On your marks, get set, POETRY! No sooner than we break for summer – I’m back in my poetry/sorting out the house skin! There is a certain bliss attached to life without an alarm clock, the way the mind works more fluidly if you haven’t forced it out of dreamtime too soon. That said, of course my natural body-clock does not realise we’ve finished and is still waking me up at 6 AM!
To be fair the diary has been pretty fully booked over the past few weeks. I am limbered up and ready! So far my notebook has two workshops in it from this summer and I am looking forward to having an open enough mind for writing, finally working on my 2nd manuscript (whilst re-submitting the 1st) and getting organised to enjoy the final quarter of the year (and perhaps the rest of my life) in a tidy house! I may even get my office space before Christmas! Which is great as my contract completed and I am back to a sporadic freelance lifestyle.
My first workshop was with Red Earth Arts (REA) and the wonderful Sara Jane Arbury, it resulted in 3 draft poems a couple of which I am happy to work on.
It was a pure delight to spend my first holiday morning in a virtual room of poets, some of whom I have come to know well since Lockdown.
The 2nd day of my holiday I attended a workshop by Sean Lionadh. I didn’t know what to expect (which is always exciting). It is part of a series (the creative non-fiction happened before I finished work) and the theme is centred around the annual competition for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (SMHAF) which happens in October.
The Poetry workshop will be led by Sean Lìonadh, a poet, writer and filmmaker from Glasgow, known for his visual poem Time for Love which reached millions of people online, won a 2019 Royal Television Society award and was translated into five languages. It also inspired a Ted talk and led to the publication of his first poetry collection, Not Normal Anymore. His short film Too Rough screened at over 90 international festivals, winning over 30 awards including a BAFTA Scotland, BIFA and Grand Jury Prize at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival in 2022.
The Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival © 2023
It was a hard workshop to begin with (a Venn diagram was involved – we use them for assessment at work and as anyone in the profession will know we have been neck deep in statistics and results since May), so it took all my strength to stay with it. When people shared their Venn’s though… oh, my. Such bravery and vulnerability. With Art or the Arts in the centre of it all.
We then went on to look at some of Sean’s work – both in film and poetry before using his steps to create Revolution poems of our own.
I had no idea at the beginning of the exercise what would come out! But a lot did. I need to unpack it and work on it – especially as it is a little ranty. But the bones are good.
It was a wonderfully intense couple of hours and I have a book filled with notes.
~ It has since been edited with support and is now an almost completely different poem. I spent some time re-researching my facts as the time I was writing about was a few years ago now. It rested for days not weeks, I will now leave it a while before I assess whether the new poem is an improvement. It has been hacked rather than whittled. I feel that’s a good thing. Time will tell.
It has been a while since a Verve Reading. When I saw this event I was excited that it would be in my holiday. Verve Poetry Press continues to go from strength to strength and this reading was a great mix of poetry. And all poets were new discoveries for me.
Dide started by telling us about the collection, the structure, meaning and themes covered. Gems like this are always intriguing to me and I think, valuable to an audience who may be hearing the poems for the first time. I love that there is a poem you can create from reading the footnotes.
talking about her collection MAKING SENSE how it is structured and what it means. Themes covered. April release. The poem you can find by reading the footnotes. MAKING SENSE was released in April and you can find more information below.
Dide’s poems are packed with strong lines, they are cosmic, surreal and poignant: The Professor of loneliness // a murder of messages // heartbreak has its own hysteria – were particularly striking. Some of her poems on body chimed with those in my current manuscript, I was interested in what rested alongside them.
Find out more here.
Rushika Wick also endorsed MAKING SENSE.
© Verve Poetry Press 2023
Tim Tim Cheng was next, originally from Hong Kong and currently living in the UK, her work plays with language, her love of language rises from her wordplay. There’s a lot of popular culture and clever depth in her poems too. And Sarah Howe endorsed her pamphlet! I love Sarah Howe’s work.
Her pamphlet Tapping at Glass came out with Verve in February – details of the book below.
Some of the poems she shared were about the body, displacement, things which enraged her, she also uses Chinese mythology. Notes to Impossibility and How do you spell (in Chinese)? are fabulous. Her work contains striking lines: what if words sweep me away more than housing me // when you’re gone I grow inwards like bark // losing track of time in the library of everything.
Find out more here.
© Verve Poetry Press 2023
Then we had a reading from Golnoosh Nour, from her pamphlet Impure Thoughts, which was published in November 2022.
The poems in this pamphlet are tenacious and feisty, a focus on bisexuality and body desire. There’s woven narrative and event after event in the poems shared. She bravely shared some new work too.
Her poetry is energetic and forceful. Some brilliant lines:
sit close to you in a lack lustre dinner party without anyone noticing // your obsession with analysis hurts my instinct //
Golnoosh Nour has an extremely strong voice.
Find out more here.
© Verve Poetry Press 2023
And finally Ana Seferovic read from MATERINA, which was the newest release as it came out this month.
MATERINA is described as a poem novel. Based on being an outsider and collective trauma it builds like a dark fairy tale. Ana Seferovic treated us to several extracts. An absorbing read (listen). Interesting occurences with the language translated between Serbian and English and English to Serbian. We arrive in a no-mans-land. Incredibly moving and some hefty lines:
// and her mother bringing the truth from the daylight // giant shining silver fish // that numbness was all we knew // truth was broken by a bullet in the peace // strangely wrapped geometries beneath my feet // and in that rupture the bird sings //
Ana’s poetic & philosophical narrative is incredible. Spellbinding.
Find out more here.
© Verve Poetry Press 2023
Phynne Belle is a poet I met online back in the Lockdown, she runs series/events online but is based in the US so the time difference means that I haven’t attended many. She also comes along to some of the UK events I frequent. So when I saw she was offering a night (day for her) wordplay, I couldn’t resist.
The workshop was with David Leo Sirois. I haven’t had quite as much fun with words since a workshop with John Hegley, or back in 2020 when I had the delight of discovering the Oulipo* poets. In case you haven’t had the pleasure yet…
*Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (Workshop for Potential Literature), a group of writers and mathematicians formed in France in 1960 by poet Raymond Queneau and mathematician François Le Lionnais.
I had a great time, it was a lovely group to workshop with and included a number of familiar faces I used to see often during Lockdown. It was good to reconnect, By the end it was a little late for my newly-holidayed brain – but I have a couple of poems I can work on and some exercises that would be good to use with a first coffee as a warm up sometime in the future.
I attended the launch of The Alchemy Spoon Issue 10. It was a great reading and exciting to hear a range of new (to be) voices alongside familiar ones. Great to be part of an enthusiastic audience, some great Guest Editor tips from Tamsin Hopkins. Some poets couldn’t make the reading but had sent videos, which I was glad about as they delivered superb poems. I was going to list all the poets, but I can go one better than that as I just discovered it has been uploaded so you can have a watch/listen too.
I’ve had a couple of days away from the computer, racked up hours sorting – lots of recycling and bag emptying, sorted a box for charity and have put aside (yes, there is a bit of a side to put) a bag of books I hope some youngsters in our family will enjoy.
I finished working the Drama job for the summer, made a trip to the library (borrowed a lot of kickstart material) and even managed to see family for lunch, which was a celebration in memory of a very loved and important person.
Mr G. is taking a break too so we are catching up with each other. And I FINALLY made some submissions!
awritersfountain 