I can pack up my laptop and saunter into Costa in Waterstones or Starbucks or whatever, and write there amidst the bustle of shoppers.

I expect the young Shakespeare left his digs in London and wrote in the occasional 'inn' too. The stories just seem to flow better in a crowd.

Novels, Weeping, Romance, Catharsis, & The Crucible

2011-08-15T01:03:00.009+01:00

It occurred to me tonight, seeing my bloodshot eyes in the mirror after putting down the book I had just finished reading, that I had never seen my husband cry while or after reading a novel. Yet I do it quite regularly. Indeed, it's almost a benchmark for me of a novel's quality, if it moves me to tears.

Of course, this rarely applies when reading poetry or what I would call 'straight' literary fiction. I'm talking largely about genre fiction here, and mainly romance. With poetry, if it's good, I do feel moved emotionally - perhaps 'thrilled' or 'disturbed' would be a better description - and frequently also moved to write something myself. But only a few poems have brought me to tears.

With literary fiction, it's more a sense of having some truth revealed. Not usually a truth which pertains to matters of the heart, but one about human nature in general, the momentary lifting of some veil covering one of the mysteries of life and death. Something important and significant, but not necessarily emotional in quality. The kind of quasi-mystical, revelatory impression one receives from reading almost anything by E.M. Forster, for instance. Or perhaps James Joyce, before he erroneously decided longer was better.

So is it normal to cry after reading a novel? Is it because men don't tend to read romances that we don't associate them with snuffling into tissues as they reach the last page? Or because they go to fiction for other things than that cathartic moment when the Darkest Moment passes and you finally remember that everything is going to be all right, because this is fiction and not reality?

I'm probably asking the wrong questions here. Perhaps the real issue for me is, why is something that can elicit such a powerful emotional and even physical response so often considered second-rate by those who value literary fiction above genre? Or science-fiction above romance? Is it because they only work on the emotional level and don't necessarily uncover the mysteries of existence?

If only they could do both.

This continues to be a problem for me, both as a reader and a writer. With my head, I know that certain kinds of writing touch me deeply but intellectually, and that these are considered by the literary establishment - and often common consent - to be more 'worthy' than the novels which touch me deeply but emotionally. With my heart though, I admit to loving the latter and returning to them more often than the former.

Here's something else though. A few years after quitting a professional sport following an unpleasant and bloody run-in with my governing body, I went to an amateur production of Miller's The Crucible. And I wept openly in the theatre because, at the time, that play spoke to me on such a deep level about betrayal of trust, about the bullying and persecution of individuals by group consent, and about the importance of standing up for one's principles, whatever the cost. Emotion came together with intellect at that moment and metaphorically crushed me, forced me to suffer and remade me, sent me out new and somehow changed - precisely what you would expect to happen in a crucible.

I think of Shakespeare, and the same is true of his great plays.

So is theatre the only place where both emotion and intellect can be invoked in equal measure? Can film ever have the same effect, or do we need to be there in person, witnessing it live, becoming complicit in the event, for a full and rounded catharsis to occur?

Catharsis. Perhaps if we had more of that, more bread and circuses, and less emotional starvation of the masses, we wouldn't have riots. Does literature ever make a difference? Is 'acting-out' the most effective form of literature we have? Why did I cry and, more importantly, why did I want to and welcome it?

The Battle for London etc.

2011-08-09T12:07:00.013+01:00

Not since the Vikings have we seen so much looting and arson across the UK. It's got to the point where I can no longer blog about writing and poetry without feeling as though I'm completely out of touch with what's going on in our society at large.

So here goes.

I have no personal photos, and don't want to use any without permission, but here are some horrifying and telling photographic images for those who need to see for themselves what has happened.

An angry demonstration against the police shooting of a young man in London turned to rioting on the streets of London over the weekend. The rioting spread last night to other major cities. To my nearest city, Birmingham, less than an hour from my home in the Midlands, and also to Liverpool, Bristol, Nottingham, Leeds, Coventry, and possibly also Manchester. I imagine there may have been smaller scale disturbances in other places too, with youths across the country stirred up by rapidly-changing reports of a violent or provocative nature on Twitter, Facebook, Bebo ("Bebo provides an open, engaging, and fun environment that empowers a new generation to discover, connect and express themselves" according to their own publicity) and probably YouTube too.

London burnt for hours and is still smouldering this morning. There were many casualties among civilians and the police. Large numbers of innocent families, caught up in the arson attacks, have been displaced without possessions. Some have lost everything they owned, including their homes and livelihoods, and may never recover from this. People were beaten up, their property stolen. Restaurants full of customers were attacked. People had to barricade themselves into pubs and other places of business. One hapless youth swept up in the violence yesterday was helped to his feet, bleeding copiously from his nose, then mugged by his helpers: the whole disgusting incident captured on CCTV. Young people out 'on the loot' went about masked or with hoodies drawn down to protect their identity. Others strode about with utter fearlessness, jeering at police and gesturing obscenely to cameramen. Looters attacked anyone with a smartphone who might have been taking photos of them.

Some have claimed these were all kids, and from the footage a large number may have been as young as twelve or fourteen years of age. But many of those appear to have been thrill-seekers or opportunist thieves hanging about on the fringes rather than ring-leaders. "Let's get some watches!" exclaimed one excited youth on a snippet of film taken at Clapham's Debenham store as it was looted. But clearly this kind of widespread looting was not a free-for-all that happened by accident. "It's not just young people," said one man in London, whose property was threatened by rioters. "Don't believe news reports about the age of these looters. There were adults involved too, and they were very well coordinated, using their mobiles to move groups from place to place."

"It was like being in another country," said one horrified eyewitness to the rioting and looting on the streets of Liverpool last night. "The police were there, but they just stood about at the ends of roads, holding a line. They didn't confront looters or arrest anyone." "We were trapped in the middle of a confrontation between looters and police," said another witness of the riots, who could only watch helpless from his flat as youths tried to set fire to the pub opposite. "We were ready to leave if necessary, but it was too dangerous to move."

Today, a Riot Clean Up in London has been organised - ironically, also via the medium of Twitter. (See http://twitter.com/#!/Riotcleanup to join in with the action.)

Many local people have come out this morning armed with brooms and buckets instead of sticks and burning bottles, and are just waiting for the go-ahead from police investigators - who are gathering fingerprints, CCTV footage and witness statements - before moving in to return the devastated streets of the capital to some kind of normality.

That same weary but determined clean-up effort is being repeated across the country. "People have been very good with the clean-up and it's business as usual,' said a local spokesperson in Birmingham city centre a few hours ago.

So why were the police stretched so thin and unable to cope last night? Why were so few arrests made over the weekend, and will more follow now that the violence and lawlessness have escalated to such an extent? Will the looting happen again tonight, and in the future? What's gone wrong with David Cameron's "Big Society"?

"In this country we police by consent," said a tight-lipped Theresa May, Home Secretary, speaking on BBC News24 this morning. Obviously though, consent by many young people in our cities, and in particular in London, has been withdrawn. Was it ever given? Only very grudgingly by some, it seems, and once the leash was off, so were the dogs.

An activitist speaking on the BBC news today, Darcus Howe, claimed that the action we saw on the streets of London last night was provoked by police brutality and the injustice of stop-and-search that mainly targets black youths. He felt the looters were disaffected and angry youths fighting back against a government that no longer cares about them. In rebuttal on Twitter, author and journalist Dorian Lynskey said: "Sad that Darcus Howe, such a vital figure in the black community in the 70s and 80s, is reduced to barking self-parody."

I was not involved in any of the rioting or looting. I was nowhere near any of the many areas affected. But the ensuing bill for tax-payers and the impact on our economy from the last few nights of unrest and lawlessness will certainly affect me as an individual and a member of the larger UK community in which we all live and work. I don't have any waterproof answers to the question 'why', and I don't know if we should call in the army or hope that increasing police presence and their powers to control looters may help to contain the escalation. I don't know why any of this has happened, and I'm not even sure it will become clear until we have a good few years' distance between ourselves and the Battle for London, as some newspapers are calling it.

But at the moment, it feels like a viral summer madness, spread via the internet and eagerly seized upon by those whose primary desire - at least for a few insane hours - is to deny the consent of all well-run societies to work together peaceably and obey the law. Others may have been dragged in unwillingly, through a fear of not appearing part of the 'group', the Borg mentality which drove the rioters and looters last night. See this article in the Independent for more on this.

My deepest sympathies go out to all those involved, and I can only hope that the madness has now burnt itself out. Whether or not that is a false hope will be seen over the next few days and weeks of the summer.

On the Dubious Hierarchy of Writers

2011-08-08T09:43:00.002+01:00

One thing that still chafes me as I do the rounds, both on the internet and at writers' conferences and get-togethers, is the difference in the way writers are treated according to their publication status.

On the one hand, there are those who are published. (And these further sub-divide into those published digitally only, published in the small presses and independents, or published by major publishers: the latter being considered VIPs, in general.)

Then there are those who are either unpublished or self-published. (Pre-published is a newish term that attempts to circumvent the perceived weakness of this position.)

In my experience, which is not insubstantial, there are two main things which decide where writers are placed in this dubious hierarchy.

One is hard work. The other is luck.

Talent is important, yes, but you can get there without it (see celebrity biographies and surprise successes) and a lesser talent can be honed by hard work and application.

Luck is either dumb or smart. Usually the latter. That we make our own luck is self-evident. Any fool can find themselves next to an agent in the queue for the conference buffet, but a smart person will know what to say to get their attention - and what NOT to say.

Now, forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but unpublished or self-published writers may be working just as hard - sometimes harder! - than published writers, and also struggling to get Lady Luck on their side year after year. They may make the big breakthrough next year, or never. But that doesn't mean they should be disrespected for not having 'made it' yet, or for having decided to eschew the lengthy and often tedious agent-publisher route by publishing themselves.

Everyone has their story. Being published doesn't necessarily make it better than anyone else's. Just more high profile, perhaps.

You shall have a fishie, in a little dishie ...

2011-08-07T09:35:00.001+01:00

Back from holiday. Many thanks to those who left messages on Raw Light in my absence. These have now been approved and posted.

This little beauty was one of two caught by my twin boys and daughter (aged 9 and 7 respectively) in Normandy last week. Is it a trout?

They found a hook and part of a nylon line on the grass one day, tied it to a long tree branch, then left the whole thing in the stream which ran beside our house, with a little wriggling worm attached.

As you can see, it was a successful idea!

On Warwick Castle

2011-07-29T10:31:00.002+01:00

I'm off on my holidays soon, so here's a poem post instead of prose
- apologies for the lack of formatting; no time to do the proper indents here - and please be aware that comments may not appear until after I return.

Catch you all on the flipside!

On Warwick Castle - a 25 page poem - was written during my year-long tenure as Warwick Poet Laureate and published as a pamphlet by Nine Arches Press in 2008. Many thanks to them!

This is the first page. And yes, that's my own made-up Middle English.

On Warwick Castle

One year floods rose,
one year they fought in the snows,
one year hail fell, according to the Cantos
(Canto IX, to be precise)
and that year there were metal-tipped arrows
loosed from embrasures
and hot pitch
dropped out of diabolic machicolations
and other fourteenth century garrison defences
and holes cut for cannon
and two dank side rooms in Guy's Tower -
one possibly a bedchamber
the other reserved for calls of nature -
GARDEZ LOO!
and down it went.

And þa mudde þær wæs so thicce
þæt wuden patens motan we weren
Forþæt ure feet he may not stynk

And the old man bent with his shovel
under that filthy drop
and there were many flies there
and a breathless heat in the white tents before battle
and a young boy with his skull dented by a mattock
and the want & the waste of it
and still the rallying cry 'For Warwick!'

the half-pint at dusk for the regular staff
and the brass-eyed army of cleaners, steady
in trainers and flip-flops
with steaming mops and buckets
come to wash it all off, swabbing down the turrets
from courtyard to dungeon, from parapet
to parapet, from Royal Weekend
to lavatory block.

An Open Letter from Kate Clanchy

2011-07-29T00:16:00.006+01:00

Extract from an open letter by poet Kate Clanchy, being circulated late Thursday night.

You can read the full text of her letter directly at the members' Poetry Society website, where you can read many other things and also be directed to a Petition to reinstate the very talented Judith Palmer as Director of the Poetry Society.

"Poets are easy to poke fun at. Their lives' work may well be shorter than a cook-book, and have fewer readers. Their art-form is notoriously ill paid. And they fuss, almost by definition, about things which seem incomprehensibly small to outsiders: scansion, line-endings, reviews, precedence. They fuss with each other too, again over goods which may seem petty: a professorship, an editorship, a review.

All this can make for a difficult atmosphere at parties: a paranoia of poets, our Poet Laureate once proposed as our collective noun. But I’ve always maintained that the paranoia was only skin-deep. I was treated very generously as a new poet, and I have always told other new poets that they will be treated generously too. In particular, I’ve always laughed at the notion of a ‘London-based cabal’, and a sinister group ‘in control’ of prizes and publications. I’ve always pointed out, for example, that prize juries rotate, and so does the editorship of our central Journal, Poetry Review. If your work is not the taste of one judge or editor, it might be to the next’s.

I went into the work of organising a Requisition to find out what was going on at the Poetry Society in this same spirit: I thought that something very poetical and principled, something to do with an ampersand, would be found to be the problem, and that everything would be sorted well before I collected my 300 signatures.

I have been horribly disappointed: at each turn, with each anguished email and late-night strange phone-call, I have found out more and more things that seem to have come straight from the imaginings of a paranoid poet. For example, that the Editorship of Poetry Review doesn’t rotate at all, any more. The Editor’s post was made permanent in 2008, and no one was told. Now, this may be one of those facts that seems incredibly petty to outsiders, but to poets, it’s like being told that driving licenses have only been given out through one instructor for the last 3 years, and no one thought that to know this was any of a learner-driver's business. Poetry Review is a gate-keeper magazine. The keys can’t stay with one person."

Read the rest of Kate's letter ...

Sign the petition.

A Petition to Reinstate the Former Director of the Poetry Society

2011-07-27T16:46:00.000+01:00

Please find a petition here to reinstate Judith Palmer as Director of the Poetry Society.

Just to be clear, Kate Clanchy sent me this link today, and also writes:

This petition is being put forward by George Szirtes, and is signed in the first instance by Carol Ann Duffy, Gillian Clarke, Jo Shapcott and Liz Lochhead. It doesn't come from me, or the Requisition team, though we are all keen to sign.

A Question of Integrity

2011-07-27T14:17:00.009+01:00

Judith Palmer, former Director of the Poetry Society, yesterday issued a lengthy statement outlining the background to her resignation and the subsequent furore and inglorious cheque-signing fest indulged in by the Poetry Society Board of Trustees.

It has become clear to me, from her account, which is freely available online, that the matter is a great deal more far-reaching in its implications than we previously considered. I urge all members to read it.

Here are some extracts which interested me particularly:

The Chair told me he’d been waiting until after the funding announcement to tell me about a proposal put to him by Fiona Sampson, the Editor of Poetry Review, a proposal that he’d been discussing with her since January without my knowledge. She requested a new working arrangement whereby she would reduce her days, work mainly from home, and report directly to the Board. I must emphasise that this was put forward as a permanent arrangement. It was initially communicated to me verbally and, a few days later, in writing.

The timing was completely unexpected. Although the relative integration / independence of the Society’s magazine Poetry Review within the Society’s activities had been a regular subject of debate throughout the Editor’s tenure, and long pre-dated my appointment, this had not been a recent subject of discussion.

In September 2008, before my time as Director of the Poetry Society, Fiona Sampson approached the Society’s Board of Trustees with a similar proposal. She requested that her fixed-term contract be made permanent and that the structure of the Society be altered to raise her status and allow her to report directly to the Board rather than continue to be managed by the Director. The Board rejected both suggestions (7 October 2008). The Arts Council was involved in the discussions, and supported the Board’s rejection of the proposal at a subsequent Board meeting I attended on 20 November 2008.

I queried with Peter Carpenter the timing of this revival of Ms Sampson’s proposal in 2011. We had only just submitted a detailed 4-year plan to the Arts Council that had been supported fully by the Board. The plan had reflected a fully-integrated Poetry Society, and this was the vision endorsed by the Arts Council. To make such a significant change now seemed to me both dishonest and dangerous. Our funding offer from the Arts Council remained only conditional.

Carpenter apologised, but explained that poets were putting pressure on him, the Board were going to split over it, and suggested that Ms Sampson would otherwise leave.

Later, there was also this:

Peter Carpenter confirmed he would “split off Poetry Review so it reports to me [Peter Carpenter]”. I feared this was the first step towards a much more profound separation of the Review from the Society.

There was much more in Judith Palmer's statement. Please do read it.

But my chief reaction to the extracts above is, why have we had no public statement from the Editor of the Society's flagship magazine - expressing, for instance, some sadness or regret at how these events have driven the Society which funds her magazine to the potential brink of insolvency?

It must be clear to Fiona Sampson that she has lost public confidence over these and other recent revelations - now being widely discussed via email communications, social media and the national press (including this, new today) - and that her position at Poetry Review has become problematic, not least thanks to an email she sent out to a list of members of the Society immediately before the EGM last week, implying that all 'right-thinking' members should, like pro-Board poet Neil Rollinson, vote for the board, rather than against. Given the overwhelming majority who voted the opposite way at the EGM, I would suggest this is indicative of a basic mismatch in ideology and outlook between the current Editor and the membership at large. There is also the longer-term question of impartiality to be considered, regarding submissions to the magazine.

I wrote earlier on this blog about this campaign not being a witch-hunt, and I still agree with that standpoint. I would be perfectly satisfied with a public statement by Fiona Sampson which signalled some regret over what has happened and outlined her plans for the future with regards to the difficulties the Society is now facing. It is my sincere hope that one will be issued soon.

Preparing Your Poems for Submission

2011-07-24T09:33:00.003+01:00

The Mslexia poetry competition has now closed, but you can still send your poems to the magazine as part of their rolling submission themes, or just subscribe. Mslexia is a fantastic resource for writers, both male and female, though it is of course primarily aimed at women writers.

Meanwhile, the third part of my poetry workshop is up on the site.

It's about Preparing your Poems for Submission, and is intended for those getting ready to submit a new batch of work to a magazine or publishing house.

I hope it's useful, and many thanks to Mslexia for the opportunity to run this new series of workshops on their website, which you must visit if you're a writer of any kind. It has fabulous resources which are absolutely free.

"Try not to revise your poetry where reading aloud is impossible (in an office environment, for instance, or on public transport).

Reading aloud is about more than the sound of your voice. It impacts on your body too, your facial expression and gestures, the way you hold yourself.

When reading a poem silently, it’s easy to ignore the sounds and rhythms, and make changes based purely on line length or other cosmetic considerations. That's not to say these are unimportant. But the two should work in tandem."

A New Dawn for the Poetry Society

2011-07-23T01:37:00.018+01:00

For those who fell asleep and missed it, yesterday saw a violently contested Emergency General Meeting of the Poetry Society in London's Royal College of Surgeons, an apposite setting considering the incisive nature of the debate.

On the one hand were the c. 500-strong requisitioners, who had called for the meeting following a recent spate of Board and staff resignations, and whose prime objectives were the discovery of the truth, and if necessary, the passing of a vote of No Confidence in the board.

On the other hand were the Board of Trustees and their apologists, such as senior poet Alan Brownjohn who chastised the requisitioners for 'obscenity' and recommended the members should not pursue a motion of No Confidence.

The EGM opened with an announcement that the Board of Trustees had decided to resign en masse, but only with effect from September, so that normal business could continue while members nominate and vote for new Board members.

A member then got up and asked from the floor why we should bother to continue with the meeting and our proposed vote of No Confidence, since the Board had already resigned.

Thankfully, this transparent deflection from the true business of the meeting - to discover what the hell had been going on behind closed doors - was disregarded by the majority of members.

In initial statements from the Board, we were told that the cause of recent resignations had been a 'personality issue' between the (now former) Director and the current Editor of Poetry Review, the Society's flagship magazine, Fiona Sampson.

Three hours later, when the meeting finally closed, it had become painfully clear that this 'personality issue' was indeed the crux of the matter.

We were told as the meeting progressed that some years prior to the current dispute the Editor of Poetry Review had demanded that her contract - originally for 3 years only - be amended to a permanent contract in line with new EU laws, notwithstanding the special circumstances of working for a charitable organisation in a job already agreed by the membership as of 3 years' duration only.

This was agreed by the Board, and it was not thought important that the membership be informed of this vital change to the Editor's tenure.

It was revealed by former Finance Officer Paul Ranford that the Editor of Poetry Review later asked the Board if she could work fewer hours for less pay and also to work from home. This was also agreed, but with her pay remaining the same, for reasons that were not entirely clear to me from the Chair, Laura Bamford's explanation. The Board decided, apparently, that it was 'not possible' to lower Fiona Sampson's wage, even though the rest of her requests had been met.

Meanwhile, the Director, Judith Palmer, was busy negotiating a vastly increased grant from Arts Council England for the Poetry Society, at a time when many poetry organisations were going to the wall through reduced or withdrawn funding. That her efforts were heroic and a triumph for the Poetry Society is not in dispute.

However, John Simmons of the Board informed us that 'increased funding brought increased responsibilities' for the Director. The Trustees soon became 'concerned by stress caused by Judith's hard work' and decided, apparently without consulting her, that she 'needed to delegate more' and to take some leave. The Director was excluded from meetings at which decisions were made concerning the Editor, with the result that after the Director returned from a two week holiday she found that the Editor no longer had to report to her, but could bypass her authority and report directly to the Board.

When asked for more details about this later on, it was blithely admitted by the Chair, Laura Bamford, that some of these decisions were first discussed 'at a party'. You can imagine the astonished noises, shouts and grimaces from the membership that accompanied this candid revelation.

In response to these actions, the Director resigned. She was immediately excluded from the building, her keys removed, her email account cancelled, and staff were told not to speak to her in any way or allow her access. Naturally irate, she allegedly made a 'verbal threat' of a legal nature to members of the Board.

In response to this 'verbal threat', the Board hired Harbottle & Lewis, the firm of solicitors currently also acting for the Murdochs in the phone hacking scandal, to 'protect the Poetry Society from legal threat'.

When asked about this decision, which they admit has so far cost the Poetry Society £24,000, over a fifth of their financial reserves accumulated over the past 100 years, the Board claimed not to know that, as a charity, they could have consulted ACAS and obtained free legal advice.

Nor could they provide any explanation for their continuing use of these lawyers, considering that no actual legal threat was or has subsequently been made in writing to the Poetry Society. The Chair gave some insubstantial account of 'other' occasions of this same verbal threat, but seemed quite unable to respond in any coherent manner to an accusation by former Chair of the Poetry Society, Anne-Marie Fyfe, that 'abusive' phone calls had been made to her and the content of private emails used in an alleged attempt to intimidate the Director into dropping her 'verbal threat'.

Former Finance Officer, Paul Ranford, a man of great integrity, stood up and confirmed that he had been asked about overdraft possibilities and also if 22 Betterton Street, the current Poetry Society London headquarters, had been valued. The obvious inference to be drawn from such questions is that the Board was preparing for a protracted legal battle which would eat into or perhaps entirely consume the Society reserves to such an extent that further sources of revenue would be necessary for the Society to continue functioning.

By the way, if I was on the Board, I'd want to ask Colman Getty for a refund on the additional £3000's worth of PR advice they also allegedly sought. This whole fiasco, after all, has been a PR disaster.

Eventually, a motion of No Confidence was called for by Laurie Smith and a simple show of hands asked for. Various shenanigans were then immediately put in play by pro-Board members to delay and confuse the voting procedure. Once these had been dealt with, we moved to a poll vote, which resulted in a resounding victory for the requisitioners of 302 votes for the motion, 69 against, and 11 abstentions.

The membership was so exhausted by this stage that the news that the requisitioners' motion had been carried - and easily too, after all the manipulative games and obstructions of the preceding weeks - was received with complete silence.

The Board was then presented with the names of four members willing to stand as interim Board members. Despite the fact that the Board have resigned and undergone a vote of No Confidence from 302 members present at the meeting or represented by proxy, under our own constitutional rules they are apparently required to stay in office for the next few months at least, and also to make their own decision on which three of these four members should be allowed to join the Board as co-opted and additional members.

There were repeated and very loud and passionate calls for some of the Board at least to step down immediately, and therefore make room for more members to be co-opted on. The Board absolutely declined to do so, however, and showed no observable remorse for their actions.

And now to my title for this blog post.

I have entitled this 'A New Dawn for the Poetry Society' because I know that many members feel utterly betrayed by what has happened. They either feel betrayed by a Board of Trustees who have been reckless and cavalier with our very meagre resources, or they feel betrayed by the requisitioners themselves, for daring to call this Board to account for its actions, thereby highlighting to the outside world that the Poetry Society is unable to govern itself appropriately.

We cannot pretend that potentially far-reaching divisions have not been created by this scandal, nor can we hope that people will soon forget who took which side in this, and why. We cannot ignore the sad fact that ACE has apparently decided to withhold the successful grant bid put together by the now departed Director until it is convinced of the Poetry Society's fitness to govern itself and continue in its proper business of promoting poetry to the nation. Even with a vote of No Confidence carried, and the Board on its (treacle-slow) way out the door, poets cannot hope to escape this unscathed.

But we will soon have a new Board to elect, and a new chance to impress Arts Council England that our house is back in order.

I therefore urge everyone involved in poetry in the UK not to allow this dispute to continue on after this week, with ordinary members discouraged from renewing their membership or becoming involved in governance and decision-making, and non-member poets considering the Poetry Society a mismanaged collective of egos whose interests are too far from their own to make any difference to their world.

There may be, and certainly has been recently, some truth to the latter. But this is no time for apathy and disaffection, or for giving up and walking away from the Society. This is an opportunity for a new lease of life for the Society, and for a new openness and transparency in the Society's dealings that can only benefit us all.

It's also an opportunity for us to see ourselves as a collective of committed individuals with a common cause rather than many different people pulling in different directions and getting nowhere. Many of us have come together as one for this issue. Let's not drift apart again, but stay together and see what we can achieve en masse.

So get involved and stay involved. Even if you don't intend to stand for Board nomination - and we need nominees with sound administration skills and expertise rather than good poets - do at least make sure you keep renewing your membership, that you visit your local Stanza group, that you read, write and support poetry at all levels - and don't lose touch with any new acquaintances you may have made over this requisition.

We know now that we all care about poetry deeply enough to come together at a time of crisis, some of us at great cost and from opposite ends of the country.

Even if we were on different 'sides' yesterday, let's put those divisions away now, and use our collective energy to achieve something wonderful together.

Resignation from Embrace Books

2011-07-21T08:05:00.006+01:00

Yesterday afternoon, I resigned as Executive Editor for Embrace Books, the popular fiction imprint of Salt Publishing.

I wish all the writers there long and successful careers, and have thoroughly enjoyed the process of running a small independent fiction imprint, from commissioning writers through to helping to promote their books.

I've learnt a vast amount about writing and editing fiction from my work at Embrace Books. Editing is not a job for the faint-hearted, nor indeed the brutally honest. I had to develop skills as an editor that I'd never needed before as a writer - like being tactful, for instance!

It's also challenged me to grow in social terms. Being an editor isn't all about staring at a computer screen for hours or scribbling on manuscripts. Writers can get away with that kind of isolated lifestyle but editors can't. Needing to go out and meet authors in person, do the rounds at the London Book Fair, write long chatty emails, talk at conferences, and generally behave like a normal social creature has been immensely good for me. In fact, I may never slink back into my cave again!

I shall be concentrating on my own writing from now on, largely as Victoria Lamb, and can only hope it has benefited from a year spent on the other side of the desk.

Many heartfelt thanks, meanwhile, to all the lovely authors with whom I've worked at Embrace, and to the team at Salt who supported me in my work there. It's been an amazing year!

SOLD! My Tudor Witch series is acquired by Random House Children's Books.

2011-07-15T21:14:00.004+01:00

It's been a fantastic, fast-moving day here. My agent phoned at around lunchtime to say that a publishing deal was on the table for my Tudor Witch Young Adult series. I discussed the finer details with him, hung up, and tried not to get too excited about the whole thing - though of course I was!

I tinkered with one of my manuscripts and answered a few emails, tidied my desk, sauntered out for a coffee, occasionally glanced at my inbox.

Then I got the very exciting call I'd been waiting for from my agent.

Random House Children's Books have acquired the first book, WITCHSTRUCK, and the next two books in the series. The series should launch next summer under the name Victoria Lamb, a few months after the publication of my first adult Tudor novel, THE QUEEN'S SECRET, with Transworld, also part of the Random House Group.

I'm hugely pleased and want to thank everyone who's been so supportive of my efforts on Facebook and Twitter and here on Raw Light over the past year. I know it can get confusing when I keep posting under different names, and people have been very patient and understanding about that.

I'm really looking forward to meeting the team at RHCB now. Which I shall do later this summer. And I expect a Victoria Lamb website and blog will be launching in the autumn.

To quote one of my favourite films, Almost Famous, "It's all happening!"

The Guardian takes up the Poetrygate story again

2011-07-06T12:16:00.000+01:00

You can find more on the Poetrygate scandal in today's Guardian.

Great photo.

Will it work, though? The Guardian reports:

"I have a horrible feeling they are wriggling," said Clanchy. "It's really difficult to get 10% of the Poetry Society together. It's like herding cats. But here we are, and they have to listen."

Herding cats. That's an image to take away with you.

The Red Wheelbarrow Gang

2011-07-05T12:51:00.003+01:00

Photo: Roderic Vincent

Today, at 3.30pm, poetry history ~~will be~~ has now been made. [Updated with photo at 16.40]

A shiny red wheelbarrow - thanks for the concept, William Carlos Williams! - will arrive at the Poetry Society HQ in Betterton Street, London, this afternoon.

It will contain the following official requisition to which well over 400 Poetry Society members have now put their names:

We, the undersigned, constituting as we believe ten percent of the members of The Poetry Society, having learnt of the resignation of the Chair of the Board of Trustees and the Director, the Finance Manager and the President of the Society, and in order to determine whether, in these extraordinary circumstances, the Board of Trustees has our continuing confidence, require the Board to hold an Extraordinary General Meeting, with a Chair elected by that meeting, to provide an explanation of the practices, policies and changes in policy which led to these resignations, and to answer questions on this matter from the floor. In order to avoid unreasonable expense to the Society, we require the Extraordinary General Meeting to be held before or instead of the General Meeting called by the Society at 2pm on 22 July 2011.

Feeling is strong, expectation is high. If you haven't a clue what all this kerfuffle is about, Ms Baroque in Hackney has made several good stabs at an overview.

To join the intrepid gang delivering this historic demand, meet up at the Cross Keys pub in Endell Street at 3.15pm today, Tuesday 5th July 2011.

Rock-Paper-Scissors: Week Two of Poetrygate

2011-06-30T19:49:00.006+01:00

Today's official message in the ongoing Poetry Society scandal - now five resignations, no explanations - came from Laura Bamford, Acting Chair of the Board of Trustees:

NOTICE OF GENERAL MEETING
The Poetry Society (Incorporated)
Company Number 01557657

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that a General Meeting of the above-named company will be held in Lecture Theatre 1, The Royal College of Surgeons, 35-43 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PE on Friday 22 July 2011 at 2.00pm for the following purpose:

To outline the future strategy of The Poetry Society and to receive members’ input

Dated 30 June 2011
By order of the Board

Laura Bamford
Acting Chair

Yes, we wanted a meeting. But no, this is not the one we wanted. We want to know WHY five people have now resigned from the Staff and the Board of Trustees of the Poetry Society. Not what the Board hopes to achieve in the aftermath of those resignations.

Fascinating though it will be to 'outline the future strategy' and deliver our input as members, there does not appear to be any room for manoeuvre in the Agenda of this General Meeting.

And why on earth is this being called a GM, not an EGM? Is that so the Board can look as though it is not bowing to any external pressure by calling this meeting, but has done so of its own sweet accord in order to be helpful to the membership?

Members need to be aware that this is rapidly becoming a game of rock-paper-scissors. We hold out paper, they go for scissors. We produce scissors, they show us a rock.

I, for one, intend to stick to my original purpose in signing the list of members who require an EGM to be called by the Poetry Society.

And that is not only to ask for full and frank disclosure of the events leading up to the recent resignations of four Staff members and now the Chair of the Board of Trustees, so that I may be confident that everything has been done in accordance with the rules of the Society, but also to ask why so many of our administrators felt the need to resign.

These are questions that must be asked of the Board. Nothing less than the whole, unadulterated truth can be accepted.

I would strongly urge any remaining members who have not yet given their names to Kate Clanchy in support of an EGM to do so now, so we may get to the bottom of this travesty of democracy as soon as possible.

kateclanchy @ gmail.com

Mslexia Workshop: Encouraging New Poems

2011-06-29T08:23:00.001+01:00

The next instalment of my writing workshops for the Mslexia 2011 Poetry Competition, judged by Jo Shapcott, is now up on the Mslexia website.

It's entitled Encouraging New Poems.

Poems beget poems. The more poems you write, the more you will find waiting to be written. So when you hit a rich vein, don’t rest after you’ve finished your first draft and put it aside to mature. Keep hammering away at the wordface.

Ted Hughes believed that poem sequences are a good way of generating new poetry, particularly during a creative dry spell. Sometimes you sit down to write something new and the words won’t come. Linking poems together can help to maintain the momentum of previous inspiration ...

Read more and follow the exercises for this instalment.

Buy A Book

2011-06-28T11:29:00.004+01:00

Grab me on Amazon.co.uk

I spend a few minutes each day tracking sales of the various books I've edited for Embrace Books. Some days it's good, some days I zip over to Twitter or Facebook to nudge the publicity machine along another notch.

Now and then, I also check my own sales.

Novel Rank, the excellent site I check most often and which tracks Amazon sales, has started telling me a sorry but familiar tale in poetry. Sales of my latest book, Camper Van Blues, have stalled after a promising few months.

So if anyone has not yet bought my latest poetry collection, Camper Van Blues, I'd be thrilled if you could give my sales a jump-start on Amazon UK, or over on Amazon.com for those in the US.

To read more about Camper Van Blues, or buy it directly through Salt Publishing, just click here.

What else?

Leaving a review on Amazon after buying, or sharing those Amazon links on Facebook or Twitter - such actions would be deeply welcome too. It would give me a warm glow to know I had garnered a few extra sales of my own book while the others I track are also selling.

"Poetrygate": your chance to stand up and be counted

2011-06-23T23:56:00.020+01:00

There's trouble at the Poetry Society. A few weeks ago, the President, Director and Finance Officer of the Society resigned, without explanation.

Much of the ensuing controversy has been connected to a lack of clarity from the Society following these events. The resignations have been made public, yes. But members of the Society have not been given any clear explanation for why these resignations occurred, nor been allowed any official discussion of how we move forward as a Society. It seems a reasonable request for full disclosure to be granted to the membership if these resignations are in any way connected.

The Evening Standard came up with some further information, but no more than was already privately circulating between members.

Some bloggers and other commentators are now starting to discuss the matter, but timidly, most not wishing to find themselves sidelined later for having been one of 'the hardy few', as Ms Baroque puts it, who dared discuss the matter. A recent post went up at Carrie Etter's blog and was removed after a torrent of libellous comments appeared, the debate unceremoniously erased.

Now people are beginning to draw comparisons between recent events and the Poetry Wars of the 1970s, when barricades were manned at the old Po Soc HQ and poets huddled about the braziers for six long years, warming their hands on copies of each other's Selected Works.

The Evening Standard claims that all this furore has come about because "Fiona Sampson, editor of the Poetry Review, the magazine overseen by the Society, had asked for autonomy from the director, and has been pushing the focus of the society from education to promoting high-profile poets."

I have known Fiona Sampson a number of years. She is a fine editor with excellent and pleasingly eclectic tastes in poetry. Far from being elitist, as has been suggested, she has featured both well-known and small press poets in most issues, and has encouraged greater depth in poetry criticism by commissioning long critical essays for the magazine. (A bold move, even if not all those essays turned out to be equally gripping and apposite.) Whatever has gone on behind closed doors, I feel certain Fiona Sampson will have acted with the best interests of Poetry Review at heart, and that she does not deserve the vitriol that has been aimed at her in recent weeks.

Unfortunately, of course, Poetry Review is the flagship magazine of the Poetry Society. As such, it needs to fulfil quite a broad range of objectives, only one of which is to promote high-profile poets.

In light of all this, I urge members of the Poetry Society to lend their names to the call for an Emergency General Meeting, to discuss these recent events and forge a way forward for the Board and the Membership.

The reason I ask this is that we are currently experiencing a crisis in confidence among the more professionally active members of the Society, and that crisis must be addressed, not simply ignored.

I also ask that, until we have the full facts before us, critics of the Board and the editor of Poetry Review behave in a civilised manner. There is something deeply unpleasant about the sight of an angry mob hounding one individual above all others.

Apathy gives us the government we deserve. But at least members are being given the opportunity to step up and voice their dissatisfaction. But we can't do that without 340 names.

Will yours be one of them?

To Get Involved:

Anyone who is a member of the Poetry Society and would like to sign the following petition, please email Kate at kateclanchy@gmail.com and she'll put you on the list. She will not share your contact or publicise you until the list reaches 340 when it will be handed in to the Poetry Society, along with the following message:

We, the undersigned, constituting as we believe ten percent of the members of the Poetry Society, having learnt of the resignation of the Chair of the Board of Trustees and the Director, the Finance Manager and the President of the Society, and in order to determine whether the Board of Trustees has their continuing confidence, require the Board to hold an Extraordinary General Meeting to provide an explanation, in the transparent and accountable manner the members expect of its elected representatives, of the events leading to these resignations; an independently chaired forum for the statements of members and for their questions; and a detailed account of how the Board will continue the business of the Society in accordance with its stated aims and purposes.

Latest Update: more information at the Guardian. The list of signatories currently stands at 323, as of 2pm Thursday 30th June 2011.

Roll up! Roll up! The Tin Angel rides again!

2011-06-23T10:38:00.004+01:00

Back in the day, in the narrow-laned medieval streets of Coventry, we had a buzzing poetry open mic night called NIGHTBLUEFRUIT AT THE TIN ANGEL.

The Tin Angel was the name of the bar where we met on the first Tuesday of every month to recite and listen to poetry, stand-up and occasionally music. It was a tiny corner joint with dodgy toilets where everyone had to cram in and the windows ran with condensation by the end of the night. The evening was organised by Jon Morley of the local poetry press, Heaventree.

Then the Tin Angel closed.

For a while, Nightbluefruit drifted from place to place, homeless and unsure, bleeding regulars.

Now it's back on track, and playing out at Taylor Johns in Coventry's Canal Basin. If you're in the region, why not go along? The next open mic night is July 5th, 8pm.

The poster above is by the massively talented Coventry-based artist Colin Dick, pictured below. Click on his name to see an article about his work at Horizon Review, with numerous examples of his amazing paintings.

Five Things You Need When Writing A Novel

2011-06-19T10:16:00.009+01:00

A Writing Space
Virginia Woolf wrote an entire treatise - A Room Of One's Own - about the need for women to have a room of their own, not simply to develop as writers but also as individuals. Frankly though, it applies equally to both sexes.

It doesn’t need to be an actual room – though my output has increased substantially since I rented myself an office downtown – but it must be established as your ‘writing space’, a place and maybe also a time you associate with settling down to write, even if it’s only that half-hour commute on the bus or train every morning.

Try to establish a rhythm in association with these special writing spaces, and keep to a routine as far as possible. More than anything, writing responds to routine. Feed your novel regularly and it will grow strong and healthy. Forget to check in, and it will quite rapidly wither and die.

Stamina

Some people call this will-power, focus, determination, patience, stickatititus, etc. If your novel is over 100,000 words long, it may feel as though you need an inexhaustible supply. Even if it’s a shorter book, like a novella, it will still need to go through several drafts before it’s publishable. So make sure your patience is on board before you type Chapter One.

Post-It Notes or Stickies

These are extremely useful for writers, as they can be instantly seized and scribbled upon when an idea strikes. No need to open a document on your computer or find a fresh page in your writing notebook which you will later leave on the bus. You just seize and stick.

Will Self famously plasters his study walls with these sticky notes when planning a novel, so you’ll be in good company. (How on earth does he get them to stay on, though? Mine always fall off after a few hours, even the expensive sort. Grr.)

They’re not very durable though, and tend to end up littering the floor under your desk, so it’s a good idea to transfer any important notes to computer later on, when you’re not actually in mid-flow.

Index cards

These are the thick paper notecards students often use for exam revision. You can buy them in bound books, which I don't think are flexible enough as a tool for writers, or little boxes to store them in, alphabetically or as you will. Some people use them to plot out their story, but I use index cards for research rather than planning.

You can order index cards online or buy them at places like WH Smiths

When I take notes during research, I often find later that I’ve forgotten where I put them or I can’t find the right note quickly enough because it’s buried inside a giant notepad or folder. So index cards, filed in categories in a box, can be a real timesaver.

Index cards tend to come in plain white or a selection of pastel shades. If you need categories in your note-taking, try using a different colour for each category. This can shorten the hunt when looking up a particular fact halfway through a scene.

When researching, one drawback is having to note down on each card where you found that particular fact: page number, book, author, publisher, date etc. But you could use an abbreviation and provide a key at the front of the card box. If you’re organised enough.

Large Whiteboard

This is an absolutely vital piece of equipment for me as a writer, and my personal favourite. Some years ago I homeschooled my kids, and that was when I learned the beauty of the whiteboard.

It’s versatile and non-static – you can clean it off and start again every day, every week or every month. It’s large, so you can use it to plan a multi-strand novel with all the different character streams and their plot arcs. It can be placed above or beside your desk as a reminder while you work, and can be used over and over again for future projects.

The large whiteboard can be a writing tool or a motivational tool. It can allow you to tick off books or internet sites you need to check out. It can plot monthly sales on Kindle or remind you about the ham sandwich you left in the office fridge. It can be used to plot complex graphs in full colour if you like that kind of thing, and it can take up useful time when you need to procrastinate.

You can get one with a corkboard area too, but I prefer to buy a separate corkboard and use the whole space of the large whiteboard for my notes.

Writers! What would you add to this list of writing essentials?

My Editor Is Moving On

2011-06-16T12:36:00.000+01:00

Sorry to see my lovely and very talented editor, Selina Walker, moving on from Transworld to Century/Arrow.

But I'm sure she'll make a great success of the new job!

For those who are interested in my fiction activities, here are the details of her move at the Bookseller today.

Meanwhile, I'm still working on the second novel in my Tudor trilogy for Transworld, HIS DARK LADY, which is stuffed full of intrigue, politics, espionage, theatrical goings-on, courtly splendour, grisly high-profile executions and, of course, forbidden love.

THE QUEEN'S SECRET will be out in March 2012, under the name Victoria Lamb.

The Writing Spark

2011-06-13T10:34:00.003+01:00

It's that time of year again. Mslexia, the women's writing magazine, are holding their annual Poetry Competition 2011, and have asked me to provide another series of online workshops to accompany it. Deadline for entries to the competition is July 18th.

These particular workshops guide you through the process of writing a poem from the initial spark of an idea through to submitting to a competition or magazine.

Apparently, the workshop series I created for Mslexia last time was a very popular feature of the website, which is highly gratifying. It's always good to know you've helped someone else with their writing, and even better when it's several someones!

Anyone interested in following the series this year, you can find workshop number one here. It's entitled THE SPARK OF A POEM.

The next few workshops should follow soon. Once that happens there'll be links in the Mslexia sidebar to guide you through to them. The last series are also still on the site. Just search for "Holland Workshops" and a list of previous writing workshops should pop up.

Southern Writers Conference

2011-06-05T18:05:00.001+01:00

I'm off next weekend to speak as a guest at the Southern Writers Conference in Chichester.

I'll be talking about poetry, and even reading some of my own if they can't stop me quickly enough. If you're in the area next weekend - Friday 10th to Sunday 12th June - and are interested in writing, there may still be day tickets available.

I'm speaking on the Sunday morning, I believe.

Here are some of the other speakers' details:

Raffaella Barker, author of nine novels and contributor to the Evening Standard, Spectator and Elle, amongst others. She is also an experienced teacher of creative writing.

Simon Hall, crime writer and (appropriately enough) the BBC’s crime correspondent for the South West. He also narrates his own audio books.

Jane Holland, award-winning poet and novelist as well as being an ex professional snooker player. She hasn’t offered any lessons on the Earnley table, but I’m sure that’s just because we haven’t asked.

Catherine King, well known author of popular romantic novels set in 19th century Yorkshire. Catherine will be well known to a lot of regular attendees at SWC.

Kathy Gale, with over 20 years of book publishing experience including editorial, marketing and sales management. She should make for a fascinating Saturday afternoon speaker.

Feeling Political?

2011-05-26T14:43:00.000+01:00

This arrived today from Jody Porter at The Morning Star:

Dear poets, publishers and editors,

I have recently taken over as poetry editor for the daily UK newspaper The Morning Star [link] and I'm looking for submissions of new or previously published poems.

Under the stewardship of the late and esteemed John Rety, Well Versed developed into a widely-read forum for new and established writers. It appears every Thursday and submissions will also be published and archived online.

Please send submissions, with biographical information, to: wveditor [at] gmail [dot] com

Poems need not be overtly political, but space is limited so they must be short to medium in length.

Please forward this message on to anyone who might be interested in submitting work. Any tweets or blog reposts spreading the word would be greatly appreciated.

The Latent Power of the Diary

2011-05-14T09:56:00.002+01:00

I don't keep a diary these days, though I did keep one sporadically when I was younger. Which means my children and posterity will have little clue as to how I was feeling on a day-to-day basis, nor what I was up to.

In some ways the blog has taken over the role of the diary. Our diarists are bloggers. But how intimate is a blog, really? Our most private thoughts can rarely be voiced in a public, or even semi-private, blog. Which means the deep dark secrets of the diary must remain forever locked away in our hearts. That may be a good thing for some. For others, it's a pity.

My mother (the novelist Charlotte Lamb) kept a diary for a large swathe of her life. Some years there is a full page entry for every day, regardless of the fact that she may have also written as many as 17 novels in the same year. (For yes, that was how many novels she wrote in 1977-8, and other years in the Seventies were not too dissimilar in output.)

It's odd to read these diaries, and sometimes disturbing too. It's an eyeopener to get a more rounded view of a parent who wasn't forthcoming about her private thoughts and feelings, and it's also useful for me as a writer, for my mother reveals many of the typical issues and doubts as most other novelists - despite her success.

Much of her innermost thoughts are about her writing rather than her family. It's very much a Writer's Diary (she loved reading Virginia Woolf's diaries herself).

But now and then I get a mention, which is comforting. (Though sometimes not!) My memories of my childhood are pretty cloudy, but I do remember this day below. It was fantastic to come across it in her diary and remember the actual events, from Saturday 2nd October 1976:

We went up to London at noon to have lunch at Luigi's and then went to the British Museum so that Jane could look at her favourite Egyptian rooms. She loves them. Then we went to Islington to St. George's to see Richard III. Jane really loved that. She caught Alan Badel's eye & he began to "ham" in her direction. The more she laughed, the more he played the pantomime demon-king.

The following month, my mother was diagnosed with a "massive tumour", after months of illness, and successfully underwent surgery to remove it.

I was completely unaware of this until I read her diaries, though I remember her disappearing into hospital for a few weeks around that time. I suppose, in the Seventies, in middle-class families, such problems were not openly discussed. Even today illness is rarely discussed in much detail. People 'die suddenly' or have 'long illnesses' which are otherwise unexplained. Perhaps we're still not very far removed from the Victorian aura of silence around the family in that respect. That may be a good thing. I can't decide.

Top Ten Bestseller!

2011-04-23T00:06:00.004+01:00

Quick - look now before it updates!

My most recent collection of poetry, Camper Van Blues, has somehow managed to creep into the Salt Publishing Top Ten Bestsellers' list. You can find the list near the bottom of the Salt front page.

Just land there and scroll down.

I may need an alcoholic drink to revive me after that shock ...

London Book Fair

2011-04-13T10:35:00.002+01:00

Had an amazing day yesterday at the London Book Fair, sited at Earl's Court. Sorry this photo of the exterior is a bit thin. Taken on my iPhone.

Apologies to all those friends and acquaintances who were also there yesterday but I didn't manage to catch up with. I know many Twitter and Facebook friends were about, and I did spot some and wave or have a quick chat - such as Danuta Kean, Carol McGrath, Kate Allan, and Lyn Vernham among others - but I missed a whole bunch of that crowd by failing to make the London Book Fair Tweetup.

Not my fault, I hadn't realised events would be on so late and booked my train for 8pm, then found that to change my Advance ticket would cost over thirty quid. Which seemed a bit steep, even for the undoubted pleasure of a LBF Tweetup. So I trundled home instead, and my sore feet thanked me for it.

Had a productive day, meeting people in independent publishing and discussing Embrace Books, and my role there as editor. I took along Rachel Lyndhurst's Storm's Heart beautiful glossy print edition as a sample, and allowed people to fondle it jealously.

And as an author myself, I met up with both my editors at Transworld, and also with my lovely and fantastically talented agent, Luigi Bonomi - who is very excited about the Young Adult novel I'm currently writing.

I received back some line edits on my forthcoming novel - in paper form, no less, egad! roughly 550 pages to carry home - and met some new faces in publishing as my alter-ego, a historical novelist.

It was a brilliant day and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A massively busy place though - must have walked about ten miles just going round and round the hundreds of stalls!

York Festival of Writing 2011

2011-03-29T12:59:00.004+01:00

Going to the York Festival of Writing on Friday was an oddly exhilarating experience, rather like emerging into the light from a narrow, grimly-lit tunnel.

I'd been living alone in a remote cottage on the edge of the North Yorks Moors during the week beforehand, writing the first 25,000 words of a new novel, so had enjoyed little contact with anyone - bar a few hours when my iPhone suddenly decided it had a signal, and I was able to send and receive tweets and a few Facebook messages.

But on the Friday, I left my rural retreat and drove through York - a lively, crowded city with many attractions - and on to the university campus, where the Festival of Writing was taking place.

I met so many industry people, it's hard to explain just how enormously useful this particular festival has become for writers.

I was a speaker - talking about my other incarnation as a romance editor at Embrace Books - and also took some pitches from writers. So I met plenty of interesting people that way, and hopefully gave my best pointers on writing romance in my talk.

But it was in the informal interactions - at meal or break-times, or in the long glamorous evenings at the bar - that the Festival really came into its own. We all had name badges, and soon knew most of each other's names, despite there being several hundred people there.

Which was a good thing, as it's embarrassing to be forever peering at your neighbour's breasts.

Those who made a big impact on me are too numerous to mention, but a good starting list would include Philippa Pride, who is Stephen King's editor and also a renowned Book Doctor; Lorella Belli, a London agent and incredibly glamorous, besides being a great conversationalist; Donna Condon, commissioning editor at Piatkus; Patrick Janson-Smith, formerly MD at Transworld, now at HarperCollins with the Blue Door imprint; Ashley Pharoah, the utterly gorgeous creator of cult TV series like Life on Mars, and an extremely funny man; Carole Blake, brilliant literary agent; and writers Jean Fullerton, Debi Alper, Kate Allan, Jane Lovering, Tim Murgatroyd, Louise Allen, Toby Frost, Julie Cohen, and many, many other wonderful authors, agents and editors who wandered in and out of my conversations all weekend, handed me manuscripts at meal-times, in the ladies' toilets or during seminars, and even stood me numerous drinks at the bar when I was looking thirsty.

Such a hard life, being an editor ...

I would heartily recommend the York Festival of Writing to anyone thinking of getting into writing, or improving their lot there, for such a stellar cast would be hard to better.

The Endless "To Do" List

2011-03-14T13:36:00.000Z

It often feels these days as though I have an endless and bewildering "To Do" list, which keeps rolling and threatening to overwhelm me.

Everything goes onto my "To Do" list: my daily editing jobs, my own writing goals, children's dental or clinic appointments, my husband's weekly shirt wash, bills to be paid, general housework, gardening, food shopping, the car MOT, book reviews I've foolishly offered to write, family birthdays, personal letters I keep putting off, and even interviews I've agreed to do.

What keeps me on top of most of this multi-tasking? (I do fumble the ball occasionally, it can't be denied.) Believe it or not, it is this humble product below: the Pukka "Things To Do" book.

I have not been paid to say this, but this little notebook has saved my bacon on more than one occasion. I fill it out religiously every evening, listing jobs for the following day, with any tasks left undone rolling onto the next day. Then I cross each one off the list as I achieve it.

My memory is so rubbish, I genuinely need something like this. It has 115 daily planners, with a large notes section opposite each list, so can contain far more information than could be squeezed onto an office whiteboard and, as long as I don't lose it or other factors intervene, it keeps me on track with all my various jobs.

Right. Now I can cross off "Update my blog at Raw Light". Phew.

The Natural Evolution of Books

2011-03-08T10:28:00.002Z

It's "Read an E-Book Week". Have you read yours yet?

Poetry at Saumur, from March 14th

2011-03-04T00:16:00.005Z

For those Francophiles and French-speaking poets among us, here is a reminder of the upcoming spring poetry event at Saumur from March 14th - 20th: Le Printemps des Poetes.

Non French-speakers, excusez-nous for five minutes ...

L'association Littérature & Poétiques organise pour la première fois à Saumur :

le Printemps des Poètes

du 14 au 20 mars 2011

dans le cadre de la manifestation nationale du même nom (13ème édition)

dont le thème cette année est : D'infinis paysages

(www.printempsdespoetes.com) du 7 au 20 mars 2011

dans la ville et l'agglomération de Saumur durant la semaine du 14 au 20 mars prochain.

Writing the Imperfect Synopsis

2011-03-03T10:06:00.005Z

Writers hate the synopsis. It interferes with our illusion that writing fiction is some mysterious creative process, handed down by a lyre-playing Muse, to be messed with at our peril. It makes our writing feel like a grubby commercial venture. The synopsis, in a writer's eyes, has more in common with a business plan than a showcase for the writer's talent. The agent or editor features in this hellish fantasy as a less than friendly bank manager, glaring at them from behind an imposing desk, or perhaps as a gatekeeper, with a large "Keep Out" sign above their heads.

I've just finished a one page synopsis and sent it off to my agent. I have no idea if it was any good. It is what it is. But the power of the synopsis lies very much in the eye of the beholder. One agent or editor may adore a particular approach to the synopsis, while another despises it. A good writer always writes for a specific (imagined or assumed) readership, so tailoring a few pages to a particular kind of reader or brief shouldn't be hard.

If you know what is preferred by the person to whom you are sending the synopsis, all well and good. But if you don't, what to do?

A synopsis is more than an extended blurb. It has to achieve a number of goals. First, and most importantly, it should tell the person reading it what happens in the book. Note, not what the book is about, per se, but what happens and in what order.

That's trickier to achieve than it sounds. Good novels have sub-plots that weave into and through the main plot. Do we mention those? Do we leave them out? If they have a bearing on decisions made, actions taken, that turn the plot, then they need to be in the synopsis. If they are secondary to that plot-turning process, then we can safely leave them out.

Though much will depend on the length of synopsis required or requested. My recent synopsis had to be one page only, and that meant squeezing a complicated plot down to its bare bones.

With fleshier synopses of two to three pages, or even longer - though if you start writing the book itself instead of a non-fiction summary of its parts, you're in trouble - you could perhaps afford to mention the milk-maid's dalliance with the master, which provokes the son to leave home and join the army, which makes the wife hate the husband - and the freckle-faced milk-maid - when her beloved boy is subsequently killed in action. Otherwise, just start with the married granddaughter packing her bags years later, when her husband has an affair with his secretary and she remembers her grandmother's suffering under similar circumstances.

But only mention it in passing. A few words should suffice.

A synopsis should also sketch out the characters of your main protagonists, but without going into unnecessary detail. (Impossible? Perhaps!) It should also convey a sense of what kind of book this will be, whether it will have a strong sense of place or time, and if it will be eerie or funny, slick or innocent, fast-paced or leisurely. But always without labouring the point or stating such things baldly. Do not open, for example, with 'This is a funny book.' Keep that for the 3-minute pitch. The synopsis is a different beast altogether, where on-the-nose statements cannot be admitted - except by the very, very skilled or the very, very famous.

So here I am with my recent synopsis. Roughly 250 words to describe a book which is admittedly short at an estimated 65,000 words - it's a Young Adult historical - but nonetheless complicated, with a couple of weighty sub-plots and some historical background to boot.

To keep the thing short, I jettisoned the sub-plots except as passing references to unnamed characters at points where they impact on the main plot. I omitted to mention several important personages who will have to appear in the book occasionally - because it's based to some extent on real events - but who have almost no bearing on the main action. Mostly I assumed historical knowledge (though it's true we had already discussed the historical background over a deliciously tasty lunch last month) and so didn't need to sketch that out beyond mentioning the dates over which the story is set.

I did not, however, as many writers like to do, give a 'flavour' of the book by writing it in the same 'voice' as the book. I have never understood why this is a necessity with some editors. If an editor needs a sample of actual writing, they should ask for it. The synopsis is an entirely functional and non-fictional document, written by one professional for another, already weighed down with strict requirements of form and length versus the demands of the plot; it shouldn't also be laden with the ludicrous expectation that it should sound 'fictional'.

One common thing writers feel instinctively when describing their stories in advance is that they shouldn't reveal the ending. 'I won't tell you what happens after that ... but it's very exciting.'

We don't do that in the synopsis. It's a non-fictional document, remember? It's like packaging; it should tell the would-be buyer what's inside, and how many grams of fat, and is that saturated or Omega-3? In the synopsis, we tell the editor and agent precisely what happens at the end, and why. Yes, even if it's going to spoil it for the little darlings.

Having said all that, the synopsis must be a flexible document. It should be constructed like a house in an earthquake zone, to move subtly with the earth, not resist the quake and tumble down, killing your protagonists in their beds. Publishers ask for changes. Sometimes they ask for them at the start of the writing process, and sometimes halfway through - or later. You will need to be open to those changes, and not have your story so tightly bound together that no daylight can be admitted between plot-points.

So the ideal synopsis is a little imperfect: it should err on the side of being too lightly written, kept flexible, with gaps - rather than holes - left for the editor's input, and neither too pithy nor over-ornate. A synopsis should always suggest rather than state baldly. Never forget that your synopsis will become, in many cases, a collaborative document. Writing a novel isn't quite like writing a screenplay, but by the end of the process, a number of different experts - often with clashing views on how a novel or even a synopsis should be written - will have stuck their fingers in the pie of your story and cheerfully wiggled them about.

In other words, you need to bear in mind that your finished novel may not resemble that first synopsis at all. It may have certain vital elements that were carried over, a basic thread or theme, perhaps even the same characters. But they will be changed now, their existence and actions more suited to what your novel has become over the course of its writing.

Rather sadly, the days of the writer as eccentric genius, who goes off into a hotel room for ninety days and emerges with a ground-breaking novel handwritten on a roll of perforated paper - which is then published to great acclaim without the agent or editor having done much beyond changing a few commas and lighting a congratulatory cigar - are long gone.

So the synopsis is unavoidable, and one of the banes of a writer's life; it represents the key to the first gate of the novel, beyond which a writer may not pass without permission.

Or not in any hope of publication.

On the Road Again

2011-02-20T18:15:00.014Z

In North Wales tonight, in a slightly chilly waterfront hotel, poring over the latest revisions to my novel. The deadline is next Monday, and I'm almost there with the book.

Plenty of fiddly little things to attend to though before I hand over the final draft to be copy-edited. Assuming my editor doesn't ask for further changes once she's seen how I've handled her original requests, that is.

Yesterday, I gave a lively workshop on novel-writing and took ten pitches for Embrace Books at the annual Get Writing Conference at the University of Hertfordshire. Some of the pitchers went away disgruntled, having been informed that their novels were neither romance nor historical women's fiction, and therefore wouldn't fit our lines. I was later described as 'the Simon Cowell of romance writing'. Some people are so touchy ...

Met some marvellous people at Get Writing 2011 - readers, writers, editors, agents, buyers - including John Jarrold, Scott Pack, Matt Bates, the inimitable Raymond Tallis, and of course our own Jonathan Pinnock, soon to be launching 'Mrs Darcy Versus the Aliens' with Proxima Books (Salt).

Tomorrow, I am giving an interview at Bangor University, followed by a poetry reading in the evening, in connection with their Creative Writing courses. I shall read from my latest book of poetry Camper Van Blues, plus one or two poems from earlier books if there's time.

The rest of this half-term week will be spent between the Midlands and the deepest, darkest reaches of rural Cornwall, where relatives will be visited and children entertained.

Then I've arranged a two-night stay at a hotel near where I live, in order to polish off the last revisions, read through the whole manuscript, and prepare my Author's Note and Acknowledgements. There may be some head-beating against the wall involved if I don't manage to tidy up my revisions before that weekend. Because Monday will be too late to change my mind about them.

Roll on, the ides of March. By then, I plan to have started my next novel.

Dabs with the Language Sander

2011-02-04T17:47:00.004Z

Revisions on my Tudor novel are almost done. I mention this because I've been blogging mainly about poetry in recent months, yet I seem to have spent most of that time writing - or fiddling about with - prose.

It's always been a secret thought with me that prose rhythms are akin to poetry, or ought to be. Certainly I take my time over sentences that don't sound 'right' to me in their context, whatever that may be.

A good sentence should flow, should be both elegant and fit for purpose - by which I mean it should communicate whatever the writer needed it to communicate, which might be nothing or everything, or any point in between.

Clumsy writing is the last thing I want to find when looking back over what I've written.

Unfortunately, it's almost unavoidable in early drafts.

This is how it happens. You need to present a thought or a situation or a mood, and the words don't want to come, but you don't have time to coax them. You're a professional writer, you have deadlines, you have bills to pay. So you bodge it. You write what is needful and make a mental note to return later - preferably after dark when no one but the night watchman's cat is there to witness your shame - and rewrite the damn thing so that it says what is needful without leaving mental splinters in your reader's head.

That's one part of the revision process. Sanding off the rough edges.

A less pleasurable part of revision is having to rejig characters who now have beards, or no longer have beards, or whose motivation is entirely changed, or who must now swim the moat instead of swinging across it with the help of trailing creepers.

I'm joking, of course. But when you change even one detail, you quickly realise that nothing happens in isolation. Everything in the novel is interconnected. This is where we get our word 'text' from, a marvellously hard-working word which is related to 'textile' and the idea of weaving.

So once you decide, at the revision stage, that a minor change needs to happen, you also need to find places where a knock-on effect will occur following that change, and to make sure everything remains consistent within the world of your novel. Once you have six or seven 'minor' changes like this to make, the process of scouring the book for places where further changes need to happen becomes quite time-consuming and fiddly.

And meanwhile, you can't help little dabs with the language sander ...

But the hardest work is more or less over. I have one key scene to entirely rewrite, and maybe a short chapter to add early on, and the rest is about style.

Then I have the next book to begin.

Writing Classes, and the Line-Break in Free Verse

2011-01-29T14:30:00.001Z

I wrote a poem this week in which I had some line-breaks which seemed, at least to a couple of other people to whom I showed my nascent poem, dodgy.

By dodgy, I mean there was a suggestion by these good folks that 'the line should not have broken there'. In fact, I'd go further and say there was a suggestion by these early readers of my poem - a poem still very much in draft form and therefore more vulnerable to critique than if I'd finished tinkering with it - that there are 'rules' about where a line should break in free verse, and I had not obeyed those rules.

A pretty standard response to a poem-in-draft for those who frequent creative writing classes, in other words.

Luckily for me - and I say luckily, because creative writing classes represent the kind of mental and emotional torture which would bring me out in hives if I actually suffered from such nervous physical reactions - I have spent my life avoiding discussing early drafts of my poems in public. Which is an excellent thing in itself, but does mean that the horror and dubious joy of 'sharing poems' in a class situation is new to me. That is, I've taught creative writing classes, but am not used to finding myself on the other side of a critique, i.e. being the student and not the teacher.

What worries me about writing classes is the personal agenda behind some of the comments that get fired at the writer in the hot seat. And there is always an agenda, even if it's just an opinion that wants to get aired or an insecure ego that feels the need to diminish someone else's.

But due to my course structure, I thought a writing-based class would be useful for me, and so I signed up. And useful it has been, as it has generated this little discussion.

So I had these dodgy line-breaks in my poem.

I saw them as risky, yes. Unconventional, probably. But not 'wrong' in any sense. They were what they were. Indeed, I know of no rules about line-breaks in free verse, except some eminently sensible but unspoken ones like 'try not to break after and or the' because it rapidly makes a nonsense of your poem. But even those quasi-rules can be broken if the poet is confident enough and has a good reason to do so, which includes wishing to prove it can be done.

One line had two full sentences in it, plus the first word - a noun - of a sentence which continued on the next line.

It was complained that this orphaned noun should be reunited with the rest of its family on the following line, which would then contain a whole sentence, unbroken. The line above would also then contain two unbroken sentences - with no messy, raggedy word dangling over the edge afterwards.

However, I wanted the emphasis to fall on the strong verb following that noun, so I placed that verb as the first word of the next line. I also wanted to suggest continuity of idea and action, so all three sentences would be linked via this enjambement.

The other complaint was about a line, higher up the poem, which consisted of only one word. Not a sentence in itself, but a word from the middle of a sentence. A word plucked out of obscurity and used as the lynch-pin around which the poem's action and point of view would turn.

I was told - pretty much without any concession that this was opinion rather than fact - that I could not have that one word on its own line. No way, no how.

Being open to opinion, I have considered whether I should change that word for a stronger synonym. I may yet do so, since the complaint flags up a potential weakness there. But I do not consider that it can be argued that having that word on a line of its own is somehow 'wrong'.

If there are no rules in free verse, how can we possibly decide something is 'right' or 'wrong'?

I agree that many writers desperately need to adhere to some kind of rule of thumb about the sounds and rhythms of free verse, otherwise they produce nothing work heading nowhere. But what that rule might be or how on earth we are supposed to reach a consensus about it is beyond me.

So what are the 'rules' about free verse?

Are there any rules at all?

If not, why do poets bother to argue about decisions like line-breaks or sound echoes or rhythms?

Can anyone definitively state that my line should not be broken where I choose to break it (because the line-break sounds and seems to fall best at that point, in my opinion as poet) and tell me how and why it is possible to be prescriptive about something so tenuous?

Letting it all hang out

2011-01-26T10:41:00.003Z

I suffer from a major conflict in my poetry writing, between the in-built compulsion to be neat and tidy - to an almost anal extent - and a desire to stuff all that prissy nonsense and just bloody well write.

I was looking a few nights ago at Vidyan Ravinthiran's excellent article on Ted Hughes and Poetic Embarrassment at Frances Leviston's Verse Palace (over a year old now, I think, but well worth a revisit) and thinking, YES! What the hell am I doing, shaving lines to a bare minimum, fussing over commas and spaces and 'poetic tone' in what must ultimately become heavily engineered poems?

I should be writing poems whose truth and meaning are just as important as their look on the page or their sound on the air - if not more important.

It's easy to forget, when lost in the idea of crafting a poem, of being a poet, of not only publishing each poem you write but actively expecting to publish it, that a poem exists for a reason beyond careerism and craft. Or it should do.

In his article, Vidyan describes what I call just bloody well writing the poem as humiliatingly akin to 'heading out to a party with your flies deliberately left undone, bra straps on show, then doing drunken impressions of David Brent. Not fashionably mussed and crumpled – just wrong, embarrassable, vulnerable.'

He then compares the cringe-making but raw and startling electricity of some of Ted Hughes' wilder work with what we tend to see in the better magazines and on well-bred publishers' lists these days: 'so many finicky, unambitious, slightly self-regarding poems, whose aim seems simply to get from the top of the page to the bottom without tripping up, without using any excess adjectives, without putting themselves on the line, being photographed from their less flattering side.'

Vidyan hits it right on the head. I thought about all this at the TS Eliot Prize readings the other night, where the work on show was beautifully-written, resonant, polished, poetic, yet rarely gave me a glimpse of the sheer urgency and violent poetic drive and power that one gets from even the slightest of Ted Hughes' poems. (With the exception of Brian Turner's work, perhaps - though I'd like to see him achieve that sledgehammer effect without having to use the bodies of unknown civilians to do it.)

So, what does this mean? That I should write poetry with my breasts hanging out and my hair unkempt and a slightly Ancient Mariner look to my eyes? Well, maybe I should.

It can't be any worse than writing poems in the mealy-mouthed, cold-sweat fear of the embarrassment of 'getting it wrong'.

TS Eliot Prize Readings: Sunday January 23rd, 2011

2011-01-24T12:04:00.002Z

So a funny thing happened to me at the TS Eliot readings last night, in London's magnificent Royal Festival Hall.

I was in the bar after the readings, chewing the fat with various poetry practitioners, when a woman leapt up to me and announced that she went to junior school with me - 33 years ago!

When I had recovered from my astonishment, I discovered that we had apparently been planning to write a novel together - just before I was removed from the school, and indeed mainland Britain, and sent off to school in the Isle of Man.

What was truly astonishing was her ability to recognise me after all these years. My memories of junior school are so dim and far-off (probably because I moved away) that I can't even recall teachers' names, though I remember the school itself. Have I changed so little since I was ten years old? What a frightening - and perhaps also comforting - thought.

But to the poetry!

I was in a box - not because I'm insufferably posh; it was all I could get at the last minute - and could see poet and editor Tom Chivers in a box opposite me, live-tweeting for the Poetry Book Society all through the proceedings.

The line-up was as follows: Simon Armitage, John Haynes, Brian Turner, Robin Robertson, Pascale Petit, Fiona Sampson, Sam Willetts, Annie Freud, Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott (who couldn't be there, so Daljit Nagra read for him).

All the shortlisted titles can be bought via the Poetry Book Society website.

Setting my stall out right away, Simon Armitage is my personal favourite to win this year's prize. There's often a perception about Armitage that he's too 'popular' to be taken seriously, and indeed one accusation being levelled at this particular book - Seeing Stars - is that it's composed of fragments or anecdotes or prose poems, not straightforward poetry. I was delighted with his poem about a sperm-whale, loved his delivery, and think Simon opened the evening's proceedings with great aplomb and a vast, almost casual talent. I don't think he'll win this year, but I'd love to see him do it all the same. Go, Simon!

John Haynes surprised me. I'd expected him to be a much younger man, for some unknown reason, but he's not. He has a shock of white hair and a somewhat tremulous way of speaking his (formal) verse from his new book You, and although I wasn't desperately enamoured of the long poem he read, he impressed me with an obviously warm, engaging and honest personality.

Former US soldier Brian Turner made me want to throw something at him. I restrained myself admirably, of course, but gosh, I was seething by the time he had finished. He came on stage and read a long, detailed, list-style poem from the point of view of hundreds of deeply unfortunate civilians in Iraq - as they fell to their deaths from a bridge during the war: men, women, free-falling children, a heavily pregnant woman whose child 'will never have a name' - or words to that effect. It was highly manipulative and sanctimonious in tone. I found this review quotation from John Bradley online: 'Brian Turner, a veteran of the Iraq war, continues this tradition of using poetry to inform and educate.' To educate is the key phrase there. It was highly disturbing to listen to, and the worst kind of sensationalism - I seriously wanted to put my fingers in my ears at one point, when he began describing the broken bodies of dead children.

The people in my box defended him afterwards, citing a tradition of war poetry by soldiers. But those soldier-poets were, in general, writing from the point of view of soldiers. Not from the point of view of horrifically dying civilians.

To be clear about this, his poem was NOT written like a news bulletin or factual report, which - in an ideal world - does not set out to treat subjects in a personal, emotive or intrusive way. His poem had the audacity and bad taste to enter at length into the mind of a young child falling to his death, a pregnant woman falling to her death, another helplessly watching her child free-fall beside her, and to capitalise on the power and horror of those real experiences. To use them as a springboard for his writing. In those moments, being forced to listen to Brian Turner describe those unfortunate people's deaths in such minute detail, the word 'poem' died a little for me, and became nothing more than one more act of grubby sensationalism in a world of the self-seeking and the desensitised.

Robin Robertson. Well, what can I say? I love his luminous, tightly-worked lyrics, and in the past have often read them in order to find a path back into poetry when feeling lost. However, there's a sparingness about them that has always been a little problematic for me, a quality of under-speak. Like the poetry has been pared away to mere slivers of language by a master craftsman. And while that felt marvellous for me at one stage, looking to such lyricism to save me from a general lack of inspiration, I was waiting to see how Robertson had moved on from his last book, and his reading last night didn't particularly convince me that he had. His subject matter was unrelentingly grim too, even dour, and his poetry 'slivers' seemed to lack some essential spark which they once possessed for me. I thought the same about his book, The Wrecking Light, when I bought it some months back, i.e. that it was a little too much like its predecessors. But he's probably still a strong contender to win this.

Pascale Petit is, of course, a poet of enormous power and imagination. I find her subject matter disturbing as well, but there is a sense of connection there, so strong and human as to be utterly understandable in her case. Some of her imagery is so startling and apposite, you almost wish to applaud it during the poem. I would certainly be happy to see her book What the Water Gave Me win this year's prize.

The same applies to Fiona Sampson, whose new book Rough Music seems to continue on from where Common Prayer left off. She has a lyricism that falls delicately on the ear, so that her power lies largely in an accumulative effect. This may make her less of a candidate for the prize, which would be a shame, as there is much to be prized in Sampson's subtlety of approach, her musicality and an easy, natural talent for language and its nuances in poetry.

Sam Willetts was unknown to me before last night. I will now seek out his work - New Light for the Old Dark. He can be a gently comic as well as a dark and elegiac poet, and although a win by Willetts would be a shock - this is his debut, after all - I would be perfectly able to see how the judges could come to such a decision. His work possesses both light and shade, subtlety and force, to a powerful and mature degree, and hints at greater things to come. A newcomer to watch!

Annie Freud - well, I already gave her book The Mirabelles a big thumbs-up in the pages of the most recent Poetry Review, so I shall not discuss her at length. But she is another likely candidate for the prize this year. Her work is also mature, powerful, and - most importantly perhaps, as far as long-term success is concerned - is written with personality rather than a desire to be applauded. As compere and poet Ian McMillan mentioned in his introduction, Annie Freud writes what is most dear to her heart and ignores all other considerations. The fact that she couples this determination with a keen understanding of poetic form and structure makes her book another strong contender this year.

Seamus Heaney came on to huge applause, and was probably the most applauded poet of the night, in fact. It was clear from the audience reaction - apparently nearly 2000-strong in the vast arena - that this was the man many of them had come to hear. He looked and sounded a great deal older than when I last saw him read, at the Cheltenham Festival in - I think - 1995, just after he had won the Nobel Prize. But despite that, he was clearly the crowd's favourite by the end of the night. And his poems were sound as ever, always so perfectly formed and rounded. Good luck to him.

Derek Walcott's work was read - very engagingly too - by Daljit Nagra. Daljit threw a few jokes of his own in, but I'm sure Derek wouldn't have minded, and it certainly lightened the evening for the audience. The first sonnet he read was a corker, where the aged poet - in a wheelchair - meets an old flame - also wheelchair-bound - in an airport lounge, as I recall. By turns humorous, wry, despairing, lovesick, and full of the spark of poetic reinitiation, this was the second highlight poem of the evening for me, alongside Simon Armitage's sperm-whale.

Which is where I came in ...

The announcement of this year TS Eliot Prize winner will be made this evening in London.

What's In A Title?

2011-01-22T18:34:00.001Z

This is a quirky essay I wrote about poetry titles, and which first appeared in James Midgley's excellent journal Mimesis in either late 2008 or 2009.

My grateful thanks go to James for publishing it in Mimesis, a magazine which sadly doesn't still appear to be active.

What's In A Title?

A title is a title is a title. Right? It’s a simple framing device, a doorway into the world of the poem. The title of a poem is the ‘in’ just as the last line is the ‘out’. It’s about yin and yang. What else is there to say on the subject?

Perhaps you’ve read the occasional theory on this, thought about it in passing, frowned over an inapposite choice, made the right one unerringly yourself - or made the wrong one and been unable to do a thing about it. All of which suggests that it’s not so simple. That maybe a title is rather more than a doorway and a framing device, that maybe there’s something compulsive and instinctual about the selection of a title, something deeply linked to the poem’s psyche.

In exploring this question further, I don’t intend to look at the titles of collections in this context, because those serve a different overall purpose than the simple poem title. Instead, to kick off the discussion, here are some of the words, phrases and images that occurred to me when playing around with the basic question, ‘How to define the title of a poem?’

Amongst other things, the title of a poem is a handle; a moniker; an entrance; an epiphany; an overview; a hinge; a first glimpse of the narrator; an illustration; a cover blurb; a foreword; a container; a puzzle; a mnemonic; a dreamscape; a proto-metaphor; a clue; a red herring; an impression; a surname; a signpost; a subtext; a précis; a brochure; a ritual; a contract; an escape clause; a souvenir; a programme; a translation; a polyglot; a market stall; an all-you-can-eat buffet; a description; a label; a magician’s hat; the secret name of the muse; an asylum; a safe house: a double entendre; an invocation; a spell; a charm; a warning; a skeleton key; a portmanteau; a joke; a mystery; a gesture; a flashlight; a tablecloth; a plot; a deception; a cast list; a question; an answer; a command; a suggestion; a conundrum; a kiss; a sword; a formula; a surprise.

Let’s unpack some of those, and bring in examples to help with that process. I’m going to choose most of these examples at random, by scanning down the contents lists of collections near my desk in search of titles which might illustrate some of the phrases above, but a few of these titles were already in my mind when I sat down to write this short essay.

1.         Ted Hughes: Examination at the Womb-door
2.         Tobias Hill: A Bowl of Green Fruit
3.         Jacob Polley: Votive
4.         Joanne Limburg: The Fall
5.         Alice Oswald: Dunt
6.         Ezra Pound: In a Station of the Metro
7.         Don Paterson: The Forest of the Suicides
8.         Jane Griffiths: Travelling Light
9.         Catherine Smith: The World is Ending Pass the Vodka
10.       Sylvia Plath: Lady Lazarus
11.       David Morley: To Feed the Dead Who Would Come Disguised as Birds
12.       U.A. Fanthorpe: Not My Best Side
13.       Moniza Alvi: I Would Like To Be a Dot in a Painting by Miro
14.       Geoffrey Hill: Ovid in the Third Reich
15.       Stevie Smith: Not Waving but Drowning
16.       Katy Evans-Bush: The Life Mask
17.       Vicki Feaver: The Gun
18.       Elizabeth Bishop: At the Fishhouses

This first title, Ted Hughes’ ‘Examination at the Womb-door’, may be comic (who gets quizzed whilst being born, after all?) but in the context of the poem is actually quite a straightforward title. It comes early on in his macabre 1970 sequence Crow and does more or less what it says on the tin, though with the usual Hughes twist: ‘Who owns these scrawny little feet? Death./Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death.’ So this title comes under the following headings: first glimpse of the narrator; a joke; a gesture; a ritual; a (literal, here) entrance; a cast list; a conundrum. Entertaining, yes, and ironic too, but not particularly layered with mystery and potential. Indeed, Hughes rarely does the heavily-laden poem title. He tends to present a bare-looking stall; you only see the rich and strange when you stop to ‘examine’ it.

Joanne Limburg’s ‘The Fall’ looks far more promising. So little is given for us to work on, yet paradoxically so much; immediately we need to ask questions, begin to whittle down the possibilities. Is this poem about the past or future? Is it about one person? (An incompetent mountaineer, for instance.) Or is it a biblical reference, encompassing all of humankind? Or perhaps it’s the American term for autumn and we should expect something Keatsian here from Limburg. With ‘The Fall’, we can’t choose between options until we start reading, so this title must be, variously, a subtext; a magician’s hat; a double entendre; a mystery; a tablecloth; a question.

So now categories of poem are beginning to emerge from the earlier list of possibilities. Some titles are straightforward; they describe the contents of the poem in an - apparently - unmetaphorical manner. Others provide a more oblique approach; they suggest rather than describe, leaving interpretation up to the reader.

In the first category, we could at first glance put Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘At the Fishhouses’, Catherine Smith’s ‘The World is Ending Pass the Vodka’ and Tobias Hill’s ‘A Bowl of Green Fruit’.

But no, you start reading, and even Hill’s innocent-sounding title, so reminiscent of a still life painting, proves deceptive: new love turns out to be like unripe fruit, and lovers must wait patiently for it to mature, for ‘kisses//sweetening in our mouths,/ the hearts softening,/the riddles undoing themselves.’ By golly, it was a metaphor!

How about Oswald’s ‘Dunt’, then? The name of a river - like her long poem ‘Dart’ - this one has got to be straightforward description. And so it could be. Except that it’s such a short, hard name, Dunt. Reminds me of ‘dunce’ or ‘don’t’ or ‘shunt’ or ... other similar words. And somehow the poem itself can’t get started, anymore than the river can get flowing. It stutters. It repeats itself. It bangs up against the intractable, like a ram obstinately headbutting a fence pole. ‘Try again,’ it orders us (or the river, or the poet). Like a poor page upload or an engaged telephone line. ‘Try again.’

So even what seems like a straightforward name-as-title - here, ‘Dunt’ - may actually be working hand-in-hand with the poem that follows it as a proto-metaphor, its impact based on sound and repetition; a subtext; a charm; a ritual; the secret name of the muse; a cast list; a command.

The second category, that of the slippery or suggestive oblique, is easier to fill. Poetry abounds with such titles, being a medium perfectly adapted to the metaphorical. Here we might put Jacob Polley’s ‘Votive’, Jane Griffiths’ potentially straightforward ‘Travelling Light’ (reminiscent perhaps of Don Paterson’s pun-based ‘Landing Light’) and ‘Not My Best Side’ by U.A. Fanthorpe. We could hazard a guess at what’s going on here, judging by these titles, but even our best guesses would lack substance. Because of their slippery nature, it’s impossible to get a proper grasp on the poem from such titles; first the poem has to be read, and understood, and then the title can be returned to, for re-evaluation, to add an extra dimension to the reading experience.

Some extremely oblique titles, however, are rather good at conjuring up the world of the poem without presenting the poem itself. Try Stevie Smith’s ‘Not Waving but Drowning’. The poem is hilarious and poignant and hugely memorable. Yet you could actually imagine all of it simply by concentrating on the title alone; the title is so brilliantly comprehensive, the poem itself is almost superfluous to requirements. So ‘Not Waving but Drowning’ is an all-you-can-eat buffet; a précis; a portmanteau; a label; a mnemonic; a joke; an illustration.

There is a third category though, which seems to straddle the other two: the semi-metaphor or false-friend. This is the deceptive title, the one which appears to be leading you in one direction, and indeed may do so to a certain extent, but then suddenly you find yourself in an unexpected place, without the guidebook or companions you were expecting. Titles from the list above which might fall into this category include Sylvia Plath’s ‘Lady Lazarus’ and Ezra Pound’s ‘In a Station of the Metro’. You could even slip Vicki Feaver’s ‘The Gun’ in there too.

In Plath’s poem, her shining energies and serial poetic violences wipe away the comfortable Biblical reference to Lazarus redivivus, leaving the reader disturbed and off-balance. Ezra Pound’s apparently straightforward ‘In a Station of the Metro’ would seem to promise a realistic, peopled, urban poem - and indeed gives us one, but packed into very few words; an impressionistic snapshot of modern life, taken with a soft focus lens.

And Feaver’s simple ‘The Gun’ might suggest something politically correct, or perhaps tragic, the accident or act of violence that ruined someone’s life; instead, the poem seems almost to revere the power of the gun itself, and its ability to change our lives with the mere fact of its presence. Is Feaver playing devil’s advocate here? The title gives us no clues; only reading the poem line-by-line may bring us to a deeper understanding of its purpose. Such a title, highlighting some elements whilst missing vital others, apparently friendly but designed to trip us up or lead us astray, is a magician’s hat; an asylum; a red herring; a warning; a gesture; a flashlight; a deception; an escape clause; a sword; a surprise.

What difference does the category of a title make to us as readers? The ‘in’ of a title can be a critical aid when the poem itself is fairly opaque - a clue, thank god! - or a delightful provocation when the poem seems at first glance suspiciously simple. It is also a way for the poet to make first contact with the reader.

For instance, on reading a playful or ironic, tongue-in-cheek title like Geoffrey Hill’s ‘Ovid in the Third Reich’ or Moniza Alvi’s ‘I Would Like To Be a Dot in a Painting by Miro’, you know instantly that you are to be entertained as well as sung to. That this is not merely a joke, but the title as first glimpse of the narrator; a signpost; a brochure; a market stall; a safe house; an answer; a kiss.

The title, then, is a pact with the reader (though some pacts - as we have seen above - are based on a relationship of deception, often by prior arrangement if the poet is well-known for such trickery). But the metaphorical is more satisfying, on the whole, than the straightforward and the downright deceptive. After all, if we wanted to read something simple and self-explanatory, we would hardly be turning to poetry for that experience.

And as poets, of course, a substantial number of us like to butter our own egos with the more slippery title, with references that demonstrate our wide reading and metaphors that challenge the reader to play catch-up.

For where there’s no mystery, there’s no allure. Right?

So we might see ‘The Forest of the Suicides’ on a contents list and wonder, is Don Paterson about to entertain us, depress us, frighten us, or leave us none the wiser? Here, the title tantalises and suggests. It paints half a picture: the poem completes it. Katy Evans-Bush gives us ‘The Life Mask’ and we think, yes! before even turning to it, the metaphor is so powerful.

And what of David Morley’s eloquent but mysterious ‘To Feed the Dead Who Would Come Disguised as Birds’? Here we find the poem as epiphany; a puzzle; a dreamscape; a polyglot; a spell; a cast list; a conundrum.

But the title remains a viable entrance to the poem throughout its various, deceptive changes of appearance and purpose. The best titles are linked symbiotically to the poem which they open; with these, poem and handle exist side-by-side with complete naturalness and no amount of imagining could bring a reader, once familiar with that poem, to think of it with an alternate title.

When everything is working in harmony, the title as doorway to the poem is greater than itself; in other words, like Doctor Who’s TARDIS, the good title is bigger on the inside than the outside. (It may even travel in time.) So always stop and examine it. To neglect the potential significance of a title, to read it in haste or forget to glance at it on your way in, is to enter the poem not only without knocking, but without any idea of what you may find there.

And with good poetry, that might just prove dangerous.

David Morley's "Enchantment"

2011-01-19T16:11:00.002Z

Off to Warwick University tonight for the official launch of poet David Morley's latest poetry collection from Carcanet: "Enchantment".

And it is an enchanting book, I can highly recommend it.

8pm, Wednesday 19th January, 2011
Venue: The Capital Studio, Millburn House, Warwick University, Coventry, CV4 7HS
Entry: Free

Carcanet Press invites you to the launch of 'Enchantment' by David Morley.

David Morley's 'Enchantment' reinvents the oral tradition of poetry as a form of magic, marvel and making. Opening with a celebration of friendship, the poems tell the world into being. In myths of origin and the natural world, the terrible chronicles of history and the saving power of folk wisdom, the poet weaves spells of Romany and circus language, invents forms and shapes, drawing his readers into a "lit circle" magical and true.

For more information visit www.carcanet.co.uk.

Get Writing!

2011-01-13T00:16:00.000Z

For those based in the south of the UK, next month I'll be appearing at the Get Writing Conference, based at the University of Hertfordshire.

My talk/workshop is on Making the Transition from Poetry & Short Fiction to Novels.

In other words, how to write long after years of writing short.

I'll also be taking pitches for Embrace Books later in the day, alongside a wide range of other editors, agents, publishers ...

The conference is a fast-paced, one-day affair on Saturday 19th February. Hope to see some of you there!

The Dream of the Rood

2011-01-09T13:55:00.006Z


Franks Casket (7th Century)

Many of you will know of my long-standing obsession with Anglo-Saxon and that I have already published various translations of Old English poetry.

Yesterday, I decided, quite out of the blue, that I would translate the Old English poem The Dream of the Rood into a modern English poem.

The Dream is one of the oldest poems in Old English in existence, possibly dating from around or before the 7th century.

I say 'out of the blue', but actually I have been considering it for some years. Over a decade, in fact. And lately the idea has been slipping in and out of my head more frequently. But not with any real seriousness until late yesterday evening, when I leapt off the sofa, snatched up a copy of the Anglo-Saxon text from the bookshelf, and started making notes in the margins.

I have often found, throughout my writing life, that spontaneous, bolt-from-the-blue decisions like this are highly propitious and nearly always end in a finished, successful publication.

This translation may take several months. The Dream of the Rood is longer than my previous OE translation, The Wanderer, which took about 6-8 weeks in all.

First, I translate the poem myself.

Then I look at other translations and compare them with my own and each other.

Then I begin to write my own version in poem-form.

(Version, please note, rather than translation, because I believe only a prose version of a poem can be called a translation. Once you attempt poetry in a second language, it can never be considered a straight translation, but only a version; however close you come to the original, the new poem will always try to assert itself over the old one, in one way or another.)

I tend to work very slowly with these versions from the Old English, writing only a few lines of the poem per day, feeling my way through it.

Wish me luck. I'll let you know how it's progressing. At least the initial own-translation shouldn't take too long, as I first translated the poem in 1998. But my OE is a trifle rusty!

For those interested in poetic translations, my rather controversial version of The Wanderer appears in my latest poetry collection, Camper Van Blues, newly available in paperback from Salt.

Creative Redrafting Workshops

2011-01-03T12:09:00.005Z

Since I've been discussing creative redrafting on Facebook these past few days, I thought it might be a good idea to post up some links to my 2010 Creative Redrafting Workshops.

They were originally written for redrafting poems, but apply equally to prose.

My online workshops were commissioned by the women's writing magazine Mslexia and appeared in five parts, now gathered together at their workshops links page:

Part 1
First Drafts are Not Holy Relics -
"Have you ever abandoned a difficult first draft that was going nowhere?"

Part II
Second Draft Onwards -
"Dare to do the thing that frightens you: rewrite in an entirely new way."

Part III
Building a Family Tree -
"Mixing it up with a little incest may be the most profitable way forward."

Part IV
Find the Core -
"Every poem has a secret core on which its power depends."

Part V
Strong Redrafts are New Creations In Their Own Right -
"The most obvious way to spot when a poem is finished is when you become heartily sick of it."

Hope you enjoy working with some of my redrafting ideas. If you have any feedback on the workshop suggestions and exercises, please do post your comments here below!

BBC Radio Coventry and Warwickshire

2011-01-01T14:03:00.001Z

Starting the new decade with a radio broadcast tomorrow morning (Sunday) on BBC Radio Coventry and Warwickshire, who have a 'reading the newspapers' show that I sometimes get invited to do, along with one or two other guests. We discuss local and national news stories live on radio, and get to eat some lovely cakes during the traffic and other news breaks.

It's a fun way to spend the morning.

For those who might like to listen in, the host of the show is Liz Kershaw, and this is the webpage: Liz Kershaw 10am.

Afterwards, I intend to shop, since the BBC studios are right in the heart of the old city centre, below the world-famous cathedral and only three minutes' walk from the main shopping area.

Books, of course, will be my main purchase tomorrow. But I do need some new slippers too.

Happy New Year!

2010-12-30T15:30:00.001Z

Happy New Year to all my faithful readers, and even to those who have no idea who I am and only landed on this blog by accident!

My wish for 2011 is to exceed 100 followers.

If you can help me, either by following me or spreading the word about this blog, that would be great!

If I manage to attract over 100 followers - see sidebar for details - I might even undertake to update this blog more often than I do currently.

Though I wouldn't want to bore people by blogging too often. There's only so much a writer can say about writing before they begin to sound like a scratched record, after all.

But even if you turn up and there's no new entry, you can always feed the sidebar fish. ;-)

Feed Their Minds: Give Kids Poetry This Christmas

2010-12-04T15:12:00.005Z

Everyone's hitting the shops this weekend, both online and on the High Street, to round up all those elusive Christmas presents. I've now bought, on the telephone, all my kids' major presents. (Shh, in case they're reading this over my shoulder.)

However, I like to feed their minds as well as cater for their sometimes unaccountable taste in leisure pursuits, so there will be BOOKS wrapped up under the tree as well - as there are every year in this household. We live by books here, and a few more never hurts!

Yet even those kids who prefer DVDs may find flicking through a little poetry book more fun than perhaps they imagined.

Especially if you buy NEW poetry for kids - not the old anthologies of lovely but antiquated Victorian verse that most people stumble across at some point and think, 'Ah - poetry for children!'

No, there is new, freshly-written poetry out there now for kids. Relevant, fun, and not always necessarily rude. Creative, and often stunning to read aloud. Memorable, witty, intelligent, sensitive poetry.

So, in between forking out for the gaming equipment and the Barbie doll accessories, pause a moment and think about buying a few smart and attractive stocking fillers as well - a few books of children's poetry from Salt Publishing.

These small books are brand-new, modern, aimed at a younger audience, and with fabulous colourful covers designed to entice kids.

And the poetry inside them is pretty fantastic too!

Try John Mole's All The Frogs and Angela Topping's beautiful The New Generation for starters.

Then there's Philip Gross, John Siddique, Phil Bowen, Robert Hull, Rupert Lloydell ...

And in the New Year, come back and let me know what your kids thought of them. This is how you seed a new generation of poets.

Mark Goodwin's SHOD reviewed

2010-11-22T12:39:00.000Z

My review of Mark Goodwin's SHOD from Nine Arches Press is now up at Hand + Star, for those readers who are interested in poetry.

Happy Birthday: Sold!

2010-11-18T07:14:00.001Z

Yesterday was my birthday, which made it doubly exciting not only to travel down to London for the RNA Winter Party, but also to be called by my literary agent in the morning, quite out of the blue, and told that a potential deal was on the table for the huge Tudor historical I've been writing most of the year. Transworld had only received the full manuscript a couple of weeks before, so I hadn't been expecting such a rapid response.

An astonishing phone call. And what followed was my most memorable birthday ever!

Ten minutes after our little group of novelists was due to leave our Waterstones Picadilly pre-party 'tweet-up' and move on to the winter party proper, my mobile went. I dashed off to answer it somewhere quiet, and returned glowing, to let the others know my book had sold, as part of a three book deal, to Transworld for a very generous six figure sum.

Still processing that information here. It's so exciting and such a marvellous birthday present.

Though, perhaps needless to say, my youngest kids are all busy drawing up their hurriedly revised Christmas lists.

Another Year, Another Party

2010-11-16T09:34:00.002Z

It's my birthday this week, and I've never been busier. It's odd though, how time seems to expand to fit everything in. At least, most of the time. There are still days when I don't quite get everything done that I'd hoped, or drop the ball on some activity.

There was freezing fog out there today on the school run. I had been intending to travel today, to go fifteen miles down the road and get a job done that's been pending for a while. But the fog persuaded me to stay home and do it another time. That's the beauty of working from home. You can be flexible and adapt to the circumstances.

It's the Romantic Novelists Association Winter Party in London tomorrow. I'm looking forward to that, always a sparkly affair, and have my party outfit all picked out. Plus the obligatory very steep heels.

Around my birthday, I always look back to see what I've done in the past year, and ahead to guess what might happen in the future.

2010 has been a massively busy and eventful year for me in professional terms. I got involved in writing my vast Tudor historical, which is now finished and with my agent. I stepped down from the editorship of Horizon Review, and became editor of a digital fiction imprint instead. I joined the RNA again, after a lapse of several years, and have made efforts to go to events and meet more novelists, get more involved in the 'scene' - which is very different from the poetry 'scene'!

But I have a feeling I've only been laying the foundations this year, and that 2011 will see me reaping the rewards for my hard work. That's the theory, anyway.

The End of the Novel

2010-11-08T18:30:00.002Z

Well, at the weekend I reached the end of my Tudor historical, which is over 120,000 words long, did all the usual twiddling and fiddling today, then emailed it off to my agent.

What next?

Torbay Poetry Festival: Saturday, October 30th

2010-10-25T12:11:00.003+01:00

For those in the South West region of England, I’ll be on a discussion panel at the Torbay Poetry Festival this coming Saturday, October 30^th. The event starts at 10am, in the Grosvenor Hotel, Belgrave Road, Torquay, and is a discussion of the different ways in which poetry can be presented to a readership.

With me on the panel will be Carole Baldock and Anne Stewart. Carole Baldock is the editor of Orbis, a well-established hard copy literary magazine, and Anne Stewart has been running 'poetry pf' since 2005, an internet showcase for poets. I am there in my capavity as former editor of Horizon Review, an online arts journal.

To buy your tickets for this event,visit the torbaypoetryfestival website. Tickets are 4.50 full price, and 3.50 concessions.

It’s been several years since I was at the Torbay Poetry Festival, which is chiefly organised by Patricia Oxley, editor of the long-running poetry magazine Acumen, and her husband and stalwart of the small press scene, the poet and editor William Oxley. So I’m very much looking forward to being back in Torbay for a few days, meeting up with some old friends and enjoying the much-missed sight of that cold Devon sea rolling in – ‘Thalassa! Thalassa!’

National Poetry Day

2010-09-30T00:18:00.004+01:00

I'm not doing anything much on NPD this year, but if you're in or around London on Thursday October 7th, this free poetry event is going on most of the afternoon at the Southbank Centre.

Poetry Society and Southbank Centre presents

National Poetry Day Live

Thursday 7 October 2010

2pm-6.15pm

Free event

For the second year running, the Poetry Society has organised this lively event for National Poetry Day together with the Southbank Centre. Once again the event is entirely free. All welcome, including groups.
Discover poetry in the foyers and hidden corners of the Royal Festival Hall, and make yourself at home in the Clore Ballroom for live performances by a host of poetry’s famous names and rising stars. The day’s events are hosted by Ross Sutherland & Caroline Bird, featuring:

Simon Armitage, Jane Draycott, Ian Duhig, Luke Kennard, Daljit Nagra
Lemn Sissay performing Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’
Joelle Taylor & SLAMbassadors
Former Foyle Young Poets: Jay Bernard, Swithun Cooper, Holly Hopkins, Sarah Howe & Laura Seymour
Forward Prize Poets: Robin Robertson, Fiona Sampson & Jo Shapcott

'Getting Published’- a Poetry Review workshop ♦ Foyle Young Poets of the Year ♦ ‘Pick a Poem’ ♦
Folk in a Box presents ‘Poetry in a Box’ ♦ Screening of Postcards from Home ♦ Prescriptions & quizzes

Venue: Royal Festival Hall foyers & Clore Ballroom, Southbank Centre, London SE1.

For more information visit www.poetrysociety.org.uk

Longhand v. Keyboard

2010-09-29T14:34:00.004+01:00

Working on this Tudor novel, which is longer than anything I've written since an unpublished psychological thriller I grew, almost under laboratory conditions, in the early noughties, I've been returning to earlier ways of generating inspiration.

In other words, I've started writing new sections longhand, and then transferring them to the computer later in the day. I also rather cunningly expand and revise as I type up, so that 500 words by hand develops into 1000 on screen.

This seems an ideal solution to keeping up the daily word count, which does feel inexorable at times, especially since I occasionally become inexplicably blocked at the sight of my laptop. Association of object with activity.

It just seems nice and undemanding, kind of old-fashioned, writing a few carefully-chosen words by hand into a notebook. Those then grow, line by line, into paragraphs, and then pages ...

I couldn't write the whole book like this, of course. It would probably kill me, and take over a year to do so. Let's face it, I can type much faster than I can write longhand. Legibly, at least. But when it's cold and damp outside, as it is today, and I can curl up on the sofa with a notebook and ink pen, there's a Virginia Woolf feel to the process of writing a novel.

Shh, if you listen carefully, you can hear the birds singing in Greek.

Reading in Leamington Spa, this Sunday

2010-09-08T00:19:00.000+01:00

The grim beauty of a deadline

2010-09-06T14:03:00.001+01:00

I was chastened to see how long it's been since my last blog post. Many thanks to writer Talli Roland for leaving a comment on my last entry and reminding me that people do actually read this blog.

It's been an astonishing summer, work-wise. Things have just blossomed and ballooned, on a number of fronts. That's partly why this blog has been so silent, as I've been trying to spend some quality time with my three youngest children over their summer holidays at the same time as getting up to speed on some rapid developments in my career as a writer and editor.

I'll confine my comments today to my novel, since that's the least complicated situation. It's a long Tudor historical, set in 1575, and features Elizabeth 1st as a point-of-view character. Though the novel is not actually about the queen, per se. It's about one of her court entertainers. More I am reluctant to say at this stage. But the book is just over halfway through, and I've agreed to finish it by the end of the first week in October.

That's a tall order. We're talking roughly 60,000 words in just over 4 weeks. But it's not an impossible task. I need to knuckle down to a serious daily word count, improve my time management, and say 'No, thanks' to nearly all offers of other work.

What's brilliant in all this is that I'm up against it so severely, and have so many other things revolving about in my head whilst writing, that I am very unlikely to suffer from 'can't finish it' syndrome. That tends to strike when you have nothing else but the novel to consume you, and it's so large in the window the thought of waking up one day to an empty view begins to terrify you.

So you put off finishing for as long as possible, and keep polishing instead, or making 'necessary' changes, or suddenly get absorbed in some other non-writing activity that takes you away from the keyboard, or obsess about other, far better stories you could be writing.

Thank goodness for deadlines, that's what I say. The sine qua non of novel writing.

Penguin open their doors to unsolicited mss - for 3 months only!

2010-08-16T00:47:00.000+01:00

Just spotted that Penguin UK is allowing unagented writers to send unsolicited email-only ms queries to them through August, September and October 2010.

So if you have something they might be interested in publishing, and you haven't yet netted an agent to do all the approach work for you, this could be your big chance.

You can find out more details on how to submit your work by email here at Penguin UK.

Good luck!

Oft him anhaga ...

2010-08-04T20:41:00.001+01:00

I was deeply flattered a few weeks ago when an old acquaintance and fellow lover of Anglo-Saxon poetry, Chris Jones, who lectures in the School of English at the University of St. Andrews, contacted me about my versions from that antique tongue. Chris was in the final throes of an academic article on modern poets who use or are inspired by Old English in their poetry, and wanted to include references to my various translations and other bits and pieces on OE.

His request is the kind of thing which reminds me why I became a poet. The thought of people out there reading about your work, and maybe going on to buy a book or two of it, or at least look you up on the net, is a very satisfying thing. I certainly didn't become a poet so my work could go unread. So any article which might flag me up to people with similar tastes and interests is excellent, by my reckoning.

If all this has whet your appetite for some Anglo-Saxon poetry, there are some odd pieces by me scattered about in various places on OE topics, but by far the largest example is my version of The Wanderer, a very famous Old English poem about a warrior adrift without a fixed abode, which can be found in my Salt collection, Camper Van Blues.

My version caused controversy when first published because the original was written in the voice of a man - or possibly several men - but I changed the narrator's gender to female, to match my own. But what are new versions for if not to test the ability of a poem to endure and reflect society's changes?

It took me well over a month to write that translation of The Wanderer, managing just 4 lines a day on average. But it was a highly complex piece of writing, and I wanted to try and reproduce at least some of the rhythms and alliterative sounds of OE verse - not just write a translation or even a version, in other words, but a poem which would work in its own right.

Anyway, I was very flattered to be included in Chris' article and hope it will lead other writers in the future to write their own versions, keeping OE verse firmly alive in the twenty-first century.

Embrace Books

2010-07-25T23:08:00.003+01:00

For those who don't know, I recently accepted an invitation to edit Embrace Books, a new digital romance line coming out of Salt Publishing in the UK.

While I wait for the website to be ready, I've launched an Embrace Books blog so that prospective writers can find the necessary guidelines and details of how to submit work.

I'll be keeping that side of my career separate from my writing, so don't expect many posts here about my work as an editor.

Indeed, I write this surrounded by research materials, reference books, my thesaurus, and a rough handwritten draft of my latest chapter. Yes, the great Tudor novel continues to grow apace.

Warwick Writers Open Mic Night

2010-07-20T11:52:00.001+01:00

I'll be hosting an open mic tonight on behalf of the Warwick Writers group, and encouraging local writers to get up and share their work at the microphone.

I'll be reading a short set myself, to kick things off, and probably one or two at the end of the evening too.

The open mic takes place at the old Kozi Bar just off the Market Square in central Warwick, across the road from the museum. I have a sneaking suspicion it may begin around 7.30pm, but I shall be there rather earlier, of course, to set up and get comfortable.

In case anyone here is going, I shall be taking copies of my brand spanking new paperback edition of Camper Van Blues to sell. So bring extra cash!

I'll also be reminding any poets in the audience to enter the Warwick Laureateship competition, for a shot at the title. The position is unpaid, but as a former Laureate, I can assure people that there are always a few well-paid poetry commissions and workshops available to you during the year-long stint - if you want them. I published an entire book of poetry off the back of my Laureateship - 'On Warwick', available from Nine Arches Press - so it's well worth entering if you like public poetry.

Plus, of course, the wonderful fun of being Warwick Laureate, which is part of the package. See the Warwick Words festival site for more details.

SALT: Just One More Book

2010-07-13T22:57:00.009+01:00

These are lean times for publishers, and my own publishers, Salt, have put out an appeal for people to buy some of their books - just one, in fact, could make a difference. Sales have been greatly reduced in recent months, probably as a knock-on effect from the continuing recession, and they very much need people to buy some of their excellent wares.

You can read their Just One More book appeal here at the Salt blog, with a link to Amazon and the Book Depository, where I believe Salt prefer you to buy their books.

Other writers and bloggers are supporting the Just one Book campaign across the internet. Here's one example from Tom Vowler.

This appeal comes just as Salt announce a brand-new imprint called Embrace Books, to be edited by me. Embrace Books will publish romance ebooks in various categories; we plan to launch the first titles in Spring 2011.

Anyone who was thinking of submitting a category romance manuscript to Embrace Books (first 3 chapters and synopsis to jane AT saltpublishing.com), but is now uncertain, should understand two things.

Salt has weathered this kind of storm before, using precisely this kind of appeal to its readers.
Embrace Books is a new imprint, a digital fiction imprint, and will be run almost entirely separately from its parent company, Salt Publishing.

The poet Andrew Philip, on his blog Tonguefire, makes the valid point that independent publishers like Salt are vital, and that buying a book from them now, to help them keep afloat in this recession, is 'about you – the reader — and making sure that you continue to have the opportunity to expand your imaginative horizons in fresh and unexpected directions, directions increasingly denied you by the chain bookstores.'

I recommend Wena Poon's brand-new 'Alex y Robert', a brave and stunning novel about a woman who wants to be a matador, against all the odds. It's also a very beautiful looking book.

Support exciting, independently published fiction and buy Wena's novel ahead of the crowd here at Salt (not available from Amazon until its official launch in 2011).

RNA Conference, Greenwich

2010-07-05T10:37:00.002+01:00

Like a typical fiction martyr, I've been writing solidly for months now, on one project or another, and saying 'No thanks' to invitations to escape the house.

This coming weekend, however, I'm off to Greenwich, London, to attend the annual RNA Conference. It's a three day extravaganza where romantic novelists congregate and exchange advice and industry news, and spend rather a lot of time propping up the bar in ludicrously high heels.

This will be my first time as a residential attendee, though I've dropped in before for day-only events. I'm massively looking forward to it, and have even bought some new clothes in honour of the occasion!

My mother was one of the best-known romantic novelists of her time, and I do love romances myself, though the historical I'm working on right now is straight fiction. So there's a strong family connection. But it's also a great excuse to escape from the house for a few days, as I've become something of a virtual hermit in recent months, only talking on the internet.

Anyone else going to the conference, do please come up and say hi if you see me wandering about - looking or actually being lost. I know plenty of novelists online, of course, but have only met a small number in the flesh. That's all going to change this weekend!

Ridi, Pagliaccio, ridi!

2010-07-05T10:09:00.006+01:00

I was born with a strong inner critic, so I'm never surprised or offended when someone says 'Actually, this doesn't work' about my writing. I'm usually there before them, already wondering how to fix it or improve it, and I'm often grateful to have those doubts spotted by someone else in the trade, as it demonstrates that I'm not imagining things.

If they tell me such things with a laughing sneer, or an obvious agenda, or if they have almost no experience in that line, then I probably have a right to be suspicious. But if they are experienced and have no reason to speak up except in the interests of helping people understand the work better - and that includes the person who wrote it - then why should I not take what they say at face value and examine it with an equal mind?

Sadly, that response to criticism is beyond some writers. They would rather believe the person pointing out the fault is wrong - either incompetent or deliberately nasty - than believe they might need to correct an imbalance in their work.

It's like throwing a line to someone who's in trouble in the water, and having them flail about angrily and question your motives in stopping to help, rather than grabbing on.

I am convinced that this aching sense of self-importance and rightness is connected to an inability to laugh at themselves.

Self-mockery is a necessary correlative to success as a writer - or a lack of it. Without humour, you rapidly lose perspective on yourself and become either an egotistical monster, convinced of your divine right to crow from the top of the dung-heap, or a twisted creature in the dark, bitterly blaming others for your lack of success.

Naturally, the opposite is simultaneously true. A strong writer must have an absolute sense of mission and purpose, and be able to shrug off criticism at will. But without perspective and humour to temper that side of the creative process, all that is created is more ego.

Mothers, wives, poets.

2010-07-02T10:52:00.005+01:00

Horrified today to see, via Arc poet Jackie Wills' blog, that an 'unknown' - as Jackie puts it - American poet called Eleanor Ross Taylor has been recognised for her talent with the Ruth Lily Award.

What horrified me was not the poet herself, or her poetry, or indeed the award, but the apparent equanimity with which some people seem to accept without question the US critic Kevin Prufer's description of her work (taken from a recent blog entry on the NBCC Award shortlisted finalists):

Her speakers are most often mothers and wives thinking about their grown children, the complexities of marriage, and (increasingly in the later poems) their responsibilities to the dead and their own impending demise. Sometimes these voices emerge from an ostensible past, as in “My Grandmother’s Virginhood, 1879” or “Motherhood, 1880.” More often, they take place in an undefined domestic present. Occasionally, they rise from more surprising places, as in “Kitchen Fable,” where the flatware itself takes on the consciousness of a frustrated wife.

Wow, and there I was thinking we'd got past the ludicrously sexist 'Look, a woman who writes about domestic issues! Quick, let's give her an award and encourage other women to steer clear of politics and the 'big' issues, and write about their children and husbands instead.'

Granted, for some women, writing about being a wife and mother is all they want to do as poets. And for some women, writing a poem about being a woman is a political act in itself.

But let's at least stop and examine why Eleanor Ross Taylor has been so suddenly plucked out of obscurity to be given this award, if it isn't to suggest - perhaps at a subliminal level - to female writers that good girls who keep their heads down and only write quiet, domestic poetry will be recognised for their modesty and humility in the end.

Even if it's only with a pat-on-the-head style encomium from some highly placed male critic.

New Paperback Edition of CAMPER VAN BLUES

2010-06-28T10:19:00.003+01:00

Yes, the moment you have all been waiting for has arrived!

Salt have just reissued CAMPER VAN BLUES as a deliciously glossy paperback, priced at £9.99 - though it appears to pack a 20% discount if you buy it from the Salt website, rather than Amazon.

So if you held back from buying the rather more expensive - though equally delicious - hardback version, now is your chance to own my latest book of poetry for roughly the same price as a modest round of drinks in a London pub.

There are also a few available at Amazon, along with some very kind reviews.

Fifth and Final Creative Redrafting Workshop up at Mslexia

2010-06-24T19:26:00.001+01:00

I had some absolutely fantastic and heartwarming feedback today via the women's writing magazine Mslexia - people finding my recent series of Creative Redrafting workshops on the Mslexia website useful and full of practical, hands-on advice for reworking those old and abandoned poems.

The fifth and final workshop in the series is up now at Mslexia, a special series run in support of their annual Poetry Competition, to be judged by Vicki Feaver this year, with a first prize of £1000.

Pulling Aside the Curtain: The Beginnings of Story

2010-06-11T23:59:00.004+01:00

Being faced with further revisions to my novel, I currently find myself rewriting the opening scenes. In fact, I have to completely change the opening scenes of my novel and begin from a different character's perspective or narrative point of view.

This may sound simple, but the character in whose mind or presence a novel opens is utterly crucial in terms of the narrative skew of that story.

If we open with the internal monologue of a brick, the whole novel becomes brick-flavoured from that point on. Whoever else speaks, be it air, dust, stream, periwinkle, dog, human, alien - everything comes to us served alongside that underlying idea of brick.

Hardy understood that when he opened The Return of the Native with a lengthy description of 'heathy, furzy, briary wilderness', a landscape as much metaphorical as real.

An opening scene needs to introduce a world and a narratorial mind-set, not merely a character in a situation.

It might also suggest what lies ahead through the idea of conflict and opposition, i.e. if our opening character is naive to the point of absurdity, she may have grown cynical by the last page of the novel. Or if cynicism was her abiding state, then her faith in human nature may have been restored. A violent man may find death - for each world has rules, and consequences for breaking them - while a peace-loving man may stand over the body of his enemy blowing smoke from the barrel of his Smith and Wesson.

In other words, this is the reversal we hear talked about so much in writing classes and manuals. The reversal is inherent in the 'ordinary world' in which the story begins, built into the trigger or 'inciting incident' which signals the start of our plot. For a story is not a plot. Plot only begins when something actually happens. Until something happens to knock that first domino into its neighbour and so set the whole row tumbling, the story remains inert.

And within the visual and mental picture conjured by an opening scene should lie the seed or kernel of the plot. The opening narrative should be, or at least come to represent, the story as metaphor.

That's what I'm trying to do right now. Find the correct metaphor for my story, and open the prologue or first chapter with it. I had the perfect metaphor in my original first draft, but the story has moved on from that point in terms of character development, so I can no longer start there. It has to be something which perfectly unites all my ideas about theme and character and conflict, and which also points ahead to the resolution of the story without giving any details away.

The opening scene in the movie Twilight - also a kind of prologue in the book - is of a fawn, or young deer, running innocently through a fairy-tale forest, with the underlying sinister implication that it will soon meet a violent end, as all such vulnerable, beautiful, but ultimately mortal creatures must in their journey through the dark forest of life. It's a clear metaphor for the story, and combined with a heavy-handed voiceover by the main character Bella, it points ahead to the dangers and possible consequences of her choices in Twilight without giving away the details.

This metaphor has no connection with the next few scenes, however, and so feels clunky and out of place. It's not until later, when the real-life forest with its dangerous, unearthly inhabitants is encountered, that it becomes more acceptable to the viewer as an opening scene. In searching for my opening metaphor, then, I'll be looking to avoid that slightly awkward join to the rest of the novel.

Making the Century?

2010-06-09T09:44:00.000+01:00

No, not years, but followers on Twitter.

I only have a piddling 56 followers to date - though thanks to all of you who have clicked Follow! - and am really keen to get my first century.

I can offer my followers wit, comment, information, and regular retweets. I can also follow you back if you're looking to build your own community of followers there.

Genuinely interesting content is not guaranteed, of course. But that's Twitter for you.

If you're on Twitter, or would like to be, or think you maybe ought to try it, and you're not already following me, I'd be thrilled if you'd go to:

http://twitter.com/janeholland1

and click Follow. Thanks!

More Mslexia Workshops now available

2010-06-07T14:43:00.001+01:00

Interested in Writing as Genetics?

Or redrafting your poems as Building a Family Tree?

My third short article based around the theme of Creative Redrafting is now up on the Mslexia site.

Get it while it's hot!

"Didn't we have a luverly time the day we went to Bangor?"

2010-06-02T12:09:00.004+01:00

Off to Bangor in North Wales this afternoon, to pick up my second eldest from university ... along with all her bags and general rubbish.

It's a long trip, but I shall be driving along with several happy thoughts in my mind:

How I'm going to open the next intrigue-ridden chapter in my historical Tudor novel

That I now have a most excellent literary agent to represent me in fiction.

We were in rainy Folkestone over the weekend, visiting my father and his sister's family down there in Kent. Tonight I'll be staying in a hotel near - hopefully sunny - Rhyl. On Friday and Saturday, Steve and I will be in Hayle for his daughter's birthday party, staying in a caravan near the sea, not many miles from Land's End.

That's three coastlines in one week. Not bad going, for someone who lives at the dead centre of England.

Mslexia Poetry Workshops

2010-06-02T00:14:00.001+01:00

Just spotted that the first two instalments of my series of five linked articles on Creative Redrafting are now live on the Mslexia website.

Some of my weary but faithful regular readers may remember my first tentative blog posts on Creative Redrafting a few years back. Some may even have survived one of my workshop sessions using the technique. Well, this is an updated and expanded version of the same theory of poem revision, which will hopefully be useful for someone out there.

This particular incarnation of Creative Redrafting is a poetry workshop series specially commissioned by Mslexia to accompany their 2010 Poetry Competition, the idea being that you hone your competition entries by working through my suggestions - and those of fellow poets whose advice I solicited for this series - and improve your redrafting skills at the same time.

Experienced poets, writers and editors who contributed their know-how for these articles include Helen Ivory, Alison Brackenbury, Sophie Mayer, Annie Finch, Zoe Skoulding, Anne Berkeley and Nuala Ní Chonchúir.

Many thanks to you all!

Small Publishers and the Prize Machinery

2010-05-27T10:46:00.000+01:00

Elizabeth Baines, fellow Salt writer and blogger, discusses the latest problem to face the world of small publishing.

This discussion all came about after some Facebook posts by various people in publishing - including my own Salteeny Jen Hamilton-Emery, and Neil Astley, editor of Bloodaxe Books, who published my debut poetry collection - criticised the introduction of fees for publishers to enter publications for the Guardian First Book awards.

Prizes and Book Club recommendations: are these more of a curse than a benefit, at least for the publishers, who end up spending huge sums on providing the books involved and accepting vast discounts on sales at the same time?

Horizon Review issue 4

2010-05-20T01:29:00.000+01:00

For those who haven't noticed yet, the fourth and most splendid issue of Horizon Review is now live on the Salt Publishing website.

As a tempter, here are the opening paras of my Editorial:

Are British poetry institutions failing poetry?

That is the controversial accusation levelled at the poetry establishment by long-time poet, editor and literary commentator, William Oxley, in this latest issue of Horizon Review. Authoritative bodies such as the Arts Council, Poetry Society, Arvon Foundation and Poetry Book Society are examined for their roles in this ‘establishment-centred’ problem as Oxley suggests that the teaching of creative writing now dominates the poetry world, with few outside poetry actually buying and reading the finished product.

In addition, we present the usual array of in-depth essays on art and literature: Colin Fisher discusses the publication of the first English translation of Kafka’s 'The Trial' in June 1937; poets Craig Raine and Jean Earle are brought under examination; an interesting theory of Beckett’s affinities with Buddhism is put forward by John L. Murphy, while Jon Stone expertly introduces us to the global lit-art phenomenon that is Manga.

Holland's Miscellany

2010-05-10T22:53:00.001+01:00

A brand-new site, taking my name in vain, has sprung up overnight at Wordpress.com

It will feature posts on politics, sci-fi, humanism, secularism, and 'whatever else crops up'. Unlikely to be much there about poetry or writing, though you never know.

I'd be really pleased and grateful if anyone interested in any of the above topics would support Holland's Miscellany by telling other people about it - maybe by linking to it on your own blogs, or on Facebook or Twitter, just to give it some momentum in these early weeks as it emerges into the blogosphere.

First few posts so far discuss the new Doctor Who, the paralysing effects of depression, and the ramifications of a hung parliament:

'This is how the LibDems die, not with a bang but a lapdance.'

Hope you will find time to support this new blog, and perhaps leave some comments?