Category: poetry (Page 1 of 12)

Ten Books I Love

I accepted a challenge from Neil Fulwood on facebook to post ten books that I love, one book per day, no explanations, no reviews, just the covers.

The idea is to promote good books, encourage reading and create a wonderful reading list.

Here my 10 as posted and explanations of why chosen.

This book is the only volume I have kept from a bookcase full of victorian books which given to my country grandparents of whom my step-grandfather could not read. It was my introduction to books from being a small child but strangely never saw read. I wrote about them in poem The Hare Lip. Read that here:

Bought in 1985 when it came out from a bookshop in Plymouth (sticker on back) whilst visiting my sister. I heard a lot about Carver from muisc reviews at time referring to the ‘Carveresque’. Loved his writing and background fitted my notions of writing working class stories in poetry and song. Years later met his widow at Poetry Library also a great poet. Still a significant writer for me 30 years later.

Simply the greatest poet I have been in the same room as ( Norman MacCaig’s birthday party in Edinburgh) although I did stand next to him outside the Edinburgh Central Library as he lit a cigarette but was too shy to speak to him. Bought this in Scotland probably at James Thins. Edinburgh made me a poet Oxford made me give up being a poet simple as that.

Again a chance meeting meant I handed a signed copy of the original Goldmark publication of Whitechapel Scarlet Tracings one of his best and earliest books when I at a Goldmark exhibition private view Sinclair attended. Instead of that book I chosen this as John Clare was a fundamental inspiration that got me through A Level English thanks to my mad teacher Miss Millington a bonkers mid 50s spinster who regaled us with tales of dope smoking camel races from her previous lives…..years later Clare inspired a song that ended up the title of a Norwegian Country Lp..go figure..

I love this book more than anything else he written (hence three copies) and he written a lot ( I know I have all of them).No never met him so cannot name drop this time but this book defined my concept of americana long before it became fashionable. Without this book there no Flyinshoes and probably no Alt Country..this was the text book.

Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh a reading to promote this book and probably the best poet of my generation by a mile. Looked like the computer programmer he was still at this point. Opened his mouth and surreal suburban odes the like of which I not heard before or since. Favourite single poem is the Asylum Dance…….superb writer and sadly will write no more but what there is awesome.

A railway labourer from Swindon who learnt several languages and wrote a series of books about his region including this amazing collection done on a bycycle tour of the Upper Thames. The achievement alone is astonishing the writer almost totally obscure like a good few of what I call the English South Downs Spiritualists.Nature writing before the current faddists and big publisher bullshitters got in on the act. He, Richard Jefferies and Edward Thomas….ECO before the word invented…..my holy trinity.

I lived on a council estate where half the houses were better built in brick and known as ‘Atomic Houses’. They were built to house the workers at Harwell Atomic Research Laboratory. It about a mile and a half across fields from my town of Didcot. I knew neighbours that worked there. My mother helped place rods into reactors when a teenager and I worked there. It was where the UK atomic bomb was built it created the plutonium. I signed official secrets act just to do a shit job there. It was an airfield used to launch Arnhem and D-Day gliders it is the reality nobody knows…..gorillas dosed with radiation early experiments with a little understood thing called radioactivity one day I will tell my stories..

Full circle the only book my father ever owned. A school prize before he sent to fields as labourer at 14. He was denied further education left that to me….never wrote but thought and spoke a lot.

In a fire this the book I save…

Submit to What? The Fallacy of Poetry Submissions.

Over the last six months I have wasted time on submitting to a list of poetry magazines. When I began my career (in brackets like above) there was no choice.

Pre internet the only viable visibility for a poet was through the list of poetry journals which I had to photocopy as a minion at the South Bank London Poetry Library. I was employed as a customer service operative whilst more canny and frankly dull people held the reins. Placing yourself there was a handy stepping stone for carreerists and I worked alongside many later ‘famous’ poets and such like. I never had a head for networking so left after a short time to move to Edinburgh.

At that time there was no other route into visibility unlike now. Also the main literary journals were well known and indeed about 10% of them are still extant and influential. The rest like many a online magazine now came and went .

I have a folder with all my paper based submissions from 1992-3 still and it makes interesting reading. The hit rate was approximately 10%. So 100 poems out may get 10 published. I had met and been known by influential poets then and that helped me place poems that for sure. My first poems were published in John Harvey’s Slowdancer because Maura Dooley liked them and suggested I send to John Harvey. Both poets I respected and a magazine I fitted in to. Having hit the jackpot with first submission I then slowly fell out of sight and favour and gave up on writing altogether by 2007 although actual output stopped long before circa 2000 as I went off in different directions.

Returning to poetry somewhat on retirement I decided to test the waters now and submit to all the free online journals around. This excluded The London Review of Books for instance. I do not pay to play so to speak.

My hit rate has been zero. Nothing at all. I not on anybody’s radar and do not fit into any of the currently fashionable cliques and niche publishing ventures out there. Most of these are frankly awful. Not just bad themed publications on whatever half-baked shit idea the editors had..waves, dolphins, trees and beetles..you get my drift but also the level of smug nepotism fermented by the social media groups is sickening.

A recent post by Irish writer Fred Jackson strayed into the ‘hung criminal blames the hangman’ syndrome when in fact the wider picture explains most of the way publishing works now. Poetry now is politically important as a viable conduit for dissent and raising issues be they trans rights, sexism, racism etc but this does not of itself guarantee good writing.

Occaisionally a good poet can combine both politics and verse but most of the time it is perMOANance not perFORMance…


i.e. Message outweighs form completely to the point where some prose poetry is nothing more than prose and bad prose at that but if says the right words it gets published. A Labour victory and the dream of increased arts funding (don’t bet on it folks as Starmer is a realist not a fantasist) will only increase the beggers at the gate.

So having put toe in water so to speak I can honestly say I do not care as I genuinely believe that this method of publishigng poetry is dead as a dodo.
A majority of the online journals were barely internet competant being the dream project of people with little knowledge of the interent and a free WIX account.
Even amongst professional journals the amount of design and presentational skills is low. There are exceptions like SALT which has a genuine designer at helm. Elsewhere it frankly embarrassing to see journals with art and poetry so bad you want to laugh out loud..you want elves you get elves you want dragons etc etc…

Based on this I have made an executive decision to waste no more time on submitting to editors I think weak or plain stupid…to magazines that cannot present my work better than I can and so it leaves one option and right now it the best course of action.

This blog and the associated substack have a far greater chance with time spent managing properly ( i.e. daily posting) than any magazine for raising my profile that is a fact not a illusion. I have made better contacts through substack than I ever would through normal social media (too overused and frankly a bucket of shit mostly) . Substack is the equivalent of meeting poets and writers in the poetry readings of old. You get to filter out the chaff and can walk away politely.

I now have two substacks.

One for general poetry criticism like this and one for a new Eco Poetry project so slightly different target audiences.

https://darkweather.substack.com

and this for reviews and criticism

https://shaunbelcherwrites.substack.com

This is my chosen route forward and I recommend it to others as for Poetry Magazines online or otherwise (mostly online as the cost of paper too high now)

Adios thanks for all the fish.

#NaPoWriMo WTF

I had never heard of this acronym until my mate and fellow poet Neil Fulwood revealed it to me and a poem (pretty damn good one) too.

Basically the UK Poetry Society being about ten years behind evrybody else has copped a write a poem every day in April meme from the rest of the world. (figures totally). They then have haphazardly and with their usual acumen and professionalism spread it about half-heartedly on the web.

Brewery / piss up meme….

So being a cynical pensioner with time on hands I thought I would give it a bash and here the first two results. ( I one behind the daily upload and I ignoring all prompts except Moniza Alvi’s as she a good poet and I know her brother).

MY FATHER’S THINGS – Poems for Ivo Charles Belcher

My father as ayoung boy holding a rabbit..Long Wittenham Berkshire probably during wartime.

I produced an illustrated sequence of poems for my father in 2019. This April 13th he would have been 92 had he lived but he has been gone 20 years now.

As a tribute I have created a pdf of the sequence that was shown as a series of artworks at the King Billy.

Below a link to the free pdf download

Note on process. All typed directly on old manual typewriter. Very few mistakes or edits. One take like jazz…..it either got that swing or it ain’t….

DIESEL ON GRAVEL – 1986-1989 First Flash Fictions

Poems written in London and Oxfordshire. Published in early 1990s in Last Gasp pamphlets. Last Gasp was a poetry open mic I helped run with poets Giles Goodland and Bridget Kursheed in Oxford.

From 1986 I was heavily influenced by Raymond Carver and especially his book FIRES.  Indeed I attended his memorial readings event in London and saw Edmund White, Richard Ford and Salman Rushdie read in his honour.

I think this volume is the ‘lost volume’ as I was living at home in Didcot and totally cut off from literary world from 1988 until 1990.

I did do some readings through the Last Gasp group until I moved to Edinburgh in 1993.

None of these poems have been seen apart from in these hand made pamphlets.

Style note all hand written then typed on my mother’s old typewriter.

The last few pages of the document as pdf have originals and some uncollected poems.

The blue pen and line through a poem are from Giles Goodland when selecting for a pamphlet…I did not have second copies as everything had to be typed by hand …so here it is..

Diesel on Gravel…..1990

Diesel on Gravel PDF

Poetry in England Part 2: Poetry Flies

Damien Hurst cow’s head which by the way was FAKE too…..it is cast the flies hatched anyway from a container containing maggots and food in other half..a Barnum conjuring act

POETRY FLIES

I came from Oxford I didn’t go to Oxford
I visited Cambridge once I didn’t go to Cambridge
I do not have a nice tidy clique to accept my poetry
Even when I write nothing for thirty years

I didn’t keep writing when I should have
I didn’t stack chairs for the powers that be
Or fawn over some imperious drunk poets event
I didn’t give a fuck about academia

In fact I have no part of any club that would want me
I attack those who live their delusional poetic lives
Ever since I worked the counter at the Poetry Library
Where we used to call the acolytes and hanger’s on flies

This isn’t the news you wanted from nowhere is it
Telling you your half-baked pamphlet on birth pains is rubbish
Or that your fake working-class credentials can raise funding not talent
As the arts council analyses your diversity count and footfall

No the English Poetry world is a festering barrel of rotten apples
Oozing its bile over another generation of half-arsed creative writing graduates
Networking themselves to death for a pamphlet, a prize, a smile from above
Whilst the old guard from Oxford and Cambridge still hold the reins

Still decide where the research diversity shilling get poured like Maundy money
Down the throats of the deserving poor in their alms houses
Power resides in the quads and vestries the quiet places
Where no poet slams or wines, no poor sleep, no modernist cries

An era of fake poetry, fake careers, fake web-based literary magazines
A dance of the dispossessed and the affluent caressing their egos
Pretending that having a poem published is fighting evil
Glued to the bright fizzing screens like bluebottles in a butchers

Dropping, dropping like flies
on the cold marble slab of the publishers.

Emily Meyer the erosion cast of a severed cows head made for Damien Hirst’s ‘A thousand years’

Erosion molding/slip casting

The basic concept is that the subject is coated in a medium that captures the pelage, plumage, scales, hairs, etc. down to the surface of the skin, and all of the material not captured is allowed to rot away until completely removed. The hollow of the mold is washed thoroughly, and another medium is cast into it. The roots of the fur, feathers, hair, etc., that were once embedded in skin, are exposed inside the mold now that the skin has been rotted away. When the casting medium is poured into the mold, it grabs the exposed roots. The outer coating/mold, is then melted/dissolved/removed, leaving a perfect cast of the subject. The end result is a form of the animal, with every hair/feather in place as it was in life. It will resemble taxidermy, but it is far from it because the only material that remains is the hair/feathers and the medium that they are captured in. In theory (with lots of practice) this method can produce a result that is more accurate than taxidermy or freezedrying can ever produce, because it removes the variable of human error as far as anatomical accuracy goes. It also beautifully replaces the skin, which can be achieved with remarkably life-like results by using a flesh toned casting medium with the appropriate level of translucency.

An exceedingly good metaphor for the current state of the hollowed out dead body of English Poetry right now.

POETRY IN ENGLAND

wrote this many moons ago nothing changed
the description of Les Murray reading at the end is true

POETRY IN ENGLAND

There is something about poetry in England
That is awfully nay terribly Middle Class
Something not quite right in the hands of a worker
Sibilants dribbling like snot from the poor man’s nose

Wiping its sleeve on the tasteful tablecloth of power
Always waiting to be found out or at least held up
As an exemplar of the erudite working class chap
Even that Larkin fellow wasn’t a chav was he darling

Then the skirmishes with the Leftist proletarians
Or the Rightists in their towers quaffing champers
No never quite right, never accepted as kosher
Little piggy faces pressed to the literary crown jewels

In 1992 I gate-crashed an Oxford University poetry bash
Crept along corridors I had no right to be in
After another day serving the arrogant little sods
And after much prevarication finally made it in

Les Murray, sitting like an antipodean Buddha
Laughing like a Boeotian at the Athenian Temple
Then he slowly let rip with poems from Dog Fox Field
Words circling the pews like a fox in a henhouse

I walked up shook his hand said thank you

And skedaddled before they set the hounds loose

POETRY SUBMISSIONS: The Poisoned Chalice

Yesterday evening I submitted to all these with varying degrees of success with the exception of Belle Ombre (which I had never heard of and which seemed a contender for the new Agenda up its own (hare’s) arse award). I got something off to all the rest even the one that I was not supposed to get to i.e. London Review of Books which I worked out later drops subs in the genre they trying to make money on through a competition…nice little capitalist ploy there LRB.

I sent three poems anyway to annoy them.

The rest especially those using submittable were all good. Clear guidance and appeared to know web from elbow. Except Allegro which should win an award for bad usage of out of date blogger and no comprehension of design or fonts. (The editor kindly rejected me already so we evens). The good thing is some decent poems rejected already on the recycle route to be flung elsewhere.

I submitted a whole pamphlet to The North because it a good magazine and it did not say you couldn’t.

London Grip I had heard rumours of through Neil Fulwood and John Lucas connection.

Poetry submitting is a bit like going out to bat without a bat..you take a defensive stance and wait for the hundred mile an hour hard ball of rejection to bounce into your sensitive spot.

The balls get bowled back on average six months later it appears so not losing sleep over some of the more arcane ‘self-publishing and social media’ rules which frankly bullshit invented by people still working out what the internet is.

More frightening is the references to NO AI which like horse and stable door frankly too late most of the crap I seeing around the magazines and the hell for leather publishers is probably already AI induced.

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