The Ware Poets' Competition 2015

Last night I attended the reading and celebration of the Ware Poets' competition for 2015, which I judged. I like a number of aspects of this competition. In addition to the prizewinners, another fifteen or so poems can be highly commended, and all 23 poems, in this case, were published in a slim anthology. At the celebration, the first half is devoted to the reading of all 23 poems: where the poets themselves couldn't be present, different members of Ware Poets read the poems--and read them well, no one having responsibility for more than a single poem and apparently practiced. It meant all 23 were treated like winners--as is only right when they constitute the top 2% of the poems submitted! (In the second half, I read from Imagined Sons.)

There are also no sifters for the Ware Poets' competition: I saw every single poem. I think that allows for a greater range among the chosen poems. Anyway, congratulations to all 23 winners, with my thanks for your work!

The Ted Hughes Award Citation for Imagined Sons

"The poems in Carrie Etter’s poignant collection, Imagined Sons, coalesce around a haunting: though the poems are spoken by the birth-mother, it is the son who takes centre stage, his absence experienced as a real and pervasive presence throughout. The sequence is a montage of fictional fragments, each fragment representing one of an infinite number of possible versions of the mother/son relationship. We loved this book’s innovative arrangement: the ten regularly occurring ‘catechisms’ interleaved among thirty-eight prose poems, and contained within an over-arching circularity of structure – beginning, as it does, with the refrain How did you let him go? and ending with the unsettling When will you let him go? But above all, we were delighted by the variety of tone ­– from heart-breaking to funny to frightening – and by the mix of the fantastic and the mundane, of fairy tale and contemporary detail. This is a book to be read and reread."

Ted Hughes Award judges, 2015

On not winning the Ted Hughes Award

My partner Trev and I were not long inside the Savile Club before its poshness had overpowered us--or we had someone with whom to share our views. For the first time in years I saw my former MA student Tom Weir, whose poem had placed in the top ten in the National Poetry Competition (yay, Tom!). Before long I'd met up with Peter Daniels, Rachel McCarthy, fellow shortlister Patience Agbabi, Tammy Yoseloff and many more I met that night for the first time. I became an avid poet-sighter, pointing out to my partner  John Agard, Carol Ann Duffy and Alice Oswald, among others.

Fortunately we didn't have to wait long into the night before the Ted Hughes was announced. Kei Miller and Julia Copus gave lavish descriptions of each work on the shortlist, then Carol Ann Duffy pronounced Andrew Motion the winner. I looked at Trev and shrugged my shoulders and spent much of the rest of the night receiving commiserations as well as, more happily, talking about the Forward Prizes, as I met Forward Arts Foundation employee extraordinaire Maisie Lawrence, with whom I'd had a fair bit of contact about meeting arrangements and book deliveries. 

Was I, am I disappointed? Of course, but only a little. I've greatly enjoyed being shortlisted and the new readers it seems to have brought to Imagined Sons; there have also been some new invitations for readings and workshops. It's time to get on with my reading for the Forward Prizes--and to my next collection, on which I'll say more before long. 

Thanks to everyone who sent kind messages over the past weeks about the book and the award. I don't think I've ever felt such strong support for my work, which is so heartening as I look to the future. Many, many thanks.

A new review of Imagined Sons on the Magma blog

You can read a new review of Imagined Sons by issue 63 co-editor Lisa Kelly here, but I'm happy to give away the conclusion: "...the poems seed their own dynamic by continuing to work on the imagination after the book is shut. That, surely, is one of the most important things poetry can do. O’Donoghue [quoted on the cover] might just be right." 

The Weekly Poem

I've long received a poem weekly in my inbox from Oxford Brookes University's weekly poem initiative, but tonight it was the first poem from Imagined Sons. You can read it here.

"An important and beautiful collection": A new review of Imagined Sons

A new review of Imagined Sons appears in Dura, the Dundee University Review of the Arts, written by Beth McDonough, and it's delightfully positive. I may be especially delighted because the nod to Dickinson, one of the poets most important to me, was noted, as well as the absence of full stops on the catechism answers....

A new badge of honor: scorn from The Daily Mail

A fellow poet brought to my attention the fact that my poem, "Imagined Sons: Greek Salad," received a negative remark in a Daily Mail review of the anthology, The Forward Book of Poetry 2015. The reviewer Bel Mooney comments, "Once or twice, I felt that the poets were having what’s popularly known as a laugh — with ridiculous poems about a rug design and a Greek salad, not to mention an ugly effort in text speak. Why?" 

Ah, to answer that question is so tempting--and yet, I expect, so futile, too....

Imagined Sons and the Ted Hughes Award on BBC Radio 3's The Verb

I was enjoying a quiet evening in last night when poet Laura McKee, via Facebook, brought my attention to the programme on BBC Radio 3's The Verb. Among Ian McMillan's guests was Grayson Perry, talking about his role as a judge of the Ted Hughes Award and about the role of emotion in the shortlisted works. I tuned in just before the conversation shifted in that direction, and to my amazement, Ian McMillan read the first poem from Imagined Sons, "Imagined Sons: Fairy Tale," as an example of a poem whose restraint conveys the emotion that much the more powerfully. 

What a week it's been! 

Imagined Sons shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry

 Three days after the announcement, it may seem old news now, but I'm still giddy that Imagined Sons has been shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, sponsored by The Poetry Society. The honor is magnified by the presence of the other poets on the shortlist: Patience Agbabi, Imtiaz Dharker, Andrew Motion and Alice Oswald. Indeed, appearing on such a list makes me feel I've already won.

The awards ceremony will be on 2 April at the Savile Club in London.

An audio recording of "A Birthmother's Catechism" available online

My publisher Seren Books asked me to do a recording of the poem they wanted to use as poem of the month for the December newsletter, "A Birthmother's Catechism." You can listen to the recording at SoundCloud here.

More great reviews of Imagined Sons in Cape Times and Poetry Wales

A short review of Imagined Sons appeared in the South African newspaper, Cape Times, on 24 October, concluding that the poetry "haunt[s] the reader as that lost son haunts the mother." I'm most grateful to author Moira Richards for bringing my work to a new audience. 

In the new issue of Poetry Wales, Katy Evans-Bush comments, "It's one of the most universal untold stories, the giving up of a baby, and it comes at us here with the power of myth, as the narrator sees her missing son in every young man she encounters. The language is plain, unspectacular, and the most disturbing in its near-affectlessness." The review continues in this appreciative, thoughtful vein. I'm heartened by both reviews.
 

A sterling review of Imagined Sons in The Warwick Review

Here are my favourite passages from Sophie Cook's rich review:

"...she does not shy away from acknowledging, even embracing, a sense of unimaginably impressive self-awareness. Etter's remarkable achievement in Imagined Sons is that she is able to exhibit such a balance; she is pragmatic without seeming unattached, and both emotive and emotional without appearing too overtly sentimental." 

"Etter uses more vibrant though obscure imagery to explore the relationship between people, as reflected in aspects of their environment. [...] Etter's unusual choices for these book-long tropes are perhaps what gives them their potency. [...] There is an unrelenting brutality to Imagined Sons which gives the volume cohesiveness and distinction."

Another positive review of Imagined Sons appears in Poetry London

Sarah Hesketh has written a nuanced review of Imagined Sons for the Autumn 2014 issue of Poetry London. Here is the final paragraph: "Etter creates a sustained narrative across the whole volume, layering the poems elegantly. The fact that these are prose poems probably made this sense of wholeness easier to achieve, but there are still moments of lovely, isolated imagery that make you want to pause. The answers in the catechisms give Etter an opportunity to be more fragmented and abstract in her descriptions and the final line in the book quotes Celan, a poet well known for taking the horrors of reality and presenting them in dense metaphor: 'It is time, Celan said, the stone made an effort to flower' ('A Birthmother's Catechism'); Etter has found fertility in a scenario of intense loss."

"Imagined Sons 9: Greek Salad" in The Forward Book of Poetry 2015

On my return from Illinois last week, I found The Forward Book of Poetry 2015 and my poem, "Imagined Sons 9: Greek Salad," among the Highly Commended Poems. It seems to me that there's more range in this edition of the Forward anthology, with the likes of Andrea Brady, Lee Harwood, Marianne Morris and Denise Riley alongside such usual suspects as David Harsent, Andrew Motion and Hugo Williams. I may have to take it with me on the train to Norwich today....

"Powerful writing of a high order": A new review of Imagined Sons in Stride

Here is the first paragraph, by poet and critic Steve Spence: "Carrie Etter's Imagined Sons may well turn out to be my poetry book of 2014. It comprises a series of scenarios where a mother who has given up her son when she was seventeen, imagined possible meetings at a later stage, envisaging alternative futures where their paths briefly cross again and recognition occurs or doesn't. This is powerful writing of a higher order and the fact that Etter often utilises the dream-like processes of surrealism allied to the quality of classical myth, in a very modern setting, enhances the intensity of the work and packs a powerful punch into the bargain." The full review appears here.

"Intimate and Searing": Patricia Debney reviews Imagined Sons for Shearsman Review

Two days, two thoughtful reviews of Imagined Sons--I'd love to get used to this. The latest is Patricia Debney's review at the new Shearsman Review. Here's a passage: "Etter’s fundamental gift throughout Imagined Sons is her deft handling of tone; throughout, she employs the no-nonsense, matter-of-fact darkness that so often permeates bad dreams and their anxious attempts at normality. [...] It is a testament to the poet’s delicacy, restraint and invention that as readers we don’t run straight away from what, when stripped down, is so painful. Far from setting these wonderings firmly out of our experience, Etter’s writing compels and moves us: we too imagine the sons, and find there the immutable and worthwhile fact of being alive."

"Superb," "Tremendous": Katherine Stansfield on Imagined Sons at New Welsh Review

"Superb" and "tremendous" come from Stansfield's tweets, while the review itself is a podcast nine minutes long with a brilliant, appreciative analysis of Imagined Sons. Her observations on the "friend" series and on the final catechism especially heartened me, as they perceived ambitions I had for the work that I wasn't sure were successful. Have a listen!

Imagined Sons chosen for Editors Select in Notre Dame Review

Imagined Sons has been chosen for the Editors Select feature in the new issue of Notre Dame Review, where the book is described as "extremely moving."

An adoptive father's response to Imagined Sons

appears on John Foggin's blog here.

The Guardian's Poem of the Week, from Imagined Sons, with a splendid review

I'm delighted that one of my birthmother's catechisms is The Guardian's "Poem of the Week," selected by Carol Rumens, yet perhaps more moved by Rumens' overall account of the book, wonderfully appreciative and astute. Describing the Imagined Sons prose poems, she writes, "Funny at times, fast-moving and psychologically astute, these tiny monologues are held together by a narrative voice as seemingly self-possessed as it is candid." Of the catechisms, she says, "Etter reinterprets the form as both a psychological and a melodic device. The intense, same-question repetition pushes the speaker into a corner, where poetic self-defence may be disarmed, the creative play of the prose poems distilled to a barer essence." Concluding with her analysis of the catechism that asks, "Who do you think you are?," Rumens comments on the last line, "It's a cadence of renunciation, singular and resonant, in a text otherwise charged with restless energy and novelistic powers of invention."
  
Heartening and gratifying....