Two and a half years ago I had a poem accepted by Global Tapestry Journal. I’d seen a call for submissions in the back of Mslexia, where I found most things at that time – competitions, nail clippings, my house keys. My complimentary copy of Global Tapestry Journal finally arrived last month, with a sweet hand-written letter by Dave Cunliffe. It’s a beat magazine. Worth the wait? The editor was prosecuted for his poetry in the sixties, man. Of course it was worth the wait!
I also have a poem in the latest issue of The New Writer, one in the Writelink Spring Fever anthology, one in the Leaf ‘Wales’ anthology Away Too Long, and some poems and pieces of flash fiction in the Earlyworks Press anthology Sky Breakers.
I’ve been reading poetry as usual. Annie Freud’s latest collection The Mirabelles was a frivolous indulgence, tasty but not as delicious as The Best Man That Ever Was. I’ve also been reading Zoe Skoulding’s Remains of a Future City, a themed collection about the transience of buildings, and Gwyneth Lewis’ Keeping Mum, which concerns the Welsh language and psychiatry.
It’s been floating through my mind to write a historical novel set in the troubadour period, so I’m reading texts from that time in order to familiarise myself with the attitudes and lifestyle. It seems like a mammoth task, but an adventure! I’ve been reading troubadour poetry and troubairitz (female troubadour) poetry and am currently attempting to plough through the Roman de la Rose. I read Marie de France a while back. Andreas Capellanus’ The Art of Courtly Love, Heloise and Abelard’s letters and Chretien Troyes’ Arthurian Romances are giving me significant stares from my book pile.
What else… I won the Monthly Challenge on the Earlyworks Press forum in September, my prize for which was Mark Rickman’s novella Crazy Bear. I read it in one gulp while in bed with flu - a great comfort read, full of humour and with an unforgettable flawed hero who somehow manages to hold our sympathy.
I went to Poetica at Bangor’s Blue Sky Cafe last week – my first real experience of performance poetry. Manchester’s superhero of slam, Dominic Berry, performed among others. It was great fun – stand-up comedy, acting and poetry rolled into one. The acting/poetry combination reminded me (don’t laugh) of Shakespeare. I went home thinking, how was it that once a poet could be accessible, profound and entertaining all at once? Why is it that poems by ’serious’ poets nowadays are fine on the page (sometimes) but at readings leave you thinking, ‘What the hell was that one about, and was it chord or cord he meant?’
I think it might be more an issue of tone…when you read it becomes more alive to the audience. 2D media like blogs and online communities are fine for a head start. Some poems are written with four or five meanings, I know some of mine are. It’s the 3D of reading that gives them life.
I often read others blogs and thing *what!?* as more and more are adding reading to their blogs the texture of the poems change.
~S~