Posts Tagged ‘resources for young writers’

In 2009, I…

Monday, December 28th, 2009



I did a big post of this ilk last year — basically a TiLT on the grand scale, saying “thanks” for all the cool stuff that happened in my life in 2008. It got a great response from all of you, and some of you even followed suit and made your own lists, which I loved reading. So without further ado, here’s my love-letter to 2009. In 2009, I…

* Started up my own small press, Read This Press, and have so far produced four chapbooks: Skin Deep: An Anthology of Poems on Tattoos and Tattooing; You Old Soak: Poems by Chris Lindores; Sharks Don’t Sleep: Poems by Eric Hamilton; and Masters: an anthology of poems by the University of Edinburgh Creative Writing MSc Poetry Class of 2009.

* Was nominated for the Scottish Variety Young Scottish Writer Of The Year Award.

* Kept Read This Magazine going throughout its second year — now plotting a total overhaul to (hopefully) turn it into a far superior publication!

* Started making recycled and upcycled jewellery out of a variety of bits and pieces (but mostly typewriter keys) in order to financially support Read This Press somewhat. I have now found that I love doing this, and set up shop.

* Helped my friend Stefa to set up the this collection project — a collaborative project designed to bring together poets and filmmakers. It’s still in the works so watch this space!

* Celebrated my 23rd birthday by moving flats (yes, I am insane) — I relocated from Edinburgh’s very central Grassmarket to Stockbridge, a little community on the outskirts of the New Town. It feels like living inside a Shirley Hughes book, I love it!

* Went to StAnza Festival for the first time, to see the tall lighthouse poets, Kevin Cadwallender, Alan Gillis, and attend a talk on young Scottish poets. All good stuff!

* Went on my first writerly retreat on the shores of Loch Tay with my MSc classmates.

* Read at five nights of the Utter! PBH Free Fringe Poetry Festival and two nights of the Underword PBH Free Fringe Poetry Festival, as part of the 2009 Edinburgh International Festival.

* Read at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2009

* Also read at: The Bowery Book Club, VoxBox, The Golden Hour, The Golden Hour Book 2 official launch, and a bunch of other places.

* Took up the post of Residency and Education Director at the London Poetry Festival and helped to organise readers and visitors for the 2009 festival.

* Celebrated One Night Stanzas’ first birthday.

* Set up a second shop to get rid of some of my huge vintage clothing collection: Edinburgh Vintage

* Continued my work as a Lecturer in Literature and Communications at Telford College, and did some freelance English and Creative Writing tutoring in my spare time.

* Graduated from my MSc in Creative Writing with distinction, and celebrated by going for high tea at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh.

* Started my PhD in Creative Writing and Contemporary Scottish Poetry — if anyone has any info on William Burrough’s stay in Haddington or the Edinburgh Beat scene, let me know!

* Took Read This Press to the StAnza Poetry Market, the Scottish Poetry Library By Leaves We Live fair and the National Library of Scotland Christmas Poetry Pamphlet Fair.

* Started working on a super-top-secret but absolutely huge poetry project… I can’t wait to share it with you!

Magazine publications in 2009: Tontine, Issue 15 // Moloch, Issue 3 // Veto Magazine // Thirteen Myna Birds // The Glasgow Review // The Clearfield Review // Form.Reborn // Stop Buying Stuff // The Cadaverine // a handful of stones // The Chimaera // Tattoosday // Oxypoet // Trespass // Anything Anymore Anywhere // Umbrella

Other publications in 2009:
The Scottish Poetry Library’s 20 Best Scottish Poets of 2008 Anthology // The Scottish Poetry Library’s 20 Best Scottish Poets of 2009 Anthology (forthcoming) // 5Px2: An anthology of poetry in English and Italian // StAnza Festival’s Homecoming Haiku anthology // The Golden Hour Book Vol. 2 // Poetcasting Podcast for Pomeranate Magazine // Edinburgh College Of Art’s “DUO” anthology (collaboration with artist Lizzie Stuart) // Poetry Podcast for the Scottish Poetry Library // Poetry Podcast for Anon Magazine (under “Day 4”) // Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes: Zany Zombie Poetry for the Undead Head // Edinburgh & South East Scotland: A New Edinburgh Travel Guide, ed. Vivien Devlin // The London Poetry Pearl Anthology // The Positivity Blog, // The Secret Society of List Addicts

(Image by Esther Aarts)

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This week’s Featured Poet Daniel Watkins interviewed.

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

Tell us about your poems.
I’m going to make myself really unlikeable straight away by beginning with quoting Ernest Hemingway. He once said “my aim is to write down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way” and that just about sums it up for me too. I’ll confess that sometimes when I read contemporary poetry I haven’t got the faintest idea what the poet’s actually talking about, and that’s influenced me to try and make what I write as accessible as possible, so that even people that don’t like poetry might glance at one of my poems and think “actually, that one’s alright”.

How long have you been writing?
I co-wrote a story about a silly sausage when I was four, if that counts.

Do you have any publications to your name? What’s the next stage for your work?
There’s Read This!, and that’s about all so far. The next stage is yet to reveal itself, but if I happen to ever write a line or come up with an image that makes someone think “yes! That is exactly what that’s like”, then that’d be a big box ticked in the creative checklist of my imagination.
Yes, I just answered a straightforward question with a weird metaphor. You’d never guess I wrote poems, would you…

What do you think is your biggest poetic achievement to date?
Through Read This! I had a poem featured in a newspaper in Edinburgh. Other than that, it’s probably the feeling you get when you read something in a workshop and everybody else there agrees about liking a particular bit of it – it’s always nice to hear that you got at least one part as right as it could be.

What’s the best thing about writing poetry? And the worst?
The best thing is that it sorts out my head – whether I’m writing about a situation or a thought or a feeling, once it’s down on the paper (or the screen) then … I don’t know, I just feel like it’s been sorted, and it doesn’t need to confuse, frustrate or concern me anymore. Worst thing is probably when I have a brilliant idea that I just can’t turn into anything half-decent. I know that it should be this amazing, wonderful thing, but what I have in my head just won’t translate itself into real words. Argh.

Got any suggestions for young, upcoming poets?
I’m a young, upcoming poet myself, but I’d probably just reiterate my first answer and say write as accessibly as you can – if what you’ve written can resonate with someone who doesn’t usually read poetry, while retaining appeal (even if it’s just an image or two, or an interesting structure) to someone who does, then you might be on to something…

My other tip is something I picked up from Sean O’Brien. It is, essentially, this – when you have written a poem and typed it up and printed it off, no matter whether you think it still needs a bit of work or think it’s all done, do this – leave it for a few weeks, then come back to it and write it out again by hand. Little things that you would never otherwise have noticed come leaping to your attention. Scribble the changes then write it out by hand again. Make any further changes that have become apparent, then write/type it up properly again. You’ll have a much more finished-feeling poem.
I was sceptical of this approach myself, to be honest, but I tried it out recently and it bloody well works! I am now using it for every poem. Sometimes it’s just an odd word or comma that’ll be changed, but sometimes that’s all a poem needs. Sometimes huge changes occur, and again it’s what the poem needs.
Hey, it worked for Andrew Motion – he does this for all his poems, and he became Laureate…

Who/what influences your poetry?
Well, in terms of what, it’s really just the everyday – stuff you might see, think about for a couple of seconds, then move on from. In that couple of seconds, I’ll probably scribble down a little note before I forget, and then later on I look back at it and see if it can become a poem. I explain it a bit better in my bio. For who, the best (well-known) poet who comes to mind is Matthew Sweeney, but if I’m honest, prose writers actually influence me more – mostly for their use of language. I find Cormac McCarthy’s style of writing incredibly powerful and poetic (if you haven’t read The Road, please, please, read it), and I also find myself influence by the likes of CS Lewis and Terry Pratchett, who both seem to have the knack of explaining something through metaphor using very straightforward, everyday language, but getting the essence of that thing absolutely, perfectly, that’s-exactly-how-that-is spot-on. Which brings us all the way back to the Hemingway quote. If I can try my best to live up to that aim, I’ll hopefully be on the right track.

Last morning

In the distant centre of my mind
I see it approaching
like headlights on the other
side of the road.

Routine, normality,
everything we got away from
for a few days
is rushing back,

waiting to wrap us up
like a worn-out towel.

Want to see your poems featured here? Drop me a line to claire@onenightstanzas.com!

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More from Featured Poet Daniel Watkins

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Daniel’s poem from yesterday was Stalemate — interview and the final poem tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy!

Room

A room in the dark. Like the finger that finds the best track on the album, the eyes that locate the best passage of the book without the mind’s assistance, a room in the dark is work for the arms that commit it to memory in light. Outstretched like the living dead (as comfortable in the black), the hands of a pianist move past chairs and electronics to the pointing digit of the door. Push. Pull. Out of the dark.

Want to see your poems featured here? Drop me a line to claire@onenightstanzas.com!

(Photo by Super G)

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This week’s Featured Poet is Daniel Watkins

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Daniel Watkins has just finished an MA in Creative Writing at Newcastle. He likes writing, but is sometimes unsure about whether writing likes him. He tends to write poems concerning trivial and ordinary things because quite often they turn out to be the most interesting.

Stalemate

A dog sees himself in glass.
He has never seen himself before.
He does not recognise himself.
A first half-second of curiosity
lowers his head and heightens his back,
lowers the other dog’s head
and heightens the other dog’s back,
before commanding instinct
releases frontline barks.
The enemy barks equally,
and he retreats,
the other dog retreats,
skidding backwards over tiles
with a sound like
vehicles driving over stones.
He approaches again.
The other dog does likewise.
A second wave of courageous attack is
returned with still equal veracity.
A leap back this time
– looks almost playful –
but no fear.
He stares defiance at the other dog.
The other dog stares too.
Nose to nose
their eyes match,
an unending
stalemate

Want to see your poems featured here? Drop me a line to claire@onenightstanzas.com!

(Photo by …stephanie…)

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Sharks Don’t Sleep: now available to buy from Read This Press

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Sharks Don’t Sleep is the title of the brand new chapbook from New Jersey-based spoken word poet Eric Hamilton, and it’s published by Read This Press. Described as “a book that crackles with life,” and “a grimy, romantic and fucking funny look at the world,” Sharks Don’t Sleep is a beautiful 32-page chapbook, hand-made with high quality cardstock covers and embellished with a black ribbon bookmark and original artwork.

Once the book goes on general release, it will be priced at $10 (£6), but right now you fabulous ONS readers can get your hands on a copy of Sharks Don’t Sleep for the bargain price of just £4 ($6.50). If you’re in the UK, you can check out the Read This Press Artfire site for listings in GBP, or if you’re in the USA, you can check out our Etsy shop for listings in USD. If you’re from elsewhere, don’t worry — you can still buy from either of these sites. And if you have any queries about the book, the press or purchasing copies, just drop me a line to claire@onenightstanzas.com

You can also buy a copy of Sharks Don’t Sleep at this special reduced rate (just £4 + £2 P&P) by clicking the button below!





Eric Hamilton is a deranged artist who paints everything from canvas to freight trains. He also writes poetry and enjoys sharing his spoken word at slams or cafes everywhere from NYC out to LA. He was born and raised in Las Vegas, spent a lot of time living in east Los Angeles, and is now unemployed and attending college as a journalism major in New Jersey, where you can find him at art galleries and coffee shops politicking with the poets, art-fags, and random transient folk. He’s a bit of a broken man who receives a lot of undeserved attention from women, smokes cigarettes, and stumbles in and out of short-term relationships looking for love. He spends most of his time waiting for lung cancer and responses from publishers, and has been known to occasionally set fire to a booklet of poems aged with the experience of time.

Remember this is just one of the Read This Press titles — we’ve also published a fantastic anthology of poems on the subject of tattoos and tattooing, Skin Deep, which you can buy here. And the last Read This Press single-poet chapbook was from upcoming Scottish poet Chris LindoresYou Old Soak, also available to buy. Both these titles are also a bargainous £4. Please do support our small press and make a purchase!

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

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This week’s Featured Poet Suzannah Evans interviewed.

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

Suzannah’s bio and first poem are here, a second poem is here. Below, she talks a bit about her creative process and what inspires her…

Tell us about your poems.
I think that the best poems make you feel something as soon as you hear them, whether it’s joy, sadness, fear or nausea. They bypass thought and go straight to your emotions, like a good piece of music, and the understanding and thinking follows later. This is what I try to achieve in my writing.
Someone said that a scientist tries to convey something nobody knows in a way that everybody can understand, and that a poet does the opposite. I believe that poetry makes the everyday more mysterious and beautiful, but I think everybody should be able to understand it and have access to it.
I have always written more comfortably in free verse. I use formal structure as a writing exercise but always end up cutting most of it and only using the lines I like. I try to say as much as possible in the smallest amount of words.

How long have you been writing?
I can always remember writing; when I was little I used to make little books out of scrap paper and make my mum sew them in the middle, and make up stories about animals in the style of Farthing Wood, Dick King-Smith etc. I started to take poetry seriously in my last year of school, when I was about seventeen or eighteen.

Do you have any publications to your name? What’s the next stage for your work?
I have had some work published online at www.thecadaverine.com and in a couple of independent magazines. I am making 2009 the year of many submissions, so hopefully a lot more will follow. I am also determined to arrange my work into a collection by the end of the year.

What do you think is your biggest poetic achievement to date?
I find reading my poetry in public very nerve-wracking so my greatest achievement to date is finding the courage to do so! I read at an event at Ikley literature festival in September 2008 and I am proud to say I survived.

What’s the best thing about writing poetry? And the worst?
The best thing is the finished poem, when you know that you can finally leave a piece of work alone. I love feedback, as long as it is constructive. It’s also brilliant when someone discovers a meaning in a poem that I had never intended. It makes me look at my own work in a different way and makes it feel new.
The worst thing is that infuriating time when you know something is wrong with a piece of work but you can’t quite work out what. It usually means you have to cut the bit you like the best. And of course, rejection letters are rubbish.

Got any suggestions for young, upcoming poets?
GET OTHER PEOPLE TO READ YOUR POEMS! Not your mum, because she will love it even if it’s illegible. Someone who you trust enough to be enthusiastic and critical in the right amounts. Writer’s circles or workshops are a good idea if you have access to them.
Also READ OTHER PEOPLE’S POEMS. This blog is an excellent place to start, and there is so much available online, in the library and in second hand bookshops that you really have no excuse. I think you can tell a mile off when a writer doesn’t read.
Reading your work out loud to yourself will always show you any lines that don’t make sense or fit.
Make time to write and do as much of it as possible, not necessarily a routine, but make sure you spend some quality time with your notebook at least a couple of times a week. For a long time I was against having any schedule for writing; I still don’t like the idea of deciding that ‘I am going to be inspired today’ but I do sit down to write more regularly these days to help me keep focused.

Who/what influences your poetry?
I moved to Leeds in 2007 and have fallen in love with it. A lot of the poetry I write is inspired by urban environments, particularly graffiti, which I find fascinating — it’s the most immediate form of literature that exists, it comes out from walls and trees, finds you and smacks you around the face.
I am inspired by people, all kinds of people — lovely ones, bastard ones, those I know well and total strangers. I don’t have a car, so public transport and walking feature unintentionally in most of my poetry!
I very much admire the following poets, writers and lyricists: Raymond Carver, Angela Carter, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Ted Hughes, Roy Fisher, Kurt Vonnegut, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Kevin Barnes, Tim Kasher, Jesse Lacey, Matt Berninger, John Keats.

Chapeltown

On Buslingthorpe lane
where they’ve dug up the road, at last,
for the gas leak,

among the skulls of dumped fridges
and last summer’s stiff hemlocks

A mare gallops
in the circle her chain allows.

She is far enough now
from the rag-and-bone man’s cart
to dance on rimed grass

with shoes that flash like knives
on kicked-high feet.

By noon she’ll be gone —

cantering the streets
with the peg she worked loose;

its metal chirrup
repeating at her heels.

Want to see YOUR poems featured here? Drop me a line to claire@onenightstanzas.com!

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More from Featured Poet Suzannah Evans

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Hopefully you’ve already seen Kate’s first poem — here’s another, her interview will be up tomorrow. Enjoy!

You think you’re Ian Curtis, but you’re not.

You’ve got problems, you said. You’ll let me down
woefully. And yet I am prepared
to listen to your teeth grind shut all night
like a sad latch to your sleeping jaw.

You’re the cliché that I tried not to expect —
rolling up your skint, thin cigarettes
with dirty-handed glamour; and the bands
without lyrics, that I’m never going to like.

You left me at the bus stop with a kiss
in sunlight, wondering how long I’ll be waiting.
Autumn strolls on, like you, elegant —
Its hands in the pockets of a second-hand suit.

Want to see your poems featured here? Drop me a line to claire@onenightstanzas.com!

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This week’s Featured Poet is Suzannah Evans

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

I am really pleased to announce this this week’s Featured Poet is Leeds’ own Suzannah Evans, whose work I absolutely love. Her poems have recently featured in Pomegranate VII and The Cadaverine, and she has two blogs, an old one here and a newer one here, where you can read some of her poetry and other musings. Here’s her bio and the first of three poems. Enjoy!

Suzannah Evans is a writer who lives and works in Leeds. She is inspired by cities, birds, trees, dreams, sleep, graffiti, friends, strangers and gin. She has a Masters in Twentieth-Century Literature and loves to read especially the work of Raymond Carver, Angela Carter, Donna Tartt, Allen Ginsberg, Ted Hughes and Kurt Vonnegut. She works as a debt counsellor so is rather busy at the moment. She is currently working towards a first collection of poems.

Haircut

I wonder if it’s for me, my benefit,

whether there are short splinters of hair
which dropped, and escaped
beneath the collar of that ice-blue shirt,

that will buzz on my lips
when I press them hard
into the hot soft skin
of your neck.

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“You Old Soak” by Chris Lindores: now available to buy from Read This Press

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

So, you’ve all been putting up with my twittering on about Skin Deep, basically forever… well, here’s Skin Deep‘s sister project (or perhaps I should say dirty old uncle project?). You Old Soak is the very first pamphlet collection of up-and-coming young Scottish poet Chris Lindores, who you may remember, as he was ONS‘ first ever Featured Poet all the way back in September ’08!


I’ll be writing a proper review of the book in a little while, but for now I’ll let you check out some of his work yourselves. I’ll just say this: Chris’ work is dark, subtle, funny, irreverant, touching and really, really smart. You Old Soak is a full forty pages of pure poetic goodness and I highly recommend it!

Every copy has been lovingly handmade by me. The covers are 200gsm cardstock, and every one has been hand-bleached and decorated to make every pamphlet unique. Staple-bound and printed on high-quality pages, you get a whole lot of pamphlet for your money! Copies are priced at £4/$6 plus p&p. Click the button below, or visit the Etsy store to grab your copy.





Remember, every single copy of Read This, Skin Deep or You Old Soak that you buy contributes towards keeping Read This Press going. Support us, we’re a micropress — and we couldn’t do it without you!


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Featured Poet Amy Blakemore Interviewed

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

You’ve seen Amy’s poems… now find out a bit more about her life, work and creative process!

Tell us about your poems.
My poems are about being a hungry animal. I write free verse.

How long have you been writing?
Since I was fifteen. The joke I repeat everywhere (actually true) is that I read some Carol Ann Duffy for my GCSEs and thought it didn’t look at all hard. So basically, I began writing poetry out of spite. Bet you’ve never heard that one before!

Do you have any publications to your name? What’s the next stage for your work?
I’ve been published here and there. I was one of the winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year competition in both 2007 and 2008, so I was published in the winners anthologies and the poetry society website. My work has been in Rising, Pomegranate, Iota, Cadaverine and Young Writer magazine.
I’m being published in an anthology by Bloodaxe next year – that’s pretty next-stagey. I suppose I should really be thinking about a pamphlet or a chapbook or something, but I don’t want to rush myself.

What do you think is your biggest poetic achievement to date?
I was well pleased with being chosen for the Bloodaxe anthology. To be honest, though, it was probably writing something, sitting back, and thinking ‘yes, this is good, this has some worth’ for the first time.

What’s the best thing about writing poetry? And the worst?
Damn. The worst thing is the frustration of thinking that no matter how much exposure you get, and no matter how good your work gets, it will always just be poetry, and for this reason you’re audience will probably always be limited. But I think you need to resign yourself to that, and write on. Writers’ block is up there, as well.
The best thing(s) are the people you meet. Mad, erudite people who you will love who write excellent things and help you write better things. You’re keeping something alive together. Then it’s the fact that you’re doing something that’s important. I’m making it sound like being a power ranger. It’s not, but writing poems is good and essential and should be done. It’s good to be part of that. Erm, so, writing poetry is the best part of writing poetry.

Got any suggestions for young, upcoming poets?
The way you write is going to be different from the way everyone else writes, so don’t feel obliged to take advice from other writers. Not that you shouldn’t listen to it, just don’t feel you ought to be doing things the way she does, or he does. That’s my number one suggestion.
After that – always write things down. You think you’ll remember that awesome line that came to you when you were in the bath but you won’t. So carry a notebook. Read – if you feel like it. Find time to watch stupid TV and fall in love and that. Carpe diem. Don’t be too precious about your poems. They’re not a mineral resource. Let them go out and play.
Most importantly, feel free to discount above advice. But not this advice; read, and submit to, magazines and blogs. Enter contests. Don’t stop.

Who/what influences your poetry?
Pop culture, interesting newspaper headlines, natural disasters, violinists, boys, girls, drunks, New Cross, makeup counters, the river Thames and reading other peoples poetry. Specifically Yehuda Amichai, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, and the vast number of excellent young poets out there.

Death At A Party

I’d never met death before,
only been to two funerals,
(great grandmothers — you deal- – never knew them)
but there he was in that
disordered deck of lethal
somebodies

where the hour-glass and garden
went to bed with japanned spades and aces and the queen
and the priestess dropped acid
with pictures of pikachu on the tabs.

Keeping to himself, in the corner.
Not grim, but without that historical gumless grin
either

and a six-pack of stella later
he was flickering like an admiring eye,
crusted green with photophores

and dancing, dancing, a skull in bug-eye shades with day-glo vertebrae,
flicking like the eye that cautiously admires,
bending hands around my shoulders —

making sure we all knew he was famous.

Be a Featured Poet: send a few poems to claire@onenightstanzas.com… that simple!

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