Neil Astley is the editor of the brilliant and highly regarded published
Bloodaxe Books. My lovely Dad, John Prior (as seen in Poetry Bus 3, Rialto and others) went to a workshop he gave recently in Norwich and wrote up a report which he has kindly agreed to share with you here.
REPORT OF A TALK BY NEIL ASTLEY
THE EDITOR OF BLOODAXE BOOKS
GIVEN AT THE WRITERS CENTRE NORWICH
NOVEMBER 11th 2013
The twelve attendees at this meeting
had all been published: all with magazines, one had been mentored through the
Writers' Centre and one had been through the UEA poetry course.
Neil's talk was mainly concerned with
getting your first collection published but on the way he gave excellent advice
for poets right through the writing process. I shall follow this route in my
report, beginning with the poem itself through to full publication.
Before doing this it is worth pointing
out the there are large numbers of people writing poems. For example, the
recent National Poetry competition received 40,000 entries. Some were from
overseas of course, but generally it 's fair to say that huge numbers of people
are poets.
He went on to say that a survey showed
that books are bought by only 63% of the population. Only 1% of these
purchasers buy poetry and of this 1% only 5% of books are by living writers. Of
these living writers 67% of the books were by Seamus Heaney. It must be said
though that the figures not absolutely recent.
This was in the year of Beowulf. Nevertheless it is obvious that the
market is small and the competition intense.
THE POEM ITSELF
The advice Neil gave
applies to all stages i.e. ….
95% of poems written
and entered for competitions are unsuitable.
Why?
1. They are not crafted i.e. it's prose
chopped into lines, and there's no metre or rhythmical
sense.
2. It's obvious the writer never reads
other poets and that their experience of poetry
comes from poorly remembered school lessons.
3. There are awkward rhymes with the inversion
of words.
And less serious but
still failings (though the judges might read the fault):
4. In the middle of a good poem there’s a 'wrong note': a line or word that
jars or is syntactically wrong
or grammatically wrong.
5. It's boring. It might be OK but it's
anodyne. This particularly applies to writers out of writing schools.
6. The poem sounds too much like an
existing writer.
HOW TO IMPROVE
He gave advice as to
how to improve and rid yourself of the above errors.
a. Read your stuff aloud
b. Workshop your poems with other poets
– the more skilled the better.
c. Go to groups and on courses e.g.
Arvon, Ty Newydd (Wales) and there are some
University courses.
d. Above all: read, think, and write.
Luckily, at the talk in Norwich, all
twelve people were already doing these things and many of the readers of this
report will have heard it all before.
THE COMPETITIONS
Neil has been a judge many times. He
admitted that after a long list has been drawn up the process is a bit of a
lottery. The judges don't always agree so that sometimes the winner is the poem
least disliked by all the judges.
In the smaller competitions the poems
may be filtered through less reliable readers.
The numbers of entries can be too
tiring for the judges. He suggested that more than one poem should be entered
because, although no names are on the pages, the numbers are in sequence so
that not all the poems by the same poet are likely slip through unnoticed. Also
two good ones carry more weight.
If it's a big competition you are up
against the best so you have to be the best.
The big competitions can result in the
next stage being offered e.g. pamphlet publication or full publication. Big
competitions include: The Arvon, The National, The Cardiff, the Cheltenham, the
Plough and Basil Bunting. You will need to check the Poetry Library website for
the current list. (www.poetrylibrary.org.uk )
It was reassuring to
learn that the major competitions are truly open.
PAMPHLETS
These are sometimes called Chapbooks
(an American term). These are small booklets sometimes sold at readings. They
contain a small number of poems. The number and the rules for your submission
vary but once again look at the relevant website for details. A number of
publishers take on Chapbooks including Mariscat, Doughnut, Hearing Eye, Flipped
Eye, Rack Press, Templar, Rialto, Cinnamon Press, Nine Arches, Flarestack,
Smiths/Doorstop, Lighthouse an IOTA. Some of these run competitions for
pamphlets. Check before sending.
The sort of poems that will attract
publication are:
1. Faultless poems.
2. Coherent poems e.g. in the same
voice and possibly with a unifying theme. Bloodaxe
is proud to publish and to have published many women poets and people from mixed and ethnic minorities.
THE MAIN PUBLISHERS
Faber, Picador, Carcanet (the c's are
hard), Bloodaxe. Not all of these take unsolicited MS.
Also note that submissions to Carcanet
are through Oxford Poets.
Chatto might be starting a poetry list.
The etiquette is to send full
submissions to only one publisher at a time, of 64 pages or roughly 50 poems.
OR you can send samples of 6 to 10 poems
to some or all of the publishers. e.g. simultaneous submissions.
There should be a strong covering
letter, not rambling, of course, but mentioning you existing publications and
including your email address and a stamped addressed envelope. If you're older
(and one or two of the participants were older) Neil suggested you shouldn't
mention your age because each publisher is looking for a long term investment.
Neil gets 5,000 MS in his slush pile in
a year. He reads them all but may take months to respond.
If you are taken on, the time from
acceptance to publication could be 14 months and your advance could be £500.
THE INTERNET
Here the situation is constantly
changing.
You can publish an e-book for an
e-reader. The best poems for an e-reader have short lines so that they look
good on the page. An iPad can make poems look more attractive and add sound.
The internet itself can act as self promotion e.g. through blogs or u-tube
readings.
Some magazines publish on the internet
only and these are read by poets other than those who submit.
SELF PUBLICATION
This has a bad name for itself but self
publication can work, provided that you don't pay a commercial firm to publish
and promote you.
Neil recommended Lulu which is an internet business supplying print on demand. They
give the publication an ISBN number, and print exactly the numbers you ask for.
You design the cover, arrange the internal layout etc. and transmit this as a
file to Lulu. The costs are
transparent on the website and when you receive your copies you are on your
own, though more copies can easily be printed. Established poets self-publish
and distribute and sell books like these at public readings.
Apologies if you are familiar with much
of this report but I'm certain that not one of the listeners on November 11th
knew it all. I certainly didn't.
One or two among the twelve, may have been
discouraged by the general gist of Neil's talk but personally I felt he gave us
a useful guide as to how, with time and dedication, one might become better.
John Prior 14.11.13
