My ebook \u00a0\u2018Made in Birmingham: The Poems\u2019 is a collection of approximately seventy poems. One was called \u2018Doing Poetry: No Sweat\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to be a poet.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an odd thing at my time of life<\/p>\n
but a choice that is becoming<\/p>\n
more popular, I\u2019ve noticed.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve bought my first garret<\/p>\n
and cut down on food.<\/p>\n
I now only need access<\/p>\n
to a pub full of artists<\/p>\n
and a distant woman<\/p>\n
to impossibly love<\/p>\n
and I\u2019ll be off<\/p>\n
doing poetry.<\/p>\n
No sweat.<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t autobiographical, just a poem. There is no garret; I don\u2019t eat to excess but that is a health thing not a starving poet thing; and a distant woman to impossibly love is definitely off the agenda (unless you count Agent Lisbon from \u2018The Mentalist\u2019, or the very nice female detective from \u2018Law and Order Special Victims Unit, or the woman detective from \u2018Castle\u2019, or Ziva from \u2018NCIS\u2019 \u00a0\u2026. Do I detect a trend here..??).<\/p>\n
A bit of a push<\/u><\/p>\n
In an earlier posting I talked about planning. Each year I have a set of loosely-sketched intentions. For 2014 these include \u2018Having a bit of a push on poetry\u2019. This is a broad statement of intent, but I have several elements in mind that might add up to \u2018a bit of a push\u2019. I also have a specific image when I talk about \u2018poetry\u2019: Not poems that pour out of me, like it or not, but poetry to order, poetry on demand, poetry to a schedule.<\/p>\n
Recent attempts at producing poetry to a theme include:<\/p>\n
Developing a poetic career<\/u><\/p>\n
A few months ago I attended an excellent workshop run by the editor\/director of Nine Arches Press which is a UK small press that specialises in publishing poetry. The theme of the workshop was to try to understand what might be meant by the \u2018career\u2019 of a poet. It was clear that (except for a very small number of people) this rarely meant creating a full-time high-income role from writing poetry.<\/p>\n
The figures speak for themselves:<\/p>\n
95% of poetry sold recently was written by dead poets. Of the small amount by living poets 90% was via one major publisher and the bulk of that was the work of a few outstanding, award-winning poets. The remainder – a very tiny proportion of the total amount of poetry published for sale \u2013 was published via a few small\/medium sized publishers, each publication maybe selling only tens of copies. On that basis, if the poet earns royalties of around 10% then they need to move to a garret and cut down on food \u2026.<\/p>\n
To reach this point of having a collection published by a small press, selling in fairly small numbers, and bringing in very little reliable income, a poet may follow a \u2018career\u2019 \u2013 ie a \u2018development trajectory\u2019, that could include:<\/p>\n
So, to have \u2018A bit of a push on poetry\u2019 in 2014 means that I will have a concerted attempt at some of these steps \u2013 moving the \u2018I am a poet\u2019 part of myself across a development arc so that I might feel some sense of progress.<\/p>\n
The aim is to find time, space, energy, motivation, inclination, stimulation etc to write 50-70 poems over the course of 2014 and to test some of these publicly in open reading events or in online publications. With a bit of extra polishing maybe 15-20 of these might be worked up to a stage where they could be considered \u2018good enough\u2019 (by me; by others; by an editor of a small poetry press). This, at a stretch, might just lead to a pamphlet of assorted poetry. That might be as far as it gets. Beyond that we get into the realm of having sufficient ability and confidence, and a robust enough track record, to put together a small collection of poems on a theme.<\/p>\n
Poets: Undomesticated, almost feral, things?<\/u><\/p>\n
Many years ago a friend wrote a dissertation taking the song title \u2018An engineer can never have a baby\u2019 as its theme. The song undermined the outdated idea that women have babies, engineers are never women \u2013 so an engineer will never have a baby. Recently this retranslated in my head to \u2018Can a poet have a family?\u2019<\/p>\n
The poet in \u2018Doing Poetry: No Sweat\u2019 was a caricature of a single person, living alone, spending nights in bars and writing poetry from within that ambience. If a poet has a home to maintain, relatives to interact with, grandchildren to play with, monthly finances to regularise \u2013 in short, if a poet is domesticated \u2013 then is there still enough time, space and ambience for poetry?<\/p>\n
Having moved house; and then had builders knocking down walls and filling the air with dust and radio music, I looked to local coffee shops as the place to do writing. That worked if I avoided the times when the places got taken over by lunchtime schoolchildren or mid-morning mums or afternoon shoppers. Especially around the buzzing busyness of Christmas finding quiet corners in which to think and write became more and more difficult. This problem itself prompted a poem:<\/p>\n
The table I sit at holds firm<\/strong><\/p>\n The table I sit at holds firm<\/p>\n as people swirl and twirl;<\/p>\n twisting, turning through spaces<\/p>\n in which I\u2019ve quietly settled.<\/p>\n My coffee cools slowly in freeze-frame hold.<\/p>\n Theirs get gulped, drained, in fast-forward blur;<\/p>\n their chitterchatter all gibblegabble.<\/p>\n My silence of monastic proportion<\/p>\n as I seek out just the right word.<\/p>\n Their minds whirring, churning,<\/p>\n as crowds carry them off:<\/p>\n The table I sit at holds firm.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, I am off to be a poet<\/u><\/p>\n So I am off, not to find a garret but to find a table firm enough to write at. I have scoured around for opportunities for local readings and events to go in my diary. I have booked into a couple of national things. I have regular blogs that I follow. I have put out of my mind all thoughts of female detectives with dark hair. The commitment to having a bit of a push on poetry, and the motivation to do something about it, is there \u2013 we will just have to see how it works out.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My ebook \u00a0\u2018Made in Birmingham: The Poems\u2019 is a collection of approximately seventy poems. One was called \u2018Doing Poetry: No Sweat\u2019\u00a0 I\u2019m going to be a poet. It\u2019s an odd thing at my time of life but a choice that is becoming more popular, I\u2019ve noticed. I\u2019ve bought my first garret and cut down on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[71],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-variety-of-writings","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1028,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions\/1028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}