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...!

On the cover of the Madrid Review...

Pleasantly surprised to see my name on the cover of this gorgeous object. And the contents are excellent too...!

The second half of the Poetry Bath interview

The second half of Siân Thomas' interview with me for the Poetry Bath podcast is now available for your listening pleasure! Here's the link - I hope you enjoy it!.

In The Poetry Bath!

Here’s the first half of my conversation with Siân Thomas for her podcast ‘The Poetry Bath’. Siân's an excellent interviewer and made me think afresh about my own poetry. I do hope you enjoy it...!

A poem in Nimrod Journal

I'm chuffed to have a poem in the new issue of Nimrod. It's my first publication in the U.S., and in a significant journal to boot. Thanks to Boris Dralyuk, the editor, for selecting my work. Here's a pic of the cover...

Relevance vs Irrelevance

If a poet believes they're being sidelined or deemed irrelevant by supposed gatekeepers, they might feel tempted to rail against the perceived slights in public, wailing into a vacuum, trying to punch up or out, but only landing on their own jaw.

I'd suggest they might well be better off putting their grievances to one side, using their time to write stuff that's actually relevant to a potential readership...!

A game of poetic Chinese whispers

I've reviewed Anna Crowe's translation of Pedro Serrano's The Conjurer for The Friday Poem. Here's the opening paragraph...

The act of translation involves the need to resolve ambiguities or ambivalences that were intentionally left open in the original, just as it forces the loss of connotations that cannot be replaced on a like-for-like basis. For some translators, this process is drenched in frustration, but for others, it’s a creative challenge, the chance to generate a new entity that simultaneously does its utmost to respect the source. And on this occasion, we’re lucky to find that Anna Crowe is the translator of Pedro Serrano’s new collection, The Conjurer (Arc Publications, 2024) as her method firmly falls into the second category. Crowe’s considerable experience in translating the likes of Joan Margarit (from Catalan) and Juan Forcano (from Castilian Spanish), both also published by Arc, is here brought to bear on a selection from Pedro Serrano’s three published collections in Mexican Spanish...

If you'd like to read the review in full, it's available via this link.

A poem from Martin Ferguson's Stone Age Howl

I'm delighted to be able to showcase today a poem from Martin Ferguson's latest pamphlet, Stone Age Howl (Dreich Press, 2024).

The poem I've chosen is titled ‘Fugitives’. It's especially interesting because of its delicate layers, starting with the title, which seems to refer to the protagonists but also hints at the passing of time itself, a theme’s that’s pivotal to the poem as a whole. A mention of grandparents nods at the passing of a generational baton, as encapsulated by the children’s use of rusted, ageing skates. And then there’s the filter of memory: this poem takes place in the past and the narrator’s perspective is of an adult who’s no longer a child. It’s an implicit invitation for us to reflect on our own lives, the specific rendered universal. I hope you enjoy it...

Fugitives

Small window in the winter
of English winters, when we knew
that conditions chance aligned,
to hold the weight of our escapes.

And we knew the place,
that the ice would not wait,
we made the trip to silvered field,
we tied them on, ready to wield

those heavy blunted clunking clogs,
would make us feel as high as sprites,
the brown old leather ankle boots,
their metal blades with flecked rust bites

had seen better snowbound seasons
on our grandparents' quick heels.
Back upon the glaze, animals transformed,
how they still could dance and reel

make our growing bones buzz and sing,
and race and speed on frozen range,
then we were their ghosts–
Souls flying free over flooded plains.

(First published in The Poetry Village 2020)

Relearning the collection

When putting a manuscript together, a poet and their editor (if such an entity still exists!) work together on synergies, grouping and flow, on how poems establish dialogues with each other on the page. However, once the book's been published and the poet starts giving readings from it, a whole new process begins, in which they have to relearn the collection from the perspective of different audiences. 

What do I mean by this term? Well, I'm referring firstly to finding out which poems work in public and which fall flat, which work on the page but not when read aloud. And secondly, there's the question of how to introduce them: not too much, not too little, not a paraphrasing or spoiling of the poem as a whole but just enough information to facilitate entry when the audience hears it for the first time.

Speaking from my own personal experience, I reckon this process takes me about ten readings to master from every new book before I reach a sweet spot. And even then, I find myself tweaking my set according to the make-up of the audience, while it's also important never to get bored or stuck in a rut of always reading the same poems, though two or three so-called signature pieces simply have to be included!

The aim, of course, is to launch the poems on umpteen new journeys inside other people's minds, thus encouraging them to purchase the book and carry those poems off with them afterwards, turning listeners into readers. And readers are worth their weight in gold for any poet!

Three readings in the next few days...

Right, so a heads-up in case you can make any of the three readings I've got coming up in the next few days...

...the first one is at Faversham Literary Festival on Saturday, though the issue is that their website currently says my event has sold out (see here). Then I'll be the guest poet for the South Downs Poetry Festival in Chichester on Wednesday (see here), followed by a reading in Cowden Pound on Thursday, as per the following poster. It would be great to see you at any of these events. And if you make it along, please do come up and introduce yourself...!

The use of abstract nouns in contemporary poetry

First off, the point of departure for this post is the premise that no part of language should be off-limits or banned for poets. Writing is tough enough without forsaking a chunk of the toolbox.

However, there are a few lexical elements that seem fraught with danger. One obvious example is adverbs, which CW tutors are notoriously wary of their students employing. I actually (sic) love them!

Another is the use of abstract nouns, which feel far more troublesome to my mind. Why? Well, because they can mean so many things to so many individuals, social groups and nationalities, even within a single language. Let’s take the example of freedom. Its connotations would be hugely different for a Remainer or a Brexiteer, for instance! When a poet uses this word, they lose control over the effects that their choice of language may have on the reader.

And of course, once we get into the art of translation, this problem deepens even further. For example, la democracia in Spanish necessarily becomes democracy in English. But its baggage for a Spaniard who lived through la transición a la democracia (following Franco’s dictatorship) is very different from its multitude of meanings for certain English speakers from specific points in the political spectrum (need I say more?!). This is one key reason why translating an abstract-heavy poem is a huge ask.

So where am I headed? Towards two main conclusions. The first is that I’m very uncomfortable with poems packed with abstract nouns that all lead to so many potential ramifications beyond the poet’s own interpretations of them. And secondly, there’s definitely an opportunity for poets to play with those very issues within a poem, though I do feel the focus is best placed on exploring a limited set of abstracts in one go. Too many, and the reader inevitably becomes disorientated.

But that’s enough of my opinions. What about yours? What’s your approach to the use of abstract nouns in contemporary poetry…?

Forthcoming on Cortázar...

My article on Julio Cortázar's poetry is forthcoming in Issue Three of the Madrid Review, out on 14th February...

Three readings in February

I've now got three in-person readings lined up for my trip over to the U.K. in February... The first of them is at the Faversham Literary Festival on 22nd Feb. I'll be appearing alongside Christopher Horton and Mat Riches. The event starts at 4.30 p.m. and the venue is the Guildhall. My second reading, meanwhile, is in Chichester as part of the South Downs Poetry Festival. I'll be the Guest Poet at the New Park Centre on 26th February, kicking off at 7.30 p.m.. And last but not least, I'll be the guest poet in Cowden Pound in 27th February. The venue on this occasion is the Queens Arms Pub, beginning at 6.30 p.m.. It would be great to meet any Rogue Strands readers on my travels...!

A changing of the guard...?

Whenever I see a shortlist, I always feel the greatest insight can be gained by looking at who isn’t on it, rather than who is.  As a consequence, in light of the T.S. Eliot readings last Sunday, I had a quick trawl through the PBS bookshop for releases in the four quarters of 2024 (the main chunk of books that might have been eligible) and noted that the following significant poets were all absent from the shortlist (among many others, of course): Ian Duhig, Ruth Padel, Niall Campbell, Kathleen Jamie, Rory Waterman, Claudine Toutoungi, Carrie Etter, Jamie McKendrick, John Burnside, Paul Muldoon, Jackie Kay, Imtiaz Dharker, Hugo Williams and Gillian Clarke.

The nature of a ten-person shortlist is that many deserving poets will inevitably miss out. However, all of the above might have hoped for inclusion on the basis of the C.V.s and/or the recent reviews in broadsheets, etc, of their eligible collections.

Some might say there’s a changing of the generational guard at play here, especially in terms of the likes of McKendrick or Burnside, who obtained significant success in this prize (and in the Forwards) in the past. Others, meanwhile, might suggest that the changing of the guard is more aesthetic.

It might well be that tastes are shifting at the top table of U.K. poetry prizes. This doesn’t mean, however, that younger poets are not emerging within a similar poetic profile to those older poets who’ve slipped through the shortlisting net. It simply means their work doesn’t fit with current trends. In fact, several of the poets on the above list are far from their dotage.

I’d suggest an analogy with winemaking. When I first entered the trade, rosés were expected to possess a deep and/or bright pink tone, whereas these days the vast majority of customers demand an onion-skin style. Which style is better? Neither. Both can be ace. Both can be awful. But I do admire the few contemporary winemakers who prefer to continue making their rosés with a bright pink colour despite contemporary fashion, thus staying true to their own interpretation of the genre in the face of lower sales and less critical recognition. And the same goes for poetry.

In short, I’d argue that there’s no actual changing of the guard in U.K. poetry. Several different and equally valid approaches to the genre are co-existing as they always have done. The only movement has been in terms of taste at some major prizes and publishers. And as we know, those tastes will shift again, often in a cyclical pattern. The key thing, as poets and readers, is that we remain brave enough to stay true to ourselves, to trust our own instincts, whatever our preference.