With a stellar line-up that would grace any of the top poetry festivals in the country, our next Rogue Strands Poetry Reading is in London on 22nd October at the Devereux Pub, proceedings kicking off at 6.45p.m.. Our featured poets are Hannah Copley, Jonathan Davidson, Fiona Larkin, Philip Hancock, Mat Riches and myself. We'd be delighted if you could join us...!
Delighted to report that I've had another three recent poems in The Spectator over the past few weeks. Yet again, I'm grateful to their poetry editor, Hugo Williams, for his support of my writing, and to Clare Asquith for her work in the background.
So far, I can't recommend Bluesky enough for poetry. Over the past few months, it's enabled me to connect with a lot of poetry people who were new to me, while also finding a whole host of additional readers from beyond the poetry bubble. One excellent example has been the reception for my poem ‘The Last Carry’, first published in The Spectator and then included in my second collection, Whatever You Do, Just Don't (HappenStance Press, 2023). As of today, it's garnered well over 600 likes and more than 100 shares, all along with numerous generous comments from readers. This is the nearest I've ever come to going viral! In fact, not a week goes by without a trip or two to the post office for me with books that I've sold via Bluesky. From my experience, it's really worthwhile in terms of finding a new audience for my poems, though perhaps the most significant bit has been the lovely people I've encountered on there...!
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.
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!
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 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...
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”...?
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.
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...!
Pleasantly surprised to see my name on the cover of this gorgeous object. And the contents are excellent too...!
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!.
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...!
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...
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...!
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.
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)
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!
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...!
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…?
My article on Julio Cortázar's poetry is forthcoming in Issue Three of the Madrid Review, out on 14th 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...!
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.
