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.

Writer's block and postcard stories: Jan Carson on her new book

We are very proud to have published two fantastic short story collections this month: First fox by Auckland author Leanne Radojkovich and Postcard Stories by Belfast author Jan Carson. There are of course stories behind all stories, and we asked Jan to tell us about hers.

* * *

By the end of 2014 my imagination was almost worn out. I’d just returned from two months in America promoting my first novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears, and researching a book about Bob Dylan. I was juggling a more than full time day job plus the onslaught of speaking engagements and interview requests which seem to come hot on the heels of a new book. I wanted to write some short stories but every time I sat down at my lap top the inclination evaporated and I’d find myself fiddling about on Facebook or simply falling asleep, (there are, it has to be said, both positive and negative aspects to being the kind of writer who likes to write in bed). I had very few ideas. This was not normal for me. I have always been blessed by an overleaping imagination. My parents, who knew me as a non-stop talker long before they knew me as a writer, aren’t quite as romantic. They call it a tendency to exaggerate wildly and take most things I say, both on the page and off, with a generous pinch of salt. Still, my imagination has served me well over the years. I’d never before been short of ideas for stories, so much as the time to actually get them written. In December 2014 I found myself, for the first time in my writing career, exhausted and without any ideas worth developing.

Jan Carson, author of Postcard Stories

Now, with hindsight, I have come to realise that this might have been a good time, to relax, rest and catch up with my creative self. But I am not very good at resting, and writing is the only way I know how to relax, and I am, (I’m finally ready to admit), a dreadful overachiever. So, instead of taking a wee break from writing I began the New Year by setting myself a ridiculous challenge. I would write a short story every day for the duration of 2015. This would force my imagination back into fifth gear. This would get me writing again. This, I quickly discovered, would feel like trying to push a particularly unwieldy elephant up a hill for 365 days straight. Thankfully, I’d limited myself to the two hundred or so words per day which I could, with cramp-inducing care, squash on to the back of a regular postcard. By January 8th I’d realised my mistake. There were still 357 days left in the year and I was already fed up forcing myself to find ideas, to develop ideas and squeeze these half-baked ideas on to tiny pieces of cardboard, but I hadn’t left myself any room to back out. I’d already recruited 365 recipients for my Postcard Stories. I’d already promised I would post stories to friends in South Africa and China, and slightly less exotic, Dundonald. If I didn’t knuckle down and write the stories, people, (including small children and very elderly ladies), would be disappointed. I couldn’t be the responsible for disappointing old people so I got writing.

By mid February the art of finding a daily story had once again become instinctual. I would listen in the line at Tesco, find myself all ears on the bus to work, eavesdrop on my colleagues and devour Radio 4 documentaries with an appetite I hardly recognized. My imagination went from first to fifth gear in a matter of weeks and by the time I’d completed the project on the 31st December – the last Postcard Story dropping into a Portrush postbox on a stormy New Year’s Eve at the North Coast – I was seeing potential stories everywhere. It is testament to the success of the experiment that I was to spend the entire first fortnight of 2016 resisting the inclination to write about all the Postcard Story prompts I kept stumbling upon as I made my way from one end of the day to the other. I closed the book on Postcard Stories, started a new novel and was grateful to have my imagination back. I never, for a minute, thought that my little postcards would have a life beyond the various fridges and mantelpieces they’d landed upon. They belonged to a season in my life which hadn’t been the easiest and I was thankful for them, but ready to move on.

However, last summer, when the Emma Press expressed an interest in publishing a collection of the Postcard Stories, and I took them out of storage to begin re-reading them in order – January through to December – I began to realise that they were more than just snapshots of a difficult year. Each one was a little anchor connecting me to a person, or family, who had had some part, however small, in shaping the stories I tell. There were postcards to my parents, my cousin in China, my old housemates from my years living in Portland, Oregon, university friends, now relocated to exotic places like South Africa and Bristol, the older people I’ve grown to know and love through my arts practice. I started to get excited about curating a little collection of these short stories. This would be a snapshot of so many of my most important people. This would be a way of giving something back to them; a small token of my gratitude for the part they’d played in shaping me. I chose my epigraph from Sam Allingham’s beautiful short story collection, The Great American Songbook, “your life so full of people, you can hardly believe it will ever end,” because this is a collection as much about the people who inspired these stories, as the stories themselves.

I am grateful to the Emma Press who immediately understood the spirit of this pamphlet, who held each little story gently and coaxed the goodness out of it, so the editing process was a joy rather than a trial. I am grateful also to the fabulous illustrator Benjamin Phillips who caught the spirit of the stories and created images which are both beautiful and very human. It is such a lovely object of a book because of all their hard work. It is such a pleasure to be able to give this back to the fifty two friends included in the pamphlet and the three hundred and thirteen others who we couldn’t quite squeeze in, but are nonetheless important, for having helped me remember why I began to write stories in the first place.

Postcard Stories

ISBN 978-1-910139-68-4 / RRP £6.50
Publication date: 16th May 2017
Pages: 80 / Stories: 52 / Illustrations: 6
READ MORE / BUY NOW

Why I Published our Pamphlets (Part 2)

Our open call for poetry and prose pamphlet submissions ends this Sunday (13th December) and I've been thinking about what I can do to help people who are still deciding what to send us. I've already written about what we do when we process submissions, so I thought it might be useful to look at submissions from another angle and explain why I chose to publish all the pamphlets we've put out already.

You can read Part 1 here, and all the pamphlets are available to buy in our webshop (pamphlets make great Christmas presents and stocking fillers!).

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Malkin, by Camille Ralphs (£5.00)

Series: The Emma Press Picks

Malkin, by Camille Ralphs

Why: Last year I hadn't worked out how to tether my netbook to my phone to access the internet, so I just downloaded all the Word docs and read them on my many train journeys, only matching them up to their covering letters later. Consequently, I was a little flummoxed by both the premise and language of Malkin: the poems take the form of monologues from those accused in the Pendle witch trials of 1612, and Camille uses unorthodox spelling for various reasons but partly to immerse the reader in the atmosphere of the period. But even though I didn't know who was speaking and why the spelling was as it was, I still had a powerful response to the visceral poems and knew I loved them.

Favourite lines: 'And after, well fed-up but famished, I knashed at th bare bakside 
of an apl csh csh - -/ nd an appl & 
another apple – and felt non the better for it, only old.'

AWOL, by John Fuller and Andrew Wynn Owen, illustrated by Emma Wright (£10.00)

Series: Art Squares

AWOL, by John Fuller and Andrew Wynn Owen

Why: One of my poetry bugbears is poems that don't seem to be written with any reader in mind. I don't need that reader to be me, but in the poems I publish I like to have a sense that a poem has been written with an audience in mind; that the poet wants to share something with a reader. I was drawn to the poems in AWOL because I can't get enough of both poets' joy in form and language, but also because they are letter-poems, written from a poet in his late seventies to a poet in his early twenties. I like the way John and Andrew's different perspectives on life sit together in the book, and I find the tenderness and mutual respect throughout very touching.

Favourite lines: 'We want, not days strung out like beads, 
But the whole present in our hands, 
Constant, as the past recedes. 

We’ve had enough of wonderlands: 
We want our share of wonder now. 
Who cares if no one understands?'

True Tales of the Countryside, by Deborah Alma (£6.50)

Series: The Emma Press Pamphlets

True Tales of the Countryside

Why: I think a good word to describe Deborah Alma’s poems might be ‘indomitable’. She writes about insecurity, fear and self-doubt, as well as sex, the countryside and ageing, but the underlying theme is strength. I love the directness of the emotions in True Tales of the Countryside, and reading the manuscript for the first time felt exhilarating. Little details from everyday life and love leapt out at me, perfectly observed and sometimes horribly familiar: the graffiti on the bus shelter, the sticky closeness of nature, the squashing down and clawing back of self in an abusive relationship. I thought True Tales would resonate with and give strength to a lot of readers.

Favourite lines: 'I am a mother, a field, a house. 
Without me, windows darken, 
no-one else knows how to put on lights 
 just to bring the house to life.'

If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing but Naked Women, by Jacqueline Saphra, illustrated by Mark Andrew Webber

Series: Art Squares

If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing but Naked Women

Why: This is the book which launched the Art Squares! Jacqueline’s sequence of prose poems was so compellingly strange and full of rich visual details that I knew the best way to present them had to be something that gave the text room to breathe. I liked the idea of creating a kind of picture book for adults, with plenty of white space around the text and illustrations that complemented the atmosphere of the poems. As a publisher, I think a lot about how to influence and enhance the reader’s experience, and I think the format of the Art Square encourages a slower, more contemplative reading experience, which might be how I think all poetry should be read.

Favourite lines: 'When I was a child I tied my mother and father together with bandages and put a song in their mouths. If I wound them up they sang an Afrikaans duet in perfect thirds.'

Myrtle, by Ruth Wiggins (£6.50)

Series: The Emma Press Pamphlets

Myrtle, by Ruth Wiggins

Why: This is another set of strength-giving poems, I think. There are ideas in Ruth’s poems which really stuck with me from the first read of her manuscript, and felt like a good, grown-up way of looking at life. She writes about sex and death with a mix of solemnity and mischief which I love, and which I wanted to share with other readers.

Favourite lines: 'This morning we mostly lay on the couch, 
impersonating cats, talking gibberish. 
This afternoon you fucked me, right out 
of my pyjamas and into yours.'

Rivers Wanted, by Rachel Piercey (£6.50)

Series: The Emma Press Pamphlets

Rivers Wanted, by Rachel Piercey

Why: Reading poetry can sometimes feel like a relief from being me, as I become immersed in another person’s world view. Rachel’s world view is full of sharp, disturbing observations, about animals, social interactions and courtship rituals, but I still find myself delighted whenever I read any of her poems, because they contain such unexpected ideas that I feel utterly transported.

Favourite lines: 'If you have always been 

on a train between two places, 
 put up your feet here. 
A hero has come to show you 

the revelatory stoniness of stones 
 and how, upturned, they disclose 
 an adjacent magic underneath.'

Why I Published our Pamphlets (Part 1)

Our open call for poetry and prose pamphlet submissions ends on Sunday 13th December and I've been thinking about what I can do to help people who are still deciding what to send us. I've already written about what we do when we process submissions, so I thought it might be useful to look at submissions from another angle and explain why I chose to publish all the pamphlets we've put out already.

You can read Part 2 here.

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Oils, by Stephen Sexton (£6.50)

Series: The Emma Press Pamphlets

Oils, by Stephen Sexton

Why: These are definitely poems which grew on me each time I read them (we read manuscripts at least twice, if not three times, before even shortlisting them). I found it hard to get a handle on the poems initially, but then literally dozens of Stephen's nervy, melancholic thoughts – like 'I ask what it means when even / in my dream I'm a coward' – stuck in my head and I knew that these were special and I had to publish them.

Favourite lines: 'I can’t hold onto anything, Anne. Because it doesn’t exist, 
I’ll meet you in town. Borrow some wine from the woman 
next door, reach for glasses. Live, then show me what I got wrong.'

Captain Love and the Five Joaquins, by John Clegg (£5.00)

Series: The Emma Press Picks

Captain Love and the Five Joaquins

Why: The Pick is the original Emma Press pamphlet format and I always hoped that established poets would use it for their more experimental projects. Captain Love is a wonderful example of this, as John Clegg tells the frankly unbelievable (and yet true-ish) story of bounty hunter Harry Love, through a mixture of poems and prose. It's short, but by gum is it swashbuckling, packed with swordfights, tequila and... Zorro?!?

Favourite lines: 'Love isn’t safe. The lines across his palm, which Ezmerelda stared at for so long before confessing she could read no future there, have started to converge. One eye popped halfway open overnight and Love was busy with his needle in the morning. Nothing’s ready for the visit. Love must send to Fresno for his epaulettes. '

Raspberries for the Ferry, by Andrew Wynn Owen (£6.50)

Series: The Emma Press Pamphlets

Raspberries for the Ferry

Why: I do have a soft spot for formal poetry, and Andrew Wynn Owen's way with metre and rhyme is so infectiously playful that he had me at 'These luscious buds should be illegal / Reserved for emperor and eagle.' The language in his poems is rich, textured and colourful, which I love, and – more than that – his worldview in this pamphlet is exuberant and joyous, which makes it a pleasure to read and very easy to want to share with readers.

Favourite lines: 'I précis 

this shaky simile because I am 
so happy, life-hallowed, the carp that swim 
in the Arno know, the leaves by the dam 

rustle knowledge of it, and the pilgrim 
stops short to wish me well [...]'

Ikhda, by Ikhda, by Ikhda Ayuning Maharsi (£6.50 / £4.25)

Series: The Emma Press Pamphlets

Ikhda, by Ikhda

Why: Ikhda is a multi-lingual globetrotter, so she uses the English language in a rollicking way which feels instinctive and fresh. When I was reading her manuscript, I liked how her poems had a surreal quality and could be viciously satirical and angry but also innocent and tender. This pamphlet feels feminist to me on a very personal level, so it felt important to publish it.

Favourite lines: 'I smelled your distinctive 
typical smell 
from hundreds of kilometres, 
branches of trees swaying gently. 
I walked along silently 
looking for a stud 
to marry me once 
and feed my ren for years.'

The Held and the Lost, by Kristen Roberts (£5.00)

Series: The Emma Press Picks

The Held and the Lost

Why: Escapism is a large part of the appeal of reading for me; it feels like a weight is being lifted when I can immerse myself in someone else's way of seeing the world. I've never been to Australia, but from Kristen Roberts' poems I can imagine the wide gaping spaces, luscious vegetation and oppressive heat. There are so many finely-observed details in Kristen's poems that reading the manuscript felt like stepping out into a variety of distant bedrooms, backyards and beaches.

Favourite lines: 'You cook and we eat, fingers barbeque-blackened, 
lips soft with lamb fat. Your smile is eager, 
mine a dam defying rivulets of ageing, unpaid crimes. 
 We ignore the old conversations pressing at closed doors 
 and instead talk longingly of rain.'

The Emmores, by Richard O'Brien (£5.00)

Series: The Emma Press Picks

The Emmores, by Richard O'Brien

Why: Love poems were my point of entry into liking poetry as an adult, but before long I started feeling resentful of the treatment of the muse: either they would barely be present in the poem, sidelined by the poet's interest in the poet, or they would suffer a lot of assumptions being made about their feelings. What I like about The Emmores is the honesty of these love poems – Richard doesn't pretend that these are anything other than the hopeful declarations of someone whose main pulling power is his way with words.

Favourite lines: 'and if I could I’d call tornadoes down 
to wrench up rooves of Collyweston slate, 
disintegrate unyielding dry-stone walls 
and crazy-pave a path across the fields 
to your door.'

The Flower and the Plough, by Rachel Piercey (£5.00 / £3.50)

Series: The Emma Press Picks

The Flower and the Plough

Why: Back in 2012, these poems struck a deeply personal chord with me, and I was astonished that another person could express feelings that I felt intensely but couldn't articulate. It felt like these poems were about my failing relationship and increasingly conflicted ideas about romance, and I felt all the better for having read them.

Favourite lines: '[...] when you temper
 scraps into treasure

 I think it’s worth it,
 and when you
 spit out glass

though you only got sand
I think it’s worth it.'

What we're looking for in the prose pamphlet submissions

We launched a call for prose pamphlet submissions last month, which felt like a significant step for the Emma Press. Up until now we’ve only published poetry, because our first publication was a poetry pamphlet and it felt sensible to build on what we had learned from publishing it. Then, a few months ago, it occurred to me that we could publish prose pamphlets which would join our existing series of full-length poetry pamphlets. They would be as short as the poetry pamphlets and therefore less daunting to edit. I suddenly felt ready to open up our list and I’ve been excited about it ever since.

The Emma Press Pamphlets

I’ve had quite a few queries from people about our submissions guidelines and what we’re actually looking for, so I thought it would be helpful to lay out my vision of these pamphlets and give you a sense of what I hope to find for our new prose list. If you have any questions/suggestions about other suitable formats, feel free to ask me in the comments section.

THE BOTTOM LINE: £6.50

The core idea of our pamphlets is accessibility, to writers as well as readers. From a writer’s perspective, this is an opportunity to showcase your writing and ideas, at a time when you might not be ready for a full-length book. From a reader’s perspective, this is a low-pressure, low-cost purchase, insofar as a pamphlet only costs £6.50 and is about 36 pages long. It's likely you'll be able to read the whole thing, maybe several times, so you'll probably get your money’s worth.

So, my advice to writers is this: please think about the reader and how your pamphlet proposal will seem to an optimistic, philanthropic bookshop browser with £6.50 burning a hole in their pocket. Your idea must feel like it's worth at least £6.50 and, ideally, by the time the reader finishes the book and is considering buying more Emma Press pamphlets, your book has got to feel like it was a bargain at £6.50.

I know this might seem excessively worldly to demand of a writer, but it’s probably the most useful thing I have to tell you. When I’m reading your proposals and deciding which ones to pursue, I’ll be asking myself: would I, an individual with little money and still less time to spend reading for fun, fork out £6.50 for this?

THE WRITING: Be clear

For me, the accessibility of the pamphlets for the readers extends beyond the price and the length, and into the writing itself. I’m a huge stickler for lucidity in literature and I have little patience for deliberately vague and opaque writing. I’m not against experimentation, but at the same time I value the sense of an unspoken contract between the writer and the reader; the communicator and the recipient. If you don’t make the effort to convey your ideas to the reader, why should the reader bother trying to understand you? If you don’t want people to understand you, why not just keep a diary and keep it to yourself? I fully believe it’s possible to write cleverly and innovatively whilst still being clear.

I think style is a big part of readability, so I’ll also be looking for writers whose style I enjoy. I like writing which has an awareness of rhythm – just because it isn’t poetry doesn’t mean it can’t scan. If you use long sentences, make sure they’re structured well and used sparingly. I'd recommend reading your writing aloud, to see if it rolls off your tongue. If you find yourself tripping over parts of what you've written, or getting mixed up over which clauses to stress in order to make sentences make sense, you might need to take another look at your style.

I particularly admire the authors Douglas Adams and Hilary Mckay for their style. 

THE FORMATS: A whole range

Short stories. I think a single short story, or maybe two short stories, would work really well as a pamphlet. After reading my favourite short stories, I always feel like I’ve been clubbed over the head and have to sit quietly for a little while, to process what has happened. You can do a lot with a short story, and I’m hoping we find some writers at the starts of their careers, pre- bestselling novel, as well as more established writers who fancy mixing things up a bit. I love children’s and YA literature, so writing in those genres is very welcome. I’ve had a few queries about flash fiction, and to be honest I’d be concerned that a collection of 30-odd pieces of flash fiction might not feel like any more than the sum of its parts, unless perhaps there was a unifiying narrative. If you think your proposal will negate my concerns, then by all means send something in.

Short plays. I really like Tom Stoppard’s one-act radio plays, like Artist Descending a Staircase, so I can imagine publishing some tightly-written mini-dramas or comedies. I think we could have some fun with the launch events!

Comics. Emma Press books already contain illustrations, so I’m very interested in exploring fully-illustrated, graphic novel-style pamphlets, for both fiction and non-fiction. If you are a graphic novelist and have an idea which might suit a short black-and-white pamphlet (or even a colour one, possibly), we’d be very happy to hear from you.

Essays. Some writing is just too good to leave on a blog, magazine or newspaper website, so we'd love to build up a list of non-fiction pamphlets. We're interested in all kinds of well-written essays which make sense as a pamphlet, including essays on politics, humorous subjects, travel, memoirs, and any other specialist areas. I know this is vague, but if you're a really good writer and can write something interesting and engaging then we may be interested in you.

Recipes. I love reading cookbooks, even though I rarely have any intention of using the recipes. I like good food writing (hello Nigella) and I'd like to publish pamphlets of maybe 10 recipes, each accompanied by my illustrations and with quite chunky introductions to each recipe. General food writing is welcome too.

Guides. The pamphlet lends itself very well to manuals and guides, so if you have some wisdom or facts to impart on the world, step this way! Do consider which subjects might appeal to us, as we won't be able to publish something that we don't understand at all and have no interest in.

Speeches. A bit of a wildcard, but why not? Any modern-day Ciceros and Plinys will certainly get a look-in, as we have a soft spot for orators and rhetoricians. You could even send us a dialogue, like the ancient philosophers!

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The call for prose pamphlet submissions is open until 25th January 2015. In order to submit, you need to be a member of the Emma Press Club (you join by buying a book/ebook/set of postcards from our website) and pay a £5 pamphlet submission fee per proposal. Read all the details here.