Losing yourself

Sometimes a person retreats to a cave or a remote croft to find themselves, worried that others might influence them, that their true self will be diluted.

Some writers are rather like that, not interacting with others. If their writing's good enough for them that's all that matters. Some become famous, albeit belatedly - Emily Dickinson for example, or to a lesser extent, Hopkins. But most writers like the company of other writers, thinking that it helps their writing. Many join their local writer's groups. Some reach out further, participating in the big world of literature, thinking that the advantages of joining a local group are magnified by interacting with more people. Maybe so, but the risks are greater too - writers risk being driven by market forces and social pressure, losing their authenticity by doing anything to be published, selling themselves out.

I'm one of those people involved with bigger groups. I look upon new styles not as a betrayal of Self but as a way of exploring new aspects of it. I think some compromise is inevitable - friendships depend on it, so why not the writer-reader relationship? But if you're worried about authenticity, here are some tips on how to survive out there without selling your soul too much.

• Find out about the magazines which accept work just like yours. There are magazines specialising in "Gothic Seaside", "Funfairs", "Angels", light verse, etc.
• Don't agonise about which magazine to send a piece to. Send it to a dozen magazines at once - most little literary magazines accept (even encourage) simultaneous submissions nowadays. Mix ambitious submissions with easier, confidence-building ones. Keep lots of submissions in the post - 20 or so. If you're a novelist, write Flash too.
• Let the piece find its own level - start by sending to the New Yorker by all means, but be prepared to send it to smaller and smaller magazines if it's repeatedly rejected.
• Be prepared to re-style your pieces to suit the market or editor (just as you wear appropriate clothes to different social events). If experienced editors make suggestions, listen to them. Don't let your ego get in the way. Try different styles: a chameleon has just as authentic a Self as a toad has - Self is more than skin deep.
• Don't forget that something of value to you - a piece where you feel you've expressed your feelings clearer than ever before, perhaps - may be of no interest to those who don't know you. Though novelty for its own sake isn't likely to fool people for long, neither is submitting work too similar to what others send in. Alexander Pope's "What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed" still applies, but many more thoughts have been well expressed since his day, so you need to read widely, not just write.

AI

Most guidelines for literary magazines and competitions include mention of AI nowadays. It's a rather loose term (I've seen it used for computer-assisted tasks that involve OuLiPo procedures, anagram generation, or randomness) but usually people have a chatgtp-like facility in mind, the computer producing the poem.

The process can be more collaborative than that though, the human keeping control. I've heard a leading mathematician say recently that he uses chatgtp to bounce ideas off of, like chatting to someone over coffee. I use Google in rather the same way, to see what happens if (say) I search for "sheep and chess".

"AI Literary Review" is a new home for such work - "a journal of new poetry, created by humans, utilising artificial intelligence". The poets describe the process that led to their poem. See Issue 1 (Sam Riviere, Harry Man, etc).

"So Tim, here's my first question - What actually is poetry?"

Well, Poetry is as various as Music - both in style (Bach, Bebop, Bacharach, Bantu) and purpose (lullabies, soundtracks, hymns, songalongs, propaganda, etc). If two people say they like music, one might be into Garage and the other Plainsong. Two poetry enthusiasts might also have little in common.

In music, fusions are quite possible (Jazz-rock etc). I think that in poetry it's harder to see the joins when styles and purposes are mixed, and switches are more common - The Waste Land's polyphony (with some fragments a word or line long) is hard to do in music.

Music fans make no apology for specialising - if they like brass bands they choose their music friends accordingly - but sometimes I feel that poets who don't understand/like each other's work feel they should stick together anyway to show solidarity against the unbelieving masses. I think some fragmentation of the poetry world is inevitable. I know of poets who say that Larkin's not a poet. I've heard others say that Prynne isn't. And there's the stage/page split - not everybody thinks that Hollie McNish's pieces work off the page. There's Flarf, Doggerel and Found Poetry.

And then there's the march of time - I think some UK pieces that were considered poetry in the 1990s are Flash now. I'm reclassifying some of mine that I wrote back then. And there's the international perspective - there's a tendency in certain periods/countries to view "bad" (or rude, or unpatriotic) poetry as non-poetry.

E-mail and social media has increased the amount and speed of interaction between poets. In the old days a fashion might dominate a nation for years. Nowadays the turnover is so fast that no single style has time to take root - less fashionable styles are frequently re-integrated. This could lead to homogenisation. Fortunately, the improved communication also gives people a chance to find like-minded people, so sustainable niches are more common now, ensuring variety.

Looking back, it's tempting to label poetry eras - "The Movement", etc - but of course many styles of poetry were present in those eras. Nowadays these unfashionable styles remain more visible than before.

So my answer to the original question is the standard one - it depends who you ask, when, and why. Some texts have been considered poetry by many people for a long time. Among those people are academics who influence (at least nationally) what we categorize as poetry. More than ever though, we need to carefully think about what definitions are for.

Acumen 110

The poetry magazine Acumen continues confidently beyond its centenary issue, keeping its combination of poetry, translations, articles (this time about William Carlos Williams, "Jazz & Poetry" etc) and reviews. There are 120 packed pages (poems by different poets sometimes share a page). Here are a few snippets from the more "mainstream" pieces -

• a plane aiming blind for Leeds,/ its noselight a needle threading clouds/ like worn-out sheets in need of mending (Nancy Mattson)
• [About a kite] - You held it up like a placard,/ while I attached the string,// unreeling it walking backwards,// as if I were laying a fuse (Stephen Claughton)
• the wind toys with leaves like loose/ change in the pocket of the sky (Kathryn Bevis)
• [About an Emperor penguin's egg] - When I'm gone and the shell/ of our marriage cracks, believe that what/ we held between us all this time will break/ out live and singing (Kathryn Bevis)
• warm right arm/ of your scarlet sunglasses/ hooked// into the plunging V-neck of your shirt (Martyn Crucefix)
• to seek truth rather than being right (Gabriel Moreno)

10th Sep 2024, Devereux Pub, London

I got there early, had a chat with Matthew Stewart and Mat Riches while they were fueling up ready for their readings, then left before the start! Long story, but at least I got there. Hope they had a good evening.

Later Matthew wrote that the reading was one of 5 done in 6 days, covering over 1,100 miles. 26 books sold. Taylor Swift doesn't have to worry about competition yet.

Busy September

• A poem of mine (34 years old) is due out in Acumen and 2 poems (24 and 28 years old) will be in the final issue of South. The success of these ancient pieces has made me look through my other old, rejected poems. I've already converted one into Flash.
• Every few years I send a story to "The Stinging Fly". I got another rejection yesterday - one of over 1,400 they sent out for this window.
• A story (only 2 years old!) was long-listed in the Leicester Writes competition. Unplaced, but in the anthology.
• I'm hoping to attend a few poetry readings. Last Sunday I heard Steve Logan (new to me).
• For the first time in months I've started writing a story (not Flash!). There's a phase in my story writing when a piece becomes easier to write, the main issues resolved. I feel content then, completion in sight, the remaining challenges superable rather than daunting.
• Suddenly I've written a poem. It's only my 4th this year - none of them even sent off let alone accepted. Maybe I'll send off a pamphlet this year - it's been a while.
• I've read (well, listened to) "Pride and Prejudice" for the first time. Not for me. I can't see what all the fuss is about. I've also listened to "Julia" (a "1984" spin-off by Sandra Newman). Over-long in parts but interesting enough. I'd forgotten how many backstory/world-making ideas "1984" has.
• And the allotment's gone mad. I'll be self-sufficient in veg for a while. Parsnips failed, but I'm picking 4 courgettes a day, giving away most of them. I did a count of plants - Leeks 48, French beans 23, Berlotti beans 44, Dwarf sweetcorn 10, Dwarf French beans 16, Carrots 80+, Beetroot 32, Potatoes 28, Sunflowers 2, Parsnips 2, Courgettes 15, Pumpkins 3.

Making prose into poetry - words, ideas, forms

How can you make prose look more like poetry?

Words

We all know about poetic words - lambent, shard, etc. There are poetic phrases too. They needn't contain poetic words. There are texts that are poetic, though they might be lacking poetic words and phrases. It might be difficult to quote a powerful phrase from them, and yet as a whole they work - "Adlestrop", maybe. It's sometimes their discontinuities (what they leave out) which give them their poetic air. The more you leave out, the more that readers can add in. So try to reduce the word count.

Images

If a writer adds imagery to prose, hoping it will pass as poetry the risk is that in such surroundings the imagery might draw attention to itself - it had better be fresh, especially if it's the punchline. There are clichés that only experienced readers will notice, clichés that writers will notice but not readers, and some that only tutors might notice. Some are so common that they're tropes/memes, used consciously - for example comparing a life to the passing of seasons. There are ideas that several writers might independently come up with - e.g.

• The idea that a wife in a sad marriage is a victim of Stockholm Syndrome
• The idea that when you switch on a light in a dark room there's a moment when you can see the darkness

One way to avoid the accusation of cliché and purple prose is to get a character (e.g. a pretentious literature student) to express the idea - easier to do in prose.

Forms

I think my aversion to some poems can be summarised by the belief that performing an automatic operation on a text isn't likely to improve it, especially if the operation's reversable (i.e. from the poem you can recreate the original prose). Here are 3 instances -

• anaphora - this can be added to many poems, and just as easy removed.
• multiple negation - a special case of anaphora.
• stanza/line length - chopping a text into regular chunks won't help.

In all these cases I suggest that readers mentally compare the "before" and "after" texts and consider whether incantation or eye candy are being over-used.

Line-breaks

Of course, adding line-breaks is the easiest trick. In Seam 27 some years ago Michael Bayley began his review of Helen Mort's "The Shape of Every Box" poetry pamphlet with

Perhaps one of the more interesting developments in poetry over the last fifty years has been its overlap with short story writing. It's unsurprising that poetic language has relaxed into an easy colloquial manner but maybe what wasn't expected is the way poetry's taken on the subject matter of prose forms. The evolution took a leap with Philip Larkin, but when Douglas Dunn published Terry Street, a book whose themes leant more to the 50s novel than its poetry, it seemed that poetry had taken a detour down a side road.

For some, that side road led to Flash and Novella-in-Flash, but that detour has become part of the main body of poetry. If in doubt, add line-breaks.