Wednesday 24 January 2018

Blurbs and reviews to tempt you?

On the strength of these blurbs/reviews, would you look forward to reading the books? I imagine some people would. Certainly I have moments when the 2nd of these would tempt me.

  • potentialities of memory and sensation are nuanced, subtle, and limned in relationship to suffering, betrayal, and loss. Fluidities of image and rhythm create an individual and musical voice to carry the reflections and echoes the poet shivers across the mirroring surfaces and abysses of her ghostly, visceral, and unflinching poems.
    (from a back cover)
  • These are poems created while parents are dying and the poet herself is undergoing cancer treatment against the backdrop of ecological crisis and several American wars.
    (from NY Times)
  • the three fine volumes published since 2009 ... raise [Clive] James to the level of quite possibly the best established poet of this admittedly rather weak period. Alice Oswald aside, James is more or less unique among contemporary established poets in consistently writing on major themes
    (Fred Beake, Acumen 87)

Wednesday 10 January 2018

A UK poetry submission schedule for early 2018

I shall try to submit to several of these (mostly UK) competitions and submission windows -

Friday 5 January 2018

About Jason Guriel's "What Happens When Authors Are Afraid to Stand Alone" article

In What Happens When Authors Are Afraid to Stand Alone Jason Guriel points out the risks of networking - "Writing as an individual pursuit has been replaced by “community”—and literature is the worse for it". Here are some quotes -

  • Apparently Thom Gunn had a “strong dislike” for “literary gatherings.” ... Christopher Middleton was “incapable of schmoozing, and his career suffered accordingly.”
  • In recent years, thoughtful poet-critics like Stewart Cole have made an eloquent case for the distinction between community and scene, and the desirability of the former over the latter.
  • while no one is truly isolated, writers have become more entangled than ever. Workshops, readings, book launches, conferences, artists’ colonies, and other glorified mixers increasingly press literary types upon one another. Creative writing instructors urge their charges to get out there and network. Social media ensures we’re always connected.
  • Literary controversies are now less about aesthetic feuds and more about group outrage.
  • literary community can have a deadly impact. The most obvious fatality: your critical faculty.
  • The American poet Kay Ryan, one of a few one-offs still around, has written eloquently about the need for writers—especially younger ones—to develop a carapace against what she calls “camaraderie.” For Ryan, this means avoiding the delivery systems by which literary community, like a virus, transmits itself: workshops and conferences. It means shrugging off the endless obligations that other writers will foist upon you. It means siloing yourself in silence.

Wednesday 3 January 2018

A UK/Eire prose submission schedule for early 2018

As more magazines introduce submission windows, and competitions increase their significance, it's worth planning ahead. I shall try to submit to these (mostly UK) competitions and submission windows -