One Night Stanzas

Anon Magazine
Editors: Colin Fraser, Peggy Hughes
Established: 2003
Based in: Edinburgh
Website: http://www.anonpoetry.co.uk
Submit via: this link

Anon is a very different kind of creative writing magazine. The ultimate experiment in unbiased editing, this publication is all about anonymity, as the name suggests. Writers who wish to submit their work must do so via a top-secret electronic ninja submission form, which means that when the editors receive the poems at the other end, the writer’s identity is totally hidden. Anon pride themselves on judging the submissions they receive on merit alone, but they’re also interested in maintaining a dialogue about the wider concerns that surround editorship in general. Indeed, the magazine has divided opinion. However, although the anonymous approach is not to everyone’s taste, Anon has made quite a name for itself with a new editorial team and a run of successful recent issues that were chock-full of brilliant stuff.

As well as the magazine, the Anon team also produce poetry-related podcasts and are actively involved in a huge variety of literary projects in the wider lit community. The latest issue of Anon is the magazine’s seventh outing, and would be an excellent place to start for anyone wanting to find out more about the magazine. You can buy a copy here. Alternatively, the team are currently running a package deal where you can buy Anon 1 and Anon 6 together — a good way to get a feel for the magazine’s origins but also how it’s changed and developed over the years. Anon is also reliant upon funding and donations, so if you have a few spare pennies and fancy donating them to a very deserving literary cause, head in this direction.

Anon has published some of my favourite upcoming poets including former ONS Featured Poets Christian Ward and Juliet Wilson, former Read This Magazine editor Dave Coates, and in the current issue they’ve also published articles by Alastair Cook of this collection, filmpoem.com and DISSIMILAR, and even little old me. A highly recommended read and a great wee magazine to appear in — send them some submissions!

Know a zine, journal or other publication that deserves some recognition? Let me know in the comments box or by emailing claire@onenightstanzas.com!

(Photo by OdeToJoi)

OK, plug time! I made a bunch of new stuff and it’s up at the Read This Store! Grab it before it’s gone!

This is a joke, right?

What ONS featured poets, friends, and readers have been up to recently: HUGE congrats to my good friend Ryan Van Winkle for his inclusion on the Cranshaw Prize shortlist. Fingers crossed for you, Ryan! // Inspiration machine Amanda Oaks is featured at My Favorite Things // A new haiku from Juliet Wilson // A new poem from Ainslee Meredith // At a handful of stones: Gareth Trew, Tom Rendell, Howie Good (he’s also at Bolts of Silk!) // I loved this from Stephen Nelson… and this even more // Matt Haigh shares his Best Poetry Books of the Decade // & non-poetry-related, but Morgaine (Boy’s mum!) has started an Etsy store!

If you haven’t yet seen these pictures from Haiti, then you should. Then you should donate. I mean it.

Thanks to @ricgalbraith for showing me this:

Wizard Smoke from Salazar on Vimeo.

What happened when a 14 year old with a tape recorder broke into John Lennon’s dressing room in 1969?

& finally… can I have one of these, please?

Have a great weekend! x

(Photo by JKönig)

Why typewriters beat computers.

Etsy loves typewriters.

(Image by Sammy Brennan)

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Shag by Sue Vickerman (Arrowhead Press, Darlington, 2003).
I’m revisiting a lot of previously-documented discoveries with this list, and Sue Vickerman is another one! She’s a former winner of the Biscuit Poetry Prize and a novelist and short fiction writer as well as a poet — Shag is her first pamphlet collection and it’s full of absolute gems. Vickerman’s poems are straight-talking and confident, acutely observed — but they also posess an intrinsic beauty and warmth. Her wording is never flowery, complex or showy — every single word here is well-placed and necessary. But the poems are never sparse, either — there’s some deft wordsmithery at work here that gives the poems a simple beauty and originality: “Aberdeen was gentle / as an egg-box, pencil-shaded, hesitant outlines / smudged by weather” (Low Pressure). Every poem in this slim collection takes you to a new place — from birdspotting on bleak northern beaches to bedrooms in the Shanghai Hilton to rainy warehouse yards in Toxteth — and every poem is a new vignette or story to immerse yourself in. This is only a pamphlet, but if my first collection was as impressive as this, I’d be more than happy.

The Unswept Room by Sharon Olds (Jonathan Cape, London, 2003).
Sharon Olds is one of those poets who needs no introduction — I’ve also discovered that she’s in that rather exclusive club with poets like Ginsberg and Bukowski. Marmite poets, in that you either love or hate them — I’ve yet to meet anyone who says “yeah, Sharon Olds is OK,” but I meet plenty of people who vehemently detest her or obsessively love her. I’m obviously in the latter category — I love the bravery and audacity of her poems. Some people can’t stand Olds’ apparent need to lay her past and personal life bare (she has freely admitted that her work is pretty much 100% autobiographical), or the way she returns again and again to the same anecdote or memory in many different poems. I, however, like this decision to use poetry as a way of understanding the past, of exorcising demons… and I have been particularly fascinated by her changing perception of a significant event as the years (and books) pass. The treatment of a memory in her 1980 debut Satan Says is often vastly changed when she returns to re-examine it in a later collection. I have enjoyed the journey Olds has taken me on in her work, and The Unswept Room is my favourite of all the stops along the way. Favourite poems include Pansy Glossary, in which the pansy becomes a metaphor for womanhood in its many shifting forms; Bible Study: 71 B.C.E, which I like because it sees Olds doing something she doesn’t often — putting herself into the shoes of someone else; and Still Life In A Landscape, when Olds recalls the day her family witnessed a fatal car accident. Those of you who already know Olds’ work will have made up your minds about her already, but if you haven’t, and you’re looking for a good place to start… The Unswept Room is it.

Poems for the Retired Nihilist, edited by Graham Bendel (Fortune Teller Press, London, 2005).
I love this little anthology, mainly because it’s pretty darned weird. Picture the scene: Barbara Cartland alongside Charles Bukowski, Lawrence Ferlinghetti sharing page-space with Sylvia Plath. Not only that — some of the poems here are actually song lyrics, snatches of prose or cut-ups. Some are old favourites while others will doubtless be surprising new discoveries. Every turn of the page reveals a radically different piece to the one you just read, which makes the book feel pretty damn bonkers. However, it is also brilliant. Printed in a limited run, it’s a low-fi, big-hearted anthology unlike any other, and regardless of your poetic tastes (from Betjeman to Richard Hell — I’m serious) you’ll find something to love in here. The book thumbs its nose at both ‘Favourite Classic Poems’ -type anthologies, and the more contemporary ‘poetry’s current edgy young things’ collections that come out every so often. What this book essentially says is: poetry is everywhere, poetry probably isn’t anything you think it is, poetry is awesome. If you can find a copy (I suspect it may now be near out-of-print), snap it up.

More soon! In the meantime… tell me what your favourites were, and why!

(Photo by Sfgirlbybay)

Ruin and Beauty: New and Selected Poems by Patricia Young (Anansi Press, Toronto, 2000).
This isn’t the first time I’ve written about Patricia Young on this blog — I’ve been a huge fan of her work since I found Ruin and Beauty in a bookstore in Victoria, Canada in 2007. It’s a wide and varied selection of poems from her seven full collections, and utterly justifies Young’s status as one of Canada’s most important contemporary poets. There are so many fabulous poems inside, but my particular favourites are Looking For A Man, a poem about an alcoholic father’s strange power over his two young daughters; Weird Genes, about a family of sleepwalkers; When The Body Speaks To The Heart It Says, a poem I was even moved to write a response to; and The Fire, in which Young describes her child’s discovery of fire and builds this into a metaphor for coming of age. As you can probably tell even from these short descriptions, Young’s poetry is original, imaginative and shows impressive range. One of my favourite poetry collections not only of the past decade, but of all time.

Nine Horses by Billy Collins (Random House, London, 2002).
Again, this isn’t the first time I’ve written about Billy Collins on One Night Stanzas (in fact, others have written about him here, too!) — he’s a big favourite of mine, for his writing but also for his work in the wider poetry community. He is a great believer in the idea that there’s a poem out there for everyone, and has done fantastic work in promoting poetry to children and young people. To date, he has published more than ten collections, but of those from the last decade, Nine Horses is definitely my favourite. It feels a little darker than his previous works, and John Updike described the poems inside as “startling, more serious than they seem.” I’d particularly recommend Royal Aristocrat, (which I’m possibly only fond of because it’s about a typewriter); the fabulously sarcastic Litany; and No Time, the shortest poem in the collection in which Collins fleetingly reanimates his dead parents as he drives past the cemetery in which they’re buried. I’m aware that Billy Collins is not everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m tempted to say that the legions of stuffy critics lining up to say he’s “sentimental” or just writes prose with line breaks in it are seriously missing the point. One of my favourite things about Collins is his refusal to take poetry seriously — Poetry-With-A-Capital-P is thoroughly ridiculed (see Litany) and I’m sure Collins would be the first to hold up his hands and say that he’s not trying to do anything radical, different or even particularly clever. What he’s repeatedly pointed out, however, is that there needs to be some poetry out there that anyone can appreciate on some level — rather than writing for university educated reviewers, he’s writing for the average man or woman on the street. The critics can pontificate about the rights and wrongs of that all they like, but it’s working — Collins is one of the most widely read poets alive today. Read Nine Horses, and you may well see why.

Looking Through Letterboxes by Caroline Bird (Carcanet, Manchester, 2002).
Caroline Bird’s debut collection Looking Through Letterboxes was published in 2002, when she was just fifteen years old, and studying her GCSEs in high school. The book was huge, receiving wide critical acclaim, but Bird had already found success — by the age of fourteen, she’d aready won the Simon Elvin Young Poet of the Year Award twice. It’s all utterly deserved: Bird’s poetry is refreshingly original and amazingly assured, achieving a tone that many far more experienced poets strive for in vain. The poems are complex but accessible, weird but poignant, youthful and devil-may-care but also highly relevant. I absolutely love Bird’s ideas for poems — the complaints of an old red callbox in the poem Pissed Off Phone Box — but also the deft execution of these ideas: “Hoodlums // scrawling their latest love / in the yellow pages of my favourite book.” Other favourites from the collection include The Radiator In Your Room (”I’m thinking of all your knife-in-the-dark remarks, / the way you fold yourself into bed like a fig-roll / and blow out the lights with the breath of a switch”); Seven Ways Of Looking At A Fire (”black / wigwam / with a yellow hat / and a red umbrella, / opening and closing, / dancing”); and I Know This Because You Told Me (”If I take money from your wallet it is called crime; // if you take money from my piggy-bank it is called borrowing”). In short, I absolutely love this book — it feels wicked and audacious. Buy it!

More to come… but what are your favourite poetry books of the decade, and why? Get thee to the comments box or write a list of your own — just be sure to link me!

(Photo by Pearled)

Don’t forget to visit The Read This Store, and its sister store, Edinburgh Vintage!

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Fridge poetry. Know one of those I-don’t-get-poetry-I’ll-never-like-poetry-don’t-talk-about-poetry-in-front-of-me people? Fridge poetry is the perfect gift. I’m serious: I have an old cast-iron fireplace in my living room, which I have covered with fridge poetry tiles, and I know plenty of poems-are-the-work-of-satan type people who’ll happily park themselves in front of it and spend hours making strange and silly sentences… all the while blissfully unaware of what it is they’re doing. You can get all sorts of fridge poetry tiles, too — Shakespearean, Scots, computer geek jargon — so there’s bound to be an option that fits your poemophobe’s personality. Magnetic Poetry is a good place to start.

The Simple Diary. Expect more Simple Diary rantings from me in due course… I have just finished filling my first one of these and my goodness, it is weird and brilliant. Basically, rather than being your usual tyrannical page-a-day, the Simple Diary is blissfully date-less… you just fill in a page (or two, or three) whever you feel like it. And it’s not ‘what I did today’ type stuff — you’re asked bizarre and puzzling questions, given mini IQ tests, asked to draw tiny sketches and all sorts of other wonderful stuff. Basically, the Simple Diary is not about recording the events that your concious mind experienced through the day, but the things your subconcious mind was doing in the background. Perfect for encouraging the creativity of someone who thinks creativity isn’t their thing. Find out more at simplediary.com or buy copies here.

GIFTS FOR THE POETRY NEWBIE…

A fabulous contemporary poetry anthology. So your poetry ninja-ing has paid off and you’ve converted a friend to the wonders of poetry… go you! But now your poor friend is probably thinking ‘where the heck do I start?’, faced with so much previously undiscovered poetry. The answer? A really good anthology of contemporary poetry — get them up to date with recent developments, and chances are they’ll work their way back through the rest on their own. A poetry anthology is a great thing for someone who’s new to the genre — it shows in a very obvious way that hey, if you don’t like one poet’s stuff, just read the next one… no two poets are the same. Personally, I’d recommend Being Alive in terms of bang for your buck — over 400 pages for only £8! — also Women’s Work because it’s chock-full of gems, and of course the fabulous Poetry 180 and 180 More.

A good notebook. If they’re a newb, chances are they haven’t yet discovered this vital fact: forget dogs, the notebook is man’s best friend. Whether they write themselves or not, if they’re reading great literature, they should have a pen and paper to hand at all times to scribble down ideas and responses, doodles and daydreams. Choosing a notebook, though, is a fine art — and I may elaborate on this in a future post — you don’t want something so fancy and expensive that it feels like a crime to write in it (I have so many of these), but you also don’t want a tatty 20p exercise book. For a good balance, I like Moleskines — favoured by many a great writer (and unfortunately, many an irritating hipster), they’re sleek, durable and lovely.

GIFTS FOR THE AMATEUR POET…

A subscription to a good poetry magazine. Personally, I like Poetry Review. Yes, they only publish you if your collection is with Faber&Faber and you studied at Oxford (NB obtuse commenters: that’s exaggeration, but it does feel that way reading the thing), but because of that the poems are really, really, really good. It’s also bargainously cheap for what you get. I also like Mslexia, though it is girls-only. And if you want to support a smaller outfit, check out Anon. A subscription is a really good way for your poet friend to keep up to date with what’s going on in contemporary poetry (or in the case of Poetry Review, its highest eschelons), and a good way for them to get inspired and move towards sending their work out for publication!

A “to read” journal. I had one of these a while ago and found it incredibly useful… I was constantly wandering round bookstores furiously scribbling down names, titles and publishers. It’s incredibly easy to think “I’d really like to check out X poet”, and then find that their name has totally slipped your mind, never to return. A book like this is a great way to organise your reading and make sure you get the chance to sample all those spotted-in-a-bookstore-once or recommended-by-a-friend collections and anthologies. I particularly like this ‘books to check out’ journal from the Literary Gift Co.

GIFTS FOR YOUR FELLOW POETRY NINJA…

Materials for poetic assimilation. Stuff that your fellow ninja can make use of to spread the poetic word, basically. Personally, I am a huge lover of stickers, and there are some truly fabulous (and erm, truly hideous) ones on Zazzle. My favourites? Tattoo Poetry // Mock the poet // Two Roads // Being a good poet // I’d Dylan Thomas… // Rimbaud. & of course, there’s the One Night Stanzas Zazzle store, too…

Got any poetic gift suggestions of your own? You know where the comments box is!

(Photo by the happy honeybee)

THE UNDERWOOD: long antique typewriter key silvertone pendant

An extra-long silvertone snake-and-link chain pendant adorned with six genuine antique typewriter keys — five black keys from a Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter, and one white mock-ivory key from an Underwood portable. Buy it here!

THE REMINGTON: silvertone typewriter key 12-charm bracelet

An elegant 7.5 inch (at full length, unfastened) high-shine, double-loop silvertone chain adorned with 12 charms. Buy it here!

THE ROYAL: genuine antique typewriter key bracelet

11 genuine antique keys from a Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter set on a silvertone bracelet. The bracelet measures 7.5in at full length (unfastened). Buy it here!

THE OLYMPIA: typewriter keyring, phone charm, bag candy

A cute collection of charms strung on a silvertone chain, and topped with a a standard twist keyring. Buy it here!

You can also add a Christmas gift box to any jewellery order… and if you have a query about anything relating to the store or the items in it, drop me a line to claire@onenightstanzas.com — HAPPY CHRISTMAS SHOPPING!

Don’t forget The One Night Stanzas Store, my Etsy store, and their little sister, Edinburgh Vintage!

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One of the most obvious Twitter resources to start with is #poetry — a huge and popular tag, and a mixed bag of home-grown poems, links to poems elsewhere, writing prompts, links to blogs, sites and other resources, and of course numerous examples of the super-short, ever-popular Twitter-poem. #poem and #poets are similar tags and can often yield gold.

Smaller tags are updated less frequently but can provide little ‘communities’ to get involved in… and they’re generally more full of interesting stuff, too. A favourite of mine is #wrejection, where writers share their amusing and unfortunate rejection tales. Another great tag is #BehindThePoetry where Twitfolk create imaginary dramas for their favourite poets, dead and alive. I also like #literature — a larger tag but most of the links you find there lead to interesting places…

A new Twitter craze is listing, something I haven’t quite got the hang of yet, I don’t think — though I have created a list of Literature and Poetry tweets. Lists are collections of Twitfolk organised by ‘theme’, which update automatically whenever those Twitfolk write a new tweet. There are a lot of literary lists out there; some useful ones are @swimmerpoet’s libraries list and @LitFest’s publishers list.

As for literary people to follow on Twitter… here are some recommendations!

Publishers & booksellers: @picadorbooks // @ForPub // @blackwellbooks // @thebookseller // @FaberBooks // @analoguebooks // @inpressbooks // @Waterstones // @canongatebooks // @bookdepository

Poetry resources: @thiscollection // @ByLeavesWeLive // PoetryFound // @ThePoetryTrust // @KerouacDotCom // @poetryschool // @PoetryDayUK // @hellopoetry // @PoetrySociety

Poetry magazines: @TheParisReview // @AmbitMagazine // @Cadaverine // @anonpoetry // @handfulofstones

Poets: @konamacphee // @weaponizer // @samuelcoleridge // @jswinch // @VisuellePoesie // @MargaretAtwood // @ajodasso // @allen_ginsberg // @bcollinspoetry // @alastaircook

Do you Tweet? Follow me!

(Photo by Wonderlander)

The literature of the Beat Generation is an acquired taste. Personally, I love it — you may do too. You may loathe it, you may not really know much about it, or it may just be one of those things that’s “not your cup of tea.” Whichever box you just ticked, I’d like to ask you to put your personal opinion aside for a second and read this short post. You may well be able to help a very good cause.

A few days ago I received this email from the staff at the San Francisco Beat Museum:

Folks – three years ago The Beat Museum opened its doors at the beginning of probably the worst economic time in most of our lives. We’ve been able to hang on by our fingernails – barely. And I’ll admit to you it has not been easy. In fact, truth be told, there have been a few occasions when money was so tight I came very close to simply shutting the doors and walking away.

So, I’m turning to you – the core group of people who have helped make The Beat Museum possible from the very beginning. I’m asking for your immediate financial assistance to help us get through the next few months until the tourists start to return to San Francisco in the Spring.

So, you may be thinking “well, that’s a shame but I don’t really care about Beat stuff.” Fair enough… but you probably know someone who does, right? If you don’t know anyone else, hey, you know me! And I’m telling you as a Beat scholar and enthusiast: the Beat Museum is a fabulous resource. It’s not like lots of other literary museums — this isn’t some personality-free space full of manuscripts in glass cases. The Beat Museum has a fantastic store where you can buy everything from small press chapbooks to t shirts and bumper stickers. They’ve rebuilt Allen Ginsberg’s San Francisco apartment in one area and you’re free to walk in and make yourself at home there. They also have all kinds of Beat-related memorabilia, some of it very rare… and the museum even own a Beat Bus which travels around the States taking the spirit of the Beats with it.

(Boy at the Beat Museum when we visited in 2007.)

Basically, the Beat Museum is a very special place. It’s run by passionate people who really care about the literature they’re helping to preserve. Whether you’re into the Beat scene or not, it’s an important literary site like Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage or the Bronte Parsonage. It needs to be saved! And here’s how you can help save it…

1). DO YOUR CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY SHOPPING AT KEROUAC.COM
Even if you’re scaling back for Christmas, you’re still probably going to be buying some gifts for friends and family – do it at Kerouac.com. I know you may be tempted to buy from Amazon or some other discounter to save some money, but I’d ask you to remember that Amazon does not have a Beat Museum for you to come visit the next time you’re in San Francisco.
And if you’re a student, ask your parents to check out our new Stocking Stuffers on the front page of Kerouac.com. Parents LOVE to buy books and educational stuff for their kids – it makes them feel they’re raising you right!

2). MAKE A TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION TO OUR NON-PROFIT PUBLIC CHARITY
You may or may not be aware that we have our own non-profit organization that supports The Beat Museum called The Foundation for Creative Expression (FFCE.org). The sole mission of this non-profit is to support various projects and programs of The Beat Museum. Every time we have an event, the non-profit sponsors it financially and every time we build a new exhibit the FFCE accepts donations and transfers it to The Beat Museum.

THREE WAYS TO DONATE TO THE FFCE.org

A). WRITE A CHECK to the FFCE and mail to:
The Foundation for Creative Expression
540 Broadway
San Francisco, CA 94133

B). CALL WITH A CREDIT CARD to The Beat Museum at 415-399-9626 or 1-800-KER-OUAC to make a credit card donation. Please call between the hours of 10 AM and 7 PM Pacific Time and have you’re credit card handy.

C). DONATE VIA PAYPAL You can make a donation to FFCE or learn more at http://ffce.org/donate.html.

3). PASS THE WORD
Even if YOU can’t do any of the above, please spread the word by asking your family and friends to either make a donation to the FFCE or make a purchase from Kerouac.com. It’s crunch time, folks, and the bottom line is The Beat Museum can only continue to spread the Spirit of The Beats if we’re in a financial position to do so. We’re all making some tough choices these days, but we ARE still making choices. Please do what you can.

So there you go — no excuses! I know you’re all passionate about poetry and literature, otherwise you wouldn’t be here reading this. So please do at least one of the above to help keep this great resource open. As someone who’s just embarking on a PhD in Beat Literature… you’ll have my eternal gratitude, and the gratitude of Beat enthusiasts the world over. So get on with it already!

Don’t forget The One Night Stanzas Store, my Etsy store, and their little sister, Edinburgh Vintage!

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