Reprints

When I publish a Calder Wood Press title I aim to break even within a year of publication, and to sell out the edition within two years. My usual print run is 200 copies, and I’ve found that works out well in the majority of cases. Going out of print is an odd experience for some authors. On the one hand there’s a feeling of satisfaction at the edition selling well,  but on the other hand there’s a feeling of sadness that there are no more copies left. For me, there are several aspects to the situation. I’m pleased that my decisions about the author, the book’s design and pricing are confirmed; that many members of the public have read the work of the authors; that I’ve made a modest excess of income over expense, which I can re-invest in new titles, and that my storage space is under less pressure. It also frees up the author and myself to look at new projects. Perhaps I may suggest doing a new collection in future, or advising an author to try a larger publisher for a full collection. Both of these have happened with some of my authors.

When a title goes unexpectedly out of print very quickly, however, it suggests to me that there is still a demand for the title, and I will try to reprint to bring it back into print. This has happened in the past with two titles – Jo Gibson’s The Heart Is Always Full, and Catriona Malan’s Love Affair With Mussels. Now it’s happened again. I’m reprinting Jayne Wilding’s Sky blue notebook from the Pyrenees, and Mary Johnston’s Fa dis she think she is? 

I will have to think very carefully about print runs for my 2010 titles - seven pamphlets and (I think) one full collection. (That’ll be CWP’s first full collection, by the by).

PS: sky blue notebook reprint now in stock, and I’m getting quotes for the full collection.

The Waste Land revisited

It’s not my favourite Eliot poem – that would be Gerontion, in spite of its implicit anti-semitism – but I like reading The Waste Land, because it always sets my thoughts off  in several different directions. The references, allusions, interjections in languages other than English, the abrupt changes in register, are there for a purpose. The poem builds itself up as an edifice, through the pasting together of sequences of stanzas cemented by seemingly unconnected fragments. They are not random.

It seems to me that what Eliot reflected, all those years ago, is a recognition that consciousness is not linear. The context of our everyday thought processes – mine anyway – is a strange world where the observable present coexists with the past (memory) and the future (daydreaming, wishing, desire), and where reality and fantasy constantly shift and re-balance. When I think about something I don’t go from A to B; I explore alternative scenarios and inner narratives. I may not even end up at B, but at some other point, or at nowhere at all.

In terms of poetry, the A to B route is the road not taken, certainly not by Eliot. The Imagists – Pound et al – added layers of images to sustain an overall emotion, or the flow of a poem. Joyce and Beckett did similar things in prose, producing the ’stream of consciousness’ effect of Ulysses and Molloy. Looking at the way the brain processes information, the left hemisphere is the one where language, vocabulary and logic predominate; the right side is where symbols, images, music are dealt with. We all need both sides of the brain to make sense of the world and ourselves – thought is bilateral, and meaning ultimately derives from both sides, plus the front and the back. Balance is all.

Is there a central character in The Waste Land? No, the poem builds in several voices. What happens in the poem? Well, life happens, stuttering along, whacked by memories, inhabited by possibilities, like my walks along Dunbar’s Queens Road, looking at the sea.

A slow watch

I’m not exactly having a dry spell just now, there’s a lot of stuff bubbling under, like the magnificent geyser Strokkur, in Iceland. (It’s very close to the original geyser ‘Geysir’, which unfortunately hasn’t done much since its internal plumbing was interfered with. Washing soda crystals were involved, I believe.

 

Also bubbling under is the magma chamber beneath the Phlegraean Fields, near Naples, where Dante set the opening to Hell, and who could blame him. As you walk over the hot, trembling ground, you sense an eruption is imminent, and if you throw a rock into the air and wait for it to land, you hear a hollow thump, as if someone’s knocking on an empty tomb. And this is the place some geologists want to drill into, to reach the magma chamber! Call me a cynical ex-geologist, but I think it’ll end in tears.  

All this is by way of being an extended geological metaphor for the fact that I haven’t written much for the last few weeks, but lots of ideas are pretty close to surfacing. “Some day it will blow” as I have written elsewhere. One of the ideas is for a song lyric to the melody of ‘In a Silent Way’ (but would I dare to sing it?). Another is for a new ‘quantum’ poem cotaining the line ’smelling like a Lothario’s boudoir’ (I know, it needs work). Today in Edinburgh, waiting at bus stops and the soaked air filled with curses and wrecked umbrellas, might be just the washing soda I need.

Lennoxlove Book Festival

The first Lennoxlove Book Festival was held in the wonderful old Lennoxlove House (seat of the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton) on Friday and Saturday last week. I went along as a volunteer on the Saturday, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Whether it was setting up chairs for events in the Great Hall, marshalling queues for signings and the genetics ’spit-kits’, checking tickets in the big marquee, aligning spotlights, or just smiling and greeting folk, it was all enjoyable. Best of all was stewarding within events, when I got to hear the authors as bonus. Those events included Jim Wilson’s Scottish DNA project (I am an ex-scientist after all), Lari Don’s mesmerising storytelling for children event (about wolves), in the Great Hall, with the daylight fading and the log fire burning in the huge fireplace, Simon King’s fascinating talk in the marquee, with the tent sides flapping in the breeze, Martine McCutcheon’s illuminating and entertaining interview, and Hardeep Singh Kohli’s late night corduroy cabaret spot. Lari and I were judges for the North of Scotland leg of the BBC’s Off By Heart competition earlier this year, so I had met her, but I hadn’t seen do her storytelling until Saturday – she was wonderful, and the children clearly enjoyed it. Martine is intelligent, articulate and extremely engaging. There was no hint of showbiz or celebrity in her sparkling personality – she came across very naturally and very well. Simon King was another one whose personality impressed and engaged. He’s passionate about wildlife,  and I loved hearing the ‘behind the scenes’ stories of the making of wildlife documentaries. Hardeep was very funny, but managed to get across some serious points about the BBC and its management culture.

After the final performance, we volunteers were asked to a party, which was a fantastic bonus. Alistair Moffat, Festival Director, was a fine host, and it was lovely to get the chance to talk to Martine and to Simon, and to renew acquaintance with Michael Morpurgo and Hardeep, both of whom I’d met at StAnzas past. Apropos of nothing, I’ve never seen heels higher than those Martine was wearing, but they suited her. The team spirit of staff, volunteers and participants was tremendous, and I’m looking forward to next year already.

StAnza’s virtual poetry festival

In a world ‘first’, StAnza is running a virtual poetry festival on Saturday 14th November. Poetry events throughout the world are being streamed in to the Byre Theatre, St Andrews, from 1pm until late. You can see the event on stage at the Byre, or as a live webcast on the StAnza website. To repeat: It’s happening live, in real time. I’m reproducing the whole programme below. I have a personal interest in the Tblisi link, as a I met David Robakidze and Gaga Naxutsrishvili at the Utena Poetry Festival in Lithuania last year, and both are powerful performers. Well done in advance to Eleanor Livingstone of StAnza for organising this, and to the technical teams at the Byre and on the website. 

Distant Voices

- a one-day Virtual Poetry Festival

- Saturday 14 November 2009

- live at:

Studio Theatre
The Byre Theatre,
Abbey Street, St Andrews
Fife KY16 9LA
Tel 01334 475000

- and webcast free online

On 14 November StAnza will stage a brand-new poetry event, a one-day virtual poetry festival, using the latest digital technology to link up poets from around the world. Poets from as far apart as Mumbai and Sacramento and many points in-between reading at live events in their own countries will be linked by satellite to the audience in St Andrews, and broadcast worldwide via an online webcast.

The event in The Byre Theatre will be free and unticketed, and people are encouraged to drop in. However if you plan to travel any distance to St Andrews for this, do contact us in advance on arts@stanzapoetry.org and we shall do what we can to reserve a place for you.

We hope that this initiative will attract not only poetry enthusiasts but anyone who is interested in the arts engaging with new technology. For the audience in St Andrews, StAnza will provide a day of innovative and exciting poetry. For press enquiries, contact press@stanzapoetry.org

During the live event, tune in to the webcast here.  If demand is high, we would ask you please to be patient and try again later. 

Programme for Saturday 14 November – all times approximate. For information on each event, please click the links below:

1.00 pm: St Andrews for event launch

Distant Voices is launched by StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival at The Byre Theatre, St Andrews.

1.10 pm – 1.40: Tbilisi

From Tbilisi David Robakidze, (publications include What is a Man, and Once at the Zoo), Amiran Svimonishvili and Gaga Naxutsrishvili whose latest book is “Gogo da Evropa” (The Girl and Europe) with cover art work by Mixo Kochakidze. 
http://siestabooks.blogspot.com/2009/05/david-robakidze.html
http://siestabooks.blogspot.com/2009/04/david-robakidze.html#links

Poems in Georgian (NB Some English translations below)

   

All poems by David Robakidze:

OFFSHORE LOVE

When I met my girl-friend she already had with her:
her child – as she had been married before,
a scar under her knickers,
a mascara poppy with a leaf, a romantic poison –
with a famous bottle, sadness which she
had picked from the cafés while sitting there
with her ex-boyfriends
and chain of  hotels haunting her day and night.
I was writing down the stories that shocked me
while as having read the others I was throwing them away.

So we have brought the child up: he’s already a man.
He has a lot of CD-s and he never listens to anybody.
He knows so well that bones can breathe.
He laughs at years greeting him.
After work he always goes his second home,
he takes his father /he’s one of his mother’s husbands/ by taxi
to his parents who are called Mr. Gikha and Mrs. Ria and
who are on the photo.
He loves his wife as much as his mother though she plays the floor
and sometimes weighs every word and – as she said offshore –
she respects her father-in-law and that’s why she always lays the table
and sets the fireplace when he comes.

Sometimes I get fresh air into my house gardens.
Sometimes I play with my grandchildren and put them to bed.
Sometimes I forget my sadness and look after fruit.
My girlfriend has no more heavy thoughts and headache.
I threw the romantic poison away.
Now I’m thinking about my guests – Mr. Morning and Mrs. Night:
they seem to be late – as usual.

* * *

The trees which are necessary for life are given
electricity each season.
While as the ordinary trees are waiting for
spring and water rising in rivers.
In spring their buds will light up and stay like that until
somebody will come and pick the ripened fruit.

* * *

 You’re a cart pulled by two oxen –
 a heart ox and a brain ox.
 A voiceless man makes you carry loads.
 And you’re going to be wise…
 after the event.

WHAT IS “A MAN”?

   A man is:
when you model a money-box of clay giving it a shape of a man
and making a slot where a rib should be.
 A man is:
when you model a money-box of clay giving it a shape of a man
and when you take it to sell at the market.
 A man is:
when you model a money-box of clay shaping it into a man
and make children carried by parents turn their heads and have a look at it.
 A man is:
when you model a money-box of clay giving it a shape of a man
and bring it hardly wrapped back home not having managed to sell it.
 A man is:
when you model a money-box of clay giving it a shape of a man
and leave it to your children so that they should break it at the waistline until
coins reach the throat.
 A man is:
when you model a money-box of clay giving it a shape of a man
and never manage to explain how you have done that.

Design by Giorgi Gamezardashvili

1.50 pm – 2.20: Geneva

From Geneva Strictly Sound / Language on Parole, with Heike Fiedler www.realtimepoem.com, Peter McCarey, http://www.thesyllabary.com, Tunnal: www.coaltar.net/_MEDIA/_MULTIMEDIA/tunnal_ruch.mp4

http://bagnoud.blogg.org/date-2007-06-28-billet-622967.html, Alexa Montani, Colette Ruch, Günther Ruch, Marina Salzmann.

2.30 pm – 3.00: St Andrews

Live from The Byre Theatre, St Andrews, StAnza presents Andrew Philip, whose new book The Ambulance Box (Salt, 2009) has been shortlisted for the Aldeburgh Jerwood Prize for a first collection, plus surprise guests.

3.10 – 3.40: Stavanger

The Stavanger reading will take place at Sølvberget, Stavanger kulturhus, in association with Norsk Forfattersentrum – Norwegian Writers’ Center, and ICORN – International Cities of Refuge Network. We are proud to present and share with the world the following poets: Helge Torvund, Easterine Iralu, Ren Powell, Mansur Rajih.  http://www.stavanger-kulturhus.no/  http://www.forfattersentrum.no/  http://www.icorn.org/  Poems in various languages with some English translations.

     

3.50 pm – 4.20: London

The London reading takes place at the Poetry Society in London, presented by poet and MC Joelle Taylor. This year’s SLAMbassadors championship, jointly run between BBC Blast and the Poetry Society, has rounded up the seven best Slam performers from across Britain who will perform, slam and rap on the theme of identity. The seven teenage performers will be mentored by Joelle Taylor and Benjamin Zephaniah. The slammers will perform as part of the virtual StAnza Festival and at the live Showcase on November 15 with Zephaniah and Taylor, and with Scroobius Pip! http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/

     

4.30 pm – 5.00: Mumbai

Mumbai’s edition of ‘Distant Voices’ will unfold on the first floor of Prithvi House, Prithvi Theatre, Juhu. The PEN All-India Centre will present the evening as a PEN@Prithvi Special, a bonus attraction to our regular monthly session at this very venue. Our longstanding partner, Prithvi Theatre – an organization committed to the growth not just of theatre, but all the related arts – is, as always, a generous and welcoming host in a city where space is at a premium! The seven poets who will read their poetry, beginning at ten minutes to ten, Indian Standard Time (4.20 GMT) are Arjun Bali, Sampurna Chattarji, Mustansir Dalvi, Rohinton Daruwala, Ranjit Hoskote, Malavika Sangghvi and Arundhathi Subramaniam.  http://indiapen.wordpress.com/  http://www.prithvitheatre.org/home.php

5.50 pm – 6.20: Vicenza

The event from Vicenza will take place at Aureofficina 11 in collaboration with Valentine’s International Culture Club. There will be readings in Italian and English from Marco Fazzini, Stefano Strazzabosco, Douglas Dunn and StAnza’s Brian Johnstone, who will be launching his book “Terra Incognita” published by L’Officina and translated into Italian by Roberta Cimarosti, Armado Pajalich and Marco Fazzini with original etchings by Giovanni Turria. Douglas Dunn will read from Whisper to the Muse: 84 poems in English and Italian, edited and translated by Marco Fazzini (Officina Arte Contemporanea, 2009).

6.30 pm – 7.00: Skye

The Isle of Skye reading takes place at the Scottish Gaelic college Sabhal Mòr Ostaig www.smo.uhi.ac.uk and with poems in Gaelic and English from Meg Bateman, Myles Campbell, Mark Goodwin and college Writer-in-Residence Rody Gorman. 

7.10 pm – 7.40: New York

New York City’s contribution to Distant Voices will take place at the Roger Smith, a hotel and arts organisation in midtown Manhattan (home of the groundbreaking Lab Gallery for installation and performance art).  In the Solarium on the hotel’s 16th floor, a poets’ luncheon with 40 invited guests will set the stage for readings by two acclaimed young writers: New York poet Caitlin Doyle, featured in Best New Poets 2009, edited by Kim Addonizio; and South African poet/journalist Henk Rossouw, 2009 winner of Poetry Society of America’s “Bright Lights, Big Verse: Poems of Times Square” competition.  The luncheon has been scheduled to coincide with dinnertime in Scotland so the guests can raise a glass to everyone at the Byre before the interval, and send a breathing postcard from the poets of New York.  http://rogersmith.com/.

8.10 pm – 8.40: Amsterdam

The Amsterdam Five –  Maria van Daalen, Tsead Bruinja, Astrid van Baalen, Elmar Kuiper & Cralan Kelder will perform in English as a special adaptation to the demands of this event. You can learn about their numerous books / translations / St. Andrews appearances / & websites on the internet.

8.50 pm – 9.20: Ghent

From Ghent, Krikri deliver polypoetry piping hot to your living room, with Maja Jantar, Jelle Meander and Helen White. Krikri’s aim is to highlight contemporary poetic activity in a way that is relevant to the 21st century stage. They organise a series of international festivals and also a range of different performances, projects and workshops. http://www.krikri.be/main.php

9.30 pm – 10.00: Sacramento

The Sacramento reading takes place in The Book Collector, a bookstore in the midtown district of California’s Capitol. This reading is presented by Richard and Rachel Hansen in association with Poems-For-All and the Poet Laureate Project of Sacramento’s Metropolitan Arts Commission. The reading will feature Bob Stanley (Sacramento’s current poet laureate), Rebecca Morrison, and Indigo Moor. www.poems-for-all.com

10.00 pm – 11.30: Live music and open mic

The first 2010 titles

I’m aiming to bring out the first two Calder Wood Press titles of 2010 next February. They are:

Morgan Downie’s stone and sea, and
Judith Taylor’s Local colour

Morgan gave a very good reading at the GRV on Sunday night, and he included some of the excellent stone and sea poems.
I’ve previously heard Judith read some of the poems in her new collection, and they are very impressive.

The editing work begins next week, followed by the layouts, typesetting, covers and all the other design elements. They should both go to the printers in mid-January, so it’s probably just as well that I’m planning on a quiet ‘holiday’ season. I try to do my publishing in pairs of books, so I can space the work out over the year.

The post-modern poem

What follows isn’t a quantum poem, but maybe you could call is post-modern, or maybe not, as the case may be. Anyway, I enjoyed writing it. I’m having more difficulty with two other upcoming poetic challenges. Annie Freud is editing the next issue of Magma, and she’s looking for poems about ‘the devil and all his works’, not a concept that does much for me. Brian Whittingham, Tyne & Esk’s Writer in Residence, suggested to our poetry group that we write about our idea of what’s ‘beyond the last thought’, as Wallace Stevens expressed it in his poem Of Mere Being, or our concept of heaven. The wee Zen roshi in me has no truck with such metaphysical antitheses. If it’s no real it’s juist no. But I guess I can put together a post-modern take on devils and heaven. Pretending, lying even, is part of the fun of writing. So here’s today’s little draft lie, up for a day or so before I remove it for editing:

Kismet [and I'll definitely change the title]

I am Cancer
so I do not like cats. Just so
you don’t misunderstand,
I’m not fond of dogs
(or dog products) either. I once
owned a goldfish. It wasn’t
very bright.

At the time of my birth Venus
was in the ascendant, as
she usually is, which determines
my love of and for the sea.

I have never married,
but rely on transactions
to tend my wanton wishes.

Every day, without fail,
I imagine an oil rig.
It’s a semi-sub, surfaced,
with its three big legs jacked
in the air, a tri-mast schooner
on tow in the Tay Firth, or maybe Beauly,
or spudded in, hunkered on a hardground
in the Viking Graben.

I am bald, from over-combing
in teen years. I flicked back
hair slick with scented emulsions
until there was nothing but air
to bring forward.

In Chinese terms, I’m a horse,
hard-working, quiet, a plodder
hauling the plough
through recalcitrant clay. The year
makes me a Water Horse –
Hippo aquaticus. No comments
from the back of the class.

I’ve always felt drawn
to Ganesha, initiator, breaker
of obstacles; not what you’d call
a natural dancer, Strictly speaking,
with that elephant head
on a human body, but he gets by.

Shaking the yarrow stalks
the last time, I read
that firmness and modesty
are prerequisites for harmonious joy.

Luck, on the other hand,
has nothing to do with it.
It’s how you play
the cards you’re dealt
that counts in the end,
and mine’s the three of clubs.

Colin Will
05/11/2009

Dunbar Writers’ Group – fitting everything in

The group has a membership on paper of over 20, but not all turn up to every meeting every time – some have lives. Recently the meetings have been so crowded – 15 or 16 – that it’s been difficult to cram everything into our two-hour fortnightly spot. We generally have a short news & ‘business’ round-up, a short writer biography spot, a 10-minute writing exercise, a read-round of the work we’ve done at home (we call this ‘homework’) on a set theme, then a read-round of the writing exercise pieces. Sometimes we have workshops, some of which involve visiting writers through the Live Literature Scotland scheme run by the Scottish Book Trust. Sometimes we work on performances – we do sessions at a local watering hole – and sometimes we’ll work with visual artists and/or musicians at the embryonic Arts Hub. So we’re a busy lot, with a strong sense of being part of something that’s worth being a part of. We enjoy each other’s company, and we support each other very well. We’re intensely democratic, with a different chair for each meeting, and it’s always fun, never stale or predictable.

As one of the founders several years ago, I can testify to the rise in quality of members’ writing, and to their performance skills, over time. Several members are now published, successful in competitions, and/or regular performers. But the crowding and the time pressures suggest we’re victims of our own success.  I don’t know what answers we’ll come up with, but I’m sure we will. Meanwhile the Writers’ Group is increasingly recognised as an integral feature of the cultural life of our community.

Quantum poetry

I used the term last night in an email, to describe some of the ways in which my writing techniques are going, and foolishly thought I might have invented it. Oh, no! Many others have been there before me. Valerie Laws painted words on the backs of sheep back in 2003, and used the random aggregations of the flock over time to produce quantum haiku. I’ve discovered the term used back in 2000, and I suspect it may go a lot further back. For those with a predeliction for historical research, I won’t stand in your way. (My guess is that Eddie Morgan probably used the term in the 1960s).

But what did I mean? I suppose I meant that I am trying to change the way I write, to include multiple perspectives in lines (but not to signpost them), to shuffle time (actually, I think I’ve often done that), to include words and images which don’t form part of a linear narrative, and to reduce the numbers of causal links in my work. To put it baldly: I’m boring myself writing ordinary poems, and I want to experiment. I’m fed up writing the kind of poems that start

This is the first line, and
here I describe something I’ve seen, and
then I say what I thought about it, and
how I felt, and then
I saw something else, and
it made a connection with the first thing, and
……… , and
The End, sometimes with a wee twist in the tail.

So, let me digress into quantum physics briefly and non-mathematically:
reality is quantized, that is, it comes in discrete packages, or ‘quanta’;
we can know the momentum of a particle, or its position, but not both simultaneously (uncertainty principle)
particles also possess the characteristics of waves (wave-particle duality)

Let’s see how far we can relate this to poetry, before it becomes absurd – as I’m sure it will, much like Humph’s helpful definitions of ‘One Song to the Tune of Another’.

If words, images, phrases etc are the quanta of poetry, then their flow and rhythm become the wave of the poem. So far, so good. But there is scope for building the wave through quanta of different energies (momentum), and there needn’t be a linear relationship between image 1 and image 2. We can use apparently unrelated terms to give a line or a stanza meaning; at the quantum level they are ‘entangled’. There are a lot of today’s poets who do this very successfully, but I’m not naming names.

And the multiple internal perpectives and time-shifts I’m experimenting with reflect uncertainties of personality and viewpoint, and the branching nature of probability. As in the quantum world, sooner or later the wave-function (Ψ) collapses, and the poem is done. And I’m not sure I believe any of this.

Tyne & Esk anthology

I’ve been helping friends out with the design and layout of a new publication, an anthology of poems by members of Tyne & Esk Writers. We’re aiming to have it ready by the time of the Pamphlet Fair at the National Library of Scotland on 9th December. The cover photo is by Anna Dickie, and I think it’s pretty striking.

Lots of things happening on the publications front just now:

• Kevin Cadwallender’s Edinburgh launch is Tuesday 10th November, 5-7pm, at the Underground Cafe, Elder Street.
• Lyn Moir’s St Andrews launch in Waterstones, Friday 13th November, 6pm
• Tyne & Esk Writers have a stall at the Lennoxlove Book Festival, 13th and 14th November
• Kevin Cadwallender’s Newcastle launch on Sunday 15th November, at the Bridge Hotel, Castle Garth, Newcastle, 7-9pm

Consider yourselves invited.