Abegail Morley’s second collection focuses on a sense of loss and relationships, effectively using a sparse lyricism. In “I learn this from him” where he has written

“love poems with loops and doodles around the borders.

He says he’ll read them to me some time. I realise this means
I’ll be coming back. The coffee is strong, slightly bitter,
grainy at the bottom of the cup – dries on my tongue.

He runs his hand down my cheek. I think he’ll put his thumb
in the dimple on my chin, but he doesn’t. I feel
the touch of his fingertips on my collarbone.”

The poem captures the sense of a doomed relationship, not just in the bitter dregs and reluctance tor return but also in his actions: he’s reading love poems not written for her and that controlling action of fingertips on her collarbone.

The title poem is worth quoting in full:

“I didn’t think you
would exist this much,
not now, not with this snow.

You are unborn,
you are not my child.
I did not extend life to you.

You spit my name;
a tiny ball of phlegm
keeps itself in a tight circle.

I retch.
There are teeth in it.
It has a possessing smile.

Frost has spoken to you,
it has a soft sound.
Its mouth is small.

I lost you to a glass jar;
you have a fin and a tail.
You sleep.

I hear you breathe.
I didn’t think your breath
would be this warm.

You are too cold.
The ice found you –
it erased your fingerprints.”

With the exception of stanzas three and four, each is built around long vowel sounds, creating a soft drawn-out feel fitting with the theme of grief and loss. Stanzas three and four are built around shorter vowels and harder sounds, echoing the change in mood and capturing anger and denial. The change from speaking of the snow child in second and then third person and then back again to second in the fifth stanza further underlines the mood. The poet is firmly in control and all the elements within the poem complement each other.

“Snow Child” contains focused, controlled poems that demonstrate poetic skill and a precise use of language to achieve poetic aims.

By Emma Lee

…his orange suede elevator shoes and mingy T-shirt and droopy blue sports coat (Sylvia Plath, “The Bell Jar”)?

Clothing and accessories show a lot about someone’s character and make the difference between a character seeming two-dimensional and too generic and a character readers want to know better or even loathe.

He was too young, too handsome, built like an athlete, and dressed like a slacker in creased black jeans and a faded green sweatshirt from the University of Notre Dame. The clerical collar seemed at odds with the cowboy boots. (Tami Hoag, “Guilty as Sin”)

No one in real life just wears a tee shirt with a pair of jeans. Some one in a pair of light blue jeans, belted at the waist, a branded sweatshirt, branded running shoes, a blouson jacket and gel-tousled hair is going to have a very different character from someone with a moon-like pallor, dark, wide-leg jeans over thick-soled boots and black tee shirt. Even something as seemingly uniform as a business suit can give away a lot about the wearer. Someone in a shiny polyester suit is on a completely different pay scale to someone wearing a bespoke tailored suit.

She was wearing a magenta corset, which trailed back into ruffles that dragged on the floor. Beneath it she wore ripped jeans and turquoise cowboy boots. The top half of her looked like Scarlett O’Hara halfway through a striptease. The bottom half looked like she’d escaped a cage fight with a rabid badger… The makeup girl pointed as Tasia in dismay. ‘Look at her. She’s been playing in the crayon box.’ (Meg Gardiner, “Liar’s Lullaby”)

Accessories are another opportunity. Choice of footwear can say something about the wear’s personality, where someone is going, whether the shoes are polished or scuffed or can point towards contradictions or someone pretending to be or to have done something they haven’t. If a character says they’ve been for a country walk on a wet day but their shoes are dry with no traces of mud, have they been on that walk? Someone with matching, designer-labelled clothes let down with worn, scuffed shoes is trying to create an impression that doesn’t reflect their true character.

Lois sat sturdily, with her knees, as usual, a little apart, her ungloved hands were folded over a huge leather handbag; on her dark face was the expression of the woman who is wondering how she is going to manage about the extra person to dinner (Jean Rhys, “Quartet”).

Movement gives away personality and mood too. Would you trust this character?

Sal, his awful hair, black and greasy slicked back to cover a bald spot. He always stunk of booze and sex, filthy hands nervously checking front and back pockets, smoothing his oily mane back, grabbing his own ass, running a dirty index over chapped lips. (Lydia Lunch, “Paradoxia).

What are your characters wearing? If you’ve grabbed generic, off the peg clothing (even uniform-wearers have hair-styles, deportment and/or cosmetics to personalise their look), you’ll lose your readers who won’t care about characters they can’t engage with.

By Emma Lee

The title poem firmly sets the scene, as the house empties and becomes still,

“It looks simple: the glass vase holding
whatever is offered –
cut flowers, or the thought of them –

simple, though not easy
this waiting without hunger in the near dark
for what you may be about to receive.”

Like the title poem, the others also use a simple but precise vocabulary. The focus is in the stillness before the drama and tumble of family life. This focus gives the reader plenty of space to read and think around the poems. Yet the poems have been worked over with the finesse of “The China-mender’s Daughter” explaining,

“how he’d check for veins of damage

lifting each piece of fine-bone to the light,
how it flared, translucent,

in his fingers – a hare’s ear
shot through with sun.”

No veins show and, like the fine-bone china plates, appear delicate yet are robust enough to take the weight of a Sunday joint or a stodge-laden pudding. It would be easy to write off “This Morning” as simply a domestic still life,

“the iron frying pan gleaming on its hook like an ancient find,
the powdery green cheek of a bruised Clementine.

Though more beautiful still was how the light moved on,
letting go each chair and coffee cup without regret

the way my grandmother, in her final year, received me:
neither surprised by my presence, nor distressed by my leaving,
content, though, while I was there.”

It’s a spot of time, a grandmother happy to accept her granddaughter’s presence for as long as her granddaughter is prepared to be there, knowing that surprise or distress might deter future visits. The grandmother, like the poems, understand the ebb and flow of family life and the importance of staying in the present, letting go of the past and only worrying about tomorrow when it comes today.

“Grace” is a masterclass in control and the necessity of finding the right word, even if it’s a simple one, allowing readers to see the commonplace in a new light.

By Emma Lee

Research/Read More

All reading is research for writers either because you’re reading what’s already published in your target market or because you’re reading outside your target market to expand your writing skills. But you can’t spend 24 hours a day reading a book (at least not every day for a year).

There are not-so-obvious opportunities that can be turned into research with a bit of imagination. Stuck on public transport, sitting in a pub/cafe/park? Watch people (don’t be too obvious about it though). Pick someone at random and notice what they’re wearing, how they move, what they’re carrying and create a back story for them. Look at your next piece of writing, how can a character’s accessories, clothes and movements show us key aspects of their character without the writer having to tell the reader?

Again, without being too obvious, try eavesdropping and get a feel for how people speak. Use it to inform the next piece of dialogue you write.

Spend More Time Writing

How much more? How are you going to create more time to write if your schedule’s already packed with a day job, household chores, family commitments and a nightly appointment with prime time TV. Spending time poised with notebook and pen or staring at a blank computer screen is simply presenteeism and not time actually spent writing. Focus on making the most of the time you do have and make sure the time you have is actually at the right time for you to right. If you write best in the evenings, you’d be better off shifting some chores to the morning so you can relax and write in the evening.

If procrastination is your enemy, in that you have time to write but don’t spend it writing, focus on why. Singer Katherine Jenkins and TV presenter Gethin Jones recently called off their engagement after much talk of “not being able to find time to get married”, yet Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig who arguably have similarly busy schedules found time to get married. If you need to write, you will find time to write.

Write More

Not a good resolution for poets. There’s no point writing more if the quality suffers and quality will suffer if you pressurise yourself to write (unless you’re the type of writer who needs deadlines and targets otherwise you’d never get your ideas on paper). Be specific and create measureable targets.

Do More Social Media

Not without doing some research first. Remember allocating time to social media means less time for your poetry/short stories/novels, so make time spent on social media useful time rather than another means of procrastination.

Send Out More Submissions

You can’t control what editors will or won’t accept but you can control how often and how frequently you submit work to editors and publishers. However, no editor will take on low quality work so don’t increase the frequently of submissions if it means you’re sending out work still in early draft stages just to meet a target.

Have a Plan B. Instead of sending out poem X to magazine A, plan to send poem X to magazine B, then C, then D, then E, etc, but not simultaneously. Most poems are rejected because they are the wrong fit for the next available issue of a magazine and editors are overwhelmed with options. If you have a list of potential magazines for a poem, you are more likely to send it out again rather than stuff it on the rejects pile and not look at it until the rejects pile threatens to topple over.

Remember 2012 lasts a year

Don’t front load all your resolutions in January – spread them throughout the year. Seasonally, it’s more logical to continue with ongoing projects in January and February and start new projects in March/April when Spring arrives and it feels more like a beginning.

Remember to plan seasonally themed projects six months in advance. Editors will start planning their Christmas issues at the end of the summer so your Christmas-themed pieces need to be sent out over the summer. Similarly if you have a piece that hits an anniversary, send it out well in advance.

By Emma Lee

Peter Gilmour developed an early love of poetry, which got sidelined as life got in the way, until the death of his wife when poetry became a necessity again. Some of the poems here touch on that death, eg in “Overkill” where the narrator on finding packs of paracetamol and half bottles of whisky,

“Again and again I wondered why –
why stow them in such different places?

Still I don’t understand. I thought of food parcels
to begin with, not any kind of poison.
All I can think of these days/ is the degree of desperation:
six suicide packs. You only needed one.”

He doesn’t judge his late wife, but tries to reach out and understand. She hid her reasons as successfully as the suicide packs. He focuses on the questions rather than the drama, questions that still haunt him and may never be answered. Note the judicious use of repetition – “again” and “why”. The poems are colloquial and easy to read aloud, which suggests some careful honing took place behind the scenes.

But these are not just about his late wife. In “Out of Step”,

“He looks for his parents
but does not find them. He walks,
then, off the edge of the world,
right off the edge of the world
and  has been treading water
ever since, waiting to drown.
He will talk to you endlessly
of that moment – one Sunday
after chapel – when he walked
off the edge of the world
into nobody’s arms,
just a blast of air and of ash,
a sense as of cups and trophies
glinting terribly behind him.”

Effective use of repetition again, not just the phrase “off the edge of the world” but also the echo in lines 2 and 9, “He walks”/ “he walked”. A sensation and feeling the “he” in the poem is doomed to return to, searching for answers.

“Taking Account” won’t set the world ablaze, but it is a careful, considered handling of a tragedy made all the more poignant for not being sentimental or draped in drama.

Taking a break for the holidays now, back in the new year.

By Emma Lee

What’s being offered in the Promotional Package?

In this case is it was a profile on a website where, if sufficient interest was generated, the website owners would help arrange for publication of the author’s work, the author would receive an opportunity to join a workshop or event once a year, and a free ticket to an awards evening. The package has a cost.

Let’s break the package down into individual elements, bearing in mind that initial details are naturally sketchy since the idea is to get people to express interest with further details to follow.

Website Profile

Website profiles can be useful, particularly on a high-traffic site and especially if there’s a link back to your own website or blog. However, there are questions to ask:

What company will you be keeping?

Will it just be profiles of unpublished writers or will you benefit by having your profile on the same site as established, reputable authors?

What traffic will the website get?

The site owners should be able to provide statistics – ask. If no statistics are forthcoming why not? A new site may not yet have established itself, but an established site whose owners don’t provide statistics isn’t worth bothering with.

What does/will the site look like?

A slick, professional looking site provides more benefits than one that looks as if it was compiled by the owner’s young relative and is covered in advertising.

What SEO has been done?

SEO (search engine optimisation) makes a website search engine friendly so search engines are more likely to list it near the top in the results for relevant searches. Do a search for the website using its own name – does it come near the top? Do a search using a relevant term such as “children’s writers”, is the site listed on the first page of results? If browsers can’t find the site, your profile won’t be seen.

Who Writes the Profile and can it be updated?

An out of date profile won’t help you and looks unprofessional. Will you be able to update your profile once it’s live? How quickly can it be updated? Ask the question.

Who will own the copyright? If the package promoters retain copyright, is this going to cause future problems when submitting biographical and profile style information for publishers, etc to use?

Do Publishers and Literary Agents look at the site?

This is an easy claim to make, after all a website is easily available to anyone with internet access so publishers and literary agents could be looking at the site. However, publishers and agents are also busy with existing clients and submissions from potential clients so don’t really have time to go browsing through a profile site to find even more new clients. Unless the package provider can actually name specific agents or publishers they know to be reading the site, treat any such claim cautiously.

Publication

Check what exactly is being offered.

Which publishers will the package promoters work with (ask for specific names so you can do your research)?  How much publicity will be expected of individual authors? All authors are expected to do some publicity, but if you are doing all the publicity with no support from the publisher and/or package promoter, is it worth it?

Workshops and Awards Evening

How much choice do you have over which workshops are part of this offer? Will they be local? By established, reputable authors? How flexible are the dates for attendance and how much notice will you receive? The offer of an opportunity to attend suggests there will not be any help with any applicable expenses such as course fees, travel expenses and meals.

Similarly the awards evening may be interesting and may offer networking opportunities, but if you, like most people in the UK, live outside London and the awards evening is held at a London venue, are you likely to actually attend?

Small Print

Check you are fully aware of:

• Costs – how much, when payable, can you pay in instalments if that’s more suitable for you? Are payments refundable? Are the costs proportionate to what you are paying for?
• Hidden extras – does everyone get the same profile or are there different charges for premium and standard profiles? Does an author photo or images of book covers cost extra?
• Renewal – is there an annual fee or is it a one off payment? Be wary of setting up any payments by direct debits where there is an automatic renewal option.
• How much input are you expected to have? Are you expected to update your profile at set intervals? How much promotion and publicity are you being asked to do? Can you afford the time investment required?
• Restrictions – are there limits on what you can and can’t put in your profile (and are these reasonable?), is there a time limit on profile availability (will it be taken down after a set time)?
• Has the package promoter done their research? Generic emails addressed “Dear Writer”, particularly if they also contain grammar and spelling errors or get an acronym wrong, should ring alarm bells.
• Are you being asked to sign up quickly? Is the offer only open for a limited time or offered on a first-come-first-served basis? If you’re not being given time to think about it (particularly if payment is needed up front and is non refundable), then how good an offer is it?
• Ask a friend. Is the organisation making the offer well-known for the right reasons? Have others used the service and what feedback would they give?

I won’t be taking up this particular offer. I have never had any contact with the sender who did not tell me how they got my email address and there was no unsubscribe option.

Some of the observations are playful, for example from “Hangin’ Round” in a middle England city,

“its Starbucks won like a medal
of cosmopolitan rank;
its battered,
mock-Louisiana-style ‘deli’

where, incidentally, I remembered sipping coffee
with a girl who loved ‘drinking coffee’
more than coffee
half a decade ago, and who, as I recall,

‘hated the immigrants,’ but smelt of truffles
and ambergris
and who, so I’ve heard,
spends her time, these days, on the rush-hour train
to a smaller small town, where she’s training to be
an accountant”

I find the authorial intrusions, “as I recall” (so closed to “I remembered”) and “so I’ve heard”, intrusive rather than informative. But like the image of the small town woman travelling to a smaller town to work in a narrow profession as a metaphor for a narrowing mind.

In “Sonetto” the poem’s narrator wakes up next to a woman (the gaps are intended to give the lines and even length so the poem looks rectangular, not easy to replicate in a blog),

“And let’s not pretend:  last night my eyes veered
to the plunge          of that                 girl’s jumper
where wool-mix met                 peach-skin breasts
and my pheromones             stamped out a samba.

Still in this fresh hour                  I lap your scent
and know                    such glances are simulacra.”

Like the coffee-drinking, trainee accountant, the narrator comes across as someone who likes the idea of being in love, but doesn’t actually like working at a relationship.

“Confer” is a slow burn, it won’t grip immediately, but does reward re-reading.

No Blurb or Back Cover Text

A book that appears to be lacking in endorsements is not an obstacle for a reviewer, but a blank back cover or a lack of introduction indicates a lack of consideration for the reader.

Who are you and what are your credentials for writing this book? What are you hiding? It only takes a couple of sentences to hint at the themes included in the book and let the reader know if it is a contemporary book or set in a historical period, whether the poems within are autobiographical or inspired by someone else’s story or a specialism the poet has. Without these hints a casual reader is unlikely to pick up your book.

No Acknowledgements

If your poems have been published individually or placed in competitions, you should acknowledge this.  Not only it is a courtesy to the editors or judges who selected your work but it gives the reviewer confidence they are reading a reasonably competent writer.

If you don’t have any previous publications to acknowledge, seriously think about whether publishing a collection is a good idea. It takes a lot of marketing to sell any book, particularly poetry books so, unless you have a sizeable number of friends or family who will buy copies to help you break even or can sell a book on the back of success in another field, start reading and submitting work to poetry magazines and competitions.

Every book I’ve read by a self-published author who does not have any acknowledgments has not been worth the effort. There may be exceptions, but I’ve never been sent them for review.

Shoddy Presentation

• Can I read your poems? If you’ve used a difficult to read typeface or too small a font or printed in grey on a strong coloured background or a neon colour on white, your poems have to be outstanding to justify the effort required to read them.
• Give your publication an urban, edgy, hurriedly-photocopied-and-stapled feel by all means but make sure you don’t cut the photocopying so fine, you miss line endings on some of your poems – I can’t review what isn’t there or make sense of a poem when half of it is missing.
• If you use pictures and images overlap text, ensure the text is still readable.
• Don’t send me the copy you split coffee over – I dislike you already and haven’t opened your book yet (I don’t sell review copies so don’t required pristine copies, but haven’t got time to separate stuck together pages or wipe covers clean).
• Number your pages, page numbers make useful reference points and prevent me wasting time having to guess where the poem I wanted to quote from is.
• Ultimately, if you can’t be bothered to present your poems in a readable format, why should I bother reading them?

Poems not in any order

The ordering of a collection will depend on the poems in the collection. It may make sense to arrange some in chronological order, some according to theme, some according to a narrative plan, some according to style. But give some thought as to how a poem fits with its neighbours. Don’t let the reviewer think you’ve not put any thought into it.

First Person Narration Throughout

Particularly if every poem is about “I” and “I” is the same person throughout and the poems have a semi-autobiographic feel by an author who thinks their suburban Sunday afternoon observations are worthy of repetition ad nauseam, it will feel less like reading a book and more like running a marathon and I don’t run. The only exception to this is when the collection is a series of monologues in different voices so the “I” refers to different narrators.

Quality of Writing

Ultimately whether you get a good review or not will depend on the quality of the writing. Reviews will be prepared to overlook a few mistakes if the writing is good enough.

Bad writing, especially if full of typos and incorrect grammar, will never attract a good review. If you’ve not tested your writing on an audience (and preferably not just an audience that will offer uncritical praise every time), you shouldn’t be submitting your work for review.

I’ve heard various variations on these themes frequently recently. The fact is, writers are tackling and writing about these themes and other contemporary issues but readers aren’t able to read them yet because:

• there’s a necessary time lag between writing and publication
• publishers and editors can’t predict the future
• the best writing doesn’t occur in either during the event or in its immediate aftermath
• fiction is not journalism.

Let’s look at each in turn:

Time Lag between Writing and Publication

It’s impossible to be a writer and critic simultaneously. It takes time to polish and hone writing to the best possible standard. There needs to be a separation between writing a poem and editing the poem (and don’t even think that a first draft might be good enough: it never is). Therefore rushing off a first draft to an editor or publisher is a good way of guaranteeing rejection. You wouldn’t dash out for a job interview in the clothes you wear to do DIY without researching the job you’re being interviewed for, so don’t be unprofessional in approaching editors.

Editors and publishers often feel instinctively when a submitted piece is right for publication, but still may like to take time to think it over and check they are making the right decision. Even if an editor or publisher does make an instant decision, they can’t make an instant publication.

Editors have to wait for the next available issue of a poetry magazine. Even a quarterly magazine still might involve a three month wait and that assumes your relevant, contemporary poem will fit with the next issue and not be held over until the issue afterwards.

It generally takes at least two years to publish a novel. Publishers schedule that far in advance so that they are not launching books within days of each other, that a marketing plan can be put in place, publicity and review copies are sent out in advance and that staff have a flow of work. Priority will go to authors who the publisher has previously worked with and who can produce books with a proven track record. A first time novelist will go to the back of the queue, even for a novel on a big contemporary theme.

Publishers and Editors can’t predict the future

No one likes to look stupid and where there is no predictable outcome, there is also a natural hesitancy about committing to publishing a book about a current event that might turn out to be mistaken about cause and/or effect.

The best writing doesn’t occur either during the event or in its immediate aftermath

Wilfred Owen did most of his writing at Craiglockhart. He may have jotted down notes or lines of poems whilst at war, but the actual writing was done when recuperating in a convalescence home where he had time, space to consider what he was writing and a trusted reader to spur him to write better. Keith Douglas edited his poems went back in England, not at El Alamein.

Writing that gets under the skin of an event, gets to know it, gets to explore it and gets to examine cause and effect, will not be written in the immediate aftermath. It takes time and emotional distance to produce a piece of good writing.

Fiction is not journalism

Writing that reports what happens, no matter how eloquently or beautifully, is not fiction. A poem that merely describes an event is not a poem but a description of an event. A story that records an event as it happened is not fiction but reportage.

Fiction is not just inventing characters or a narrator and putting them in the thick of a significant, newsworthy event. Fiction enables readers to empathise with characters, to explore and understand why events happened the way they did and allows readers to explore their own feeling about those events and further their understanding.

Research has shown that reading fiction can foster empathy, equipping the reader with skills to understand real people around them by relating to and understanding perspective of fictional characters. Studies have been made at Washington and Lee University into whether fiction can provide prosocial models and influence behaviour in the short term. Mere reporting of facts can’t do this.

People caught up in events don’t have the gift of hindsight or the ability to separate and analyse their emotional response. A writer may know that they will write about an event they are experiencing, but they won’t know how. It takes emotional distance and time to be able to think through and around an event and reactions to it.

There are poems about Iraq and Afghanistan, there are stories about the Eurozone crisis and stories about last summer’s riots, but it’s unlikely you’ll be reading them in the near future.

“a crone of sixteen, who lost
her virginity to a lightning bolt.
It’s time to pull the handrail out.
I didn’t expect love to feel like this –
you holding me down with your knee,
wrenching the steel rod from my chained body
quickly, kindly, setting me free.”

There’s a black humour here. The masculine endings in “lost”, “bolt” and “out”, portray a practical acceptance of the accident and need to move on, then the tone softens when “love” is mentioned and then a skittish playfulness in the rhythm of the final line particularly on “quickly, kindly, setting” with the drawn-out emphasis with the long vowel on “free”. There’s an irony there as Frida Kahlo was freed into a life of pain and numerous operations. In “My Dress Hangs There”

“while my body lies on this gurney, pecked at
by beaks of instruments
as an icy wind slices through”

Where the passive “my body lies on this gurney” becomes active with the sound-echoes in “pecked”/“beaks” and “instruments”/”icy wind slices”. But Frida Kahlo looks beyond herself too, in “Diego on My Mind” she acknowledges his infidelities and also her love for him,

“You whisper encouragements from the mirror
nestling deeper into my forehead.

But remember, when you take
.                Maria Felix,
.                       Paulette Goddard
.                                      or my sister

to your dirty yellow hotel room,
they lie on my eyes.

My nose smells them.
My mouth stays closed. Every love-cry

is a silk tendril
.                    quivering in my silent house.”

The poems are as skilful and vivid as their subject and written with a painterly eye. Pascale Petit studied paint and sculpture before turning to poetry and her knowledge and immersion in her subject is brought to “What the Water Gave Me”. The poems complement the paintings.