This Saturday 14th November from 1pm, Distant Voices: StAnza’s Virtual Poetry Festival can beam in – live – to your computer screen (details at the link). The readings won’t be available after the time of broadcast though – you need to watch in real time. You can tune in throughout the day to a huge variety of sounds, styles and languages: major literary figures and recent award winners, teenage slammers, sound poets, poetry in English and also in a range of other languages. Scottish poet and publisher, Colin Will, has an impressive post on the festival programme, complete with poems, photos and interesting links.

It strikes me that this is a highly ambitious project and could so easily go wrong! But, as the organisers say, “It might be smooth, it might be bumpy, it will definitely be different.” If any of you tune in, whether for nine minutes or nine hours, I’d be interested to know what you think.

Don’t miss the launch reading on Monday 16 November at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court, London.

We are delighted to have Catherine Smith and Jacob Polley as guest readers. As usual, all poets published in the issue have the opportunity to read, which will make for a rich and varied programme.

The evening will start at 8 pm sharp, at The Troubadour Coffee House, 265 Old Brompton Road, London SW5 (near Earl’s Court Tube). Tickets are £6.50 / £5.50 concessions.

We hope to see you there!

Annie Freud, Guest Editor of Magma 47, with Roberta James as assistant editor, invites you to submit poems stimulated by anything connected with the devil and all his works.

The deadline is 28 February 2010. Off-theme poems will also be considered. Please see the Contributions page for details of how to submit your poems.

Don spent two fascinating hours at the workshop taking questions and talking about the English language lyric poem, and covered large areas of poetic ground, offering us his take on prosody, metre, phonetics and even managing to squeeze in a brief sentence or two on the subject of metaphor.

I’m pleased to say he is writing a book about poetry – publication date still up for grabs – so that those who haven’t had a chance to hear some of his insights will be able to read about them – eventually. Those who have been lucky enough to hear Don talk about poetry will know that it’s partly his particularly original turn of phrase that is illuminating; for example, the idea that most poetry that uses iambic pentameter is ‘magnetised’ to the metre or a sonnet is just a ‘wee black square’ on a white page.

I offered the participants a chance to become editors for an hour so, putting into practice some of Don’s insights and suggestions. Split into small groups, they were invited to select which of three very different poems by dead poets (selected so that there was no danger of offending the living) they would choose.

They pursued this task with enormous gusto and there was a wide range of opinions, all of them justifiable, which I’m delighted to say proved the point I was trying to make. Poetry, like all art forms, is a hugely subjective business, and once a poem has reached a certain benchmark of quality (also a subjective matter, I know), selection becomes a matter of the editor’s personal taste. This is where Magma has the edge. A rotating editorship means that the flavour of each issue will be different and if one editor returns your poetry, the next one may publish it. Keep sending it in!

Judy has been a member of the Magma team and, before that, a member of the City Lit group from which Magma sprang. We have all delighted in her gift for rich and startling imagery whenever her poems have appeared in Magma and elsewhere, and clearly Don Paterson, the competition judge, did too. Judy’s first pamphlet collection, Pillars of Salt, was published by Templar Poetry in 2006 and we’re sure it won’t be long before a more substantial collection of her work appears.

Congratulations too to Howard Wright for winning second prize in the competition. Howard is a Magma regular and was our Showcase poet in Magma 28. And congratulations to Matthew Caley for his Commended. Matthew has appeared many times in Magma and featured at many of our readings, even going so far as St Andrews to read for us at the STAnza Festival in 2007.

I suggest readers do not want layers of meaning added to a poem by perceived notions of who or what the poet is. A biography which gives more than name and past works is at fault because it inevitably influences the reading of a poem. A reader should not be prompted to a particular point of view about a poem outside of the poem itself. For example, if readers know that a writer spent formative years in foster care they will be prompted to think that a poem about dysfunctional families is written from the standpoint of a damaged child. It may be, but I argue that should come from the poem not from knowledge of the poet’s life.

You might argue that a poet’s biographical note is relevant for an understanding of the poem. That, for example, the works of the World War One poets would not resonate for us if we did not know they were written in the trenches. But an extraordinary poem about war should not be trapped within one time frame, and its understanding limited to its place at the specific moment when it was written. A biographical note asks the reader to do just that.

Or looked at from another angle, a poem is as much a window into the soul of the reader as it is into the soul of a writer, and the poet’s background should not get in the way when it is read. I don’t want a light-bulb moment of realisation when I think “ah, that must be the Spanish incident” because I know the poet worked as a doctor in that country. I want to leave the poem questioning what has happened at Finisterre, or with my own interpretation of it based on the poem. As a poet I do not want the reader to understand a poem as an extension of any biographical note. Poems deserve effort on the part of the reader, as well as the poet.

If I visit a theatre, I would think it inappropriate if I were given biographical details of the cast with the implication that I should superimpose knowledge about the actors onto the play. What I hope to do instead is immerse myself in the plot or layers of ideas and make my own decisions about what is happening and who the characters are, about whether the work is successful. So it should be with poems.

If you are a poet and we meet, share with me, if you wish to, knowledge about yourself and your background.

But when it comes to your poems, do not tell me who you are. Let me not know.

What Do You Think?

Do you want poets’ biographies included after their poems?

Is biographical knowledge important to understanding some poets’ work? If so, which ones?

Many visual artists were displaying books, some of them quite exquisite, as you can see from this small selection from the Artist Book Group.

© Peggy Hughes, SPL

A few publishers also had stalls, including Red Squirrel Press, who were represented by Sheila Wakefield and one other person who must have slipped off for a coffee when this photo was taken. They also had another little helper sitting on top of their table.

© Peggy Hughes, SPL

Individual artists and poets had stalls too, including Kona Macphee (published in Magma 43) who is donating all money raised from sales of her Bloodaxe collection, Tails, to UNICEF (find out more from her site).

© Peggy Hughes, SPL

I’d thought that spending a whole day behind a stall might have become boring, but it was entirely the opposite. There were nearly always people gathered around the Magma stall. It was great to meet existing readers, others who were interested in the magazine, and even some whose work had appeared in it. We sold quite a few copies of Magma 44 and many people signed up for the e-newsletter. During the rare quiet moments, there were always Francesca and Giovanna (pictured below with me) from 20X20 magazine to talk to.

© Peggy Hughes, SPL

Thanks to the fine people at the SPL for making it such an enjoyable event, for the endless supplies of coffee, and for inviting Magma to be part of things. Also, thanks to Peggy for permission to use her excellent photographs.

Jacqueline Saphra, editor of Magma 46, will be joining Don to give you insights, ideas and probably anecdotes about poetry and publishing. Expect helpful advice as well as the kind of inspiration and surprising technical tips for which Don is justly famed. Hear from Jacqueline what it’s really, truly like to edit an issue of Magma Poetry and how she has been going about choosing around sixty poems from the thousands that find their way to Magma’s inbox for each issue.

The Workshop will take place on Saturday 17th October at 10am at the University of Gloucestershire. Click here for full details.

Hope to see you there!

How do poets write about subjects well beyond their own experience? Let’s take war, for example. The poems recently commissioned by Carol Ann Duffy for the Guardian and published under the heading, Exit Wounds, were attempts to write on war by poets with no direct experience of it. I don’t really want to discuss how successful or unsuccessful these specific poems were. I’d rather consider the question of how poetry can do it well – poetry, that is, from those who haven’t been directly involved.

David Harsent’s Legion won the 2005 Forward Prize for Best Collection for a book largely concerned with war. Jane Holland’s Boudicca & Co graphically recreates the battles of a first century woman ruler in Britain against the invading Romans. Christopher Logue re-conjures Homer’s Iliad in his epic War Music. I thought all these books were convincing in their diverse depictions of war.

So what makes a poem convincing when it clearly concerns something the author has no direct experience of whatsoever?

So don’t miss this year’s competition:

Judges: Maura Dooley & Jamie McKendrick (Both judges will read all poems).

Prizes: 1st £1000, 2nd £500, 3rd £250, & 20 prizes of £20 each

plus

a Spring 2010 Coffee-House Poetry season ticket

and

a prizewinners’ Coffee-House Poetry reading
with Maura Dooley & Jamie McKendrick
on Monday 30th November 2009
for all winning poets

Submissions: by Friday 9th October 2009

How to Enter

Judges

Maura Dooley was born in Truro, grew up in Bristol, and after working for some years in Yorkshire now lives in London. She is a freelance writer and lectures at Goldsmiths’ College. She edited “Making for Planet Alice: New Women Poets” (1997) and “The Honey Gatherers: A Book of Love Poems” (2002) for Bloodaxe, and “How Novelists Work” (2000) for Seren. “Life Under Water” (Bloodaxe Books, 2008) is her first new collection since “Sound Barrier: Poems 1982-2002″ (Bloodaxe Books, 2002), which drew on collections including “Explaining Magnetism” (1991) and “Kissing a Bone” (1996), both Poetry Book Society Recommendations. “Life Under Water” was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2008.

Jamie McKendrick, one of the Poetry Society’s ‘New Generation’ poets, was born in Liverpool in 1955, studied at Nottingham University, has taught at Salerno University and now lives in Oxford. He is author of five collections of poetry: “The Sirocco Room” (1991); “The Kiosk on the Brink” (1993); “The Marble Fly” (1997), winner of the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and a Poetry Book Society Choice; “Ink Stone” (2003); and “Crocodiles and Obelisks” (2007), shortlisted for the 2008 Forward (Best Poetry Collection) Prize. His selected poems have been published in Holland and Italy and he edited the “Faber Book of 20th-century Italian Poems” (2004).
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Rules

General: entry implies acceptance of all rules; failure to comply with rules may result in disqualification; competition open to poets of any nationality over 18 years; no competitor may win more than one prize; judges’ decision is final; no individual correspondence may be entered into.

Poems: must be in English, must each be no longer than 45 lines, must fit on one page of A4, must be the original work of the entrant and must not have been previously broadcast or published (in print or online); winning & commended poems may be published (in print or online) by the Troubadour Poetry Prize and may not be published elsewhere for one year after 9th October 2009 without written permission. No limit on number of poems submitted.

Fees: all entries must be accompanied by fee of EITHER £5/€6/$8 per poem if fewer than 4 poems OR £4/€5/$7 per poem if 4 or more poems submitted; payment by cheque or money order (Sterling/Euro/US-Dollars only) payable to “Coffee-House Poetry” with entry name (and/or e-mail Entry Ref) written on back.

By Post: no entry form required; each poem must be typed on one side of A4 white paper showing title & poem only; do not show author’s name or any other identifying marks on submitted poems; include a separate page showing Name, Address, Phone, E-Mail (optional), Titles and Number of Poems EITHER £5/€6/$8 OR £4/€5/$7; no staples; entries are not returned.

By E-mail: no entry form required; poems must be submitted in body of e-mail (no attachments) to CoffPoetry@aol.com; entries should be preceded by Name, Address, Phone, Titles and Number of Poems EITHER £5/€6/$8 OR £4/€5/$7; acknowledgement will be sent to entrant’s e-mail address showing Entry Acknowledgment Reference; send payment by post quoting Entry Acknowledgement Reference; e-mail entries will be included only when payment received.

Acknowledgement/Results: will be sent to all e-mail entrants; postal entrants should include stamped, addressed postcard marked “Acknowledgement” and/or stamped, addressed A5 envelope marked “Results” if required.

Deadline: all postal entries, and postal payments for e-mail entries, to arrive at Troubadour Poetry Prize, Coffee-House Poetry, PO Box 16210, LONDON, W4 1ZP postmarked on or before Friday 9th October 2009. Prizewinners will be notified by Friday 20th November 2009. Prizegiving will be on Monday 30th November 2009 at Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour.