"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.

My book and magazine collection

The messy bookcase downstairs mostly has kids' books and books in Italian. Roget's Thesaurus is there, and a few reference books.

My literary collection is upstairs, hidden away in a fitted wardrobe. I've just sorted it out - long overdue. I don't keep all the things I've ever read, though I try to keep an issue of each periodical, and I don't give away anything I'm in. The sections are

• Annual story anthologies (35)
• Story anthologies (25)
• Poetry anthologies (25)
• Flash monographs (15)
• Story monographs (75)
• Poetry monographs (160)
• Novels (10)
• Craft/theory books (20)
• Short story periodicals (35)
• Periodicals (70)
• Things I'm in (225)

I don't keep novels. I sometimes re-read books. More often I use the books for reference. Now that I've put the books in order I'll be able to find what I'm looking for without being waylaid by discoveries.

Magazine news

• South - this printed poetry magazine is about to publish its final issue after decades
• Bad Lilies - ominously this was in haitus, but now it's requesting submissions for a 2025 issue.
• Flashback - historical Flash. In haitus.
• Powercut - New! "We like landlines and record players, secondhand dog-eared books and small TVs you can’t talk to." It wants writing set in 1930-1999.
• Prole - I listened to "A Literary Magazines Masterclass" podcast (part of the MK Lit Fest) with Brett Evans and Phil Robertson of Prole. One of the editors described themselves as left of Jeremy Corbyn, which was no great surprise. I have a couple of issues and have sent them a story or two, careful not to be too pretentious.

  They started 14 years ago. The magazine cover price of issue 1 was £5.50. Half of the magazine profits went to the authors. The cover price is still £5.50, but there are no longer any profits, so for the last 2 or 3 issues authors haven't been paid. They lost most of their overseas subscriptions after Brexit. It's a struggle.

  About 10% of prose submissions are published. They get about 200 stories a year. Both editors have to agree to a piece being accepted - they think it possible to appreciate the quality of a piece even if they don't like it.