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.

Poets on their Pamphlets: Ruth Wiggins on poetry and 2D vision

There's just over a month left in our annual call for poetry and prose pamphlet submissions (deadline: 13th December), so I've asked some more of our pamphlet poets to share an aspect of their pamphlet-creating experience on this blog, to join our Poets on their Pamphlets series. I hope that this will be inspiring to people who are thinking of sending us something or in the process of assembling their submission.

Ruth Wiggins

This week, Ruth Wiggins explains what it's like to see the world in just two dimensions and considers the effect this might have had on her poetry. We published Ruth's debut pamphlet, Myrtle, almost exactly a year ago and we have always found her worldview uniquely bracing and reassuring, so it's fascinating to get a further insight into the way she writes.

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What It's Like, by Ruth Wiggins

Against Perspective 

At this vantage I am
m    a    s    s    i    v    e
here
I-can-bury-my-face-in-the-hillside
work the green with my fists
 like a suckling cat
guzzle up       g   r   o   u   n   d   w   a   t   e   r
draughts of sap 

I have a lazy eye, or as it's more correctly known, amblyopia. I can't see Magic Eye pictures and 3-D films are torture. It's quite common, but what people tend not to know is that it destroys depth perception. It doesn't affect my driving, but I have a sorry history of broken toes, ankles & crockery. When people ask what it is like to see the world in 2-D, I usually answer, 'It's like this!' (Holds flat of hand to face.) It is less like seeing the world, and more like colliding with it.

Perhaps inevitably, this has an impact on my poetry. Emma was very supportive when we were putting Myrtle together, and not least when I decided to open my pamphlet with a short, oddly-typeset piece called 'Against Perspective', a poem that had become something of a totem for the way I physically see the world.

What it's like... (photos by Ruth)

A friend once described my poetry as 'falling in', which fits because the world certainly feels that way. I find natural and urban landscapes equally absorbing. Things that move give me a sense of depth, which is great, but spiders are endlessly alarming. Tricky when the room you work in is spider city. I have always enjoyed photography, and tend to take wide aperture shots of something in close focus surrounded by a lot of edge blur, which feels like an extension of this.

When I look at the poems in Myrtle, I am struck by how many lines also bear out this wonky perspective: newly solid / with three dimensions of pink is some kind of wish-fulfilment; from which vantage point the ambush will spring, for 'ambush' read ANYTHING but particularly spiders; Curse the kindness of the rocks that jut, yet / will not wreck, demonstrates my need for trust in the solid universe; and Forces open the sky – any vista pretty much covers the impact of swooping birds. 

Although not a defining credo, I enjoy the precise aesthetic of the Imagist poets, largely because they have that same crashing-onto-the-retina effect. And I particularly enjoy poems that wormhole you into a physical world, such that you really arrive there. Poems that take you wading through the physical, in a way that is both sensual and abstract and which in turn pushes the brain to engage beyond the 'this is how it looked'.

Here are a few lines from Alice Oswald's tremendous poem 'Tithonus' that really encapsulate this idea of perception colliding with the universe –

the dawn // which is a wall of green // which is a small field sliding at / the speed of light // straight through the house and on / to the surface of the eye 

... and that is exactly what it's like.

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Myrtle, by Ruth Wiggins, is available in paperback (£6.50) and ebook (£4.25). She keeps a blog at Mudpath.

Our open call for poetry and prose pamphlet submissions ends on 13th December 2015. Full details can be found here. 

Poets on their Pamphlets: Ikhda Ayuning Maharsi on her process, inspiration and poems

There's just a few days to go in our open call for poetry pamphlet submissions (deadline: 31st August – this Sunday!), so I've asked some of our existing pamphlet poets to share their pamphlet-related experiences on this blog. We've already posted an interview with Australian poet Kristen Roberts, where she talks about assembling her pamphlet submission to the Picks this time last year, and now we're going to hear about the beginnings of one of our first full-length pamphlets.

Ikhda Ayuning Maharsi

Ikhda, by Ikhda is the debut pamphlet of Ikhda Ayuning Maharsi, a very new Indonesian poet whose writing first came onto our radar when she submitted some poems to our Anthology of Mildly Erotic Verse. Her pamphlet is utterly charming, and we're delighted that it's had such great reviews. Sabotage Reviews observed 'Ikhda herself has conjured a fantastic tree of poetry, branching out and blooming on the strength of her conviction as a writer of innovation and sentiment', while the Cadaverine described it as 'a navigation of birth, love, sex and motherhood, and the ways that these cycles entwine and shape our relationships.' And now, here is Ikhda in her own words:

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My background

I was born in Surabaya, Indonesia. I lived in Paris for two years and now I'm living in Naples until September, before moving to Nantes. It was my father, a dancer, who first told me that I had a poetic voice to share with other people. It all started when he found out that I kept skipping my dance classes to run to the bookstore and read anything there.

He wrote a short-childish poem for me to read at the bachelor party of my big sister (also a dancer) when I was five years old. I still remember the poem:

Thank God, I am not a duck, by my father 

Thank God
You have created me as a human
Not a duck
That goes anywhere by its kwak kwak kwak
Thank God
You have created me as a human
Who is able to talk, walk and laugh
I am not a duck
Who goes anywhere by its kwak kwak kwak
Following other ducks and kwak kwak kwak
Thank God I am not like a duck
Kwak Kwak Kwak and Kwak

I don't know what was on his mind, but it sounds like an encouragement for me? From that moment on I began to fall in love with poetry and now I always write what I want. I take examples of multiculturalism, wrap them in narrative poems, and share them with readers.

The poems

Ikhda, by Ikhda

My inspiration for writing comes from people on the streets, my son, good essays about society and culture, and whatever I feel and see.

For a long long time I kept my poems in my closet. I was afraid of judgement, misunderstanding, and what I could contribute to the world of poetry. It wasn't a problem of confidence, but more the question of essences – how to capture my world of perceptions, ideas, feelings. The world that I love.

It took six to eight months for me to write my full-length pamphlet, and alongside it came music, baby diapers, wine, seas and conversations. If someday you find my pamphlet and read my poems, whether you adore or dislike them I hope you liberate yourself from the conclusion. Poetry is a process, and the ideas in a poem can be destroyed by the reader's state of mind, set before they read. If you free yourself from that, the poems will free you more. Welcome to the world of poetry, the world that I love, the world that energizes me.

The title

Emma and I talked a lot about the title of my pamphlet, which Emma suggested. 'Ikhda, by Ikhda' was not the title that I proposed in my original submission, and I thought it might be too much. I mean, who the heck is Ikhda? I didn't feel ready to put my name in the title of my book, for readers in Great Britain and around the world. It was so controversial and funny. But finally I accepted the title because I thought, this is my book and we live in an era where voices are more important than speakers, so why not?

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You can read more about Ikhda, by Ikhda and buy it for £6.50 (paperback) or £4.25 (ebook) on the Emma Press website. You can find Ikhda on Twitter @ikhdadegoul and contact her on ikhdaayu [at] gmail [dot] com - she would love to hear from readers, poets and critics!

We recently looked at 'Lys', a poem from Ikhda, by Ikhda, in Poem Club – read more here.

Poets on their Pamphlets: an interview with Kristen Roberts

Kristen Roberts

We're in the final month of our call for poetry pamphlet submissions, so I've asked a few of the Emma Press pamphlet poets to write something about their experience of working on their pamphlets. First up is the lovely Kristen Roberts, an Australian poet based in Melbourne. We published The Held and the Lost, an Emma Press Pick (a short, illustrated pamphlet), back in February 2014.

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Hello Kristen! Can I ask you to describe your pamphlet?

Hi! My pamphlet is a collection of poems about the happiness that we find in the sense of belonging, of just being with family and lovers, and then the sadness that swells around us when someone we love leaves or dies. I write what I think of as everyday poetry – sort of conversational, and less structured or formal in style – so the collection feels a bit like a written snapshot of everyday life. I think Emma captured its spirit beautifully with a calm, yet melancholic blue cover.

Why did you decide to submit it to The Emma Press?

I find the passion and creativity behind the Emma Press publications so appealing, while the size of the pamphlets makes them a perfect step for someone like me who does not have a large body of new work ready.

I first met Emma and Rachel via Skype when I had a poem published in The Emma Press Anthology of Mildly Erotic Verse, and found their enthusiasm was infectious. And Rachel’s pamphlet is just gorgeous, so I wanted one with my poems in it! I was so keen that when I saw the call for submissions I responded almost immediately, and now that I’ve seen the other pamphlets that were released this year I’m really glad I did it.

How did you choose which poems to include in your original submission?

I had some favourite poems, some published and others shiny and new, that I knew I had to send in. I’m not always brilliant at identifying my strongest work; sometimes it’s the unexpected pieces that treat me well, so I pulled together a range of poems that wove into a common theme with my favourites (I seldom actually write with a theme in mind, so it was interesting to see how much of my work fit within this idea of love and loss). When I had a group that I thought worked, I picked out the ones that I thought best showcased my voice and style.

When did you write the poems?

Some of the poems are a couple of years old – a few had been published already, and others were sitting in a file on my computer waiting for the right opportunity. There were others I’d been working on in the year leading up to the submissions window, giving them the occasional stir and leaving them to simmer, and there were a few that I’d only written very recently (they were still raw in the middle!).

How did you come up with the title?

Hmm… it’s terrible of me, but I don’t actually remember! I do remember liking that ‘the Held’ referred to both those I hold, and those who feel held, and that ‘the Lost’ could refer both to those feeling lost and those who have been lost. It was only a working title in the beginning, but I think it grew on us all.

What did it mean to you to have your first pamphlet published?

Gosh, it was the most fabulous opportunity, and a lovely validation that I should keep up this writing thing. I’ve been writing for years in the spaces between my young children’s needs, stealing snatches of time while they slept or played in the garden, and while I’ve had single poems published in journals and anthologies, nothing feels better than having a gorgeous little volume of poetry with my name on the cover. It’s my turn, and it made all the hard work worth it.

What kind of a reaction have your friends and family had to The Held and the Lost?

I’ve had a fantastic response! My family and friends were incredibly supportive and proud, and all bought a copy without me even having to hint. Some of my favourite reactions have been from those who don’t ordinarily read poetry. I think some were surprised to find themselves enjoying the experience - they’d find certain poems that resonated with them, and then they’d come and discuss them with me! I’ve loved it.

What advice would you give to people preparing their pamphlet proposals for this round of submissions?

Go for it! Give yourself your best chance by showing off your range and voice, pull together the poems that illustrate a cohesive idea, and be brave.

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'Night music', a poem from The Held and the Lost, was recently up for discussion in Poem Club – read more here.

John Clegg on bandits and bottled heads: the story behind 'Captain Love and the Five Joaquins'

I swore by heck I’d break his neck
for the jolt he gave my pride,
so I threw my noose on that old cayoose
and once more took a ride;
then he turned around and soon I found
his tail where his head should be.
So I says, ‘Says I, perhaps he’s shy,
or he just don’t care for me.’

                     (‘The Devil’s Great Grandson’, Bob Nolan)

Like Skyball Paint, the devil’s horse and subject of Bob Nolan’s hillbilly song, here’s a tale where a head should be. The head belonged to Joaquin Murrieta, a horse-thief and bandit active during the Californian gold-rush, and the tale belonged to Harry Love, a veteran of the Mexican-American War contracted by California’s embryonic government to put a stop to Murrieta’s career and that of his associates: four more bandits, each also called Joaquin. Love had been hired for a three-month term, concluding in mid-August 1853, and there is little doubt that there was a tacit agreement of a substantial bonus if Love brought down his man. On August 4th, Love reported to Governor Bigler that the deed was done; as proof, he brought with him Murrieta’s severed head, preserved in a jar of alcohol. It was taken on a tour of the state by two of Love’s confederates, with admission charged at a dollar, and during this period a number of affidavits were taken as to the identity of the head. The route, however, seemed to purposefully avoid those areas where Murrieta had been well-known, and most of the affidavits were signed with Xs, indicating that the witnesses had not been able to read what they were signing. One of Love’s confederates was reported as bragging in a pub that ‘one pickled head was as good as another if they [sic] was a scar on the face and no-one knew the difference’.

An illustration from Captain Love and the Five Joaquins

This is history, of a sort. My poem ‘Captain Love and the Five Joaquins’ plays thoroughly fast and loose with it. My real inspiration was the legend of Zorro: the serials, the Douglas Fairbanks film, Youtube clips of the Mexican telenovela (in which Zorro battles pirates and zombies, and is assisted by a flamboyant coterie of gypsies), and especially the 1998 film starring Antonio Banderas. All of these (apart from possibly the telenovela, which plays by rules of its own) engage with history but are not bound by it. To get a clearer view of Love alone, as his lie begins to close in on him, I have made him a solitary figure, erasing the twenty California Rangers he rode with; on the other hand I have made the Five Joaquins real, whereas all evidence suggests they are a joke being played on the California legislature by a cynical state senator called De La Guerra. I have also played merry hell with Californian geography: Fresno was not a city at this point and certainly not a seat of government, and Laredo is mentioned in tribute to the beautiful song rather than out of any topographic plausibility.

And in a way this is honesty towards the source, because in fact Murrieta is Zorro. The early newspaper accounts were turned into a sensational novel by John Rollin Ridge (who was incidentally the first Native American novelist), pirated and corrupted by the California Police Gazette, and thereafter told and retold as much or more than any other piece of Gold Rush folklore; and these accounts were plainly the main source material Johnston McCulley drew on when he created for the pulp serials his ‘masked man dressed all in black’, the fox, so cunning and free, and who is especially free with carving his initial on stationary objects.

— John Clegg

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Captain Love and the Five Joaquins, by John Clegg and illustrated by Emma Wright, is publishing on 29th May 2014 with The Emma Press. You can read more about it and buy it for £5 on The Emma Press site.