Breath and the Poet

I've been thinking about the poetic breath this week, how poets use punctuation and line breaks to direct the reader. I've been reading my own collection out-loud, listening for mistakes and difficult phrasing, but also how the speed of the poem is directed by these little internal controls. I've also recorded a couple of poems recently which requires you to slow them down even more for clarity. 

A poet in my writing group said he uses line breaks like punctuation, but then we noticed he used both randomly in his poem we were discussing and when he didn't pay attention to it, it lead to confusion for me. I'm not sure if he'll change it, but it was good to discuss.

Some poets are hyper-aware of how they use punctuation and line breaks to add emphasis and control how the poem is read. I enjoy this, read their work out-loud, measuring how I read to their layout. Short or long lines, big pauses and smaller intakes of breath, commas, full stops, line ends, it lends life to the poem that isn't always felt on the page.

I'm wary when reading other poets' work of placing my values on how they create pauses for breath in a poem. I read a poem this week that seemed so badly broken up for no reason that it made it painful to follow, sentences broken repeatedly across stanzas it seemed just to keep the two stanza format going. It made me wish to hear the poet read his own poem, so I could understand how he envisioned the poem. 

It's worse when editing, so if I query a comma or line break in a poem, I have to stand back and look at it without my own poet's lenses on. Usually, I discuss it with the author just to make sure it's not my voice I'm imposing on their poem. 

I often tell my writing students to use their layout and punctuation wisely, keep line endings strong so the image or sound carries to the next line, unless you're making a point by breaking it on a less poignant word or mid-sentence. But I realise that this is a personal thing, not every poet follows the same rules, just like some poet like to capitalise each line of a poem, mid-sentence or not. 

And I'm aware I'm not always great at it myself, sometimes I get caught up in the image or how the format is working that I forget to listen to how my poem sounds when it's read. Sharing my work out at my group is often most helpful just because I hear where it's going wrong with the line breaks and rhythm. Having a dramatist in the group is also beneficial for this as he is quick not notice stumbles as well.

It's something to play with, to ponder, to challenge oneself with as a poet.

For a GloPoWriMo challenge, focus on the breath in a poem. Pick a moment where breath is essential or obvious and write about it for 15 minutes. You could try and reproduce that feeling of breathlessness after a run or the faltering proposal of a shy teenage asking for a date or the adrenaline-fueled excitement of a rave. 

Then take some time reshaping the poem, so you direct the reader's breath as they move through your sentences. How can changing the line length, adding pauses through punctuation or line breaks affect the reading of your poem? Can you control how it's read or where the emphasis is placed? 

In GloPoWriMo news, I've started a few poems this week, but not every day as expected. Some days it was just scribbled notes, other times I've managed to sketch a rough draft of a poem. 

I've taken to using poetry as my 'pause. be.' time. Our school counsellor runs a lesson where she teaches the kids breathing and calming techniques. I take myself into a corner a write poetry as a way to decompress. I've never been able to meditate as my brain is always firing at full blast, so this seems a good compromise. 

How's your GloPoWriMo going?

Little Steps Through the Mire

It's been raining on and off for weeks. My back garden is a bog, studded with windfall apples that I need to pick up before the birds, hares and insects hollow them out. I bought a fruit dryer to keep up with them. The kids eat each batch immediately, so there's no keeping up. With anything, the unmown grass, the fallen leaves, the red pile of apples beneath the tree, the kids and their hunger. 

Last week the scary, big question was 'what do I want to be when I grow up?'. Again. I feel like I did 23 years ago when I finished my last degree. It doesn't help that my course has set an assignment of basically 'what's next?' in terms of professional development and I don't have an answer. So I've had a fretful couple of weeks of worry and stress and questioning what my priorities are. 

I am unfortunately a Jill of all literary trades, but master of none. I've taught literature, creative writing, English as a second language, some media classes, but don't have a teaching certificate. I have worked as an editor with a small publishing company and for my own company for a variety of clients, but I have no specialty besides creative texts which is very niche in a country where I am not fluent in the native language. I am a writer and poet, but not top tier, so getting work, partially because of the language, is not easy. I have no confidence in anything I could offer just now.  

Most anything I am able to do, I don't have the right credentials or contacts or language skills. If I need to spend more time training, I want it to be in something I'll be happy to do for long term. I also need to take into account that I have a family to help support.

I've spoken to my course supervisor and to another teacher at my school for advice about staying in teaching. I'm hoping to meet up with another editor here in town this week for advice there. I've also had an off-the-wall idea I need to be brave enough to approach some people about for a future project. 

I have to not get bogged down in it all. I'm taking little steps forward and have to remind myself that for now that is good enough. It's not something I can decide or sort overnight. I've had a nice holiday week with my kids, trying not to fret too much. I'll get back to it Monday. 

This morning there was frost, a reminder I need to finish my winter digging, to pick the last apples, to rake more leaves. I need to take more long walks with the kids to enjoy the last of the decent weather and sunlight. We're heading into the dark season, there will be enough time for contemplation and planning then. 

And in writing news, my work has appeared in The Broken Spine Artist Collective anthology, 2nd Edition. They have a call out for submissions for their 3rd edition, so get your work in. 

I'm still writing, still working away at editing, submitting. Like the apples, some things don't wait. 

The Nitty Gritty

School was over-whelming this week, so challenging and fun. I worked as a classroom assistant, specifically with two kids who barely spoke English and who were struggling to settle into their new class. We had some bumpy moments, but by Friday they had both smiled a few times and engaged with me. I had a Harry Potter magic battle with one and cooed over puppy pictures with another. We also managed to do some work connected with what the class was doing. I left school elated, exhausted and somewhat disappointed that this is just a temporary gig. But after my frustration with teaching last year, I'm looking forward to the next challenge this school throws at me. 

So I had no chance to write during the week, but I took a lot of time this weekend to focus on editing, submitting and general organising of my poems and collections. I put a joking comment on Twitter about my horror at finding an old poem that used a word three times. It wasn't an important word or done for any particular reason, I just never noticed that I used 'clean' in three different ways. 

I'm sure it seems a minor issue, but my writing group knows it's one of my pet peeves for my own work. I want my words to have some power in their use and I feel overuse weakens that. Three times shows to me that I haven't really pushed my linguistic skills and feels redundant. Was 'clean' a theme of the poem I hadn't noticed, was I trying to express something through my word choice or was I just being lazy? I decided the latter. The poems wasn't affected when I found different ways of saying 'clean' in two of the three spots. 

It made me wonder how many other unintentional 'mistakes' I've missed in my proof-reading over the years. I'm aware I sometimes reuse words or images as themes throughout a set of poems, Do we, as writers, sometimes get stuck on a riff and not notice? 

A mentor I once had wrote a book with an uncommon, but not unused, word in the title. Our group spent over a year working with her, sharing our work and almost all of us somehow managed to put the word in one of our texts, often without realising it. She was hyper-aware of the word, of course, so eventually pointed it out to the class, so I'm sure most of us edited it out. I think her editor eventually changed the title, but it showed how we were sponges at her feet.

Today, I found I used the word 'mossy' in two poems that I would probably later consider placing together. Again, it's no big deal until they are actually sitting in a collection together. They were written about the same time, so I wonder if I had that idea on my mind. One was a mossy carpet and one was mossy light, so different images, but with both were used to suggest overgrown abandoned areas, one from above and one from below. Not sure how or which to replace or if I need to at all, but I love this level of getting down to the nitty gritty of language when editing. 

I didn't get that Editorial Manager job I applied for. We all realised I'm a word person, not a people and process person and they really wanted someone with the knowledge to streamline those rather than edit texts. So I wasn't too disappointed and they said they hope to hire some plain old editors in the future, so my CV is being kept aside. In the meantime, I will continue to play with my own words. 

End of Summer Slump

Back to school this week, but I'm not sure how long I'm going to last among the germ-ridden first graders when the schools all have a strict policy of no attendance if you're ill. I took a girl to the nurse yesterday for a runny nose which was shared with me I'm sure as she wept over me to be sent home in the first week of school.  I'm sure I won't last long either. 

I had my interview and I'm not sure where I stand. I doubt I'll get it, they really want someone with different skill set than me. And I'm not really bothered if I don't get it because it's less editing and more managing which isn't really what I want to get into. Though earning real money would be nice for a change.

I've enjoyed working as a teaching assistant this week, much more than I was as a middle school teacher last year. I'm not sure if it's the age group or being able to actually work one on one with kids a bit more rather than trying to speak to the masses. We'll see how things go. I wish I knew what I want to be when I'm grown up. Substituting has been a good option to try things out though.

I'm struggling with motivation this week with my writing. I see so many writers being awarded this and that, publishers and art bodies offering opportunities I can't take advantage of because of where I live, so I feel I'm just spinning my wheels, wondering why am I bothering. I'm sure it's just a blip and I will get a burst of enthusiasm again. My writing group stayed up late chatting online last night and that helped. I'm happy to have their life line. 

It's raining today after several really hot days. I need an indoor day just to relax, but I really want to get out to my allotment and start sorting it for winter. I can see hints of autumn everywhere, heard the ghostly calls the Barnacle Geese flying overhead last night through a dark, opened window. That sound always makes me want to run away myself, but since I can't I want to prepare for what is coming. 

I've had a poem appear in ang(st) for their Distanced 2.0 issue. They've got a call out for Distanced 3.0 and their Hair issue, if you're looking for somewhere to submit. Their quick response and turn around time is a major plus. 

So if you want me I'll be curled up under a blanket on the couch with a cup of tea. Enjoy

Gearing up and Down Sizing

The schools have started back and we're in that transition period where the scheduling begins, the afternoons fill with hobbies and lessons and we shuffle them around until we can manage. My morning are quieter, but without a flow yet. I am still running around and catching up on errands, so haven't found a rhythm to fit my poetry in regularly. And being a substitute I'm always slightly on edge waiting for the phone to break into the silence. My interview is also coming up this week, so it's nipping at the edge of my mind as well. 

One thing I've started this week is reviewing my poems in consideration of an A5 page size. Suna Afshan at Poetry Birmingham Journal made an off-the-cuff remark on Twitter asking those  submitting to stop formatting poems in A4 docs. It caused a flurry of tweets of confusion, ah ha moments, discussion and it got me thinking. Print magazines and collections do mostly print in A5 or a similar size, so it makes sense. Though most also seem to ask for submissions in A4 (even PBJ), so maybe the industry needs to rethink things as well. 

I do often look at potential collections from that format, but I have never considered using that size to type my poems from the beginning. So it's thrown my work in disarray. I've changed all my potential collections and my rough draft files to A5 and am looking at how it changes the lay-out of the poems. I'm not rewriting many yet, but it is making me see things differently. 

I've noticed my newer poems do run shorter and fit in A5 comfortably for the most part, but my upcoming collection is mostly older poems and is sitting at over the page limit at the moment. I need to find out what size and style of font my publisher uses. I don't mind splitting a poem over two pages if necessary, but three or four lines dangling over looks wrong. I'm unsure what to do about those extra 5 pages I've suddenly gained.

Of course, for online magazines it's less of an issue. Magazines and competitions usually specify A4 and around a 40 line limit, but my lay-out is running about 28 lines to a page (2cm margins top and bottom, 11pt Arial font for text and a 16pt title.) One of the benefits of being trained in editing at a small magazine is I learned little tricks to make a poem fit on a page, how to lay out a book so it looks good, but I won't be able to do that with my collection being published.  

It's a small thing really, but I feel better using the A5 format from now on. I'll still write my poems first in my notebook, not caring about length or format, but it will be a consideration when editing and designing collections. And, of course, I'm definitely not suggesting that poets should write to please editors and to fit publications, but it helps to know how a poem will look on the page and if we're using A4 as our template the printed product may not look how we imagined. 

I'm also trying to get back into reviewing and reading poetry collections, so I read a few poems every night before bed, the one time I can be sure I have time. I have turned back to Fiona Benson's Vertigo and Ghost which I started last year. This is one of those collections I wish I had written, but not lived. Such beautiful writing that tears me apart emotionally. Even the more gentle ones about parenthood and the poet's fears connected with raising her girls in this difficult world when other mothers are leading their children through unimaginable dangers in the hope of finding safety and shelter dig into all my tender places. But Part One which is considers the mythology of Zeus in modern terms, as a serial rapist, is more of a punch to the throat. Benson plays with the words on the page, mixing modern language with ancient stories and uses a kind of interview format to give voices to the victims, Io, Callisto and others, as well as bragging, bravado-puffed Zeus. It goes much further than Yeats' 'Leda and the Swan'. Difficult to read as it doesn't shy from blunt emotion and descriptions, it is an important voice in these times when 'Me Too' is not a thing you wish to say, but it needs to be heard. 

I've been commissioned to write a review for a poetry collection late in the autumn, but more about that later. 

I'm off to edit and later enjoy some late summer sun. 

Targets and Black Holes

I've been teaching almost every day this week, adding a new school to my list, so that has been keeping me busy. My bank account says, 'long may that continue', but my writing mind wishes for more slow days.

I've managed a few poems written in staff rooms and had a few acceptances as well as a few rejections, some of which have come a few days after submission which feels a bit weird. It's a relief not to have to wait almost a year like some magazines. 

I've hit my 100 rejection target and I can see the positive results in the numbers. I've submitted about twice as many so far this year and have had about a 12% acceptance rate which of course I'm very happy with. The daily writing I've done most of the year has helped as I have a good amount of poems to submit, but it has been hard work. 

I no longer edit a poem every time I submit it, though I do proof it for errors. I maybe cast a more serious eye of them every few submissions, longer if they've had a quick turnaround. I still research the magazines as much as I can, via guidelines, masthead blurbs and looking at old issues if I can, but I am more open to online magazines. I currently have a big backlog of unsubmitted poems, just because I don't have the time or energy to do tons of submissions. 

I'm putting a tender in for a big editing job which I'm looking forward to. It's copyediting, bringing the text up to the publishers standards of formatting and layout, so requires more repetition (looking at how references are noted, standardising to British English) and less tidying up the language. 

I'm trying to get myself ready for the end of year madness, but really just want to skip to spring. I hate going to work and coming home in darkness, the struggle to get outside when its dreich, the stress of getting the kids to accept they need proper outdoor clothing. 

The writing course I'm on has been a nice distraction, it's focus is works found in several museums, art and artefacts. So I've been losing myself in research black holes about photograms, gum diggers, curiosity cabinents and other unexpected subjects. I try not to spend too much time researching, but sometimes jumping from one subject to another is how I find the sweet spot from which a poem can spring. 

A New Normal

The upheaval of the last nine months is over and now I have a clear view in front of me. I know the next few years won't be easy, but at least it will mostly be on my terms. I'm trying to get my head around planning and figuring out what I want to do with it.

Writing will probably have to find a lesser place, I need to get a real job of some sort though I'm hoping I can work with some sort of creativity. We'll see, but the upshot is I need to find a way to keep writing within a different life once I get that sorted. So for now, I'm trying to keep to my promise of writing every day.

I'm setting out my shingle as an editor and proof-reader again, but it's a very different scene from the one I joined in 2003 in Scotland. I had been working in a publishing company since 1997 and had picked up some typesetting work that my employer didn't have time for or interest in. That slowly blossomed into my own little publishing company Grimalkin Press that I set up to publish short runs of work, usually connected with the groups I was teaching creative writing. They didn't have the resources or skills to publish their own books, so I would do the design and editing work, get it printed and they would fund it, usually through arts grants. I really enjoyed it and miss working with community groups and schools, helping them bring their projects to fruition. 

Social media wasn't a thing then so everything was done word-of-mouth. I was recommended by one organiser to another, from one poet to another. I miss that, it's still there, in various electronic formats, but I need to learn the new system. 

I can't publish books as I just don't have the contacts or funding here in Finland. Not speaking the language means I'd be very limited, so I will just focus on the editing side of the business. I'm building websites and linking medias accounts and joining Twitter and Linkedin. I've had some lovely friends and some new colleagues walking me through possible venues to market myself, looking over my website, suggesting places to contact for work. Good old school networking even if we're communicating at a distance. Hopefully something will come of it. 

If you're looking for a editor, proof-reader, typesetter, book designer kind of gal, contact me via the website link to the top right. I am also available to teach creative writing classes  and workshops to kids or adults or do poetry readings here in Finland.

Tiny steps, but I'm getting there.