Thanks to a link from Todd Swift's Eyewear blog I've just watched a wonderful interview with W.S. Merwin. I bought Merwin's latest collection The Shadow of Sirius the other year after reading this most gorgeous poem of his in the New Yorker.  In the programme Merwin says that Pound advised him to write 75 lines of poetry everyday and went on to say that Merwin, being so young at the time, wouldn't have anything to write about therefore he should learn a language and translate!

Some quotes from Merwin:
"poetry rises out of what we don't know"
"a theme that runs through all poetry and language is a feeling of loss"
"grief...is the beginning of language"
"poetry begins by hearing, listening"
"the background of words...is the nourishing dark...that is always with us"


I heartily recommend the programme,  it's 52 minutes long and available to watch here.

Writing Methods

Why is it so hard to write poems? I love reading about how poets come to write their poems, their thought-processes, what triggers them etc. I think I think too much about the process, I'm too self-conscious, too aware when I start writing. I've got this mad idea in my head that I want every poem I write to count, to be really meaningful to me, to tell me something. And because of this I struggle to write a poem just for the fun of it. It's counter-productive, this self-imposed pressure is immensely inconducive to writing. So I gather my images, page after page of groups of scenes that I try to find meaningful homes for. The images are the easy part, a walk by the river or in the gardens and the images come but not just nature description, images with real emotional weight. But finding the right narrative home, the story that these images come from is the real struggle. I'd love to know how everyone else writes, some people don't like to talk about their processes but the analytical part of me is greedy for detail about such things.

Goodbye Sorlil, Hello Marion!

Yes, I've finally decided to come out of the closet.
In some ways I'll be sad to see the back of sorlil. I coined the name when I created my first blog which recorded my first full pregnancy and the first couple of scary years of parenthood. We had agreed on the name Sorley for a boy and Lily for a girl hence sorlil!

I met up with Colin the other day to talk over the pamphlet, he thinks possibly early next year for its publication. It was a funny feeling handing over my poems, almost like a purging of my poetic self. I certainly feel 'lighter' for it somehow.

Issue 4 of Horizon Review is running a bit late but hopefully it'll be online sometime this week and with my St Andrew's poem, Cathedral Ruins at Night, in it!

The poetry magazine Anon has recently introduced a new online admissions system where you can create an account and log-in at any time to monitor the status of your poems. I think this is a fantastic idea! Like most people I'm pretty fed up with the merry-go-round of submitting, waiting, waiting, wondering whether to email and chase them up, wondering if they bother to reply if they don't want your work etc etc. Where as here I can have an obsessive day and check the 'status' of my poems ten million times or forget about it for a few day knowing I can check up on them anytime!

*** edit***
Horizon 4 is now online and here's my poem! A really enjoyable issue with poems, art, fiction, reviews, essays and an interesting collaborative poem by two Calder Wood Press poets!
Also, Anon has accepted one of my poems for publication in their next issue!!
I apologise for the excess use of exclamation marks in this post!

I've never been able to write on demand, well I could but the result wouldn't be pretty or worth much. Unlike swiss, who seems to have little problem turning his daily life into poetic epiphanies, I sit on my reams of imagery waiting for the 'thing' that's going to give it substance and meaning. So that, probably laziness, and the endlessness of household chores are my excuses for not having any new poems to post at the moment.

I'm not much of a short story reader but lately I've been devouring Robin Jenkins' book of short stories -Lunderston Tales. It has to be an excellent writer who makes you look at people differently and even value them more than you did previous to reading their work. I love Robin Jenkins' stories, they make me laugh, give me insights into the life and thinking of people around me. They are literally about the people around me. Jenkins spent the last thirty years of his life living just outside of Dunoon, where I live. His fictional stories are based on real people and people I recognise. These people exist everywhere of course but luckily for me Jenkins' stories are very much based locally which means when I walk down town I imagine I could be living in one of his stories.

Incidentally, Brown's latest gaffe reads like it's straight out of a Robin Jenkins story! - 'The Pensioner and the Prime Minister'.

Very exciting news for Plath and Hughes fans - the British Library has recently published a cd of all Plath's recordings including interviews with Plath and Hughes not publicly available since the original broadcasts, a live recording of Plath reading 'Tulips', Plath describing her experiences of being an American woman in England as well as Plath and Hughes talking about how they met.

The Spoken Word CD is 73 minutes long and includes a booklet containing an introduction by the Plath scholar Peter Steinberg of the excellent Sylvia Plath info blog where you can read a review of the cd here. The cd can be purchased here.

A nearly eight minute podcast taster from the cd can be heard here.

With it being the holidays I've not had much of a chance to get into writing but I have been thinking a lot about poetry book covers and I'm curious to know how people decide on the cover picture or design for their book - whether they go for a nice picture that ties in with the theme of the book or maybe a striking picture that's more specific to the title of the collection, and what kind of covers people prefer when buying a book.

I really like the cover of Robin Robertson's The Wrecking Light. According to the inside cover it's a painting by Sam Morrow. It doesn't bear direct resemblance to the title and I don't think the apples are a reference to any particular poem but it is a beautiful picture. To me the black background conveys the darkness at the heart of many of the poems with the apples representing the fragile beauty and sensuality of nature which at times blends with human nature. And of course apples are a potent symbol of innocence, knowledge and sinfulness. I was planning on buying the book because I'd just heard Robertson read from it and really liked his poems but if I hadn't heard of the author or the poems and just saw the book in a bookshop I would definitely have picked it up for a look because of its cover and title.

I also really like the cover of Anne Sexton's All my Pretty Ones (notice a theme here of black backgrounds!!). The purple flower against the black seems darkly feminine which is one way you could characterise the poems, I'm afraid I don't know what the flower is so I can't really speculate on its significance.

I guess my preference is nature as a symbol against a dark background!

Just for fun - a Wordle of a bunch of my poems!

books, books, books

I recently ordered some poetry pamphlets from Calder Wood Press and now that they've arrived I'm even more excited about my pamphlet next year.
They are beautiful, colourful, sturdy pamphlets printed on gorgeous silky paper.

I've only flicked through them and can't wait for some proper quiet time to read them:
Sky Blue Notebook from the Pyrenees by Jayne Wilding
Local Colour by Judith Taylor
A Hesitant Opening of Parasols by Lilias Scott Forbes

You can read sample poems by them on the Calder Wood Press website.

I also ordered Colin Wills' Sushi & Chips collection (published by Diehard Books but also available through Calder Wood Press) which I'm looking forward to reading.

Finally, swiss has just had his first full-length collection published by Calder Wood Press, I am the happy owner of a copy.

stone and sea is a gorgeous collection of 44 poems which I'll be blogging about in more detail in the future but right now I'm just enjoying.

I don't feel so jealous about those of you who are heading up to St. Andrews for StAnza 2010 now that I can snuggle up with my lovely signed copy of Robin Robertson's latest collection, The Wrecking Light.

I went to the Don Paterson / Robin Robertson reading on Saturday and it was great. I have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to Paterson's work, it just doesn't really do it for me. Which is odd because he's one of the foremost influential and accoladed poets of our times, and he's Scottish! So I feel I'm really missing out on something.

Robertson, on the other hand, with his dark, surreal but exact, open-ended poems laden with myths, symbols and landscapes, I find inspiring.
I did enjoy Paterson's reading and he came across as a really nice person. But the poem I enjoyed of his the most he attributed Robertson as a major influence in the writing of it!

The reading was in the beautiful Mitchell Library, the same room where, on Thursday night, I read two of my poems as part of the open mic event. I wasn't nervous about reading but I did forget to breathe properly so that by the middle of the first poem I was running out of breath! During the second poem I had to deliberately concentrate on breathing and the reading of it was much easier. I think it takes the first couple of poems to get into the flow of reading your work, I noticed that Robertson didn't look at the audience once while reading his first poem but after that he seemed to relax into a rhythm of reading.

At the book signing when I asked Robertson who his influences are, he mentioned Geoffrey Hill whom I've come across here and there but never really read properly. Now I'm curious to read more to see what way he has influenced Robertson.

A poem in memory of the three Russian asylum seekers who jumped to their death from a Glasgow high-rise flat on Sunday morning.

Citizens of the Sky

The morning scent of spring

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Apparently in 1992, the UN General Assembly designated the 22nd of March each year as World Water Day!

The Unesco Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science at the University of Dundee are, this year, hosting an online interactive event and other events on that day throughout Dundee. They are looking for links to poems about water. So if you post a water poem on your blog and link to their page they will link to you also (you have to send your link to this email. Thanks to Rachel for the heads-up, check out her three water poems here, plus Colin has one up on his blog here.

Anyone who has read my blog for a while knows that water features very prominantly in my poems, well that's because I live next to the beautiful Firth of Clyde (pictured above)!.

Here's a watery poem of mine which I wrote almost exactly a year ago when I was pregnant with my daughter.


Heliotropism

Waves rise from nowhere
like the water pearl

wrapping its layer
upon layer within
my mantle folds.

A lochan is gathering
its cushiony hold
under my skin,

a sea swelling
in my bones.

The air is fresh with snow
and the faint halo
of a daylight moon.

I’m walking into the light
and wondering,
if like a sunflower,

you’re turning,
heliotropic,
in my womb.

So in-between the usual daily house/children busyness, today I've been battling with finalizing the line-breaks on a poem to be published in the next Horizon Review. It's finding that balance between how I read the poem, how it looks on the page (screen), and imagining how other folk are going to read it.

I mainly break my lines according to natural pauses when I read it aloud and what I particularly want to emphasize. For a long time (so it seemed to me) I was stuck writing in three-line verses, I found it hard to shake that off. Now I've found a freedom in not keeping to the same number of lines in every stanza but this introduces the problem of when to have a stanza break and how does it look on the page if, for instance, I have a three-liner followed by a two-liner followed by a one-liner!
Anyway, I think (I hope) I got there in the end.

Very much stuck on a poem at the moment, I have plenty imagery and theme but it's not working, I think I'm trying too hard to force it together. So often I feel when starting a poem, from the very first line, that I'm working toward reaching the end of it as quickly as possible so as not to mess it up!

I had the wonderful experience last night of discovering poems by a poet I had not come across before that have completely blown me away. I was randomly listening to poets reading their poems at the Poetry Archive website (a fantastic resource) when I clicked on the name Jean Valentine. The rich imagery, the dream imagery and the tautness of her language appeal to me hugely. I can't wait for a chance to order a book of her poetry.

For any Hughes or Plath fans - Interview with Frieda Hughes on Radio 3's Private Passions, it's available for the next six days. Includes her choice of music from Classical to AC/DC!

I'm listening to it as I write this and it's giving me the shivers, she sounds so like Plath - the same smooth, deep, very articulate voice despite the fact that her accent is quite different.
An artist and poet in her own right, Frieda (isn't that just a lovely name?) Hughes has published three collections of poetry, several children's books and held numerous exhibitions of her art work.

Thanks to Peter at Sylvia Plath Info blog for the link.

Muddles

A couple of months ago I entered poems for the Cinnamon Press Poetry Award competition. I thought the prize was pamphlet publication but then later realised it was for full-length book publication so embarrassingly I had to withdraw my submission. The publisher was very nice about it and wished me well in my poetry so I went ahead and submitted my poems elsewhere.

Well this morning I received a letter saying that I had made the top ten short-list for the competition which means they are going to print three of my poems in their stories and poems anthology to be published later on this year. The problem is that the three poems they've picked I've now submitted to three different poetry magazines. So this morning was spent writing embarrassing emails and probably hacking off editors of magazines I would like to publish poems in, in the future.

Normally I'm super-careful about such things and read submission guidelines very thoroughly but I don't know what's happened to me this month, I've been such a prize twit (I messed up with another sub also). Please someone tell me they've done something similar to make me feel better!

I do have exciting news which I don't know much more about but can't keep to myself any longer...Calder Wood Press are going to be publishing a pamphlet of my poems sometime next year!!!
I was delighted when Colin emailed me about it the other week. Calder Wood Press has published many Scottish poets I admire including Kevin Cadwallender, Morgan Downie, Jayne Wilding and Juliet Wilson. I met Colin at StAnza last year and he is such a lovely man, I'm really looking forward to working with him on putting together a pamphlet collection.

On the poetry readings front, I'm able to make it to the open mic night next month at the Aye Write Glasgow Book Festival. So I shall go armed with my poems and hopefully get a reading slot.

So it's been a rough couple of weeks - we all caught a nasty head cold, both kids included. But thankfully we're over it now so hopefully I'll get back to some writing.

Quite some time ago Rob MacKenzie asked me if I would give a poetry reading at one of his monthly 'Poetry At The...' events in Edinburgh, so I've been booked up for the June event for ages. Well I nearly fainted the other day when I saw whom Rob had managed to book for the other two reading slots on the night: the renowned Scottish poet, David Kinloch and the also renowned American poet Phillis Levin. I hadn't heard of Levin but I've been reading up on her work since and I very much like what I've read, to say the least.

I'm really excited about the reading. I'm trying to organise a local get-together of writers to see if there's much interest in putting on a local poetry event here in Dunoon, something I've been thinking about for ages but the thought of my first poetry reading being in such esteemed company has given me the kick-up-the-backside to get on and do something locally and hopefully at least get in a practice run. I know it's only February but I've already organised the poems I'll be reading and the order of them. In fact I practice reciting the one's I've memorised when I'm out walking, under my breath of course!!

I've also got some other exciting poetry news which I'll reveal when I know more about it!

I'm sad to be missing out on StAnza this year, it had become a bit of a yearly escape away for a few days and especially since none other than the Seamus Heaney is going to be doing readings and some lucky people are even getting to a round table reading with him!


Ruby, as you can see, is just too young to be abandoned for a couple of days so StAnza will have to wait till next year.

However...I have booked a ticked to hear none other than the Don Paterson reading with Robin Robertson during the Aye Write Glasgow book festival!!

It seems a bit silly to have Aye Write and StAnza on at roughly the same time, I'm never normally able to make Aye Write events because the budget won't allow day trips up to Glasgow in the same week as a weekend up in St. Andrews.

Anyhow I'm excited to be able to make it to this reading. There are plenty more exciting events at Aye Write with a great line up of poets and authors but being bound by ferry times I can only make afternoon events.

I've never been a huge fan of Paterson so perhaps this reading will change that. I'm really looking forward to hearing Robertson, since googling his work I know I'm really going to enjoy it.

Rob facebooked an interesting submission request from Succour.
So for all you clever people out there who do weekly poetry challenges, how about giving this a shot -

Succour: The New Fiction, Poetry and Art Magazine

Submission Details

For Succour 11, our Spring/Summer 2010 issue, we would like to invite submissions which pertain not to a theme, as has hitherto been the case, but which adhere to a pair of conditions.

Condition 1: All submissions should be written on Saturday February 6th, 2010.
Condition 2: What you write should not be an attempt to execute an idea – for a story, for a poem, etc – that has previously occurred to you. Rather, we would prefer you to write whatever happens to come into your head at that particular time.

The idea for this issue was inspired by 20 Lines a Day by Harry Mathews, in which the author sets out to follow a rule Stendhal once set himself, to write ‘Twenty lines a day, genius or not’. Mathews undertakes this project in an attempt to overcome ‘the anxiety of the blank page’; it becomes part of his writing practice, his way of starting off, getting in the zone, before going on to whatever his main writing project may be. We would like submissions to February 6th, 2010 to be written in the same spirit.

We will be accepting submissions to February 6th, 2010 from Saturday February 6th 2010 until Monday February 8th 2010 – thereby allowing a couple of days for typing up etc.

I blogged about the Carry a Poem campaign a while back here. Well these lovely free books were distributed throughout Edinburgh yesterday, here's the link to my story in the book about William Carlos Williams's To a Poor Old Woman.

Some thoughts on Jim Murdoch’s Living With the Truth

If you approach the novel with the idea that it’s going to be some kind of serious psycho-philosophical study into existence and the human mind then you could be forgiven for being disappointed when you begin to read the book though by the end of it that’s exactly what the novel has become.

The basic plot is that the protagonist, a lonely oldish man called Jonathan, gets a visit from Truth personified who resides with him for a couple of days and the novel is about this visit.
I’m not going to review the storyline as such as there are already several reviews of this book here. Instead I’m going to pick out some strands of thought I’d like to explore.

In all honesty, I found Truth to be super-annoying much of the time. What did I find annoying? Well his inability to be serious for any real length of time is the main culprit. What can be more serious than the truth – the truth about life, existence, knowledge, morality, afterlife etc. It’s all a big game to him. But it turns out that truth personified is not alone, there’s a whole pantheon of personified abstracts which are, to me, indicative of the Homeric Gods. Though Murdoch goes to lengths in the novel to insure that they are not quite the same thoughtless puppeteers, their essence is the same – existence is a big joke to them because they’re not weighed down with the worries / burdens of life and death.
With this characterisation of Truth, Murdoch immediately subverts the expectations of the reader and yet, as it turns out, manages to explore deep philosophical issues in an accessible manner through the use of comedy.

The parts of the book I enjoyed the most were the interactions between Jonathan and the women in his life. I really loved the scene in Jonathan’s flat when his sister, Mary, comes to visit. Truth convinces Mary to act out a scene from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The ridiculousness, the absurdity of the scene and the ambivalence of the characters towards one another reminded me of Harold Pinter-style scenarios. Murdoch’s excellent characterisation made this one of the best parts of the book for me.

Jonathan is alienated from life around him, he watches from the outside looking in. This is exemplified in his profession as the owner of second-hand bookshop. Life is to be experienced second-hand, not directly; the role of a book is to mediate life to its reader. Which brings us to Jonathan's curious attitude towards others, particularly women.
He had never married and, despite being lonely, had no desire to. Women are reduced to their physical being yet Jonathan is not misogynistic in the usual sense. Even when listing his sexual encounters, he never really enjoyed the actual act of sex in itself, seeming to prefer self-love. What he does desire is the physical closeness which, we are led to believe, is due to the lack of overt parental physical affection throughout his childhood. In particular the Freudian memory of eight-year-old Jonathan being harshly told off when, watching his mother breastfeed his baby sister, he also expressed a wish to be breastfed. This is then the explanation of his particular obsession with breasts throughout his adulthood, yet it is no ordinary sexual desire. Rather, the sense of not being allowed to simply touch another woman’s breasts is viewed as an injustice harking back to the unfairness that his sister should have been the recipient of the tender affection he was denied.

I genuinely enjoyed this novel. Murdoch’s strengths are in characterisation, humour and the complex interaction between strained relationships.
I’ve only scratched the surface of a couple of the themes running through the book. I haven’t even mentioned the many, many humorous exchanges or the existentialism integral to Jonathan’s perception of life.
And, of course, this is only my reading of the book which may or may not be accurate as close reading of novels are not possible in my household at the moment!

first draft


A Car, Snow-sunk...

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