States of Independence - the best yet?

Saturday's States of Independence event at De Montfort University was arguably the best yet - certainly it seemed busier than ever.

I was only able to be there for part of the afternoon, but I did catch readings by Simon Perril and Julia Gaze, promoting their Open House chapbooks. I bought both, and very good they are too - I'll have more to say about them in a later post.

I caught up with plenty of familiar faces from Leicester, Nottingham, Birmingham and further afield - Roy Marshall, Mal Dewhirst, Alan Baker, CJ Allen, DA Prince, Mark Goodwin and Jane Commane among them - and it was nice to meet Ian Parks for the first time.

Oh, and I bought a few more books. A chapbook of translations of TH Parry-Williams from Shoestring Press is excellent, and I also picked up Shoestring's Commons, Nadia Kingsley and David Calcutt's Road Kill, from Fair Acre Press*, and a book of local history, Getting The Coal, which I've been enjoying immensely. Congratulations to all concerned on another superb event.

* Fair Acre also had a gorgeous-looking book, Shropshire's Butterflies, which ought to appeal to the natural historian every bit as much as the poetry reader. Definitely one to add to the must-buy list.

Recent reading

There's an excellent review, over at Roy Marshall's blog, of Maria Taylor's Melanchrini, her debut collection from Nine Arches Press.

In the past week or so, I've read it, Daniel Sluman's Absence has a weight of its own, and C J Allen's At The Oblivion Tea-rooms. Now, I know I'm far from being an impartial observer, given that I'm published by Nine Arches, but I reckon that's a very strong, and varied, trio of collections, the sort of rich vein of form that any press would be very proud of.

I'm putting together a few more thoughts on all three books (I do have Alistair Noon's Earth Records to read, though, and it's a perfect day for reading), but for now, I'll just say that Roy hits the nail squarely on the head about Maria's book.

New at Nine Arches

Nine Arches Press has two new debut collections out now - Melanchrini, by Loughborough poet Maria Taylor, and Absence has a weight of its own, by Cheltenham-based Daniel Sluman. Having heard them both read from the books, I'm looking forward to getting stuck into them, because they're realkly both very distinctive poets.

Meanwhile, over at Gists & Piths, Simon Turner is interviewing another Nine Arches poet, C J Allen, whose At The Oblivion Tea-Rooms was recently published. Regular readers here might recall that I'm a big fan of both Clive's and Simon's poetry, so it's probably no surprise that it's a terrific interview, with a lot of interesting things to say about form, among other things.*

Finally, the next Nine Arches/Crystal Clear Creators Shindig takes place at The Western in Leicester on July 16th - be there!

* Incidentally, I think Clive's reason for wanting to be a painter - "I liked the smell of linseed oil and the way they hardly ever seemed to do anything" - probably sums up my childhood ambition to be a cricketer, and continuing obsession with the game.

Catching up

I've been out of circulation for a few days, so I'm just going over a few things I missed, and that you might have, too.

Monday night's Shindig at The Western, in Leicester, featured the launch of C J Allen's new Nine Arches Press collection, At The Oblivion Tea-Rooms. There's a sample poem from it here at Litterbug (and the New and Selected from Leafe Press that's mentioned there comes highly recommended, too).

Meanwhile, at the HappenStance blog, Helena Nelson has some very interesting things to say about selling books through Amazon. I try to buy direct from presses where I can, or at readings, but I have taken the lazy way out at times.

Finally, my review of Carcanet's An Andrew Crozier Reader is at the Magma blog now - it's a book I reccomend highly.

Derwent Poetry Festival - some thoughts

I was only able to pop into the festival on Saturday afternoon, but I had enough time to see readings by Christopher James, Kathleen Jones, Clive Allen, Susanne Ehrhardt and Jo Bell, as well as to buy a couple more of Templar's beautifully produced books (Clive's collection Violets, and the 2011 anthology, Bliss), and chat with Wayne Burrows and Roy Marshall.

I'm pushed for time, so I won't attempt any genuine review of the readings (they were excellent, though). But here's three thoughts that occurred to me...

1 Introducing one of his poems, To Read The Relationship between the Residents and the Surfers in Newquay, Clive mentioned that he had never surfed, or been to Newquay, but that he saw no reason why that should stand in the way of him writing the poem. Increasingly, that's how I feel. Not that there's anything wrong with facts finding their way into a poem sometimes, but it probably gets a bit overdone, and we probably all know the feeling you get where you try to cram all that research into the poem. Far better to wing it now and then, I think.

2 St Guthlac seems to find his way into contemporary English poetry more than any of his fellow saints, and should be declared the patron saint of English poetry forthwith. He cropped up in one of Christopher James' poems (a really fine one about fen-skaters), I've seen him mentioned in another within the last few weeks, he cropped up in Tom Chivers' How To Build A City, and he was in one of my poems in Troy Town (which, alarmingly, I've completely forgotten the title of, and I haven't got it to hand to check). Guthlac spent a large part of his life as a hermit on the fen island of Crowland, driven half-mad by the isolation, hunger, the ague, the effects of eating hallucinogenic plants, and regular visits from a whole tribe of demons. You can decide for yourself whether that makes him more or less suitable for the post.

3  Clive Allen also, in the introduction to another poem, described poetry as "a complicated way of being ignored". That might be my current favourite definition of poetry.

Derwent Poetry Festival 2011

Having mentioned Clive Allen's poetry yesterday, I received details of this year's Derwent Poetry Festival, held at Masson Mills, Matlock Bath, on November 11th-13th, and noticed that he's reading on the Saturday.

It's a great little festival, run by Templar. I went to the first a few years back, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but have been away for each one since. The diary looks all clear this year, though, so I should make it to the Saturday, at least.

Quite apart from the festival's attractions, and the natural beauty of the Derbyshire countryside, there's the wonderful Scarthin Books just round the corner in Cromford, too. 

Snail Explains

Excellent little discussion here, on the New Walk Magazine website, of CJ Allen's poem Snail Explains. I found myself agreeing with pretty much everything Nicholas Friedman says, and also thinking that one of the things I like most about the poem is that superb opening stanza. I'd be terrified, writing a poem about snails, of struggling to escape the shadow cast by Thom Gunn's towering Considering The Snail, but that first verse marks out its own territory beautifully.

Beeston International Poetry Festival

Beeston, a small town now swallowed up by the urban sprawl of Nottingham, might not seem like the obvious place for a poetry festival, but that's just what's happening there over the next couple of weeks.

Full details are here, with many of the events taking place at the excellent Flying Goose Cafe. At the very least, I'll make it along to the Roy Fisher reading on the 28th, but there are several other events there that look appealing.

A refreshing change

I've recently completed a review for Staple of C J Allen's new e-chapbook, Lemonade, which is available now from The Red Ceilings (it's in the column down the right-hand side).

I was going to post a cut-down version of it here, but I'm far too idle to do that, so you'll have to wait for the next issue of Staple to see exactly what I thought of it. Suffice it to say, though, that it's a great read - simultaneously very accessible yet satisfyingly complex, and very much the sort of coherent piece of work that pamphlets and chapbooks are particularly suited to.

I'd have to say, too, that the e-format didn't really make much difference to my appreciation of it. I printed it off, but ended up doing most of my reading onscreen. I always tend to have a few books on the go at once anyway - one each for the lounge, bedroom and, err, bathroom, and one for work - so this just added another poetry-reading opportunity to that. And it's got to be better than going on Twitter or Facebook every time I fancy a break from work, hasn't it?

Latest Litter

Lots of good stuff over at the latest issue of online magazine Litter, with poetry from the likes of Jane Commane, Nathan Thompson, Kelvin Corcoran, Carrie Etter, Ian Seed and C J Allen.

I particularly liked Jane's poem At Lyveden - the site it refers to figures heavily in the Midlands Revolt of 1607 and the whole tragic story of Captain Pouch.

Also good to see C J Allen's Lemonade there - it's the title piece of a new e-book that I've just downloaded to review.

Shadowtrain 33

As usual, the latest issue of Shadowtrain has plenty worth a few minutes of your browsing time - I've particularly been enjoying CJ Allen's poems.