The hottest day of the year, again

So I'm definetely starting to look like a clown now, in my spotty summery shorts, and my face i don't recognise in the mirror. I do Mr Benn changes, super quick, when anyone I know knocks at the door- an ey up, that poet is coming round, better not let them see the indignity of knees. The logical thing to do would be buy some more summer clothes, but the Englishman in me, with all its experience of weather, keeps telling me it will break soon,and I'll be glad of all the money i didn't spend on flowery skirts. The other day I started washing my arms because they were looking distinctly grubby, until i realised what i was actually scrubbing at was freckles. I am trying though, trying to get used to squinting, and the sudden urge to paint things and make them look clean (to use up every ounce of the sun.) I was thinking, I blame all this lets use the sun on Mam's and their twin tubs, draining the sun for every use its got. I feel guilty for not having a twin-tub, and enough whites for a load.

The poems are really shaping up, I've started to look at them as a collection in progress. What sounds silly is that I didn't before, but I was just writing, about certain things, and don't think of it all together until a shape is beginning to emerge. I won't have a title until later on though, almost last, and I wonder if with everyone this is the case.

I've also been doing things that I've been told are useful, setting up a thing on myspace, with a bit about being a poet and some of the poems with music on there. Myspace is a funny thing though, seems like a popularity contest, like being at school, and you have to ask people to be your friends. I felt strangely cheated that Morrissey had 44,000 friends (the same way there was a voice in me, going yeah right when i heard him sing I'll never be anybody's hero now on his new album, although I loved the song, I wanted him to stay a shy outcast forever. How will he ever understand me now!?!?) I have I think 3 friends on myspace, though I think they should indulge the less optimistic and call these people associates or something like it. I did end up with a very strange email from someone I havent spoken to in 10 years, saying I know you, I saw you at the Kenaz gig, which was a bit weird. I ended email contact when he said he had some sweeties in his pocket. The net makes things different somehow, we can make references to things we never would, joke about it, admit it is a haven for stalkers, call ourselves one, google everyone we meet. I still fell guilty when I google someone, like I am pinching their washing off the line and taking it home. How stupid is that? Know I need to get over this, get on board with the digital age, where our concept of privacy has become a very public one. (And yeah, I'm mentioning this on a blog, less guilt, since i'm not stalking anyone, i suppose its more like the verbal equivalent of a flasher though.)

I've been reading 101 ways to make your poems sell this week (by Chris Emery.) It seems like a necessary evil. That part of you that is a poet and just wants to make your poems good flinches at the reality that unless you engage with the p word no one is ever going to read your work (and this makes you less likely to finish it.) The book uses the p word alot, both p words, and talks a great deal about promoting your work, and building your profile as a poet. A few years ago I would have threw this book at the wall, in sheer frustration and denial of the reality of the need to get your work out there (and the hard work it entails). All I wanted to do is write poems. When rejection comes knocking, or even worse the letter box whistles in the wind, we have all consoled ourselves so many times with the names of poets who never made it till they were dead. A book like this makes that seem preposterous. (There is something passive agressive about even thinking this that pisses me off somehow.)You won't find such comforts in 101, but you will come away with ideas on how to get your work read, sell some copies of your books, and let people know you actually exist. At times the book is harsh, makes no bones of the fact that self promotion is a necessary evil, suggesting that those who are unwilling to attempt it, who merely want to see their work in print, are better off self publishing, and leaving it there (ouch!) Poetry is approached as a business, your business as well as the publishers, something that you are selling, that comes in the package of selling yourself. As a meak writer squirreling away in a back bedroom there will be lots of people who find this book terrifying; it is infact in many ways completely alien to my natural tendencies towards shyness and not speaking till you are spoken to. The facts are hard, but there are some practical suggestions on things you can do to help your career. Some of them aren't too painful, just require a little effort, and some of them might be scary, at first, it would be useful to start the slow process of visibility by doing some of the things suggested in the book that don't seem too outside your realm of experience, and build up to some of the ones that you haven't encoutered.

At times, by presenting reasons, Emery has even managed to convince me to see in a new light things I have always been opposed to.
For instance, I have always been in complete denial, and felt horror when publishers etc have requested a photo (yeah yeah, all the usual, hate seeing what I look like, want people to see the work and not be put off by me, etc etc) but there is actually a compelling argument about providing photo's of yourself in this book, which I may still hate the idea of, but am convinced by. The authors's suggestion of looking at photo's of musicians you admire and constructing a photograph or selection of images of yourself in the same way you would think about a poem, asking what is the photo saying, what drama or story does it tell etc, is a good one, and some how makes the fact of the photo easier to swallow. This is a book I will keep for reference to be jolted into a reminder of the painful truths of the poetry game (when I am deep into writing mode and begin to fantasise that the quality of work will somehow allow people to know about its' existence. How do I knwo the quality is there if no-one has seen it?!?) This book will be a wake-up call (not for those who want to sleep blissfully on.) One step at a time...

Summer

The grass looks as if it is trying to remember how to be green. So much summer I don't know what to do with it. There is a weird feeling of being exposed by the sun somehow, having to wear all these clothes because it is so hot that feel like I am dressing up as someone else. My jackets are hung up and look at me accusingly. Truth is, it is just too hot to be smart. I wish I was one of those summery girls, who change colour at this time of year, wear strappy vests, walk barefoot and wash their long hair in milk pails like that old Timotei ad. I've been looking around at big girls who walk about in white shorts with their thongs poking out the top of them and realising it isn't even all about my size. I think I'm too old fashioned somehow to be very good at the sort of strip tease that this time of year demands.

I keep expecting a storm. A few weeks ago I caught in the heavy rain, walked home in it just letting myself get wet in my stupid flip flops. But it was over so quick. Something about good weather makes me feel guilty for not being outside, or on a picnic at the coast. I wonder how many people's lives are like that so they actually use the weather that way. I am enjoying the weather in a sense, like everybodyelse, but spend about as much time looking at the sky and wondering when it will break. A few weeks ago I went camping though, it seemed the right thing to do. I had only ever been camping in a tent once before, when I was 3 and my parents took me on holiday to Scotland. I don't remember much about it, except an orange tent, and that I fell in the lake. I didn't choose never to go camping again, I just somehow never went.

I wonder how many things are decided about the kind of people we are like this, not that we chose not to be certain types of people or like certain things, just found that opportunities never occurred where we would experience these things? Then before you know it you are a 32 year old who doesn't do camping, eat lobster, can't swim, whatever. I went to the Lake District, which I had only ever been through before, and was pretty amazed by it. I watched people in little boats, walked about, sort of just let the scenery wash over me, wash me out. I couldn't sleep the first night, not used to the light and being outside,I could hear the masticating sheep, and though this didn't worry me I couldn't stop listening. When I did sleep I dreamt of a new book coming out by Kevin Cadwallender (a poet whose work I really like), called Sex with Keith Armstrong. (I've actually never met Keith Armstrong, I just know his name and have read some of his poems, but for some reason it is a name I remember.) There were posters everywhere advertising it, with the cover on, which was a photo of the author in a pair of blue y-fronts and matching socks, it was quite a comical pose. This is a very strange dream, I wonder what the point is of people trying to analyse them. I woke up and heard the sheep crunching steadily behind the nylon.

So I have tried something new, and really enjoyed it. This is the first summer I actually went out and bought some open-toed shoes, which is incredible, how something so normal is something I have never done. I usually live in denial of summer, that it will pass soon enough and I'll get by in my boots. I was shuffling like a geisha at first worrying I might be like the girl in summery shoes I saw who kicked something and watched her shoe fly into the sky and onto the road. I reckoned I was too old and not pretty enough to get away with something like that, so I must watch my step. I'm asking why I stuck to my boots even in the heat before? And I have no idea, maybe because I wanted to seem taller, maybe a fear that someone will stand on my feet- whatever it is it's too strange. But maybe it was just something that happened, that one time I had a reason for not wearing open shoes, and although I've forgot what it is this just happened, and I became someone who never wears clothes that nod at the sun.

Last week I started tying up the Marilyn poems, I thought I had maybe one more poem to do and ended up writing 5. I think I needed a space between the ones I wrote about her life and these ones, before I wrote them. I can't explain why, it is a feeling of something like loss, but also a feeling of guilt, of somehow being part of a problem by writing about it. I think I'm glad to be finishing these poems though, as it is a world I don't want to stay too long in incase I never come out.

This morning I went to the post and saw another SAE with my name on it, and knew it would be more poems being returned me with the obligatory slip. (I have started to dread my own handwritten name.) When I opened it I was very surprised that they actually want to publish one of the poems in their magazine. It was a poem I wasn't even sure about putting in, because it is one I personally like, which always tends to be one other people don't rate. It is one of the poems from the Traci sequence.

So if you are counting, I had to get 9 rejections before I had one acceptance. 1 in 10 isn't bad compared to the 1 in 30 I was originally warned. (But to be honest I'm still trying to tell myself that!)

Reject ed Poets Anonymous

So I'm caving, I've been waiting to have positive things to say till I came back to this blog, and nothing different has happened really. I've had some more rejections from mags. Sometimes I have been unable to face sending more poems out and will simply put the rejections aside, knowing that I should get back on the horse, but the memory of that fall is too fresh in my head. Sometime will pass, and I will send some more poems out. But I've been thinking, maybe part of the reason the rejections feel so bad is that we assume that other people are so successful, we only ever see the success stories, see poets when they have been comissioned, getting paid gigs, are launching a pamphlet or book. We never hear about rejections, only the success, which makes our own failures harder to swallow somehow. Of course it is silly to take reassurance from other people being in the same boat, sort of like not doing your homework at school and feeling so much better when you discover who else hasn't either, but we do.

I wonder why poets don't ever mention rejections from mags etc? It would be reassuring to know that all of this is just the nature of the game. If I could hear about poets I know to be good poets being rejected now and then I think I'd feel better, not take it so personally when I experience the same thing, because the thing with rejection is it makes you quiz your own work, wonder if it isn't good, and it's really easy to think that about myself as it is.

I've been worrying that mentioning my rejections would be sort of exposing myself somehow, that people would suddenly see that my work is no good because of the rejections. Perhaps I think of an Emporers New Clothes situation, once they read all the rejections the things that have passed for poems will be revealed as an empty page. The temptation has been to change the subject, but since I think I would feel better for knowing this is happening to even good writers all the time I've decided it would be braver to fess up, and I hope this makes other people feel better somehow about their own experiences.

The rejections have been odd. Some are the standard slip with no more, but a few of them have come back with handwritten notes on the rejection. E.g

"I was really intrigued by these poems."
"Enjoyed these though, Tomatoes most"
"Enjoyed reading the poems, particularly Picturebook Life"

What I am then doing is sort of trying to decrypt what this actually means. Since they have taken the trouble to write something encouraging sometimes, I can assume (?) that the rejection isn't down to the quality of the work. The editors are sort of acknowledging that there is something good in them. When I used to send work out I was getting comments sometimes telling me that the poems were interesting but needed more work (I was young, and definetely wasn't as controlled in my writing; they had a point.) It was as if they saw something good in the poems and were encouraging me to shape my work more. But in this batch of rejections the comments are less easy to know what to do with. There is the tendency to pessimistically think people are being polite, but I don't think I buy that. Editors are anonymous, they don't know you and have nowt to lose by being abrupt. They are busy, and have to read alot of work and don't want to encourage people to send in more work for them to read if it isn't interesting. So I am left wondering what these sorts of rejections say about my poems, and am left thinking that perhaps these people are not rejecting them because they don't recognise they are good, but because the poems simply don't fit in with the type of work/tone of the magazine in question. I have been trying to tailor work to the magazine, but this is really difficult. Most often my work doesn't seem to fit the tone of any of the magazines. I am interested in what this poses- an option for me as a poet then to change the tone of my work somehow to become more like other people's? This seems to be a possible way to gain more recognition in terms of magazine publication. But there is some part of me that would feel unfulfillled by this, by ceasing to write about the things that seem important to me, and poems I hope are doing something I beleive in somewhere. I wonder how other writers negotiate these problems, wonder why the poems I write I rate above others are never the ones other people like? I suppose writers have to think about these things, and wonder what it says about their own work. I have been thinking about this, but I don't have answers yet.

Sometimes I tend to devalue work that felt easier to write, or that didn't make me feel anything when I read it after. Perhaps the work is tied up with the process, but sometimes there is more to it. Some work seems more acceptable because it has a reference point in terms of what it is like, about, or its tone, and maybe this is the work magazines tend to select because they feel comfortable with it. Some of my work isn't designed to make people feel comfortable, as I have been challenging myself to write about things that I am uncomfortable with, people who have broken the rules, and are sometimes untouchable. I am holding onto the belief sometimes that the work isn't bad, but that maybe it doesn't fit in, and I suppose hoping that someone will see some beauty in amongst all the ugliness, and maybe take a chance.

Writing wise the Marilyn poems are at a stage were they seem mostly finished, there are about a dozen of them I think, and I have been surprised by the tenderness in them towards the male characters. There isn't any judgement, and I didn't expect that. I thought that I thought all these men were bastards, but when I wrote I realised they were just people. Just people who loved someone, but didn't know what to do, didn't always know what to say.