Current Issues

When I started "Current Issues" posts on my blog, it was in response to students who asked where they could read more of my work, especially as I had yet to publish a book. With two books now in hand, I was starting to wonder whether such posts had become superfluous, but as I'm always interested to know where poets I admire are publishing new work, I'll persist in the hope someone is curious about my work in the same way.

I have poems in two new anthologies, The Best British Poetry 2011 (Roddy Lumsden, ed.; Salt Publishing) and This Line Is Not for Turning: An Anthology of Contemporary British Prose Poetry (Jane Monson, ed.; Cinnamon) as well as in the magazines Horizon, Sunfish and Tellus.

Poems are forthcoming in Notre Dame Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Poetry Wales, The Rialto and Tears in the Fence. A short-short story, "The Name," will appear in Ginger Piglet, a new magazine started by Bath Spa MA graduate Libby Walkup. I also have a poem in the forthcoming anthology, A Mutual Friend: Poems for Charles Dickens (Peter Robinson, ed.; Two Rivers Press).

I also have a short review forthcoming in the TLS.

Jane Monson's Speaking without Tongues, second selection, and launch tonight in Cardiff

Tonight former student Jane Monson launches her first collection, Speaking without Tongues (consisting entirely of prose poems), while Alison Bielski launches her latest, one of our skylarks, at the Wales Millennium Centre at 7 p.m. The event is free--say hello if you join me!

Here's a second selection from Jane's collection.

Kierkegaard’s Chairs

When Kierkegaard was eight, his father made his son eavesdrop on the conversations of his dinner guests, then sit in each of their chairs after they had left. Nicknamed ‘the fork’ at home, because that was the object he named when asked what he’d like to be, the seated boy would be tested. The father wanted to hear each of the guest’s arguments and thoughts through the mouth of his son, as though the boy was not just one man, but as many as ten. Almost word for word, ‘the fork’ recounted what these men had said, men who were among the finest thinkers in the city. The tale is chilling somehow. Not least because his father at the same age, raised his fists to the desolate sky of Jutland Heath, and cursed God for his suffering and fate. Not least because of the son sitting in each of those chairs, their backs straight and high, rising behind him like headstones, while the words of others poured from his mouth, his father at the head of the table, testing his son like God. Not least because when asked why he wanted to be a fork, Kierkegaard answered: “Well, then I could spear anything I wanted on the dinner table.” And if he was chased? “Well then,” he’d responded, “then I’d spear you.”

Jane Monson

Speaking without Tongues

Cinnamon, 2010

Jane Monson's Speaking without Tongues, first selection (Cinnamon, 2010)

Speaking without Tongues is the first collection of Jane Monson, a former student of mine from The Poetry School. In Spring 2005, I had one of my best teaching experiences giving a ten-week course on the prose poem at the BT Poetry Studio in London; one of the sixteen students, Jane was already knowledgeable and passionate about prose poetry, studying for a PhD that focused on the form. To learn more or order the book, please visit Cinnamon Press's page for it.

Hatching

They would land in the middle of the plate, sometimes on top of the peas, spiders which had lost their grip on the light-shade and fallen. She grew up comparing the glue of a web to a cheap envelope. Her mother, at such dinners, would go red in the face and curse their life; the sound was of flies repeating themselves on a window-pane. The daughter would sit quietly, and ask for each fly to be caught. Be careful what you bloody well ask for, her mother once said, and shot the girl a look that landed in her stomach. She had no recollection of speaking aloud, but from that moment started to bite her lip whenever she had these thoughts. Teeth-marks began to form on her mouth, and more flies on the tongue of the mother.

Why I Withdrew from Editing the Prose Poetry Anthology

Last summer CB Editions engaged me and Jane Monson to co-edit an anthology of contemporary British prose poetry, but when they did not secure Arts Council funding in response to a hastily prepared application (that ignored some crucial points I, a former grantwriter, had made about it), CB Editions editor Charles Boyle promptly, awkwardly dropped the project in spite of his former enthusiasm.

At this point we had already put out a call for submissions and accepted several pieces of work. Jane and I, both passionate about the anthology, decided to continue with the project and pursue other publishers. A month or so later, I was approached by an experienced anthology editor regarding the possibility of a prose poetry anthology, and on account of long delays in response to my messages, it took over six months before I could confirm that there was not, in fact, a publisher to hand. To clarify the time frame, it was spring 2009 before I learned that there was no publisher in the wings for the anthology, whichever editors were involved.

If you've been reading this blog, you'll know that in spring 2009, or, more specifically, March, was when my father unexpectedly died, which occasioned a week's visit then and another two weeks' visit the following month. When I started to catch up with my life in May, I realized that in my new circumstances, I had too much on: my first book coming out the next month, the second book scheduled for January 2011, and an anthology of experimental/post avant UK women's poetry for Shearsman due out in 2010. That's not to mention my teaching for Bath Spa University and The Poetry School or my reviewing.

Of course, all those commitments were made alongside the prose poetry anthology, but with my father's death, I would now be even more involved in my family's lives back in Illinois, what with supporting my mother and helping her to move from the house she's been living in for thirty-five years, more frequent visits, etc.

So sometime in late May/early June, I called Jane and told her I needed to relinquish the project to her. We met in London last week to talk about where the anthology would go from here (I'm still doing what I can to support the anthology in my reduced position), and Jane is well organized to take sole responsibility. She's begun wading through past submissions, rejecting some, accepting others, and will shortly approach a publisher or two we've discussed about the book. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Jane at prosepoetryanthology (at) gmail (dot) com.

I hope someday to be involved in editing another prose poetry anthology, but I think given my other commitments and plans, that's a long way off. All my best wishes to Jane for what I expect to be an invigorating, wide-ranging collection.