Fabulous reading this Thursday

There's going to be a fantastic reading this Thursday at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute with Deryn Rees-Jones and Gabrielle Calvocoressi, two women poets whose poetry evinces both keen intelligence and enchanting lyricism. The BRLSI is located at 16-18 Queen Square, Bath, and the reading will begin at 8 p.m. The cost is £5/£3 concessions.

Salt Publishing's Poetry Survey

Give the wonderful Salt Publishing your perspective on poetry publishing and purchasing by filling out their survey: http://www.saltpublishing.com/Surveys/survey.php?uid=343df308311184.

Freudian Slips

Hello, all. I just realised that in my last Current Issues post I originally had the poems in TLS as "Magnum Opus" and "The Weather in Normal" instead of "Magnum Opus" and "The World at Dusk." I suppose the two titles have the same grammatical structure, but I find it interesting that I should put the working manuscript title in place of the title of a poem therein.

I'm feeling better these days as my divorce is at last final. I feel no bitterness; I simply feel like my own person again, liberated and independent. I hadn't expected this.

So The Weather in Normal (my hometown) is a manuscript title, but that work is slowly coming forward as my focus is on completing Imagined Sons, a collection of prose poems, and on placing my first collection, The Cult of the Eye. I'll keep you informed!

Lopez and Caleshu

A splendid reading last night at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute--Tony Lopez reading largely from new work and Anthony Caleshu from The Siege of the Body and a Brief Respite. Lopez was especially impressive, both for the excellence of his work and his soft-spoken, focused reading style; if you don't know his work, check out False Memory.

The Problems of Publishing Poetry in a Small Country, I

Hello, all. I find several problems in publishing poetry in the UK that I did not have in the US. For one, in my early days of submitting poetry in the UK, I submitted poems to journals I didn't really like, simply because they had a good reputation and the range and number of venues for publication are so limited compared to the States. To be truthful, I still catch myself doing this occasionally, most recently because a fellow poet had a different opinion about a magazine and urged me to submit. I suppose I'm confessing here in the hope that it will help me to avoid such weakness in the future.

Another problem that I haven't had but I've seen and that I worry about for my students: I fear that some of my students who write more original poems will find it harder to find place their work in UK journals and will take that as a measure of the quality of their poetry. I hope bringing in American journals and facilitating greater exposure to the better online magazines will help every student writing well find his or her own place. Am I naive to expect that every good poet will find publication? I'd be glad to hear others' experiences and opinions about publishing poetry in the UK--please join in.

Want to see more poetry in The Times' Books section? Read on!

In the 4 March 2006 Books section, Erica Wagner writes, "I'd like to know if you'd like to see more poetry (discussion of, or the poems themselves) in Books. Single poetry reviews? Poetry round-ups? Poetry discussed in the Books group? We're open to suggestion, here. books@thetimes.co.uk."

The full article can be viewed at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-2066902,00.html .

Poetry lovers, please write in!

Lovesick and homesick

Hello, all. My partner is teaching in Italy for the next week, and I haven't seen my family since late December, so I'm missing everyone at the moment and thought I'd post this photo of Matt and my nephew Nathan, from Matt and I's Christmas visit to my folks.

Going American

After my posting about my need to "mix it up" with other poetries besides British, especially by reading more American poetry, I suppose it's appropriate that I'm going to the Associated Writing Programs annual conference in Austin, Texas next week. The list of exhibitors at the bookfair almost makes me want to weep. So many journals I've heard about and wanted to see, quite a few journals I've appeared in before, presses I admire, etc., etc.--I'm going to go from just dabbling in the American scene again with a few publications in various magazines to being immersed in it--dropped in as though I were sitting in the dunk tank at the county fair. It can only be good, right?

I'll let you know!

Poetry in Bath and environs

What does it take to make a poetry community? I feel as though one is emerging here in the Bath area, but perhaps I feel that way because I am directly involved in a number of community poetry activities--the new Bath Spa reading series at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution on the second Thursday of each month (through June, and resuming again in the autumn), The Poetry School's first proper course offerings in Bath next academic year, my own seminar group at my home in Bradford on Avon, and the new Aloud series run by David Berridge here in BoA (in which I am "involved" as a regular attender--there have been two so far!--and reader). Then we have a Poetry Society Stanza group developing under Nikki Bennett-Willetts' direction, possibly meeting at the University of Bath in the near future.

What I miss about London poetry is the conversations I'd have with others involved in poetry in different ways, especially with my Poetry School students at the Poetry Cafe before our class on Friday nights last spring and when I'd run into other poets at readings and we'd go for a drink afterward. We would talk about new books, magazines, reading series, other poets, etc., and I loved it. I miss it.

The Drunkenness of Things Being Various

While in my hometown over Christmas, I made my usual visits to Milner Library, one of my favourite places, and felt liberated by the variety of excellent poetry I found in such magazines as Denver Quarterly, American Poetry Review, etc. I remembered what I've often realised on previous trips home: when I focus my reading on British mainstream poetry, I tend to suffocate on account of the lack of air, the narrowness of scope. This manifests in a tendency to write and read less poetry in general, but I never seem to recognise the cause until I also see the solution.

How does this happen? Why don't I always "mix it up"? As I've only become properly acquainted with British contemporary poetry since moving to the country in 2001, and since I was working on my thesis on Victorian fiction and early British criminology until autumn 2003 (not to go into my health problems, jobs, divorce, etc.), I've had a lot of catching up to do. Meanwhile, publishing continues and I see new titles that interest me; it doesn't help that Shearsman's received an Arts Council grant to increase their publishing from 2005-7. As the people around me are generally talking about (mainstream) British poetry, referring to poems I haven't read or poets I barely know, I tend to sink into long periods of reading only British poetry of the last ten to twenty years.

One of my goals for 2006 is to keep my reading wildly various. My friend Lytton Smith was kind enough to bring me copies of Lit and American Letters & Commentary this past summer, and in Chicago I picked up Fence and Poetry. The presence and improving quality of online journals will also help.

I also hope to broaden the conversation with fellow poets and my students by sharing copies of American magazines and adding links to noteworthy American and online journals to this blogsite. In each category, there's a range of styles, from rather mainstream through experimental, in the hope of appealing to a range of tastes while broadening them.

Here's hoping--