Tag Archives: editors

Philip Larkin and Moral Judgement

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He looks a bit like Eric Morecambe in some of his photos – which is probably not a good comparison.

I wrote this after watching a YouTube clip of Philip Larkin riding a bicycle. I can’t exactly remember what he was doing but association with An Arundel Tomb has always made me think he was visiting churches, even though I’m not convinced that a church features in the clip. It started out as a longer piece and I pruned it and polished it every time it came back, which was often. I think it was sent out at least four times. On the last occasion I didn’t, as i recall, do anything, as i couldn’t think of anything else to do so I just sent it straight out again and, a day later, it was accepted.

This is an example of how editors all have different views and requirements.

Meanwhile, although I have used it on the blog before, I use it here to illustrate the making of moral judgements. Larkin, you see, was a racist according to his letters. That illustrates several points, such as whether we should judge poetry through a filter of our own morality. Just because he was a racist does that make him a bad poet? And if we do decided to judge a writer by his morals rather than his writing, is it fair to judge one as a racist because he preserved his correspondence, yet to make no judgement on another writer who may have failed to preserve his correspondence?

That’s a tricky thing about making moral judgements, they aren’t always accurate – a bit like the poem, which picks and choses which facts to use. I didn’t use moral judgements in selecting the facts, just what fitted nicely into the flow.

Hidden Worlds

He wears a grey gaberdine and rides a bicycle from church to church. In his head he composes poems about sex and tombs. On YouTube he flickers in black and white, like a newsreel from the 1950s. Smiles are clearly still on ration.

Larkin used more bad language than you normally expect from a librarian. This becomes understandable when you find that he started his day with half a bottle of sherry.

monochrome photo
my parents younger than me
1963

Failed Haiku Feb 2021

 

Some Meandering Thoughts on Poetry

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The 27th already! What appeared to be “plenty of time” last week has slimmed itself down considerably. I will be Ok, but an extra week would be handy. The three rejected haibun are, I have decided, going out again with a couple of words tweaked. I’m happy they were good enough for an acceptance last time out. It is just, as I have found before, that some editors don’t like my style. If I was a bad writer, everybody would return my work. If I were a patchy writer of variable quality, all editors would reject me at some point. Generally that doesn’t happen. Some editors accept me. others reject. Once in a while something will be rejected unexpectedly, but that can usually be put down to (a) it being a bit too obscure or (b) rushed and not good enough.

In an ideal world I would, I suppose, be able to write to a quality that it was impossible to reject, or would be skilful enough to appeal to all readers. So far that hasn’t happened, though I continue to practice writing with the aim of global domination.

Allysum with ladybird

However, I have just looked through the index of a recent magazine. and looked for the names of the three editors who have recently rejected me. They aren’t in. It could be that they didn’t submit anything, or it could be that they were unsuccessful. It’s difficult to tell, but I do know that one of them has written on the subject of how many times they have submitted some poetry before it was accepted. That article was why I always give poems a second and third chance.

It’s a bit like writing long pieces of text – much of the work and skill is in the rewriting. With poetry, much of the time is used in post mortems of returned submissions. To be a good writer of haibun, it’s not enough to write well (which is hard enough) but you have the suit an editor, follow fashion (without being hackneyed) and do a number of other things I haven’t grasped yet. I know that sounds strange, but it’s all part of the constant learning process – the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns of poetry

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Several More Things . . .

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I had meant this to be a post about things I missed out of the last post. That was, itself, started to say something I’d missed out of the one before.

Optimism of a Moorhen building a nest

Thoughts can be like that. You start a new one before the old one is finished and as you finish one you forget what it was you meant to write about.

I could continue this line of thought, but if I do, I will undoubtedly start to muse on the decline of my mental capabilities, and from thoughts of low intellect, I will pass on to discussing politicians.

I don’t want to do either of those things. I may, at some point in the future, touch on the matter of Zohran Mamdani, Mayor of New York, and his announcement that he was going to ask King Charles for the return of the Koh-i-Noor diamond to India. At the moment I will just give him 10/10 for political grandstanding and ask if his enthusiasm for returning things to their “owners” extends to handing New York back to the British.

Mallards

Meanwhile, back in the world of poetry, I forgot to mention, regarding editors, that some of them really don’t like poets. I’d noticed this way back and then let it pass from my mind. There are one or two in Japanese-style poetry who seem a bit snippy but I got round that by ignoring them and sending my poetry elsewhere. Now I start looking at free verse again, am noticing them more and more. They seem commoner in this sector. I will just have to see what happens.

Meanwhile, my copy of Ribbons, the journal of the Tanka Society of American arrived by email.  They turned down my last tanka prose submission so I have mixed feelings about this edition, though I do have two tanka in.  Xenia Tran also has two in. I don’t see her about so much on here these days but she can be found here.

Mallard duckling – Arnot Hill Park

Of course, there is a reason for me mentioning Ribbons. They  run a Reader’s Choice Award each issue and it seems that I got an Honorable Mention for one of my poems in the last issue. There is one winner and three poems are given Honorable mentions, so it’s nice to be one. It might be nicer to be a winner, but on the other hand if you win, you have to choose the next winner and write a commentary.

This month will also see the new issue of Eucalypt and I was one of the winners in the last issue. I’ve already mentioned this, I know, and I’m not doing it to show off, just to mention that I’m going to have to choose a winner (big responsibility) and write a commentary (big danger of looking like an idiot). Not sure I’m looking forward to it . . .

Yellow Flag Irises

 

 

In Search of New Places

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As I published the last post, I realised I’d missed something out.

One of the new titles I was looking at asks for a donation to accompany the poems. It’s less than the cost of buying a coffee at a coffee shop, so I suppose it isn’t ruinous. But it seems wrong. as I discussed recently. I would link to the previous post, but I can’t remember when it was. And I’m too lazy to look.

Regretfully, I won’t be submitting. If it was a printed magazine I would probably buy a subscription, but I am in two minds with online magazines. I know there are costs involved, but I also know I have costs for WP, for newspaper archives and for other research services I use. Somewhere I have to draw a line.

The second was a magazine that doesn’t send rejections. They say if you haven’t heard after a month you can take that as a rejection. It’s one way of cutting down the workload, and avoids having to be nice to hundreds of people, no matter how bad their work is, but it’s also a bit rude. I have, in the past, submitted to magazine with this approach but never been successful. Maybe it’s because my negativity transmits itself, maybe it’s because it’s an approach favoured by young, cutting edge editors and I’m just a dull, old-fashioned poet.

I know I often say I’m looking for new places to submit but there are some lines I don’t want to cross. Paying to be published is one.

I’m not quite so sure about the other. Which is worse – a guaranteed (though impersonal) one month cut off, or an editor who waits three months to reply.  (Some, to be fair, reply in days – they are the best!)

 

Photos from May 2016

 

Some Thoughts on Poetry and Particularly Tanka

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Julia’s latest vase (she gave the last one away as a present) with silk fritilleries.

I’ve just been replying to two emails from editors. One was comparatively simple, a quick note of thanks for an acceptance. I had an automatic reply by return, telling me that they weren’t taking submissions at the moment – an impersonal response to my attempt at being polite. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised – some magazines are like that.

The other was more complicated. It was a rejection with some suggested links to articles which would help me improve. It’s the sort of response that always invites being categorised as condescending.

I read the first one and it told me that most western definitions of haiku were too restrictive. This explains why editors annoy me by publishing haiku that fall outside the published definitions. Maybe they should take down the definitions hey often display, or display a current one. Same goes for the people who are often quoted on the subject – if your definition is outdated, have the courtesy to indicate this or update it.

As for the haibun article, it quoted a number of haibun. One of the haiku wasn’t a haiku by any definition and the rest all reiterated the subject material, which you aren’t supposed to do. I can’t help feeling that if I’d have submitted any of them, they would have been turned down, not used as examples. I just wrote and thanked them for the feedback and said they provided food for thought.

Email is not the forum to exchange views over something like that, as it could be construed as argumentative and although I have issues with things, I don’t want to start an argument with someone who is trying to help.

This is the one she gave away as a present.

That’s the nice thing about tanka – fewer rules, more freedom, and fewer people writing about them.

 

The Mystery of Editors and Some Thoughts on Writer’s Block

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

I had my first acceptance from the July submissions on Monday. It was a tanka that had actually been rejected in June, but after a quick check I decided that it was ready to go again.  It was part of a group of nine that had been returned after the tenth was accepted, so I only needed to write one to make the submission up to ten.

It’s one of the age-old questions writers have. I send out ten poems, one is accepted, does that mean the other nine are not good enough?

Sometimes I’ve had an editor ask if they can hold one over for the next edition. I always say yes to that – it saves me work and I assume it saves them work too. If it wasn’t for editors there wouldn’t be any magazines. And if there were no editors and magazines there would be no competition for publication. That’s why I mainly only blog poems that have been published – it means that someone who knows more about it than I do has decided that it merits space.

I’ve also had editors select two or three poems (very, very rarely) and a couple of times they have told me the rest weren’t bad, just not what they wanted for the moment, and I could submit them again at the next submission window. This is very rare – remember we are talking about something in the region of 400 submissions and this sort of thing has happened a handful of times.

Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

It all tends to indicate that several of the ten are publishable, and that they can all be recycled. That’s why I like editors who give quick decisions. If they reject something in the first few weeks, I can use them for another submissions and don’t need to write as much.

This may be a bad attitude, and more akin to the approach of a  worker on a production line than an artist but  this month I’ve just had an article on collectables published in a magazine, plus four Facebook articles for the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire and  a couple of longer articles  for the Peterborough Military History Group. If I waited for aesthetics and inspiration to align I’d struggle. Dawn comes, I drag myself from bed, I make tea, then I start writing. I hate mornings. I like tea and I like writing. I have no time for Writer’s Block and curlicues. And I’m more likely to suffer from dehydration than a shortage of words. I have no time for the introspection in the article behind the link. It’s very interesting, and more than slightly familiar, but I can’t afford to let such thoughts take root.

Photo by Roman Koval on Pexels.com

 

Poetry and Robins

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Robin - singing

Robin – singing

a robin
sings to its mate
when was the last time
I sang
for you?

That is my latest publication. It was a surprise, because I hadn’t ben told it was accepted. Fortunately I always check before sending things again, as editors don’t like simultaneous submissions. It’s in a German publication called Chrysanthemum. After waiting a while, I went to check on the website, assuming I’d been rejected but wanting to double check, and found the magazine had already been published and I am on pages 226 and 227.. It was a pleasant surprise. They also translated it into German. I knew this was going to happen, but hadn’t anticipated the different look (using capital letters) or the different dynamic that would come from what seemed to be a reordering of words.

Here’s the German translation.

ein Rotkehlchen
singt für seine Gefährtin
wann habe ich
das letzte Mal
für dich gesungen?

Robin, Arnot Hill Park

I just fed it into an internet translator and it put it into English in almost exactly my words. This was a surprise, and a superb effort by the human translator. I have to admit I was expecting it to come back seriously scrambled due to the changes in word order I could see and because of previous experience with internet translations.

I also had a haibun published.

Lesson not learned
Only a few miles from where I sit, a mammoth died. Grass grows on what was once
a Roman town. Stone spires show where a great religious house rose and fell, then
rose again. So many empires, so many layers of dust telling one and the same story

dreams of
a second chance
— one more grey dawn

I’m not quite sure what happened in the edit as the title and last line have been altered in the published version. Altered but possibly not improved. What do you think? The original version is shown below.

Lessons we have not learned

Only a few miles from where I sit, a mammoth died. Grass grows on what was once a Romans town. Stone spires show where a great religious house rose and fell, then rose again. So many layers, so many stories they could tell. So many men forget all empires turn to dust.

dreams of
a second chance
—one more grey dawn

Robin at Rufford Abbey

That means that in the first four months of the year I have made 30 submissions and 22 have resulted in acceptance. However, before congratulating myself, I have to remember that the 30 submissions contained 151 poems. Normally a submission contains three haibun or tanka prose and the submissions of shorter poems at often 10-15 poems. So when I say I made 30 submissions and had 22 acceptances this 77% success record could also be calculated as also only 15%. It all depends on how you look at it.

Robin

 

 

 

 

One Door Opens as Another Door Closes

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I’ve just being going through my spam box. I am expecting an email which hasn’t arrived, and was checking it hadn’t been rejected in error. It hadn’t. It’s a depressing place – I have won several prizes in competitions I haven’t entered, have numerous parcels needing to be collected, have to step in to stop various things being cancelled and have had to ignore several requests for sexual favours from women with exotic names.

Julia says they are all actually likely to be from sweaty men working in distant call centres, including the ones from the “women”. It’s a relief  in a way – I really don’t need a car care kit or an electric drill, or a mystery package, and my days of exotic women are definitely in the past. Apart from being married, I’m entering that phase of my life where Pointless and a nice cup of tea hold more attractions than erotic adventures. Anyway, as I may have mentioned, getting my trousers on and off is something of a trial these days.

It’s going to be a tough month. Having done my  submissions I sat back and reflected on the likely success rate as many of them had been out before and some of them were rushed.  One was going to an editor who has never accepted a haibun off me in six years. Derrick asked why I sent things to him. It’s a good question. There are several answers to this. One is that rejection keeps my feet on the ground. I have had some very successful runs of acceptances, but it’s always good to remember that it’s nor assured. A second is that you need constant rejections to stay immune from their demoralising effects. And third is the need to have targets – I’ve set 100 submissions as this year’s target, and I have minor targets like wearing down certain editors who constantly reject me.

I have already had one reply, as I mentioned, asking for a few alterations to one piece. I have now had a second reply rejecting a second lot. It’s one of “those” rejections, he ones that seem helpful but close with the comment that you should read XYZ for more pointers. I’ve had several like that over the years and always wonder why they think I haven’t read XYZ, particularly when it’s been a fixture on the website for the last five years.

Anyway, it was good news in a way. After slightly polishing two of them I am now in a position to submit all three rejected pieces to another magazine this month. It’s a system that has worked before. It’s important to remember that a rejection is only a sign of one editor’s opinion and other editors may have different opinions.

My Orange Parker Pen

The Pitfalls of Contentment

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Although I have a lot to look forward to and a lot to be grateful for – a new house, someone paying me not to work (or a pension as it is also known) and the ability to see Julia all day rather than just for a rushed breakfast and an evening of preparing for the next day, I am at a low ebb in other ways.

I am, for instance, just days away from the end of several submission windows, with nothing ready and, currently, no interest in writing poetry. It’s actually worse than it sounds, because I haven’t even done my list of planned submissions for the year. I’m sure it was only about a month since I said I was going to aim higher this year. So far I have done nothing.

Contentment, it seems, takes its toll.

My Orange Parker Pen

My plan is to improve by writing more. And to write more I have to submit more, because it doesn’t count as writing unless somebody judges it. For instance – my first paragraph uncoiled as one sentence. And that sentence is 65 words. Now, it’s well known that sentences over 30 words are difficult for most people to understand, the British Government style guide specifies a 25 word maximum and many authorities on writing suggest 15-20 words as being ideal, though James Joyce, who was probably a better writer than most Civil Servants, once wrote a sentence that was 4,391 words long (I knew I had a good reason for avoiding Joyce), so it’s fair to suggest that one of the benefits of submitting writing to editors is that they will curb these tendencies (though note how J K Rowling’s books got longer as she became more successful and no editor dared tell her to cut out half the words). I think that was 113   I am a mere amateur compared to Joyce. But you probably already knew that.

I’ve been getting complacent recently – submitting pieces for the Numismatic Society Facebook page does not involve a lot of competition as there are only two of us writing the posts, and that fell to one for a while over Christmas because the other writer was ill.

Time to start testing myself, I think. The only way to improve is to get a few rejections. That will wake me up.

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Poetry and Puffins

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Puffin at Bempton Cliffs

On a good day, when I’m concentrating and moderately free from distraction, I can do a couple of thousand words a day without thinking. Actually, if you’ve read the blog before, you will know that I don’t think.

Recently I have been having a problem trying to write some factual pieces about medallions and sweetheart brooches and that hasn’t been going so well. It takes a lot more planning and fact checking than just rattling off opinions, and I’ve been going very slowly.

Even writing poetry takes less effort than writing a short article. There is, after all, little fact checking to do when writing from imagination.

Strangely, I had a knock back recently from an editor who said something didn’t make logical sense to him. I’d referred to a fire, and also to something happening later, and he couldn’t square the two ideas as he thought the fire would have burnt out. To me, the two thoughts were not linked, and I wondered why a poem had to make logical sense. I’m not sure, for instance, that Dylan Thomas intended us to believe that his father could speak words that literally caused lightning flashes, or that he actually caught the sun in flight. Logically this is nonsense of a high degree. Not quite as nonsensical as Lear and his mimsy borogoves, but nonsense all the same.

Would the same editor, I wonder, have turned down Do not go gentle into that good night for being illogical, or Jabberwocky for not making sense?

You never know. A different editor making decisions and it’s possible that the poetry in the UK could have developed in a completely different way.

And there you go. Twenty minutes. A idea. And a distinct lack of heavyweight thinking. It will be 300 words by the time I have finished and there are plenty more where they came from.

Calling Puffin – Bempton Cliffs

In fact, have some more. Do you remember my trips to see Puffins? They rely on sand eels to feed their young. They are suffering from the lack of sand eels, as are Kittiwakes, and numbers of birds, already hit by bird flu, are falling seriously. Puffins and Kittiwakes are now on the Red List, which is a list of threatened species. They are classed as Vulnerable, due to rapid population decline. It’s not as bad as being Endangered, but it’s far from comfortable.

So to help them, the British Government has banned sand eel fishing in our waters in the North Sea, The EU and, particularly the Danes, have challenged this, It seems they don’t think we should be able to do what we like within out territorial waters. Despite the picture you may have of Danes, from listening to Sandi Toksvig on TV (and notice how she actually lives in the UK, not in Denmark), and all this talk of hygge, they aren’t as nice as they seem.

Puffin

I don’t just base this on their attitude to our territorial waters and their hatred of Puffins. They have had a poor attitude to our seas for over a thousand years, after all. Remember, today’s smiling Dane in a shell of knitwear is just a Viking in disguise. The sand eels that they catch end up in fish meal which is used in factory farming. I’m not necessarily against the Danes and their intensive pig production, as I do like a bacon sandwich, but it has to be said that the Danish bacon industry is morally ambiguous, as is my consumption of bacon sandwiches. However, I’m not intent on wiping out Puffins, and would give up bacon in an instant if I thought it would help.

That’s 600 words. Sometimes I surprise myself.

Puffins at Bempton