Isabelle Charlotte Kenyon's Blog, page 5

Self Publishing the smart way

When I first heard of self publishing, Amazon Createspace was the service shouting the loudest. This is still arguably the easiest platform for self publishing, offering:1. Free ISBN allocation2. Free design service (you can use their templates to create your cover, which automatically places your barcode on to the work)3. Distribution around the world – a print on demand service, meaning that any costs of printing are simply taken off your profit total. This way, you never lose any money.As I began to branch out and start wondering how to get my quality work into bookshops, I realised that as UK author, using an American service, there were many disadvantages to publishing through Createspace:1. Createspace ISBNs are not accepted by many bookshops who may want to order your book.2. Ordering my books from Createspace at ‘manufacturing cost’ so that I could sell them on myself, would take up to a month to ship to my UK address, and the shipping costs were too high for me to make any profit.I was introduced to Ingram Spark as a distribution service. Like Createspace, they offer a print on demand service, which means no warehouse holding costs, and best of all, they have a catalogue which is sent to booksellers across the globe, giving sellers information on your book, and the opportunity to order direct from Ingram Spark.I found that the advantages of Ingram were as follows:1. Leading forces such as Waterstones had developed relationships with Ingram, and accepted ordering books through them.2. Ordering from them direct, was much cheaper than Createspace and gave me the possibility of selling my books via my website – and generating a profit!It’s not all plain sailing however. If you have a pre-existing ‘deal’ in the past year with Amazon Kindle, you won’t be able to sell Kindle books via Ingram Spark. You have to buy your IBSN separately. You also have to pay an upfront fee to create your book on Ingram AND if you want to be in their catalogue, you have to pay a marketing listing fee – so you have to hope you will make this back via book sales. If you do, and the expanded distribution which Ingram offers pays off, then my bet is, you’ll never go back to the big boss that is Amazon.Let me know what you think of these publishing services in the comments and if you have any which you would recommend to readers!

2 Chapbook Reviews - the launch of Selcouth Station Press!

Conversations with Dadby Jacqueline RobinsonBlurb:In 'Conversations with Dad', Jenni's father rings her every Friday night at 6 o'clock. The only problem is: her father's been dead for a little while now. Jacqueline Robinson explores the Jamaican cultural processes which surrounds the death of an individual. In addition, the story is a critique of psychiatry in relation to BME communities within the context of grief.My review:Simple and very short, Jacqueline somehow manages to travel through the character's relationship with their Dad, his death and her grieving (or denial after) in this chapbook. I loved the interrogation of mental health - the twist at the end particularly investigates if mental health professions misdiagnose patients. It also explores whether mental health needs to be medicated. I thought long and hard about this - as I am of the school of thought that if it is not hurting the general public and the person is happier without medication (although can be diagnosed as 'hearing voices') then I can't see why that person's life should be dulled through medication. Of course, there are many exceptions to this thought trail, however the point is that Robinson, in just a few pages, is able to investigate deep themes and leave questions for her reader. Robinson is also able to craft a story arc which immerses a reader quickly and leaves them wanting to know more.Just Let Me Have Thisby Heather SweeneyBlurb: Heather Sweeney's first poetry collection focuses on the textural, minute details of the self and memory. With a sharp awareness of today's culture and the past, this collection flickers in and out of clarity and dream, of the surreal and the painfully true. My Review:'Maybe all I need is a hot Tub and and an endless cigarette To outlive the memes of tomorrow The vanity of this national illness.' The above poem 'The memes of tomorrow' was my favourite poem of this collection. Sweeney's writing is splintered and disjointed - meaning has to be pieced together. It's a very different style of poetry than I usually read and I really enjoy discovering new poets and unique voices. I think I would have enjoyed this collection more if I could identify a thread of meaning throughout the chapbook which joined all the poems together thematically. Perhaps this would have emerged if the collection was slightly bigger. The imagery in this chapbook is rich and sometimes surprising: 'cancer on your cheekbone/a cradle of pacific rust'. I would be interested to read more of Sweeney's work! I love the aesthetic of this chapbook - it feels glossy and made with care. Great front cover designs.

Book Review: "corvus' burnt - wing love balm and cure all"

Francis is a writer with real grit and this book feels like pure filth in more way than one. The ‘ammonia coral' covering the pipes in a toilet is one graphic description, and sexually explicit descriptions such as ‘you made my body your altar’ are not shied away from, but retain the imagery and distance necessary for this kind of poetry. The writing is cryptic and often uses words from other languages or folklore and mythology, which sometimes have religious connotations- I feel there is a lot to unpack here and if I had to say the themes which Francis is exploring in this chapbook, I would say sexuality, gender and society, but this would do little to shed light on the poems’ meanings! Some of the poems feel like they are written from personal experience, which left me wondering about Francis’ personal life due to poems like ‘Redeem’, about a man called X who has spent time in prison and is living in squalor, and ‘At the Urinal’ where he seems to be accompanied by a drug addict.The book is beautifully designed and put together by Black Light Engine Room PressFor just £5 it’s a steal – a collection which can be reread due to its layered meanings.Find out more about Francis here.

Visiting Venice for the arty traveller

Venice is a beautiful floating city full of culture. However, it is difficult to access this culture in such a tourist orientated city. The first thing you want to look at is the modern art gallery, The Peggy Guggenheim Collection. This is an easy waterbus trip to Academia (make sure you get a couple of days pass to avoid the steep €7.50 per trip). There you can spend time in the garden with neon art works and sculptures, as well as appreciating classic names such as Picasso and Jackson Pollark. For 2018 there is an architecture exhibition across Venice which is mostly free, and vast. You can follow the map of the locations and explore the island parks and buildings to see these pop up exhibitions. We visited the famous bookshop, Libreria Acqua Alta. This bookshop is famous for its satirical placement of books in bathtubs and gondola (to save them when it floods?!) It also has some bizarre books. Worth a visit!Venice has 2 islands famous for the production of glass (glass blowing) and lace- Murano and Burano. These are worth a visit, even if you don’t access the museums there. Burano is especially picturesque with it’s multi coloured painted houses!If you have any top tips for arty travellers in Venice leave them in the comments below...

Book Review: Our Wild Magic

Our Wild Magicby Amanda LinsmeierBlurb:'for the cursed the wicked the wild the charmed for those in their ever after and for those on their way A fairytale-inspired poetry collection in five parts from author Amanda Linsmeier.'My review:Our Wild Magic will appeal to any romantics, as it did to me - a whimsical book, which is ultimately rooted in reality. Amanda describes our own lives as 'enchanted' - more than any story. There are different styles of poetry throughout and i enjoyed the variety. There are patterns within the sections - for example, the black out poems taken from Linsmeier's favourite poets, prose poetry and very short and compact poems. Poems such as 'Snow White' had echoes of Amanda Lovelace's 'The Princess Saves Herself In This One' - Amanda wants us to wake ourselves up and stop waiting. The black out poems were the strongest for me: 'suddenly/twist out of element, a kick of air/ recoiling under ripples, leaving/ torn to repair/ and I experience a small completeness'- think Amanda has an eye for drawing out powerful imagery from the original poems. For me, the fairtytale similes and metaphors felt overdone and occasionally, the book fell into a few cliques. Word and imagery repetition make some poems feel similar.Buy the book here.About Amanda Linsmeier:Amanda Linsmeier is the author of Ditch Flowers (Penner Publishing, 2015) and Beach Glass & Other Broken Things. Her writing has been featured in Feminine Collective, Portage Magazine, Literary Mama, and Brain, Child Magazine. Besides poetry, she loves fables, fairytales, and fantasy, and sometimes she pretends her Hogwarts letter is still coming.

Scrittura Magazine's editor reviews my new chapbook!

Valentina Terrinoni is the Editor of Scrittura Magazine, which supports new writing and is looking at the 11th issue.Digging Holes To Another Continent By Isabelle KenyonIsabelle Kenyon’s autobiographical collection touches on some of life’s most intimate moments: loss, grief, loneliness and finding oneself, all of which encapsulate what it truly means to be human, and it is this which resonates most. The aptly titled The Journey launches us in, and within three lines we’re hit with the loss of a pet and ‘Mum’, feeding perfectly the dominant themes of the collection. Wave Meditation follows, setting up the central metaphor - the juxtaposition of a new world, nature and Kenyon’s emotions - which is beautifully presented and particularly satisfying here as the ‘rhythmic crashes’ of the waves mimic the overwhelmed state of the Kenyon’s mind. He Married a Faith Healer feeds the feelings of grief and loneliness, while Beach Thoughts continues the clever metaphorical language use with ‘pebbled words’ and ‘seaweed tongue’ conveying the bitter decline of a relationship. Rock Cavern plunges us into the ‘grabbing hands’ of ‘hellfires’ in climactic force, leading us to The End/ The Beginning, a sobering reminder that while life moves on it is a cycle which loops back, rendering new heartbreaks on top of old; there’s still ‘no wagging tail’, and now an empty nest leaving us ‘more broken than we started.’ A poignant and thought-provoking, intimate collection; I particularly loved the fusion of nature and emotion, which is beautifully captured by Kenyon. Buy Digging Holes To Another Continent here.About Valentina:Valentina graduated in 2013 with BA Hons English Literature with English Language and Creative Writing, and completed her Masters in Creative Writing in 2018. As an undergraduate, Valentina took up the role of Editor-in-Chief of the University’s student newspaper. She works as a Marketing Assistant by day, Digital Content Editor by night and is a reader for Structo Magazine. She is currently working on her first novel, 'Greenacres Academy'.

May Book Reviews!

Poetry Picks:Something Like Happinessby Alex FiveTruthful and unique Honestly this book sometimes revolted me - the words of the other man, the one who admits he doesn't know what he's doing with other people's hearts, hurting himself and others. At other times, I saw the writer's vulnerability utterly, the death of a grandma and a family which was broken by an abusive parent. It's a heavy book and there is a lot of pain and in that pain, I found truth. I felt deep emotion and some of the poems were also filled with beautiful observations of people and the world around us. Decaying nature. Beautiful and cynical. This book is something completely different.Sproutsby Alexandra DavisThis is a personal collection which explores a wide range of subject matters, however seems that come through are: body image, legacy, and family. Alexandra describes the moment at which she loses her son to his greater love for his father, having reached that age in which ‘the worm of adventure nudges him on’.The poem which touched me the most was ‘Glancing’, the busyness and the chaos of everyday life and how the moment before bed time, maybe the only moment to make eye contact with your other half: ‘we claim this thing/ this chance this choice’.The collection begins and ends with Alexandra reminiscing on memories of her grandmother, and so the theme of legacy continues in the readers mind after putting down this lovely and touching collectionFeminine Gospels: Poemsby Carol Ann Duffy‘Feminine gospels’ by Carol Ann Duffy made me realise how so many people have been inspired by her exploration of the female myth. Often satirical and always from a feminist perspective, Carol explores motherhood, challenging relationships with food, the way the press and the media represents women as objects, and dreaming. My favourite pans were: ‘A dreaming week’, in which Carol refuses make future plans because she would rather spend her time dreaming: ‘not the following evening, I’m dreaming in the monocle of the moon’ and also ‘White writing’, which explores the idea that her words of love to a partner are written in white and therefore in her actions and therefore implicit.Fiction Picks:Sour Heartby Jenny ZhangThis book is a game changer. Set in 1990s New York, Chinese families face poverty and discrimination. Parents unfulfilled dreams are taken out on their children. The pressure to survive and to achieve is high. The children which the short stories track are all about 9 years old - Zhang is exploring femininity and sexual discovery, but from a mostly ignorant perspective. There is a graphic scene in this book which others have reviewed as 'destroying' the whole book for them. I don't believe that Zhang is any less talented for writing with such powerful imagery and creating situations which, yes, make me squirm - there is violence in this book as an undercurrent which rears its head throughout - but it is only to aid the story. Isn't real life just as grim and graphic? We can't read sheltered books. Zhang understands the voice of so many - the characters feel real, from the grandmother who worries she will cease to be important, to little girls who feel cruel because they are lost and they convert their fear into anger and spite. You need to read this book.

Author Interview: Mind Poet Neil Elder!

Meet Neil Elder:Neil Elder is winner of the Cinnamon Press Debut Collection prize with Us . This collection builds on the success of his 2017 chapbook, Being Present (The Black Light Engine Room Press) and his award winning pamphlet (Cinnamon Press), which introduced readers to the much-loved character of Henderson. Neil lives and works in NW London.Do you find that themes reoccur in your work naturally? If so, what would these be?In broad terms my interest is in writing about the gap between what we think we know about each other and what we actually know about each other. In The Space Between Us, written over quite a long period of time, I didn’t consciously write with a theme in mind, however I now see there are a number of ideas shared between some of the poems. I am in the phase of giving readings from the book and when I plan which poems to read I like to create a fluent running order; to get from poem A to B in a natural fashion. Thus I have been thinking about the poems carefully, and in a way that you don’t when writing them, and some poems sit quite naturally alongside each other. For instance, I’ve realised a few deal with the idea of life happening beyond your immediate view – things going on that you are not witness to, one poem ends “good things happen out of sight”.In the main, apart from the great universal themes of love and death, I look at the way we interact with each other and make sense of our environment and relationships. However, I have also deliberately set out to explore themes in two other works. In my pamphlet Codes of Conduct I explore that gap between the known and unkown by setting a sequence of poems in an office – where people play a particular role, but that role is only one dimension of their life.If you had to describe your writing style in a sentence, what would you say?To describe my writing style I would use the words economic, wry and accessible.Can you give us some insight into the title of 'The Space Between Us'- how did you go about choosing this title?The title The Space Between Us stems from this idea I have about the gap between what’s known and unknown – about each other, the world around us, and even about ourselves. Subsequently a poem in the collection (What We Could Not Give) has come to take on greater importance than I had known it had, and that poem has a line about “the space that stands between us” and so I perhaps had some subconscious realisation that the title of the collection should relate to that poem. The composer Debussy said, “Music is the space between the notes”, and I think that is often very true.Who have been some of your inspirations growing up - and have they influenced your work in any way?I remember being struck by Ted Hughes at school. However, I don’t recall any special inspirations beyond him, because I wasn’t reading widely enough. More recent influences and inspirations are Edward Thomas, Andrew motion, Lorraine mariner and Paul Farley.Reviews:Daljit Nagra At times tender and at times laugh-out-loud funny, Elder seamlessly negotiates anythingfrom the terrors of a BBC fact file to an ancient jeep in Mombasa.Hannah Lowe The poems explore domestic life, fatherhood and nature with great tenderness but oftenframed by an unease with the world, and a sense of important things being said, but beingtold ‘slant’.Lorraine MarinerThe Space Between Us mines the gap between aspiration and reality, appearance and truth, the said and the unsaid, but never takes itself too seriously. With wit and tenderness, Neil Elder explores love, loss and the absurdities of life on earth, bridging the chasm between disappointment and hope.Watch the promo video for the book here.And visit Neil Elder's websitehere.

A day at the Saboteur Awards

On Saturday 19th the Saboteur awards were held in London to celebrate literary achievement which is underrepresented in the industry. This may mean independent, underfunded, or experimental work which does not fall under traditional publishing. I was overwhelmed by the talent and the standard of work which was exhibited through spoken word, workshops, panels and simple conversations that I had with other writers, learning about their work and their projects.I was heartened that groups such as poetry described in London exist, led by Miss Yankee, who performed a gorgeous rendition of the spoken word poem about abusive relationships, and explained how her group helps those suffering with mental health problems to express themselves through writing, regardless of natural literary talent, explaining the writing itself is a form of therapy.I made my first zine in a workshop, and enjoyed making art for art’s sake, being the first time I had picked up a gluestick for a artistic expression and collaging probably since GCSE art. I know that Sabotage reviews DIY zines, which really does turn literary world on its head, because it proves that all you need is a creative willpower and an audience to share your work with. Of course the highlight of the night was the coming runner up for Best anthology next to #metoo. It really did hammer home to me the power that we’ll hold as individuals to take an idea and fly with it, and I can’t wait to start new projects which consume me just as much.Thank you to Claire Trevien and to her team who reward underrepresented writers each year, I feel very lucky to have been included in 2018.Read Please Hear What I'm Not Saying here.

Review: The Space Between Us

I had the pleasure of reading Mind poet Neil Elder's collection, The Space Between Us.Packed with intriguing observations and descriptions which draw you into Neil's world: 'Today she watched a man clean Jesus,/With a brush you'd use for washing up'this collection feels personal and fragile. Poetry such as 'Like My Daughter Says' explores distance and possibly, the afterlife:'I hope you fall like snow/ and settle for a while'. I laughed at poems such as ‘Flatpack’ and sympathised with my own shoddy DIY skill, and ‘Reading in a church hall ’ – an offensive poem with the word ‘fuck’, innocently spoken! Through nature, animals and the mundanes of every day life, Neil creates a magic in simplicity.It's not all light though and poems such as ‘Earth Eater’ feel gritty and rooted in the city of London and it’s ‘blue – gray London clay’. Poems such as ‘In Our Path’ shed a gloomy light with descriptions such ‘kitten noosed by orange wire’ and the mention of a person, ‘Daniel’, who was cradled carefully on a morning ‘when everything changed.’The poem which ends the collection, ‘The Gaps’, brings the collection together. In it, I found childhood innocence, interspersed with death of animals and iconic people. It is a poem which reveals snippets of life, snippets of truth and of pain.Explore Neil's work here