Four months of fun

Ah, it's been a while, but I can report that I have, in the time away, managed to make my 2021 performance debuts in the real world, first in la belle France at Paris Lit Up last month and then at the very beginning of October for the European Poetry Festival European Camarade at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester. For this, I invited Lydia Unsworth to team up with me, and we had fun creating a collection of 'grams for each day of the week. I've since been busying myself while suffering from a poorly back following a fall (I'm getting on a bit now, after all) with a few additions, including messing around with anagrams about Barbara Hepworth sculptures and calligrams about a comet I claim to have seen while en vacances. I've also been writing some ekphrastic pieces about the work in Dez Rez Projects' visual art exhibition GALA, which finally got shown at Victoria Baths at the end of September, when I read some of my poetry from the bottom of one of the pools, and I'm currently compiling all these new bits and bobs into a third pamphlet. My debut poetry pamphlet, cache-cache, has found a home with Netherlands-based Contraband Books and will be out in the spring; my prose pamphlet, Marine Drive, is chalked up for an autumn publication with Broken Sleep Books. I can't tell you how delighted I am to have been accepted by such amazing publishers, and I'm really looking forward to working with them both. One of my concrete pieces, Navigation Is Difficult, More Now Than Ever Perhaps, just came out in the hold-in-your-hands lovely magazine that is Firmament from Sublunary Editions while The Interpreter's House has another visual piece of mine, Will Finches Inhabit Me?, creeping up on us very shortly. Upcoming live appearances include being one of the first to hit the new stage of Verbose as it moves into the King's Arms (next Monday), then joining the fabulous Sophie Herxheimer as she launches INDEX with Tom Jenks' zimZalla at the Peer Hat, alongside Nell Osbourne of No Matter fame (14 November). Phew, it's all go and right now I'm in the audience for a Centre for Poetry & Poetics evening beaming out of Sheffield, so I'd best make tracks...

A change to our schedules

This post, we take a break from writing to look at art, or maybe, more accurately, to look at writing looking at art. 

Mine and Jazmine Linklater's collaborative project, 900 – which we created to perform at the European Camarade as part of the 2019 European Poetry Festival (a year was skipped due to the pandemic, but it's back in Manchester this summer, hopefully at the shiny new Manchester Poetry Library, on 8 July) – has just been printed in PN Review. This work, partly explained by me in the contributors' notes to PNR259, stemmed from three dreams each, three cafe visits each and three trips each to art galleries, observing the goings-on therein for an hour from a fixed point. Swapping out verbs from one dream each (we condensed our three down then picked the most interesting), adjectives in the selected cafe pieces, and nouns between our two chosen galleries, you'd be hard-pushed to identify which places we'd been to – in effect, the whole thing became somewhat like a dream – the number 900 is significant in dream theory; the swapping is significant in Oulipo experimental writing exercises. For the record, my art palaces were Dulwich Picture Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery and The Whitworth, overlooking the park.

I've also been busy trying to reintegrate into normal life, which I've got to say is more tricky than I had anticipated. Still, I managed to catch the Brutal exhibition at Saul Hay Gallery before it finished, and, same day, my art immersion continued with a spin around Grayson's Art Club, with its inspiring, intriguing and sometimes eye-opening amalgamation of contributions from both celebrity invitees and viewers of the first series of the Channel 4 show. A week away in Cornwall involved a, er, potter round the Bernard Leach Pottery (due to Covid restrictions, only the shop was open at that point, but you take your kicks where you can get them, right?), a chat to a street artist painting a gable end with a mural of his ceramicist friend, another chat with the person running the New Craftsman Gallery, a quiet contemplation in Barbara Hepworth's studio and garden amid a downpour, a whirlwind tour of all the Hepworths we could lay our eyes on, and a trip to the newly extended Tate St Ives.

What a pleasant surprise to wander into the first gallery and be faced immediately with Joan Eardley's 'Salmon Net Posts'. I allude to the painting – all big, bold brush strokes of vibrant blues and whites and greens – in the poem I contributed to the anthology marking the Scottish artist's centenary year. By pure coincidence, I'd had the honour of reading the piece live from St Ives only the night before, 18 May, celebrating the date of Joan's birthday and the official launch of the project. Organised by Colin Herd and co-edited with Sam Small, the Eardley anthology, All Becomes Art, will be published by independent Glasgow house Speculative Books later in the year; the call for work is on and the deadline is 28 June. 'Place Setting (Catterline)' was my first piece of proper ekphrastic poetry in recent memory (I feel I've done some before, maybe as far back as during my first time round studying), and it was a really enjoyable and enriching experience – as I babbled at Sue, the Tate St Ives invigilator. Hopefully, she is now telling everyone who comes through the doors that it's Joan Eardley's centenary year. Here's a picture...

Words, no pictures

Since last we spoke, dear reader, I've of course been to lots of events, including reading at Virtual Verbose, when Nicholas Royle and Naomi Booth headlined, and travelling far and wide from the comfort of my own home. 

I've been to a Poetry London shindig featuring Holly Pester (seen IRL some time back at Rory Cook's rather wonderful but short-lived Sunday soir salon Murmur), to a Glasgow hook-up with NYC-based Bernadette Mayer (fabulous, and a nice continual update on the snowfall in downtown), to Kendal Poetry Festival and the ever-brilliant Vahni Capildeo, to a Bad Betty launch, a Carcanet New Poetries VIII showcase, a "workshop" (more of a chat with Jerome de Groot, really) with Zaffar Kunial, to some StAnza stuff - a visual poetry talk with Chris McCabe and Astra Papachristodoulou, and the annual lecture, with Jacqueline Saphra, talking about her recent lockdown work - to Manchester's own No Matter, to another Live From The Butchery in Norfolk, featuring Jen Hadfield way up north in the Scottish islands, to an Arvon gig with Rebecca Watson (whose little scratch I'm about to embark upon reading), to a Welsh innovative poetry evening from Sheffield's Centre for Poetry and Poetics and Blackbox Manifold, featuring Lyndon Davies among others, to Poets & Players' first foray into the online event world (love their Reemergence prize winner Susan Shepherd's stuff), and to the Guillemot Press launch of Suzannah V Evans's new boatyard-based book Brightwork, also with a reading from Eleanor Rees, who spoke of the Red Rocks on the Wirral. How lovely!

My own Hilbre Island flash fiction found a home this month in the Irish e-zine Splonk (there's also an interview with a certain David Gaffney in there) and I've had some more pieces published, mostly poetry, which is all very exciting and encouraging. I have a piece in Poetry Scotland magazine, another (a 'Daily Permissible Exercises') with Osmosis Press and another pinned on the Litfest Places Of Poetry map here. Upcoming, my collaboration with Jazmine Linklater is coming out in the PN Review OuLiPo supplement, edited by Philip Terry, and I have a concrete poem in the Summer 2021 issue of Firmament from Sublunary Editions and an experimental piece in this week's instalment of PERVERSE. I'm reading next week at an event launching a Joan Eardley centenary anthology project organised by Colin Herd and Sam Small (more here) and on 8 July at this year's European Poetry Festival, organised by SJ Fowler, and for which I've arranged to hook up with Lydia Unsworth, whose recent lipograms I've been enjoying, along with loads of her previous work.

I've managed to do some more 'Daily Permissible Exercises', a year on from the first time, and I've written a few things for specific deadlines and invitations. Nonetheless, I've been feeling that I've not done enough writing (I suddenly got inundated with freelance work, including proofreading a book about French châteaux and writing copy for an annual report on climate change targets), but I aim to change that, having an upcoming rest from work for a week or perhaps a little longer booked into my diary. Phew. I'd fix the fonts in this post, but I have to go out and drink wine and show off my new haircut. I'm sorry.

Onwards and upwards

Since my last missive, the UK has been in a prolonged lockdown starting midnight 4 November (a free-for-all on Christmas Day aside) and 2021 has got off to a somewhat bumpy start, with the sad passing of my lovely cat Pushkin, the founder of modern Russian literature, obvs, and featuring floods, pestilence and various other shitstorms demanding my weathering. Still, onwards and, hopefully, upwards - spring bulbs are starting to shake their sleepy heads and I just noticed the honeysuckle by the back door sending forth some new shoots and leaves. 

Event wise, I've had to duck out of a few I was hoping to go to, what with one thing or another, but before the festive period (or lack thereof), I did manage to visit Nottingham, where Lila Matsumoto hosted Samantha Walton (and her colleague Vicky Sparrow more recently welcomed Zarf's Callie Gardner live from Glasgow), and Sheffield, where Iris Colomb was the star of the show at the December outing for the Centre for Poetry & Poetics Safe Readings Series, hosted by Ágnes Lehóczky.

In the New Year, I listened as Lucy Burnett explained her new crossword book, out with Guillemot Press, and visual poet Derek Beaulieu and visual artist Rhys Farrell described their collaborative processes for Lens Flare, and I watched a bit of a showcase as Mau Baiocco, Kirsty Dunlop, Fred Spoliar and No Matter's Nell Osborne joined Maria Sledmere to celebrate her recent Guillemot launch alongside Kyle Lovell with his Broken Sleep Books Legitimate Snack pamphlet.

In sherry-drinking open season, I also did some readings, including on the open mic at prose poet extraordinaire Anne Caldwell's double book launch with Matthew Hedley Stoppard, hosted by Leeds Libraries, and at Rachel Davies' 4Word pamphlet launch, featuring Hilary Robinson, Kim Moore and others. I also had the absolute pleasure of collaborating with Andrea Mason for the most recent outing of The Other (pictured above), when writers swap work to read. Like me - so a very fortuitous pairing; thanks to the Fates! - Andrea is big on deploying constraints in her work and she sent me a piece made using the verbs from a source text to create her own work, which was published by Sublunary Editions. I'm super-pleased that Andrea is on the shortlist for The Manchester Writing Prize.

I'm still striving to develop my practice, so I've applied for a few things, not always successfully, but hey if you don't ask you don't get, and I've been putting my name down for various upcoming workshops and talks. I joined the audience for the Northern Writer Awards Roadshow looking at getting poetry published, hosted by Will Mackie, and featuring Uni of York's JT Welsch, writer Rommi Smith, Hannah Bannister of Peepal Tree Press and Jo Clement of The Butcher's Dog journal (above image). All very useful, especially as I make headway into the uncharted territory of getting my debut pamphlet out there...

Eyes on the prize

I’ve been here, sitting on the sidelines, waiting in the wings, overflowing with updates to share on the blog – but I thought I’d hold out on posting until now, when the secrecy I’d been sworn to is finally allowed to be released into the wild. The exciting news I’ve been holding in for over a month is that one of my favourite recent pieces has been shortlisted in this year’s Bridport Prize - out of 1,722 flash fiction entries! The lovely email said “That puts you in the top 5% of the competition. Take a bow. Well done!”, after starting with the wonderful opening gambit of “It’s inspiring news” (far better than another recent missive that began “Your job” – more on that later). You can watch a great video of the “prize-giving ceremony” with films of the winners reading their work and the judges describing their process here and see the shortlists in each category – flash, short stories, poetry and novels – here.

I also heard through the grapevine (Twitter) that Confingo #14 is out this week. I’m proper chuffed to have what I’m calling a “triptych” (I’m currently working on the annual AIL Report all about artwork saved for the nation, so I can’t help myself!) of prose poems published therein. I’ve had quite a lot of flash fiction and short stories printed, and I’ve had poetry online, but I think this will be my first "proper" poetry in actual print since I was 12, when I won an engraved fountain pen in the WH Smith Young Writers' Competition. Yes, I still have the pen, in its presentation box; I’m not a monster. For the Confingo triplet, I even got paid – a crisp twenty pound note has just been popped through the letterbox and I’m considering sticking it on my bedroom wall to bring up in future talks, à la Armitage. 

The Confingo trio is from my debut pamphlet cache-cache, which was given an airing (well received, too, which is nice) at Paris Lit Up and which is looking for a home while I start thinking about my next, entitled Water Palaces & Chateaux d’Eau and drawing on my experience as Writer-in-Residence at Victoria Baths. In the meantime, I’ve been working on some other poems, have completed the rather good University of York online poetry course with FutureLearn, How To Read A Poem, and I’m about to make a start on Forward Prize-winning Maliker Booker’s Arvon five-day poetry writing challenge. 

Also coming up print-wise is mine and Jazmine Linklater’s European Poetry Festival collaboration, which will be featured in the forthcoming Oulipo supplement in PN Review – very exciting indeed! PN Review and Carcanet supremo Michael Schmidt is hosting an event at this year’s online Aldeburgh Poetry Festival (the Port anthology was launched there last year) featuring The Penguin Book of Oulipo editor Philip Terry – who’s also coming up at a special zimZalla event on Wednesday 18 November at 7pm alongside Sophie Herxheimer (loved her cutup stuff on New Boots & Pantisocracies, also featuring one of my cache-cache numbers, 'Guidance Avoidance'); zimZalla being the object publishing arm of Tom Jenks, who I was recently seen chatting to online alongside CD Rose at two Love Bites evenings – the first, David Collard’s salon series Leap In The Dark, and the second (below) as part of Altrincham Word Fest, for whom I also ran a flash fiction showcase event (above). And breathe. 

Jazz has just published a pamphlet, Figure A Motion, with Guillemot Press, and her launch with Chener Books is one of the many events I’ve been patronising, virtually of course. Since last we spoke, I’ve heard from The Mezzanine and Room Temperature (love those books, very infra-ordinary) author Nicholson Baker via a University of Glasgow livestream, I’ve been to the Winchester Poetry Prize-giving, hosted by Man Met's Andrew McMillan, and the aforementioned Forward Prizes, and I’ve attended the first event at the first online Manchester Literature Festival, when Daisy Johnson and Sophie Mackintosh chatted to the Centre For New Writing's Jeanette Winterson (one of my tutors when I was there). Just in the last week, I’ve been to a York Centre for Writing Poetry event featuring Vahni Capildeo (star of the How To Read A Poem course and Jazz’s mentor for Figure A Motion) and Rebecca Tamás reading from their work and chatting to Caleb Klaces, senior lecturer in Creative Writing and English Literature at York St John, the closing Altrincham Word Fest event, featuring The New Abject anthology from Manchester's Comma Press, with readings by Lara Williams and Sarah Schofield, and Live From The Butchery, an almost monthly event hosted from their home by Helen Ivory and Martin Figuera, and yesterday welcoming George Szirtes among others. Coming up, I’m looking forward to Rosie Garland’s Nine Arches Press launch – I’ll be putting something up about it shortly on the Creative Tourist Literature Guide. 

Of course, with the smooth comes the rough, and as October faded away, so too did my tenure as subeditor (and, previously, copywriter) at one of Manchester’s online platforms, the direct result of furlough reaching its zenith and the Government not deigning to announce an extension to the job retention scheme until 31 October. Ho-hum. Anyway, I’m not leaving it at that without some kind of recognition, nay celebration, of the absolutely amazing work I contributed, so here’s a rundown of a few of my favourite headlines I came up with… Caught in the muddle (for a story about a cocktail “mixologist”), Ace of bakes (Greggs pasties, obvs), Let’s get quizzical (pub quiz), One to relish (dirty burgers), The wurst that can happen (Oktoberfest), For cluck’s sake (chicken “event”), In cider dealing (no, not sure), Sweet cheeses (again, nope, give us a clue). Proof, I’m sure, that I can turn my hand to pretty much any topic. Also, I’m here all week…