One Night Stanzas

Hardie — there’s a very comprehensive bio here — writes a great deal about sickness, death and loss. Morbid perhaps, but these are topics I find fascinating, and often write about myself. They’re also rather tricky topics to “get right,” as I have discovered many a time — but Hardie has a deftness of touch that makes it look easy. When you read her poems about her own illness or the death of someone close to her, you feel like you’re reading a chronicle, an account — but one that demands to be read, one that says “look, this may be mundane, but it’s important that I show you.” It’s refreshing to find someone who writes about mortality in a matter of fact but beautiful way, without feeling the need to make large and grandiose points about life, the universe and everything. Of course, Hardie’s poems can’t help but touch on deeper issues, but essentially she’s saying “here’s what happened, here’s how I felt.” It’s a simple honesty that I also love about poets like Sharon Olds and Liz Lochhead, but Hardie’s work also posesses a modesty and quietness that Olds and Lochhead sometimes lack. With a lot of her poems I found myself nodding in agreement as I read, thinking “yes, that’s exactly what it’s like.”

Then I would want to praise
the ease of low wet things, the song of them, like a child’s low drone,
and praising I’d watch how the water flowing the track
is clear, so I might not see it
but for the cross-hatched place where it runs on a scatter of grit,
the flat, swelled place where it slides itself over a stone.
from She Replies To Carmel’s Letter

She never liked pansies. All those little faces,
looking at you. I always made a point of sowing them.
When I left it late, I bought young plants in trays.
It was against my husband as well.
Not that he minded what flowers I grew,
but she was his mother:
it was my small gesture of defiance,
a staking of territory; mine, not hers.
from Now That She Has Gone Away

You can buy Kerry Hardie’s books here, or from the Gallery Press website.

(Photo by felixspencer2)

1. Get experience: volunteer.
Experience is vital when it comes to teaching and tutoring, not only to prove to your employer that you’re up to the job, but also to put you through your paces before you start. If you’ve never worked with young people or taught anyone before, it might seem very easy — but trust me, it certainly aint! One of my fellow lecturers once said of teaching school-leavers, “it’s scary and exhausting”, and I’d be inclined to agree — sure, it can also be fun, easy and hugely rewarding, but you need to be prepared to take the rough with the smooth.
It feels like a vicious circle, though, right? How do you gain experience in this field if you need experience to get your foot in the door in the first place? The answer is: volunteer. Because organisations who need voluntary staff are generally desperate for motivated and hardworking people, they’re far more willing to cut you some slack if you’ve never done this stuff before — being willing to learn is what matters. Voluntary work also adds serious brownie points to your CV; if you’re willing to sacrifice your time without expecting a pay cheque, that makes you a bit special. So where to volunteer? As I said in Part 1, if you’re looking to teach young people, you can try anything from babysitting to working with the Girl Guides or Scouts — even helping to organise youth fundraisers is useful. The trick is to get to know parents in your local area, because word of mouth is a powerful tool, particularly if you want to freelance at a later date. If you’re more interested in teaching adults, volunteer in a library or local community college, and get involved with public art projects. Get to know people, ask where you can help, work hard. It pays off!

2. Get qualified: know your stuff.
Getting qualified does not necessarily mean signing up to do a teaching certificate or PGDE — though these are tried-and-tested ways of entering the world of education, many teaching graduates are currently hanging in limbo as there are just too many teachers and nowhere near enough jobs. One viable alternative is to invest in a more open-ended qualification — a HNC, HND, degree or the like in a core subject like English, Maths, Science or Modern Languages, which creates career opportunities above and beyond teaching and sets you up for a wider range of options. However, being “qualified” to teach is not just about having a piece of paper that tells people you’re clever — it’s about being prepared and committed, and knowing your stuff. Attending an evening class or going to one-off talks and training courses can be a less high-maintenance way to learn the basics — it can also be easier and more informal than committing to a long-term qualification. If you’re willing, you can start at the bottom and work your way up — working as a classroom assistant to start with, for example. There is no harm in getting hands-on classroom experience, and with current class size figures, it’s clear that teaching assistants are badly needed… I frequently wish I had one on hand!

3. Start small: teach one-to-one.
Deciding to become a one-to-one tutor was one of the best decisions I ever made, I reckon. I had never taught formally before and certainly wasn’t ready to be responsible for a class of 25+ teenagers. However, teaching one-to-one within my subject area gave me heaps of valuable tools. I got experience, a strong knowledge of the curriculum, a whole boatload of confidence and more than a few useful contacts… as well as my first teaching paycheque! One-to-one is a brilliant way to start out because you’re safe within your chosen field, you’re only ever dealing with one student at a time, and often — particularly if you’re an out-of-school, extra-support kind of tutor — you don’t have anywhere near as much responsibility as a regular teacher. Also, working with young people one-to-one in particular teaches you a lot about how those pesky kids tick — it’s easier to get them engaged with the work you’re doing, too. The best thing about one-to-one is it’s incredibly rewarding. When there’s just you and the student, you can give them the time and attention they really need to improve, so generally you see them go from strength to strength which is what teaching is (or, should be) all about.

4. Get hired: make yourself visible.
I talked about this a fair bit in part one, so swing back over there to see my tips on finding a teaching job. It’s not as simple as looking for ads in the paper or online — you need to cast your net wider and be willing to look in some fairly weird and wonderful places. You should also consider joining an agency — I have recently done some agency work for the first time and was really pleased with how smoothly things can operate. Pick your agency carefully though — there are conmen out there! If you’re not sure about a particular agency’s rep (and don’t be fooled, they all give themselves stunning write-ups whether they’re any good or not), ask around. Get onto education message boards online and drop the name, see what people say.

5. Be in control: freelance.
Freelance tutoring is a very attractive option for a lot of people, but it is a big commitment and can be harder than more conventional teaching. Firstly, you might want to teach in your own home — fine, but you may hit some bumps in that particular road. If you’re a student or recent grad, chances are you live in rented accomodation, and a lot of landlords have clauses in their contracts to say you can’t run a business from your property. Also, though it’s not essential, it’s a good idea to risk-assess your property, particularly if you’ll be welcoming under 16s into it. This includes making your home safe and um, tidy — parents/potential students will probably want to check you and your teaching environment out before they decide for sure whether they want hire you. And if you live with other people, they’ll need to be cool with you turning their living room into a classroom, AND they’ll all need to have a police background check before you can invite under 16s into their environment. See? A lot of work!
Alternatively, you could teach students in their own home or in a neutral setting like a coffee shop, which side-steps all the official stuff but could potentially put YOU in danger. Be sure to meet potential new students and/or parents in a public space before you go to their home on your own — and even then, you need to be VERY careful. Tell someone where you’re going — the exact address — for how long and when you expect to be back. Tell them who you’re seeing and how you can be contacted. Yes, it’s a drag that you have to do this, but bad stuff happens sometimes — sad but true.
Remember, if you freelance, you also need to do all the running yourself — no one is going to find your clients for you. See point four!

6. Be safe: get a CRB
A CRB (or Advanced Disclosure in Scotland) is a check done by a regulatory body to ensure that you’re fit to work with young people and don’t pose a potential threat to your students. These checks draw on information from police records to make sure you have no criminal convictions — if you do, your CRB may be refused, or you may be called to an interview for futher checks (NB: if you do have a conviction, it may not mean you can never work in education. Obviously some offences are more relevant than others which is why you should always go along if you’re invited to one of these “we need more info” interviews). It can seem a bit insulting, being subject to all this digging — but we’ve all seen the horrifying cases of child abuse and professional misconduct in the news… sadly, it happens, and we all need to play our part in preventing these events. Also, if your employer is a good one, they should be insisting that you have a background check, and not allowing you to work for them if you don’t. If you’ve never been background checked or your CRB is refused, you should NOT be working with young people, full stop. Even if you have no convictions and your employer’s cool with it — even if you do nothing wrong, you could be in big trouble if you’re found out. If you want to be in teaching for the long term, do the smart thing and get checked!

7. Do it because you love it.
Finally, please note! Teaching is not the kind of job you go into if you just want a paycheque and you don’t really care how you get it — it is NOT like flipping burgers or waitressing or filing and photocopying. Sometimes, it is really, really darned HARD. Also, if you go into teaching, you become responsible for the welfare, support and progress of your students — THAT IS A BIG DEAL. I personally believe that it’s also important for you to love the job — if you hate it, you’ll turn into a jaded person and a bad teacher, and you’ll be doing yourself and your students no favours. Teaching isn’t for everyone, so if you start out OK but begin to dread facing the day, it’s time for a career move!

Anything you’d like to add? Any questions? Think I’m wrong, or I’ve missed something vital! Wander down to the comments box and let me know.

(Photo by Arthur van Dam)

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Tell us about your poems.
For me, the question of style is eminently maddening! I’ve been told that, broadly, from poem to poem, it would be difficult to tell that they were all by me if my name were to be stripped away. That said, I think that I can discern stylistic currents amongst certain of my most frequent subjects. For instance, many of my more confessional pieces tend to deal with memories from my tomboy childhood in rural Pennsylvania or memories of my family in general. The voice in these pieces is (I was once memorably told) a strange combination of lyrical, frank, and unnerving.

I also tend to draw on my academic interests for inspiration; you’ll often find me making allusions to medieval poetry or the matter of handling old, fragile books and manuscripts. Folktales, myths, and music also figure prominently in my more speculative and fantastical pieces. I’m fond of rescuing and recasting lost stories, and you’ll frequently find me taking on ‘non-traditional’ sexuality and gender issues. Lost books and lost voices often go hand in hand. I traffic in archetypes, but with a twist.

How long have you been writing?
Compared do most of my writer-colleagues, I seem to have started quite late. Where you’ll hear many writers say that they’ve been at it ever since they first learned to string letters together into words, and words into sentences, I’ve only been at it since the age of 13 or 14 (I learned to read and write around the age of 3 or 4). For the longest time, I seemed to think that the visual arts were my calling in life; I drew and painted competently. However, when I reached my early teens, I realized that my art wasn’t really improving or progressing. So, I thought, well - what’s left to me? I’ve always had a good voice, and I loved singing, but I needed an outlet through which I could create raw content (I’m no virtuoso pianist or composer). Writing it was. And, in the long run, my love of writing was the reason I dropped out of music school to major in English instead. A career in academia with writing on the side is what I’ve chosen, but if the writing should ever take center stage, I won’t complain!

Do you have any publications to your name? What’s the next stage for your work?
Quite a number, although I should stress that this doesn’t mean I’m famous. I’ve been in quite a few magazines in both the U.S. and the U.K.; a full list of my credits is available online, for the truly bored or curious. My e-chapbook through Gold Wake Press, Dead Zones, is also available on the web, and my first print chapbook, Devil’s Road Down, is currently available from Maverick Duck Press. My first full collection, Lost Books, will be available from Flipped Eye Publishing in April 2010. 2009 has been an incredibly good year. “Snap,” one of the poems from Dead Zones, is up for the Pushcart Prize anthology, and I’ve been nominated for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net awards.

What do you think is your biggest poetic achievement to date?
Although I’m thrilled about Lost Books, which I mentioned above, I’m actually more proud of one of my single-poem publications in a U.S. magazine earlier this year. Mythic Delirium is regarded as one of the best speculative/SF/F publications out there, and a year and a half after submitting, I was told by the editor, Mike Allen, that he’d be accepting my poem, “Journeying,” for the special tenth-anniversary issue (#20, which came out in May). I was thrilled about this for two reasons:
1) I had written “Journeying” in late 2004, as a sort of creative place-holder for the novel I one day intend to write. At the time, I was still an undergraduate at Wellesley, and I’d been accepted by Frank Bidart to take his 300-level poetry course, which at the time I thought was a big deal. Since “Journeying” had been through a few drafts before I ever took it to class, I thought it’d work well in my final-project portfolio. As it turned out, Frank praised every piece in my portfolio except for this one - he called it pseudo-medieval something-or-other, which, at the time, really stung. I was proud of the piece, and, back when I was young[er] and [more] rash, there was nothing like telling me I’ve been a bad judge of my own writing to make me determined to prove that all the work I put in was worth it.
2) Mythic Delirium is a well-respected publication, Mike Allen is an absolutely fantastic editor, and a new poem from Neil Gaiman also appeared in Issue 20. A geeky writer’s dream, really!

What’s the best thing about writing poetry? And the worst?
The best thing about writing poetry is the incredible people you meet. In my experience, poetry draws like minds to like. It can also draw opposing minds together, which is great, too - debate is right and necessary. A colleague recently sent me a bumper sticker that says POETRY SAVES LIVES. In either case, I agree with that statement; it probably saved mine. During the years I was primarily writing to and for myself, I was able to hold off the barrage of uncertainties and maintain a sense of self.
The worst thing about writing poetry is the inevitable down-time, the blank spaces between poems. However, it’s from those spaces that we carve new work, so how can it be all bad?

Got any suggestions for young, upcoming poets?
Be bold. Ask questions. Read insatiably. Know who you are.
(And if you don’t know who you are just yet, you’ll discover it in the writing.)

Who/what influences your poetry?
William Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, and Louise Glück were the first poets to make me really sit up and pay attention to verse, although I wouldn’t say my style has been directly influenced by any one of them in particular. I’ve been told my work stylistically resembles Carol Ann Duffy’s, which I find sort of amusing, because my style was pretty set by the time I discovered her work (only two years ago). Jorie Graham, James Nash, and Mark Doty are also on my list of favorites. Sharon Olds. The Gawain-Poet. Any poet whose work reflects a profound sense of wonder and discovery even in the face of loss.
All of my work, whether fiction or poetry, is ultimately indebted to the stories my grandmother told me. Without the wealth of her words, my creative world would have been a poorer place.

Split Vision

Turn the tables or the corner. Smoke rises
from my upturned hands and stings my eyes

with this beginning, for I cannot learn
from what was. So I will chase them through

the Shadows of the Valley of Death, these lies
resembling love, and then I will find them

though all Hell should rise to meet me
in the trying. Read in these pages the blue

of the evening. I have left it behind me,
and the stars be my diamonds now, distant

cold pulses of flame in an instant
unwinding—

and the tables burned.

Want to see your poems featured here? Drop me a line to [email protected]!

(Photo by Kayleesea)

You can see yesterday’s poem, Nine Things Oracles Do, here. Interview tomorrow — in the meantime, enjoy!

Amnesiac

We set sail from Amsterdam Harbor sometime
in September, or it might have been August—

I can’t remember. These signs, images,
and floaty sea-birds begin to blur

into fearful, restless oblivion.
Sharper still is the sheer dizziness

of steep, winding stairs deep in the heart
of that ageless brick haven: free-standing

wonder mortared with memory and loss
sifted from the whispering canals,

which I skirted with weary steps on stone
that could not take the weight of our dreaming.

Want to see your poems featured here? Drop me a line to [email protected]!

(Photo by Jaap de Wit)

Adrienne J. Odasso is currently completing her Ph.D. in English at the University of York. Her poetry has appeared in a number of publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including Strong Verse, Aesthetica, Sybil’s Garage, Succour, Farrago’s Wainscot, The Liberal, Mythic Delirium, Under the Radar, and Ouroboros Review - with new work forthcoming in Illumen, Not One of Us, and others. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies from Drollerie Press and Hadley Rille Books, and her first print chapbook of poetry was published in September 2009 by Maverick Duck Press. Her first book-length collection, Lost Books, will be published by Flipped Eye Press in early 2010. One of the poems from her e-chapbook from Gold Wake Press, Dead Zones, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Nine Things Oracles Do

1.

Sit on bedside tables. Persephone
watches over me as I sleep,
and the alabaster jar beside her
says nothing.

2.

Hide in drawers. My tarot deck
sleeps beneath cotton knickers
and never bothers to yawn
when daylight enters.

(Lazy git.)

3.

Lurk on hard drives. Patti Smith
and PJ Harvey drag me under,
over and over. Horses
and ether.

4.

Sit in bowls. Corn Mother
is patient between feedings,
but Raven, little trickster,
loudly sings.

5.

Weave carpets, although I do not
know the name of the man in the market
who sold this blue-and-rose beauty
to my mother-in-law.

6.

Tell stories. My bulletin board
can show you what I looked like
at twenty. It also knows several
addresses that I forget.

(It’s always right.)

7.

Oversleep. My flatmate
doesn’t rise until noon,
but you’ll smell her kitchen miracles
very soon.

8.

Give kisses. My husband
never wakes me, and he’s gone
before I know it. But that kiss
will always tell me
what he meant.

9.

Give advice. I am on call
24/7 if you need me,
even digitally,
and all I ask of you
is a cup of tea.

(Discount price.)

Want to see your poems featured here? Drop me a line to [email protected]!

(Image supplied by Steve “PodcastSteve” Lubetkin)

Some of my favourite quotes and quips from the Twitterverse yesterday.

@audreyisawake Has Bono written a Poem for National Poetry Day about Miley Cyrus quitting Twitter? Trending Topics always amuse me.

@sharongracepjs Does anyone in Great Britain want to adopt me for the day so that I can celebrate your National Poetry Day? @stephenfry, maybe?

@Squarlotte Mr P didn’t know its was National Poetry Day and hes an English Teacher! Lol! :P

@matthewbreen Roses Are Red Violets Are Blue National Poetry Day is fucking stupid and so are you.

@Frank_Pretty EVERYONE WISH ME A HAPPY NATIONAL POETRY DAY SINCE I AM SUCH A BEAST AT MY WRITING!!!!

@futurerelics Apparently it’s National Poetry Day in parts of the world that are not my own. Apparently it’s time to relocate.

@biscuithearts Its National Poetry Day! Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m typing my mum’s assignment about the zoo.

@sammydayvis I think National Poetry Day may have broken Twitter.

@coreywaters Today is National Poetry Day Hooray! I thought that day fell sometime in mid May. And some other words that rhyme and shit.

@zombiepromswife Happy National Poetry Day: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by/madness, starving hysterical naked…” HOWL by Ginsberg. Genius.

@SayAnniething Happy National Poetry Day (UK)! Special shout-out to the Ancient Mariner, Paul Revere, and the man from Nantucket!

@PlanetJusta It’s a good excuse to act flamboyantly gay. Or drink red wine & wear a beret. Perhaps that’s a bit cliché on National Poetry Day.

@J_Bammer Today is National Poetry Day in the UK. AKA: Nat’l Irrelavancy Day, Nat’l Nobody Reads Your Prose Day, Nat’l Shrinking Literary Elite Day

@Iron_Girl omg it is the worst day in history because it is National Poetry Day. fml

@simon_grant_ Ode 2 national poetry day: U can tweet while in the street, on your feet or in a seat; eating meat or just a sweet - Makes email obsolete

@PoopTheWorld Coyote puppies. Mickey Rourke is made of clay. Time for some breakfast. National Poetry Day

@MissMAB It’s National Poetry Day in Britain, so go rhyme or be poetic or something.

Seen a better one? Link it in the comments!

(Photo by chadbrooks)

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1. Pass on a poem.
This is easy peasy, and it’s not only a good way of marking National Poetry Day, but a good way of keeping poetry on the map for the other 364 days of the year. “Did you know it’s National Poetry Day today?” is a great ice-breaker — which means that today’s the perfect day for enlisting new readers. You could send a poem round your office in a group email, send someone you love a card with a poem inside, or take the guerilla approach and fling a printed-out or torn-out poem at an unsuspecting stranger in the street. Whatever you do, accompany it with a “Happy Poetry Day!” Yes, people may think you’re nuts… but they may also go out and buy a poetry collection tomorrow. You never know!

2. Give the gift of poetry.
I’d really like to start a trend where National Poetry Day is like Christmas, only all the presents are poetry books. POETMAS, ANYONE? OK, maybe it’s just me. But this National Poetry Day you should consider giving a poetry book to someone, even (or perhaps especially) if it’s just yourself. Why? Well, poetry books bought = happy poets. And everyone likes a present, poetry or not. If you’re a poet yourself, you might just find a new influence… or if you’re just a reader, you might find a brand new favourite poet.

3. Support a small press.
You should all know by now why this is a good thing to do — small presses are the plankton that nourish and support the many-tentacled monster that is poetry. And for all that buying Seamus Heaney’s Collected might be one way of marking National Poetry Day, personally I’d be inclined to nudge you towards something a bit less obvious. It might be a bit more work, but see if you can find a small press you’d like to support — then buy one of their titles, donate a few pennies, or recommend them to a poetry-loving friend. Trust me, Your Chosen Small Press will be far more appreciative of your support than Faber & Faber!

4. Bookcross a poetry collection.
Bookcrossing is a really cool idea, so if you’ve got a stack of poetry collections lying around gathering dust, put them to good use by passing them on. You just go to the website and sign up, and then strategically drop your chosen book and wait to find out where it goes! (NB: I particularly like the fact that Bookcrossers have started a trend for marginalia — communicating with each other by leaving little notes inside the books they ‘cross.’ Why not mark the occasion by scrawling a National Poetry Day note in the margins?)

5. Host an impromtu poetry reading.
I know you have only a matter of hours before National Poetry Day 2009 gears down again, but seriously — how hard can it be? Get on the phone to your friends, tidy up the living room a bit and coerce everyone into coming over for a night of literary mayhem. You could read your own poems, compose poems on the spot, pick poems by other people that you love and share them around, or turn the whole thing into a bit of a workshop to polish up your works. National Poetry Day comes only once a year, after all!

Any other ideas? Comments box below!!

(Photo by National Poetry day 2009 poster, originally uploaded by Melissa Castrillon)

It became one of those on-going conversations that keeps resurfacing in the midst of other things. At one point my mother came up behind me and yelled “GAMP! That’s a word no one uses any more!” (Gamp is a once-common term for an umbrella, at least in the north of England.) This got us musing on other dialect and pseudo-dialect words that are disappearing along with our older generations: others we came up with were “yat” (”gate,” in Cumbria and the North West) and “sithee” or “sither” (an expression a bit like “see here,” used to draw the attention) — “sithee” is Cumbrian while “sither” is more Yorkshire and the North East. We also lamented “gander” (to “have a gander”) and “butchers” (to “have a butchers”), both meaning “to inspect or have a look” at something.

My father talked about how, when he was at school, he and his friends used to compete to see who could use the longest word — bonus points if they used a word their teacher didn’t know or couldn’t spell. His favourites were “surreptitious” and “soporific.” I tried hard to imagine my students using these words, or to imagine them trying to outwit me with words like this. The closest they’d ever come would probably be baffling me with their fangled-slang…

Others my mother offered were “salubrious” and “palatious” — “no one ever talks about salubrious neigbourhoods or palatious houses these days” — and “somnambulist”… nowadays you’re just a sleepwalker. I did argue that naturally, language must evolve as it always has, and for every word that disappears, hundreds more are created. However, I had to admit that “n00b,” “yay” “grrl” and most of the other words recently added to the English Dictionary don’t have quite the same ring to them as “hither” or “palatious”…

Which little-used words do you love? Are there any words you’d be glad to see fall by the wayside? Which words would you like to resurrect? Get thee to the comments box!

(Photo by wild goose chase)

Tell us about your poems.
I think my poems are “love poems” and “city poems”. Most of my writing is densely populated and I find writing about people far more interesting than writing about trees or mountains. Huge things scare the living daylights out of my pen. I wouldn’t know where to start with writing a mountain or the sea — people walking on a mountain or sailing on the sea I could just about handle.

I also like to write in a way that is accessible for its readers. Sometimes saying the simplest things is much more effective than language steeped in hyperbole and classical/mythological allusions.

How long have you been writing?
It feels like I’ve been writing forever. I wrote little songs during primary school and wrote teenage angsty poems when I was a teenager. In terms of “taking myself more seriously” I’ve been writing properly for about 2 years. In recent times I’ve begun to get more involved with the running of workshops and I always enjoy watching people who are relatively new to poetry come out with strong first drafts.

Do you have any publications to your name? What’s the next stage for your work?
I’ve got a pamphlet out through Erbacce Press called Suitcase/Earthquake which I enjoyed writing. I’ve also had poems accepted for numerous publications such as Pomegranate, The Cadaverine, Read This, Like Starlings and the Guardian Online poetry workshops. The next natural step I suppose is my first collection. I had a mental breakthrough the other day and finally figured out what was holding the existing poems together. I guess I’ll be using my MA time to write the rest of my first collection. I’m also hoping move over to Thailand for a couple of years to do some translation from contemporary Thai poets. That should be around June or so.

What do you think is your biggest poetic achievement to date?
Well, it’s a difficult question to answer really because “achievement” in poetry is always marked by “published in this” or “won such-and-such prize” and I really think the thing I am happiest with is something called The Firework Factory, which I am going to take a moment to plug. Basically every week/fortnight an email is sent to a group of writers giving them a writing exercise to respond to. The responses are often very strong and I include 2 or 3 of the best in the next weeks email along with the subsequent writing task.
I think this is my strongest “achievement” because it is free, fun to run and is accessible to everyone. If you would like to join the list please email [email protected] and we’ll get you added on. If nothing else it will give you something to mull over!

What’s the best thing about writing poetry? And the worst?
The best thing about writing poetry is that brilliant moment you write something that you instantly fall in love with or think “shit, where did that come from?”
The worst thing about poetry is when you write 2 or 3 poems in a row that aren’t up to scratch and you start to have hideous and horrendous doubts. Those moments always pass of course but it is always hellish!

Got any suggestions for young, upcoming poets?
Well, read Rowena Knight’s interview from a few featured-poets-ago. She’s bob on with so much of what she has said in that space and if you’ve read it already go back and re-read it!
The only thing I can really add to it is practical things. Exercise, try writing in different styles, watch world cinema, go to art galleries, hike, bike, subscribe to zines, if you can afford to then go on an Arvon course with a poet you admire… listen to what people have to say. Read Claire’s posts on criticism - join a writer’s circle, ignore anyone who claims that contemporary poetry is dead. Read everything worth reading. Follow One Night Stanzas. (Thanks David!!)

Who/what influences your poetry?
I think the world you connect with influences your writing and it certainly does so for me. In terms of what to read and what has influenced me the list could go on forever but lets make a start with the following:

Carol Ann Duffy, Billy Collins, Sujata Bhatt, Moniza Alvi, Alison McVety, Sinead Morrisey, Moniza Alvi, Dorothea Smartt, Pat Borthwick, Geoff Hattersley, Jean Sprackland, Mark Doty, Michael Symmons Roberts, Jackie Kay, Gillian Clarke, Emma Jones, Michael Laskey, Kathryn Simmonds, Jen Hadfield, Jo Shapcott, Maura Dooley, Helen Farish, Daljit Nagra, River Wolton, Catherine Smith, Imtiaz Dharker and Kapka Kassabova.

In terms of younger writers keep an eye out for Helen Mort, Suzannah Evans & Mark Burns Cassell who all write brilliant stuff.
I’d also really recommend watching lots of world cinema, in particularly directors like Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Kim Ki Duk.

Time-Zones

You always were a few hours beyond me,
and it didn’t come as too much of a shock
when I read the note that you dropped in our gutted
bedroom, that said you’d left me for a new life in the east.

You didn’t apologize or give me much to go on
so I bought a clock that included all of the time-zones,
and watched my days as breakfast chimed lunch in Dubai –
or dinner, on your own, in downtown Shanghai.

Three years on and your clothes don’t smell like you.
I’m eating lunch hours early with wide-awake friends
in my kitchen, my dull clicking clock, and your face
pressed to the window, staring through the time-zones.

Want to be a Featured Poet? Drop me a line to [email protected]!

(Photo by Andrei Z)

First, an update on my Etsy empire!: There’s a sale on at Edinburgh Vintage with many very cool items considerably reduced! I also just started up my own line of handmade accessories, CustomisEd. Check out the Halloween stuff I posted recently! // For those of you who don’t know, I also recently set up a spin-off to Edinburgh Vintage, a store called Quilt of Dreams which carries vintage fabrics, buttons, trimmings and embellishments for dressmakers, quilters and crafters. Check it out! // & the Read This Press store is business as usual… Skin Deep is almost totally sold out now so grab yourself a copy on the double!

Rediscovering poetry // Poem of the week // & another // I heart Byron // Reviewing the work of friends // 10 most challenged books in the USA // 10 of the UK’s best second hand bookstores (I’ve only been to two! I sense a roadtrip coming on…)

Photos from the Scottish Poetry Library’s By Leaves We Live Fair (including some terrifying ones of me), and a write up!

I now follow Margaret Atwood on Twitter!

Literary threads (thanks Regina!)

Found online this week: A sweet haiku by former Featured Poet Juliet Wilson // Matt Haigh at 13 Myna Birds and Pomegranate // Gareth Trew is Poet in Residence at Poet’s Letter Magazine // New work from Alex Williamson // I love this poem from Howie Good at Bolts of Silk // & Angela Maiers gave me a mention!

Cool stuff at qarrtsiluni

This is cool.

& finally… Boy & I are thinking of getting one of these! Thoughts…?

Have a good week, all!

(Photo by boopsie.daisy)