The Poetry Society have chosen Whatever You Do, Just Don't as one of their Books of the Year. Thanks to Tim Relf for the recommendation...
Three poems from Whatever You Do, Just Don't are being featured today on iamb. Thanks to Mark Antony Owen for the invite. You can read my poems and listen to my readings by following this link. I hope you enjoy them!
The recent removal of funding from
Planet and New Welsh Review should shake English poetry publishers and
magazines to the core. Bearing in mind that this axe has been wielded by a
Labour-run administration in Wales, it’s a stark reminder of a bleak future for
business plans that are reduced to making applications to ACE, no matter who
might win the forthcoming general election, no matter what prior relationships
might have been built. How long will such funding bodies continue to sustain ventures
where the sales figures often total less than a third of the staff costs, and
that’s before we discuss non-existent profit margins?
In this context, instead of simply
waiting for eventual, inevitable rejection, then panicking and scrambling to beg
individuals for help in a last-gasp survival bid, wouldn’t it be more sensible for
publishers and magazines to act in advance and reconsider their attitudes
towards the relative importance of sales when balancing their books (sic)? Several
excellent, self-sustaining models are already out there, after all, but such
outfits have had to commit fully to driving sales, and have taken time to build
a strong identity. It’s impossible to generate a core base of loyal customers
overnight.
Rather than viewing funding as a
necessary, permanent prop, why not see it as a temporary boost that enables
magazines and publishers to target long-term editorial and commercial independence…?
Victoria Moul has a terrific poetry blog, titled Horace & friends, over at Substack (see here).
Her blog's terrific for two main reasons, the first being a deft combination of rigour and accessibility when dealing with complex issues of literary theory and practice. It's refreshing to encounter an academic who's willing and able to engage with readers from beyond the realms of university life.
And then the second reason is its additional linguistic and sociocultural perspectives, thanks to her classical background and the time she's spent in France. This means that she's often able to cast fresh light on U.K. poetry.
All in all, Horace & friends is thoroughly recommended. It's already among my favourite poetry blogs...!
‘Long-awaited debut’ is a cheesy cliché in the poetry world, but it’s
actually true of Hard Drive (Carcanet, 2023), Paul Stephenson’s first
full collection, following three stellar pamphlets that had left readers
wondering how he might deal with a broader canvas. Throughout those pamphlets,
if anything had defined Stephenson as a poet, it was the feeling that his writing
was indefinable. Impossible to pin down, refusing to be pigeonholed, his principal
aim seemed to be a constantly evolving exploration of the genre’s
possibilities.
The above backdrop is key to an
understanding of Hard Drive, which revolves around a series of elegies
for a partner. It’s often stated that elegies are ideal for poets to stretch
themselves and push their boundaries, due to the inherent attempts to capture
something that lies beyond the capacity for expression of human language. As a
consequence, they lend themselves perfectly to Paul Stephenson’s approach to
poetry. In these poems, his inquisitive method revolves around a continuous and
continual reinvention of itself, desperately thrusting into the indescribable
agonies of loss.
One such example is ‘Putting It Out There’. Here’s the first stanza…
So here I am worrying myself to death
about commodifying your death,
arranging and sequencing your death,
curating the left and right pages of
your death,
deciding which parts of your death to
leave out…
From the start, this poem finds
Stephenson playing with language but with utterly serious intent, toying with
the absurdity of its idioms such as ‘worrying
myself to death’, which is
juxtaposed to death itself in the original meaning of the word.
And then it implicitly challenges
the blurred roles of subject, speaker and poet, inviting us to question this
collection’s supposedly confessional nature, suggesting a difference between
factual truth and poetic truth, casting doubt on the poet’s own motives, underlining
that these poems move far beyond anecdote, claiming them as art.
In other words, Hard Drive might
be a series of hugely affecting elegies, but it’s far more than that. The
collection rummages through the received wisdom of how the poet and the reader
are meant to interact, dislodging many preconceptions with great emotional
courage. I recommend you get hold of a copy - its echoes will linger in your
head and heart for years to come.
