The intertwining of life and death, Rebecca Farmer's A Separate Appointment

Nine years ago, I reviewed Rebecca Farmer’s first pamphlet, Not Really (Smith-Doorstep, 2014) on this blog, admiring its subtle treatment of love, suffering and death, noting…

the role of ghosts. They crop up in several poems. They are characters. They take on human traits. As such, their haunting qualities are exacerbated.

And today, as I sit down to write about her second pamphlet, A Separate Appointment (New Walk Editions, 2022), I’m struck by how much of my previous review holds true for these new poems, which seem to present two different strands - roughly speaking, hospitals and those afore-mentioned ghosts - that intertwine. In these poems, Farmer reminds us that death cannot exist without life, and that the living have to contend with others’ deaths.

In this context, the final stanza of ‘The Ghosts regret joining a self-help group’ provides an excellent illustration of the latent tension between life and death, Farmer’s work inhabiting a no-man’s land between the two. canvas It might seem cheesy and trite to state that her poetry occupies a ‘liminal space’, but in her case it’s actually true…

…Punched by the absurdity of death
the ghosts wonder why they never recognised
how they could have lived the life they had.
They used to go to classes to be taken out of themselves
but now they’d give anything to be put back in.

The everyday, natural rhythms of these lines belie the tension that they gradually build, never overstraining for effect.

And in the poems about hospitals and doctors, death is always hovering in the background, waiting to intrude, knowing the narrator will eventually join those ghosts, as in the following extract from the opening lines of ‘Corporeal’...

The surgeon shows the x-ray
of my left hand. I expect
to see its history in
black and white but
the image is as grey
as the sky before rain.
In it I catch a glimpse
of the start of my ghost…

The coherence and cohesion of Rebecca Farmer’s two pamphlets leave me wanting to see her poems on a broader canvas. The format of a full collection would enable the reader to get to grips with her uncomfortable yet vital world. The question now is which publisher might step up to the plate and grant us that pleasure…

Ian Harrow, poet (1945-2022)

There's a terrifc poem up at The Spectator today (see here) by Ian Harrow, a poet who's new to me. However, the shocking detail was the appearance of brackets after his name. A quick google led me to another excellent article from the same journal, written by him in February 2022, titled The Delicate Business of Writing Poetry (see here), which states... 

Living, as Clive James put it, under a life sentence, and having refused chemotherapy, I find I respond to the time issue in contradictory ways.

And then a further google brought me to his website, with some examples of his poems (see here). Moreover, it also explains that he published several collections and pamphlets in his lifetime, while...

Since the mid-70s his work has appeared in a wide range of periodicals and magazines including the Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, Oxford Magazine, Stand, Poetry Wales, Other Poetry, Literary Review, London Magazine, Archipelago, Poetry Ireland Review, Shop Magazine and New Walk.

All this has made me reflect once more on the fleeting nature of poetic fame. I'm annoyed that Harrow's work should have flown under my own radar until today, but I'm also taken aback that nobody seems to have mentioned his passing on Poetry Twitter, for instance, bearing in mind his substantial track record in the genre. At this point, of course, I'm now keen to get hold of his books, explore them, share their poems and try to keep them alive for readers...

Jonathan Davidson's Poetry Blog

I’ve long admired Jonathan Davidson’s poetry and have featured his collections on Rogue Strands, while his most recent book, Commonplace, is a uniquely generous engagement with other poets’ work.

And this same generosity runs through his poetry blog. I uselessly forgot to include it in my annual round-up back in December, though it deserves a post to itself in any case.

Jonathan Davidson’s blog might be irregular, but it’s packed with posts that force us to pause, think and re-evaluate our assumptions of poetry’s place in the contemporary world, analysing the seismic shifts that are taking place in traditional roles of poets, publishers and readers. Moreover, all this is grounded in sensible discussion without unnecessary linguistic fireworks. Instead, we encounter solid arguments and debates that speak to us directly. I cannot recommend it enough, and you can see what I mean by reading it via this link!

The Poetry Publishing Machine

Over the past year or so, I've noticed that the Poetry Publishing Machine seems not only to have taken up where it left off at the beginning of the pandemic but to have accelerated further. What do I mean by this statement? Well, I'm referring to the speed with which collections (and sometimes even the poets behind them) are rushed out, promoted and then discarded in the genre's onward flight.

This phenomenon seems tied in with several issues. For a start, there's the urge, the adrenaline rush that many poets seek from publication. Once their book's out, they're no longer interested in it and immediately move on to the next project. 

And then there are publishing schedules to meet. Several significant U.K. poetry publishers appear to be constantly bringing out new books, month on month, and their skeleton marketing teams can barely keep pace with the revolving door. Is it any surprise that in this context the sales of many full collections from prestigious outfits struggle to reach three figures?

And what about the effect of social media and newsfeeds? We all scroll so quickly, a new book becoming an old one in the space of weeks, pressure everywhere to be constantly publishing or be left behind.

A number of poetry people whose opinion I value have long held that poets should allow at least four years between collections, firstly to enable the previous book to garner and gather a readership that gradually builds and accumulates, and secondly to allow a poet's customers to have a rest from shelling out on their wares, not to feel there's something nearing an annual fee to keep up with their output. I myself am still encountering new readers for The Knives of Villalejo, my first full collection, which was published back in 2017. I'm not sure that would be the case if I'd brought me second collection out a couple of years later.

What do you think? Am I imagining a problem that doesn't exist? Am I old-fashioned? Can collections still be slow-burning successes in the age of social media...?

The future of poetry blogging

The last few years have undoubtedly seen a significant drop in the number of poetry bloggers on the U.K. and in the regularity of their posts, almost as if there were a tacit recognition of the format’s growing irrelevance in the context of social media.

However, I’d argue that this shift is also tied in to two important points. Firstly, it’s far quicker for a user to tweet than to write a blog post. And secondly, even if the blogger gets their finger out and writes a post, it seems to fall into a vacuum and garner little reaction (how many people leave comments on blogs these days?!), whereas a tweet might receive several replies in minutes.

Well, I can do little to address the first question apart from suggesting we all need to fight the growing loss in our attention spans. Nevertheless, the second issue does have several potential solutions that can not only help poetry blogs survive but enrich our interaction with them.

Over the past year, I’ve been experimenting with how I use this blog in conjunction with social media. My point of departure was a quick analysis of the differing temporal nature of blogs, Facebook and Twitter as a poet’s main means of communication with their readers. If a blog post often gathers pace over the course of days and weeks (and sometimes even months and years if Google takes a fancy to it), Facebook posts accumulate likes over a period of hours and days, while Tweets find audiences mainly in minutes and hours.

This is why blogs are losing impetus. But it’s also their possible saving grace. Rather than viewing my blog as a separate entity from my social media use and lamenting its decline as a fading anachronism, I’ve begun to realise that my blog posts could acquire a crucial function on Twitter and Facebook. And as a consequence, the viewing stats for Rogue Strands have increased once more.

For instance, on some occasions, I now initiate a debate on Twitter via a quick, questioning Tweet, let the replies fly back and forth, then collate the differing opinions in a blog post that can consequently be posted on Twitter to bring the discussion together more coherently, thus enabling it to take a step forward instead of being lost on a morass of other threads.

Meanwhile, another option is to use a blog post as an anchor for debate. If a quick Tweet feels insubstantial, too open to misinterpretation or not long enough for a position to be coherently explained, the afore-mentioned blog post can work as starting point for exchanges of views. What’s more, if posted as the start of a thread, a decent blog post is a place where Twitter users can check back to recall a discussion’s initial frame of reference.

Oh, and one final reflection-cum provocation. I’ve found that certain blog posts fly on Twitter and others on Facebook. Facebook tends to work best with posts that reward lengthier engagement, while Twitter homes in on catchier stuff that’s more immediately attractive. Once again, the question of our ever-reducing attention-spans.

Do you agree? Does your experience tally with mine? Am I right in feeling that there is a strong future for poetry blogs if they learn to interact with social media in innovative ways…? Do you have alternative suggestions?

The Best U.K. Poetry Blogs of 2022

As social media evolves, so the role of poetry blogs is changing. A number of poetry bloggers seem to have given up this year or started posting on a far more sporadic and irregular basis, as if they’re struggling to find a purpose or a need for their blog posts. Nevertheless, I’d argue that as the internet develops, so the role of poetry blogs is adapting rather than vanishing. In this context, I’ll be posting in January about the new, extremely useful potential niches that might be filled by poetry blogs from now on.

For the moment, however, here's my highly subjective and personal list of The Best U.K. Poetry Blogs of 2022, divided this year into three separate sections: newcomers, regular blogs (i.e. ones that post on average at least once a month) and irregular blogs that are still worth bearing in mind despite their sporadic nature.

First off, the newcomers to this list, some of whom might well have been blogging for years but have only just appeared on my limited radar:

Nigel Kent’s blog

Marian Christie’s Poetry and Mathematics

Billy Mills’ Elliptical Movements (from Ireland but also covering the U.K. scene)

Paul Brookes' The Wombwell Rainbow 

Tears in the Fence

And now, the regulars:

Fokkina McDonnell’s Acacia Publications

Mat Riches’ Wear The Fox Hat

Matthew Paul’s blog

Bob Mee’s blog

Tim Love’s litrefs

Emma Lee’s blog

Julie Mellor’s blog.

Ama Bolton’s barleybooks

Wendy Pratt’s blog

Elizabeth Rimmer’s Burned Thumb

Liz Lefroy’s I buy a new washer

Martyn Crucefix’s blog

Charles Boyle’s Sonofabook

Josephine Corcoran’s blog

John Foggin’s cobweb

RobinHoughton’s blog

Sheenagh Pugh’s Good God! There’s writing on both sides of that paper!

Caroline Gill’s blog

And to finish off, the irregular bloggers:

Jeremy Wikeley’s new blog

Richie McCaffery’s The Lyrical Aye

Giles Turnbull’s blog

Chris Edgoose’ Wood Bee Poet

Matt Merritt’s Polyolbion

John Field’s Poor Rude Lines

Clarissa Aykroyd’s The Stone and the Star

AnthonyWilson’s blog

Angela Topping’s blog

Marion McCready’s Poetry in Progress

Clare Best's blog

And that’s the end of the 2022 list. Oh, and one annual reminder; as mentioned in previous years, I do know that grim feeling of reading through a list, coming to the end and realising you’re not there, so I can only apologise if I’ve missed you out. As one individual reader, I can’t keep up with everyone, and I’d be very grateful for any additional blogs that readers might like to add in the comments that follow this post…

Planet Poetry podcast

I'm the featured poet on this month's Planet Poetry podcast. You can listen to my ramblings, plus a first public reading of two poems from my forthcoming second full collection, via this link.