Saboteur Awards 2014

The winners of these were announced over the weekend at a book fair and event in Oxford (I think), and Nine Arches Press, who have published my last two collections, enjoyed a very successful night, winning the Most Innovative Publisher award.

They also came runner-up in two more categories - in Best Anthology, for The Apple Anthology, edited by Yvonne Reddick and George Ttoouli, and in Best Magazine, for Under The Radar. Now of course, I would say this, but hooray for Nine Arches!

Great, too, to see Michelle McGrane's Against Rape project win Best One-Off - thoroughly deserved recognition for some really important work.

The awards generally, though, deserve praise, for shining a light on publishers, poets and events that might otherwise go unrewarded. Liars' League, Sidekick Books' Riotous and WN Herbert's Murder Bear are among them, but there are lots more.

Against Rape revisited

Just a reminder that Michelle McGrane's Peony Moon blog is playing host to this remarkable protest against rape and sexual violence. As well as a wealth of powerful and thought-provoking poetry, there's also an extensive listing of international resources for rape, domestic violence and abuse support.

Before you start reading, please read the introduction below...

Before the reader embarks on reading these poems, the editors stress that some content may be found disturbing, troubling or even distressing. Sexual violence is an emotive subject, and some writing about rape is as exploitative as the crime itself. Such writing in the context of politics, the media or literature can constitute a “double violation” for the rape survivor who lives the experience for a second time: the experience of “triggering”. Encounters with sexual violence as a subject for literature demand caution, care and respect, but an interrogation of “rape myths” is necessary. The poems selected break the silence of the status-quo, which defines sexual violence as a freak event rather than part of a dominative “rape culture”. This protest is the beginning of a conversation that seeks recuperation, healing and redress.

Against Rape

Rather than launch into a long preamble about what's involved, I'm just going to recommend that you click on this link to Michelle McGrane's Peony Moon blog.

It deserves the widest possible attention, so I won't apologise for linking to it again and again over the coming weeks. I'm in awe of what Michelle and the poets involved have managed to do in making a such a strong and resonant statement.

The Elephant Tests at Peony Moon

My new collection, The Elephant Tests, is currently featured over at Michelle McGrane's wonderful blog, Peony Moon. There are six poems to read - Ganesha, Svalbard, Patsy Parisi's Blues, Red Centre Blues, Always, and Seeing The Elephant.

It's an honour to be on such a consistently fine site again - I've discovered the work of more new poets (to me, at least) through it than anywhere else. At the moment, I'm greatly enjoying Alvin Pang's When The Barbarians Arrive, recently featured there, and well worth investigating further.

Helen Ivory at Peony Moon

I make no apology for sending you in the direction of Michelle McGrane's fine blog Peony Moon, for the second time in a couple of weeks.

The latest post is this remarkably honest and enlightening interview with Helen Ivory on the writing of her new Bloodaxe collection, Waiting For Bluebeard. The specifics are fascinating, but there's also a lot there that applies to the whole creative process more generally.

Alvin Pang at Peony Moon

Michelle McGrane's blog Peony Moon offers a constant stream of the best new poetry out there, so it's well worth checking daily. Today, it features Singapore poet Alvin Pang, whose Arc collection When The Barbarians Arrive is out now. You can read four poems from the book here.

I like the look of that a lot - I'll be ordering it later. I've been reading a lot of older, 'back catalogue' poetry recently, so it's time to get back to the here and now.

Giles Goodland at Peony Moon

Michelle McGrane features so many excellent poets and collections on her wonderful blog Peony Moon that it would be a major achievement to buy and/or read a tenth of them, but this one, Giles Goodland's The Dumb Messengers, is going to be must.

As a couple of the reviewers quoted there suggest, Goodland's a poet who often makes the tired old mainstream/innovative debate look rather redundant, as well as one who's, above all, entertaining. I look forward to reading it.

Andy Brown at Peony Moon

I really enjoyed reading the new work by Andy Brown posted at Michelle McGrane's superlative Peony Moon - the poems are from his new Salt collection, The Fool and the Physician.

He's one of those poets who seems effortlessly able to write out of a number of different traditions and 'schools', and while I suppose you can't always trust blurbs, in this case you should! Luke Kennard, John Burnside and Lee Harwood all have good things to say about him, and I'm not going to argue with a triumvirate like that.

Anyway, Andy's Fall of the Rebel Angels: Poems 1996-2006 is a book I go back to a lot, so I look forward to reading the new collection.

Best British Poetry 2011 - a sample

I've not got round to posting anything from Salt's Best British Poetry 2011 yet, but over at Michelle McGrane's Peony Moon today, there are poems from Kayo Chingonyi, Abigail Parry and Jon Stone, plus links to them reading the poems. Enjoy...

An interview with Michelle McGrane

Michelle McGrane's third collection, The Suitable Girl (Pindrop Press), was one of the highlights of the last few months for me, a strong, unified piece of work whose poems utilise a wealth of evocative detail to build their many layers. I got the chance to talk to her about it and poetry more generally just ahead of the Cape Town launch of the book, and she also shared a couple of the poems from the collection.

The Suitable Girl feels like a very unified piece of work – was it conceived that way, or did you find your writing leading in a certain direction?

I’d written a few persona poems when The Suitable Girl, the title of a previous poem, kept reappearing and waving at me from the wings, trying to catch my attention. At that stage I knew that I wanted to explore the idea of societal expectations in relation to women and I thought that the irony in the title might work for a collection of poems about ‘unsuitable’ women, women who had strayed from the paths of convention. Once this consciously became the bridging theme it was relatively easy to continue in the direction I’d envisioned the collection taking, although in the three years of writing The Suitable Girl I removed and added poems to the extent that only a couple of the earliest survived.

With a project like this, then, do you actively research the personae involved, or is it a case of accumulating knowledge about them over a long period of time to the point that you have to write the poem?

I try to discover as much as I can about the character and the period through biographies, novels, films, art and the Internet. The more I immerse myself in the character’s life and surroundings, the easier I find writing the poem. In a way, I imagine it might be similar to preparing for an acting role where you need to become the character in order to portray her. As a hoarder of miscellany, I find research endlessly fascinating, sometimes to the point where I have to steer myself back to the poem before I lose sight of it.

Could you tell us a little bit about your writing processes? Do you revise and redraft a lot? And do you have any particular conditions/rituals that need to be in place before you can write?

Until I have some idea of where the poem is heading and what form it’s taking I tend to draft in longhand on lined paper with a Pilot Fineliner. There’s something very seductive and satisfying about making loops and curls in black ink on clean white paper (and for me, the finer the pen tip the better).

When the poem is sufficiently shaped I transfer it onto my computer where I continue drafting and editing. In the early stages of a poem’s creation I need to be alone and I work best in silence. I’ve always envied poets who are able to write while listening to music but I find music distracting.

I don’t carry a notebook so occasionally when I’m at a café or restaurant I’ll write notes or a couple of lines on receipts and tickets found in my wallet; I tear pages out of my spiral bound logbook and scribble while I’m waiting for the traffic lights to turn green on my way to work.

Do you keep all the drafts of a work, even once you've started writing onto the computer? I heard Paul Farley talk about this recently, and he was saying that he keeps printouts of every draft. I sort of envy that, but I'd be terrified of being buried beneath a wall of paper.

An environmentally friendly alternative to keeping printouts of every draft might be to save them in a folder on a memory stick but, no, I don't keep every draft.

I can honestly say I've never read a poetry collection that's made me quite as hungry as The Suitable Girl did! It's a very sensuous book generally, but especially where taste and smell are concerned, and I thought you used them both very evocatively in a way many poets ignore. Are they always such a focus of your poetry?

Well, it depends what the poem requires. Thirteen Ways with Figs, Bertha Mason Speaks and The Remise of Marie Antoinette, aged 14 are more sensuous than the poems about my father's death. I think the senses provide a direct route to the reader's imagination and that by invoking them he or she can be transported from the comfort and familiarity of an armchair to undiscovered worlds.

Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses (Vintage, 1990) is a book I'd recommend to writers of all genres. She suggests that "Our several senses, which feel so personal and impromptu … reach far beyond us. They're an extension of the genetic chain that connects us to everyone who has ever lived; they bind us to other people and to animals, across time and country and happenstance. They bridge the personal and the impersonal, the one private soul with its many relatives, the individual with the universe, all of life on earth."

Moving away from the collection a minute, I wondered what your opinions are (as a very web-savvy poet, and one who's able to look at the UK scene from the outside) on the way the internet is changing poetry. My own experience is almost wholly positive - I think the internet has exposed me to the writing of poets I'd never have come across otherwise - but I wonder too whether it's breaking down some of the tribal divides that used to exist.

I think the Internet has opened up the world to poets not only in terms of having the opportunity to read work one might never have come across and being able to interact with writers living on other continents but because of the news, resources and information at one's fingertips. I really don't feel qualified to comment on tribal divides except to say that from what I've observed the virtual community is accessible to anyone who has an Internet connection and shows an interest in poetry.

It's probably the question poets get tired of being asked, but are there any particular poets you constantly return to for inspiration?

Louise Glück and Margaret Atwood.

Do you enjoy the whole process of getting out there to do readings to promote a book, and do you find the audience response feeding back into your next project? And is there any prospect of any UK readings somewhere down the line?

It’s encouraging and humbling when people attend readings and I particularly appreciate when, at the end of an evening, someone takes the time to tell me why a certain poem means something to them. Still, I’m always more comfortable at my desk than in the limelight. As years go by, being the centre of attention seems less important, less real to me, than creating and writing.

I have good friends in England so, at this stage, I’d say the prospect of a few UK readings down the line is fairly good. I’ll keep you posted.

Bonsai

Finally, I was free to disappear

the day my husband

brought the young brush cherry home.

He settled her on the stand

between the firethorn and crab apple,

then mended the mossy wooden fence

along the property boundaries.

I knew she was different

by her tapering trunk,

glossy, red foliage,

heavy lower branches

and well-distributed roots.

Oh, she was ornamental enough.

He’d always had an eye for potential.

Through the bedroom curtain,

I watched her peel twenty years off his age.

He couldn’t keep the smile from his face,

spent the evening kneeling in the garden,

singing green heart notes

to her sprouting, elliptic leaves.

No more fingering,

pinching, pruning, bleeding,

every branch and twig wired,

brown and flexible, bent to the shape

of his fingers and thumbs.

Waking in the early morning, I left him

wrapped in dreams of sweet, red flesh,

the sunlight glinting off my node scars.

The Escape Artist

In our three-month acquaintance, Faolán was known throughout circus rings as the Lord of the Fleas. Faolán means ‘little wolf’. He was a hairy wee beastie. Agile, a born entertainer and ambitious to boot. Nothing short of global domination would satisfy the Lilliputian star. From tenth generation Saratov Circus stock on his paternal side, his mother was Muirne Mac Nessa, the Irish siphonaptera racing champion. People journeyed from as far as Argentina and the Macau Peninsula to marvel at his mesmerising chariot act, dazzling tightrope performance, virtuoso cannon routine and death-defying fire dance.

There was no one to blame but myself when he ran off with the ringmaster’s silver weimaraner. I should have suspected something was amiss. He stopped feeding when the laughing, long-haired bitch sashayed past his trailer, refused to turn cartwheels as I greeted him from behind the magnifying glass. Now, I’m training aerial silk artistes. Of course, it’s not the same. My heart’s no longer in the hyperbole. Does he miss the good times, he spotlight, the smell of roast chestnuts and candyfloss, the cheering crowds? I sleep with his gold-trimmed tophat and tails, his diminutive whip, in a snuffbox beside my bed.

Michelle McGrane lives in Johannesburg and blogs at Peony Moon. Her collection The Suitable Girl is published by Pindrop Press in the UK and Modjaji Books in South Africa.

 

The Suitable Girl, by Michelle McGrane

While I was away, Michelle McGrane's third collection, The Suitable Girl, was launched by Pindrop Press. There are some sample poems from the book, and details of how to buy it, here.

I'll be reviewing it in due course, and hopefully featuring some poems from it and an interview with Michelle.

hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica at Peony Moon

There are four poems from my new collection featured over at Michelle McGrane's splendid Peony Moon today, along with details of Sunday's launch event at the Jam Cafe in Nottingham, with David Morley, Robin Vaughan-Williams and Sarah Jackson.

Much more on the book (it's at this point I realise I need to think of a shortened version of the title) later in the week...

Poems at Peony Moon

I'm delighted to have three poems - Gabble Ratchet; Wader Flock, Thornham Harbour; and The sea at Ashby de la Zouch - published over at Peony Moon, Michelle McGrane's fine webzine.

I've also got three - Summer Breeze; Dotterel; and Windjammers - in the first issue of New Walk, a new Leicester-based literary magazine. There's also work from Tom Leonard, Andrew Motion, CJ Allen, Rob Mackenzie, Hilary Menos, Jonathan Taylor, Leontia Flynn and Mark Ford, among others, some good (and satisfyingly lengthy) reviews, and a letter from Alison Brackenbury to Wilfred Owen.

The magazine launch takes place at the Library Lecture Theatre, University of Leicester, on November 11th. Alice Oswald will be reading, along with Grevel Lindop and myself.

Troy Town at Peony Moon

My collection, Troy Town, is currently featured over at Michelle McGrane's wonderful blog Peony Moon. There are four poems from the book, plus some info on how to get hold of it. I'm very grateful to Michelle for giving the book some attention - have a browse through her blog's archives to find all manner of fine poets featured in the past.

Ouroboros Review

Issue Three is out now - follow this link to have a good browse. I reckon that's as well presented an online journal as there is, and the content is good too. So far I've not started on the poetry itself, but Michelle McGrane's interview with John Siddique is a really good read.