Kathy Pimlott on place, poetry, and Elastic Glue

Kathy Pimlott talks about her new poetry pamphlet, Elastic Glue… 

The poems in Elastic Glue are mostly about ownership of place. One of these places is Covent Garden where I, an incomer, have lived for 40+ years, in the corner called Seven Dials.

Most people think of the area as a tourist honeypot of dinky shops, bars and restaurants, with some very expensive flats for short-term lets or foreign investors – and that’s true. But it’s not the whole picture. It’s also home to successive generations of people who worked in the wholesale market, the theatres, the print and their ancillary trades. When two of these mass employers moved out, leaving the area ripe for redevelopment, the residents, who mostly lived in dilapidated social housing, didn’t just quietly submit to ‘relocation’, they stayed to fight a prolonged and complicated community-led battle with developers – both the benign-but-misguided and the opportunistic.

They were successful. Covent Garden was not flattened. The community was not ‘decanted’. Most importantly, a substantial quantity of new social housing was built. But the success was double-edged as the area became an increasingly desirable proposition for profit. The struggle now is to maintain a foot-hold in this heavily-marketed prime real estate and a sense of normality, surrounded as we are by pop-ups and fairylights and bedevilled by late night revellers and crack dealers.

The other place which crops up is an allotment site. I’m very struck by the changes in profile of allotmenteers over the years we’ve had plots and the little England-ness of the activity – how a sense of ownership here comes through an intense and strenuous physical relationship with land and productivity.

The poems are full of people – there’s Lenin and Renzo Piano, the Consultant Placemaker, Chicken Jim, the biodynamic hippy, the Fred Collinses and, amid them, me, owning myself – from a child in the school hall in my knickers and vest, stumbling towards feminism, as a heedless squatter, through to a ruby wedding anniversary. It’s a political pamphlet but channelled through the personal – as I’m a child of my times.

I write about what catches and noodles around in my mind. I still work within community activism, for a small Trust involved in public realm projects in Seven Dials, so engagement with who ‘owns’ the area is always on my mind. Though these are now quite old poems for me, I do like them still. I think they ‘stand up’. And they still make me laugh.

The title of the pamphlet comes from an old enamel sign on what used to be the ironmongers and is now a ‘vintage’ clothes shop. Seven successive generations of Fred Collinses had the business, through to the 1990s, when ill-health forced sale. I think of that continuity as a flexible but tenacious elastic glue which binds a community together – how accumulated place-based memories are as powerful a form of ownership as a freehold.

There are a couple of poems in my first pamphlet, Goose Fair Night, about Nottingham, where I was born and grew up – but they’re a personal history. I use place in other poems as a way to access ideas I want to have a play with or memories I want to tease out. Elastic Glue is definitely further removed from my personal history – though that’s there too, of course. I think, stylistically, the poems are a bit braver, less restricted by what’s of the moment – there’s a ballad!

In theory I set aside a couple of mornings a week for poetry – that might be writing from scratch and /or editing or it might be poetry admin, like submissions. If I’m writing new work or editing, I can usually keep at it for four hours or so at a stretch, interspersed with putting on another load of washing or a quick hoover round – dedicated writing time is the best spur to doing housework. I write new work in bursts – starting by hand and then moving to the screen once I’ve built up momentum, a certain hard-to-define weight. I keep a poetry diary where I write, last thing at night, about readings I’ve been to, the two poetry workshopping groups I’m part of, what I’ve been reading, what acceptances or rejections I’ve had and my notional plans – this sometimes turns into proto first drafts as does my sporadic non-poetry diary in which I moan about life, work and people. And I aim to read some poetry every day, leaving books and magazines lying around to ambush and encourage me.

I’m currently working on another pamphlet. I wouldn’t go as far as to say the poems are confessional but I’m thinking through what passes for an accumulated wisdom of age and trying to set it out. It includes poems about egg and chips, advice to daughters, adjusting to daylight saving, Keats, the Mersey Sound poets and Sammy Davis Jnr. Pending, I have notes waiting for my focused attention on crimes I have committed and an anecdote about a flying pig, which I think might be about the balance between expectation and resignation. I’m looking forward to that – but first, I find I must clean the bathroom.

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You can find out more about Elastic Glue and order your copy (£6.50) here.

Follow Kathy on Twitter @kathy_pimlott and find her website here.

This week at Valley Press, #72: 'Ghosts and Mirrors'

Dear readers,

This coming week sees another familiar face back with a new collection: Oz Hardwick and The House of Ghosts and Mirrors. The cover art, partially pictured above, is a photo of the exact spot where Oz was born, which should give you a clue about to what to expect from the new book – we're looking backwards only to find ourselves, figures from generations past, and a touch of both the infinite and the domestic. (And there's a few darkly funny bits, he's only human!)

Here's the opening poem, which asks a few questions that may linger, unanswered, within your mind for some time: (you have been warned)


The Pros and Cons of Immortality

Is it really so bad to begin with an ending?

Here I am, queueing for dreams
in a new world that hardens around me
like a scab on the wound of growing apart
from where I belong, what I know.

So, I ask again, is it really so bad
to be here, where walls crumble,
where your solitary love
is long gone and, surely, forgotten?

Because from here – half a century away,
and counting – even I forget
most of the time. But
that’s what hurts, you tell me,
the long forgetting that hangs
in the air, its cold breath
dampening your sleepless face.

You forget everything
one heartbeat at a time
until you forget yourself.
But is that really so bad?
                       

Antony Dunn says Oz's new collection is 'sad in the best way', which is a great turn of phrase (he's known for them I guess). By the way, you can now enjoy an hour in Antony's company via the video of our sixth "Literary Lunch Hour", which can be found here; we really get to the bottom of how he writes, what makes him tick, how his latest collection was assembled and many other crucial matters. I'm so glad we took the trouble to film these events; they stand as a great record of some truly magnificent writers.

Back on the subject of Oz, and speaking of events (this newsletter is a tricky one, keep up!), he is launching his new collection at York Explore on the 30th September, all details here. This is our day of being in four places at once: you'll remember John Wedgwood Clarke's book launch is also that day, and I'll tell you about the other two events in the next newsletter – you're spoiled for choice!

What's more, both those authors are leaping out from the printed page at the moment: John can be seen on TV screens shortly hosting Through the Lens of Larkin, which Yorks/Lincs residents can catch on BBC1 next Wednesday, the 20th September, at 7.30pm. The rest of you must wait until the 25th September on BBC4, also at 7.30 (and I'll share the iPlayer links here if I remember). It should be excellent, particularly if you have even the slightest interest in Philip Larkin.

Oz, meanwhile, has been working with musician Peter Byrom-Smith on an album setting some of his latest poems (also featured in the book) to music, which can be found here; one for all you opera fans I would say, and there's a great story behind it involving Oz's maternal grandfather.

You're up to date with Valley Press now, thanks as ever for sparing me some of your time. I'd like to end by saying we approve of the shortlist for this year's Booker Prize (we didn't have any eligible titles, so there's only good wishes!)  It includes a debut author from York, evidence (as if you needed any) that North Yorkshire is fast becoming the centre of the literary universe ... and Paul Auster, who after hanging out with Nora Chassler last month, is pretty much part of our gang. As are you, dear reader! It's quite the organisation we're running here...

All best,
Jamie McGarry, VP Publisher

This week at Valley Press, #62: 'The Eagle'

Dear readers,

I must start by thanking everyone for the outpouring of kind words after our last email. I've included another Helen Cadbury poem at the end of this post, in a different genre; a childhood anecdote in fact (showing the great storytelling skill everyone's been talking about in the past week, along with a 'Twinkle' of humour).

After a few requests, I turned last week's poem, 'The Dance', into an image which can be easily shared on social media (find that here). The family have asked that donations in Helen's memory go to Accessible Arts and Media, York, a brilliant organisation which Helen chaired for a number of years – details here.

* * *

Elsewhere at Valley Press, Helen Burke's twenty-month wait to see her Collected Poems is almost at an end – hardback copies arrived in the VP office on Thursday (see picture above). An ebook is also available now. The hardback, after all this effort, is priced at £30... but we realise that is a touch steep, so for the next few weeks you can all have 20% off using the discount code BIRDIES.

In other new releases: Mountain Stories is "officially" published today, and should be appearing on bookshop shelves across the UK. For those who've already ordered, I hope you find it as intriguing and entertaining as we did. A sample can be found here, if you've not yet read anything from our new Chinese translation series. We're working on the second volume at the moment; I have the final manuscript in my hand.

This week also saw the release of our third audiobook publication. We invited Norah Hanson over to Scarborough to record her latest collection Sparks, using the brilliant studio/production setup at Tom Townsend's Village Records. We did take after take of each poem until they were perfect, and the results are available on Amazon, Audible and iTunes now for just a few pounds – less than a posh coffee! Give it a try.

If free entertainment is more your style, VP authors Sue Wilsea and Nora Chassler recently visited the Valley Press office, and graciously agreed to film video interviews, answering the questions from TV programme 'Inside the Actor's Studio'. (In the video, I credit them to James Lipton, but have since learned he borrowed them from a man called Pivot... who in turn lifted them from Proust. So more literary than you'd think.) You can see Sue's video here and Nora's here.

* * *

I'm about to embark on an email holiday for a few weeks, starting Sunday – I'll be keeping one eye on the workings of Valley Press though, and still doing the occasional meeting/event (so don't panic if we've got one booked!) The next few newsletters will be from enterprising interns and other VP staff, so look out for some lively new voices in your inbox. Enjoy those, and the poem below – see you in August.

All best,
Jamie McGarry, VP Publisher

---

The Wrong Label

by Helen Cadbury, from Forever, Now (published November 2017)

The Christmas I unwrapped an Eagle annual
there was Dan Dare, all black lines, strong jaw,
the Mekon, slime-green, repulsive, sucking me in.
Each comic strip a rush of danger, thrill of speed.

Minutes in to this new-found joy, a cry went up,
my brother sat with a Twinkle annual in his lap.
I fought my case, ruined Christmas with my argument,
and lost. These things happen, simple mistake.

I flicked the pages of Twinkle, where fat-faced
children smiled pink-lipped smiles, cherubic.
I was having none of it. I spent the afternoon
plotting how to make the Eagle mine.

The Emma Press Newsletter #36: Fingers crossed!

Hello everyone,

I'm proud to say that the Emma Press has been shortlisted in the Michael Marks Poetry Pamphlet Awards for the third year in a row. Not only that, but we've got a pamphlet in the running for the very first time: Malkin, by Camille Ralphs. You can read the judges' comments over on the Wordsworth Trust website and see all the other estimable publishers and pamphlets in the shortlists. The results will be announced at the awards dinner at the British Library on 13th December – wish us luck!

There's lots more good news in this newsletter, so read on to find out about our latest anthology, our new pamphlet authors, some general book news and dates for your diary, and our call for animal poems.

* * * *

Hot off the press: Anthology of the Sea (£10)

Our last book of 2016 has hit the shelves! We were delighted to celebrate the publication of The Emma Press Anthology of the Sea: Poems for a Voyage Out a few weeks ago.

Editor Eve Lacey has assembled a truly excellent selection of poems and we were lucky enough to see some of the poets perform at the launch party in King's Cross. You can see some photos here.

You can read more about The Emma Press Anthology of the Sea here and buy the paperback (£10) in our webshop. I will do the ebook soon too, I promise. Excitingly, we've already had our first review, on the LiteratureWorks website.

* * * *

Meet our twelve new pamphlet authors

We're finally able to announce our new pamphlet authors, chosen from last year's call for submissions. And they are... Andrew Wynn Owen, Emma Simon, Jack Nicholls, Leanne Radojkovich, Jan Carson, Padraig Regan, Zosia Kuczyńska, Carol Rumens, Rakhshan Rizwan, Simon Turner, Julia Bird and Malachi O’Doherty. 2017 will be a great year, for pamphlets, at least! You can read more about the authors here.

Latvian success 

A couple of newsletters ago, I mentioned that I was trying to understand foreign rights deals and translation funding bids. I'm happy to inform you that my deals and bids were successful and we'll be publishing two Latvian translations next year: The Noisy Classrom (Skaļā klase), a collection of children’s poems by Ieva Samauska, illustrated by Vivianna Maria Staņislavska, and The Secret Box, three stories from Pirmā reize, a collection of short stories for adults by Daina Tabūna. You can read more about it on the actual Bookseller and you can read about the 'Support for Foreign Publisher Publishing Latvian Literature' programme here. You can also read about it in Russian here.

* * *

General book news: Mums and Moons 

Some of you may have noticed that The Emma Press Anthology of Motherhood has been out of print for a while. This is because I wanted to update the cover design and illustrations, as our house style has changed a bit since 2014. This time, I've done five new drawings, which you can preview here – and you can see the new cover design to the left. The books have just come back from the printer and you can order your copies here.

Moon Juice at the Oxford Lieder Festival 

Some poems from Kate Wakeling's collection of poems for children, Moon Juice, have been set to music by composer Frances Cheryl-Hoad and were performed at Oxford Lieder Festival a couple of weeks ago. Rachel and I went along and we were completely blown away by it. Seeing all the reactions of the audience made me think that Moon Juice should be recommended for the Ted Hughes Award, as it really is an outstanding piece of work. Wink.

Kate went into BBC Radio Oxfordshire ahead of the concert, to talk about her poems and read a couple out loud. You can listen to her interview here, from 1.07.10.

* * *

Dates for the diary: competitions, courses & events 

* Fri 25th-Sat 26th November, BIRMINGHAM. We've got a table at Ikon Gallery's first Winter Craft Market – details here.

* Fri 2nd-Sun 4th December, BIRMINGHAM. You may have spotted that I'm keeping it very local this winter, as a treat to myself. But why leave Birmingham, when there's so much good stuff on? I'm especially looking forward to having a stall at this: the Winter Makers Market in the old Municipal Bank building. Details here.

* Mon 5th Dec. Women writers are invited to send their poetry and prose on the subject of 'Guilt' to Mslexia by 5th December. Winning entries will be published in their March 2017 issue. Details here.

* * *

SUBMISSIONS UPDATE 

Open calls for submissions 

* There's just over 2 weeks left to send us your POEMS ABOUT ANIMALS, for The Emma Press Bestiary, an adults' anthology which will be guest-edited by Anja Konig and Liane Strauss. You can read the press release here and the guidelines here. The deadline is Sunday 4th December 2016.

Closed calls for submissions 

* Our call for poems about British and Irish KINGS AND QUEENS closed on 13th November and we are no longer accepting entries. I'll let you know an ETA for responses in the December newsletter.

* Our call for LOVE POEMS ended on 10th April and we have now sent out all the responses to everyone who submitted. If you can't find a response, even in your spam folder, let me know and I'll forward the email on to you again!

* Our call for poems for THE EMMA PRESS ANTHOLOGY OF AUNTS ended on 29th May and we are no longer accepting entries. The current ETA for responses is the end of November 2016.

This is a complete update on all of our calls for submissions, and we do send responses to everyone's submissions individually. In the meantime, just keep an eye on our newsletters for news of our progress and read our blog to find out what we do when we process submissions.

* * *

And finally... 

* You can see some photos from our launch party for Watcher of the Skies: Poems about Space and Aliens, taken by poet John Canfield, here.

* There's a new writing magazine brewing over in Belfast: The Tangerine. Read all about it in the Irish Times and check out the Kickstarter campaign here.

* I hope everyone who went had a nice time at Poetry in Aldeburgh last weekend! The poet-in-residence Ben Rogers diligently did about a million interviews, including ones with Jacqueline Saphra, Emily Berry and Geraldine Clarkson. Get this man in residence in more places!

* 'These are poems how I like them to be' – Nadia Kingsley from Fairacre Press has written a lovely piece about Deborah Alma's pamphlet True Tales of the Countryside. You can read it here.

* * *

That's all for now. Do forward this newsletter onto your friends if you think they might enjoy it, or encourage them to sign up themselves here.

Best wishes,

Emma Wright
Publisher

How a Poem Changed my Life: the Beginnings of the Emma Press

I started the Emma Press when I was twenty-five. Up to that point, I had tried very hard to live sensibly, but then a quick succession of events jolted me into the realisation that playing it safe held its own risks, and perhaps I didn’t know as much about life as I had thought.

So I quit my job as an ebook production controller, resigned myself to living in Winnersh with my parents again, and decided to start from scratch. What did I love? I thought I might try to make a living from sewing or illustrating, and then I read a poem by an old school friend and was gripped by the desire to make other people read it too. This poem – 'Bonfire' by Rachel Piercey – resounded with me as I read it on either side of an impossible relationship, and I wanted to share it with other people who might be navigating similar emotional binds. Here are the opening lines:

I have felled
all the trees in my wood
to keep you going, […] 

Anyone can post a poem online, but whether anyone will read it is another matter. I decided that the best way to encourage people to read the poem was to create a little book on beautiful paper which could be thrust into people’s hands. A book that would be a pleasure to open and read. It turned out that I knew enough about book production to create a book (and an ebook), and so 'Bonfire' became the centrepiece of the first Emma Press pamphlet: The Flower and the Plough by Rachel Piercey.

The Flower and the Plough

Nearly four years on and twenty-seven books later, many things have changed. I live in Birmingham now, with my own office, and I’m never just working on one book at a time. Everything is larger-scale and longer-term, but I still have the same feeling about everything I publish. From individual poems in anthologies to the single-author pamphlets, I want to shout about them all from the rooftops, and share them with as many people as possible. I’ve gone from safe living to ludicrously unsafe living, trying to build a self-sustaining business on poetry, but I love what I do and I hope the books I publish bring a similar joy into readers’ lives.

* * *
This article was originally commissioned for ARTEMISpoetry Issue 16, May 2016.

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Mild Erotica OR How to Sell Poetry Books

Mildly Erotic Verse has been selling briskly, so I ordered a reprint a few weeks ago. I timed it well, as I ran out of copies on the exact day the new books were due, but... they never arrived.

Now, I use a nice, slightly pricey printer precisely so I don't have to panic in such situations, and I'm confident that they will sort it all out for me. However, I did feel a twinge of alarm when they informed me that FedEx had delivered my books to my neighbour J. Johnson in number 21, as the flats in my building only go up to 14. Who are you, J. Johnson, and why did you sign for a box marked MILDLY EROTIC VERSE?

FedEx will return to this not-my address today, retrieve the box, and redeliver to me tomorrow. It's going to be fine. But part of me wonders what if J. Johnson decides to keep the books. At £10 a pop, that box is worth £1000! Mildly Erotic Verse is a handsome-looking volume, and sex sells, right?

I'd rather have my books back, J. Johnson, but who am I to extinguish the hopes of a bright new poetry salesperson when there are so few of us out there as it is? If you really want to make a quick grand off poetry books, I can only wish you well. Here are some tips to get you started:

* * *

How to sell (stolen) poetry books

1. Read it. Read the book so you understand what it's about and why someone might like to buy it. Then you'll have the makings of a sales pitch, which you can refine according to the customer. For example, you could say to your mum: 'Mildly Erotic Verse is a thoughtfully-assembled collection of contemporary poetry. Don't let the title fool you – it's definitely erotic, but not in a queasy way. It makes a great gift, and also a treat for yourself. I loved it so much I stole a box of it.'
2. Put yourself in the readers' shoes. Now you've identified why someone might like to buy this book, think about who might like it. Mildly Erotic Verse is edited by two twenty-something women, presumably according to their tastes and what they wanted to see available in the world, so you could create one customer profile around them. Something like: twenty-something women interested in feminism, activism and the arts. 
3. Sell direct. If you try to sell the books in bookshops, you're not going to get that full £1k, and you certainly won't get it quickly. If you want these books off your hands within a couple of months, try running some events and selling at craft fairs. You can't contact any of the poets in the book in case they alert me, but you could still book the upstairs room in a pub somewhere and bill it as an open-mic night for erotic verse. If the pub charges you a booking fee, you could charge for entry to the event, though then you would have to spend quite a lot of time promoting it to make sure people come. 
4. Stay local. If you want to make £50k on poetry books, you have to go national, if not global. If you want to make £1k, you should probably focus on your local area. You don't want to cut into the k with travel expenses and shipping costs, and also you're far more likely to catch people's attention and sell books if you can say the word 'local' frequently and with conviction. 
5. Share your story. Maybe a grand is all you need to step on a plane and glide towards a new country and identity. If you can afford to burn bridges and get your name on an Interpol list, why not brand yourself as the Mildly Erotic Maverick and tell everyone about how you took a chance on a box of books? Gain a bit of local notoriety, boost it by getting kicked out of Ann Summers for loitering round their book section with a bin bag, then sign all your remaining copies of Mildly Erotic Verse and charge more for these special editions. 

Godspeed, J. Johnson.

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Legitimate copies of Mildly Erotic Verse are available to buy on the Emma Press website for £10 here. Any books posted out from tomorrow will be the very ones featured in this blog.