Catherine Smith: Featured Poet

THE FATHERS

All over the city, women in restaurants,
cafes, bars, wait for their fathers. Sometimes
the women sip coffee, or wine, pretend to read.
Some fathers arrive promptly, smiling,
dressed as Policemen, or in flannel pyjamas.
One wears a taffeta dress, fishnets and stilettos,
rubs the stubble under his make-up.
Sometimes the father is a Priest
in a robe stained with candle-wax.
Some have pockets gritty with sand
from Cornish holidays; one father
flourishes a fledgling sparrow, damp
and frightened, from an ironed handkerchief.
They bring spaniels, Shetland ponies, anacondas,
they bring yellowed photographs
whose edges curl like wilting cabbages.
One father has blue ghosts of numbers
inked into his forearm. Some of the fathers
have been dead or absent for so long
the women hardly recognise them, a few
talk rapidly in Polish or Greek and the women
shift on their chairs. Some sign cheques,
others blag a tenner. One smells of wood-shavings
and presents the woman with a dolls’ house.
Some fathers tell the women You’re getting fat
while others say, Put some meat on your bones, girl.
Some women leave arm in arm with their fathers,
huddled against the cold air, and shop
for turquoise sequinned slippers or Angelfish
hanging like jewels in bright tanks. Others
part with a kiss that misses a cheek – lint
left on coats, and buttons done up wrong.

From Lip (Smith/Doorstop)

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Catherine Smith is an award-winning poet and fiction writer; she has also written radio drama, (Jellybelly, broadcast May 2005). Her first short poetry collection, The New Bride, (Smith/Doorstop) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, 2001. Her other books include The Butcher’s Hands (short-listed for the Aldeburgh/Jerwood Prize ) and Lip which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 2008.  The Biting Point, her long awaited prose collection is published by Speechbubble Books.

Swale Life Poetry Competition

The Swale Life International Poetry Competition series are organised to encourage creative output and excellence whilst raising funds to help our charity work at Diversity House and keep Swale Life magazine in publication and free to read. These competitions are administered on our behalf by Excel for Charity –  a service operated by Eastern Light EPM International that raises money for charities through writing competitions.

COMPETITION RESULTS
Results of the Swale Life Poetry Competition (April 2011) judged by Claire Askew are now out as follows:

Winners:
1st Prize: “Blue-shirted” by Roanne O’Neil
2nd Prize: “Triangulation” by Frances Donovan
3rd Prize: “Rough Guide to the Lake District” by Christian Ward

Highly Commended:
“Eating Mackerel” by Wendy Pratt
“Garden of Remembrance” by Abegail Morley

The winning and Highly Commended Poems will be published in Issue #6 of Swale Life magazine on Saturday 28th of May.

Judge Claire Askew gives some very fair and frank advice and feedback in her judge’s report.

 

Online Magazines

As The New Writer is girding its loins, embracing the web and moving towards online poetry publication, I have been looking at what is out there and gathering some ideas. The Poetry Library has an impressive and extensive list of e-magazines, blogzines and other online poetry sites “that follow an editorial policy similar to that of traditional printed poetry magazines.” In other words, they have weeded out the unmediated and provided a list worth exploring.

Todd Swift of Eyewear suggests you look at what the sites ask for, and what they offer before sending your work. “If a site doesn’t ask for money from the poet, offers them proper credit for their work, and presents the poetry in an attractive format, with other poets (some of whom are respected, published and recognized as serious) then all should be well.”

So once you’ve done that, what can you expect from publication on these sites and why send your work for online publication rather than print? At Ink, Sweat and Tears they have an enormous international readership, something not achievable with a conventional publication. How enormous is enormous? Charles Christian who launched Ink, Sweat and Tears has a monthly visitorship of 16,000 readers (measured as distinct URLs) and 55,000 page views, so on average each reader visits the site about once every 8 days. Approximately 60% of his readership is located outside the UK. Eyewear receives 17,000 visits on average per month and Michelle McGrane reports that Peony Moon receives between 100 and 200 hundred daily hits.

I find it quite difficult to keep up with all the poetry out there and am currently more comfortable with a printed magazine. But now realise I need to make room for both in my life. Do they co-exist or compete? Charles Christian suggests poetry sites do not compete with printed magazines. “There is still a lot of snobbery associated with printed magazines but this is really a generational thing. The world is changing, dead-tree publications, postage stamps and fountain pens are giving way to digital publications. We are committed to the iPod Generation, we are the future”.

It is not just the young who are online readers. Todd Swift sees everyone becoming more tech-savvy and interested, but thinks “under-40s are more comfortable reading online and more likely to consider an online journal the equivalent (at least) of one made of paper.” Peony Moon has readers from twenty to seventy leaving comments on the site and thinks “online sites and internet stores have made poetry more accessible, particularly to readers who live in places where bookshops don’t stock poetry beyond Keats and A New Anthology of English Verse.”

Poetry is sometimes criticised as elitist. Can online sites break through this barrier by making it more accessible? Todd Swift hopes “that poetry retains some of its elitist image, because any art form that is ‘for everyone’ is likely to be watered down.” Charles Christian suggests that poetry is not elitist but that it is a fringe activity that will never appeal to as wide an audience as other art forms and entertainment. “What I think is the value of online sites is that they are accessible … they allow us to publish digital/experimental forms of poetry that could never be reproduced in a conventional publication.”

So, it’s time to judge for yourself: follow the links to the sites mentioned. Once you’ve done that, I suggest you visit The Poetry Library online and trawl through their list. You might be surprised how many online poetry sites are out there.

First published in The New Writer, Spring 2011

Since writing this article Helen Ivory is now sole editor of Ink, Sweat and Tears.

Mr Luczinski Makes a Move by Peter Daniels

Daniels has a string of publications to his name (Smith/Doorstop, Vennel Press, Mulfran Press Minatures,) his latest, Mr Luczinski Makes a Move from Happenstance (£4.00). Of the 28 poems in the pamphlet, three are winners: The Representatives won the Ledbury competition in 1992; The Pump won the TLS competition in 2010 and Hat and the Pan won the Ver Poets in 2010, so it is no surprise to discover Daniels has a full collection coming out from Cardiff based Mulfran Press later this year.

In this collection the reader is dragged along streets, on trams and trains and then to forests, rivers, oceans. The urban is lonely, invisible, the part of one’s life that is lost; the rural is always just a little out there, a place to be when the secret pain becomes unbearable, but the loneliness is never filled:

“You can attend to each arising moment,
an edge where you stand that gives
back-country behind you, and rough ocean
to launch across, when you finish with land.”

{All you need}

This dual persona offers the unusual and the philosophical, shows us the solitariness of existence and the way things might have been. Sometimes tongue-in-cheek, other times terribly painful, he shows us all of life:

“The city loves us however we’ve failed; it’s a great heap
of love, of lovable people, truth and respect
held in banks of integrity, streets covered in glory and fame
but also with dogshit.”

{The naked city}

Mr Luczinski reveals what is at the heart of the collection:

“In this incarnation, his tweed suit
is not quite threadbare enough.

He hasn’t lost his sense of direction but
it has nowhere to take him.

Somewhere at the end of this line
is a field of dandelions and a bluebell wood.”

{Mr Luczinski takes a tram}

HappenStance is an independent poetry press originated and run by Helena Nelson. It specialises in poetry pamphlets. It has no public funding. It does, however, have a group of loyal subscribers and readers. The best way to get to know more is to subcribe. A subscription to HappenStance entitles you to the annual Chapters of the HappenStance story, plus a free pamphlet — and following that all sorts of bits and pieces during the year: subscribe here.

The press mainly publishes first collections from UK poets (there are exceptions). They are based in Scotland, and each year a couple of the publications are by Scottish or Scotland-based writers. Most of the poets, however, live and work in other parts of Britain.

Look at their site for some really helpful information. I think what’s particularly good is their list of recommended poetry magazines and links to those sites.

Abegail

Caroline Carver: Featured Poet

CLOUDSCAPE

Unpredictable as my sister’s shadowed face
the clouds are playing house again

building castles for giants;
there’s a beach framed by mansions

of extraordinary beauty      the sun plays hide and seek
among Roman villas in terminal decline

and the giants are planning a ball -
soon the great yachts and cruise-ships will come

dispense their passengers at the doors
of these dream palaces

although the coastline has already moved crab-ways
into new countries   new continents;

oceans puff and fill
perhaps dragons are stirring underneath

as we enter a world wrapped by Christo,
(to this day I have a small fragment of cloth

clipped from the Pont Neuf)       But look!
the cloudsea is no longer calm

the tumbler of gin in my sister’s hand
clicks its castanets of ice;

our pilot acknowledges turbulence;
the plane begins its slow    measured descent

First published in ARTEMISpoetry

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Caroline Carver is a poet and promoter of poetry and poetry events, especially in Cornwall.  She started her conscious life in Bermuda and Jamaica, came back to school in England, and then moved to Canada. She now lives in Cornwall, rummaging through the memory bank as she writes. She’s a National Prize winner, poet-in-residence at Trebah Gardens, a Hawthornden Fellow, and has published three poetry collections. See more of her work at: http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/carolinecarverpage.html

photo credit: Lyn Moir