Another UK prose magazine bites the dust

After 10 issues, "Short Fiction" is no longer going to appear in print. "Metropolitan" (another prose-only, non-genre magazine) ceased in 1998. "Panurge" closed in 1993. "Riptide journal" and "Unthology" are still going, and so is "Granta" (though that takes poetry as well now).

Simple economics works against printed story magazines. Understandably, people are more likely to subscribe to magazines that they're likely to appear in. During its decade of existence , "Short Fiction" published only 120 stories. In contrast the latest issue of "The North" published 173 poems by 84 poets.

The increasing popularity of Flash fiction has helped prose magazines survive - more authors per issue! "Flash" is still being published. And genre magazines (SF, etc) continue to live a charmed life.

Writers' and Artists' sheds

Many writers and artists like to work in their garden. The Guardian had a Best writers' sheds feature (Americans seem to prefer writing huts in the wilderness). Here are some that I've seen.
Roald Dahl's cubby hole at Great Missenden (with me sitting in it). He liked wedging himself in.

Henry Moore's summer house at Perry Green, which I visited last weekend. Nearby he had various studios and barns to work in. This shed was nearest his house.

Henry Moore's chair in his summer house. Looks like he also wedged himself in.

The studio of a friend's late husband - a geosodic dome to let in as much light as possible. At Perry Green, Henry Moore's "Plastic Studio" was like a partially built greenhouse.

GB Shaw's shed at Shaw's Corner, Ayot St Lawrence - it could be rotated so that the light was right.

In the magazines

I'm in the current issues of the paper publications "Envoi", "Acumen" (a letter), and "Unthology" and am due out in the forthcoming issues of "Interpreter's House", "Cake" and "Flash". Online I'm in the current "Firefly" and I'm due out in "Spelk" and "Ink, Sweat & Tears". 10 acceptances so far this year.

I'm not used to such exposure. I did my market research at the start of the year (A UK prose submission schedule for early 2017, etc) so I've been able to keep a minimum of 20 submissions in circulation, resending rejected pieces out quickly. And I've not wasted time sending to the growing list of magazines that I realise I've next to no chance of being in.

New Meanings

In http://www.moriapoetry.com/stewart.html by Steven J. Stewart it says that

• Barthes sees the evolution of language terminating in its present condition, one of absence, where literature only exists in the "absence of all signs," hence the "zero degree of writing"
• the language of poetry no longer exists as a means of signifying or representing the world. Whereas the project of classical literature was to express an existing thought or image with the right words, the project of modern literature is to organize words in such a way that a new, previously-nonexistent thought or image is expressed
• Connections are not properly speaking abolished, they are merely reserved areas, a parody of themselves, and this void is necessary for the density of the Word to rise out of a magic vacuum, like a sound and a sign devoid of background, like ‘fury and mystery.’
• While words don’t relate in the classical sense, each word furthers the creation of the "continuum" until a critical “density” is achieved and the reader experiences the poem as “fury and mystery.” The poem becomes like a Zen koān, an unanswerable riddle that resists the reader’s efforts to solve it. As the reader experiences the poem, chasing the false leads, she comes to a type of enlightenment, a sense of the mysterious, problematic nature of language.
• It's an effect that Robert Kelly calls presentness; he says that the power of poetry is "to employ prepositional language not to make assertions, but to make, for a moment, lush gardens where one is free from assertions, exalted in the fragrance of presentness"
• Paz writes that "In order to experience a poem, we must hear it, see it, contemplate it — convert it into an echo, a shadow, nothingness"

I know what he's getting at. I don't think I could write texts that generate this kind of meaning.

Unthology 9 Launch

Tonight I helped launch Unthology 9 with Gordon Collins, Judy Birkbeck, Tim Sykes, Roelof Bakker and Jane Roberts, presided over by the tireless Ashley Stokes. I read the final part of my episodic piece, providing some explanation. It's available on the Kindle

The last time I read in Norwich I was trying to sell magazines for Cambridge Univ's poetry society, so it must have been about 30 years ago. This time I read part of a story rather than poems, and the setting was rather grander than the brown-walled hall of long ago - "the library", the venue for the launch, was the UK's first public subscription library.

CB1 Poetry - Geraldine Clarkson and Paul Stephenson

Last night I saw Geraldine Clarkson and Paul Stephenson at the CB2 venue (like OuseMuse it's in a basement). Standing room only. I've not encountered Geraldine Clarkson before - I'll keep my eyes open for her work in future. Paul and I have been bumping into each other off and on for years. He going from strength to strength, able to combine rhythm, repetition and reportage (elsewhere I've seen him do Oulipo) with emotion ranging from humour to horror, and an effective delivery - only a few words between the poems, but his Paris poems speak for themselves.

States of Independence (Leicester, 2017)

On Saturday I went to States of Independence in Leicester. It's the 8th one. I think I've been to most of them. I recommend it to writers of all types, but especially small-press people. I couldn't attend all the events/readings I wanted to - there are too many. In the end I plumped for "How to Submit to a Literary Magazine" (Maria Taylor), "Shoestring Spectacular, with poets from Romania, America and Leicester" (I went to see Roy Marshall), and "How to Talk About Poetry" (Nottingham STANZA) - they looked at Jacob Polley's "Jackself".

I bought "The book of tides" by Angela Readman (Nine Arches Press, 2016), "The Great Animator" by Roy Marshall (Shoestring Press, 2017) and "Swimming with Jellyfish" by Stuart Pickford (Smith Doorstep). I've already started on the Angela Readman book. I've read (and liked) her story collection, "Don't try this at home" and am already finding her poems interesting, varied and worthy of slow reading.