Tag Archives: Poetry

Poetry: Thetis by Sue Watling

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Think mackerel

        49 Nereid sisters
                        swim like shoals
                                        of bright fish

        Thetis is drawn
                        to the shadows
                                        liking the dark
                        the atrament

        how does she look…

                        opalesque skin
                                        reflecting light

                        streaming slate hair
                                        liquid shadow

                        iridescent
                                        shimmering bright

                        Thetis is lustrous

                                        blue
                                        green

                        don’t do her justice

                        think peacock shimmer
                                        kingfisher wing

                                think mackerel…

This beautiful poem is from Thetis by Sue Watling. She is a writer and poet from Hull where she has an allotment and keeps honey bees. Sue has poems published in a range of journals including: ‘The Adriatic’, ‘Amethyst Review’, ‘DawnTreader’, ‘Dream Catcher’, ‘Ekphrastic Review’, ‘Green Ink Poetry’, ‘Poetry Shed’ and ‘Saravasti’. Sue’s first poetry collection, Heaving with the Dreams of Strangers, was published by Driech in 2022 https://hybriddreich.co.uk/product/heaving-with-the-dreams-of-strangers-sue-watling/

Below she explores the inspiration and writing of her collection Thetis.

Sue Watling

I first encountered Thetis in the Hollywood film Troy (2004) with Brad Pitt as Achilles and Julie Christie playing his mother. I remember seeing it at the cinema shortly after release in the UK and then looking up Homer’s epic poem The Iliad, on which it was based, albeit with some major deviations. The Iliad is about the final weeks of the Trojan war. There I was struck by the tragedy of Thetis, an immortal goddess who gave birth to a child destined to die young while her own life was eternal.  

Thetis was forced into marriage and motherhood with the mortal king Peleus, but she adored their son Achilles, doing all she could to protect him. This included dipping him in the River Styx to make him invulnerable. Prophecy had decreed the Greeks could not win the Trojan war without Achilles fighting on their side, but that he was destined to die young. The fate of mortal lives could never be avoided and Achilles died from an arrow shot through his heel, the fateful spot where Thetis had held him in the river between her finger and thumb, giving rise to the appellation of an Achilles Heel.  

Tragedy is defined as great suffering and this story is tragic by anyone’s standards, yet my research suggested Thetis had never been a central topic of attention. The duality fascinated me and Thetis: a poetic narrative emerged out of this dissonance. My retelling of her story is based on each of her appearances in the Iliad, alongside supplementary resources about the Trojan war where her name appeared. I felt the tragedy was full of poetic potential while the gaps in our knowledge about her life were a gift for the creative imagination.

I took a part-time degree in creative writing at the University of Hull and decided to use Thetis as the subject for my dissertation. My poetry tutor was Felix Hodcroft, who encouraged and supported me in the venture, and I was delighted when Felix offered to publish Thetis through Esplanade Press.

Cover image from collection by Helen Birmingham https://www.untangledthreads.co.uk

Copies of Thetis: a poetic narrative can be ordered by email watlingsue@gmail.com or via direct message on social media https://www.facebook.com/sue.watling
and Twitter https://twitter.com/suewatling                

I’ve always enjoyed writing but most of my publications came about through my career in higher education teaching and learning. Following a restructure in 2019, I left work and realised it was an opportunity to reframe what felt, at the time, like an unwelcome change. Really it was a gift in disguise because I had time to write. Poetry has always interested me so I began to study a different way to express thoughts and feelings.

Myth and legend have always fascinated me. I’ve also rewritten the tale of Kalypso and Odysseus, while many poems in my first collection, Heaving with the dreams of strangers (Driech, 2022) have a mythological basis. These include Icarus, the Willendorf Venus and the biblical story of Samson and Delilah. Many mythological stories are set in worlds where mortals and immortals live side-by-side. God and goddesses had great powers but were unable to change individual fates, as these were decided at birth and were immutable. The possibilities for reinterpretation of myth are endless and it feels like the various cultural pantheons of gods and goddesses offer a lifetime of potential story telling.

To Find Out More
Sue blogs at https://suewatling.com/ and can be found on Twitter as @suewatling

Copies of Thetis: a poetic narrative can be ordered by email watlingsue@gmail.com or via direct message on social media https://www.facebook.com/sue.watling and Twitter https://twitter.com/suewatling                

Further information about the background to Thetis can be found in the blog post The tragedy of Thetis https://suewatling.com/the-tragedy-of-thetis/  

Of Gardens and Witches

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Today I am delighted to welcome Adrienne Silcock to my blog https://www.adriennesilcock.co.uk/poetry/ She has recently published a collection of herbal poems with The High Window Press called Of Gardens and Witches. Below is one of the poems from her book, plus her thoughts on what inspired it and the whole collection. Enjoy!

‘Dill’ Illustration from Of Witches and Gardens by Hannah Green

Dill
Anethum Graveolens

give seeds
for luck
to the bride to place in a shoe
to the groom for the pocket

give seeds
to protect the baby
– a small bag in the crib –
or to children during church
to hush and stay their hunger

give leaves
to the person who believes
themselves bewitched

give tea
for hiccups, swelling,
insomnia and pain

infused
by Neolithic chef and Pharaoh
across Russia and Rome

consider the smallness of seeds

 

Adrienne writes about her collection:

Even before the Covid pandemic, many of us were beginning to turn towards the natural world for answers and for healing. Some had done so a long time ago. I think I’ve probably been one of the latter, but somehow societal issues seemed to be coming to a head. Climate change, continuing international conflict, people’s mental health issues (I was keenly aware of these, having worked in mental health for a large chunk of my working life)… I started to consider how people over the centuries have turned towards herbs for help.

I began to do the research. Society has had a very long relationship with Dill for instance. Ever since Neolithic times in fact. People used seeds to support superstition, to suppress hunger in times of starvation, to treat mental health issues (give leaves / to the person who believes / themselves bewitched), to treat insomnia or simple physical discomfort, such as hiccups! In a way we have learned to take herbs for granted. On the other hand we’ve forgotten about their magic, their taste, how they can be part of a healthy diet. Suddenly I found myself writing a herbal!

There are so many ways to talk about different herbs. Some of the poems in the collection engage with history and/or mythology, others reflect their usage in modern life, or in the case of Hyacinth (who knew that is considered a herb?) a symbolism for the brevity of life itself. Some are edible, others poisonous. Some have disappeared. I found man’s imprint on the planet and the world’s fragility appearing in my writing again and again. Some poems are light, others wistful and sad, some poems are written with form, others are free. And there are even notes for the curious at the back. I hope that there is something here for everyone.

Adrienne’s most recent publication is Of Gardens and Witches, a collection of herbal poems is from The High Window Press (September 2021). She has also published a poetry pamphlet Taking Responsibility for the Moon with the Mudfog Press (2014), has appeared in the independent press and various anthologies, including Chaos (Patrician Press, 2020), Geography is Irrelevant (Stairwell Books, 2020) and is a featured poet in Vindication (Arachne Press, 2018). She has published two novels, Vermin (Flambard, 2000) and The Kiss (on Kindle) and was shortlisted for the Virginia Prize 2009 for an unpublished novel Controlling Aphrodite.

Strange Meeting

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I am sometimes asked: where do you get your ideas from? My response is: everywhere. To be creative, all we have to do is open up our bodies and our minds. Feast our eyes, our ears, our nose on the world around us, stick out our tongues to taste the day, be curious, reach and touch the varied textures (Covid restrictions may apply).

I was very happy to learn, therefore, that one of Britain’s greatest dead poets, Wilfred Owen, was also stirred by his environment, the town I now call home.

When I moved to Scarborough eighteen years ago, I found out that Wilfred Owen had been here just before he was sent back to the front near the end of World War One. In late 1917/early 1918 he was billeted at the Clarence Gardens Hotel, now the Clifton Hotel, on North Bay. Several years ago, I heard a talk by Dr Paul Elsam and John Oxley MBE FSA in which they discussed how this sojourn had fed into Owen’s poetry. I was overjoyed to find this talk expanded into six podcasts for the recent Big Ideas By the Sea festival. Each podcast takes a poem and explores the links with Scarborough. The series is accompanied by an art installation at the railway station.

https://bigideasbythesea.com/festival/index.php/wilfredowen

Art installation at Scarborough railway station by Kane Cunningham, Ben Cunningham & Dr Paul Elsam.
Window based on the poem, The Calls. Photo by Mark Vesey. July 2021.

I have always said graveyards are a great resource for writers. Half told stories adorn every grave, demanding: ‘What happened here?’ And ‘What if?’ In the current novel I am working on, Drowning Not Waving, DC Donna Morris walks through Dean Road cemetery, the dedications to fisherman giving her a new perspective on her investigation. The paths she walks, I have walked dozens of times. And, according to the podcast on the poem Strange Meeting, so did Wilfred Owen. He stood in front of a memorial which has always intrigued me and, perhaps, like me, it got him wondering.

Photo by Kate Evans, July 2021

I was very glad the podcast on the poem The Calls explained the background to it, as, at first, I was not taken by it. However, as I sit overlooking the South Bay, it comes back to me and I write.

The Calls, 25th July 2021
The drone of the speed boat.
The excited prattling of the children paddling.
A man arguing into his mobile phone.
The (not quite) silent beat of the wing of a seagull gliding in to grab.

A winter visitor in 1918,
he would not have noted these.
Yet, a hundred or so years apart,
we can share the shush-shus-shush-shoosh —
the inexorably incoming tide.

Both Wilfred Owen and I have been inspired by Scarborough. Now his words have stimulated mine. That’s how writers roll, moved by our surroundings, but further stirred by the language of others who have also been inspired in this way. A never ending process, whirling on and on.

Now I invite you, dear reader, to use this blog post as a portal to the Wilfred Owen in Scarborough podcasts:

https://bigideasbythesea.com/festival/index.php/wilfredowen/

If you love reading or writing poetry or stories, I can guarantee you will find them fascinating.

Guest Author: Prea G Kaur

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I was lucky enough to come across one of Prea’s poems in Mslexia (For women who write, Mslexia is a national magazine of women’s writing.) and was even happier when she agreed to appear on my blog. Below is her poem, followed by her thoughts on the writing of it. A short biog and links come at the end of the post.

How Taljinder Met Tarlochan
She pierced her ears at 11, punctured her nose
at 13 and was ready to be married by 15.
She had the colouring of light cha, a northerner
living in the city of five rivers and she would
breathe in its life; the musical sultry nights,
powdered peacock holis, the cracked mud villages,
the first monsoon of the season: the outpour
of warm rain on her arms, her face, seeping
into her clothes. The dry heat would burn through
the night and into the next day, where she would lie
in the blades of grass, until the world fell away.

And then she flew the sky, leaving the clouds,
the fields, the mud and the rain. Landing
in manicured pastures, she would discover
a new tongue, faces met by arrangement, a new
house, double glazed windows, instant mashed
potato, brown bread, fish and chips, her bridal self
and Tarlochan: whose mother and siblings
would teach Taljinder that for a few decades
her body was a planting pot for purple, yellow
and green flowers to bloom under her skin. 

She would understand from Tarlochan that sex
is not love, sex is for babies, all four who would teach
them the boundaries of respect and that the borderless
state of love between them both is at first friendship,
hardened by the lightning bolt of disappointment
that would strike when their children defied
religion and tradition. And yet, their strength
would be found in the soft sigh of knowing that
the ones who they gave the future to had found
a loop hole: left open, a freshly painted door
through which they too, could one day, walk through. 

By Prea G Kaur
First published in Mslexia March/April/May 2021 Issue 89

Dancer at Cranford Community School International Women’s Day celebrations 1993. Photo by Kate Evans

Reflections on writing the poem by Prea G Kaur

Prea G Kaur June 2021

My writing explores generational trauma, it seeks to examine how my family’s traumas and the way they dealt with them can be passed on to their children, including myself. My parents are British Indians and landed in England in the 1980’s and fell straight into a society that was mostly hostile to migrants, and to an extent, it still is. How Taljinder Met Tarlochan is quite an intriguing poem, not only for readers but also for myself. I first wrote it in my third year as an undergraduate and back then it was a very different poem. The beginning was strong, but the ending was flat and so before I submitted it to Mslexia it underwent quite a rigorous editing. In fact, not only did the title and structure change but so did most of the poem. This change comes from growth, your views and opinions are always evolving, so I think it is always worthwhile revisiting a poem. When Debbie Taylor, the editor of Mslexia, informed me I was to be published, she also sent me a new version of my poem which Karen McCarthy Woolf had rearranged, and as a result it read much better. I agreed to the change in structure and so it was published in three more compact stanzas rather than the original longer ones I had submitted.

On a leave of absence, technically I am not supposed to write or work academically but I find this impossible, if not very damaging to not do. For me poetry is therapeutic, it allows me to express pain in a way in which it can be dealt with. So not only am I still writing, but I was also recently brought on as a voluntary poetry editor at a new online start up magazine founded by Isla Telford called Hencroft Hub. With Isla, I run online workshops where we breakdown the work of already published writers, so that participants can see where narratives work and where they don’t. I often find that the stories and poems which don’t quite work, are where the writer is too scared to express themselves and so hides behind language. I was once this writer and sometimes I still am, but I have learned that I can bypass hiding behind language if I pull on the heart of the poem: the thread of raw emotion. Emotion which lives in memory, people, places, and events and which should be weaved throughout the poem or story. This is how I build a poem and then I edit, edit, and edit, until I am happy with it. The job of poetry, and I suppose all writing, is to make comprehendible something that an individual may not understand. Narrative must arrest, interest, and overwhelm the reader’s attention. I try to connect to my readers through emotion, so that they can empathise or sympathise with my work, which as a result can lead to a stronger connection between characters and readers. Everyone has had different upbringings and experiences, but we can understand each other through the way in which we feel and empathise—this, I believe as humans, is our first and last connection to each other.

The poem follows my mothers’ journey from India to England, there isn’t one emotion here, there are sets which include love and pain. When I say sets of emotions, I mean to say that love is a feeling made up of emotions such as happiness, fear and surprise; which goes hand in hand with pain, made up of sadness, anger and disgust. And so, love and pain become a symptom of each other, and I think this is the base of my poem. It follows my mother’s life from beginning to its present; the unknowingness of leaving an environment where she is comfortable in India, to flying to England to get married. I hoped to convey the fear of leaving a place she knew and entering one she didn’t. Where after a while, British culture such as “fish and chips” and “double-glazed windows” are a part of her life, which are contrasted by the mud villages she once knew.

Arranged marriages are common in the Indian culture and this was very much the case with my mother. She left India to get married to my father who was already in England. Here, I wanted to portray a different sort of love. A love that is born through a lack of free will, chance and friendship rather than passion at first sight. A love that weathers hardship and mutual pain but also a love that is forced to follow the tradition of the Indian culture; one where the female must have children, be the angel in the house as well as work to earn a wage. The poem ends with the hope that the next generation will do better, that they will not have to conform to tradition or religion; that they and the generation before can live in the freedom that is allowed through choice. In many ways this poem skims the surface of the collection I am working on, there are so many stories and avenues in here that I am yet to explore and perhaps that is why I don’t love this poem, because I do not yet see it as complete—as a writer this is always the case, for the end is always unwritten.  

Prea G Kaur, brief biography
I am undertaking my PhD at Keele University but I am currently on a leave of absence; I think I can speak for most when I say it’s been a hard year. Among the death, despair, and endless stream of devastation in this pandemic, poetry has allowed me to keep seeking the joy in living. Faced with the possibility of non-existence, like many others, the pandemic made me realise that I was far from being content. I was despondent doing an English PhD up to the point that it made me very ill. Struggling with depression, an eating disorder and the pressure of a PhD that no longer reflected what I needed to tell the world, was just not how I wanted to live my life. So, I decided to take a leap of unknowingness and get some of my poetry published. I entered the Mslexia 2020 poetry competition with three poems. The one which I thought was my weakest, How Taljinger Met Tarlochan, was chosen by the judge, Karen McCarthy Woolf to be published and was awarded the unpublished poet prize.

During my undergraduate and Masters I took a few modules in creative writing. I was and still am a good writer, and I enjoy it with a wicked passion. But I chose to ignore my strength as a writer because still as it stands, creative writing is frowned upon by some academics and students. Yet I find this quite perplexing because most academics would not exist without creatives. The world needs more writers who choose to feel and reflect our humanity. I can’t quite explain what poetry means to me; it’s in my blood, every atom of my being, it’s akin to oxygen and I can’t see myself living without reading or writing it. Being published gave me the recognition I needed to believe in my voice and my writing. I am no longer doing an English PhD. Keele and the arts and humanities research council have allowed me to change the output of my project to creative writing; where I’m still exploring mental illness and trauma as I had originally planned, but it’s now more personal and, of course, poetic.

Links:
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/preakaur/
Hencroft https://www.hencrofthub.com/


Guest Author: Isabelle Baafi

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I subscribed to the Poetry Book Society (The book club for poetry lovers. (poetrybooks.co.uk) last year to widen my understanding of poetry and to introduce me to new writers. This it has done. And one of the poets I have been fortunate to discover is Isabelle Baafi. As soon as I read her poem ‘Plantain’, I wanted more, and ordered her pamphlet Ripe (ignitionpress, 2020). Here is a fizzing cornucopia of poetry in a fresh voice. The mundane is often used to explore emotional depth. The white space on the page is sometimes innovatively employed to underline what the words are expressing. It’s not always an easy read, but it is worth spending time to ponder over and reflect on. I found fascinating how the the first poem of hers I read, ‘Plantain’, took on a different flavour when nestled in the context of the others in the pamphlet.

How grateful am I, then, that Isabelle has agreed to allow me to reproduce here one of her poems and has graciously answered some questions (see below). Thank you Isabelle.

Finding my dad in a can of baked beans

In supermarket aisles, you teach me to need; stacking cans
up to my chin—baked beans, corned beef,
carrots, peas. I heave our trolley against the weight
of a fear you have never unlearned.

At night, your prodigal car lights creep across my bedroom wall,
and I add you to my list of things that come to us tightly sealed.
On school runs, I plant tiny feet in the back
of your driver’s seat—hoping you’ll feel something.

Beanstalk-tall and paraffin-scarred:
Google Translate says your laugh means
           wandering echo
And me—your youngest bean. If I knew the way back, I’d bury

scoops of me for you to find: in the Bantustan, near your
mother’s house; the chirp of grasshoppers saturating the bush.
In the tracks on sloping road, made by your father’s dusty Navara.
In the belly of the mine that swallowed your brothers every night.

The first time I hear your language, it’s in the song of a baked beans ad.
White families rush through drizzling streets to huddle in kitchens,
fall into dining room chairs. Uniformed, backpacked kids
drift home to the baritones of Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

You’ve played that song on the stereo. I don’t know
the words. But you say it’s about
wise men, who cross the world looking for home
in a man they have always hungered for.

At the table, I nudge beans around my plate, clustering stars;
trying to navigate the miles between us. At the window,
the sides of the curtains shine like the rim of a half-opened can.
In the pauses between ads we chew on silence.

‘Finding my dad in a can of baked beans’ was first published in harana poetry. 
It also appears in Ripe, which can be bought from the ignitionpress website, here.
Photo by Kate Evans
isabelle_baafi[23224]Photo of Isabelle Baafi by Sarah Kiki Nyanzi

Kate: Can you tell us something about your creative process?
Isabelle: I write as often as I can, which is almost every day at this point. I recently started writing full time, and that has been such a rewarding experience. Normally, after going for a run, I’ll write in the morning until lunchtime. For me, writing often involves a lot of free writing, which has allowed me to explore the many associations, memories, random thoughts, and concepts that are trapped within my subconscious. But also, I often think about new things that I want to try, and experimentations with various forms and devices. In the afternoons, I’ll usually do some admin, or work on projects, and then in the evenings I read.

Kate: Looking back, how did you come to write poetry?
Isabelle: The first time I wrote a poem, I was 14. I was very into the Brontës, and I came across the poem ‘High Waving Heather’ by Emily Brontë, and I loved it. So, I wrote a poem after it about a rainstorm. Over the next few years, I wrote more poems. But I didn’t get very far, and I suppose that I lost confidence in it, and I put all my energy into writing fiction and screenwriting. Then, in 2017, I read Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, which reignited my love of poetry. Warsan Shire’s writing is such a force. At the time, I was also writing flash fiction and sharing excerpts of stories online, and gradually the stories became shorter and shorter, and increasingly poetic, until eventually I realised that I was writing poems. I had always wanted to be a writer, and yet I never really pictured myself as a poet. But poetry is a great form. There is so much that only a poem can do, and so it’s a really cool genre to work with.

Kate: Where does the title ‘Ripe’ come from?
Isabelle: At its core, Ripe is about the desires that propel us through life, control our actions, and define us as human beings. The pamphlet grapples with permutations of physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual curiosity, and relational need, and how they all overlap and inform each other. The poems explore pubescence, trauma, submission, reclamation, and self-discovery, and so, what I think the title captures is a sense of allure and temptation, and the sensation of existing on the verge: on the verge of knowledge, the verge of beauty, and the verge of destruction.

Kate: In many of your poems you use the white space and the placement of the words on the page in an innovative way. Can you explain how this came about and your thinking around this?
Isabelle: For me, the form of a poem is as much a part of the poem as the words themselves. Also, I think one of the greatest things that literature can do is encourage empathy — and so, when I write a poem, I want the reader to feel what the speaker is feeling. For that reason, I will sometimes try to convey the speaker’s experience through the form. For instance, a poem in which the speaker feels trapped might have a justified alignment to convey a sense of rigidity and external control. However, it’s something that I try not to do too often – and only when it serves and enhances the poem. I think anything that you do too often can become predictable and gimmicky. But experimenting with form is something that I really enjoy doing.

Kate: What are your future plans?
Isabelle: At the moment, I’m preparing to start a Masters in Creative Writing at Oxford in September, and I’m also looking forward to some editing opportunities that I have lined up for later this year. Plus, I’m gradually writing towards my first collection, and I’m hoping to put that together next year.

Kate: The question you wish I’d asked?
Isabelle: Your questions have been great, Kate!
I suppose, one thing that I haven’t talked much about is how the pamphlet has changed my relationship with my work. Nowadays, whenever I write anything, I consider it as a piece of a puzzle, and I’ll think about its place within a body of work or larger narrative. Every choice that I make will take into account every other poem that I’ve written, as well as the end result that I have in mind; the ideological framework that I’m building. These days, I’m holding onto poems longer, and waiting for them to speak to each other before I send any of them out into the world.

Brief biog.
Isabelle Baafi is a writer, poet, and critic from London. Her debut pamphlet, Ripe (ignitionpress, 2020), was the Poetry Book Society’s Pamphlet Choice for Spring 2021. She was the winner of the 2019 Vincent Cooper Literary Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, the 2020 Bridport Prize for Poetry, and the 2019 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition. Her poems have been published in The Poetry Review, Magma, Anthropocene, Tentacular, and elsewhere. She is a Ledbury Poetry Critic, an Obsidian Foundation Fellow, and a Board Member at Magma. She is currently working on her debut poetry collection.

Pamphlet: Ripe (ignitionpress, 2020)
Twitter: twitter.com/IsabelleBaafi
Website: isabellebaafi.com

Poetry Bites #10: Rehearsing for this

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I am very happy to welcome fellow poet, Felix Hodcroft, as my guest for this post. He is launching his new collection Rehearsing for this. Below you will find a poem from this collection, plus some background to its writing. Enjoy!

Felix Hodcroft reading his own poem: Bosphorus

Bosphorus
Before I was – I was
an ash – a seed – a shred of
slime – I rolled on waves that
chopped and swelled – the
fishes’ muscled surge and dance – the
sun’s stain on the sea I
watched – for years – but
not with eyes.

When I’m what they call dead –
ten billion scuffed-off scrapes of
me – will tumble on cool breezes –
will kiss pale eyes that
seek what I lost – stroke warm flesh that
aches like mine – be
drunk by mouths that never
speak my tongue.

Alive’s a stuttering fumbling –
scrambling up while slithering down –
grains sifting softly in –
swept clean away.

So take this rope of breath – and
climb it – drink this cup  before it
smashes – catch life piping
hot – it soon
will chill.   

Notes from Felix Hodcroft about his poem Bosphorus: Although I can and do rhyme, usually within lines rather than at the end of them, rhyme is not the be-and-end-all of poetry for me. I’m more inclined to use other verbal patternings – alliteration and assonance, echoes, repetitions and parallels, onomatopoeia. I find they give much more variety, energy and challenge while still, I hope, achieving that sense of heightened intensity and sparkle that can differentiate poetry from prose. Another important poetic tool for me is rhythm. I will to vary it, but generally I seek to use start-line stresses to achieve a dynamic spring and energy. I often make use of narrative and characterisation, which some people think are more the stuff of prose than poetry. I always aim for intensity, compression and a balance between accessibility and mystery.

Most of my poems arise from trying to think, and feel, very hard about things: problems, dilemmas – personal or public – to which it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to find an “answer”. Only by trying to translate my confusions into poetry can I keep reasonably happy (and, probably, reasonably sane).

I’m very preoccupied by the darkness I sense around us – often seeping into us. Plus by the challenge of really, really feeling what it feels like to be anyone apart from myself. I’ve always thought a lot about time, its passage and loops, and about death and legacy.

‘Bosphorus’ was sparked by a boat trip on that waterway, the divide between two seas, two continents. I was fascinated by the Bosphorus’s power, by its busyness, by the wildlife – fishes, birds and lots of jellyfish when I was there – by the pollution and the spectacular and stirring views of Istanbul (the most impressive city I’ve ever been to) on either side. 

These impressions, together with a sense, common when I travel, that I am holding my breath and touching briefly a life and civilisation fascinatingly/disturbingly alien, exploded into a vision of the waterway as a focus of an endless cycle of birth, death and recycling in which each one of us is but “an ash – a seed – a shred”. We can – we must, while we can – take joy from the beautiful, terrible world that lies around us. We can – we should – take comfort from the fact that others have lived, laughed and wept, loved and died, just like us. Not in black-and-white, not in any lesser way but just like us! They have grown chill and rotted but their joys and pain, their learning, the very compounds that formed their bodies and brains are recycled into us. They will, provided we allow ourselves to carry on existing, form and nourish generations more when we are but “scuffed-off scrapes”.   

I wouldn’t say that this poem reflects my ‘spiritual philosophy’. As a poet, I think it’s my mission not to have a mission, to think lots of different, often contradictory and definitely contrary things and not to have too clear a philosophy. However, having written ‘Bosphorus’ some years ago now, I still find it a poem that helps me to manage my life, and the death to come.

About Felix Hodcroft
Born (Manchester), brought up (in and around Oxford), took degrees in Eng Lit and Applied Social Sciences in my twenties. Worked briefly (18 months) as a Northern Ireland Office civil servant and, not at all briefly (36 years), as a probation/court welfare officer, based in Birmingham, then Hull, then Bridlington and finally, part-time, here in Scarborough.

I’ve been writing poetry for many years. I had a previous book, ‘Life after Life after Death’ published by Valley Press in 2010. I have never wanted to hurry into publication, being prone to the neurosis that there’s always something you could  fiddle with to improve (though, looking back on LALAD, I’m fairly happy). Such neuroses make me as much at home as an editor, anthologist and teacher/mentor as I am as a poet. Those activities, as well as the usual family traumas of someone tipping over from middle age towards – er, late middle age have delayed my second volume. 

I’ve performed and compered, collaborating with Kate and with artist Helen Birmingham to run Scarborough’s open mics and, more recently, Rotunda Nights. Also with Sue Wilsea as the ‘Hull to Scarborough Line’. None of these activities have stopped me writing but they’ve all got in the way of pulling it altogether into a second collection. As has aforementioned neurosis and an apprehension about stepping too far into what can sometimes seem the conflicted wokey-luvvie-bitchie world of the ‘professional’ ‘poet’. I’ve done it now though and would love to invite you to the on-line launch of my second collection ‘Rehearsing for This’, at 7pm on Sunday 29th November. Email me on feljen@feljen.pluscom if you’d like a link to attend, and/or if you’d like a copy of the book for just £8 including postage.

Poetry Bites #9: Your Story Ended

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The other morning, I was delighted to find an email announcing a new poetry collection: Rainbow Parachutes: a collection of children’s poems from the 2020 Central Tramway Poetry Competition. It is always a joy to discover new poems. Plus the writers in this case were youngsters, whose creativity and wisdom defied their ages.

The Central Tramway Company runs one of the two remaining cliff lifts in Scarborough. Built in 1881, it is one of the oldest still running in the UK: https://www.centraltramway.co.uk/ The Rainbow Parachutes competition was organised by the company in aid of Young Minds: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/lockdownpoetrycollection

Cover design by Tess Willoughby:

https://www.tesswilloughby.com/

When I read the through the collection, this poem went straight to my heart:

Your Story
I stood beside you in your fading words
We’ve been through thick and thin, the normal and the absurd
I’ve laughed with you in parks through the gentle breeze
I still can’t get over losing you to this merciless disease
Death is vicious, there is no way to fight it
Your story ended, so I will rewrite it.

It’s author is Vikram Kochhar, aged 11, hailing from Kent in the UK. I am delighted that he agreed to be featured on my blog and answer a few questions.

Tell me something about yourself
I enjoy lots of different activities, from English, especially creative writing, to riding my bike. Things I like include Japanese food, holidays (I suspect most people do!), writing, and most sports. I don’t like things like comprehension and grammar (mostly in tests), watching TV for over an hour (unless it is a movie), rugby and rain. Unlike many others, I enjoy both opiniated subjects, like English, and straight-forward subjects, like mathematics, where there is usually only one answer. This is mainly because I enjoy learning new things and getting good grades!

Tell me something about your writing and your approach to writing:
I usually end up turning the writing task at hand into something I enjoy, as it makes it easier to think of new ideas. I like writing very metaphorical pieces, which emphasise the current time, or an emotion. A story or poem with a larger meaning makes it easier to change in more ways than a story with a simple plot. If I am given a task which suggests this, I would probably do as asked, but try to make it more relatable to the reader. A ‘relatable’ story means something which is easier to understand, so the audience can appreciate the writing completely. This is precisely what I aim for when I either must or would like to write. Sometimes, when I’m bored, or have a sudden urge, I like to write a story or poem, as it gives me something to concentrate on.

How did you come to write your poem for the Tramway Competition?
I wrote the poem on a regular day, at the time of what could be called the ‘peak’ of coronavirus. As I said in the previous paragraph, I somehow felt the urge to write something. I then looked at a website named Prose (for those who don’t know, Prose is a writing website with weekly or monthly tasks and challenges), and saw a challenge to write a story or poem, ending with the phrase, ‘your story ended, so I will rewrite it.’ This appealed to me because it related to the times when restrictions were in force. I decided to enter this, but I didn’t submit it to the original challenge, because it didn’t feel as important. Instead I submitted it to the Central Tramway Writing Competition, as I thought it deserved a proper reviewing. In times like now and then, it is important to remind people about the risks of now, and to reminisce about the times before. 

Poetry Bites #8: Ekphrastic Poetry

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I love going to museums and art galleries. What I find there often inspires me to write. I have recently discovered there is a formal term for this: Ekphrastic. The idea is not necessarily to give an accurate description of the art work, but to delve deeply into your own interpretation of its underlying story or significance.

The intention is to add to the artwork by having a kind of conversation with it. Am I always saying poetry starts with a conversation…?

We have been lucky enough to have our art gallery open (https://www.scarboroughmuseumstrust.com/scarborough-art-gallery/) and there is an excellent new exhibition on show. It is the New Light exhibition: https://newlight-art.org.uk/prize-exhibition/. This has moved me to some ekphrastic writing. I am not going to claim them to be poems, more ‘little stones’, as they are not particularly crafted, but intend to give a sense of a moment, of an encounter.

My method for Ekphrastic writing?
Spend some time with art work. Stand in front of it. Look for the details. Study it closely and then from afar. Write for about five minutes in your writing journal. Write loosely, words or phrases which occur to you. Do not judge or edit at this time. Leave this writing alone for at least a week, maybe more. Go back to it. Pick out the words which still appear germane and have a play. This may end up with a little stone, or the beginnings of a poem.

Sorrowing Cloth
A winding cloth,
a shroud,
in a burning world.
It offers little shelter,
or luxury,
adrift, in a lily strewn swamp.

Is it us or the cloth which is sorrowing?

Inspiration: https://newlight-art.org.uk/selected-artworks-2020-21/sorrowing-cloth/

I challenged myself to work from a piece which I was not drawn to: https://newlight-art.org.uk/selected-artworks-2020-21/booby-no-2/

A daughter, not a son, held by her teeth to her mother’s teat,
Our Madonna unholy shuns our gaze.
‘Look away,’ she says.
‘Do not preach.
Do not bring your gifts of platitudes.
Do not think I care.’

Your turn?
Have a go using the link to the New Light exhibition and share in the comments box if you like.

Poetry Bites #7: Locating the Full-Stop

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A friend’s teenage daughter asked a question to help with a presentation she had to do at school and it got me thinking. The question was around whether poems are ever finished. It echoed others I had received from students during my teaching years. Is this poem/piece of writing completed? Can it ever be said to be finished?

There is the famous quote from French poet, Paul Valéry (1871-1945): A poem is never finished only abandoned. Which suggests it is indeed difficult to know the end point of a poem.

I think a poem, perhaps more than any other type of writing, begins with a conversation with oneself. Some of our deepest conversations with ourselves are life-long and, therefore, so is the working through it in writing. Themes and characters reappear in writers’ works over and over. Colm Tóibín is the first to admit he has spent many a novel trying to deal with the early death of his father and the relationship with his mother.

However, I do believe a poem captures a moment in that process, which means it can have a full-stop at its end. I think it is can even be healthy to find that full-stop so we avoid returning and returning again to the same spin of the record. When I was training to be a psychotherapeutic counsellor we would get exasperated with ourselves for ‘playing the same record’ when we repeated old scripts or behaviours. It came as something of a relief when someone suggested, yes it’s the same record, but it’s a different track. Finishing a poem could help us move the needle to an alternative groove.

Concluding our work on a poem could also depend on whether we want to share our conversation with another. This brings in all sorts of considerations about comprehensibility, acceptability and whether we are open to our writing being understood in different ways from how we intended. Writers have very varying attitudes to the latter. Some want to retain a lot of control over how their work is read and what is taken from it. Personally, I love to hear others interpreting my poems in their own way – even if it is not at all as I anticipated – because it shows they are engaging with it and finding their own personal meanings in it. (I should say there would be a limit to this, I would not want my poems used in a way to promote something I found abhorrent. I hope never to hear Trump reciting something I have written at one of his rallies!)

I have noticed that some writers and students of writing seem to want everything they write to be directed towards an audience. Visual artists are allowed their studies and sketches, musicians can practise their scales, dancers have their warm-up routines, but writers? Once words are on the paper they should be destined for a finished piece. For me, this is not the best approach. As creatives we also require the space to experiment and develop. I have ‘delivered’ A Wake of Crows, my first novel of three to the publisher Constable. I am now turning to the second, Drowning Not Waving. It will be essentially a re-working of a novel I have already ‘finished’ but I am changing both narrative characters. It means that the story as seen through ‘Sarah’s’ eyes won’t be read by anyone (a good third of the novel as it was originally written). But it is not obsolete, it is not wasted. I have learnt so much about Sarah (who is still in the novel) by writing through her, this will enrich the new version.

Evaluating our own work
Deciding whether a poem is finished will entail some evaluation of our work. My friend, writer and artist, Jane Poulton asked me once: how do we evaluate our own work?

My first response was, with great difficulty. Though it certainly becomes easier with practice, with writing, with reading (as a writer, ie critically) and with the support of friends who are writers. We do need to be aware of our own internal psychological processes. Generally are we perfectionists? In other walks of life, do we think we are rubbish at everything? What shape is our internal critic in? All these things will effect how we evaluate our writing. And whether we can finish. Perfectionists tend to find it hard to say it’s done, for example.

Plus, who are we evaluating it for? Is there a real audience/editor? Are we clear about what they want from us? Or are we evaluating it with an ‘imagined’ audience – this can be within or outside of awareness. For instance, when we evaluate our work are we unconsciously trying to prove something to a parent or a teacher (who are no longer even around)?

Bringing psychological processes within awareness aids assessing whether they are helpful or not and how they might be attuned to be more beneficial.

JP, herself had some more useful thoughts which she is happy for me to share. She suggested some questions:

  • Would I want to read this if I hadn’t written it?
  • Is this so personal other people might not identify with it?
  • Am I making enough bridges/connections for readers to identify with it?
  • What – specifically – would be relevant to anyone else?
  • What will others take from this?
  • What is really essential to this story/poem?
  • What could I take out and it not really matter?
  • Is it in a relevant style bearing in mind the subject matter?

She also cautions avoiding repetitions – saying the same thing in other ways – and overt sentimentality. She counsels a lightness of touch, less is usually more – suggestions often carry more impact than long descriptions of something.

On re-reading her contribution, JP did want me to point out that she doesn’t always manage to, and sometimes chooses not to, follow her own checklist.

Finding your own way to a conclusion
Since I consider a poem to be an essence of a moment, or of me in a moment, then I rarely go back to one to re-write once I deem it finished. Other writers are completely the opposite, forever revising and reworking. There are some poems which I would not share anymore because I do not judge they have stood the test of time. However, I would not alter them. I sometimes like to return to older poems to chart my journey – emotionally or as a poet. But if I want to return to the theme or image, since I am in a different place (in terms of understanding, psychologically, age-wise, geographically), I will make a new poem.

How do you know if something you have written is finished?

 

Musings #1: Pantser or Planner

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For devotees of this blog – thank you for staying loyal – the concept of pantser or planner, when it comes to writing a novel, will not be new. However, to recap:

  • a planner plans meticulously each twist and turn in their novel before they start writing;
  • a pantser writes ‘by the seat of their pants’. They start writing without any real idea of where their story is going or even what it might be about.

I used to be a pantser. After now writing six crime novels – three self published, two unpublished and currently one under contract with Constable/Little Brown – I am moving towards becoming a planner. And, like many things in life it is a continuum, not an ‘either/or’. Or it should be, I believe, for any writer.

‘Pantser’ is joyously following your imagination and characters where they wilt. It means the writing surprises you the writer and will, therefore, surprise the reader. It will mean the writing can really plumb the layers of your sub-conscious and come up with what is truly original, unique to you and what you really what you want to say. On the other hand, perhaps especially with a crime novel, at least keeping a plan as you go along saves time in the future. Clues and red herrings have to tie up in the end. Whatever is written later in the novel has to be presaged by something earlier on. Tweaking or rewriting earlier passages in the re-drafting process means things have to be altered down the line. A prosaic example: in my current novel, A Wake of Crows, late on in the rewrites I decided my main protagonist had to have married when she was just 20, rather than just 19, this changes the wedding anniversary she thinks about in the ‘now’ of the story.

Val McDermid has said she has moved from being a planner towards being more of a pantser and, let’s be honest, her novels have improved over time (perhaps not just for this reason, learning ones craft is also important – writers are rarely born, they have to be developed). I was interested to learn from Ian Rankin (interviewed at the Edinburgh International Book Fair 2020, more of that below) that he writes a first draft and then does the research – a pantser turns planner. I would imagine this must mean the second draft requires a good amount of care in keeping everything straight.

What are you, pantser or planner?

Collage postcard by Kate Evans, Summer 2020

Zoomed Out
This pandemic has spawned a host of new language in the usage of once familiar words. Pandemic, in itself, was once something which happened elsewhere but not to us – not anymore. Self and isolation when brought together have developed new meanings (and attendant feelings). Language is always evolving, though often more slowly, it is interesting (if unnerving) to watch it happen over just a few months.

Many of us are spending more time online. Hence the term ‘zoomed out’ (other platforms are available) to suggest too much screen time. I know I have been zoomed out more than once. However, there has been an upside to being forced more into the digital realm. I am a devotee of radio and am now discovering and enjoying more and more podcasts. Plus various events which I would never have thought to attend in person have become accessible to me. For instance, I joined an excellent series of poetry workshops exploring racism facilitated by Charmaine Pollard (https://charmainepollardcounselling.co.uk/) and Victoria Field (https://thepoetrypractice.co.uk/home/about/). In addition, here are a few other suggestions which may serve as an antidote to feeling zoomed out:

This is all pretty much free, so don’t forget, if you can, donate to a cultural organisation, they really need our financial support right now.

Have you any digital recommendations?