If i jumped from the top of the parachutes

There's been people occupying the writing space for a week. It started with someone I know coming back from her hols in America with lots of stories to tell, then came my birthday, then my friend from way back coming to stay with me for a few days. Birthdays are funny, they make me think too much, when I seem to have a check list of all these things I thought someone my age would have done then compare it to reality. Aren't I supposed to have a real job by now? Aren't I supposed to be married and feel ecstatic at the sight of new lawn mowers and stuff? Where do these things come from? I have no idea. I blame Peter and Jane, cooking with mummy, digging with daddy, who don't look any older than I am now, and of course TV. You can put it down to anything you like, my annual mid-life crisis (we're entitled to more than one, since none of us know how long we will live), the fact that I had thought my writing did more than scratch the surface until it hit bone, the fact that I was just tired. Tired of routine maybe, sick to the back teeth when I heard someone I know talk about hols when I hadn't been anyplace again (she talked the states as if it was her back yard "Oh, you must pop over and see next time we go"), tired of feeling guilty about my new poems and proctrastinating about whether i should use them, and mostly just tired of myself. I still haven't decided if I will use the new poems that are about me, but I am thinking I will write some more and select some ... possibly, maybe, I hope. But I have been looking into practical things about my work and thinking about it, order, gaps, edits, length, and am thinking about the spaces that need filling, and spaces that should be there. Also prose is perculating and I am wondering if I will have the chance to let some out, but enough of that. What I really thought about was how I had said I have realised my own boringness, and self limitation, that is born of fear I suppose, or habbit, or what other people expect of me, or all of the above. I realised I forgot how to have fun, and couldn't remember when I last really laughed. I wanted to laugh like those girls on a bus you see, in stitches about nothing that is visible, the girls that make you feel like you must be the joke, with their laughter in code. The girls who are just being girls. I forgot how to be a girl along time ago. The good thing about this is my clothes are alot more comfy, I eat more that I just fancy, I get more done, but if you stop doing something enough you forget how to do it. I've had to change this abit in the last week.

My friend came to stay and I decided to forget about the work and its baggage and go with it, experiment , see what things where like. I made a list of lots of things I want to try, and either never have tried or haven't done in 20 years. I wanted to just do something, see if I could release me of practicality for a little while,see if I could forget, find out if I was only the woman who tiles walls and writes odd little poems, and see if this was fun.

Birthday To do List

1) Go Iceskating
2) Go on some fairground rides
(the last time I did this was 20 years ago.)
3) Try archery
4) Try a rockclimbing wall
5) Lose some weight
6) Wear a dress
7) Learn to cut glass and lead it
8) Learn to say No
9) Turn off the narrator and try to Dance-
(maybe go to a salsa dancing class or something to get more confidence in moving)

(The thing with the dancing is once I was no longer young or thin I stopped, when I tried again I found I was sort of a puppet with the real me trying to put clamps on my body pulling strings, saying "Oh no, you can't get away with that, what are you doing?" My arms and legs began to work with my brain saying left leg moving now, hand to right, and it just lost the feeling of dancing. I remember it used to be fun, remember when I lived alone dancing in the kitchen to The Smiths with a tea-towel and feeling good at looking like a dick, and want to lose the self awareness enough now and again to do it again.)
10)Put my feet in the sea
11) Go on a boat
12) Try dressed crab
13) Try lobster
14) Visit some country or place I've never been
15) Go on some go-karts/quad bike
16) Try and ride a horse


All of these sound really simple, they are. But I just have never done these things, or have done them once when i was 7 or something, and no one will stop me being boring but me. Alot of things that are very simple and alot of people take for granted I just don't do. I worry about them, I decide they are impractical, I talk myself out of it, and let myself be lazy. On my birthday i tried lobster; the day after I tried dressed crab, and was hugely disappointed that it didn't come in an actual dickie bow or something the way I had envisioned it as a child and a slightly autistic adult. So when Luan was here we kept busy, made ourselves do some of the things that were outside our comfort zone. The first thing wasn't too bad, we went to the Baltic, because last time she visited there was a function on and we weren't allowed in (though I did go in the time tunnel, which I might have avoided before due to the humiliation of the fat girl on a slide.I laughed all the way down, I don't know why. The Baltic man at the bottom looked so serious I thought I must be doing it wrong, but it was good anyway. I liked the little house in Baltic square, it seemed quite moving to me, that little house talking, saying a house is supposed to protect (is it?) , saying it was fat. I also enjoyed watching David Beckham sleep though I don't know why, I kept expecting him to wake up screaming 'Victoria man, get off us', or something, but asleep he just looked like a real pretty man being normal, sleeping, and I didn't have to worry about whether he was a bastard or thick as the Bo selecta sketch, or shallow. He was just a person, ok a real pretty one, asleep.) The next day we went ice-skating (skating is too strong a word , we went to the ice-rink and sort of shuffled along with one hand on the rail- I did let go of the side though and tried to do it, not very well, but ...) The day after that we went on the ferry (can't believe I have never been on this the whole time I have lived in Newcastle) and went on fairground rides. These are such easy things, shallow maybe, with no self impovement involved, but when I was up in the parachutes I no longer felt guilty about anything. I span round on the twister and laughed, for no apparent reaosn, laughed till my mouth was dry as the sand and the people were just sandcastles falling away in slow sifts. I felt my arms juggle air on the way down as I grabbed the rail and laughed so much I forgot who I thought I was. Maybe I never really knew. I felt more alive than I have felt in a long time, doing something just because I could. Some things I want to do aren't on the list, I need to lose the weight first or learn to swim better or things that are quite hard and slow, but it feels good to have ticked some things off the list. I did wear a dress, and looked , I dunno- fat? Yeah, but more than that, more vulnerable maybe, as if I was trying to be a girl, and the safety of jeans that no matter how bad I look no one can say I am trying to be or do anything, there's a comfort in that, a sheild of invisibility somehow as something without a gender. But I do know more about myself for all this, the most trivial things; no I can't iceskate, but do enjoy it, lobster isn't a patch on prawn and my favourite fairground ride is The Twister.

Why do people write?

I am really interested in why people write. It worries me also. I recently read in 101 ways to make poems sell that poets need to ask themselves this, but also why should anyone pay money to read my work? Why do I think they will? I need to spend some time thinking about this, as I don't think it is something poets initially think about. What they are thinking about is how to make their poems good, make them work, then comes the question about how commercial they are, and where they fit in when they think about getting a publisher. For a long time I believed writing poems that sell meant compromising what I wanted to write about, and how. I thought about the poets that do well commercially, and the biggest name I could think of was John Hegley. So this made me think to write poems that people will want to read they have to be

a) funny
b) rhyme.
c) Come in a package with a good/cool/or somehow otherwise appealing look
d) That this package must contain some form of likeable personality

I think there is an element of truth in this, in the sense that some poets will receive more readers because they seem non threatening, media friendly, and mostly write poems that are accessible and create the illusion to readers that they themselves could write something like that. But this is an over-simplification. (John Hegley is in many ways a bad example of what I want to say, as I actually really like his work, but am constantly surprised when I see people laugh at it. Ok, I admit I do have a problem laughing out loud in public, but when I have seen Mr Hegley read there are times I will be thinking that a poem is painful sounding, sad or something in it is plain unfair and the audience will be laughing along quite merrily. - This brings up somethingelse about comedy, and its essence- do people not see, do they choose not to? Is everyone cruel? Or is JH tapping into the truth that one of the functions of comedy is to provide relief where it is needed. Something has to be done, and it's better to laugh than cry - except I am out of the loop with that one.) I think about the people I know who buy poetry and they are not only buying John Hegley. They buy a range of comtemporary poetry, in different styles, with diffferent subject matter and voices. As my work is now approaching being a collection I need to think about what it might have to offer a publisher, who might read it, how, and why, which is new to me in many ways.

A colleague recently told me they had written a list of what they want to acheive in their writing and how they intend to go about it. This scared the hell out me , because I am not sure how I can create a similar list, and how to go about anything that I would like for my work. But I do need to think about it. I'm horrifed, but am going to try and compile a similar list sometime this week, to see what it does.

Sunday

They keep saying August will be hotter than July, but it's raining. I noticed a clutch of red leaves on the tree the other day outside my window, feel summer has burnt itself out. This week has been an odd writing week, I've been at my desk wanting to write poems about the last biography I read, and was finding it really slow.
I asked a colleague who is quite familiar with my work what they felt might be missing if the poems were part of a collection, and their answer was 'you.' All of the poems are about other women. (At times I have been touching of course on things that relate to my own experience, but there is no way for a reader to know that.) This raises an interesting question, which relates to things I have been reading lately, being how much do readers actually want to know about the writer themselves? Is this something I need to know the answer to and consider? I don't know the answer, and I think not knowing it made writing slower than usual at the beginning of the week, because I was sitting down to write with the suspicion that this is the point where I need to write poems that include the writer a bit more, but felt reluctant to do that.

I am interested in how writers deal with writing about themselves, because it always means actually to some extent writing about other people (our parents, relatives, friends, lovers.) Then what do these parties make of the poems, and what we have said? All week I avoided writing anything personal because of this huge feeling of guilt hanging over me regarding this issue, as if writing would be snitching on people somehow, showing things the people themselves have forgotten. So I couldn't write the poem that was really there regarding my research which would have actually included some people I know, and wasn't sure how to get past this.

Actually this was also hanging because recently I received a phonecall off my mother which ended with her saying "put that in your book", and hanging up. My mother has never said anything about the content of my poems other than she understands that there was swearing because I wanted to be "realistic. But suddenly the thought was there, that she may disapprove, and at very least must have said this for a reason. I thought about my previous work, and the poems she was named in - and couldn't see what might have annoyed her about them. I wondered if what was annoying her was the thought of the things I could write about, that she doesn't want to hear, rather than what I have actually written, and that seemed more likely. But I don't know, like I said she hung up on me, so I left her to it. But that comment has stuck with me enough so that the poem that was actually the one to be written couldn't come out, I had to write about other things to do with what I had been reading rather than what wanted to be wrote. I had pretty much decided I just wouldn't write a poem about my mother, because of this conversation and the guilt that it brought, then something changed.

At the end of the week I received a note from my mother, with 3 poems attached to it.

The back story to this is that since about February she has been asking me over and over if I was entering this poetry competition that she saw advertised in the paper for poems of less than 12 lines. I had reasons not to enter, being my suspicions about it

1) It was free to enter- how many poetry competitions are free?
2) There was no judge named and mentioned (which should always appear on competitions)
3) It was advertised in The Evening Gazette (though it claimed to be a national competition.)

All of this put me off (plus of course the fact that I have no faith in competitions really). Nonetheless I did send a couple of poems in, just to stop her going on about it.

Last week what I received were poems she had wrote and sent to the competition. The note told me that one of these poems had been selected for the anthology. This was all strange to me. This is the first I have heard of her even writing poems. But most of all I couldn't understand why she hadn't mentioned this, and why she had asked me to enter the same competition she knew she would be entering (mine, of course weren't selected.) (Now I know what anyone reading this will think this is a case of jealousy that my poems weren't chosen, but actually I couldn't have cared less in this instance because it wasn't a competition or press I heard of , etc, etc.) But I did wonder what this all was about; was she competing with her daughter (in the one thing that matters to her) and trying to put me down somehow? In terms of my acheivements as a daughter (infact everywhere) poetry is all there is (there is no high status job she can tell people about, no holiday cottage tucked away somewhere, etc etc), about all she can say is that I have had some books published in the North East. I wondered if this was a way of putting me in my place, saying 'look I can do what you do, and am infact better at it.' (I'd like not to think this, I'd like to think my poetry inspired her to want to write- but if so, why didn't she tell me about it?)

More to the point, the content of the poems was interesting. She had not only written about my childhood but used my actual real name (I may have written about mother, but only as a mother, in poems which could potentially be a fictional first person account of any mother.) I couldn't get out of my head the implication that I shouldn't write about her, that she didn't like it, yet here I was, my name in black and white and my childhood in rhyming couplets. Although this incident was odd regarding my relationship with my mother, it was actually hugely liberating for my work. I could shrug off the guilt and concerns about ethics that had plagued me all week quite easily (what's good for the goose is good for the gander right?) I had hated seeing my name in the poem, and felt misunderstood. I decided that writing anything whatsoever that explains who I am now inevitably involves writing about my childhood sometimes. And writing about my childhood does involve at times mentioning parties who were present, but I had a realisation that is so simple but huge; it is my childhood to write about. She has written her take on it, I can have my own too. Suddenly the poems I had pushed into nothingness bubbled out, and I had no reason to feel guilty anymore, she had herself given me permission to write in the most unlikely way.

Some people might see this and think the motive behind writing those poems is revenge, at very best tit for tat, but it is infact something to do with reclaiming your own life, that people take from you by their own perspective, or locking it away. I actually feel pretty good now , somehow free, and the poems I wrote? Could be worse. ; )

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.

The Happiest Day of the Year

I am staying away from my blog for a little while, I started to worry that it is turning into Eeyore's ponderings. I did have one rejection that at least told me their favourite of the ones I sent, which I actually felt was the least interesting poem I sent (though perhaps the only one that could have been written by somebody alot older than myself.) So who knows?

Last week I have been doing some research by reading two biographies about the same person, and listening to Paul Summers Home in three bits CD, which is brilliant, and a real example of what can (and should more often) be done in the presentation of poetry which can appeal to a wider audience. This week I have been writing poems inspired by what I read, and have ended up with a few poems which i think surprised me. I expected to be writing about the woman the biogs are about , and ended up writing a fair deal about a man in her life and the players who weren't there except in the back of her mind I suppose. So much of who we are is by what we compare ourselves to and struggle against, that I suppose this was inevitable, but it wasn't what I thought I'd be writing about until I sat down and wrote.


Anyway, as Marilyn said everyone likes a happy girl, and I don't want to Eeyore you, so I am going to stay quiet until I have something more positive to say, till the recjections are all in (or cease to mean anything).

Extract

Extract from a poem

The leaves quiver an elderly hand,
so slight I need to adjust my eyes.
Rustle of breeze like a prom dress
being tucked into a car,
hum of tractor far away
as Mom's hoover at the foot of the stairs.

I saw a picture of sunflowers once,
a swirl of sky so angry you knew it cared.
There is just this, warm, light.
With my eyes half-shut
I have learnt to be my own Van Gogh.

Rainy Bank Holiday

Last night I had a dream that my tongue was involved in some sort of accident with a fishing rod, and I had to live without a tongue- couldn't speak, taste a thing, and it made me quite depressed in the dream. I woke up, couldn't get back to sleep right away, and later dreamt that I had a butterfly in a jar, it was an amzing thing, I had caught and wanted to show to someone before I released it, but I was in my old school and none of my schoolmates would look at it.

This morning I woke up to another rejection from a poetry magazine, the bog standard variety. One of the poems I sent is probably one of the best I've ever written, or at least that's how I feel about it. The problem with sending to mags is the ability to hold on to how you feel about your work is threatened, maybe this can sometimes be a good thing. It was a sad poem, not neutral feeling at all, and I am wondering if this is a problem. Seems emotion in alot of work magazines favour can be a liability, and not something that can be harnessed. All day today I am clashing my tongue against the back of my teeth to see it is still there, wondering if I make a sound- and if it exists if no one hears it.

The proper poets

This week I have been working on how to approach the life of a Cheesecake pin-up model in poetry form. There has been a problem getting into it, because I have found so much contradictory information about her life. The question is who do I beleive, and having to decide which side I will take somehow. In the end I wrote a poem in which I described one event twice, projecting both versions of events, which seeemed more interesting than I imagined, in questioning what truth is, how memory is constructed. Perhaps both versions of events are reliant upon eachother to exist. Really I should have been writing prose this week, but the research I had done was pressing upon me to make a commitment and decide how I would tackle it. I wanted to tie up poetry loose ends before delving into prose because I always feel with prose I never know how long it will take. I don't with a poem, but at least a draft is in sight.

Also this week I went to two poetry events. The first was a reading by Paul Batchelor and W.N Herbert at Newcastle University. I was uncertain about going to this event, I think because it was at the university, and because it was required to book a place to attend (I worry that events which do this potentially exclude people who may not know if they can attend until on the night itself, or people like myself who can't speak on the phone.) I am sort of very wrong at the uni, the room was full of academics and proper poets, lots of people who don't know me, and lots of people who have met me once or twice but don't really want to speak to me (just as well, I am even more useless in this context and sort of hear my voice bleat useless hello's, but am too intimidated to have anything else to say.) (OK, a quick diversion to describe what I mean by proper poets, I think this is something I need to think about. I suppose the term refers to people I consider to be serious poets somehow, either by the content of their work or by the fact that they are recognised, known and respected as poets. Proper poets leave me feeling somehow improper I suppose, somehow inferior because of the things I write about maybe, but also because I'm not there. I am not a hobbyist with my poetry, as it is something I am passionate about, but somehow respectable poets leave me feeling like a poet YTS.)

This event was really packed out, literally every man and his dog (the proper poets can really rake them in.) There was a good mix of men and women in the audience, which was unusual. (Last month there was a reading by female poets and the audience was exclusively female (this doesn't beg the question to me, it screams it- what lies at the heart of this? It seems to indicate that women who like poetry are interested in hearing it whatever its source, but this does not seem to apply the other way around. I refuse to accept that male poetry lovers are somehow more discerning, or that the quality of poetry by women is generally inferior to that by men. I am still thinking about this, and have noted that when I have seen lists of poets favourite poets it is very very rare for female poets to be included on the lists of men. Is it just me who finds this insulting?)

Batchelor read from his new pamphlet To photograph a Snow Crystal (everyone knows this is a poet on the rise, and I mean this in an actual way, not in how we usually use this term to talk kindly about poets who aren't yet known, so I won't go into the quality of his poems- we all know it, since the poems are a competition winner.) I almost feel as if some poets are a different type of species to myself, perhaps because of the quality and content of the work, and I feel ill-equipped to venture my opinion when the poets are academics. Batchelor's poems are very clean and precise, at their best they are like a crystal through which we can see the real nature of light. My favourite poems in the pamphlet are those which illuminate specific details of real life (sometimes the ordinary becoming extraordinary, as in Butterwell, a poem which is not in the pamphlet which the poet ended the reading on, in which the simple act of his father returning from work is transformed.) The poems are controlled, almost scientific, but if the poems are a science they are a science of the human condition, providing space for thought. My favourite poems in the pamphlet are those which seem somehow haunting, almost lonely.

' A day
with nothing to say for itself, and morning
making light of it. Who in the world
might she have been? You draw the blinds
& turn back to the bed as one
by one the panes fill up with snow.'

(from Snow, To Photograph a Snow Crystal- Paul Batchelor)

In contrast to some of the poems I was surprised at the humour, and humanity of his introductions to poems. Like I said, this is an event of a whole different poetry species ( the respected poets) so I didn't expect humour and honesty at an event at the university (don't ask me why, something to do with my own fear that middle class/academic people are somehow robots, I am prepared to accept that many of them may not be, but they usually have to demonstrate otherwise somehow first!) Batchelor seemed to create an atmosphere of inclusivity for the audience by allowing chinks of humanity to be glimpsed in his introductions to the poems. (I think introducing a poem well is a skill that isn't thought about too much, the danger of saying too much or negating the poem is always present, and the tendency to say too little is there. What I actually realised is that audiences do like to hear little bits to create the illusion that they know the poet a little, that he/she is sharing something of themselves with them. This is something I need to work on, since I have the feeling that the less I can share of myself the better, as I hope the poems are alot more interesting than I am.) There was a comfort in hearing Batchelor's mother said she ' liked this poem, it reminded her Ruby don't take your love to town, by Kenny Rogers', and it was this sort of revelation that was surprising in the midst of (some of) the poems.

W.N Herbert read following Batchelor, and I was again surprised at the energy he put into presenting his work, and the inclusion of humour in the poems and the presentation of them. I haven't seen this poet read before, and he wasn't as I imagined him to be at all. The audience lapped it up. The only thing that I was slightly disappointed by perhaps is that although the poems were presented in a very confident and engaging fashion, there was less of that illusion of the poet revealing something of himself to the audience, and I was left wondering what this poet may actually be like really under all of this. The advantage of this of course could be the creation of intrigue. I will certainly be reading more W.N Herbert in the future, not only because it was of a high standard (like I said why go there? since this is a uni event and a Bloodaxe poet we knew that) but perhaps because I want to see if there is any sense of who this poet really is to be gleamed from inspection of the poems.

The following night I went to Colpitts in Durham, to see Jackie Litherland read from her new book The Work of the Wind (I really can't wait to read this book from cover to cover.) This was another extremely well attended event, and I suppose another situation in which I am uncomfortable in. (What I discovered from the two events being in sucession was that people's reaction to seeing me at events is to say 'I haven't seen you in a long time. are you alright?' This really surprises me since I do go to a fair few events, not every event granted (or there wouldn't be time to write, or do those pesky things that need doing in life to ensure free head space for writing time- in my case, at this time of year re-potting plants, and sorting through rooms with binbags of things for the charity shop, things for recycling, things that will get in the way when I have to gloss the skirters.) (Perhaps people say this because they just don't know what to say to me, because after all these years I've still never managed to have a conservation with any of them beyond how is work?) Jackie Litherland's reading was amazing in so many ways, the sheer volume of work in this book is intimidating in alot of ways (the fact that there are 60 sonnets in the book is something that makes me realise how far I have to go.) The poems are lyrical, sad, and at times funny, but always ferocious with life, and she defly combines all these elements in deeply personal poems which never contain an ounce of self pity, bitterness, or anger. What the poems do is present loss, grief, the ordinary things that become extraordinary in everyday life, and most of all love, a very human tenderness is in these poems, and we see love, relationships that are sometimes mundane, predictable but always magical. This is a love that is sometimes full of holes that have had to be darned again and again in different ways, the poems show this working, love happening between different people negotiating who they are and what is there everyday. I felt extremely moved at the reading to hear poems about her father, poems about alcoholism, life and grief. I forgot about class, and didn't care, the poems seemed so specific and yet universal. I forgot how uncomfortable I was, how I didn't fit right, how I hate my hands and couldn't seem to hide them, and was transported by the poems. A poem which was a celebratory tide of a baby forming cyllables on the beach seemed to demonstrate the remarkable skills of this poet, a subject which could so easily become sentimental and be difficult to tackle in a poem flowed effortlessly, beautifully, a celebration. This was truly an inspiring night, a humbling night, and something that has made me think about how there are still things I've never been able to write about to any satisfaction, and perhaps never will.

Holy smoke

Having an odd week, after such a good week last week with the writing of poems about pigs. I've just returned from a few days away in Holy Island , a writing retreat with some poetry colleagues. Came back feeling? Odd. That's about the only word. I haven't stayed on Holy Island before, and the place is so different to anything I've experienced before, it is such a beautiful place, and I went expecting the isolation. What I didn't expect was that because the island is so small you can never really be alone, you go for a walk and there is always someone everywere you go, strangers. It is a quiet place were I seemed unbareably loud, the jangle of change in my pocket, the buckles of my boots, I felt invisible in many ways when I was there, and yet almost wanted to be because the place demands it. Travel is a funny thing, you start to think too much, because there is no one there who knows you, about who you are really, and it seems a difficult question to answer. We are all so constructed by the people around us, what they see, what they reflect back to us, that being away makes you wonder what is really there, wonder if there's anything at all. All around the island there are notices, signs to make you aware of things that could happen, intructions: Beware of falling rocks,
We are not a cafe,
Naturally occurring poisonous algae,
a strange feeling of an awareness of visitors the islanders don't want to bother with. I have quite a high threshold of being able to be alone, but this feeling of not quite being alone is new to me, and something that made me an unwelcome visitor in my own skin.

As well as the physical aloneness I suppose there was that awful feeling of being misconstued, things you have said that have been re constructed by interpretation, which make you feel invisible in a more sad sort of way. I sat around worrying about not being entertaining, about being quiet, about people thinking I was not really there and engaging with them, and it was a feeling of being exposed I suppose, of people discovering the parts of you that are worried about on a bad day- what if I'm boring, silly,no good at it all, what if I just have nothing to say? I wanted to have jokes, to wear them like a mask and nothing would come. I just felt quiet, as if I was thinking about things I couldn't identify yet. In terms of the writing I took scattered notes and that's all, and I realised that my process has changed. I used to be a workshop poet, could write something there and then and have something to show. For some reason I'm not like that anymore (mostly those workshop poems could never be used again anyway, maybe 1 in 10) , something has changed and i'd be interested to know why. I just take notes now, the odd line, which I have to put away and return to, and be at my desk to sort out. To see the poems typed as I make them seems essential, for the spacial awareness. If I was to describe now the way I used to write I'd say it was like making a stir fry,so many colours, a little flash tumbling into one another, now it is more of a casserole, plainer but needs to simmer for so long. I didn't know this about myself, I think something about being given the time to spend on my writing may have something to do with it, I can approach everything alot more slowly,have more time to think. I didn't see that I am working in a different way, and just sort of needed time to process the things I had thought about there. When I came home I was able to process all those odd little notes more I think, and have written two poems (one of them quite long, one short.) I am saying this stupidly, as if size matters, and maybe sometimes with me it does, most of my favourite poems are quite short, but when it comes to my own work I somehow feel more justified to myself if I have produced more lines (which is just so wrong, and something I hope will go if I can gain more confidence in my abilities.)

The whole experience was interesting. The negative thing about it was thinking too much, being faced with my own limitations, and wondering if my poems are any good and if I will get them out there. I think I am thinking about this because I am at a stage with the current poems were I have been writing away, and am in need of some reaction to them/feedback, as the doubts are trying to creep in before I've actually given the poems a chance. My hunch is they are different to my previous work, but are they better? They are certainly simpler, but am not sure if that's a good thing. They are more assured in the respect that they do not try to be clever or witty in any way. But I don't know if this is a bad thing. I was trying to think of working class women poets who have made good, and couldn't think of many at all. In terms of poems in magazines, poets who win competitions, etc etc they seem to have alot in common, a sort of class neutrality, and often location neutrality, which doesn't allow for exceptions.Don't get me wrong, they are always good poets, but is it possible that poetry isn't as open to diversity as much as we would like think? Cultural diversity seems to be embraced by poetry, with this one exception. It also seems to be somehow more acceptable to be a working class man than a working class woman. I worry about this a great deal. If I wasn't so working class, infact even if I was a man would magazines etc be more interested in my work? These are things I don't want to think about, that suspicion that I'm just not the right type of poet, but maybe I have to. So the question is what can I do about this?

I wanted to wear the shoes in the picture when I was away, because I so rarely am anywhere were I don't have to wear big shoes to be taller, but the weather didn't allow it. When I got back all the cherry blossoms I could see from my office window had gone.

oops- forgot

Oh , forgot to actually say what I've been up to. Came 2nd in an internet competition to write a poem about new year (was such a bummer to come second, in a way would have been better not to be placed at all, because the prize for 1st place was an ipod, and i'd love one- so near and so far!) I have no use for the second prize, some simm card back up thing, so just gave it to a friend. Still, I suppose these minor triumphs get us through the day. The poetry perculating bore fruit. Worked on a huge sequence last week about pigs, the first draft was finished on Friday, and it ended up having 16 parts (16 being the age it ends at, before the story has already been told, or rather seen.) Also been considering images and stuff to go with the porn poems (actually I call them that, there's very little adult content in them, it's just a working title I guess that I stick to). I think it would work nice as a package with images at a reading, so it's been a nice hobby for me to consider this at my leisure. Took a lovely little bit of footage of the tree outside blowing in the wind, but now need to find out if there is a way for it to be projected bigger without it losing all the definition (when blew it up on the PC became more pixilated the bigger it got- this is a huge problem, since had the camera on highest res possible. Wonder if doing it on a proper digital moving image camera would improve it or not?) I think I need to learn more about stuff like this, but am not sure how or where to start. There are so many more things I don't know than I do it's amazing some days, and scary others.

rejection

It didn't take long, sent out first bunch of work to magazine in 6 years last week, and got my first rejection today, less than a week since I sent it. It was the standard photocopied slip, no comments, the usual. I couldn't help but notice how pristine the poems seemed, wondered if they'd even been read. I think I'd have felt better if the magazine had kept hold of them a little longer somehow. Still, I knew this was coming, just didn't know how soon. I am looking at the poems wondering what it may be that they didn't like about them, and can come to the conclusion that maybe they aren't poemy enough. They probably don't have that poem tone somehow. I'm not sure how I define this, it is the sort of thing you know when you see it, when you read the poems that do make it into magazines. Quite often the poems that make it into mags are fairly quiet in tone, seem somehow mystical and mysterious. The poems I sent are new ones, and have a plainess to them, not complicated really, no tricks to them. This may be what will be wrong with them to the poetry world, I dunno, time will tell. I'm still wondering if sending work to magazines serves any function , other than to fluff the poet's own ego, and reinforcing their feeling of being a poet. Think people need this from tme to time perhaps, but is that all it does? I don't think I know anyone who has gained collection publication or readings or anything from getting work in magazines, I don't even know if it sells books, or any feedback from the poems is passed on and is useful. If you've experienced anything positive from sending work to mags let me know, I think I'd like to hear it's not just fluffing.

Also, this week I heard that Colpitts in Durham has limited days. This is really sad to hear. Colpitts is the only regular poetry night in Durham, and has been going for thirty years. It seems that alot of poetry nites are sizzling out, and I worry about this. There are alot of theories buzzing about about why nights may be disappearing: that they aren't getting the audience figures, aren't reaching new audiences, that the arts council have changed their funding criteria, that large arts institutions like The Sage and The Baltic mean there aren't enough funds to go around. I really don't know what the case is, maybe a combination of things. I just know that i would be sad to see Colpitts go, and that I worry about the future of poets in the region. It seems that poets plod along and there are less and less places for them to get together, read their work, and sell their books. There are alot of problems for poets, one of them is that book shops simply will not stock poetry (particularly by small presses.) (Recently I was on a quest to buy some poetry by Sharon Olds, I went in several book shops looking for her work. Not one poetry section had a single one of her collections. I eventually found one shop which stocked her selected works (but being a purist of readuing a collection as it was intended, this isn't reallty the same thing. yes, I could have asked them to look her up on the computer and order a book, I would have to go back for in a few weeks time, but the thing is, I wanted to see a few of her colections on the shelves, have a flick through them, and select the ones I felt held most value for me. Poetry in these shops isn't selling, I'm not surprised. Few people will buy what they cant see. Potentially I would have bought three books that day, in the end I bought none.) I wonder if independent presses will become a thing of the past if there are no regular poetry nights in existence where their books can be sold. What will happen to all the poets?

The general reputation and accessability of poetry is a huge problem. It seems the majority of the population just are turned off by it. There are many many writers producing exciting and vibrant work which I think could change people's minds about their associations with poetry being nothing other than stuff that seeemd irrelevant to them when they were made to study it at school- the problem is trying to get people aware of it. One way audience figures have improved is by incorporating music or comedy into poetry events, and this has worked well. But speaking as a writer I think poetry spaces which do not want to go down the open mic or slam route should be maintained and are due for a re evaluation, and re appreciation. I have read at both types of events in the past, and think both are vital for bringing poetry to life away from the page. Unfortunately the simple fact is books don't sell at events with musicians and comedy. The audience may be younger and therefore do not have the funds to buy books, and I have been to many poetry events were people attend for an open mic or a slam to read their own work and do not stay for the poets (or do not listen.) At events like this poets who are performance or comedy poets are able to gain the attention of the audience, but for those less skilled in this area it is a struggle. There are poems even skilled performers will not read at such events, because they are quieter or more serious poems, and there needs to be a space for poets to read good quality, though not necessarily funny or immediate work. I read at Colpitts a few years ago, and went there worried and holding perhaps some of the prejudices some people may have about such poetry nights.I was worried about not being middle class, about having a regional accent, and about how I would be received. The truth is I was delighted to find something unique there, that is a place were the audience really listen. This is somewhere that doesn't feel like a poularity contest, a battle of charisma or confidence to make the work heard, an attempt to be read your funnier stuff (that in your heart you know isn't as good as some of the serious poems in your bag that you daren't read because there is silence after them)- this is a space that is all about the words. It didn't matter how I read them, who I was or wasn't, words were allowed to stand up by themselves. (And I sold more books as a consequence than I had sold in the last 6 gigs combined.) I am ashamed to say that I am not currently a member of a library- how odd is that for a writer? The reason is that libraries have changed. The library were I live has been closed down. Libraries have been transformed somehow from what they used to be, and the concept of quiet and a librarian saying ssshhh is a thing of the past. Libraries are full of children, teenagers, mobile phones and people who come in to use the computers, and the need for quiet seems to have gone with the digital age. I don't like what they have become. I don't beleive poetry should be something in the exclusive domain of libraries, but nor should it belong exclusively to the domain of pubs. I am grateful that something like Colpitts still exists, an event that I can go to hear good quality poets, were the space a good poem needs is provided and understood.

Colpitts aim to re-apply and ask for reassessment of the decision to stop their funding, and I hope it is sucessful (or like I said, is the future of poetry performance poetry only? I don't think anyone would see this as a good thing?)

As for poetry being so poorly available in shops, I am extremely continually disappointed that The Baltic fails to stock a selection of regional writers in the book shop. A poetry section of regional writers in the Baltic bookshop would take up little space, and be a welcome addition, and way for an arts funded project to show support for artists in the region. It is easy, it's simple- so why don't they do it? Who knows. I also know that phoning to ask about this, or sending an email gets absolutely no response (hey, even a response explaining why this isn't their policy would be nice, and a courtesy.) What started me on this was reading with the Finns at the bookshop in The Museum of Modern art in Helsinki (which is a hell of a building, amazing) , who were very nice to the poets and happy to stock the book. Yet a reply could not be gained as to the prospect of The Baltic stocking the book from the Baltic poetry exchange. Seems that if somewhere like The Baltic would stock regional poets it would become somewhere that could host the ocasional reading in their bookshop (and given the aspect of the shop what better way to get people to see contemporary poets, people pass by on their way in and out.) One art institution supporting in these small ways artists, and smaller arts projects in the region, seems logical and couldn't be easier. Why don't things like this happen? Is poetry dying, and who's going to miss it when it's gone?

Writing in April

The research has been getting to the good bits. Research is like that, so much wading through irrelevant stuff and then bam! Something that gets you going, pen moving away, can't wait to get it all down. I haven't felt as if I've gotten as much writing done this month, but I think it's a false verdict in a way. All it takes sometimes is a period of getting lots and lots of new stuff on a page so that what follows seems lazy in comparison. All that new stuff has to be sorted, waded through, and spotting the mistakes and improvements takes time, sometimes more time than that inital rush. I haven't sat and counted how many poems there actually are for the biographical set, I slowed down, and what came out seemed more ready and in need of less work. I wrote the gaps that needed to be filled out once I sae it, and I think I'm done with that. There is still an end poem conspicuous by its absence though, something that feels like an end, without tying too much up this is a tough one.

I have spent my evenings in spring cleaning mode, painting the walls a boring colour I never thought I'd entertain. I must be becoming a beige person in my old age. I just wanted something cheap, clean and tidy. When I got back to work I got stuck into a poem about pigs, it had been bubbling away while I worked. I have one book left to read I think until I need to change my routine to better accomodate prose. The poetry has worked well as some actual writing while I'm doing research, but I'm at a point were I need to wrap up lose ends then flip to researching poems while i write some prose.

And yes finally I've done it, I've been psyching myself up most of the year to send some work to magazines. I sent one some poems this week. I tried to guess what the mag would ike, but to be honest I just can't tell. Mags are funny, now I'll wait for the rejection. I heard it's a 1:30 ratio of rejections over acceptances, just 29 more mags to send to then!

Easter

The season seems to have finally changed after so many false starts, and I've had a few days off writing over Easter. It was getting to a stage were so many jobs round the house had built up, and all that stuff was threatening to come crashing into writing time, so it was a good idea to take a week away from it. So I spent the week painting a room, and varnishing the floor and stuff, and am so stiff with doing the ceiling and gloss that I was glad of my time off to come to an end so I could sit at a desk again. During time off I kept away from writing events too, and had some relaxation at the end of the days watching movies. ( Really loved Walk the Line, most the other movies I saw were pants.) Sometimes I think taking time away from writing can be good, I sometimes find that getting stuck in to manual work can be a good thing if it follows productive writing time. At first you don't tend to think about writing, and get on with the painting, but eventually you get bored and find that something in the back of your mind must be working without you. Found that at the end of the day I had some ideas regarding the porn sequence when I didn't know I had been thinking about it, and also have a new poem idea sort of perculating around which I need to do some net research for.

So pretty much quiet and uneventful here. The only thing to tell you really is that I found a copy of my book in Oxfam the other day. I know logically that this is bound to happen at some point, if anything gets published sooner or later it will wind up in a charity shop someplace i guess. I had a conversation with Adam Fish once were the idea of seeing my book in a charity shop had just occurred to me, and I said how awful. Adam must be more of a glass half full guy than me, as he thought it was pretty cool, and said he would buy his own book and ask the lady at the counter of the charity shop to sign it! It was so sad to see it there though, it is so little compared to all the other books next to it. I had to buy it because it seemed so sad, and also to stop me checking next time i'm in the charity shop to see if anyone has bought it (and feel like it's a rejection everytime they haven't!) I came home thinking someone thought my book was shit, someone hates me, thinking it must be someone I know (whoelse bought it?) I took some consolation in the fact that there was another Diamond Twig book in the shop, so I'm assuming they have come from the same person, next to mine (which I have and is good), so it helped me take it less personally. (She is a good poet, and someone even gave their book away, so it doesn't matter if they gave mine away too- maybe they don't like poetry full stop. Maybe they beleive in recycling, maybe their ex partner chucked it when they found them in bed with a sheep, maybe, maybe- the list goes on, but there was definetely comfort in not being the only reject, however sad that is.) Thing is, now I am going to be looking at everyone with suspicion, wondering if they are the one. Well, I'll take my leave now, I have to sort through some things in my office, and go through some books for the charity shop.

Morden Tower

Last night I went to Morden Tower. Bob Beagrie and Kalle Niinikangas were reading from Perkelle, accompanied by Milo Thelwall and Shaun Lennox. The night was compared by Kate Fox. I went along to show support, but ended up being asked to read at last minute (good job I washed my hair afterall before I went out.) It was an odd night, a night of powerful performances of poetry with music which I enjoyed, which was overshadowed by a feeling of disappointment on my part by the lack of audience. The quality of the poetry and its pairing with the music, made this a really magical night, and an enjoyable one- so why people didnt come I don't understand. The event was plugged in various e-mails, and has been plugged at other events-so I have no idea. It makes me sad for the Finns who have come so far more than anything else, but makes me a little bewildered as to where all the poets are (if we assume there are no poetry fans, that every poetry lover is infact a poet- which i am starting to believe.) Is it a case of cliques? Do people only to come to events featuring their friends? (which would explain why poets from Middlesbrough and Darlington are unable to get an audience in Newcastle.) It saddens me particularly because what poets like Andy Willoughby and Bob Beagrie are doing with musicians is so good, unique and entertaining (yes, entertaining, I can't say that for all the poetry readings I've been to unfortunately.) (Isn't it sad that when we think of poetry one of the words that doesn't readily come to mind is 'entertaining' come to think of it, if we are to expect people to sacrifice their time and energy coming out to things we should make the effort to make them entertaining more often.) I'd feel better if it was only OK, reasonable poets and the music was alright, but there is something so disheartening about knowing something is good, and not being recognised sufficeiently. Once again i will give the poetry scene of newcastle the benefit of the doubt, and say that perhaps people didn't come because it was Good Friday, and people tend to go away for the weekend at Easter. (To be honest even i wasn't enthused about the prospect of having to put some slap on and leave the house, when I would have rather liked to chill out in comfy clothes with a can of beer, but it was worth it.) A friend suggested to me that maybe people think Finnish poets and assume it will be boring,but I don't think most people have enough of a concept of what the Finn poets are about to reach this conclusion.

The tower opened the portal and magic happened, as it is prone to at the tower. When faced with disappointment the poets stepped up a notch and pulled out all the stops. I particularly enjoyed Andy Willoughby's performance of Sexy Baz's Birds, with a punky accompaniment (this really is a great poem anyway though, check it out in his collection 'Tough'.) I read first, but to be honest not very well. I wasn't expecting to read, and I hadn't had the advantage of working with the musicians in advance of the gig. I could have read better if I had read poems from Hardcore which I had previously done with Shaun, but I felt that this would be a cop out. Seems that the one advantage of having so few audience is that an intimate space is created, where you can experiment and share new work. Since there seemed little point in plugging the book with so few there, that's what I opted for. So my performance was decidedly average, but I was pleased to get the opportunity to read some of my new poems. I'm still not sure what anyone thought of them (people aren't that good at coming forward to say what they think , and I think my bad performance might have prevented people wanting to say what they thought of the poems, or of course there is the possibility that people just thought the new stuff is shite- which is always what you are gonna have buzzing about in your head at a later date.) (Also, other people's launches aren't good places to read new stuff I suppose, since you're just sort of something people have to sit through before they can see the main turn.) Anyway, it was a good night other than that, and I was pleased to have the chance to try out reading poems I've never read before.

Writing in March

Writing in March

The life story of a porn star sequence has reached its end. This month I have written a couple of poems that were drawing an end to the porn poems set, including a poem about gardening (of all things, quite a surprise to me!), one about Sploosh (there is something wrong with this poem, and I haven’t been able to put my finger on what it is yet), and a final postcard poem. I have also been doing re-writes on the poems I wrote last month, and in research mode, reading about a counterfeit king, Liz Taylor and Marilyn Monroe. I managed to track down a couple of books from America, which don’t seem to be available in this country whatsoever. I read two books about a cheesecake pin-up, and I hope they will help me to write one or two poems that will relate to the porn sequence (they will be about a different character, though still set in America, and in a very different and more innocent era.) I am also reading a book about female criminals, which is sketchy and sensationalist, but may provide one or two names for people I would like to research further at a later date.

Writing in February

There have been times when the gigs got in the way, and I wasn’t able to write all week when the Finns were here. I have been breaking up the research with poetry. It has been very productive, a good mix of research, writing and editing. The Traci Lords research I did came out in some new poems. The process of writing these new poems was interesting to me. For one thing, I made myself write them in chronological order, I don’t know why. But it felt important to do it that way. I wonder if this was because I didn’t want to jump into the more grim subject matter right away, and it was a way to avoid it for a while. I found myself sort of writing from someone else’s point if view, which I have done before, but it seems not so deliberately and intensively, and using language which isn’t even close to my own (dialect, colloquial ways of speech, use of words etc.) There are so many limitations, and a sort of freedom with this, which was interesting. I found myself putting off writing the first sex poem by spending two days writing short poems to scatter throughout the piece, that are sort of a journey.

Then I had to get into the sex stuff and I found it physically draining to write the poems, a new sensation with writing that hasn’t come to me before. Sure, I’ve been tired, or sick of seeing a monitor, but I felt like I had been digging in a field after spending the day writing the sex poems. I knew I didn’t want to go there, and then made myself go there anyway. This leads me to ask why I did that, why I pushed myself to write about something I must find so distasteful, when I don’t have to. For the past year I had been writing with a collection in mind, a publisher already there, and knew I had to get on with writing poems for that collection to complete it. But this time, there is no such external need for the work, which makes the question of why I made myself write something so mentally and physically demanding all the more challenging. I don’t know. The sex poem that came out is the longest poem I have ever written, and yet it seems that there isn’t the option of cutting it, as it doesn’t seem unnecessary, or gratuitous. It surprised me, in dealing with innocence, expectations, a transition, and yes sex, but also love. Love is what surprised me the most. I suspect it is the kind of poem people really wouldn’t want to hear at a reading. It is probably the saddest poem I have ever written, and yet the most tender. Without the length it would seem unredeemable, I had to make it worth it with other things in it beside the acts. I came away from writing the second draft feeling drained, a bit like you do when your blood sugar drops, and had a can of beer to sort of distance the process. I’m amazed writing can do this to me; it’s a new sensation.

A few weeks later I showed the poem to Jo Colley and Kate Fox, they are my new poetry buddies, and we try to meet up now and then to sort of get some feedback and sound out new work. This is so great, it’s hard to find people who will look at your new poems, and even harder to find people you trust to give feedback. I had a feeling of wanting to show them the new poems, but also wanting to drag the sheet out their hands and bury it with this one particular poem. Wanting to show the poem, and not wanting anyone to see it- I think because I knew it was a miserable poem, and I felt guilty for making them go to a miserable place to hear it. As for reading it, in a way I didn’t want to read it, because it was hard to read, hard to keep going when I could hear the silence in the room and sense them really actually listening. There is always that oddness of reading, if you are reading a darker poem, the silence of the audience is almost unbearable. It is lonely to read serious poems, and have that silence around you, you wonder if people are bored, if they think it’s crap, part of you wants to make a joke half way through to get something back. It must be nice to have funny poems to fall back on, to get some reassurance. I think it the silence must be something we should get used to, and respect, but it’s hard when there is always going to be the element of wanting to feel liked. This particular poem seemed to magnify this feeling. I read to them, and we were quiet for what seemed like ages after, though it was probably only a few seconds. I hope they liked the poem, and I am sorry if it is a hard poem to hear. Thing is it feels like a personal poem probably to listen to, even though it is about someone else and uses their voice. I was pleased with poem in a way, though it isn’t one I will ever send out due to its length.

Later in the week, and the one after, I had to continue with the sex poems. This time I had to do research, of buying a porn mag. This was so dreadful to me; I have never bought one before, and sort of felt implicated in the whole industry by doing so. I could have not bought one and guessed I suppose, but it felt like cheating. It took me a week to pluck up the courage, and I ended up putting on a big coat and going to a newsagent near Byker where no one would recognize me in order to do it! This is so silly, I have always thought I am quite open minded, and sure I have seen porn mags before (I house-sat once in my early 20’s and found a big stack of them, quite out in the open, in the house of a friend’s aunty. We were grossed out, but did in fact read them for the whole fortnight, a sort of morbid fascination, a ‘yeah right’ to the letters page, and a ‘yuk, but how are they doing that?’ to the pictures.) I bought lots of other magazines to sort of disguise what I was actually buying, and was very aware of some young student lad in the queue behind me looking at what I was buying as the shopkeeper struggled to find the barcode. All the way home I wondered if he was thinking, yeah, a woman buying porn! When I got home I had to hide the magazine, I have no idea why, and then go back and look at it the next day. I was surprised by my reaction, of feeling so sad, and so yes, shocked. You hit 30 and think nothing will surprise you anymore, and certainly not shock. But I was shocked, shocked at the pictures, and the odd lack of eroticism in the pictures, shocked by what I was seeing, the glossiness, the letters page, and by the captions (one page was artfully called Hairy Russian Twats for god sake- is it just me, or could they have found a less sort for insulting way to describe what they wanted to?) The whole thing was a puzzle I couldn’t solve. In terms of research it is probably the oddest thing I’ll ever do, but also strangely satisfying to find reactions I never knew would be there. Now of course I’m stuck with the damn magazine, I can’t stand to put in the recycling pile incase the men see it and think thereafter that’s the porno house! How sad is that? Do you think it would be better if I put a post-it on the cover stating I bought this strictly in the name of research ?! Partly I am paranoid that one of the recycling men will recycle it in his own way, and that is even worse. I’m wondering what uses I can find for the damn thing, there is an evil side of me that wants to put a stack of Bella’s around it and leave it in the dentists, and a better side that wants to learn how to make handmade paper so I can make some with the thing and write something beautiful on it (and yeah, of course, send letters to nice people on it, like my mum!)

If you have any suggestions of what you would do with my porn mag, please email me them, and I will send the one I like most the magazine (if they so wish!)

Writing in January

In January I spent time reading as research for things, and working on poems I had started at Arvon in December. I had to type them up first and see how they looked, and do some re-writing. Only a couple seem finished, and there are some I will need to go back to. The best of them is a poem called Tap I think. I spent some time thinking about poems I never got far with at Arvon, and finally got round to doing something about the snapshot exercise, which proved to be the most productive exercise of the week. So why was I reluctant to do much of it at Arvon? Seems the exercise was private and didn’t suit that public space. The idea was to write about a photo. I started and wrote two very short poems about photos of me as a child. In the end in January once I had the other things out the way and in the PC I spent some time writing a sequence of these photo poems. All of them are very short. I rarely write about my own early childhood, in fact never. I thought it would be a good way to write about it, quite simply, without bringing much that isn’t in the photo into it, so that there are gaps, things missing, to be figured out, which sort of relate to the child’s viewpoint of lack of judgment and few words. It shaped up not bad, but the title still isn’t there. The title was originally Snapshots before the Ugly Stick, which I quite like as a title, but when I showed them to Jo Colley and Kate Fox they felt that a judgment and awareness is in the title that isn’t in the poem, and I think they have a point. So I still need a title. I spent some time the following week writing a sequence that expands beyond the original, and is a sequence of poems about things you make as a child. It seemed to convey the relationships and things to aspire to as a child, without getting into a god-like voice about it all. They are very simple poems in a way, pared down with a lot cut out. One of them is the first poem that mentions my Dad, I seem to write about my mother and grandmother a lot, but he is conspicuous only by his absence. Maybe this is why I distrust them; some work is like that. The question over is it too simple has no answer. Titles though, they are tricky. Seems that there are poems you know the titles of instantly, and others never seem right.

April 12th 06

April 12^th 06

Last night was the Hydrogen Jukebox. This is really what poetry nights should be, and never are. Hydrogen Jukebox always produces an excellent standard of work, and is a forum that inspires artists to produce new work and take risks. There is a lack of pretension and an atmosphere that is charged, poetry is alive at the Hydrogen Jukebox and you can feel it. Last night was no exception. The night started with Darlo band Too many Units, and then proceeded with Kate Fox’s Hydrogen Jukebox commission “How I learned to stop worrying and love Leonard Cohen”. The piece was a mixture of stand-up and drama, as Fox begins a stand-up act and girls representing her 16 year old self begin to unpick the year she was 16 and in the process deconstruct the comedienne’s persona. The story itself is fascinating, about identity, role models and a dysfunctional family (which include her parents swinging), but more than that is a deeply personal and moving piece which is ambitious and ballsy. The piece swings effortlessly from comedy to drama, and sadness, and brings out a new element in Fox’s performance which we haven’t seen before. The piece may well be about growing up, for those who have seen her perform before it is also clear that this is a piece in which Fox is growing as a performer, taking more chances, including more range, and delving into more adult and at times bitter sweet humour. The piece was directed by Andy Willoughby, and the physicality on stage created humour that both complimented and contrasted with the text. This will not be the last time you see this piece; there is a lot of scope for further development and expansion from this commission (such as drawing out further the different versions of events, and questioning what constitutes truth and memory) and it will go on to surpass its humble origins.

Following the break Bob Beagrie and Kalle Niinikangas launched their new bi-lingual Ek Zuban pamphlet Perkele. Perkele is an old Finnish deity, who became demonized by Christianity (and is now infact a finish curse word.) Kev Howard, Shaun Lennox and Milo Thelwall provided music to accompany both poets, and the result was spectacular. Both poets provided their best performances to date. Beagrie is a true wordsmith who seemed to become possessed by the poems, transporting us to other worlds, that we are not always comfortable in. His poems are lyrical, intense and lively, and are invocations that hold the audience under his spell. Mr Niinikangas followed Bob with a menacing performance of his hard edged urban realist work, in which humour snuck up on you in the most unlikely of places, and was all the stronger for the artists unique dead-pan style.

Later the night offered the song stylings of Shaun Lennox (the Leonard Cohen of Eston)- and the beautiful Rebecca Davison(Harrison?- it was loud in there, and I was straining to hear the intro) who sang like an angel who has fallen to earth. This was the best Hydrogen Jukebox I have been to in a very long time, the night sparked with energy and offered a smorgasboard of North east talent that is second to none (where were all these people when I read in February?! I’m really trying hard not to take these things personally, but at the moment it seems there is nowt like me to clear a room!) As always the night ended with an open mic, which was as eclectic and darn right odd as ever, regulars took the stage including Mr Cabbage- a singer/songwriter who sang his song about failed romance to an 80's synth pop backing track ( including the word y-fronts in the song.) Also I had to witness my worst nightmare, I always have a terrible fear of standing up in front of an audience (so many things could go wrong, I could fart, I could vomit, I could die, or equally as bad my flies could fall, down.) One of the open mic acts got up with flies down, that gradually fell further and further down throughout their act. (I did actually shout out flies, flies, tried to warn them, but since it was me people probably just assumed that I was refering to the imaginary insects crawling round in my brain.) It was terrible, I couldn't look at the stage, and still had to look now and then to keep an eye on the situation. Always always check your flies before going on stage, get button flies if poss.

All good things must come to an end I guess, and it is sad that there are only 3 Hydrogen Jukeboxes remaining. Hydrogen Jukebox has been running for six years, and for the last three years I’ve considered it my reading home. It emerged as one of the few sources of encouragement for me at a time when I just wasn’t reading, and was beginning to give up on writing. It has been the only place I can go to read, and try out new work. It has been the only place I can read certain poems (knowing that this is a unique place that makes no distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow subject matter, poetry is liberated and for once it is all about the words.) I have to get used to the idea of Hydrogen Jukebox not being there, and sort of feel as if it’s the end of my readings era (time to go back in the box.) I’m starting to look at my writing life and worry once I’m back in that box no one will open the lid.

Favourite lines of the evening:

Later it got freezing cold

& I found a refuge

in the roadside toilet

where I slept in the urine of Norwegian lorry-drivers

dreaming of beautiful girl’s shitting

(from Mountains of Toothpaste by Kalle Niinikangas,

in Perkele- Ek Zuban press.)