Iota Publication

Four of my poems feature in the current issue of Iota. I'd been reading Iota since my second year as an undergrad, always finding it to be one of the most accessible poetry magazines, but one which never compromised on depth. Put simply, the poems are always very good and I'm chuffed to get in it. The poems of mine they've published are 'Marsden', 'The fall', '37 Morpeth Avenue' and 'Heredity as Seen Through an Eight Inch Mirror With a Disposable Razorblade'. Have a spy at the magazine here.

Drain

I’ve just finished phase one of my first commissioned piece of writing. That is to say, I’ve finalised the body text of a long poem which will go on to feature as part of collaborative work in the Seachange artworks that will be mounted along the South Shields foreshore from this Spring into early Summer. All quite wishy-washy, I know, but I don’t want to say too much about the work until it’s actually out there, so hang fire.

The reason I bring it up now, however, is that I’m starting to feel like some of the writing I’ve been working on the past 2-3 years is reaching sell-by. I talked in a previous post about the potential for poems to reach an expiry date; for the passions that ignited them to become staid and the writing to become forced and disingenuous.

I’m not sure whether I need to widen my scope in terms of subject matter, or even to take back up the old prose writer in me for a change of scenery. Whatever the case poems seem to have stopped coming to me as easily at the minute. I probably just need to boot myself up the arse and say, right, I’ll have 5 totally new draft poems by date x; I’ll resend x, y and z old poems to a journal I’ve not submitted to before, etc.

This was all a bit pointless really wasn’t it?

Devils and Angels

Instead of boring you senseless with a generic ‘2011: wow’ comment, or an inane list of literary resolutions, I plan to stick to form and ramble inconsistently about my current feelings towards reading and writing books.

I’ve just finished a second spell doing Christmas temp work for a large, nationwide bookshop. I previously did similar work in late 2009 in the Chester branch, so the following feelings are certainly not isolated to the past 8 weeks. Forgive me in advance for the bloated egotism of the following, but this needs to be said (I’m sure anyone seriously interested in creating art will tell you something similar): for the artist, there will always exist a very bizarre discord between the creation of their new works and the consumption of them by the general public. This will invariably be compounded when any amount of finance enters the picture.

As writers, we need to make a living. Indeed, any opportunity to make some cash should be seized upon. In an ideal world, yes, we would expound our verse from a plinth in the middle of Northumberland Street and simply be fulfilled by the odd affirmative comment and round of applause. We know that such a world does not exist.

The argument for bookshops should be multifarious and very clear: without such places – and for the sake of argument I count everything from Amazon’s gargantuan warehouses to the second-hand corner shops in the Lake District – the important work being done by writers would not reach nearly so wide an audience. Working twice for a large, national bookselling chain, I can confirm that this base aim is being fulfilled. As someone straddling the fence between consumer and creator, however (for namesakes, let’s keep it simple and call me the ‘cashier’), I can also confirm that it is a supremely odd sensation to sell thousands and thousands of pounds worth of books by hundreds of authors to many hundreds of nameless consumers in any given six-hour period.

Don’t get me wrong, it fills me with glee that these people still deem it important to buy books; as a writer I’d be very worried if it had been quiet. My qualms are more personal and ultimately, I suspect, part of a universal ambivalence faced by any aspiring artist: namely, how much is my work worth?

In May, I will have the first opportunity in my life to sell my words. I certainly won’t make much money. It would be easy to say that I don’t give a stuff about how much the pamphlet makes, and in a sense that’s true, but I’ve already signed up for paying gigs and have already found out how much each copy will sell for. Implicitly, I’ve signed up to an agreement that my creative works on printed paper will exchange hands for money. Should I just embrace this? Get more gigs and flog the lot? The devil on my shoulder is saying 'fucking go for it, my son: you’re in thousands of pounds of debt for the courses that got you here, you give it your all; reap the rewards!' But on the other shoulder, some little angel says, 'only sell them if people want to buy them; don’t worry about the copies you sell or the money you make, as long as your words reach people, you’ve succeeded.'

My thoughts on this, as well as actual details of aforementioned publication, will continue shortly.

Radio 4 Poetry Workshop

BBC Radio 4's Poetry Workshop just aired on the old wireless. Recorded in Newcastle City Library late last year, the workshop show on the theme of 'cities', which is led by Ruth Padel, includes me commenting on poems by Sean O' Brien, Wendy Heath, Danny Hardisty and Sophie F Baker. Have a listen, it's a great idea for a radio show and the poems are all fantastic!

Because this (mostly) sums up my feelings

So, Alice Oswald and John Kinsella have withdrawn from the T.S. Eliot prize. Oswald's statement the other day expressed her unease over the prize's new, financial sponsor: '[...] I think that poetry should be questioning not endorsing such institutions [...]' Like her or love her, at least she's chosen a position and stuck to it. I don't really want to go into the politics of the Eliot prize, though. I've been thinking about Oswald's statement, and I think it deserves further deliberation.

In his blog, the writer Ian Marchant talks about the end of economic growth and what it means for his mid-Waleian town, Presteigne. Marchant, whose book The Longest Crawl is one I bang on about to just about everyone (seriously, it's fantastic), is certainly not an economist, and neither am I, but what he says about moving towards a society in which we don't put financial gain as the ultimate virtue in life seems to me to be on the button, making him, in a way, a co-conspirator of Oswald. Marchant's summary, which can be found linked above, is probably the best I've read of how we ought to progress from 2012, but my fear is that most people will write him off as being a luddite.

Thinking about Marchant's views in conjunction with Oswald's withdrawl, I begin to think how I feel. Lately, I've been trying to write some political poetry, after being encouraged by Clare Pollard to write about a political issue; to act on Shelley's maxim and become 'an unaknowledged legislator of the world.' That 'unaknowledged' does sit uncomfortably for me, but the rest of the sentiment is perfect. How, then, do we legislate the world when the world seems to want different things to ourselves?

I'm certainly not a Tory, but it winds me up no end hearing endless, futile rants between and by Cameron and Milliband and their supporters. All the bullshit that festers in the news about getting the economy kickstarted and saving the Euro and all the rest of it - that means fuck all if the sole aim is to get back to 1999, to the same situation which started all this mess.

Personally, I'm with Shelley, Oswald and Marchant: I want my poetry to legislate the world and in doing so challenge the status quo, but I don't want to ram those thoughts into its face. I'd prefer for you to breathe them in; sweat them out; feel the residue of their salts on your glistening skin.

On being involved in a vibrant poetry community.

Some brief updates for anyone who’s interested (the egotistical part of me hopes that despite having no followers, I’m not the only one who will read this). For a start, Trashed Organ last Thursday was excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed all of the other performers and discovered the beautiful tuneage of Matt Stalker and Fables. The crowd, too, was exceptionally good given the Metro strikes. All round, a fantastic night and one in which I largely stuck to my ambition to read mostly new material.

Some of that new material came in the form of sections of the sequence of poems I’m writing for the Seachange initiative in South Shields. This project’s first phase began in the summer and will culminate in spring and early summer next year with a rolling series of interdisciplinary billboards containing some of my poetry at the seafront in Shields. Unfortunately, I can’t reveal much more at this stage, but suffice to say I am excited.

Other exciting projects are shaping up, too: tonight I’m going to Newcastle City Library to record for BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Workshop programme. The show won’t go out until January, so watch this space, but it should be a totally enriching (and somewhat terrifying) experience to critique poems for a radio broadcast. The group who I’m doing that with are also the same group taking part in New Writing North’s new poets’ development programme – a series of weekend workshops led by Clare Pollard. We had the third session on Saturday and despite feeling fairly under the weather, I still managed to thoroughly enjoy it. Not only is Clare a brilliant workshop leader and editor, the group itself is warm, intimate and supportive, without being too cosy, so the sessions sit well between friendly banter and useful critiques. It’s great being back in such an environment, talking about writing and generating loads of new ideas. For my part, I hope that we can continue working together; continue building on this 'scene' and continue to make Newcastle and the North East a place in which to write, read and share brilliant literature.

Alliterati Publication

Just a quick one: my poem, 'Erase' features hot-off-the(virtual)-press in the stunning new issue of Alliterati, the creative writing and arts magazine published by students at Newcastle University. The direct link to issue 5 online is here. Congratulations and thanks to the A-team; the magazine is superbly produced and a great read!