Bear with me. I’m not working now so I’m very busy; it’s been one of those weeks. Right now I’m hard at work on a new professional blog, which will aim to do for the world of PR & copywriting what this one has done for – well – poetry and me, really. Cover them in a Baroque film. Though the new blog will not be Baroque (very).
I’m not saying now what it will be. You have to wait and find out. It’s very exciting.
Picture me, burning the midnight screen. There I am, envisioning my vision and valuing my brand values at 9pm – briefing an illustrator at 10pm – figuring out CSS editing at 11pm – paying WordPress £10 a year for the privilege at 11.15pm, learning to use CSS colour systems at 11.55pm… and all this on top of a gruelling two hours or more of grim-faced copy-&-pasting! And that’s on top of the tireless days of brainstorming and googling that went into thinking of a title. I’ve filled sheets and sheets of paper with puns on the word “copy,” rhymes for “paste,” variants on anything to do with language and communication. CommuniKate, anyone? Comma Chameleon? Lingua, Frankly? I thought not.
Then there were the solid days and days of obsessively reading PR blogs, which of course also fed into my positioning. “Positioning” is a fancy word that means taking a good, hard look at yourself and calling it like you see it, with only the merest touch of aspiration thrown in; you need to put yourself on a path where you really can walk the walk. But it has to have a great view, and preferably some steep precipices.
The problem is that what I’m now doing is what I should have been doing in some sensible, grasshopper-like, tortoise-like way over the past five months, after work – but I have been, frankly, too shagged out to even think straight so Aesop has got me bang to rights. This situation has been looming all along – but once you start messing with websites you really do need large swathes of time, it isn’t the kind of thing you can do in an hour here and an hour there. (I read somewhere recently, in one of these self-help or PR-related places, something like: “You are very wonderful indeed, but you are not actually superhuman…” This is going to have to go into my positioning. I’m just a “Writer Who Can’t Say No.”)
So I did mean to write your yesterday’s Elegantly Dressed Wednesday post! Honest I did. I even had a picture all lined up. And I have been reading the news. We do keep up here. I know the Forward Prize shortlist has been announced. I know it contains only one woman on the main list and that’s Sharon Olds (puh-leese), and I know that the first collection list includes one American book that I can remember buying in a Connecticut shopping mall in 2007! Sorry, all you British poets with first collections just out this year. I know that, following Jen Hadfield’s win of last year’s TS Eliot Prize, Don Paterson is the youngest person on this list, at 45. And The Australian was happy because there are two shortlisted Australians. But I promised someone already that I wouldn’t blog it. Doh!
I know that Me, Cheetah has outrageously bumped Antonia Byatt off the Booker longlist. I know, I know. What are we coming to.
I know my intrepid publishers, Salt, have launched another phase of their Just One Book campaign, which I did in mitigation link on Facebook. Buy a book! Gwaaan!
On a more personal, leisure-time sort of note, there was my BFI and almost-infant Goons outing on Monday night, which was very exciting. And a pub quiz on Tuesday! (We came sixth. But I impressed myself so much I nearly blacked out by guessing correctly the cover of an album by Melanie.) So I have had some time off… Maybe I’ll do an Elegantly Dressed Friday for you tomorrow; set us all up for the weekend.
Once I’ve got this new blog under control I’m going to re-do my website so it makes sense. Then I’ll launch them both, and my career, properly, and it’ll be Party Time in Baroque Mansions! Oh YES. Canapés and dinner jazz all round, baby.
I’m prescribing myself three poems a day while all this is going on. To read, I mean. Otherwise insanity could ensue.
“Comma Chameleon?”
Boy George, I think she’s got it.
Best of luck with your new blog. I’m sure it will be super.
CommuniKate…now this could be an alter ego (or something). It’s so bad I almost like it. She could have her own C4 series. In fact the more I say it the more I think Kate has legs…maybe more than she needs but you know, legs always come in handy.
Could we write a new female Blackadder or something do you think? Via email?
Oh, you guys are so great. That’s why I love ya.
Though Rachel, I’m not seeing it. Blackadder with email! Rowan Atkinson’s legs? And who’s my Baldrick? Hmm.
Stumbled on your site through a google search. Just a quick question re your comments on the Forward shortlist: do you not like foreigners? Or is it just Americans and Australians who shouldn’t be uppity and have their books published in Britain, and be eligible for prizes here? (I’m a Canadian by the way, and have been bitten by British cultural insularity before; hence the hurt feelings…)
Hi Moonflag. No, this isn’t really about not liking foreigners! I guess, these shortlists always being very political things, the idea is that there are only a handful – and a very small handful – of prizes for poetry books in the UK. Given how hard the struggle for recognition is, and how few the rewards – even the rewards possible to strive for – it just seems a shame when the shortlist places go to books from a place like the USA, which is replete with prizes. And to US poets who are already garlanded with them. And, in the case of Meghan O’Rourke, for a book that was in fact published two years ago. It doesn’t help that there are rumours flying around about some of the more surprising entries on the lists being friends with the judges. There have been issues like this with the Forward prize in the past, and it was depressing then, too.
Canada and Australia are both, to be fair, commonwealth countries; but even there, I know of many excellent UK-based first poets whose books are (in my view) much superior to Emma Jones’, and are not on the list. It’s also disappointing that hers was the only first collection published last year by Faber, which is supposed to be the apogee of British poetry publishing.
My vantage point is very much that of someone on the ground in the UK. But I am, and many of my friends are, very interested in opening out current taste, reading people from other countries and in translation. It’s not about that. It’s just about knowing people who may seem on the face of it more suitable, and just as wonderful writers.
I see where you’re coming from to a certain extent. And, to be honest, I’ve only read two of the short-listed collections (O’Rourke and Maxwell), so I don’t disagree on the basis of this or that particular book. But I think it’s kind of disappointing that someone as interesting and articulate as you seem to be think British prizes should only be open to British poets. With most prizes there’s already the sensible restriction that the book has to have been published in Britain, which I guess safeguards its ‘relevance’ to the British poetry scene. And do you *really* think publishers should give any thought to nationality? Shouldn’t they be making decisions purely on their own critical judgment (which will inevitably be disagreed with by some)? I haven’t read the Jones so I can’t comment on whether Faber should have published her over those British poets you prefer – but I also think think that nationality is probably irrelevant to the question. Those editors liked her work; you don’t like it; you would have preferred someone else to be published instead. Maybe it’s as simple as that, and nationality shouldn’t come into it (though I do wonder: if she were a Commonwealth writer from, say, India or Africa, rather than Australia, would you still be objecting to a ‘British’ publishing house choosing her over a British poet? I suspect you wouldn’t, and rightly so).
Now that I think of it, your own excellent publisher was started by an Australian in Britain (I think) and boasts a pretty impressive international list. And Faber might be an apogee of British poetry publishing as you say but to many people it will always bring to mind Eliot (who made it famous) and other American expatriate poets in Britain – Plath for example – who changed poetry profoundly but who under your criteria perhaps wouldn’t be eligible for British awards (unless you’re proposing some kind of minimum-residency requirement – but I notice from the link you’ve put up that one of the Australians you’re objecting to has lived in Britain for 50 years). You take an interesting line for a British-American writer. Anyhow, I don’t mean to sound overly critical but I googled you because I read some of your work recently (I bought your book as part of Salt’s Just One Book campaign) and it spoke to my North American / British experience. It seemed interesting and refreshing to me – nicely open and hybrid. So I’m disappointed to hear you echo some of the more insular tendencies I’ve come across sometimes in the UK literary community. I just think that poetry should be its own country, as much as possible. You’d think the internet would emphasise this, rather than re-enact the same old divides…
And just in case this sounds like sour grapes (I know I’m probably getting way too passionate and long-winded here!) I should point out that I’m not a poet (though I am a writer). My girlfriend, though, is a poet, born in the US, working in Manchester, and I would want her work when published to be read and potentially rewarded on its merits as poetry, regardless of her nationality.
Well, that’s my two cents. Or two pence, if you prefer.
Hi again Moonflag. Wow! Well, I guess all I’m saying is that I think in a small place like Britain it’s nice to see the prizes going to people who at least have some engagement with that place. Your girlfriend is working in Manchester; Eliot was taught to me in school as if he’d been Lawrence of Arabia! I’ve been in London over half my life now. So I’m really not being closed-minded, I’m more in the Schumacher small-is-beautiful mode.
Anyway, what you read was just me spouting some pub-bore poetry politics, my heart sinking slightly even as I hit Enter. I’d never make half the case for my position as you’ve just made for yours – precisely because I knew mine was based on preconceptions, boredom, antipathy (Olds), and all the other stuff that goes into petty politics. I wouldn’t even go so far as to say I support or don’t support anyone’s inclusion on the list (except the O’Rourke does seem a stretch, frankly).
The main objection, especially with all the general opening-out that’s been happening in poetry publishing in recent years (thanks in part to my own publishers, Salt), is that – aside from the first collection section – even for individual poems, where there might have been more latitude, this is a list you virtually couldn’t get on unless you’ve been established for 15 years or more. The list is littered with friends and friends of friends so I’m not getting at any of the shortlistees (in any case, list make-up not their decision!). But it just seems a retrograde list, as a whole.
Anyway, I’m very glad you liked my book! “Interesting and refreshing” is a lovely thing to hear. And you’re clearly a demanding reader. Glad you came back. And now I must go, because I am going out to dinner.