Last night saw the launch of Crystal Voices, an anthology of poems and stories celebrating ten years of the arts organisation and publisher based in the East Midlands. You can check out the list of writers in the anthology and order a very reasonably priced copy here.  

The launch took place at the Western pub spoken word night, Shindig! and followed readings by Jo Bell and Jonathan Davidson, whose new books, Jo’s ‘Kith’ and Jonathan’s ‘Humfrey Coninngsby’ I can highly recommend.

Shindig! is a regular open mike  with guest readers,  an event jointly run by Crystal Clear and the wonderful Nine Arches Press, and over the years the list of visiting readers has begun to look like a who’s who of contemporary poetry.

One of the most valuable aspects of these readings is the sense of community that has built up among the attending writers and readers over the years, with familiar and new faces gathering at the bi-monthly events…

Lighthouse, A Journal of New Writing, is a beautiful and exciting literary magazine published by Gatehouse Press. I’m incredibly proud to have a poem included in this issue (8).  It is so cool on the outside… and then when you open it there’s something about it makes me feel all excited as if I am a child again about to enter  a world of story with a blotched treasure map to be found inside.  It must be the magical  font: IM Fell English. That, and the paper they have chosen which is all grainy and the page-edges look as if they have been handcut. It smells properly of book as well. I haven’t had time to read it all yet but the few poems I have read are remarkable. I must get on with it right now…..     thought you might like to know about it so here is the link where you can download a free…

There has been a lot of discussion recently on how poems which rely heavily on others should be attributed in work that follows it. There are people who say they work from a starting point of someone else’s poem and change words until they make it their own. I do not see that as creating, but learning how to write, and not to write something that could be submitted for publication. Poet means ‘maker’, not ‘alterer’.
Those who aspire to write poetry must read it and aim to learn from poets who have spent time learning their craft. Expertise cannot be gained overnight: it comes from years of practice and reading, experimentation and critique. Those who have immersed themselves in poetry absorb much. They don’t sit and write with other people’s poems to paste in or alter, unless they are doing cut ups and collages – and in that case…

In the past, I have been careful about writing about the current poetic trend of workshop culture. Running workshops is a primary (and much-needed) source of income for a great many professional poets. Sometimes it can become a means of gaining personal prestige. There is certainly a market for workshops. A great many people want to learn how to write poetry, and that is a good and noble goal, but there is a difference between learning how to write poetry and attending a workshop.

A student learns how to write poetry by applying themselves to the study of poetry, by reading vastly, deeply and well. A good student reads considerably more than they write, and they read the classics as often as the works of their contemporaries. A student of poetry (of any age – we aim, as poets, to be master and student at once, and all our lives)…

A week today, the poetry pamphlet Sarah James and I have collaborated on will be launched in a special reading at Cheltenham Poetry Festival. It is the first in a new series of Poetry Duets, to be published by Mother’s MIlk Books. Hearth is themed around the idea of using objects to write about family life, memory and how these affect the way we see the world.

Apart from the opening and closing poems, which are wholly collaborative, the rest of the poems are paired. Either I wrote a new poem to go with one Sarah sent me, or she wrote one in response to mine. It was uncanny how close we were at times in the objects which had significance, although we are from different regions and of different ages.

The collaboration culminated in a very enjoyable visit from Sarah. We worked for two days to go through all…

Love For Me

There is a love for me
A love wrapped in old prayer
A love tucked in my lungs like breath

There is a love I was pulled from
A dust of stories
A wind of rapture
A cunning song that leads the darkest night to its dawn

Love
Crowds my tongue
It weaves a new language
It carries itself in the scent of a new day

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Thato Angela Chuma is a Motswana singer, poet and writer. Her poetry has featured in literary magazines such as Saraba Magazine, Brittle Paper, Strange Horizons and The Kalahari Review.

I wrote a few thoughts on drafting and re-drafting poems last night. I redrafted my thoughts today. This is only a draft.

1.  Does the opening line invite the reader to read the poem? Is it compelling? Is it hard to understand? If so, will it repel the reader? Do you need the first line? The first stanza? Half of the second stanza? Delete until you are left with the poem. Or not, in which case it probably wasn’t meant to be a poem.

2.  Have you read the poem aloud? Does it sound ‘right’? Is it hard to read? Where do the line breaks naturally fall?  Do you want to subvert this, and if so, to what purpose? What’s the white space doing? What shape best serves the poem?

3.  Do you need to put the poem away until you can see it more clearly? Come back tomorrow. Or next year. If you are…