The Nail, Autumn 2006

A new issue of THE NAIL is just out and lying on my desk. THE NAIL is an eclectic magazine coming out of Oxford - edited by Dave Todd - which looks in particular at the live poetry scene in Oxford and beyond. This new issue of THE NAIL features spanking new poetry by, well, me, plus many talented live poets such as AF Harrold, Alan Buckley, Rob Gee, Peter Wyton and Nina Davies.

Besides its vibrant cover, the magazine is also illustrated throughout, with photographs and some highly atmospheric line drawings.


Even if you don't usually buy the smaller poetry magazines, THE NAIL is useful because it has two pages of live poetry and performance listings at the back of each issue, letting people know what's on where in the Oxfordshire and Reading areas. You can buy THE NAIL from Dave Todd - pictured left in MY hat! - by contacting him for details: davetodd @hotmail.co.uk or send contributions with SAE for return to Dave, Hammer & Tongue, 16b Cherwell Street, Oxford, OX4 1BG - though you really should buy a copy first to see the sort of work he prefers.

On Fame

Tidying my book shelves in advance of an influx of my own slim volume, in largish numbers for selling, I found a beautiful little green-backed 1897 edition of ‘The Lyrical Poems of John Keats’, heavily ornate, decorated with gilt flowers and leaves both on the spine and front cover.

Though I have several other editions of his works - letters as well as poems - I had forgotten that I owned this particular nineteenth century edition. Very much a pocket Keats, and unashamedly lovely.

Picking it up, the book fell open at the following poem; wonderfully serendipitous, given that I have just published a new collection of poetry myself and am wondering how well - or poorly - it will be received.


ON FAME

Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;
She is a Gipsy - will not speak to those
Who have not learnt to be content without her;
A Jilt, whose ear was never whisper’d close,
Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her;
A very Gypsy is she, Nilus-born,
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar;
Ye love-sick Bards! repay her scorn for scorn
Ye Artists lovelorn! madmen that ye are!
Make your best bow to her and bid adieu,
Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.

John Keats, 1818

BETA BLOGGER -Time to Swop Formats

Okay, I swopped POETS ON FIRE over to the new advanced Beta Blogger system last weekend. Now it's the turn of my Raw Light blog.

If the site takes ages to load once the switch has happened, or if you spot any other problems like dead links or whatever, or even if you just love or hate the new look of Raw Light, please let me know by emailing me or leaving a comment below this post.

Here goes ... abracadabra!

PS. Just to add to this, having now switched over to Beta Blogger, there are some teething problems. Like not being able to post poetry up in the sidebar except as a list (posting it backwards, one line at a time, which is an odd but very interesting procedure!) and also having some trouble getting the new layout to load fully.

So please forgive any strange things going on for the next week or so, as the new format beds in. Hopefully, all will come right in the end.

Jane

Boudicca & Co. is now out there and available to buy!

Nine Years On

Friday 13th may be unlucky for some, but for me, it's an immensely important occasion and one I refuse to be superstitious about. Today, my second collection of poetry Boudicca & Co has gone live on the Salt Publishing website, which means it's now in print and available to buy!


It's nine years since my first poetry collection was published by Bloodaxe, amidst a flurry of exciting publicity. It seems an incredibly long time ago, yet some of the poems I wrote immediately following the New Blood tour in October 1997 - just after Brief History of a Disreputable Woman was published - are in this new book, and they still feel and sound as fresh to me as they did the day I wrote them.

So why did I wait so long before publishing my second collection? Well, it certainly wasn't because I'm a slow writer! I must have written nigh on three hundred poems, at least, in the interim between that first book and Boudicca, but I was advised that the vast majority of my poems were not up to scratch and so I dumped many of them soon after they were written. Possibly the wrong move, but I guess we'll never know.

Some of the rest I also eventually binned out of sheer lack of interest, others I stupidly lost in a wearying series of house moves, still others were eaten by dead computer drives. An entire verse play called Umbra disappeared. I stopped writing in the end and only began again, very tentatively, towards the end of 2004. The individual poems that remain from that dark time, the ones I kept copies of and refused to stop believing in, are true survivors and I'm very happy to see them in print at last.

I shall not be waiting - let's hope so, anyway! - another nine fairy-talesque years before producing my next collection. New poems are already simmering in the 'possible' pile. But in the meantime, I have a new and extremely handsome book of poetry to sell and I sincerely hope you will all consider buying a copy of Boudicca & Co ... before the first print run sells out!

Jane

Here's the link to BOUDICCA & CO.

Poets-I-Used-To-Know, Poetry-Magazines-I-Still-Miss

Well, the Ancient Greek exam is finally behind me - results at Christmas, I'll admit to them only if I pass - so I now have a small amount of time free each day for writing poetry.

But is that what I do, first day 'out of school' - write some poetry? Of course not, that would be too sensible. No, instead I spent a few hours tonight trawling the net in search of amusement. Not the porn stars on pink lilos type of amusement - I used to bother with that sort of thing when I was single, but now the pop-up ads just drive me insane - the poets-I-used-to-know type of amusement.

Here for instance is KM Dersley, who may have said hello to me at the Small Press Fair one year in Newcastle, possibly 1996, after we had been corresponding on a poetry matter.

As I recall, he came shuffling up to me in a duffle coat, heavily rucksacked and looking at me sideways. I was on a stall flogging, or trying to flog, copies of Blade, the poetry & critical magazine I used to run before my brain ran out of energy for such adventures. We talked and then he moved on to the next stall. And here I find KMD again, ten years later, still poeting and online at the Ragged Edge website and writing about precisely that experience; the 'Magazine Rigmarole' as he calls it in his poem of the same name ...

I wouldn't get on very well at committee meetings,
would rather be at home
reading Scarlet Pimpernel stories
or one of Rider Haggard's soap and tsetse fly sagas

Later in the same poem, he quite accurately - if cynically - describes the motivation of poets to part with hard cash in exchange for poetry magazines they despise on the off-chance that this purchase may somehow enable them to get their work in too, since

If that shit counts, then maybe their crap does too,
and everyone can then sit on the dung pile and
smoulder together.

Nada the Lily. What a classic. And Umslopogaas. They don't make tragic heroes like that anymore.

Everything I know about tsetse flies I learnt from H. Rider Haggard.

But not all (small press) poetry magazines are/were unadulterated rubbish.

What about Joe Soap's Canoe? The Wide Skirt? Sunk Island Review?

The poetry world seems to be shrinking even while the magazines proliferate ... shrinking down, down, to the few that still matter (to me, that is).

When will any of us get excited by a new magazine again? By which I mean the sort of little magazine that spurns the establishment whilst making its strong new ideology heard above the wastepaper-bin fodder.

Ah, those heady days of wide-eared poetry innocence ...

Second Prize and a Poetry Reading!

This National Poetry Day (Thursday 5th October) I found myself in the stately Great Hall at Warwick Castle, surrounded by suits of armour and sitting three seats away from the Mayor, as the winner of Second Prize in this year's Warwick Words Festival poetry competition, judged by former Birmingham Laureate Julie Boden. My poem was called 'The Sound of Guitars' and after reading it to the assembled dignitaries - it was the launch ceremony of the 2006 Festival - I was then awarded my various prizes: a generous book voucher, a copy of Andrew Motion's new memoir of his childhood, In the Blood, which I can't wait to read, a recording of Julie Boden's poetry called Beyond the Bullring, and a copy of her poetry collection Through the Eye of a Crow (Pontefract Press), which seems, at first glance, to be heavily inspired by my own favourite poet, Ted Hughes. All in all, quite a treat for a cold and rainy Thursday night in October!

The winner, Helen Yendall, was crowned as new Poet Laureate for Warwick, taking over from Brenda Tai Layton, with her winning poem 'Kettle'.

Today, Saturday 7th October, I'm reading at the Thomas Oken Tearooms near Warwick Castle as part of Brenda Tai Layton's Poetry Cafe event, which runs throughout the Warwick Words Festival.

If you're in the vicinity, my particular performance slot runs from 1.30pm to perhaps 2pm. But I should imagine that's a moveable feast! I'll be reading poems that will appear in my brand-new book, Boudicca & Co., which is due out from Salt Publishing in a matter of weeks. Also a few poems from my first book, The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman, which is now available for sale at a considerably discounted sum!

Hope to see you there!

Warwick Words Festival

Just to let folks know I'll be reading some poems of mine at the Warwick Words Festival next weekend, on Saturday 7th October.

It won't be a lengthy reading as it takes place in the Thomas Oken Tea Rooms next to Warwick Castle and is part of the 'Poetry Cafe' which is running there throughout the Festival. If you're in or around Warwick next Saturday and would like to hear me read - and maybe stick around afterwards and say hi - then I'd be pleased to see you there.

The reading should take place between 1.30 - 2pm and is free, though their tea and scones probably won't be. There'll be other local poets performing or reading their work all that day and on Thursday and Friday too, if you're interested in coming along for the whole Festival.

For more information on all the other workshops and poetry/literary events available that weekend, try the Warwick Words website.

Who else should you be reading?

I have just, whilst trying to avoid writing my novel, found this great website at www.literature-map.com where you type in the name of a favourite author and the website will instantly generate the names of other authors read by people who like that author's books. It sounds a little dull, put like that - it's not, damn it! - but just go and try.

Personally, I think it's rather cool, especially the way the names sort of starburst and jiggle about on the page as they spread further and further away from the original named author. It's like a bomb going off and the bits flying everywhere. But in slow motion. And without hurting anyone. Hard to explain, better just go see what I mean - here's the link: www.literature-map.com.

I'm not listed by the way. Sob.

Autumn Launch dates for BOUDICCA & CO.

Here are some forthcoming performance dates for the autumn launch of BOUDICCA & CO., to be updated nearer the time. Please see the News page on my website for full details.

Copies of my new poetry collection BOUDICCA & CO. should be available at most of these events, but if you want one and can't make it to a reading, you can buy it online at a discount by visiting Salt Publishing.


Thursday 5th October NATIONAL POETRY DAY
Rugby Library
Afternoon Reading at Poetry Cafe, with Q&A session

Saturday 7th October
Warwick Festival
Lunchtime cafe reading, guest poet

Friday 13th October
Electric Cinema, Birmingham
Finale to the Birmingham Book Fair
& End of Laureateship Party
36 performers through to last 6

Sunday November 5th
Buzzwords, Cheltenham
Evening workshop
followed by guest poet slot with open mic

Date to be finalised (Saturday nights)
The Cellar, Poetry Society Cafe, London
Guest poet


MORE DATES TO FOLLOW SHORTLY.

First Day at School

My youngest started nursery school for the first time this week. She looks so cute in her little outfit - sparkling clean for once - and Bang-on-the-Door bag. (Which is apparently a lunch bag rather than a school bag proper, but I've never been terribly good at getting these minor details right. A bag is a bag is a bag, right?)

Anyway, here she is, never to be the same again, bursting with cuteness and first-day-at-schoolness. Those other kids won't know what hit them ...

The "Apples" Poem

I've been trying to place this poem of mine, entitled 'Apples", for over a year now. It takes months to get replies from most poetry magazines, of course, but all the same, I do love this particular poem and am really quite disappointed that none of the editors I tried took a shine to it. Though perhaps I like it too much and therefore can't see if or where it fails as a piece of writing. Or maybe the editors just weren't the right type for this poem. Whatever.

There is perhaps an air of late fifties and early sixties' nostalgia about this poem, as if it had come straight out of that era, and perhaps it did, in a way, with echoes of other famous poems about horses written about that time. It has an unusually gentle and domestic feel to it, which is rather out of step with many of the poems I've written over the past ten years.

Maybe I'm mellowing at last ...

Anyway, 'Apples" will be published soon enough in my new poetry collection, BOUDICCA & CO., due out from Salt in a few months' time - which basically means I can't submit it to a magazine now, with book publication so close at hand. So I'm posting the poem up here on my blog instead, with this photograph of last year's apples in my own back garden to accompany it.

Enjoy!

Apples

The horses come here for apples twice a day,
nudging the fence and rubbing themselves
against trees, trampling earth
with their hunters’ hooves while they wait.
At first we fed them with palms held flat,
away from the substantial teeth and those warm
brownish lips lifting up to reveal them.
But one always dropped his apple
into white-flowered nettles under the fence
and the other would stoop
to retrieve it, thick sinewy neck supple
as a giraffe’s. So now we roll them into the field
or throw them, over-arm, so they bounce
and split soft apple everywhere.
Some days the children are outside playing
and I lift them up, let the baby
grab at a sleek nose with her clumsy fingers
while the boys stare, mesmerised
by the moist brown eyes and those lashes -
like false ones! - seductively curling.
The gentler one comes on his own sometimes,
whinnying and snuffling at the fence.
He turns a wide circle under the horse-chestnut
before moving on, apples
just out of reach and no one in the garden.

Last of the Salad Days

It's nearly the end of the summer holidays, the weather is beginning to drift back into autumnal unpredictability, and I'm coming up to my hundredth post ... I can't believe I've been blogging on Raw Light for nearly a year now. Incroyable!

But at least this means I can stop nibbling on rabbit food every other meal and dig out the slow cooker for some nice thick warming stews. What a summer we had though, so blooming hot it was almost impossible to sleep some nights. And I only made it to a beach once, for one delicious hour, on a day trip down to Cornwall - all the way from the Midlands, can you credit it? - but it was worth the long drive just to listen to those waves rolling in and watch the gulls wheeling about overhead, making their mad gull noises. I'm not meant to live this far inland, even though I was born several hours' drive from the coast. It feels so unnatural, especially for a water sign, being constantly surrounded by earth and earth and yet more earth.

This is a photograph I took of my youngest daughter a year ago, on a trip to one of my spiritual homes (I have several) - the Isle of Man. Now this is what I call a beach ... known as the Ayres, a long isolated stretch of shore on the northernmost tip of the island, often deserted, about half a mile shy of the lighthouse.

Boudicca & Co.

Here's the cover of my new collection, BOUDICCA & CO., out in November from Salt Publishing. Hope it hits the bullseye ...

thought for Monday

"The race belongs not to the swift but to those who keep on going ..."

Who said that?

gecko tattoo

Should I get a tattoo? My eldest daughter has come to stay for the summer, as she has nowhere else to go while college is out, and though we have no room for her in the house - my other four children are all in residence, plus a visiting step-daughter - she's camping out in our back garden, pictured above. She's brought with her a small green gecko in the form of a tattoo on her wrist. Rather lovely, I thought.



Should I get one myself? Maybe not a gecko like hers, but perhaps a discreet little Scorpion on my upper arm or shoulder?

I hate pain though, such a coward ...

If you go down to the woods today ...

Just before the weather broke last week in a spectacular lightshow of lightning, thunder, and torrential rain - during which our inflatable paddling pool flew over the roof of our house into the road opposite - we took the kids for a walk in some very ancient woodlands about twenty minutes' drive from where we live in rural Warwickshire.

This particular area of woodland is called Old Nun Wood and is on the edge of a much larger and newer piece of woodland, but is itself extremely ancient and atmospheric, especially in those dark tense moments before a storm.


In we go ...






It seemed such a bright day when we set out, hot and sunny, the perfect day for walking in the shade of ancient woodlands.






Quite suddenly, the woods began to darken; here the gleam of fallen silver birches provides the only glimmer of light at ground level.






The first sinister rumbles of thunder are heard in the distance.





Time for a sharp exit, reaching the car only minutes before a violent downpour engulfed the Warwickshire countryside!

Not Dead, but in Hiding

I know it's been a long time since my last confession, folks, but hold onto your kidney bowls, pictures are coming soon of a lovely trip to the woods. Bears and all.

Blog-o-mania out of control!

In case people have been wondering why I so rarely update my Raw Light writing blog these days, I'm afraid it's not good news. I have over-stretched myself - every bit as painful as it sounds - and now have more time-consuming blogs to maintain than is healthy for my mental state. To prove this, here is a selection of the various online journals and resources I administer:

POETS ON FIRE daily listings

My Ancient Greek OU course blog

An irregular blog in memory of my mother, the popular novelist Charlotte Lamb

My local CE parish site, which I maintain for the church

To add to the above, I also have two other blogs under different pseudonyms, which I wish to keep anonymous for all sorts of dreadful and scandalous reasons, and I run a fun but infrequent blog for one of my four year old twin sons, who likes to make up his own poems and post them on the net, plus, of course, my Raw Light blog which you are currently reading.

I also run the POETS ON FIRE forum, which can't be left to run wild and needs daily attention, rather like a dog.

POETS ON FIRE FORUM

Is it any surprise I'm exhausted!?!

It's All Happening!

Boudicca & Co.

Yes, it's official, I now have my own author page at Salt Publishing and the new cover of my second collection Boudicca & Co. has finally been revealed to the public in all its Titian glory. Drum roll, please!

It really is a fun, sexy cover for a poetry book, everything I could have hoped for and more, and I'm very pleased with it indeed. The book itself is not due out for a few months yet, but there's some biog. and an interesting description of the book available online now, plus an extract and a recent photograph of me - which is unusual enough to merit a visit to the site, I think, since I usually try to hide behind pictures taken in my twenties!

Anyway, it's real, it's happening, and I'm very excited to be launching my second poetry collection with Salt.

Here's where you can find out more about Boudicca & Co. which is due out 1st November 2006.

"If you love your books, let them go" - The New York Times on the new global phenomenon of BookCrossing

This is Summersault, a cafe in the heart of Rugby, a market town in Warwickshire, whose chief claim to fame is that the game of rugby was invented there. I live within ten miles of Rugby, so visit the town frequently.

When we first moved to the area about three years ago, I checked out Rugby and was enchanted by this charming cafe with its outside tables, lavish flower displays and the arts & crafts materials and jewellery for sale inside the restaurant. It runs to three floors, with a lovely atrium-style top floor for those long winter afternoons, heavily planted with greenery and glowing with light. It's always marvellous to find a good place to write and it helps if the food - and especially the coffee - is excellent too.

But in recent months, Summersault has become even more special in my eyes. For it has joined a rapidly growing worldwide 'sociology experiment', as Book Magazine has dubbed it, and become an Official BookCrossing Zone.

Okay, you may be asking, what is BookCrossing? Well, basically it's about passing on your used books to other people for free. But anonymously, to complete strangers, instead of to friends and family. The three 'R's of BookCrossing are

Read it!
Register it!
Release it!

This is how the system works. You read a book, you visit www.bookcrossing.com and register that book, giving it a unique number which is attached either on the cover or on the inside cover, using your own book labels or one specially downloaded from the website, then you just release the book ... leave it on a park bench, on a cafe table, at a bus stop, in a church. When it's found, the person who takes it home with them will hopefully read the label, visit the bookcrossing site, and notify them that the book has been found. Then they read it, and release it again. Simple as that.

Naturally, it's NOT as simple as that. Many books are released into the wild, as it's called, and never heard of again. Very depressing for the releaser. But many are registered on the site as having been found, and are then passed on again, all over the world. Pretty neat idea!

To facilitate book exchanges, some places have been designated as BookCrossing Zones. And to come full circle, Summersault Cafe in Rugby is just such a place.

As you can see from this photo, the books are kept in a small bookcase near the door, with a sign explaining the process and letting people know that these particular books are FREE and can be taken home. You go in, browse the books, take one home, register it, read it, take it back and pass it on again.

I've just picked up a cookery book there today, a Dan Brown novel for one of my teenage daughters, and a couple of younger reader books for the kids. On the BookCrossing site you can find out if there's an Official BookCrossing Zone near you or who's registered on the scheme in your area, when the last books were released there and exactly where. This scheme is global, of course, so your books can travel anywhere and you will be notified by email when someone finds them, even if they end up in Peru! It's an amazing network of leads and book stories for you to follow and the BookCrossing worldwide discussion forum makes fascinating reading ...

Here's a link to the Bookcrossing site. Why not join them and register one of your books today, then release it ...

bookcrossing
n. the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.

(added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary in August 2004)