Sheenagh Pugh's Blog, page 47

Galoshin rose and sang his song/You'll never keep me down for long!"

Edwin Morgan, 1920-2010, was, in the words Stephanie Byng used about Jeeves, the specific dream rabbit, and if that seems an odd choice of encomium I doubt he would have minded, for his reading was not only encyclopaedic but eclectic and he loved all things good of their kind. "Edwin Morgan has always been interested in many different areas" as his website rather inadequately puts it; actually he was the twentieth century's closest approach to Renaissance Man, and his poetry was characterised...

Interview with Jim Mainland

Jim Mainland lives in Nibon, Shetland, and is a teacher. His collection of poems A Package of Measures was published by Pieces of Eight in 2000; he has also had work in many magazines and anthologies.

When Shetland Arts ran a project called Bards in the Bog, putting poems in public toilets to attract the world's most captive audience, Jim contributed this poem:

Prestidigitator

Watch this, watch my hands, look in my eyes:
this is viral, this is fiending, this is Celebrity Smash Your Face In,
I'm s...

Off with the new...

"We need better networked programmes [...:] offering talented writers help at early stages in their careers. [..:] and the profiling of work by new writers" (Arts Council England, in a recent consultation paper)

This might seem unexceptionable, and probably is, with one proviso: that "new writers" and "writers at early stages" are not, as they often turn out to be, weasel words for "writers under 30".

Not that there's anything wrong with writers under 30; they can't help it, and, given time, will...

RIP Alex Higgins

No, he wasn't a good man in many ways, and his troubles were largely of his own making. But he was an absolute genius at the one thing he did well, and watching someone do something as well as that is life-enhancing in just the same way as reading a great poem or hearing Robeson sing. So in memory, here's a poem I wrote about him in 2001, which was first published in The Movement of Bodies (Seren 2005)

Forgiven

Bad boy going on 50, trace the bones
through your skin, you're like some consumptive...

Interview with Paul Yandle

Paul Yandle was born in Caerphilly in 1982 and grew up in the small ex-mining village of Abertridwr. He studied Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Glamorgan, graduated with a First in 2005 and gained an MPhil in 2010 – the research element consisted of a dissertation called "Adventures in Imaginative Travel: A Study of Movement and Manoeuvres in the Poetry of Billy Collins". His poems have been published in The North, Iota, Envoi and Poetry Wales and he also has work in th...

Translating the Not Quite

Just put a new article on translation up on my website. Translating the Not Quite is about my efforts to translate a German poem that wasn't quite in German, since it was by the Swiss German poet Johann Peter Hebel (1760-1826), who wrote in the Alemannic dialect. I've included the original and translation in an appendix; for a poem written about 200 years ago it contains some strangely contemporary end-of-the-world forebodings. the article was originally written for a university but ironicall...

Poets 2, Publishers 0

Delighted to see from Jo Preston's writing blog that her collection The Summer King has now won the Mary Gilmore Prize for the best first collection published by an Australian author in the last 2 years. There is history here; I've posted before about how this collection, having been turned down by several UK houses, was eventually published as a result of winning another prestigious competition. Just proves several old saws: cream eventually floats to the top, if at first you don't, etc, and...

Review of Best of Manchester Poets Vol 1 (Puppywolf 2010)

I don't copy all the reviews I write to this blog, but am doing so with this one, partly because it's a new press which should therefore be encouraged, and partly because one way or another, I know several people in Manchester, who might be interested. There's a shorter version of this on amazon.co.uk.


The more I read this book, the more I find myself wishing it came with a CD attached. It is an anthology of currently practising Manchester poets, but many are performance poets, and a lot of pe...

Which way did that zeitgeist go?

There are fashions in writing; there always have been, and being in tune with them does sometimes make odds to one's chances of publication. For instance, the Holy Grail for some publishers, both in prose and poetry, has lately been to find young, male writers who concentrate on urban settings and "gritty" themes. (I assume this is in order to appeal to young male readers, though since by far the most novels are bought by women, it would seem a strange marketing strategy to ignore the likely ...

New book prize

The Terry Pratchett Anywhere But Here, Anywhen But Now Prize

So much to like about thsi -

1. it's for previously unpublished novelists
2. it offers serious money for what some would call sniffily genre fiction
3. you can enter by email (yes, a novel!)
4. the prize includes a publishing contract

What I can't see anywhere is an entry fee, which may mean they'll get inundated. Still, that's their prob....