Duffy, Hughes, Eliot and Translation

This week, Carol Ann Duffy launched her new poetry prize: the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for

the most exciting contribution to poetry in that year.

It's a generous gesture from the new laureate, though questions have been asked about whether we need another poetry award. The test will be the shortlists: if they copy those of the other prizes, the Ted Hughes Award will be pointless; if they're as broad as the outlined criteria, it could be worthwhile:

Eligible works include, but are not limited to, poetry collections (for adults or children), individual published poems, radio poems, verse translations, verse dramas, libretti, film poems, and public poetry pieces.

It's particularly encouraging that translations will be in the running. Translation is an art largely unsung in the UK. Indeed, the rules for the TS Eliot Prize stipulate:

Books which contain more than twenty percent (20%) translations (including versions, imitations or any poetry inspired by the work of one or more other writers) will not be eligible. Percentages should be calculated on the total number of lines of poetry in a book.

A translation award could too easily reinforce the ghettoisation of translated poetry but, by including it along with untranslated work, I sincerely hope Duffy's new prize helps to raise the status of translating in the British poetry scene.

Well Done Nell!

Huge congratulations to Helena Nelson on HappenStance press being shortlisted for the publisher's award in the inaugural Michael Marks pamphlet awards. It's much deserved, as Nell has done a huge amount to boost the publishing careers of numerous poets and the world of poetry chapbooks in the UK, not only through her own quality productions but through the magazine Sphinx, the only publication dedicated to reviewing poetry pamphlets. Here's hoping she goes on to take the prize. But whatever the outcome, it just makes me even more proud to be associated with HappenStance.

Hadfield on Today

The Today programme's interview with Jen Hadfield is here, along with all the recordings they've done of the other shortlisted writers. Worth a listen. She sounds a touch tired. Good on her!

Seeing the shortlist again just emphasises how stunning a success this is for her. Not just for her, but for the younger poetry generation(s). Somehow having the faces there gives it all the more impact. There's almost something of a Dr Who moment to it, not only because Jen Hadfield is the youngest TS Eliot prizewinner ever, but because of how young she looks next to everyone else. (She's only three or so years younger than me, but somehow it feels like she younger still.)

There's certainly a sense of excitement around the UK poetry world -- or at least the corners I frequent, virtual and otherwise -- about this award. A sense of something genuinely fresh happening. Todd Swift says it's the next best thing to an Obama moment, which feels accurate, overblown and very slightly churlish all in one to me.

Here are some links to other bloggers' perspectives: Katy Evans-Bush, Rob Mackenzie, Matt Merritt (I'll add to this if and as I spot any more).

The Nearly No Has It!

Jings, as my dad might say, Jen Hadfield has won the TS Eliot! Andrew Motion describes her as "a remarkably original poet near the beginning of what is obviously going to be a distinguished career", an assessment with which I wouldn't quibble*. Nigh-No-Place is certainly an interesting, stimulating, rich book. The prize must be an enormous boost to Jen Hadfield, given the company of winners she now joins.

*Quibble is such a fine word, don't you think? Only, it sets me in mind of that scene from Blackadder Goes Forth in which our eponymous antihero prentends to be mad in an attempt to escape the trenches. Wubble! as much of my generation is wont to exclaim randomly.

Mick Imlah 1956-2009

Mick Imlah, whose second book of poems, The Lost Leader, won the 2008 Forward prize for best collection and is shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize, has died. He was only 52.

Timor mortis conturbat me.

Dated and Prized

The Ambulance Box grows ever closer to becoming a reality. Chris at Salt and I have just settled on 1 March 2009 as the publication date. If that seems far away to you, as it does to some friends I talk to, it seems tantalisingly close to me!

Speaking of Salt, Will Stone's collection Glaciation won the Glen Dimplex New Writers poetry award 2008 the other week, while Rachel Blau Duplessis has been longlisted for the first Warwick Prize for Writing. The Warwick list is nothing if not varied. Congratulations to Chris, Jen, Will and Rachel!

Oh, and speaking of prizes, the shortlists for the Costa are out. No Salt titles on there, but it's a strong poetry list:

• For All We Know by Ciaran Carson (more)
• The Broken Word by Adam Foulds (more)
• Sunday at the Skin Launderette by Kathryn Simmonds (more)
• Salvation Jane by Greta Stoddart (more)

Ciaran Carson's is the only one I've read. Adam Foulds' book I've heard a lot about. Kathryn Simmonds won the Forward first collection prize this year, of course. And I know nothing about Great Stoddart's book (I couldn't even find it on the Anvil site when I looked the other day). I have to agree, of course, with Todd Swift about the glaring omissions ...

And the Winners Are ...

Mick Imlah, Kathryn Simmonds and Don Paterson. No real surprise on the main Forward prize and possibly not an enormous surprise on the best poem prize, but Kathyrn Simmonds's win in the best first collection category seems to have been unexpected. To be honest, I can't really comment, not having read any of the winners (for the nth year running!), so I'll leave the commenting to my fellow poetry bloggers. So far, of those I follow, Rob A Mackenzie and Matt Merritt (who was at the award ceremony and has a poem in the Forward anthology), Colin Will and Todd Swift have commented. As others pitch in, I'll update this post and continue to extend the list. There will probably be some discussion of the merits/demerits of the choices on this Poets on Fire thread.

Forward Reading +

Dropped into the Scottish Poetry Library to pick up a couple of the books on the shortlist for the Forward best first collection prize. I've decided to focus on that prize because of the stage I'm at in my own publishing history. Frances Leviston's and Andrew Forster's books were the only two from the list on the shelves, so I've come away with them.

They'll have to wait a little, however, until I'm finished Window for a Small Blue Child by Gerrie Fellows. It's a cracking book. I knew it would be good because I heard Gerrie read from it when we appeared together for the Poetry Association of Scotland last year, but I'm enthralled by its power and lyricism and I'm enjoying it hugely. Get your hands on it.

Forward Shortlists 2008

In the past few days, this year's Forward Prize shortlists have been announced. Here they are in full:

Main Prize
Jamie McKendrick - Crocodiles & Obelisks (Faber)
Sujata Bhatt - Pure Lizard (Carcanet)
Mick Imlah - The Lost Leader (Faber)
Jane Griffiths- Another Country (Bloodaxe)
Jen Hadfield - Nigh-No-Place (Bloodaxe)
Catherine Smith - Lip (Smith Doorstop)

First Book
Simon Barraclough - Los Alamos Mon Amour (Salt)
Andrew Forster - Fear of Thunder (Flambard)
Frances Leviston - Public Dream (Picador)
Allison McVety - The Night Trotsky Came to Stay (Smith Doorstop)
Stephanie Norgate - Hidden River (Bloodaxe)
Kathryn Simmonds - Sunday at the Skin Launderette (Seren)

Single Poem
Seamus Heaney - "Cutaways"
Christopher Buehlman - "Wanton"
Catherine Ormell - "Campaign Desk, December 1812"
Don Paterson - "Love Poem for Natalie 'Tusja' Beridze"
Kate Rhodes - "Wells-next-the-Sea"
Tim Turnbull - "Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn"

It would be idle for me to comment on the quality of the choices because, as usual, I've read hardly any of books on the shortlists. (The only one I have read is Hadfield's, which is strong, inventive and fresh.) However, I can see it's another good year for the small presses, especially on the first collection list. I'm glad to see Salt there for the third year running (not that I have any vested interest, you understand!) even if it's with fewer titles than last year. Simon Barraclough's book is being talked about as a strong contender, though Frances Leviston's seems to be considered the frontrunner. It's also a pleasure to see and acquaintance, Andrew Forster, appear on the list.

Cape is conspicuous by its absence in either of the collection categories. A shame there are no Salt titles on the shortlist for the main prize. If I remember rightly, Luke Kennard's The Harbour Beyond the Movie was the only book on last year's main list from a press outside the Mighty Handful; the pattern is repeated this year with Catherine Smith's collection in that position.

Of course, next year I might not be quite so dispassionate about the whole thing ...

More Laurels for Morgan

Somehow, I had missed until the middle of this week the news that Edwin Morgan has won this year's Sundial Scottish Arts Council book of the year award for A Book of Lives. Shame on me!

Not having read the collection--or any of the other finalists, for that matter--I can't comment on its merits, but there's no doubt that Morgan is and always has been a remarkable writer. He's perhaps the most widely known of that significant seam of writers who have demonstrated how possible it is to combine experimental and mainstream poetics in one career, even in one poem. Above all, his work--serious, subtle and craftful as it is--teams with imagination, verve and wit. He is a poet for the variousness of today. Incidentally, he's the first poet I ever saw read live and probably the first living poet I read extensively off my own bat, unprompted by any course syllabus.

It's always encouraging to see poetry winning when it goes head to head with other genres in awards like this one. The poetry shortlist was strong; Carcanet dominated with three titles, while Cape and Edinburgh's Luath had one apiece. But Morgan wasn't the only poet among the finalists: the winner of the first book category was fellow Linlithgow resident Jane McKie, whose first collection, Morocco Rococo, is published by Wales's Cinnamon Press. She was up against a Cape chicklit title and a non-fiction book from Scotland's Sandstone Press so, all in all, it was a good showing for small presses too.

Shore Poets February 2008: Photos

Mark Ogle's family and several Shore Poets past and present.

Alison playing.

The Mark Ogle Memorial Poem trophy.

Hamish Whyte, Jacob Polley and Diana Hendry relax.

Angus Peter Campbell receives the trophy from Lizzie and Deborah.

Angus Peter with Mark Ogle's family.

(These photos, with full tags, are also on the Shore Poets Facebook pages.)

Wading Through ... Or Not

On the train into Edinburgh for Polly Clark's reading the other night, I finally started to read Sean O'Brien's Forward and TS Eliot prize-winning collection The Drowned Book. Now, I might be missing something--I must be missing something, if the judges of both prizes aren't--but I simply couldn't get into it. It's not that it's what one might call difficult poetry, it's just that I found it ... well ... dull. Granted I've only read the first three or four poems, so maybe there's something more later in the book, but it would go against all the principles of constructing a collection to put your least interesting poems at the front.

Has anybody else read The Drowned Book? Do you find it dull? If you don't, I'm willing to be persuaded. I don't intend to abandon it quite yet, but there was little or nothing in those opening poems that would naturally draw me back, especially when I'm having fun reading Milton along with Rob Mackenzie, Jane Holland and others. If you're a Drowned Book fan, what is it about the poems that grabs you or draws you in?

Whaur Extremes Meet?

I know this is a bit behind the times, but there's an interesting post on "official verse culture" over at Eyewear, on the back of the result of the TS Eliot Prize. One wonders whether Edwin Morgan--one of those whom Todd Swift and other bloggers (well, Rob Mackenzie at least) hoped would win those laurels--didn't get the prize partly because he's always sat slightly athwart that culture. I've said this kind of thing before, but it seems to me that ability to straddle the mainstream and experimental is something that Scottish poets are particularly good at. I have no idea whether the proportion of poets from Scotland to whom that applies is any greater than that among the ranks of our English and other Anglophone brother and sister poets but, if it isn't, we certainly seem more readily able to recognise and celebrate them. Perhaps it's a function of size: oh, we can be a gey carnaptious lot, but sometimes we just stick together.

Not Quite Back to the Forward

The sharp eyed among you will have noticed that, despite previous posts on the Forward prize shortlists, I've not yet commented on the results. The main reason for this, aside from the usual time pressures, is that so far I've read only one of the shortlisted collections in each of the book lists--John Burnside's Gift Songs and Daljit Nagra's Look We Have Coming to Dover!, which won the first-collection prize--and, until I have at least a couple of the other books under my belt for comparison's sake, I don't feel qualified to comment on whether I think the winners were the most worthy. I'm currently reading Luke Kennard's The Harbour Beyond the Movie; no distance through it yet, but hugely impressed thus far. Sean O'Brien's winning The Drowned Book is high on the to-be-read pile. I'll be back to this topic, time permitting.

Another Dose of Salt

Salt has started a blog of coverage, readings etc connected to its Forward shortlisted authors. Can't help but be chuffed to see they've linked to my comments on the shortlist. I'll add the blog to the sidebar. Keep an eye on it: there seems to be something new every half hour or so! The latest is that Luke Kennard is bringing his theatre company to the Fringe, but here's hoping Salt will bring their Forwardeers up to Scotland for a reading or two. After all, Jen Hamilton-Emery is a Scot and the publicity of a wee reading tour could only help them with the problems that I've heard they have shifting books in Scotland.

Speaking of Luke Kennard, his MySpace is also one of the recent additions to the Tonguefire blogroll. As you can see from the two links on his name above, I've tracked down a few of his poems online. First impressions: an interesting flavour of slightly madcap, surreal seriousness. It's a voice I think I could easily warm to. I hope Salt will provide us with some podcast poems and one of their author videos on his author page soon.

Making Headway with the Forward ?

The shortleet for this year's Forward prizes is out and I haven't read a single book on it. No surprise there, as I don't ever seem to keep well abreast of these lists. I don't own any of the titles yet either, although John Burnside's Gift Songs should already be in the post from the PBS.

Without knowing the work, the only interesting comment I can make about the list this year is that it shows Salt Publishing continuing to make advances into the Mighty Handful's share of the publicity cake: one title in the best collection category* and two in the shortlist for the first collection prize**. No mere crumbs these, especially as the Guardian article linked to above leads with a few paragraphs about Luke Kennard, the Salt nominee for the best collection prize. The folk at Salt are understandably and justifiably delighted. It's due recognition of the vibrance, energy and success of their publishing enterprise.

Also interesting is the fact that the Guardian also has an article by Sarah Crown, editor of Guaridan Unlimited Books and one of the Forward judges, about her experience of reading nowt but poetry for three weeks. As far as I recall, such coverage for the Forward is without precident. It's the kind of treatment usually reserved for the Booker or, at a pinch the Whitbread-sorry!-Costa awards. Does this mean that the cultural media are waking up to the Forward? I hope so, though it's probably just a matter of Crown's being on the judging panel. Even if it is, I doubt it means that we'll see many more poetry collections reviewed in the mainstream broadsheet press in a hurry.

*Cape has two, while Picador, Carcanet and Bloodaxe have one apiece.

**The other two are from Arc and Faber.

Arvon Successes and Failures

The shortlist for this year's Arvon poetry competition is out. I entered, but didn't get anywhere. However, Siriol Troup, who read alongside me at StAnza this year, is on the shortlist. Gaun yersel, Siriol!