draft poems / first draft

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Plath Profiles, an interdisciplinary journal for Sylvia Plath studies, Volume 5 is now published and can be fully downloaded here.

Some really fantastic essays in this one including an excellent collaborative article by Peter K. Steinberg and Gail Crowther on the experience of researching the extensive Sylvia Plath archive material held at Smith College with particular insight into Plath's correspondence with The New Yorker. Also further interesting essays on textual variations in the British and American versions of The Bell Jar, the intrigue of a postcard which survived Plath's 1962 bonfires, the relationship between Plath's Ariel collection and the tarot system and much more. I think this is the best issue so far.

Poetry is an addiction.

When your life feels like one big, long, endless effort to write a poem, you're a poetry-addict. I'm either working on a poem, fretting because I'm not working on a poem, observing life / events / objects with a view to their poem-potential, and worst of all too busy looking for the poem in the experience instead of actually just living the experience.

On the one hand it feels like an inauthentic way to live, as if the poem is cannabalising my life, myself, for its own ends because poems don't stick to the facts they transform experience / objects to suit the poem. However, on the other hand, the constant analysis of myself, my life, experiences mean that life doesn't just blindly happen to me unchallenged or without thought. I'm deeply aware of my life, I constantly examine it which, according to that old Greek guy, means it's worth living but more importantly, for me, means it is an authentic way of living. Poems don't tell things exactly as they are but I think they do tap into deeper truths about ourselves.

I can understand why Wallace Stevens had the view that poetry could replace religion, in the times when I've struggled most with doubt I almost thought this could be possible too. It's a funny old life, but it's the one I've chosen to lead. Although, you could say, with an addiction there's never really a choice.

So I'm sitting here trying to write a poem and constantly checking emails, hoping for a reply from a poetry editor. I'm still reading Stevens and back to Claire Crowther too. Does it sound terrible to admit that while I really love many of Ted Hughes' poems, reading him in abundance bores me senseless? I can't go near Plath at all now, her influence is just too great on my poems otherwise. I read John Burnside's Black Cat Bone a while back and I'm only really now beginning to digest it so I'll be pulling that out again. I borrowed some techniques from Janet Sutherland's  Hangman's Acre for a few poems I wrote a couple of months back so I'll be looking at her collection again too.

First draft


Transfiguration
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Thanks to a friend I've managed to make a few decent recordings of some of my poems as requested for the Northwords Now website. It's always slightly embarrassing listening to your own voice but so much worse when you're reading words that you can't quite pronounce!!! 'Coiffured' was a struggle to pronounce, never mind having to say it twice, then there was 'Laforgue' as in Jules Laforgue. My French accent isn't quite up to scratch!
I still don't have a definitive list of which poems will be in the magazine so I'm really looking forward to finding out which ones the editor is going to pick.

I've had an epiphany with Wallace Stevens. I've always enjoyed his poems when I've read them in the past but reading them now is an entirely different experience. How could I have missed all of those Eliot tones! So I'm currently immersing myself in an old, second-hand Stevens Selected and researching what I can of him amidst the jungle of the internet. If anyone knows of any good in-depth analysis websites of his work I'd appreciate a link.


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White Bird’s Homage to its Own

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Orchid

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Ship Lake

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Out of the Night a Shadow Passed

 For anyone in Glasgow, Hannah Frank prints, two for the price of one at Glasgow Uni visitor centre until June 13th. I really love her work and I'll be hoping to pick up a couple of prints when I'm in Glasgow in the next couple of weeks.

I've had some poems accepted for the summer issue of Northwords Now, don't know quite how many poems yet and there's talk of perhaps a drawing/photograph or two to accompany my poems. Very excited about this, I've supplied the names of a couple of my favourite Scottish artists / photographers, though ultimately it will be decided by the mag's design editor and money so trying not to get toooo excited!!!!

Well it's been a madly busy few weeks. As well as the removal we had an intruder break into our old home in the middle of the night a couple of nights before we moved, so that's still being dealt with by the police, and on Friday there it was Jamie's 40th birthday! So it's been chaos trying to organise and stay on top of everything.

However that's us now in the new house and it is so unbelievably nice, I feel like I'm living in a holiday cottage! We're still waiting on another couple of bookcases to arrive and when they do, that will be all of our books out of boxes onto shelves for the first time ever! Then I can fulfill my geeky dream of alphabetically arranging all of my poetry books and never lose a poetry book again!

One thing I'm loving is our Charles Rennie MacKintosh rose design glass door. I've always loved Rennie MacKintosh and Art Nouveau. I've already managed to pick up a couple of lovely framed Mackintosh prints from local charity shops.

first draft

Lament

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My three most wanted books at the moment are:

Sightlines by Kathleen Jamie, a book of essays / meditations about her journeys and exploration of the natural world.

Thin Slice of Moon - the newly published New and Selected poems of Hugh McMillan

Weaving Songs, a collection of poems by Donald S. Murray, the collection was inspired by Murray's father who had been a weaver.

The great thing about the new house is that there will be room for more bookcases!!!

first draft

Poem removed

Series of short poems / fragments

draft work

poem removed

I've been too excited about the house to be able to concentrate on writing poetry so it's all a bit quiet on the poetry front.
I'm using this time as a note-gathering season so that when I've got the head-space to write I'll have plenty of material to draw from.
After lots of false starts we'll be finally getting the keys to our new house this friday.

I've been playing about with my new phone, recorded an old poem on it that I've given up on but quite like the sound of. I'm pleased at the quality of the phone recording, so I think I'll be trying out some more on it.
Here is the poem, if you click on the title you can hear me read it.

High Rise

the Rannoch Moor rises from the fifteenth floor of us
a tree grows out from the concrete side of us
playground swings fly far below us
the turf of raging winds adore us
our hearts are black     the city lights extol us
bodies lie broken     twisted at the foot of us
the bog lanterns of their eyes reflecting us
as we rise on every side    storey upon storey of us

At the top of Blackpool Tower

It's nice to be back home after a busy, blustery week in Blackpool!

It was also nice to come back to a lovely short review of Vintage Sea in the new Northwords Now (p22)

"This poetry is full of confident play with words, deep connections with nature, especially the sea, and vivid images evoking joy and agonising loss."

It looks like a great issue as usual with contributions from Meg Bateman, Hugh McMillan, John Glenday, Rody Gorman, Andrew Greig and many more.

Never had the chance to read any of the poetry collections I took on holiday with me! But we did go up the tower, play on the Pleasure beach, go to Nickelodeon Land, get a ride in a horse-drawn carriage, go to the zoo, see a magic show, watch a 4-D film, walk, walk, walk, and eat, eat, eat....

Things have been a bit manic lately and I'm heading off to Blackpool for a few days now but I thought I would post up this gorgeous picture of The Gantocks that a photographer friend took and kindly added my poem to.

A short visit to St Andrews for StAnza for me this year, I only stayed for one night and went to four events. From my limited visit the highlights for me were hearing Tony Curtis read, what a funny, lovely man and a great reader. Chase Twichell, who read fantastic poems and is a new and very pleasant discovery for me. From the Happenstance showcase I really enjoyed Richie McCaffery's reading, I've always liked his poems when I've come across them in mags and journals and it was good to hear him read.

My poetry purchases this year:

Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been: New and Selected Poems by Chase Twichell
Black Cat Bone by John Burnside
Spinning Plates by Richie McCaffery (pamphlet)
Where We Live Now by Elizabeth Rimmer
Question Your Teaspoons by Alec Finlay (pamphlet)
Corpus by Michael Symmons Roberts


I read at both of the open mic events and though both events were very enjoyable and well organised I found it it all quite unfulfilling, I really need to get myself along to doing full set readings at events in Glasgow and Edinburgh. On the Saturday I helped out for a bit at the Calder Wood Press stall at the Poet's Market and Colin gave me a fantastically hand-painted Calder Wood Press T-shirt!
It was lovely being in St Andrews again, the noodle bar is great! My only regret is that I couldn't stay to hear Kathleen Jamie read, one of these days I get to hear her.

I loved listening to Melvyn Bragg's discussion on The Lyrical Ballads on Radio 4 this morning. It's been quite a while since I read them but you can read the whole collection online thanks to Project Gutenberg.

I've always quite liked Coleridge but I've never been much of a Wordsworth fan, yet this morning I loved reading through the poems. So far 'Goody Blake and Harry Gill' is my favourite, you can read about the background of the poem here.

When I was studying Utopian Political Thought at uni I wrote an essay on the utopian aspirations of the Romantic Poets (how to study poetry whilst doing a politics degree!). I loved studying the utopian stands in the Romantics, the effects of the ideals of the French Revolution and the later harsh reality of it on their poetry. The radio discussion covers some of this and Coleridge's vision of setting up a utopian community in America. Well worth a listen. 

The house is just about ours, finalising the last few details on the contract etc and we get the keys on Friday 13th (!!!) of April!!!

"An airy, visceral mood permeates her work, which captures the narrator’s unhurried gaze" 

I was delighted yesterday when someone facebooked me to say that Vintage Sea had been reviewed in this month's Scottish Review of Books, a quarterly pull-out mag in The Glasgow Herald. You can read it on-line here. I'm reviewed alongside poets like Elizabeth Rimmer and Gerry Cambridge whose work I much admire. There are some criticisms of my pamphlet, which I can't say are unjustified, such as: "it can be argued that the poems in Vintage Sea feel too similar to each other". Very pleased to have been reviewed.

Also, my six wee poems are now up on the new Shadow Train. I'm delighted to have some poems up there alongside Claire Crowther and Rupert Loydell no less!!