Telling It Slant

The encouragement to Tell It Slant! has become popular among many CW lecturers and workshop leaders over the last few years, seemingly as a natural extension of the old favourite, Show, Don’t Tell!, but what does it actually mean?

Well, it refers to an approach to writing that veers away from dealing with stuff head-on. Its inherent attraction lies in the opportunity it provides for the poet to explore new perspectives and fresh takes on seemingly tired subjects by coming at them via unusual angles, often omitting bits that would be obvious if treated directly, thus intriguing and challenging the reader. As such, its use is widely seen to be lending the poem extra gravitas and depth.

However, there are also consequent risks in its deployment. One is the accusation that the poet is being wilfully obtuse, frustrating the reader, playing a pointless game by holding back information, the absence of which creates the false impression of extra layers to the poem that actually don’t exist. And another is its tempting propensity for enabling emotional shortcuts that skirt round the potential core of the poem.

From my perspective, Tell It Slant! is useful as a weapon in a creative armoury. However, its overuse in contemporary poetry as an all-encompassing method leads poets down a blind alley, causing many poems to fizzle out before they can take their reader on a journey. And for my money, that journey is where poetic truth is found.

Five Reasons...

Do you still need a reason to read Whatever You Do, Just Don't?! Well, Andy Hopkins has generously (and with great insight) written at length on his blog about five good reasons for doing so. You can find out what they are by following this link!

The undercutting of everything that came before, Richie McCaffery’s Skail

While maintaining many characteristic traits of his poetry, such as the portrayal of relationships and the human significance of objects, all within the context of condensed lyric snapshots, Richie McCaffery’s new pamphlet, Skail (New Walk Editions, 2025), also offers its readers a glimpse into the new routes that his writing is exploring.

To start with, there’s his abandonment of the first person in much of the collection, many of the poems referring to a ‘you’ and a ‘he’. This decision on McCaffery’s part not only generates greater distance between the poet and his characters, but also highlights a fresh filter of external observation.

This above-mentioned use of reportage relates to a constant questioning and doubting of certainties that runs through the pamphlet. Of special interest is McCaffery’s repeated use of specific words. For instance, ‘but’ crops up on no less than thirteen occasions in these twenty pages of poems, while ‘though’ appears eight times. What’s more, they’re employed together in certain poems, one after the other, as in the closing stanza to the title poem…

But the bulk of his ash was left to her, and went
headfirst into the remains of the vegetable bed.
And though it was a wet night, the dust cloud of him
hovered under the streetlamp, as if getting its bearings.

At several points throughout the collection, ‘but’ acts as a hinge, starting a last line or a final stanza, just like in the above example, indicating a change in tone as McCaffery homes in on the core of his inspiration. And then in the poem’s concluding clause, ‘as if’, another of McCaffery’s favoured turns of phrase, also kicks in with a leap that lends the poem an extra layer.

When looking at this quatrain in depth, it becomes clear to the reader that those three devices (‘but’, ‘though’ and ‘as if’) all undercut each other in turn. Absolutes no longer exist in vital and linguistic terms. Supposedly modest and clear-cut words suddenly take on unexpected new ramifications.

This additional depth of nuance is to be savoured by any reader, but especially by McCaffery aficionados. Skail evokes the undercutting of everything that came before it, hinting at riches to come in his future writing, a significant landmark on his continuing poetic journey.

The Madrid Review is now available...

The new issue of The Madrid Review is now available for download via a link on the main page of their website (see here). It includes lots of excellent original poetry, plus my article titled ‘La Poesía de la Experiencia in Spain, from the 1990s to the present day’. You can read it in full in the journal itself, but here's the first paragraph as a taster...

Literary terms and labels often shift in meaning over the years, and La Poesía de la Experiencia in Spain is a prime example. Its connotations have changed over the last thirty years with a focus on the evolution of two contemporaries, Luis García Montero (born in Granada in 1958) and Karmelo C. Iribarren (born in San Sebastián in 1959). Rather than invoking a changing of the generational guard, we’ll now look at how the reputations of these two older poets have developed...

‘One of the best Scottish poets of his generation’...?

My short essay on Gerald Mangan's poetry is now up at Wild Court. You can read it in full by following this link, though here's a sample to whet your appetite...

Thirty-five years have passed since the publication of Waiting for the Storm. Will it remain the sum of Gerald Mangan’s poetic output? Is it sufficient to warrant a major reputation? Is Douglas Dunn in his endorsement justified in stating that “quite simply he is one of the best Scottish poets of his generation”...?

Refreshing received notions, Daniel Hinds' New Famous Phrases

With the publication of his first full collection, New Famous Phrases (Broken Sleep Books, 2025), Daniel Hinds has confirmed that he’s very much an outlier among his contemporaries on the U.K. poetry scene. In fact, many might label him ‘A Poet’s Poet’.

What does that term mean in the context of Hinds’ writing? Well, to start with, there are numerous mentions of other poets in this collection, often accompanied by quotes and references to book titles. This indicates that its target audience is already poetry-savvy. New Famous Phrases doesn’t feel like a suitable entry point for general readers who believe poetry might not be for them. On many occasions, they’d be left to wonder how much they were missing due to having no prior knowledge of all those names. And even experienced readers of the genre are sometimes forced to guess that their own deficits may be hindering the deciphering of a literary code.

But what about the poems themselves? Well, to start with, the first letters of all their lines are capitalised. Apart from providing a harder line ending, this decision is a signal of intent, a pointer that they are not only anchored in the canon, but drinking from a very specific set of its wells.

Throughout the collection, Hinds’ invocation of the power of emblematic words is of special interest. He’s always aware of their allusions, connotations and ramifications, as in the closing couplet to ‘The Fifth Season’…

We will stand in the sand and glass of the broken
Timepiece and ask it to flow.

This poem offers us a terrific example of Hinds’ method at its best, marrying tradition with contemporary concerns (about climate change in this case), taking received notions and renewing them.

By taking a step back from everyday experience and viewing it anew via an esoteric literary filter so as to understand it better, he’s reminding us that other poetries are still possible in the contemporary landscape. As such, New Famous Phrases is a courageous book. It takes real guts for a poet to plough their own furrow in a first full collection, and Daniel Hinds is to be congratulated on his achievement.

The commercial life of a full collection

Judging by the social media feeds of many significant poets and prominent publishers, there seems to be a tacit admission that they both believe a full collection's commercial life pretty much comes to an end on the day it's launched. Or at most, the book's life is drawn out till the appearance of any reviews a few weeks or months down the line, never again to be mentioned in commercial terms.

This attitude is patently leading to a lack of medium-term sales. A full collection needs exposure over a period of time so as to enter into a potential reader's consciousness. From my own experience, for instance, I've witnessed the gradual growth of a vibe around a book if a continued effort is made to explain and sample it. I've personally sold over forty copies of Whatever You Do, Just Don't (HappenStance Press, 2023), my second full collection, so far this year, a major chunk of them via social media, even though the book is now eighteen months old. But the most striking thing is that this interest has also generated a synergy with my 2017 first full collection, The Knives of Villalejo, which has also contributed a further twenty copies to my sales figures.

The above-mentioned story leads me to believe that a full collection's commercial life is actually as long as the poet and/or publisher wish to make it. By immediately moving on to the next creative project, poets lose out on readers for their previous work. And by concentrating on driving a constant churn of new titles, publishers miss out on sales. Mind you, a further question in many cases might be whether their focus is more on funding than on shifting units.

In summary, readers are our lifeblood and we should never turn our backs on them. And in that same vein, (plug, plug, plug!), you can get hold of a signed copy of Whatever You Do, Just Don't by dropping me an email at the address that appears in my blogger profile! Thus contributing to prolonging its life even further! I look forward to hearing from you, etc, etc, etc...!