Clare Best nominated

I'm delighted to see that Clare Best's Excisions, from Waterloo Press, is on the shortlist for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for best first collection. It's a terrific book, and thoroughly deserves to be on there. I should get my act together and finish and post the review of it I've been writing.

Nice to see Waterloo getting some recognition on a shortlist, too - they've got a strong and varied stable of writers, and their books are beautifully produced.

Poetry Bites revisited

I’ve been away in Cardiff for the last three days, so I’ve got a bit behind with what I intended to blog. I caught up with some old friends, I ate a lot, I drank too much, and I did a lot of good birding around Kenfig NNR, Newport Wetlands, Ogmore and Southerndown. The latter two were places we went to on holiday every year when I was a kid (my grandparents lived in Bridgend), so I’ve got a big soft spot for them. I’ll return to them later in the week – they figure in a post about pub signs I've been meaning to write for a while.

But while I remember, I want to talk about last Tuesday’s Poetry Bites, at the Kitchen Garden Café in King’s Heath. Let’s start by saying it’s a great venue – intimate and easy to project to when you’re reading, but not at all cramped. The food’s very nice, too – chips just like my mum used to make.

Most importantly, there was a large and very attentive audience – what more can you ask for as a poet? I read two 15-minute slots, mainly from hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica, but including a few older and newer poems too. I sold quite a few books, and I sat back and enjoyed some really excellent open mic slots, including one young man who delivered a long poem entirely from memory at breakneck speed. Normally, that's not a good thing, but this absolutely demanded such a delivery, and very impressive it was.

I haven't got the dates to hand at the moment (more info is available here), but the March guest will be Ira Lightman, followed by Clare Best in May, both really fine poets. It was actually as quick and easy to get to from Coalville as central Nottingham, so I'll certainly get alongf to future events.

Sussex by the sea

I'm just back from two glorious days in Sussex, reading at the Chiddingly Festival with David Swann, Maureen Jivani and Clare Best. The sun shone, there wasn't so much as a single cloud, the readings were excellent, the people terrific, and I even did some quality birdwatching yesterday.

The first thing to say is that Chiddingly is a wonderful place to read. The venue, the Six Bells, is exactly what an old-fashioned country pub should be, with good food and beer (I can recommend the Harveys Sussex bitter), and an excellent room for the event itself, complete with bizarre but endlessly intriguing decor (you really need to see it).

There was a good-sized, responsive and appreciative audience, the whole thing ran like clockwork, and it was a pleasure to hear three really fine poets. I knew Clare's HappenStance pamphlet Treasure Ground already, but she also read from her just-published Waterloo collection, Excisions, and the poems are outstanding - direct, lucid, and yet constantly surprising, startling even.

David Swann is also with Waterloo - they really have an impressive line-up of poets for a relatively new press - and his collection The Privilege Of Rain is subtitled Time Amongst The Sherwood Outlaws, a reflection of the fact that it draws on his time as writer-in-residence at Nottingham Prison. I think what's most impressive about the poems is that David manages to bring humour and humanity to the most harrowing of situations, without either trivialising anything or allowing his gaze to be anything other than honest and unflinching. The poem he read in which he effectively remakes that old cliche "at the end of the day" was a favourite, and his between-poems banter is worth the admission price alone.

Maureen Jivani's Insensible Heart was shortlisted for the 2010 London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award, and I can see why. The poems she read were often rooted in her day-to-day work as a nurse, but were unafraid to take imaginative flight and consider a much wider perspective, and there's a lovely balance of delicacy and strength.

We all read two sets - one of 15 minutes and one of five - so I did a more general longer set, and a bird-oriented shorter one, both from hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica. The books sold well, and doing a quick stock-take when I got home last night, I found I have only two copies of Troy Town and four of Making The Most Of The Light left. If you want one, now's the time to say.

I'm very grateful to Clare both for inviting me to read, and for putting me up at her lovely home (a stay enlivened by her seven-month-old whippet, Flint), and then I was able to make the most of the glorious Indian summer weather with a walk around Cuckmere Haven, and later near the Long Man at Wilmington. There were warblers and Redstarts dripping from the bushes at the coast, presumably enjoying this sudden heatwave before flying south, and it was the same story further west, at Pagham Harbour and Bosham.

I'm looking forward to reading all three poets' books this weekend, and I'll be writing more about them in the near future. In the meantime, I've got notes for poems to write up - long drives always start me writing.

Words in the Weald

Just a quick reminder that I'll be reading at Poetry in the Pub, as part of the Chiddingly Festival in East Sussex tomorrow night.

It all takes place at the Six Bells, Chiddingly, with doors open at 7.30pm for an 8pm start. Tickets are £7. The other readers are David Swann,whose collection The Privilege of Rain (Waterloo Press, 2010) was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry; and Maureen Jivani, whose book Insensible Heart (Mulfran Press, 2009) was shortlisted for the London New Poetry Award, plus host Clare Best, whose collection Excisions is just out from Waterloo Press. I saw it on Saturday at the Free Verse book fair, and like everything else I've seen from Waterloo so far, it's a thing of beauty. I look forward to reading it.

You can book online here, or call 01825 872 401 (between 7pm and 9pm, or book by post, enclosing a cheque to 'Chiddingly Festival Committee' mailed with SAE to Chiddingly Festival Box Office, Chauntlers, Chiddingly, Lewes, E Sussex BN8 6HD.

Further details on the evening, and the festival generally, are available here.

Chiddingly Festival

At the end of this month, I'm going to be reading at Poetry in the Pub, as part of the Chiddingly Festival, in East Sussex.

It takes place at the Six Bells, Chiddingly, on Wednesday, September 28th, with doors open at 7.30pm for an 8pm start. Tickets are £7.

The other guest poets are David Swann,whose collection The Privilege of Rain (Waterloo Press, 2010) was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry; and Maureen Jivani, whose book Insensible Heart (Mulfran Press, 2009) was shortlisted for the London New Poetry Award. It's all hosted by Clare Best, whose collection Excisions is forthcoming from Waterloo Press this month, and whose HappenStance chapbook Treasure Ground (2009) I can heartily recommend (Clare will also be reading).

You can book online here, or call 01825 872 401 (between 7pm and 9pm, or book by post, enclosing a cheque to 'Chiddingly Festival Committee' mailed with SAE to Chiddingly Festival Box Office, Chauntlers, Chiddingly, Lewes, E Sussex BN8 6HD.

Further details on the evening, and the festival generally, are available here.

Hooray for HappenStance!

Wonderful to get back to the news that HappenStance won this year's Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets. Matthew Stewart has the news here, and although I know HappenStance supremo Helena Nelson wasn't able to attend the awards night, poets D A Prince and Clare Best were there (and their own books are both great examples of the high-quality work the press is publishing).

I hope HappenStance will continue to go from strength to strength - production values are very high, but most crucially, Nell has the knack of unearthing fine poets.