New
You’d think by now I’d be used to in-between places – as an at least bicultural writer. Linear narrative is overrated anyway and poetry in particular often takes its own quirky, queer pathways. Besides the pandemic has put paid to so many people’s plans in far more serious ways.
Promotion of my latest book was stymied by the pandemic. My new book is in the pipeline. And I am now writing another one…If you know anything (and I don’t know much) about marketing you know it is linear: you start with little teasers and gradually build up to a crescendo for publication and launch. But I am in between different books. The other thing is that everything has to be new, fresh, immediate, preferably young and now – like items in the news have to be, or in sales of houses/flats say where within weeks a property goes stale. My new book was actually finished before the pandemic. I have resisted shoehorning in something ‘ relevant’ to the current situation because I wanted to preserve the integrity of the work. Will it be new enough? Should I tell you more about it now or wait till I have the publication date? In the meantime should I tell you a bit more about the recent/latest one?
You may have noticed poets often mention their publications and any other successes. I get annoyed. Then I do exactly the same.
We have to do our own marketing – however bad at it we are and let’s face the majority of us aren’t great – since poetry publishers simply don’t have the resources. For most poetry publishers and editors bringing out books and magazines is a labour of love. Like poets (some are both) they make no money and are often out of pocket. My very first publisher was rumoured to finance his books from winnings on the horses. Poetry is the poor relation of the arts and considered ‘niche’.
I was talking to the wise and wonderful poet Jackie Wills about this the other day. She said what was astonishing was that we all act as though we believed in a business model with fame and profit as the goal, behaving as though we really might get rich or famous when what we are actually doing is trying to write poetry! Poetry! Admittedly it’s not just poets. More and more people are seduced by the idea of their five minutes of fame.
Think how many of us document breakfasts, outfits, pets, views from our kitchen windows, holidays. As I’m writing this my partner Deborah Price is scouring all her old photo albums for a picture of herself with blue and pink punk hair to send her publisher. She can’t find one. She has a fantastic very brand-new bildungsroman memoir The Peanut Factory about squatting in south London in the 1970s coming out soon. We both remember using cameras with a limited, expensive roll of film. We documented so much less, though there were diaries and letters, political and music fliers – if we kept them.
What’s truly exciting is the creative process itself. I feel lucky to have something I love (and love-hate!) doing. Am privileged to be able to do it. As Deborah says most working class people are too busy working to have time to write. For women too there are often more family responsibilities which eat up time. Many of us struggle with enormous self-doubt. I’m also lucky to be part of a writing community where people support and encourage one another. So we really have got things to celebrate and they are worth documenting. But should I start documenting my breakfasts – would that help promote poetry? Waiting to hear from you dear reader with bated breath.
